Are EVs Becoming Less Popular.

[Ashy]

on the weight question, as I have mentioned before the socking big battery -

The controversial mayor of Greater London has demanded that all London's buses shall be battery electric very soon*, so he'll be scrapping or cascading the hybrids and diesels with unbridled haste. A typical double deck battery electric bus weighs over 14 tons, compared to the trolleybus of yesteryear which had three axles and weighed 9 tons. I wonder if he has considered the risks to London's roads, and more importantly to London's buried services, the water mains, the gas mains, the cable ducts and the sewers?

*News today that this project will be creating hundreds of jobs, in China. At around £400,000 each bus they are a bit cheaper than the "Boris Bus" that was built in Ireland for £433,000 each. There are nearly 9,000 buses on London's roads.

[JBR]

The controversial mayor of Greater London has demanded that all London's buses shall be battery electric very soon*, so he'll be scrapping or cascading the hybrids and diesels with unbridled haste. A typical double deck battery electric bus weighs over 14 tons, compared to the trolleybus of yesteryear which had three axles and weighed 9 tons. I wonder if he has considered the risks to London's roads, and more importantly to London's buried services, the water mains, the gas mains, the cable ducts and the sewers?

*News today that this project will be creating hundreds of jobs, in China. At around £400,000 each bus they are a bit cheaper than the "Boris Bus" that was built in Ireland for £433,000 each. There are nearly 9,000 buses on London's roads.

All I can say is that I'm glad I don't live in Londonistan.

[GrannyMac]

My son in law has an EV, he runs a business, and the tax benefits were very attractive, but he wouldn't choose to have another.  

[JBR]

My son in law has an EV, he runs a business, and the tax benefits were very attractive, but he wouldn't choose to have another. 

Exactly.  The real reason for this, supposedly, marked increase in EV purchases is simply that the government, in its wisdom, has been bribing people to 'invest' in them.

I believe that when the hand-outs go, so will the interest in buying EVs!

[klondike]

The personal incentives stopped a while back. 

Wait til they bring in pay per mile to make up for lost fuel duty. Nobody will want them then.

[Diasi]

Technically if they are selling more than are being scrapped or exported, then EVs are becoming more popular. just that the initial enthusiasm for the product may have declined.

The problem is the figures, falsely, treat a car registration as a sale.

[Raven]

This made me chuckle.

[klondike]

There are 650 in Westminster that won't laugh. They simply won't understand it.

[Ashy]

I've heard that there are huge fields full of registered EVs in China, that nobody wants, and of course dealers will register a few as demonstrators, so yes registrations aren't a guide to sales of new vehicles..

[klondike]

Lots of those cars in Chinese fields are fully registered. I posted about that earlier. Possibly with a link.

[dextrous63]

On the downside, bridges across the land will end up requiring strengthening or rebuilding due to the weight of ev's

On the plus side, once their batteries combust spontaneously, they'll melt the tarmac which will self level out and fill potholes.

[JBR]

This made me chuckle.

👍 Exactly.

Yesterday at 03:41:02 PM

On the downside, bridges across the land will end up requiring strengthening or rebuilding due to the weight of ev's

On the plus side, once their batteries combust spontaneously, they'll melt the tarmac which will self level out and fill potholes.

And car parks, apparently.

Yes, one possible advantage of EVs!  A shame that the road repairers just tip in some warm tarmac and expect it to last!

[klondike]

repairers just tip in some warm tarmac and expect it to last!

That comment spurred me into nipping up the road to take a photo. This junction is virtually never free of a hole sometimes very deep ones. By the time they turn up to fix one there is another starting. At one point they did do a big patch but that is now overlaid by a patchwork of small repairs. It doesn't show well in the picture but a fresh hole is appearing at the edge of an old repair before the latest patch has lost its newly done look.

This junction gets a hammering as there is a school just up the road and impatient parents trying to make it onto the main road seem to all be budding drag racer stars. Or possibly already are as the Santa Pod drag track is quite near.




Just to be clear the yellow arrows were added to the pictute by me. They are not the magic spray paint that many councils seem to think actually repair the holes.

[dextrous63]

Luckily the huge weight of ev cars will compress tarmac and make it even stronger than it was before.  No way are they going more wear and tear.  No sirreeeee