Volvo to cease production of diesel cars in a few months
reuters.com
reuters.com
> In August 33% of Volvo's sales were fully-electric or hybrid models. The company did not break out how many of the remaining 67% combustion-engine models were diesel and how many ran on petrol.
> Diesel vehicles comprised more than 50% of Europe's new car sales in 2015, but accounted for just over 14% of sales in July.
Delightfully, we are almost at the combustion->EV tipping point.
EVs will continue to get cheaper, faster, as global auto manufacturers scale up their production. If you can take a bus, a train, or an ebike, definitely do that. But consumers will not stop buying cars (global light vehicle market is ~83M units/annually), so sell them EVs, making them as inexpensive and quickly as possible. China EV sales are already at 9M units/year, more than half total US light vehicle sales in 2022 (~14M units).
TLDR Volume is misleading, pay attention to velocity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects
https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline
https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-...
https://www.reuters.com/technology/ev-energy-storage-battery...
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/used-ev-prices-are-collapsing...
The problem is not solved and may not be which is what I think the original poster is considering. The bottom rung of society is going to lose their transport.
Edit: I know everyone is blinded by EV hype at the moment but the entire financial model is drastically different and that will impact people heavily. Even the infrastructure and housing here doesn't necessarily mean it's viable.
And in many cases, they're also going to lose their jobs. Politicians are incapable of thinking beyond the M25, so are probably expecting everyone to just hop on the Tube or frequent London bus services instead.
People can't move closer to workplaces (or better public transport links), as the #1 goal of every UK government seems to be pumping up property prices to ever more ridiculous levels. (You can't allow the supply of housing to increase when rich people are getting richer from the rising prices!)
We're incapable of building transport infrastructure in the UK. Look at the state of HS2. Something like £500 million per mile of railway (largely down to those property prices), and it might not even reach London at the current rate, let alone be extended north of Birmingham.
Even for those that can afford an EV, huge numbers of people are unable to charge them at home (living in flats, relying on on-street parking, etc). There's hardly any visible growth of public charging infrastructure, and you just know that public chargers will be a huge bait+switch, eventually charging extortionate amounts compared to home charging (if only to minimize the queues...)
So why are governments committing to these non-sensical goals?
The UK is the perfect place for High Speed rail, and part of the problem with it is the idiotic bending over backwords for NIMBYs and the generally terrible rail planning practices. Not having built this in like the 80s is insanely dumb.
If we are talking about poor people then bus reduction in bus service is actually by far the biggest deal.
Where is the most expensive property in the world? For the most part, next to ports, next to railways, next to subways, next to anything that makes makes it cheap to move people and things.
Demand for housing and transport is rising beyond the means of the infrastructure to actually sustain this. Most of the whinging I see against governments surrounds their unwillingness to restrict investment and immigration, which they won’t do because their books are balanced around the notion that they will “grow out of debt”. Likely we will arrive at a point where we have a bunch of infrastructure we built that’s infeasible to maintain that will turn into ruins when the population gets around to contracting.
The idea that rail infrastructure isn't sustainable is kind of nonsense, even with smaller population. Road infrastructure maintenance is far more expensive and in a bad economic situation you can run 30 year old trains. Its simply a matter of what your society puts priority on.
Main part of Britain specifically is so densely populated that even with massive collapse in population most of the rail network would still be vital.
Yet we are still building up such infrastructure, even if emphasis is gradually shifting to more sustainable infrastructure. I still am sceptical that much of what is being built now can survive a century. It seems most plausible that transport costs are going to climb up every year over the next few decades and I don't see how that doesn't break the back of many many communities.
https://www.cars.com/articles/2023-cars-com-affordability-re...
> The median new-car price among Cars.com dealers was approximately $42,500 in December — a 10% increase from December 2021 and 18% higher than December 2020.
"The segment median for cars ($25,745) is $8,450 less than small SUVs, $17,325 less than small pickups and $33,925 less than EVs."
