EV's are perfect for a lot of people.
They are the fortunate ones, although they sometimes overlook the fact that in 2022 (the last year that full data is available according to the BBC) 40% of our electricity came from fossil fuels.
Some of our electricity comes from "renewables", which includes wood pellets transported here from the USA by oil burning ships, then burned here. Charging a car overnight means that solar power won't be contributing and the wind usually drops at night too.
What are fossil fuels? Where does the UK get its energy from?
To meet climate change targets, more of the UK's energy needs to come from low-carbon sources.www.bbc.co.uk
EV's will not be perfect for people with lower incomes who normally drive around in a sub £2,000 car which they scrap when it won't pass the next MOT.
This is a forum for owners of vans at the premium end of the market so it's no surprise that I've not seen any comments on here that acknowledge this problem, but many of these people are employed in roles such as the care sector and they rely on that cheap older car to do their job. It is unlikely that those people can move over to EV use without incurring significant extra costs which will not be viable.
EV's will not be perfect for those who, for a variety of reasons, can't charge it at home, again nobody seems interested in these people, perhaps they won't be able to own a car?
EV's will be a challenge for some users, such as emergency services, who will almost certainly need to buy and fit out far more cars than they currently have to allow for their 24 hours a day use requirement. (A Police Officer who handed his petrol patrol car over to the next shift with half a tank of petrol had better have a good reason for that.) The costs involved in that vehicle duplication are huge.
When I'm out and about I notice a significant proportion of traffic is commercial. I'm not aware of any EV that can realistically transport goods around the UK as commercial vehicles currently do, so even if all of our cars were replaced with EV's the transport sector as a whole will still be partially reliant on diesel.
A novel idea would be to celebrate the fact that so many are happy with their EV's while recognising that it doesn't mean that they would work for everybody else!
I agree that currently EVs are definitely not suitable for every use-case. In fact, that seems to be the one thing that everyone on this thread does agree on!
On the cost, I also agree that clearly currently EVs occupy the premium end of the market. However, by the time anyone is even close to making a mandated purchase of an (presumably second-hand at your £2000 price point example) EV, it's hard to imagine prices won't have come down hugely both because technology will have improved and also simply because the passage of time means that EVs of the same age as your current £2000 example will be readily available.
That's a stunning stat you quote on the UK power mix though, whilst 40% from fossil fuels is still arguably too high, the fact that it's dropped so hugely from even a few years ago is a great example of how progress can be made if we put our minds to it. Shipping wood chips from virgin forest for biomass is clearly indefensible but after five minutes googling I struggled to find out how recent or significant it was compared to harvesting wood from sustainable (i.e regrown) sources.
you won't choke on the smoke from a controlled nuclear explosion so surely now we can all agree that a nuclear powered Transporter has to be better than a rebadged Transit and not an infringement of your right to pollute?
