Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Ban on new petrol/diesel cars by 2030 - AIBU to be excited?

688 replies

almostautumn · 18/11/2020 05:56

The government are set to announce a ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030. As someone who lives in a polluted city (London) and worries about the effect that carbon emissions are having on my family’s health, I’m so excited by this news because I think it will really change our children’s lives for the better. And it’s fantastic that it’s only 10 years away!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54981425

OP posts:
PizzaForOne · 18/11/2020 09:23

My garage is not powered, its 'en bloc' (why do they use french for this?) and sits about 30ft away from my back gate so I'm worried this will harm any future resale of my property and having to rely on overpriced public charging for an electric car in the future

Glittertwins · 18/11/2020 09:23

@SoupDragon

We have recently switched to a model x Tesla, anyone who thinks it won’t happen needs to go drive a Tesla.

It's over £80,000!

😂😂

Precisely this! We earn more than average but this is beyond our budget
wonkylegs · 18/11/2020 09:26

@wombat1a for reference we live in a rural village so I would argue that it's not just a city thing but more of an individual circumstances thing - it doesn't work so well for those in cities with on street parking either. Charging isn't so complicated once you get you head round doing something different from going to the petrol station.

Proudboomer · 18/11/2020 09:28

@MoonriseKingdom

Proudboomer - our only car for 5 years was a second hand (ex demo model) Renault Zoe that cost £9k. Now I appreciate that not a lot of people would want to manage with that range. However a brand new Zoe 40 or even a Tesla 3 bought today is not going to be 40k in 5 years time and there is a lot of evidence that battery life is very good (see the article I posted up thread).
A new Zoe E is £27k for a 245 mile drive on one charge. A second hand Zoe of the same age of my car cost twice as much as my Mazda. Both the new and second hand are out of my price range and although the mileage would be ok for me on a day to day basis if I wanted to visit family I would need to stop and charge and then what happens if I am stuck in a 10 mile tail back on the m25?

I bought my Mazda this year. I am in my mid 50,s and the plan is for it to last until I want to give up driving completely which will probably be around retirement age for me.

PrincessButtockUp · 18/11/2020 09:29

Lots of questions in this thread, many good ones. My husband got his first electric car earlier in the year so we've had a few months to talk about some of this stuff.

Yes it's easier if you have driveway parking and can put a wall box on your house. But, there are plenty of other solutions available and the good thing is, for most drivers you don't need to charge every night so sharing resources is very viable in most cases.

Range anxiety is mostly fake news. Who commutes more than say 80 miles each way on a regular basis? My husband's EV has a fairly small range and it's still roughly three commutes for him before the battery is drained. We could definitely manage two EVs from our one home charger.

Driving more than 200 miles without a rest stop? I wouldn't do that in an internal combustion engine car. By the time I've had a wee, a walk around the shop and bought a cuppa, a plugged in EV would have had a real boost of charge.

Battery life - cars need batteries to be in the prime of their condition, and it is true that they become less efficient over time. But not beyond use. There are onward uses for batteries as banks of charge for rural charging points, and plenty of third world uses such as supporting solar energy generation and storage in remote villages.

As for dirty metals, there is a bit of e.g. cobalt in every battery. Did you know there is also cobalt in every tank of fuel you buy? Meaning an internal combustion engine uses far more cobalt in its lifetime than an EV.

Our plan is to have solar panels on our house meaning we generate the power sustainably and drive the car "for free".

Milk vans were battery powered in the 70s, this is a very viable option for local parcel delivery now.

All the Park and Ride buses in my local big town are electric. There is a lot less to go wrong, roughly 100 parts in an electric motor vs. over a thousand in an engine.

For the community nurse - ask your employer to sign up to NHS Fleet Solutions. We have and the rates are very favourable.

Yes a lot of places need more infrastructure but who says you have to charge at home? In most cases you don't need to charge every night. You can use the app to control when you start charging so there isn't a big pull on the National Grid at 5.30. We charge between midnight and 6am on average, charging doesn't start the moment you plug in.