What does $23K get? I drive the car like a normal person with no attempt to eek out extra mileage. I'm averaging 48 mpg over the past seven months since I got the car. Even though it is a low end model, it is amazing what technology it comes with. It shows me the speed limit and indicates when I'm over -- not by having a map of the speed limit, but by reading the signs as I drive. It has lane keeping and adaptive cruise control, and warns me when my closing speed is too great.
My ego isn't attached to my car so I don't care it is not flashy. I can't imagine paying twice as much unless I had some specialty need (eg, had to buy a heavy duty truck).
But my comment was about third party options with lower range. $6-10k depending on the range selected, IIRC. For a car with high mileage already, that'd be a good way to turn it into a commuter.
In practice, I'm not seeing a significant difference between the way the 3 is being treated and the way similarly sized vehicles are treated.
It's a bit like the fact that there is a ton of Iphone8's available, pop a new battery in them and you're still good to go: https://www.gumtree.com.au/s-iphone/iphone+8/k0c18597r10?cat...
And even if it is $10k, plus another $10k for a new battery, and from at least a drive train perspective that's practically a new Tesla for $20k that'll last another 100,000+mi.
I certainly would think twice about an old car with over 100k on the clock for $20k. There are plenty of other components besides the drivetrain that can go south on you and are expensive to fix relative to the value of the car. Some ICE cars are notorious for the drivetrain going 350k+ miles while the rest of it might rot apart. Honestly modern cars are terrible to drive when they are old. My old 20 year old honda had a leaky sunroof, leaky tail light seals, slow window motors that cut out in the cold winter, every hydraulic line corroded and leaked at one point or another sometimes multiple times, frame rust, shot rubber in the suspension components, shot brake system, rubber and plastic body trim that was just cracking and sloughing off from 20 years of UV bombardment, blown speakers, and a motorized radio antenna that never once worked. The drivetrain on the other hand was flawless being a honda, just needed an oil change with synthetic once a year ($35 or so and 15 minutes of my time mostly passive waiting for it to drain) and it was still on the original clutch.
With a tesla you still have suspension components with rubber. You still have rubber gaskets and seals around windows and doors. You still have hydraulic brake lines. You still have steel components that will rust. You still have electric motors controlling things like windows (and presumably the sexy door handle release) that probably have plastic gearboxes. You aren't out of the woods, far from it.
But that's why I don't understand why you seem to assume a Tesla needing a new battery and a worn out interior/exterior/suspension is going to be $10k. Where's the data? Do you actually have listings of Teslas with dead batteries for $10k?
The financial reasonable thing for the wealthy has always been to buy off lease, at a steep depreciation discount, excellent service records, a dealer warranty, and 2 years and 20k miles.
I'm cheap, I last bought a 7 year old car for ¼ of its sticker price and 100k miles with detailed service records. I still drive it 13 years later at 20 years old, though, I only put 5-10k miles on a year. My most common trip is 150 miles in a neighboring state. That and track and autocross. I get 32mpg on mid grade gasoline.
I did consider a Tesla recently, a 2016 model s is about ⅓ of it's original sticker price, though Tesla is one of the few companies that the new car is cheaper than it was 6 years ago. With a 20% price drop.
There's obviously lots of reason why "most people" want a new. An unblemished interior, the newest self driving features, the longest range. But you'll find the 2-6 year olds still have 80% of the range, the same safety features, and some form of self driving that your old car (that as rates increase you should keep 7 years instead of 4) didn't have.
https://youtu.be/uxoRrdE9efk?t=355
Plus, China's middle class has been gobbling up the BYD Qin and Song EVs.
(And maybe, just maybe, we should create viable alternatives before pricing vast swathes of populations off the roads and out of work...)
I'd say this is an example of putting the cart before the horse. Why would you expect people to shift to other forms of transit before the road network supports these other forms of transit?
More restrictions on road and car use shouldn't surprise anyone at this point, it's been coming down the pipe for years. At some point you have to make the status quo painful, because no-one's willing to change anything if they're not feeling the pain yet.
