I wouldn't call either of those cars as 'cheap' for their size, the only people I know who own one are very nicely off thank you (one Leaf owner has at least one other car, it being a jacked-up Land Rover V8 petrol gas-guzzler).

Well-off people can already afford them, and their overall green credentials are still not established for all sizes of car and usage patterns. Still a niche vehicle, one which most owning them should fully pay for.

BTW - how do you think all the electricity they use is produced (and BTW, only 30% of the energy used to generate it reaches the vehicle), especially when the sun isn't shining for the PV panels to work or the wind is not strong enough/too strong for the wind turbines to work?

Guess when most people charge their EVs and what time of year coincides with the worst conditions for charging, electricity generation and require the highest output (and thus get far lower ranges) of the EV batteries?

IMHO we are 15-25 years away from EV/electrical power beinga true viable green alternative to ICE cars for the masses, especially when the generation, storage and charging infrastructure and technology have a LONG (and expensive( way to go before it becomes anywhere near viable.

All too often, the rich benefit from subsidies from the less well off when supposedly new 'green' tech arrives, e.g. the stupid subsidising of diesels by artifically reducing VED for them based solely on CP2 emissions when particulates were much worse than petrols (and the manufacturers cheated).

Lobby groups for equipment manufacturers and 'green' energy generation firms and often ill-informed (and often connected) 'pressure groups'/environmentalist chums have a lot to answer for with all this expensive virtue-signalling on green issues because the politicians are always suckered in by their patois, which we pay for in taxes and only THEY benefit from.

I wouldn't call either of those cars as 'cheap' for their size, the only people I know who own one are very nicely off thank you (one Leaf owner has at least one other car, it being a jacked-up Land Rover V8 petrol gas-guzzler).

Well-off people can already afford them, and their overall green credentials are still not established for all sizes of car and usage patterns. Still a niche vehicle, one which most owning them should fully pay for.

BTW - how do you think all the electricity they use is produced (and BTW, only 30% of the energy used to generate it reaches the vehicle), especially when the sun isn't shining for the PV panels to work or the wind is not strong enough/too strong for the wind turbines to work?

Guess when most people charge their EVs and what time of year coincides with the worst conditions for charging, electricity generation and require the highest output (and thus get far lower ranges) of the EV batteries?

Who called the cheap? Just not cars for 'toff's. And for the type of car they are the cheaper models.

Multiple ways to produce the electricty...nuclear, hydro, solar, tidal,

a) You were implying that EVs can be affordable - hence why I questioned that.

b) Very little electricity is produced using hydro and is essentially near the limit without ruining the landscape by artificially making more dams in Scotland. Tidal is still in the R&D phase and appears to have a significant impact on the environment locally, especially with rivers/estuaries.

As I said before, solar and wind are highly variable and are normally at the worst in that regard in winter when EVs need the most charging and there's far more demand for electricity generally.

Nuclear is still a diminishing resource unless and until the new generation of plants are built (thanks to our useless, dithering politicians), which is likely 10-15 years awy at least, possibly a lot more.

Thus, to cover the high winter load and to account for the current reductions in nuclear as old plants are decommissioned, we have to use fossil fuels (mainly scarce gas, which means putting prices up even further for domestic markets [great!] and increasingly relying on dodgy foreign countries such as Russia and from the Middle East). Hardly green or ethical.

Home (house) generated electricity by PV is good, but that's yet more costs (and every 15-20 years) to lump on top of the overall costs of EVs, and it still doesn't resolve the issues of winter/night-time demand and charging.

Edited by Engineer Andy on 24/10/2019 at 14:53