Tesla are planning for a future where people don't own cars, they subscribe to a service that provides one when needed. That's why they are working so hard on autonomous driving - so you can summon a vehicle when you need one. It would solve the problem of towns clogged up with all those cars sitting around most of the time and make better use of what charging infrastructure we have. Plus, when you need a bigger vehicle e.g. for going on holiday, your subscription enables that to happen.

Yes, it's a big change (and a long post, sorry) but there's a lot of misinformation out there.

LearnedResponse · 18/11/2020 09:30

SoupDragon didn’t say “go buy a Tesla” she meant that if you drove one once, you’d realise that electric cars are perfectly capable of having all the grunt you’d need.

wonkylegs · 18/11/2020 09:30

@Abertropper you don't need to charge every time you go out though
In the past 6weeks I have charged once away from home and then when at home 1-2 times a week. My DH is driving everyday for work in lockdown so it's not that we are doing less miles.

LittleMissLockdown · 18/11/2020 09:31

People keep saying there is more charging points around than we realise. But in most places I’ve seen them there are only one or two in each car park , which is fine for now but useless when most vehicles are electric.

I think people who say there are more charging points than you think must live in very populated areas. Im on the edge of a city and there are 5 charging points in a 10 mile radius of my house of which 1 of them appears to have not been working for quite some time. Even if they put in another 200 charge points there wouldn't be enough for everyone to use them and that's just in my tiny part of the country. The amount of infrastructure needed will be just unobtainable.

notheragain41 · 18/11/2020 09:31

Does anyone know how much it costs to have a charging port put on your driveway? I'd like to see a scheme helping people do this, frustrating our house was built this year and they still aren't built as standard.

MyDucksArentInARow · 18/11/2020 09:32

Super excited for it. We've got a Kia eNiro on order atm. We're looking at an enyaq as our 2nd car when it is released. Priced the same as their ice equivalents if not slightly less. eNiro will be my business car. Enough range to drive to my customers, further ones I may need a little top up on the way home but you only need to stop to charge for how ever many miles you need to get home. You don't need to "fill the tank" since you just pop it on charge at home.

By 2030 the 2nd hand electric market will mean people who can't afford new can afford an electric. And it's only new sales being banned, anyone who buys 2nd hand ICE car now will still be able to for years after the new ban.

As autonomy develops, then personal car ownership will decrease. Therefore, dense on street parking will decrease. There will probably be app based booking systems for the on street chargers or if you buy a house that cannot support charging, then you work it into your lifestyle to charge at public chargers. Maybe on street parking will have to become a thing of the past and if you live in a property without a drive you'll have to rent or buy a parking space with charger a bit further from home if you don't want to rely on public charging facilities.

For very long haul, hydrogen is a possibility under development. That's what I expect some haulage, ships and planes to resort to.

thecatsatonthewall · 18/11/2020 09:32

Wireless charging?

But the future is not expensive and super heavy battery powered cars but the hydrogen fuel cell, charging a far smaller battery, BMW already have this car up and running, Germany has 80 refueling points, Japan is building many more, currently 131 and hydrogen producing centres, with an aim of 800,000 hydrogen cars on the roads by 2030.

Meanwhile the UK is planning on building an electric car charging infrastructure :(

AaronPurr · 18/11/2020 09:33

Im on the edge of a city and there are 5 charging points in a 10 mile radius of my house

It's a similar situation here. Locally we have 4 in a large supermarket carpark that must have a few 100 spaces, and 1 in a local carpark which you have to pay to use.

BarbaraofSeville · 18/11/2020 09:35

Driving more than 200 miles without a rest stop? I wouldn't do that in an internal combustion engine car. By the time I've had a wee, a walk around the shop and bought a cuppa, a plugged in EV would have had a real boost of charge

But it costs a lot to charge a car at a service station (works out around 12 pence a mile, more than fuel for many cars), and you need the time to be able to wait for it to charge. Many people who are travelling between clients don't have time to piss about at service stations.

