Hurricane52
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My dad turns 80 this year. He’s narrowed his collection down to an Abarth 595 and his Austin Healey. His daily is his free bus pass.
Joining the electric car club
- Thread starter Ewan
- Start date
zagatoes30
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In later years my old man had mobility issues and was on the motability scheme, where he had the latest Nissan Qashqui thing every 3 years for ease of use but most times you saw him out and about he was driving his trusty P6 Rover 2200 SC
outrun
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Boss of newly merged Fiat and Peugeot warns on UK investment
Stellantis chief Carlos Tavares says electric rules and Brexit risk ‘destroying the business model’ of Vauxhall plant
www.ft.com
Good article today in the FT. Carlos Tavares, boss of Stellantis (the newly joined Fiat Crysler and Peugeot/Citroen/Vauxhall), talks about the lack of thought that's going in to the move to EV by governments and how it harms the business model for building cars in the UK. There seems to be a growing momentum for changing to calculate the true impact of an EV using LCA which takes into account the manufacture of the batteries, extra power used to make each car etc. Seems blindingly obvious but so far the government bandwageon has just made rules without doing the proper research. Who'd have thought that possible?
LCA will, for example, potentially rule Chinese manufacturers out of the UK market as they use coal fired power stations to make the batteries (once they have the raw metals from the child miners in African mines). So they would need to clean up their entire lifecycle process to get into the markets.
It's also a nice way to be seen to be ethically preculding China, which given what China has contributed to the world recently, provides some vote winning point scoring for the politicians.
outrun
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Just realised you need to subscribe to view it so here's a copy/paste.
https://www.ft.com/content/0d11705e-8d00-4707-80b8-a667a0a16d13
The owner of Vauxhall will decide within weeks whether to invest in its UK car plant at Ellesmere Port as its chief executive warned the British government against “destroying the business model” of its operations in the country. Carlos Tavares, chief executive of Stellantis, the newly merged Fiat Chrysler and PSA, cited risks from Brexit and rules banning petrol car sales by 2030 as he said the UK government must show a “willingness to protect some kind of auto industry in their country”. “There is a limit. If one country is putting so many barriers there is no room to make decisions, there is a point where there is an ethical responsibility of the officers of the company to make the appropriate decisions,” he said. His warning came as shares in Stellantis began trading in the US following the completion of the €50bn merger. The company owns the Ellesmere Port facility, as well as a Luton van plant, but has withheld investment in the Cheshire plant because of uncertainty over trading conditions after Brexit. Mr Tavares told a press conference on Tuesday that the company would make an investment decision on the plant within weeks, adding that any new funding would likely be for electric cars due to rules requiring that new vehicles sold in the UK be electric or hybrid after 2030. But he told the FT carmakers were being forced to produce electric vehicles by “narrow-minded” regulations that ignore carbon emissions from battery production. Governments were pushing new technologies before fully understanding their overall environmental impact, and he wants regulators to look at the full manufacturing process from start to finish. Electric cars typically cost more than traditional engine vehicles. “The way we are making decisions today is very narrow-minded,” Mr Tavares said. He said emissions from making batteries “handicap” electric cars before they even leave the showroom, forcing them to drive higher mileage before beginning to offset their petrol equivalents. This includes pollution from extracting lithium used in batteries. Carmakers have launched dozens of electric cars, largely to meet tightening emissions rules in Europe and China. Despite his criticisms of the way the rules are formulated, PSA has sprung from being a laggard in the technology to being one of the leaders in electric vehicles in Europe. Its range of battery and hybrid cars helped the company meet the region’s CO2 targets last year. “If governments are saying you must go electric, I will go electric, so I will do the best electric vehicles in the world,” he said. He said the “real question” facing the company was whether carmakers are sidelined by regulators in the future when deciding policies from emissions rules to those around allowing private cars in urban centres. Carmakers are ignored if they raise objections to the policies, he said, because of the industry-wide fallout from the Volkswagen emissions scandal of 2015. “I am put in a box, and the box says ‘we are crooks’, then who is going to listen to us,” he asked. “There was a point in time where we tried, there is no one who is willing to listen, so why bother?” PSA was among carmakers that faced questions over its use of software in diesel cars that allegedly made them less polluting during emissions tests. The €50bn merger of PSA and FCA was born in part by the need for the two carmakers to save on future investments into battery technology, and to cut development costs across the businesses. While PSA’s stronghold is in Europe, FCA makes almost all of its profits from its North American region and its Jeep brand. A formal business plan for the combined groups will not be ready until 2022, Mr