Government can set targets and punish manufacturers all it likes, but if people won’t open their wallets and buy, the whole thing falls apart.
September saw the second highest month of electric vehicle (EV) registrations on record yet they are still falling well short of binding targets forced on car makers by the Government from next year.
Some 45,323 new EVs entered UK roads last month, which saw battery cars take a 16.6 per cent stake of all registrations in September.
However, demand for EVs is still primarily being driven by fleet registrations while private sales have gone into reverse, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders says.
I’d say that this was entirely foreseeable. People are waking up to how absurd the whole idea is. The EV is heavy, expensive, environmentally costly and has a really shit resale value. Why would any sensible private buyer throw money away on one? I won’t. And no matter how much the manufacturers are penalised by government, I still won’t. The idea is insane, but it is an idea that the consumer can beat by simply not playing. The manufacturers will hurt badly – and hopefully when the pips are squeaking, they will do something about it instead of just kowtowing.
The market share of EVs in September also remains a long way off the binding targets set to be placed on manufacturers from next year, which will see the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Mandate require mainstream brands to increase their share of EVs sales to 22 per cent in 2024 – or face heavy fines.
Looks like it will be heavy fines, then. You cannot force people to buy something they really don’t want.
In order to meet these targets, it is pivotal for private buyers to make the switch and purchase more EVs, along with business and fleet customers.
No. Fuck you in the arse and in the eye. We do not have to make the switch and nothing these scumbags say or do will make me.
With new EV prices still at a significant premium, residual values of battery cars plummeting and ongoing concerns about the lack of charging infrastructure and range anxiety, car makers face an uphill task to meet the mandate’s binding requirements.
Bears shit in the woods, Pope is catholic and so on.
Perhaps manufacturers will abandon the UK market.
That’s another option for them. Or perhaps they could put their big boy pants on and kick back at the government. Use their lobbying power.
We may see EVs being sold at a significant discount rather than a premium, just to shift them. If that costs the manufacturers less than the fines.
That still relies on people actually wanting them.
Make a really cheap electric car like an EV version of the Tata Nano and sell it for a small sum, say £1,500. The loss on that can be made up on expensive ICE cars assuming that you make them. If that does not make up 22% sell them for £1 with each purchase of a BMW, Audi or Merc over £50,000.
Would people buy such a car.? Yes, some people would if really cheap. My late mother went to the supermarket, library, flower arranging and to see her sister; total weekly mileage less than 25 miles. My commute to work and back used to be 10 miles. My cousin drove to the station and caught the train into London for work. A cheap short range EV would do all this. Of course, you would need a second car for longer journeys but if your car is at the station all day you might need this anyway.
Would you need off street parking to charge? A low range means a small battery so not long to charge, so not necessarily.
To clarify I am not proseletising for EV cars; I don’t have one, don’t want one and think that the whole climate “crisis” is blown out of all proportion.
And if a cheap, short range EV worked as you suggest ( and it probably does), then we shouldn’t need government coercion and threats to make the public go for them.
Are insurance companies being told that from January first 22% of all cars they insure have to be milk floats, and that they will be fined for every one they miss? Ditto garages for the cars they service? Kwik fit for the cars they put tyres on?
How about the police being told that 22% of all the drivers they harass have to be in milk floats (actually I would be all for that!)
Etc
To a degree car manufacturers are being hoist by their own petard as they have readily gone along with the green genocide in exchange for bungs and handouts. Governments whore themselves with our money to attract “giga incendiaries” and hand out our money to bribe manufacturers to promise to make the useless toys.
He who takes soup with the devil and all that.
However, they have all the power. Just threaten to close a large factory and throw tens of thousands (don’t forget the supply chain) out on theirs arses and see what happens.
However, in the real world
Mark, That will be what happens. The government is basically pushing for manufacturers to stop making ICE vehicles to force people onto EVs. When the EVs won’t sell at any price the manufacturers will go bust. Fleets may be the main buyers but when you want something like a truck or a long distance drive you need a ICE.
When a manufacturer slows down and makes layoffs, and fingers crossed it is one who has voluntarily stopped making ICE cars, then it will change.
I think the pushback against suckdick khunt’s (piece of absolutely disgusting, rancidly corrupt 4th world tilth) spy network shows that while you should never underestimate these people, you should not overestimate them either.
In this case, what can khunt actually do? It’s quite striking how little repercussion there has been on the perpetrators. Why have they not been quickly caught given the surveillance/police state we’re in?
The first manufacturer that does kick back (I wonder if warnings have been privately delivered already) will basically be sounding out public opinion and I wouldn’t be surprised if their real car sales rise as a result.
Suckdick brazenly went ahead, utterly contemptuous of public opinion, clearly believing he could do what he liked.
He found out he can’t.
As far as milk floats are concerned, all the gaulieters can do is double down on their threats, arrogance and lies.
But they will not be able to avoid responsibility, and it will be both interesting and entertaining to see who they do try to shift blame onto.
