okonumiyaki

Batteries are more recyclable than an ICE engine though, so it is still better. And if there is one thing we know about oil extraction & transport, it does create a hell of a lot of pollution & wars.

900 km range in Europe would be >8 hours continuous driving. Which, for professional drivers, is illegal due to the danger of fatigue - for every 4 1/2 hours of driving, you must take 45 minutes break (either one 45 min break, or one of 15 minutes and another of 30 minutes)

Shard

How much does it cost to charge up an EV at home?

christmasoompa

Ours is a couple of pounds.

Shard

Seems reasonable. How often do you have to charge it up ?

R I C H

Is that really the case? Everything I read suggests batteries are problematic and we're not well equiped to deal with them:Current EV batteries “are really not designed to be recycled,” says Thompson, a research fellow at the Faraday Institution, a research center focused on battery issues in the United Kingdom.

That wasn’t much of a problem when EVs were rare. But now the technology is taking off. Several carmakers have said they plan to phase out combustion engines within a few decades, and industry analysts predict at least 145 million EVs will be on the road by 2030, up from just 11 million last year. “People are starting to realize this is an issue,” Thompson says.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021...dead-batteries

There's plenty to suggest that demand for rare earth materials will outstrip supply, and we end up in the same situation you describe relating to oil. Extracting anything from the earth has a price to pay:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapo...h=2ca8100779a8

OrangeMango

Yes, I do take breaks but decide for myself, when and how long and also where. Plus I don't want to wait in line somewhere until it's charged up, or the one before me has charged up or hear some bad excuse to pay for some overpriced and bad coffee in one of those continental European roadside places on the motorway. At the moment that's just all unpractical. Maybe in 5 or 7 years down the road they have better batteries but at the moment an electrical vehicle is just not a choice.

And in Canada there would also be the temperature change. Batteries at minus 20 or minus 30 degrees are something else. But again, maybe in 5 or 7 years down the road the technology has advanced considerably.

Shard

Probably a good opportunity for local authorities to generate some income. Set up some paid re-charging points at parking meters / car parks and take a margin. Once the user base expands sufficently.

scrubbedexpat091

Governments that rely on gas tax revenue for things like transit, and roads will certainly need to find alternatives.

caretaker

That's a good point; the cost of a charge isn't going to stay the same for long.

christmasoompa

I rarely charge it at home, if I do then once a week does me but I don’t do big mileage. I work from home so it’s just 2 or 3 local journeys a day.

scrubbedexpat091

I could see them adding a tax to electric bills for those with a registered electric vehicle, and adding a tax to public charging stations.

It's a fairly large chunk of money various gas taxes.

These numbers may be a couple years old, the document wasn't dated, but best I could find for BC.

B.C. Carbon Tax $237.5m
Provincial Taxes $492m
Federal Taxes $440.1m
GST(federal portion only 5%) $277.7m
TransLink (Lower Mainland only) $311.8m
BC Transit (Capital Region only) $11.4m

Now in theory the carbon tax is revenue neutral so in theory the government isn't relying on that money for anything, but the rest is revenue for roads, transit, and whatever the feds do with their share.

Former Lancastrian

Pretty simple the taxpayer will be expected to cover the losses and especially drivers of vehicles by the Govt introducing something like Pay As You Drive and more toll roads.

OrangeMango

The understanding I have is that you'd have to drive a Tesla for 300.000 km per year to start being environmentally friendly. I often think a Tesla isn't even a good car, from a mechanics point of view. Any technical university in Europe can probably build something similar like the Tesla. The reason why the price of their stock is so high, is more because of the intellectual property in terms of software.

I was never aware of this law. I only know of mandatory breaks for professional drivers. I am aware of taking breaks. And if I do take breaks, I don't really want that discussion of drinking overpriced coffee while worrying about the small print of the charging cost and different rules and laws in different countries.

Also in rural areas of Canada there will be much difficulty in building up a decent charging infrastructure. And then there is the matter of cold winters. A battery at minus 30 degrees simply performs differently.

You certainly don't want to have any breakdowns in winter on a drive from Edmonton to Saskatoon.

I think politicians can only force the electric vehicle upon drivers, - unless there is a massive breakthrough in battery technology, like a range of 1200 km in one charge. If they charge 2 pounds for the litter of petrol, hold the price of petrol up with exorbitant taxes and constantly refer to the electric vehicle, they probably will be succeeding.

Danny B

Understandable from a mechanics point of view, kind of like how the Farrier's felt when they got rid of horses

OrangeMango

Not really.

Electric vehicles do have fewer service intervals, other things like an oil change are completely obsolete. The real issue is only the battery and the limited range.

Plus on top of that, if you factor everything in I don't think that an electric vehicle is so environment friendly. As said, one needs to drive a Tesla for 300.000 km per year, to be somewhere in the area of environmental friendliness. That has been mentioned by various sources several times.

The subject is sadly often too ideologically, and it's politically driven not which technology is best, or what is the customer's choice.

If politicians could do one thing is find a way to say good by to coal power plants in the world. Sadly that's not the case.