Tavares said. “We are going to take our time; this was not a crisis merger,” he added. Despite the pressure to eke out €5bn of promised annual savings, Mr Tavares pledged to avoid closing any sites — something that PSA also successfully promised during its 2017 takeover of Opel-Vauxhall. “The synergies do not include plant shutdowns,” he said. “We believe that if we implement our synergies properly we do not need to shut down any plants.” Recommended FT AlphavilleJamie Powell FT Alphaville presents: the EV bubble in real time In Europe, Stellantis will this year continue to pool emissions with Tesla, the Californian electric car maker, to avoid CO2 fines following an earlier deal with FCA that “will be respected”, Mr Tavares said. “After the deal ends, then another life starts.” PSA met the EU rules last year on its own, largely by selling electric cars and lowering the emissions of its standard petrol models. Mr Tavares said he was “absolutely comfortable that we will be compliant” in the next few years as well.
https://www.ft.com/content/0d11705e-8d00-4707-80b8-a667a0a16d13
The owner of Vauxhall will decide within weeks whether to invest in its UK car plant at Ellesmere Port as its chief executive warned the British government against “destroying the business model” of its operations in the country. Carlos Tavares, chief executive of Stellantis, the newly merged Fiat Chrysler and PSA, cited risks from Brexit and rules banning petrol car sales by 2030 as he said the UK government must show a “willingness to protect some kind of auto industry in their country”. “There is a limit. If one country is putting so many barriers there is no room to make decisions, there is a point where there is an ethical responsibility of the officers of the company to make the appropriate decisions,” he said. His warning came as shares in Stellantis began trading in the US following the completion of the €50bn merger. The company owns the Ellesmere Port facility, as well as a Luton van plant, but has withheld investment in the Cheshire plant because of uncertainty over trading conditions after Brexit. Mr Tavares told a press conference on Tuesday that the company would make an investment decision on the plant within weeks, adding that any new funding would likely be for electric cars due to rules requiring that new vehicles sold in the UK be electric or hybrid after 2030. But he told the FT carmakers were being forced to produce electric vehicles by “narrow-minded” regulations that ignore carbon emissions from battery production. Governments were pushing new technologies before fully understanding their overall environmental impact, and he wants regulators to look at the full manufacturing process from start to finish. Electric cars typically cost more than traditional engine vehicles. “The way we are making decisions today is very narrow-minded,” Mr Tavares said. He said emissions from making batteries “handicap” electric cars before they even leave the showroom, forcing them to drive higher mileage before beginning to offset their petrol equivalents. This includes pollution from extracting lithium used in batteries. Carmakers have launched dozens of electric cars, largely to meet tightening emissions rules in Europe and China. Despite his criticisms of the way the rules are formulated, PSA has sprung from being a laggard in the technology to being one of the leaders in electric vehicles in Europe. Its range of battery and hybrid cars helped the company meet the region’s CO2 targets last year. “If governments are saying you must go electric, I will go electric, so I will do the best electric vehicles in the world,” he said. He said the “real question” facing the company was whether carmakers are sidelined by regulators in the future when deciding policies from emissions rules to those around allowing private cars in urban centres. Carmakers are ignored if they raise objections to the policies, he said, because of the industry-wide fallout from the Volkswagen emissions scandal of 2015. “I am put in a box, and the box says ‘we are crooks’, then who is going to listen to us,” he asked. “There was a point in time where we tried, there is no one who is willing to listen, so why bother?” PSA was among carmakers that faced questions over its use of software in diesel cars that allegedly made them less polluting during emissions tests. The €50bn merger of PSA and FCA was born in part by the need for the two carmakers to save on future investments into battery technology, and to cut development costs across the businesses. While PSA’s stronghold is in Europe, FCA makes almost all of its profits from its North American region and its Jeep brand. A formal business plan for the combined groups will not be ready until 2022, Mr Tavares said. “We are going to take our time; this was not a crisis merger,” he added. Despite the pressure to eke out €5bn of promised annual savings, Mr Tavares pledged to avoid closing any sites — something that PSA also successfully promised during its 2017 takeover of Opel-Vauxhall. “The synergies do not include plant shutdowns,” he said. “We believe that if we implement our synergies properly we do not need to shut down any plants.” Recommended FT AlphavilleJamie Powell FT Alphaville presents: the EV bubble in real time In Europe, Stellantis will this year continue to pool emissions with Tesla, the Californian electric car maker, to avoid CO2 fines following an earlier deal with FCA that “will be respected”, Mr Tavares said. “After the deal ends, then another life starts.” PSA met the EU rules last year on its own, largely by selling electric cars and lowering the emissions of its standard petrol models. Mr Tavares said he was “absolutely comfortable that we will be compliant” in the next few years as well.
