Has the electric car bubble burst?

[Costafortune]

The Germans are hedging their bets but the German car industry - a very powerful lobby - is now pushing back.

They are seemingly not going to sign and neither are the Italians.

https://europe.autonews.com/environment ... many-italy

In reality there is room for both EV and ICE.

Personally - I'd love a Honda E for local driving.

[Exminiman]

Personally - I'd love a Honda E for local driving. :

Thats the one I was thinking of, really like the look, range is just too small though for the odd busy day

So max of 130 miles, realistically, range anxiety at about 100, which is too low.

And £36k plus

Bit of a mini vibe, looks wise….IMHO

35E89811-395D-483C-9824-9C387D516E39.jpeg

[johnv]

not sure I'd have liked to have been stuck for 6 hours on the M62 in an electric car last night though

[Costafortune]

not sure I'd have liked to have been stuck for 6 hours on the M62 in an electric car last night though

Well, exactly.

However:

This is what I call an interior. What a fantastic bit of design. If I had to have an EV for town driving I'd buy one like a shot.

[Costafortune]

Personally - I'd love a Honda E for local driving. :

Thats the one I was thinking of, really like the look, range is just too small though for the odd busy day

So max of 130 miles, realistically, range anxiety at about 100, which is too low.

And £36k plus

Bit of a mini vibe, looks wise….IMHO

36k isn't unreasonable but it needs a solid 200 mile range.

Definitely a Mini vibe. More Mini like than the atrocities BMW have planned.

Look at this nonsense.

Mini Shiteman?

[mab01uk]

Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars....



Between 2019 and 2022, groups of Tesla employees privately shared via an internal messaging system sometimes highly invasive videos and images recorded by customers’ car cameras, according to interviews by Reuters with nine former employees.
“We could see inside people's garages and their private properties,” said another former employee. “Let's say that a Tesla customer had something in their garage that was distinctive, you know, people would post those kinds of things.”
Tesla didn't respond to detailed questions sent to the company for this report.
Two ex-employees said they weren’t bothered by the sharing of images, saying that customers had given their consent or that people long ago had given up any reasonable expectation of keeping personal data private. Three others, however, said they were troubled by it.
“It was a breach of privacy, to be honest. And I always joked that I would never buy a Tesla after seeing how they treated some of these people,” said one former employee.
Another said: “I’m bothered by it because the people who buy the car, I don't think they know that their privacy is, like, not respected … We could see them doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids.”
One former employee saw nothing wrong with sharing images, but described a function that allowed data labelers to view the location of recordings on Google Maps as a “massive invasion of privacy.”
David Choffnes, executive director of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University in Boston, called sharing of sensitive videos and images by Tesla employees “morally reprehensible.”
“Any normal human being would be appalled by this,” he said. He noted that circulating sensitive and personal content could be construed as a violation of Tesla’s own privacy policy — potentially resulting in intervention by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which enforces federal laws relating to consumers’ privacy.
“People who walked by these vehicles were filmed without knowing it. And the owners of the Teslas could go back and look at these images,” said DPA board member Katja Mur in a statement. “If a person parked one of these vehicles in front of someone’s window, they could spy inside and see everything the other person was doing. That is a serious violation of privacy.”
The watchdog determined it wasn’t Tesla, but the vehicles’ owners, who were legally responsible for their cars’ recordings. It said it decided not to fine the company after Tesla said it had made several changes to Sentry Mode, including having a vehicle’s headlights pulse to inform passers-by that they may be being recorded.
In interviews, two former employees said in their normal work duties they were sometimes asked to view images of customers in and around their homes, including inside garages.
“I sometimes wondered if these people know that we're seeing that,” said one.
“I saw some scandalous stuff sometimes, you know, like I did see scenes of intimacy but not nudity,” said another. “And there was just definitely a lot of stuff that like, I wouldn't want anybody to see about my life.”
As an example, this person recalled seeing “embarrassing objects,” such as “certain pieces of laundry, certain sexual wellness items … and just private scenes of life that we really were privy to because the car was charging.”
One of the perks of working for Tesla as a data labeler in San Mateo was the chance to win a prize – use of a company car for a day or two, according to two former employees.
But some of the lucky winners became paranoid when driving the electric cars.
“Knowing how much data those vehicles are capable of collecting definitely made folks nervous," one ex-employee said.
The Full Report by Reuters:-
https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesl ... 023-04-06/

I think I will stick with my 'old' ICE cars with no factory fitted cameras for as long as possible...

[Polarsilver]

interesting that no one seems to understand or care that EV cars are Heavy .. i wonder how many homes with "bodge it & scarper" Block Paved Drives perhaps will show signs of subsidence under the wheels after a few years of EV Parking & Road Potholes will become just maybe worse.