Meanwhile, the people in charge of solving the problem of climate change are still flying around the world on private jets.
The poorest already don't own or use cars. Getting cars off the road will make buses faster and more reliable, and the poorest will benefit the most from that.
We need fewer cars on the road, so any way you slice it some people have to be pushed out of driving, and any way you slice it the rich will find a way to pay to continue to drive. Either we let them pay directly, and spend that money in public-directed ways that improve transit and help the poor, or we adopt some other system and they'll find more wasteful ways to use money to "solve the problem" that just mean everyone loses out. (e.g. some cities have a rule that each car is only allowed into the city a few days a week depending on its numberplate - so the result is that rich people buy two cars).
> Meanwhile, the people in charge of solving the problem of climate change are still flying around the world on private jets.
And they'll continue to do that until we adopt a carbon tax system so dumb that there's no way around it. But if you try to just "ban private jets" then they'll buy private prop planes, or private trains, or fly around in private full-size airliners...
And the cost of (often obligatory, in places like the USA) private transportation is almost like a crony capitalist regressive tax. It disproportionately harms the purchasing power of working-class individuals. Before I broke into the middle class, it was absolutely infuriating how much of my hard-earned money I had to spend on owning, maintaining, and operating my car. But there was no way around it, because the city I lived in was structured such that not owning a car was tantamount to not even having a chance at improving my economic opportunity. The sooner governments are forced to stop making infrastructure decisions that further siphon money out of the pockets of individuals and into the pockets of big automakers and oil companies, the better.
I'm afraid it's not going to be anytime soon. What you are doing is government acting in service harder for the benefit of big corporations.
Its simple really. There are 2 problems, both need to be solved. We can't wait on 1 to be solved until we start addressing the other.
And EV now are way cleaner then ICE cars even in West Virgina. If you are in France, Switzerland or a country lie that, they are incredibly low carbon.
> spend on owning, maintaining, and operating my car.
Yes, society would do much better to invest in walking, biking and trains (of various kinds) then EV and to discourage car usage, EV or not.
This is pretty clear to anybody who has studied the issue. Housing and transportation cost combined are a huge part of avg peoples lives, well over 50% in many cases. Better land use and zoning policies, combined with proper transport policy can make this much, much better.
The US ironically has so many access road lanes that establishing a bike network is actually easy. In Switzerland most cities roads are very narrow so its much harder to add an extra mode in.
If government in the 80/90s were as smart with their nuclear policy as Canada now we would live in a much better world.
Cities are gonna be littered with aging cars in a few years since there are virtually no chargers in cities with street parking. Conversely, no mechanics in the country know how to work on EVs. EVs only work in the suburbs.
I suspect this will be relatively easy to build out. They installed them in my neighbourhood over a few weeks. There is already electricity supply to residential streets, so all that's required is installing chargers. Which can be quite simple if they're not fast chargers.
I've also seen people simply running extension cables out of their houses. Which isn't ideal, but it works.
I don't like how these concerns only get raised about EVs and are seldom raised over appliances that utilize far greater power over longer periods of time like individual air conditioning units
The US power grid is run down to the point it's a regular contributor in wildfires. People make memes about how bad the situation is. There are numerous YouTube videos detailing just how old a lot of the equipment and lines are. Besides, the problem is the continuous load. An air conditioner doesn't run the pump continuously for hours, while a charging post constantly consumes peak load.
> I don't like how these concerns only get raised about EVs and are seldom raised over appliances that utilize far greater power over longer periods of time like individual air conditioning units
FWIW yes people are talking about air conditioning, and it's already a massive hassle for grid operators to balance loads when it's extremely hot as a result.
No matter what, electrical grids - and not just in the US - need a serious overhaul over the next few decades. Other than being generally old and poorly maintained, electric vehicles are just one issue... decentralized power generation, distributed battery storage, more demand for heat pumps (particularly in winter) and AC (in summer), the existing grid can't handle all that.
