Electric cars are NOT the future, are they?

[Isometimeswonder]

I am genuinely torn. I need want a new car but really don't want electric.
But so few smaller petrol cars are made now.
I haven't got a place to charge a car at home.
AIBU I should accept electric is the future.
AINBU I should get petrol. (Please recommend a small city car)

250 a litre is hardly the level that ‘no one will be able to drive anywhere’, though. Even if that happens - it may or may not.

TBF it doesn't affect me, i'm fortunate to afford any increase in costs, so no, despite your attempted veiled attack/insult, i'm not feeling doom ladened or hopeless, one can be concerned about the impacts world events you know without sinking into depression.

But i do think the Govt is complacent, though they have opened up a moth balled CO2 plant, i'd like to see more diesel refineries here in the UK too & greater emphasis on energy reductions.

@Alexandra2001

i'd like to see more diesel refineries here in the UK

Do you drive a diesel? I can’t remember.

You can ask VW and they’ll tell you that there’s 20 billion reasons why no-one is investing in new diesel refining capacity in the UK. That’s how big the $ fine was that they paid for conning the world about “clean” Diesel engines over a decade ago (and they weren’t alone).

Since then there has been a huge turn away from diesel for passenger vehicles in Europe (they were never very popular in the US), and that shift has only accelerated as EV and plug-in hybrid sales have increased.

New refining capacity costs 10s of £billions and only pays back economically over decades, so don’t believe anyone that pretends that’s any kind solution, particularly since the future of all road transport is electrification, whatever the naysayers and fossil fuel lobbyists would have people believe. The economics are going in only direction.

And the cost of EV charging is absolutely central to this thread - you can’t wish that away. It’s literally a question about whether EVs are the future or not. As far as I can see, the UK’s access to gas is not going to be affected so much as many other countries, and the government is working to decouple the cost of gas from electricity in due course anyway.

Everything Trump touches turns to the smelly brown stuff. He’s bankrupted six businesses and his “help” for the fossil fuel industry appears to be ensuring that countries wake up to how dangerous it is to be dependent on an energy source that can be shut off so easily.

I’m very pleased for you that you can afford the increased price of fuel, but I’m personally happy that filling up our EV hasn’t gone up even 1p.

I am old enough to remember the days of people will not be able afford to drive if petrol went up from 20p to 25p per gallon (4.5 litres) - not that I had a car or was no old enough to drive.

@Alexandra2001

EV charging prices are neither here neither here nor there for the majority

I was directly responding to your assertion earlier:

Electricity will go up massively too.

So which is it? Is electricity going to go up massively (implying EV charging going up in price, as it did in 2022), or are EV charging prices neither here or there?

Please don’t make an assertion (without evidence), have it debunked (with evidence) and then promptly try to say “that’s neither here nor there.” It’s a little tiring when the goalposts are shifted that way.

@Whyhaveibeencutoutofmamsnot

I am old enough to remember the days of people will not be able afford to drive if petrol went up from 20p to 25p per gallon

🤣

Interestingly, the Economist has this:

“Comparing its price with that of years ago without accounting for overall inflation is a common fallacy. In real terms, which makes prices comparable across time, petrol is about as expensive today as it was on average during the ten years before 2015”

Petrol Prices

Governments have done a lot of damage by allowing the relative price of fuel to drift downwards over the years, since it has encouraged people to buy bigger and bigger vehicles and not value fuel economy at all.

Now fuel prices are climbing higher again, maybe people will think twice before buying an enormous SUV?

No, you re failing to address my point, Iran will most likely lead to huge increases in electricity prices generally, maybe not to the levels seen after Ukraine, by not far short.
Charging your car over night or via solar will not save the country.

On Diesel, yes totally fine for you and others to get around in your EVs laughing at those without but the vast majority of deliveries are made using diesel powered vans and lorries.
We are a very long way from EV lorries being the norm.

