Imagine you're on taxable income of £120k and have two chidlren in nursery. Currently you get no help with childcare costs from the government. From my own experience it's ~£6000 subsidy per child.
You can currently take out an EV salary sacrifice scheme for ~£600 per month (pre tax), and that brings your taxable income down by £7200. Put another £13k in pension. Boom, you're now getting £13k in pension p/a, and your car is effectively free, because you get £12k back in childcare subsidies.
It still might be desirable, but it isn't free.
Obviously if you don't need a new car, it's a really bad financial decision to buy one.
And even if you do, it might be a bad financial decision to buy one.
It's almost always a bad financial decision to buy a new car. The first-year depreciation is unreal.
We just bought a 1 year old Audi Q5 in the US for ~30% discount over new. And with the Audi CPO program, the warranty is just as long as a new model.
I dunno ....
At least two EV manufacturers offer a 7 year warranty on new cars on all parts INCLUDING the battery.
> total vehicle sales in March 2026 was 269,483 units
So BYD market share is 5.5% in Brazil.
https://www.globalchinaev.com/post/byd-edges-out-vw-to-becom...
1. Unlike the rest of the world, EVs were sold in the US as muscle cars for rich people (e.g. Tesla). Everywhere else they're cheap cars for urban commuters (e.g. BYD).
2. Republicans sabotaged every attempt from the Democrats to get EVs going on.
3. Space and demography: EVs do very well in small countries (e.g. Europe) or big countries with a concentrated population (e.g.Brasil, Nigeria). They do poorly in countries with big distances and a spread out population.
Yeah, the Nissan Leaf was a high-torque monster. Though to describe the BMW i3 as a muscle car is... not the descriptor I would use.
EVs were not sold by every OEM as high-power drag-strip rock stars - that's just what it took to get Americans to pay attention
Certainly not in cars. The US car industry really more or less stopped even _trying_ to compete internationally in the 90s or so. The sole exception was Ford, but they went for an unusual approach where Ford Europe designed its own cars, using parts from Bosch etc. Ford Europe is now also all but dead in the consumer space, too. To a large extent the US car industry survives due to protectionism (notably this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax).
Though AIUI US companies are largely failing to keep up there, now, too; diesel city buses are on the way out, and electric bus powertrains are largely Chinese or European.
Because the US is the most backward advanced country socially/politically
Only Tesla designed cars to be electric from a clean sheet. And they were doing extremely well for a long time, and had an enormous lead. But they squandered it in a variety of ways.
The automakers and oil interests spent a lot of effort badmouthing electric cars. To hear Americans talk about it, they need to haul giant boats on their daily 400 mile commutes into uncharted forest. They didn't come up with "range anxiety"; it was deliberately spread.
For a while there was a partisan divide about it, with electric cars seen as a hippie-liberal choice, much as hybrids used to be. Then circa 2020 Elon Musk began to systematically alienate that market.
We never wanted their “electric cars” … we wanted their cars, but electric.
The basic Seat Leon combi is currently 22.000€ on promotion. And that's a spacious family car. No EV car exist at that price point in that size with a range that most people would be comfortable with it.
Yes they will exist in the future but we are still a decade away from that at least.
How much will you spend on fuel during that decade? Seems likely it will be more than today's upfront cost differential. Possibly a lot more.
Disregarding the range because that's a different topic. Fundamentally EVs will be of a different size than ICEs because the big and heavy battery has to placed somewhere low, which is usually under the passenger area floor. Then the car must be higher to accomodate that and also sturdier etc., so at that point we have a bigger and heavier car for the same interior space. And also pricier of course. So it's better to forget the Seat Leon Combi and look at the EVs with fresh eyes.
Or you can retrofit an EN to a ICE shell, like Stellantis did with eg the Opel Astra TS which is also cheap for an EV, but mostly everyone agrees this is a dead end.
One more point regarding the price - that's our own (EU) making. Chinese EVs in China are much much cheaper.
The salesman aren't knowledgeable about them, they don't have ownership experience with them, and EV's generate dramatically fewer lifetime "service" visits and parts sales.
This was common with the f150 lightning, where salesman were pretty much "If you want it I can do the paper work, but let me show you the regular F150's we have here if you like to drive places without headaches."
And surprisingly to me it is even pretty damn efficient despite being originally designed as a gasoline-powered vehicle.