Can i ask what type of Jack is provided with say a Tesla .. or do you need to call the AA/RAC/ Green Flag ?

Good informative write up on a EV MINI in April Cooper World...

[Ronnie]

On the BBC radio news this morning, some report stating that many multi story car parks will not cope well with the extra weight.

[Peter Laidler]

And battery life only guaranteed to 8 years. Any idea of replacement cost anyone.....?

[trevorhp]

I wouldn't be worried about the replacement cost ..more about where they are burying the old ones now Portugal is full

[andy1071]

Peter, there was a Tesla owner in Scotland that was quoted £17k for a new battery...

Also, just heard from a colleague that people in China are not buying electric cars now. They want hybrids or 'range extenders'... due to the lack of charging infrastructure outside the cities... sound familiar?

[rolesyboy]

Well I've had my Tesla for a year now. Practically I cannot really fault it aside from the handling which is not on par with the amount of power the thing has.
A truck took the side out in December and I've been in a petrol hire car since. I can honestly say the Tesla wins by a country mile.

And it hasn't caught fire yet!!

[mab01uk]

Hertz sells off 20,000 electric cars as drivers stick with petrol.
Rental giant expects to take £190m hit after blaming weak demand and high repair costs...
"US rental giant Hertz is selling off thousands of Teslas as weak demand forces it to replace 20,000 electric cars with petrol-powered vehicles.
Hertz said it would sell the vehicles over the next year and expected to take a $245m (£193m) hit as it reversed plans to massively expand its electric car fleet.
The company is selling off a range of makes and models but is expected to offload thousands of Teslas. More than 600 are already listed for sale on its used car website.
Three years ago, Hertz announced plans to buy 100,000 Tesla electric cars, a move that pushed Tesla’s market value beyond $1 trillion.
However, Hertz said renting out electric cars had proved to be less profitable than traditional vehicles and the cars had also come with higher repair costs.
The sell-off, which applies only in the US but amounts to around a third of the company’s global electric vehicle fleet, comes after years of Hertz positioning itself as a “first mover” in electric car rentals.
As well as agreeing to buy 100,000 Teslas, it committed to buying 65,000 vehicles from Polestar, Volvo’s electric subsidiary, and last year it said a quarter of its fleet would be electric by the end of 2024.
Motorists have complained about experiences when renting electric cars as a result of the myriad of different charging networks, the fact that the cars are often unsuitable for long road trips, or in some cases because drivers receive vehicles without fully-charged batteries.
Hertz chief executive Stephen Scherr said last year that the plummeting value of used electric cars also made them less profitable.
Demand for electric cars in the UK flatlined last year, according to figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. They accounted for 16.5pc of all new car sales last year, slightly down on the 16.6pc in 2022."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/20 ... th-petrol/

[Spider]

This current wave of EV's that have been a rash on the motoring landscape, running on dumb arse batteries will die off. People are starting to wake up to the con job that they are and the knee jerk of many Governments to encourage their use.

Not currently, but not far off Hydrogen will be the way forward as an alternative fuel, for both EVs and ICEs.

Here in Australia, there has been a short sighted up-take of EVs, though they don't well suit our country. For the folks that live & work in the cities, they are kinda working out, though most have had rude surprises at the true running cost. Of course, we have lots and lots of wide open low to zero populated regions between towns. Our dumb deaf and stupid Government is putting in diesel powered charging stations on some of the major routes, but that won't be adequate for at least 10 years and it'll likely take as long to charge up considering it's just one charging point,,,,in School Holidays, I can see the cues reaching all the way back to the cities they came from.

A Motoring journalist hired a Hyundi EV, drove Sydney to Melbourne, a distance of 600 miles. It took her just over 12 hours and cost $210.00 in charging fees. She did the return trip in the ICE version of the same car, took 9 hours (as she didn't need to waste 3 hours charging ) and cost $140.00 in petrol,,,,,,,,, The EV was fully charged when she picked it up and needed a charge along the way. The ICE version did the trip with no stops.

There's lots and lots of private car parks here that won't allow EVs to enter because of how dangerous they are.

EVs, at least here are a total con job.

[MiNiKiN]

This current wave of EV's that have been a rash on the motoring landscape, running on dumb arse batteries will die off. People are starting to wake up to the con job that they are and the knee jerk of many Governments to encourage their use.

Not currently, but not far off Hydrogen will be the way forward as an alternative fuel, for both EVs and ICEs.

Here in Australia, there has been a short sighted up-take of EVs, though they don't well suit our country. For the folks that live & work in the cities, they are kinda working out, though most have had rude surprises at the true running cost. Of course, we have lots and lots of wide open low to zero populated regions between towns. Our dumb deaf and stupid Government is putting in diesel powered charging stations on some of the major routes, but that won't be adequate for at least 10 years and it'll likely take as long to charge up considering it's just one charging point,,,,in School Holidays, I can see the cues reaching all the way back to the cities they came from.

