27% of New Cars in France Now Plugin Electric Cars | Hacker News Reader

27% of New Cars in France Now Plugin Electric Cars

cleantechnica.com

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> In October, pure electrics once again outsold PHEVs — 63% share of the plugin market vs. 37% — keeping the BEV share at 64% vs. 36% PHEV in 2023. This represents a slight increase of 2% of BEV share compared to the final 2022 result (64% vs. 62%). Added to the also slight increase in plugin share, this could mean that the French plugin market has reached the ceiling of what current models can offer — and new, cheaper EVs will be needed to break it open further in order for the EV transition to reach new heights.

I wonder. Isn't that because poor people can't buy even new cheap cars these days?

So the share of electrics is there because only the rich early adopters have bought a new car lately.

But but but! “If you buy electric cars you never have to worry about gas prices ever again!”

you joke now (because oil is dirt dirt cheap right now) but just wait a few decades. I've listened to some of the most knowledgable people in the oil industry (Art Berman and others on Nate Hagens podcast) discuss Oil. And it looks like Hubbard's curve at least on a worldwide basis is true and oil supply is only going to go down in the long term. The peak is much much closer than most people expect. The world is so much more dependent on oil than it realizes and the impacts will be far more profound than most economists currently realize.

In "a few decades" 99% of the new Teslas being sold today will be in a scrap heap :)

The decision now is for 5-10-15 years.

Why do you think 99% of the new Tesla's today will be in a scrap heap in 20 years?

By the very nature of lithium batteries EVs are basically throwaway cars after 10 years.

The cost of replacing an old battery pack quickly exceeds the value of the car. You might be able to get a few extra years refurbishing it but that’ll be expensive and require niche battery work that’ll be hard to find.

The oldest Teslas sold are now about 10 years old, and this epidemic of no-longer-holding-charge cars heading to battery replacement or scrapyards you speak of hasn't happened yet. From most accounts I've seen, the cars have 80-90% of their original capacity at 150-200k miles.

Because the kind of person that buys an expensive electric car now won't keep it 20 years.

The average age of a car on the road in the EU is 12 years, varying from 8 in Austria to 17 in Lithuania.

This may well increase with electric cars being more reliable, but other failures (rust, collision) won't change much.

So 99% is too high. VEH1107 shows that 22.5% of cars in the UK were 13 years or older.

[VEH1107] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/vehicle-...

It's probably worth noting why cars are finally scrapped. It's usually not because of problems with the engine, but other issues that EVs also have. Rust (in Northern Europe this is a big thing), crash damage, generate state of disrepair. Of course EVs will remove some issues meaning the lifetime of cars may extend a little, but it's not going to increase it significantly.

It’ll be a peak demand, not peak supply problem.

One of the big takeways from Art berman, Nate Hagens and other experts on this subject is that the growth of GDP is very heavily dependent on Oil and it's impossible to decouple that within the next several decades. That may sound unlikely but the evidence they've shown is overwhelmingly convincing. One of the things I've learned is that reknewables aren't actually reknewable: they are mostly all tied to oil in some way, almost everything is because everything is either made of oil or uses oil in it's production, hence it's "the hemoglobin of the economy".

So there will always be more demand. It's the mainstream media that has it backwards: they're the ones always saying peak demand and that's misleading.

That's correct assuming you have to choose between buying two equally priced cars, one electric and one combustion.

But the choice here may be between buying a new electric and a used combustion that costs 1/4 of the price.

Or between buying a new electric and keeping the existing car longer.

Pretty sure that over the next 10 years at least, the latter two are the cheaper options.

> the choice here may be between buying a new electric and a used combustion that costs 1/4 of the price

This is why targeting new car sales, instead of fleet composition, is the best strategy. Despite the latter being the closer input to emissions.

ICE vehicles at and above EVs, in price and capability, should not have a market. Those EVs should then have the opportunity to decrease in price through both economies of scale and learning curves, on one hand, and the emergence of used vehicles, on the other hand.