For example Hyundai Kona EV differs inside from the Kona ICE and hybrid models by having the shifter on the column instead of on the center console and the floor is flatter from not needing to accommodate the transmission tunnel.
A mix of Googling and LLMing suggests that BMW, Genesis, Mini Cooper, Volvo, and VW also have some EVs that are very similar to their non-EV cars.
It is interesting with the current oil shock what will happen to US automakers that have all but abandoned fuel efficient cars.
I own a Kia Rio hachback. It was incredibly cheap for the features and has been incredibly reliable. I just want an electric version of that with as much range as possible and a heat pump for cabin climate control and battery management.
But nope, can't have that, instead we have a market full of cars 4+ times the cost with a bunch of stupid, useless, asinine bells and whistles.
I assume they'll eventually sell that, in about 10 years time, which makes me sad.
B = Battery
H = Hybrid
PH = Plug-in hybrid (Same as a hybrid but you can charge up the hybrid battery at home)
And, in practice, the battery tends to be much, much bigger. Some PHEVs are basically mediocre-range electric cars which happen to have a petrol generator.
In practice, most are mediocre range, low-speed only evs that effectively no one bothers to charge regularly because its impractical and annoying. The manufactures claim 80% reductions in emissions, and use those credits to allow them to sell more gas cars in the EU market. But real world emission reduction is 20%. They know this, they've known for years. Its a scam.
https://electrek.co/2026/02/19/biggest-study-yet-shows-plug-...
Some newer toyotas, newer BMWs and the coming EREVs will actually be able to be electric cars most of the time, and might live up closer to the claims. Doesnt change the fact the category has been mostly fraud until now.
Something with a 60 mile electric range will likely satisfy all of their day-to-day driving. The generator means they don't have to charge though, so they can still take road trips without worrying about electric range.
In practice though, they're somewhat impractical. You still need an entire ICE drivetrain AND a moderately sized battery and electric motor, driving the price up.
A colleague drives a BMW 3something hybrid and as far as i know has a 14kWh battery..
Thats good for about a 100km, but i very much wouldn't consider that a "fully" electric car by any means (edit: did you edit your post? couldve sworn you said "fully electric" instead of "mediocre range"?)...
Also, what most people don't realize: if you're only (or mostly) driving it electric, you're putting many more cycles onto that tiny battery.
...which usually costs as much as a "regular" EV battery, x times the size.
https://evclinic.eu/2024/09/05/bmw-hybrid-repeated-battery-f... for example...
Surely that's the "same as a battery but you can use petrol on long journeys"
The only energy input for a "hybrid" is from petrol. It's slightly more efficient. A Toyota Yaris 1.5 hubrid gets about 65mpg rather than the 45mpg on a Skoda Kamiq
https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/realmpg/skoda/kamiq-2023
https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/realmpg/toyota/yaris-cross-2021
Not really. The petrol drivetrain takes up so much room there's no space for a large battery, so the much smaller battery will only take you a short distance if you used it alone, plus now it's much less efficient because you're carrying around a heavy engine with you.
They put tiny batteries in a lot of plug-in hybrids. Unless you live very close to work, you’ll struggle to use it as primarily an EV
IIRC, the latest Honda Civic Hybrid has the ICE decoupled from the drivetrain most of the time (even if it is running to generate power), but it can couple to the drivetrain under some conditions?
No, that would be an EREV.
You can, but in practice most people don't. And I can understand why -- it's inconvenient to have to plug in after every short trip, and the short electric range of most PHEV's means you do have to plug in after every short trip.
I plug in my EV around once a week, and it's more convenient than going to the gas station, but I'm not sure I'd want to have to plug it in every time I come home from even a short trip to the supermarket.
I actually wanted a PHEV, since my car is mostly used for local driving but I also drive hundreds of miles for work trips. Unfortunately I couldn't find one I liked.
https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/best-car-insurance/average-car-...
> The average car journey distance in the UK is approximately 8.2 miles
> Realistically how many people are actually plugging those in?
Answer: almost no one. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/16/plug-in-...
You could easily turn those terms in the article into hyperlinks to definitions.
You could even have the links go to definitions hosted on your own website to boost page reads and ad counts if you really wanted to
ICE cars come with a variety of add-ons and schemes to improve efficiency: fuel injectors, ECUs, braking energy capture systems (aka hybrid), small batteries for short trips that no one plugs in (aka plug in hybrids), etc.
