How will people afford cars in the future?

[stbrandonsboat]

This 'no new petrol cars to be sold from 2030' is rather worrying. From what I've seen, electric cars are super expensive and prices of used petrol cars are going to become unaffordable as well as the deadline looms. How are ordinary people going to be able to afford cars?

How much does it cost to lease an electric car? Why aren't electric cars smaller? All the ones I see are massive. I have vehicle anxiety 🫣

They'll also pre-register a whole heap of stock as a workaround, so you'll be able to buy 'new' cars that are registered in 2029 into 2030 and beyond.

All of this. We might be the same age. We were ordinary too and I remain so.

Where I live has excellent public transport and I cannot understand why most of my car-owning neighbours have them. I wouldn't stop them, but it is not unreasonable to expect them to comply with the rules of ULEZ for my benefit and for theirs too - I don't drive but we all have to breathe. Same goes for those people from outside who want to drive all over my neighbourhood without paying the ULEZ or the Congestion Charge.

I understand that if you don't live in an area with good public transport or there are certain things about your life, you might need a car. I have every sympathy for those people and think that is why the Government should fund a good scrappage scheme to help people whose cars aren't compliant rather than playing politics by demonising Sadiq Khan and those other local authorities such as Oxford that they don't like.

But ultimately I think people should drive less in towns and cities because it's much more pleasant for most of us that way. People who want to drive anywhere any time when they don't have to are selfish. There's nothing particularly wrong with that - we all do selfish things. But on this one, it might be going my way.

2030 is pie in the sky. Won't happen. Infrastructure isn't ready. And consumers are getting cold feet over it. The people who should be buying electric at the moment just aren't and that's part of the problem. It needs significant intervention from government to change things - the UK was ahead of the market a few years ago but that's slipped as government have downgraded it in term of priority for other issues as crisis have hit.

Dacia are about to launch their first electric car though and it's price is significantly lower than other brands. It's looking like the £18k mark new. That will change the market I suspect.

Personally I don't know how people afford some of the high end brands right now, so I think that's key - a lot of people are going to have to rethink the badge they have on their cars.

The ID range from Volkswagen will be the same as current petrol range ie from tiny 2 seater up to van. Ie the VW Id3 is already out and is the same chassis as the Volkswagen Golf. The VW ID4 is the Same as the Volkswagen Tiguan. The Id2 will be out next year and will be the Same size as Volkswagen Polo.

Most car manufacturers will gradually be introducing a range from tiny to 8/9 seater vans. Most started with Suv as it’s the mid market

Also our lease to buy electric is cheaper to run monthly than our 15 year old corsa. We have no large repair costs at every MOT, no MOT for 3 years, our insurance is included in Lease, far cheaper to charge etc etc.
We aren’t in uk, so not sure comparable grants but we also received a decent grant from government towards deposit and installation of fast charger at home was also covered 90%.

The VW ID4 costs £15.000 more than thd Tiguan. ID4 starts at £38,105 and Tiguan starts at £23,010.

@Chersfrozenface - maybe in the uk. Here we compared and the ID4 was only €3000 more. We then received €4500 from government. Making it cheaper

We’ve started thinking about it as good chance both of our cars will die within next 3/5 years. The price of new electric cars is massive but hoping prices do start to come down in the next few years as the cost of producing becomes lower.

8 weeks ago I took out a pcp on a new electric car. From a financial point of view it’s become one of the best decisions I’ve ever made - my previous 6yr old ICE car was bought with a 5 year personal loan 3 years ago and cost me just over £275 a month to pay off at 2.8%. The car was costing almost £80 a week in diesel to drive as my work commute is quite long and the car was never as economical as was promised.

My EV is brand new, they took in my old car as deposit and a cash back amount to settle the old car loan. It costs me £312 per month and can be fully charged at home overnight for £3.50. It’s incomparable - comfortable, quiet, convenient and has a 230mile range which is plenty. I just took a mini break to London (300 mile round trip) and charged it up when I arrived at a public charger for £5.40, which easily got me home again.

I am confident in saying that I will NEVER go back to ICE.

No grants in the UK for purchase. There is s discount on some eligible vehicles, reflected in the advertised price, but the VW ID4 isn't one of them.

There is a grant for installing a charger at home, but in common with nearly 40% of dwellings in the UK, we havd no off road parking, so that's oug.

Bear in mind there are now very good deals to be had with 1-2 year old EVs which will be substantially cheaper than new

Mechanics that can repair fossil fuel vehicles and keep them on the road will be worth their weight in gold. The last fossil fuel vehicles will retain their value and slowly trickle down to consumers without enough money to buy new cars. People who usually buy new cars will either hold onto their fossil fuel ones longer or will just buy an electric one.

I disagree. If the whole of the UK dropped into the sea right now and we ceased to exist, there would be almost zero tangible difference to global emissions.

There is NOTHING we as a country can do to make a difference overall - we're too small and insignificant.

India and China on the other hand are the biggest polluters of all, but don't give a shiny shit and without that things won't change.

Selfish though it probably is, and as much as I'll probably get piled on right now - electric vehicles are bullshit, public transport is bullshit, and "15-minute cities" are even more bullshit. I'll stick to my massive diesel 4x4 (which I do actually need for work) and the occasional abroad holiday where god forbid, ill use a PLANE to get there 😱🤷‍♀️

I remember the days of the man was the breadwinner and women if they worked got a small local job in a shop so it was easier to live near work because the woman's job didn't matter
According to some on here this is the ideals we should go back to.

Yep. When the Dacia electric hits the market, in a few years time the price will start to go down (though Dacia's do tend to hold their value precisely because they are at the bottom of the market).

As previous poster point out though, the biggest issue is actually the lack of charging points and the number of people who have not got off road parking and the number of public charging points isnt currently sufficient.

We were discussing with friends the other day about this and someone suggested we could rent out a charge point from home during the day if we got a charging point to people as we have solar panels and it potentially could bring in income. I'm not sure if I'd go down this route, but I can see the potential for others to do so and that might be a way to increase the number of charging facilities available nationally.

But I think until they can come up with a better solution to the problem of houses with no off road parking it's going to be an issue going forward.

The same goes for getting rid of gas boilers because uptake / cost of ground source pumps is poor and not all properties are suitable for it (eg flats). That leaves a technical issue that's as yet unresolved.

It's starting to be harder to not see this argument as having something to it.