I can see us having a diminished range of availability of models post-2030, in that unless other major markets also put a similar timescale in place, manufacturers will continue to produce ICE’s and hybrids for a global marketplace and we’ll just get the EV variants from their offerings.
Seems about right for the UK, based on current trends for shooting ourselves in both feet.
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I would go for an alternative proposition - entirely plausible if there is a belief that in the long term EV will dominate globally.
The UK could become hugely proficient in EVs - technology, batteries, recharging infrastructures, taxation implications, road pricing, repair, manufacturing and design. It will make the UK one of the "go to" places in this market globally.
The losers in the next two decades will be those countries which embrace only old technologies. They will increasingly find that their export markets no longer want ICE (irrespective of price). And the UK will carry on playing "catch up" with the rest of the world.
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I would go for an alternative proposition - entirely plausible if there is a belief that in the long term EV will dominate globally.
The UK could become hugely proficient in EVs - technology, batteries, recharging infrastructures, taxation implications, road pricing, repair, manufacturing and design. It will make the UK one of the "go to" places in this market globally.
The losers in the next two decades will be those countries which embrace only old technologies. They will increasingly find that their export markets no longer want ICE (irrespective of price). And the UK will carry on playing "catch up" with the rest of the world.
If it wanted to
If it trained enough engineers.
It won't as it is lead by people untrained in anything but history and English literature and politics.
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I would go for an alternative proposition - entirely plausible if there is a belief that in the long term EV will dominate globally.
The UK could become hugely proficient in EVs - technology, batteries, recharging infrastructures, taxation implications, road pricing, repair, manufacturing and design. It will make the UK one of the "go to" places in this market globally.
The losers in the next two decades will be those countries which embrace only old technologies. They will increasingly find that their export markets no longer want ICE (irrespective of price). And the UK will carry on playing "catch up" with the rest of the world.
"those countries which embrace only old technologies"
You sound just like a politician!
You really think that the UK can compete with China, South Korea,Taiwan etc on electronic technology and when their labour costs are about tenth of the UK's?
Some common sense needs to injected into this lemming-like rush into EV's.
EV's are fine to reduce urban and city pollution, but as a replacement for the current highly efficient, low polluting iC powered vehicles for longer journeys outside cities they don't add up, no matter how you spin it.
So stop wasting resources on trying to make an EV the equivalent of a decent IC petrol or diesel vehicle and spend the funds on something useful, like alleviating poverty, building houses, getting the homeless into jobs and accomodation is my advice.
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and spend the funds on something useful, like alleviating poverty, building houses, getting the homeless into jobs and accomodation is my advice.
There won't be any country left though if pollution keeps on increasing - you need to deal with it now.
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and spend the funds on something useful, like alleviating poverty, building houses, getting the homeless into jobs and accomodation is my advice.
There won't be any country left though if pollution keeps on increasing - you need to deal with it now.
How do you know pollution is going to get better even if we do go all EVs, global warming may not get better, no one has proved we can prevent GW so far unless you know better?
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A very sound point. GB is but a dot on the globe and responsible for less than 1% of world pollution. If EVs clean up the UK air than that is something though at what price. Pollution in cities is far greater than elsewhere. EVs operating in the countryside will not make much difference. As far as climate change is concerned well what is causing it. Is it human activity or the sun? Humans generally are not helping and are indeed the most selfish and dirty species on the planet and slowly destroying and bringing misery on other species and indeed themselves. From my own observations I see no sign in the last 60 years that weather is changing in the UK although from a selfish point of view it would be nice to have a Mediterranean climate what with winter rapidly approaching.
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and spend the funds on something useful, like alleviating poverty, building houses, getting the homeless into jobs and accomodation is my advice.
There won't be any country left though if pollution keeps on increasing - you need to deal with it now.
How do you know pollution is going to get better even if we do go all EVs, global warming may not get better, no one has proved we can prevent GW so far unless you know better?
Just going EV's won't sort everything out - a lot of other things need to be done - as with most things there is not just one simple thing you need to do.
If you get rid of all fossil fuelled vehicles why would you think pollution levels would not decrease?
We know we are changing the climate - so it would usually follow that if we stop polluting as we do then the Earth climate will settle down more to where it should be - I suppose there is no proof as such - but it's not something you can really wait to see if it will work.
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and spend the funds on something useful, like alleviating poverty, building houses, getting the homeless into jobs and accomodation is my advice.
There won't be any country left though if pollution keeps on increasing - you need to deal with it now.
How do you know pollution is going to get better even if we do go all EVs, global warming may not get better, no one has proved we can prevent GW so far unless you know better?
Just going EV's won't sort everything out - a lot of other things need to be done - as with most things there is not just one simple thing you need to do.
If you get rid of all fossil fuelled vehicles why would you think pollution levels would not decrease?
We know we are changing the climate - so it would usually follow that if we stop polluting as we do then the Earth climate will settle down more to where it should be - I suppose there is no proof as such - but it's not something you can really wait to see if it will work.
Thats the point though, we are told we are changing the climate but the whole Universe is changing, so it stands to reason the earth changes, you wouldn`t expect earthquakes not to cause damage or anything the earth does to stop because we are here.
but to listen to some people you would think everything the earth does is our Fault, we do cause problems no doubt about it, where plastic pollution and other waste is concerned and should clean up our act, but we should be doing it in different ways
I have seen as most have Keep oil in the ground where it belongs, problem is we cannot as its used for so many things not just running our Vehicles, so its not as people think once we stop using crude oil we stop needing it...we do for other things
As a PS I am not against EVs, when they come down in price will get one myself (though won`t have a choice) but will get a Hybrid before that because of the range, and use of heater and other things in the car will limit my distance by a lot more than a Hybrid
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I'm not a politician - they say what people want to hear, I try to say that which I think (albeit courteously I hope).
China labour costs may have been (two decades ago) around 10% of Uk, Today they are catching up fast, are about 50% of UK now, and growing much faster.
Labour element of manufacturing is reducing due mainly to automation. In higher level jobs - design, IT, technical - pay costs are not much different to UK.
Machinery (robots, presses, moulding machines, computers etc) cost much the same wherever you are in the world (ignoring import duties and volume issues).
Slowly, perhaps over the next decade, China will change from a source of cheap labour and products to a "normal cost producer". This is what happened to many other once low cost producers - eg: Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea.
The question will increasingly be - do the savings made through production overseas justify the additional shipping costs, delivery lead times, stock investment and inflexibility.
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