It seems to be a US thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_zero-emissions_vehicle
> In California, PZEVs have their own administrative category for low-emission vehicles. The category was made in a bargain between automakers and the California Air Resources Board (CARB), so that automobile makers could delay making mandated zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs)—battery electric and fuel-cell electric vehicles.
Mild Hybrid… pfffft.
The road to electric - in charts and data - https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/choosing/road-to-e...
Electric car charging prices at public chargers - https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/charging/electric-...
Makes EVs quite appealing.
Now the experience is much improved.
Cars aren't just a pure cost benefit analysis.
Hence my perspective is different. To have everyone priced off the roads is going to make the cycling so much faster and pleasant.
I have considered getting an electric car in the past, but, one look at the traffic, and I decided against going that slow. So I thought about getting an electric bicycle, only to come to the same conclusion, a normal bicycle is all I want or need.
There is a similar story with food. No fertiliser? No problem! I only eat plants, with no processed food or dead animals. Soon the 'grow crops to fatten animals so fat people can eat them' idea will be too costly.
Of course, the world isn't going to stop eating animal corpses at every occasion or ween the adults off milk, so we will see what happens. Nonetheless, plants only is a good starting point.
I don't see electric cars as a solution except for boomers, particularly in the UK context, where the goal is to have 50% of urban journeys taken with active travel by 2030. Active travel means walking or cycling, and I am all for it.
If you are obese, car dependent and eating burgers, the situation is not good. However, if free from car dependency and able to cook from scratch with plants, then the situation is somewhat different, previously unpopular lifestyle choices make sense.
I also don't see what right I have to West Asian oil, it is not a birthright to have access to all the fuel one can afford. My view is that it is best left in the ground.
But that's assuming we're just running power plants off of petrol and fuels. Coal is much cheaper than petroleum in some cases. There's also a lot of people who get their power from nuclear, hydro, solar, and wind. In many cases, your electric prices are not at all affected by the increases in petrullium prices, because most of your electricity is coming from something else. In fact, I doubt there's any place in the world that all your electricity is coming from petroleum fuels. Even if that's the major input, there are almost undoubtedly other sources in the mix.
Over 25% of this is then lost in transmission and distribution[0] (down to 45%). Then 10-25% of that lost in charging the car[1] (down to 40%). Finally, the car itself loses about 10-15% of that[2] (down to 35%).
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/322834/transmission-dist...
[1] https://go-e.com/en/magazine/ev-charging-losses
[2] https://evreporter.com/understanding-the-complete-efficiency...
Furthermore, if you're going to include distributional losses, then let's also drop the available petrol by 10-15% to account for refining etc.
Finally, on anything resembling a sunny day, my car charges entirely of rooftop solar, so what efficiency do we assign to that?
25TWh annual distribution losses off of ~300TWh usage per year is 8% loss.
If you charge at home, and you don't have a car tariff, it'll be ~25-30p per kwhr
If you get a car charging tariff then you'll be paying ~9p a kwhr.
if you are brave then you can use an agile prices which depends on the weather you can be paid to charge (my record was -11p a unit) however in winter it can be a lot high, like 45p a unit.
Charging on the street can be around 50p a kwhr up to 98p a kwhr
In Canada most of that is pretty opaque. Electricity tariffs are not really something that most households would worry about. Businesses and Industrial usage do though
You can base it on the wholesale price, great if you have battery storage
https://octopus.energy/smart/agile/
Or just an overnight rate
https://octopus.energy/smart/intelligent-octopus-go/
Again if you put in a £5k 10kWh battery you are golden, as you put 8kWh into your car and 8kWh into your battery every night, dropping your electric cost to £38 a month (plus the standing charge, which is far higher)
Many people choose a single fixed or variable rate tariff, but there are also off-peak tariffs that are very cheap at night but slightly more expensive in the day (designed for EV users), or even tariffs where the rate changes every 30 minutes depending on what is being generated - in this case when there is excess solar and wind generation then sometimes the rate even goes negative and you are paid to use the excess power.
Most places I lived had this set up.
(Nowadays smart meters offer many more options.)
In 2022 is was £1.89 a litre and spent most of the year over £1.60 a litre
Adjusted for inflation that would be most of the year at £1.85, and a high of £2.18 a litre
https://www.racfoundation.org/data/uk-pump-prices-over-time
From 2011 to 2014 petrol was about £1.30 a litre. Adjusted for inflation terms that's £1.80-£2 a litre -- far less than current "highs".