Too bad they're ignoring the opportunity. And laying off people because sales have gone down :)

>I wonder. Isn't that because poor people can't buy even new cheap cars these days?

Kinda yes. Poor/average people now in France/EU will just keep using their 10 year old cars, for the next 10 years as well.

France has cheap electricity so the class of people who can afford brand new cars will definetly go for electric to save money. I bet most new car sales now are company cars anyway rather than individuals.

Poor people were never buying new cars anyway.

>Isn't that because poor people can't buy even new cheap cars these days?

What is your definition of cheap?

The best-selling EV in France is the Dacia Spring and it is around €16k after government subsidy. The cheapest ICE vehicle is probably the Dacia Sandero, and it is around €10k.

I don't know if fuel prices would eat up the savings of an ICE car but I do know that electricity is very affordable in France.

Rather surprised by the sales of the MG 4 , a Chinese make - they bought the remains of MG Rover (MG=Morris Garage) when they went bust in the UK.

It looks rather nice for a subcompact SUV - reminds me a Corolla based Cross.

I'm not surprised at all. MG4 is the best bang-for-the-buck BEV you can buy in Europe.

To me more surprising is that Fiat 500e was higher in the ranking, despite costing more and having smaller battery.

MG4 also has Xpower model, which costs the same as a base model of VW ID.3, but does 0-60 in 3.5s (it's not a real sports car, but it's still ridiculous).

> To me more surprising is that Fiat 500e was higher in the ranking, despite costing more and having smaller battery.

The buy Price tag is not the only thing that people are looking when buying a car.

People do care about maintenance and after sell service. In France, you can be pretty sure that anywhere you are, you are almost sure to have a Stellantis garage within 25km of your home. For MG... probably within 150km.

People care (maybe too much?) about that. This is especially true for an EV under warranty that your random neighbour garage will refuse to touch because he miss the know-how on it.

This tool shows that an EV in France pays back it's carbon debt and overtakes gasoline after 10,000Km (roughly 1 year).

https://www.transportenvironment.org/discover/how-clean-are-...

It also lets you change country and various other parameters e.g. compare with diesel or hybrids.

Two other interesting things I noticed:

1.It lets you choose where the battery is made (China Vs EU average Vs Sweden) and it has relatively little impact.

2. It lets you choose solar panels instead of a national grid, and France's grid almost exactly matches the figure they use.

What are you people in France paying for electricity at the moment?

My provider is Engie, my cost per KWh was 0.248322148 Euros in October.

This is when I thought I was paying 1/3 that then see the rates increased to 1/2 and I have new fees that appeared or increased.

USA average shows $0.23/kWh

https://www.energysage.com/local-data/electricity-cost/

Electricity rates in the U.S. average 12 cents KWh according to the Energy Information Administration. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/

2022 data.

105 EUR / MWh [0]

Google tells me 1 MWH = 105.26 liters of gas [1]

Math that out and it's basically 1 EUR per Liter of Gas

Gas seems at least 1.75 EUR / Liter, so a pretty good savings? [2]

0. https://tradingeconomics.com/france/electricity-price

1. https://hextobinary.com/unit/energy/from/gasoline/to/megawat...

2. https://www.cargopedia.net/europe-fuel-prices

Shouldn't the comparison use distance as the denominator?

Converting between the electrical energy and the heat energy intrinsic to gas is the wrong way to do that calculation. You need to compare efficiency vs efficiency to get a proper price comparison, as the heat energy of gasoline is much higher than the actual energy used to move a vehicle. Most is wasted.

A decently efficient EV is about 250Wh/mi (it’s closer to 220, but 250 makes math easy), so 105 EU of power can travel approximately 4000mi.

By comparison a decently efficient ICE (in Europe) gets about 5L/100km, roughly. So, to travel 6430km (4k miles) you’d need about 320L of fuel. At 1.75EU/L that would cost 560 EU.

It’s a very substantial difference, assuming your pricing is correct on fuel and energy cost.