And for most people, paying extra for an electric car means that they need to save a considerable amount on fueling the thing, or else it's a luxury they cannot afford.

Macncheeseballs · 18/11/2020 09:37

I think it's great, we need to look at ways to change our way of life rather than be stuck in old habits of the last 50 years, private car ownership is reducing for example, car sharing is becoming a lot more accessible to many

edwinbear · 18/11/2020 09:39

All well and good, but it will leave a £40bn hole in tax revenues from fuel duty and road tax. One of the ways the Government may try to plug this, is by introducing a 'pay per mile' tax, so every time you get in your electric car, you have to pay a bill for driving it. How will that affect low income families, those in rural areas, the disabled and elderly who may not have access to public transport?

Proudboomer · 18/11/2020 09:40

Out of interest I have just googled for charging stations near me.
The Tesco superstore is the nearest with a total of 6 charging points.

MrsMiaWallis · 18/11/2020 09:41

Driving more than 200 miles without a rest stop? I wouldn't do that in an internal combustion engine car

I would, and do, happily. No interest in wandering round a depressing, over priced service station!

I shall be buying a 4x4 diesel in 2029!

AlwaysLatte · 18/11/2020 09:43

I'm very happy about this, not least because we bought an all electric car in March and it means that there will be more charging possibilities. Currently we're still using our diesel estate for long journeys, but it would be great to replace it with another electric when charging away from home is easier.

AlwaysLatte · 18/11/2020 09:44

Nope, the thought horrifies me.
Why?

TalbotAMan · 18/11/2020 09:44

@vanillandhoney

Because its so old the best range in summer is a little over 80 miles, but I've never had real problems in finding charging away from home. I work at several sites and yesterday had to do a 40 mile round trip with no issues at all. New electric cars now have much better ranges. I've never run out of power, not least because the car will give you so many warnings that you need to charge.

That's great, but lots of us live in places with absolutely no public charge points whatsoever. I'm a dog walker and drive between clients (walking 15 miles in between jobs is hardly practical though I'm sure someone will come along and say they do it three times a day Wink).

There are no public charge points near me or near any of my clients so my only option would be to charge at home. Which is great, but how am I supposed to work when my car is sat on charge (and that could only happen if nobody else was parked outside my house in the first place).

Charge overnight when you and the dogs are all in bed. Then in the morning you have a full battery. Much the same as people do with their phones.
MordredsOrrery · 18/11/2020 09:45

@Moonlightandstardust

As ever, MN and money issues eh! Yes they are expensive, I’m sure pricing will come down.

Things are always expensive, you can buy a model 3 for £30/40k. Which is still expensive for many, but doable. In time more options will appear from other manufacturers.

Expensive but doable? I have no idea who taught you about money but you clearly have no clue if you think many people can afford that!
ExclamationPerfume · 18/11/2020 09:47

@Moonlightandstardust are you on another planet? That is double our household income.

DynamoKev · 18/11/2020 09:47

This is a welcome development but it's not enough without a massive investment in public transport.
Also as alluded to on this thread it is fucking outrageous that the new house builders aren't compelled to include charging points where they are building a drive/garage (although 99% of garages are too small to fit a current car into - that's another story).

DynamoKev · 18/11/2020 09:49

@Moonlightandstardust I have never spent more than £20k on a car and that was a one-off error.
I have never bought a new car.
Over here in the real world we have one 2005 and one 2012 car both cost under 5K each.

LittleMissLockdown · 18/11/2020 09:49

Charge overnight when you and the dogs are all in bed. Then in the morning you have a full battery. Much the same as people do with their phones.

I don't get this analogy. It's not even remotely comparable with charging your phone. In my house I have multiple charging points which I could use to charge a phone. I have no where to charge a vehicle as I have no driveway and often vehicles cannot be parked directly outside each owners houses. The 2 situations are not at all comparable.