So it's far better to sell EV below cost (Chinese or not) to get more sold than have to a pay £15k for an ICE car.
The Chinese manufacturers are arguably at double advantage here as they have more BEV to sell so it's far easier for them meet the targets, and they can 'sell' the excess to the Western manufacturers (and further subsidise their EVs!).
I'm not personally against it, I got a brand new EV on a lease recently for close to free after all the tax advantages, and it's not like the Western manufacturers didn't have time to prepare...?
https://transportandenergy.com/2026/04/16/42-of-councils-to-...
Not sure fast charging all the time is good for battery life though. 99% of my driving in NZ is on a normal 10A overnight charge
Electricity is expensive in the UK (~25p/kWh) But not gas car expensive. It is £1.57/L (£5.94/gallon).
The EV infrastructure is also pretty dang far along, especially compared to the US. Remember that everything in the UK is a lot smaller and closer together than it is in the US. Further, the UK has a functional train system for long distance travel. You can go from the top of Dunnet Head to Lizard Point in a 15 hour drive.
People downvoting me, Look up chargers in plugshare to see just how many there are in the UK, it's a lot. And also correct my math if it's wrong. An 80kWh car costs £20 to fill up. A 55L car, which has about the same range, costs £85 to fill up.
This won't happen unless they outright ban non-EV vehicles which is unlikely considering how many people are still using old cars and cannot afford new cars, how many car enthusiasts are there, and not to mention potential lobbying from big oil.
- Gas Station = retail outlet that sells and dispenses gasoline and other petroleum-based fuel products
- Charging station = place to charge your EV
For example, I have 2 gas stations within a mile of my home. They stay pretty busy because people around me constantly need to fill up. I, on the other hand, basically never visit either of those stations since I switched to an EV. I charge at home.
If everyone around me switched to EVs, those stations could not stay in business. There's a grocery store in the same area which makes anything those stations offer obsolete.
Those are the majority of gas stations that die with a mass switch over to EVs. There's a gas station for my hometown without an attached convenience store with 300 people there. There's no way that station stays in service if a significant portion of the community switches to EVs. It already struggles to be profitable as is (I know the owner).
In contrast, my cheaper 'leccy rate is now about 25% less at 5.2p per kWh than it was. Electricity is weird in the UK - its pinned to the price of gas and is currently (lol) rather expensive "on peak" at 27.87p per kWh and there is a day standing charge of 47.71p. That's from Octopus.
We also have a petrol car - an elderly Renault Clio. It does just run and run and is pretty economic for a pretty shagged out ICE.
My EV is cheaper to run, by far. However, its unlikely the battery will last 20 odd years. I haven't yet sat down and done some whole life costs for ICE vs EV yet.
My Saic MG4 can do 300+ miles on a 100% charge of its 78kWh battery. After two years, it still manages to exceed its WLTP (with care, when required) and I quite like the ridiculous 0-30 acceleration etc.
Poor people don't buy new cars. New EVs being expensive is not a poor person problem.
The lowest end of the market won’t have electric cars unless the batteries are shagged (early Leafs)
And given how insanely cheap petrol is (15p a mile, so £450 for a low mileage runaround) the savings even if electric was free and they weren’t introducing a 3p/mile charge isn’t there.
And, as it turns out, a brand new 50kWh battery costs around £4000 to manufacture. Used will be cheaper.
A logical future market is battery-refurbished EVs, just a question of where the crossover point is.
Do happen to have a link for how the "brand new EV on a lease recently for close to free after all the tax advantages" works in the UK?
If you're in the higher tax brackets this means a £200/month lease (say) ends up more like £90/month.
And because of the "new" £3kish subsidy the govt put in, the car finance companies seem to basically apply that as a big discount to the lease value (or it seems that way?). So you could get a brand new ~£30k EV with no upfront payment and a 2-3 year term for <£100/month including maintenance. Mine even came with a free car charger install at home.
For an ICE car the government claws this money back through hefty "Benefit In Kind" taxes placed on employer-provided vehicles, but as an incentive to drive adoption the rates on EVs are only 3% of the car's nominal purchase price (and you only actually pay up to 45% of that 3%).
It doesn't work out "free," but it's typically as cheap to lease a new EV through this scheme as it is to pay the depreciation on a used ICE.
The Honda Super-N EV will also be released in Australia, New Zealand, and other countries in Southeast Asia that were also British colonies: this decision has nothing to do with tariffs and everything to do with left-hand-drive vs. right-hand-drive.
For people with a garage or a driveway who can charge at home, EVs are overwhelmingly a better option. The problem is that large swathes of the population are outside of that and you're making their lives miserable by punishing ICE car ownership.
Meanwhile, adoption numbers are thrown about ignoring that for those in optimal conditions, adoption is already very high and cannot grow much more. While for those particularly misaligned with the strengths of EVs, it will often be so painful to own one they will resist with everything they have, and in many cases they will have to admit defeat and stop driving altogether. Which I guess the government will also be content with. But it will take some time.
*typo
It's obviously not ideal to have an EV if you can't regularly charge at home or at work, but "making their lives miserable" seems like a bit of a stretch. Instead of spending 5 minutes a week filling up at the gas station, you'll spent 30 minutes a week at an EV charging station.
I rent EVs every couple of years, last time it was recently, just to see how things are evolving. Since anyway it's clear where policy is going. Whatever you think about said policy. Right now, they're lovely commute machines if you can charge at home.
Second hand EVs devaluation is not a product of anecdote. It reflects the current state of the market.
They are a different product and they're great at what they do. In fact, for those in the market for them, "nudging" (state coercion) is not necessary at all.
the UK is a small country. The average British driver drives 20-30km per day. One full EV charge almost gets you through England South to North. If you're putting a bunch of charging stations next to workplaces for people to charge once or twice per week that's going to cover most drivers.
statements like these are what turn some people away. cz they're not sincere.
you can easily compare the costs between models within a manufacturer - BMW ICE version vs Electric version
& on a head to head basis the old guard of auto makers e.g BMW, Mercedes make better vehicles than Tesla.
(And before the inevitable “but Chinese subsidies” comment - update your talking points, subsidies no longer happens to any meaningful degree)
Actually somewhat surprised we still even have legacy auto in top 10.
https://nationalpost.com/news/massive-risk-chinese-evs-are-t...
Hopefully this means competition with the other EV manufacturers in Canada too.
You're right, I guess it is only just slightly more lazy than writing the whataboutism.
> if the Chinese want to hurt "US" they have plenty of other ways to go about it.
Another what aboutism...
Why should those other national governments move away from Microsoft, the U.S. has other ways to hurt those countries.
Do they operate like Tesla, or can indie garages handle repairs? How long are warranties?
Both Labour and the Conservative parties seem to have resigned the nation to only being a financial hub.
Typical case of short sighted capitalism.
He is not even hiding the fact US automakers make a more expensive inferior product, but that US consumers should not be allowed have the superior one.
Not very free market. It's basically military and intelligence budget combined. If you can hurt auto manufacturing, you further consolidate manufacturing inside China. Then if you can get people to pay for you to spy on them through their own cars, that's well spent intelligence budget. If you reduce the portion of global manufacturing outside of China, you reduce the amount of manufacturing that can quickly pivot to wartime production like we saw during World War 2.
I'm glad that we still have sane enough people in the US that we ban these obvious and transparently bad things. It wasn't that hard to see free trade died.
Hopefully people don't still think that China's green energy initiatives are about the climate. Whatever you think about those initiatives, don't let that blind you to the legitimate questions around China's motivations.