A Motoring journalist hired a Hyundi EV, drove Sydney to Melbourne, a distance of 600 miles. It took her just over 12 hours and cost $210.00 in charging fees. She did the return trip in the ICE version of the same car, took 9 hours (as she didn't need to waste 3 hours charging ) and cost $140.00 in petrol,,,,,,,,, The EV was fully charged when she picked it up and needed a charge along the way. The ICE version did the trip with no stops.

There's lots and lots of private car parks here that won't allow EVs to enter because of how dangerous they are.

EVs, at least here are a total con job.

I've deliberately kept quiet here for a long time now, but I think I need to intervene again to correct things a bit.

It is a fallacy that hydrogen is the better solution. It just produces a lot more CO2 (losses during production and transport) compared to battery electric, H2 is dirty (because most of it is made from fosile methane), it's inconvenient (refuelling at a busy "filling station" takes ages as the tap freezes if it's constantly in use), hydrogen is highly flammable, in these our area (Europe) most of it will be produced in Russia (resulting in even more dependence on that autocratic state, let alone them givin a shite about pollution in production, etc.)
Comparison of efficiency:

battery-electric-bev-or-hydrogen-fuel-cell-fcv-source-volkswagen.jpg

Hydrogen: For very remote areas, heavy goods transport and aviation, it could be the better solution.

And please don't spread the fake news that electric cars are dangerous, because they are far less dangerous than ICE cars. This is proven by factual statistics and not by manipulated news from certain people with an "agenda". By the way, a hydrogen car also has a battery - in case the hydrogen propaganda community hasn't yet realised that

fcv-source-volkswagen.jpg

[swifty]

I’ve read that with interest. Trouble is there is so much misinformation on both sides and every one seems to have an agenda. ,,,, Shirley

[richardACS]

I’ve read that with interest. Trouble is there is so much misinformation on both sides and every one seems to have an agenda. ,,,, Shirley

Agreed on the misinformation. Cannot be that difficult for the true calculation to be determined between ICE, electric and Hydrogen.

The basis of the information being:

1) Cost of manufacture to end of life scrappage

2) Cost of fuel per 10k

3) Cost of service/repairs per 10k miles

[beardylonodn]

My brother in law works in this space, and he says Hydrogen just wont work.

Also indecently I saw a good doc on the BBC which was about heat pumps but brings the Hydrogen issue, and the main takeaway is that said most Hydrogen is actually made from natural gas, so it's a non starter for the moment as it also produced sh!t loads of Co2, and they need to pump it out to sea!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p ... heat-pumps

[goff]

My brother in law works in this space, and he says Hydrogen just wont work.

Also indecently I saw a good doc on the BBC

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p ... heat-pumps

Who ever believes what the BBC say , biggest liars on the telly , they said we was going into a ice age in the 70s , now they tell us we have got global warming , yes it is true , just look at how the panties are getting smaller , " proof of global warming "

[Spider]

Goff,,,,, hehehehehe,,,,,, yeah,,,, I hear ya mate and can't disagree there !

Not currently, but not far off Hydrogen will be the way forward as an alternative fuel, for both EVs and ICEs.

It is a fallacy that hydrogen is the better solution. It just produces a lot more CO2 (losses during production and transport) compared to battery electric, H2 is dirty (because most of it is made from fosile methane), it's inconvenient (refuelling at a busy "filling station" takes ages as the tap freezes if it's constantly in use), hydrogen is highly flammable, in these our area (Europe) most of it will be produced in Russia (resulting in even more dependence on that autocratic state, let alone them givin a shite about pollution in production, etc.)

Cheers for that.

I did say 'not currently' and I don't disagree that on current technology, it's not clean, but that'll change. I'm no chemist so I have no idea here how they are doing it, but one avenue that I have heard they are looking in to is using ammonia. I have little doubt, it is the way of the future.

There is a LOT of R & D going on to Hydrogen 'production'. It is the most abundant element in the Universe. Toyota, Hyundi, Honda, JCB and New Holland are putting a lot of their 'betting money' on Hydrogen, with cars in production today that you can buy. There are many filling stations worldwide, now;-

https://www.h2stations.org/

I doubt these companies would be putting so much in to this technology if it was to be phased out on the basis of 'dirty' fuel production.

Don't forget - Batteries are also dirty, very dirty. That might change down the track, but I really just can't see that. They also just don't and not likely to have in the next 100+ years going to come within a bulls roar for energy density of hydrocarbon or straight hydrogen fuels. Batteries are not future.