davy83
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I note you are all discarding the environmental side of this. In Scotland where we have a lot of renewable energy if you buy the right EV (I have a second hand i3 which i think is built reasonably environmentally friendly) and i charge on a 13 amp plug so no big investment here its considerably better than running an ICE vehicle for our air quality and global warming generally. The running costs are tiny, and its not polluting the planet while I pooter in and out of the city in traffic, on mostly short journeys, it makes sense to me. And the note about older people wanting reliability, comfort and visibility its got all of that and I like it, its a good car. I still have the maserati and another work horse car but the EV is my daily.
outrun
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I’m not ignoring it at all, just pointing out that there’s more layers than government decision makers are bothering to work through.
I own an electric moped company and so I really buy in to the advantages. I’d be happy with an EV as a daily, just don’t take my v12 away !!
Oneball
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Has your Audi got some sort of noise production? They said the we’re bringing it in for EVs so people could hear them?
safrane
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Legal req now.
www.gov.uk
New noise systems to stop ‘silent’ electric cars and improve safety
From 1 July 2019 all manufacturers must install an acoustic sound system in new types of quiet electric and hybrid electric vehicles to improve road safety.
davy83
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Having one of the early ones that does not make a noise I can confirm this is needed. I have on several occasions been behind walkers and cyclists and they are completely unaware that I am there. One cyclist nearly jumped out his skin when he looked back and saw a car right behind him. Its nice inside driving some thing so quiet, but there is a safety element here.
Legal req now.
New noise systems to stop ‘silent’ electric cars and improve safety
From 1 July 2019 all manufacturers must install an acoustic sound system in new types of quiet electric and hybrid electric vehicles to improve road safety.
RobinL
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The whole pollution and C02 issue is incredibly complicated. No one has yet figured out just exactly how you can measure the absolute footprint. (Do you start with the carbon footprint of the chap who drives to work to assemble the battery pack (and all his mates), and the carbon footprint of the folks that assembled the machines he uses -ad infinitum)
Or maybe the fuel used by the offshore service vessel that takes supplies out to the oil rig....
But for me I agree, short city hopping trips for daily commute then an EV is really the only option.
My i3 is great for that. But does not have any soul!!
Putting my boot in going through Conwy tunnels in an i3 does not relive my childhood the way a V8 does with a hard downshift thrown in!
Sent from my ONEPLUS A5010 using Tapatalk
I saw Harry on the X5PHEV and was mighty impressed. But Which car guide came last week and has an article on hybrid and electric. Reckons it costs 429% more to run the X5 when you take average overall mileage and fuel/electric mix. As Harry said makes sense when small local journeys 30 mile range and charge at home but with more long journeys using fuel is a different equation. Interesting Which says X5 uses 41.4kWh but Audi e-tron uses only 25.8kWh per 100km
mjheathcote
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Electric gate?
Wack61
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This would be shocking on any new car but something as expensive as a tesla, really
mjheathcote
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Battery went flat?!
hashluck
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Been sat fully charged but owner has nowhere to go and nowhere he wants to go in lockdown and has decided to buy an old E46 BMW from us for the little he drives.