The average UK car does 8000 miles and about 45mpg (uk gallons), or about 10 miles per litre. It thus costs 800 litres, or £1,260 a year.
Last year petrol was £1.35 a litre, and thus £184 a year less for the average car.
Fuel is insanely cheap in the UK in historic terms, just not as cheap as it was last year.
Why are you choosing the 2022 energy crises as your baseline? Not only your choice was arbitary but you managed to choose the year fuel was at its highest as a reaction to the war in Ukraine.
That price was not representative or typical, it was a spike. You can see it here.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/time...
We will see exactly the same thing again in a few years when people are 'shocked' that prices are rising again. And then expect the government to step in, even though on the interim they've bought a massive car on PCP rather than take some personal responsibility and buy a car that they can afford when inevitably something goes wrong.
"Insanely cheap" for the UK to feels really strange for those of us way over here who tend to forget how good we have it.
That is an interesting perspective. We do not forget how good we have it, because we choose not to put high taxes on gasoline and diesel. Do drivers in the UK tend to forget that taxes are more than half the retail price they pay at the pump? Sometimes way over half. That is a policy decision.
For sure, EVs are far more efficient at converting a kwh of energy into forward motion, but if we assume 35 mpg (9.25 miles/litre) for the gas car, we need about 970wh to travel 1 mile. A modern EV can manage a mile on ~260wh, almost a quarter of the gas requirement.
There are public charging networks in the UK averaging 92p/kwh - we know we need much less energy to move the more efficient EV, but even with this adjustment fuel cost per mile looks like:
petrol at UK average today: 17p/mi
Electric at very expensive public charger: ~24p/mi !!
At many chargers, there are no savings at all. For comparisons sake, that 92p kwh would be just 28.6p on the most expensive domestic electricity supply, and charging at home would be ~8p per mile on the worst possible tariffs.
I've probably done some bad math somewhere here, but I think the broad picture is correct.
Which is 21p per mile, for my petrol car
at 98p a kwhr its 20p per mile.
but in practice the electric car is 3 pence a mile for me (average car charging price for me is 15p a kwhr)
https://www.racfoundation.org/research/mobility/still-standi...
Wales – 75% of households have – or could have – off-street parking and EV charging England – 68% Scotland – 63%
In London, sure, most homes don't have off-street parking and ev charging, but then only half the households in London have a car
https://content.tfl.gov.uk/travel-in-london-2024-car-ownersh...
Even in Wales, 25% can't. This isn't a figure you can ignore.
And that's a hypothetical, it relies on landlords playing ball etc. then there's the social issues. On the north of England we have lots of terraces built for mill workers, these aren't owned by the richest on society. So then you're in the situation of charging the poorest more for transport. And these are necessarily on towns with good transport links (think 1 bus and hour).
> https://getneocharge.com/a/blog/identifying-your-240v-dryer-...
Almost everyone I know with an EV charging at home just reused the 240v dryer socket to avoid paying for a dedicated fast charger. It's often cheaper too to have an electrician fit a new 240v socket instead of the dedicated charger as well.
Unless you are regularly doing upwards of 150 km/ day, it's fine.
It's used for dryer, stove etc.
People use the mobility part of their PIP payments to lease a car from Motability which is an independent company, they could use the mobility payment to pay for taxi instead.
But the only reason it exists is because of government funds and government policy.
The scheme would collapse if the government stopped allowing benefit money to be used for Motability leases. The banks lent them money under the reassurance of the government funding.
But yes, they lease the vehicles, they don't sell them.
EDIT: my comment may have some minor inaccuracies. I just found https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmwo... - a very detailed description of the company, charities etc
It’s not independent, because it derives all of its income from the government and uses it to buy people brand new top of the range cars.
You're gonna have to cite sources on that one, but I would sincerely doubt that £77 a week will allow you to lease an Audi.
Also the pip claimant has to be probed by a panel every three years to keep getting the benefit, unlike say a state pension (but I paid for that I mean possibly you did, its still a non means tested benefit, unlike PIP)
Electric cars registered in countries with large land mass?
"..Electric car adoption , ranked by value of government incentives.."?
Eventually I just searched for
"... graphs relating to EV adoption"
" ..Relationship between country land mass and ev adoption rate.." ?