While this may not be the case for all electric grid operators in the US but the one I am under has planned for increased electrical usage by electric vehicles, datacenters, and a move from natural gas.
Outside of the richest countries there are whole communities who'd never buy a new car, because the car they can afford to buy is a much-used cheap car that's the same age as the first-year Leaf is now; the rich countries/communities drive the first 10 years of a car, buy a new car, and the used car gets sold in poorer areas where most people don't ever buy new cars, because even the entry level new cars are like twice the cost they would afford. The ICE market provides a significant quantity of such used cars, which are cheap because of the wear and tear of being 10-15 years old but are still likely to be usable for a very long time if you maintain them properly.
Are 15 year old Leafs a comparable alternative to 15 year old ICE Hondas? If after the EV revolution buying a 15 year old car ceases to be an affordable option because it will need an unreasonably expensive replacement (compared to the value of such an old car) to be usable for 10 more years, then that's a major societal change in the affordability of transport.
And real world data does not suggest that will be needed at all. Sure there are outliers like someone damaging battery by doing only supercharging but that's exception like not changing oil in ICE.
For example, the first reasonable site I googled for replacement costs (https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/ev-battery-replac...) asserts that the battery replacement for a Leaf would cost on average $17,657 - but I'm talking about a target audience who currently would buy a $10,000 car and expect to use it for many more years; current ICE cars enable that, but if getting a usable range from a Leaf when they'll be 15-20 years old will require a replacement battery, that's not going to work out. The replacement batteries for full EVs (as opposed to hybrids with smaller capacity) are more expensive than even full engine replacements or full transmission replacements for old ICE cars, and even very old ICE cars usually don't need a full engine replacement but can work (with usable range!) with much cheaper repairs.
In essence, my doubts are about the longevity of EV cars - what proportion of EVs will be usable/used when they will be 15, 20 or 25 years old (or after 100k / 200k miles), and how that compares to the same metric for the current ICE cars; a downgrade there won't be a big difference for the relatively wealthy buyers of new cars now, but it can be a kick in the balls for the poorer communities in a few decades if the affordable used (and I mean significantly used, not those which were just leased for a few years) cars cease to exist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmWL1hZQmD0
It means you can have a battery subscription rather than buying the battery. A subscription keeps your battery new and also lets you swap between higher and lower capacity batteries as needed.
Nio has 70, 75, 100, and 150 kWh packs in the same physical pack dimensions:
https://cnevpost.com/2023/07/07/nio-user-manuals-include-150...
Found that out trying to get rotors replaced on a Prius.
Europe is completely different, but I get the feeling the charging infrastructure isn't so bad throughout most of Europe.
Exactly. As long as you don't drive, and have lots of disposable income, EVs are great.
It’s far easier to build an EV charging station than a fuel station, they can be installed just about anywhere, and they are only going to get faster and better with time.
I drive a lot, and don’t have much disposable income at the moment, and EVs are great.
I’m so glad you said this. No one understands how big an issue this is. They only have to look at historical examples like how motor vehicles failed to establish as a market because no carriage workers knew how to work on engines
It really bothers me when people point to perfectly solvable problems as reasons why we can't have electric cars.
That’s also an expensive repair job, but it hasn’t stopped the adoption of ICE vehicles.
Now I drive an EV.
At some point, the need for something new, whether it's e-fuels or hydrogen or whatever, will become undeniable. We simply won't be building millions of charging stations and place them at every parking spot. If adblue is inconvenient enough to stop diesel cars, then the charging problem will be even more fatal. We must have something that refuels like a conventional car, period.
As far as the idea that we can’t install AC wiring in public and private parking spaces, that isn’t even worth discussing. Do you know how much money it costs to build and maintain a parking space? At least chargers will come with a revenue stream that can be leveraged to pay for the construction.
No. Europe's charging infrastructure is much superior to North America's. And the EU has a plan to make it better still:
https://www.fleeteurope.com/en/new-energies/europe/article/f...