My wife has a plug in hybrid, for company tax reasons (35 miles electric, 700 miles diesel). It is due for replacement. Her company now mandates all electric, despite her travel distances on business. Forget all the ‘lone female’ safety, they really don’t give a shit. Me, I am about to sign up for a nice juicy 650 mile range diesel. If she has a long trip, she can take mine, and I will pay for the diesel, because unlike her net zero, virtue signalling company, I DO care that she gets home without needing to charge up at some dodgy charging station next to a badly lit A road in the Midlands.
The fines are crazy.
£20K per car.
Are the fleet buyers going to keep buying? If there isn’t a second hand car market for milk floats, I can’t see them doing so.
They buy large numbers of vehicles. And then run them for a few years before selling off and buying new. I assume this is because it’s cheaper to take the loss of value hit than to run for longer and have maintenance costs and loss of business that results.
However, if nobody is buying knackered evs with shit batteries, that’s going to change the calculus quite a bit. Suddenly they’re stuck with vehicles they don’t want or have to take a massive hit to the balance sheet. Even tax discounts aren’t going to cover the cost of buying a new EV.
Yet the car makers aren’t pushing back. They’re all going ahead with a push towards fully electric. I used to be a big fan of ford. Good cars, good value. Now they’re so big on EVs and their cars are shit.
So I’m going somewhere else next time.
All the TV ads for cars have been for fully electric models only for a couple of years now and people still aren’t buying. As for the government, why didn’t they deal with the Covid problem by just passing a law against having it? It’s the same sort of mindset, thinking that you can affect reality by passing a law.
“…the whole climate “crisis” is blown out of all proportion.”
Worse than that, it’s complete fiction. The warming period up to the end of the 1990s was down to natural variation, nothing to do with CO2. We know this because the warming stopped in spite of rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. Any perception of a crisis is simply down to the media reporting every weather event as if it is something unprecedented and new. Anyone with an ounce of sense, which excludes most people I know, realises that bad weather has always been with us and always will be.
The idea of the very cheap little car to get too and from work sounds ideal. But all they want to produce is the fancy streamline ones.
It would be interesting to see what diesel and petrol vehicles are being sold, bet camper vans are high on the list. They are heavy already so won’t get up the hills if have a heavy electric battery in it. A friend just bought one, was told not to worry as they can’t make them electric so won’t be obsolete in a few years.
I work in a care home for learning disabilities, if they started buying electric cars they would need charging points for each of the residents cars. Plus the house cars. All have to be ready to use in an emergency so would be expensive for the company to install and a nightmare to organize.
Funny thing is the company boss has an electric car, it keeps loosing charge so she ends up borrowing the house cars to get where she wants to go. Not a good advert.
I’ve been told by a dealer that they are buying back, less than, year old cars, sold on PCP, and offering new ones for the same deal. So as to have a stock of ‘almost new’ vehicles to sell when the new 22% EV new car rule comes in to play. Makes sense, most of the new sales will be EV but, most of their overall sales will be ICE.
I wouldn’t underestimate these people and I wish I had your optimism- they have total control of Parliament, the education system, local government, the police and the judiciary. Look at what happened with lockdown. They were able to coerce tens of millions. I would expect Starmer to reverse the 2035 move and by 2030 they will outlaw ICE cars regardless of infrastructure – as for those on here thinking they will keep their petrol and diesel cars. Try that when fuel is banned or made £40 per litre. You are not dealing with rational people.
‘Those (Net Zero advocates) are out there
they can’t be bargained with
They can’t be reasoned with
They don’t feel pity, remorse or fear
And they absolutely will not stop – ever
until you are dead’
Or until they are dead. This dam will burst sooner or later. There are millions of us adversely affected by this insanity. Eventually, there will be a groundswell. The Blade Runners are just the start. personally, I’d like to see some Ceausescu moments for these evil bastards.
That would be great but bear in mind the Kims (for example) in North Korea have been in situ for 7 decades – it might not be in our lifetime this ends. I don’t think the advocates of Net Zero will give up easily.
You are probably right. The Soviet Union lasted seventy years. But eventually, people will rise up. In this case, the onset of enforced poverty might trigger sooner rather than later.
Problem is that the majority of people are mindless morons who actually believe what they are spoon fed through the googlebox. Take face nappies and lockdown as a recent example.
They actually think that government will solve their problems when the reverse is the case.
While this is true, harsh reality will hit them sooner or later.
How are they going to fine Toyota, Hyundai, Kia, MG?
Will they stop you going overseas and buying a car, or even having one shipped in? Good news for Isle of Man and Channel Islands
What will Morgan and Caterham do? Especially if most of their British made cars are exported.
Does a mobility scooter count on the electric power side of things?
Lots of lovely legal lolly.
A big concern with EVs is the fire risk, the mainstream media don’t say much if anything about this problem, there are two excellent blogsites on You Tube which cover it, both factual and concerning. The first one is “Geoff Buys Cars” select the You Tube option then Videos. The second is a very blunt talking Australian, “Auto Expert John Cadogan” again the You Tube option and Videos, often amusing, outspoken and some of his reports on EV fires are laxatives, especially his recent one on Electric Bicycles. Well worth a look.