You forgot about the much lower maintenance costs.

Also, please don't mix units.

I believe that the rates you are BenoitP have quoted are the wholesale rates. They are the rates that a grid operator might pay to buy electricity from a producer or from another grid operator.

Consumers rates will be at least about twice that.

A good heuristic to tell you are looking at a rate is that is not a consumer rate is that if it is quoted in units that are per MWh it is probably not a consumer rate. Consumer rates are almost always quoted per kWh.

In France though EDF has become a monopoly recently. I'm pretty sure the government fully intends to sell it as produced to French industries and individuals. Why wouldn't it? It is financed by us, we should reap its rewards.

Some others folks in the EU have chosen others means with lesser or unknown EROEI. But hey, their sovereign choices, their consequences. It's not like France is preventing them from doing nuclear.

I guess we'll see in a few years; but CfDs going over decades and being backed by governments I think it's safe to plan around this price.

the short-term answer is "it's a bit expensive right now", the long-term answer is "we mastered nuclear power a long time ago, it's bound to become plentiful dirt cheap and plentiful again eventually"

Looks like it was 15-50 in 2020 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1267546/france-monthly-w...

What happened in 8/2021 that caused a huge spike?

From memory, we enjoyed a heatwave in Jul - August ‘21 in UK/France.

Beyond demand pressures on the interconnected European market due to secondary effects of the heat and the COVID rebound, it’s likely nuclear output was reduced as the cooling potential of water sources was reduced - I vaguely remember articles on this before the cracking issue stole ‘headlines’.

Reduced nuclear output in France results in increased demand for less cost efficient national or more-expensive-than-nuclear international (interconnected) generators.

Why would there be a sudden reduced cooling potential of water sources for the nuclear plants? I have never heard of such a thing anywhere.

It was all over the news at the time, e.g. [0]

0: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/frances-edf-takes-13...

They are misrepresenting reality. The cooling potential was fine, it is just that France has regulation for how hot the water is allowed to be at the release in order to not raise average stream temperature too much.

It is mostly to protect the ecological system, nothing to do with any technical problem. They calculated that after going through the cooling process the water would be too hot and thus, they didn't restart the reactors.

Because that is second important part, this alone wouldn't be news worthy because reactors could be running in other parts of France and electricity shifted around. But the thing is that after a lack of care/maintenance for its nuclear industry (due to political powers and belief that we could do without in the long term) after the lockdowns of COVID, France had a lot of reactors that needed repairs/inspections/maintenance; all kind of compliance for regulatory approval. So, the heatwave problem was doubling down on an already reduced capacity but most of the time it shouldn't be a problem at all...

About 110€/MWh, and also the government is planning the nuclear reactors to produce around 70€/MWh from 2026 onwards.

Another painful reminder of how Californias are being screwed on electricity prices, with double the US national average, which itself is higher than 110€/MWh.

That's the wholesale price paid to producers. Consumers are paying around 23c/kWh, however that (as with most European countries) has been subsided by the government - the real price should be higher.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/france-raise-regulated-...

The real cost is difficult to assess because taxpayers' money is massively used in order to support 'EDF', the local (now de facto) monopoly.

In the first nine months of 2023, electric vehicles accounted for 21.5% of cars sold in California (7.4% nationwide). Apparently we're ahead of schedule to get to 100% before 2035 when ZEV will be mandatory.

Some consideration.

There is a tax in France called "malus écologique" that depends on CO2 emissions, and it keeps raising. In 2024, it may become more expensive than the car itself, up to 60k€.

But for plug-in hybrids (>50km range), you don't have to pay that tax. So if you want a gas guzzler, buy the plug-in hybrid version.

A plug in hybrid is by no definition a gas guzzler. They are quite efficient. People like them because of the energy efficiency of short trips combined with the lack of range issues for long trips.

Being cheaper is a nice bonus.

Do we count the Citroen ami as a car or not?

It's a quadricyle, so it's not counted in.

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