Meanwhile, Americans are already killing each other over EV charging:
https://electrek.co/2023/05/03/tesla-driver-dies-fatal-shoot...
It's a cultural thing.
I know mechanics, they have been on EV training courses. The dealerships clearly have trained mechanics working on the EVs they've been selling for years.
I live in the countryside, I see plenty of EVs. Range anxiety is only for people doing long distance 200+ mile journeys every day, as those that commute in the suburbs day to day have the common (and financial) sense to charge at home and leave every morning with a 'full tank'
Judging from your prose, admittedly, I suspect you are North American and as such have a distinctly different worldview from mine.
> Sales of EVs surpass sales of diesel models for the first time in Europe, with battery-electrics holding a 15.1% share of the market, while diesels hold 13.4%. (Audi e-tron GT pictured above.)
> Plug-in hybrids have seen gains and losses over time in different European countries, but hold 7.9% market share on the continent overall.
> The Tesla Model Y has been Europe's best-selling model in any vehicle category in the first six months of 2023.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
For ic there's the tipping point where the engine is common enough that 'enough' fuel forecourts have the fuel. There's the tipping point where the fuel is in every forecourt.
For EVs there's the tipping point where it becomes normalised, not something that just sandal wearers use. There's the TCO tipping point, there's the purchase price parity tipping point, there's the tipping point where there are 'enough' chargers, there's the tipping point where chargers are everywhere.
I don't object to all these being combined into one grand tipping point, they're all fuzzy anyway.
But I don't think you can put an exact figure on it, and I also don't think tipping point implies it will completely take over the market.
For a start, diesel and petrol both come from oil, using more of one is going to increase supply of the other so if it isn't used prices will fall.
Second petrol and diesel have different strengths and weaknesses, which is why you don't tend to see petrol lorries or diesel scooters.
I think an ev tipping point has more potential to be self reinforcing though. As less of the electorate has ic cars, it's more politically acceptable to increase taxes on it. People will become less accepting of the externalities of IC cars, and ultimately you don't have petrol / diesel piped to your house so as the market shrinks, finding fuel is going to become harder.
Define cheaper?
IC cars are currently cheaper to buy, so should we ignore Bev's?
Bicycles are cheap too???
That's about the time the EU effectively mandated the use of AdBlue for diesels. AdBlue is a massive pain in the ass and I'm glad not to have to deal with it.
Less of a pain in the ass than wiper fluid and blades.
But it will be the last combustion car I own. The Zoe is out preferred car for most trips.
What are you talking about? I have a diesel and you really only need to top off DEF about as often as you change oil. Your service people will top it off for you, and just about any place that sells diesel in America sells DEF too.
Or how about the fact that the regulations enforcing use of def cause you to be unable to use your vehicle after 500 miles of it detecting any kind of system fault. So imagine you are 10 minutes into a multi-hundred mile drive and an emissions fault pops up. By the time you get home you have about 120 miles of driving before you will not be able to start your vehicle. Now, you call the 2 dealers within 100 miles and due to a thing called the pandemic the soonest you can get a service appointment is over a month out.
AdBlue is enough of a pain in the ass that it is the reason I had to buy a second car. How's that for saving the environment.
God forbid you have a sensor problem with the SCR system since your modern diesel is programmed to be crippled if it reads there's no AdBlue in the tank. We had a car come in once (a Citroen or Renault I believe, I remember it was some sort of Frenchie) that needed its rear left fender to be removed to replace the damn thing and I'm 100% sure devils designed the way everything attached together.
I can say this with some certainty as I bought a diesel car 16 years ago partly because it would be cheaper.
EU's war on personal transportation continues.
Sad to see them go.
I heard there already are some exceptions
It's about 10 years from now...
My 21 yo Mercedes diesel costs pennies to keep on the road and refueling is quick and easy. My 18 yo Honda is the same.
BTW, I gave up my BMW M5, M3 and TVRs due to the stress of parking them and the possibility of having them vandalised. I can afford nice things, but I am not throwing money at an EV.