However i do agree on Govts should not continually be cutting fuel costs, difficult though when those same govt's have done all they can to restrict wage rises.

@Alexandra2001

On Diesel, yes totally fine for you and others to get around in your EVs laughing at those without

I don’t think I’ve been laughing about anything. I have spent a very large amount of time being deadly serious, debunking (with evidence) a lot of lies and fossil fuel misinformation about EVs that several posters were very keen to spread here, just as that rubbish has appeared elsewhere.

I have tried to remain factually accurate about the relative costs and convenience of owning an EV in spite of having no ability to charge at home, as a balance to the many posters saying, “I love my EV, but I can charge at home” or “EVs are great, but only if you can charge at home.”

Another strand of my (deadly serious) commentary is to place EVs within the context of the necessary shift away from fossil fuels we have to undertake in order to give us any hope of turning down the Earth’s temperature as global heating worsens in the next few years and decades.

I am only being realistic in pointing out the impossibility of increasing our domestically refined diesel in the short and medium terms - you are not wrong that more expensive diesel for delivery vehicles will impact inflation, but I believe that will lead to an acceleration in electrification.

I have done my best to explain to you why electricity prices are not going up in quite the same way in the UK as in 2022, and why there is reason to hope that this will continue. The gulf war is not impacting our supply of gas in the same way as it is impacting global oil supplies. Things may change next winter, if the situation in the gulf doesn’t improve, but for now my observations are borne out by the facts - petrol and diesel are much more expensive, and public EV charging hasn’t gone up in price.

Now fuel prices are climbing higher again, maybe people will think twice before buying an enormous SUV?

This is the UK, where image and "perceived safety" is everything when it comes to car ownership.

There are people who would rather cut back on food, activities and treats than ever dare to change out of their "high up" and "safe"" Qashqai, Sportage, T-Roc, Tiguan or whatever absurdly monikered SUV is their choice.

A Toyota Yaris hybrid or a VW Polo would have big fuel gains and probably is 90% of the car they need.

However it's that feeling people want of having something nice and big for their lifestyle, the image of being high up and 'adventurous', and expensive looking...you won't see people transitioning out of these things any time soon.

I have literally overheard people saying that estate cars look "old man", that hatchbacks look "poor" or "first car"...

Britain is still so focused on image in this car buying segment and I wish some people would be honest enough to admit it.

This is why EV drivers, far from laughing at the drivers of fossil fuel burning vehicles, are actually doing them a solid:

If more drivers switched to electric vehicles, Britain would sharply reduce its petrol and diesel consumption, with every car charged from the grid rather than the pump extending the country’s fuel reserves – and experts say the potential impact goes far beyond that.

Before the war, the UK had about three weeks’ worth of car fuel in reserve: 21 days of petrol and 22 days of diesel, according to official data analysed by the policy consultancy Mandala Partners. That reserve could reach an extra seven days of petrol if Britain had as many electric cars per head as Norway, the world leader. Nearly 32% of all cars on Norwegian roads are fully electric, compared with 5.4% in Britain.

Even now, Britain’s existing electric and hybrid cars are saving about two days’ worth of fuel, the researchers estimated.

You have done all of that & made me think seriously about an EV, my Skoda Diesel wont last forever, the greenest thing for me to do is to run it into the ground.
I think in the near future we will have "affordable" EVs with 400 to 500 real world ranges, that charge within 10 to 20mins.

Well, thats what i'm hoping for.

Can't speak for you personally and i shouldn't have, sorry.... a few EV owners i know are having a giggle at the rise in fuel prices.

My concern is the short term, people doing essential but poorly paid jobs, fuel prices impact them hugely, they have no alternative.

Diesel vehicles aren't going away, EV lorries just wont happen yet, so a longer term plan to have our own refinery capacity is wise.

EV lorries just wont happen yet

They are already on the road. Not many, for sure, but they are there. And just as EVs started with a few Tesla Roadsters, then the Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi i-MiEV, the electric HGV will become a thing.

Just as London now has over 2,000 fully electric buses, there will be fully electric fleets of trucks on regular routes, where logistics companies will see a rapid return on investment with current fuel prices.

And all that will happen well within the timescales and budgets needed to build additional diesel refining capacity.

You are right - there are many people for whom an EV is not yet practical, but every EV on the road reduces demand for fossil fuels, so does something positive to help. That post above explains the research about that, from the Guardian, although the link failed.

Trying again 😀

How EVs could be part of answer to UK’s fuel reserve worries

And just as EVs started with a few Tesla Roadsters

Some interesting facts. Tatton Park has a small car collection which has an electric car from the early 1900s.

The first modern electric product car was a General Motors one made in 1996-1999 . There were over a thousand of them, all leased not sold, and drivers loved them. When the motor and oil industries realised the impact it was going to have on their revenues, they killed it. They literally crushed cars people were begging to buy off them.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489037/

I often wonder how far ahead we would be now if that program of car making had continued.

Oh, and when we next get to billionaire bashing, let's try and remember that the entire electric car industry as it now exists was a result of one wayward billionaire using his money to break the stranglehold that the oil and automotive industries had on car sales.

I looked at one last week with a 9 minute charging time. Not as fast as fueling up. But on the other hand you don't have to stand beside your car waiting, its a perfect amount of time to have a pee and buy a takeaway coffee.

Somebody else addressed most of the myths you're spouting here but not the most glaringly obvious one. No electricity in UK comes from fossil fuels. The last coal fired electricity plant was closed in 2024.

@Imdunfer

I often wonder how far ahead we would be now if that program of car making had continued.

Totally. The oil companies and legacy western car companies have done all they can to suppress the development of EVs, and continued to push heavier fuel-guzzling vehicles into the market for their own profit.

Love him or loathe him, Elon Musk has done the whole world a favour by proving that EVs could be a practical alternative to ICEVs, entirely independent of all the legacy businesses - right down to avoiding the awful monopoly-per-brand dealership model they have in many states in the US, by having a direct to customer sales model.

And recognising it was a whole system and not just a technology challenge, with the buildout of the excellent Supercharger network was a genius move. It’s a credit to the Chinese that they recognised what Tesla was doing, and decided 20 years ago to focus on “new energy vehicles”. It’s interesting that BYD is planning to follow Tesla in creating its own network of chargers, to allow owners of its latest vehicles to benefit from their 1.5MW charging capability (10-80 in 5 minutes).

😀

You beat me to it!

And for those that doubt that electric HGVs could ever exist, here’s the new Daimler Benz E-Actros 600 being put through it’s paces, with a 3,000km run from Germany to Madrid, courtesy of the Electric Trucker:

The eActros 600 is the New Benchmark for Electric Trucks

And for more serious journeys (Australian), battery swapping trucks are a growing business, as explored on Everything Electric:

This MASSIVE Electric Truck Can Battery Swap In 4 Minutes!!

And if one is still doubting how seriously the move to electrification is being taken, this is Everything Electric again, with a 200 tonne mining truck, electrified with the help of Williams Formula 1:

This GIANT Electric Mining Truck Charges in Under 30 minutes!

This is very timely, and underlines what I was saying much earlier - that the rapid growth in EV sales has led to the reduction in cost of batteries, which have in turn led to the economic use of batteries to store solar power.

The astonishing truth is that China already has enough manufacturing capacity to double sales of solar panels and batteries again, and the Iran war will only help the sale of those to countries wishing to reduce their exposure to fossil fuel volatility.

Globally, renewable energy accounted for 34% of electricity generation in 2025, outstripping coal which took a 33% share.
The report also highlighted battery storage as a key factor. About 14% of last year’s additional solar generation was used at other times of day, thanks to large increases in the uptake of batteries, which have fallen sharply in price in the past decade.

Clean energy generation exceeded rise in global electricity demand in 2025

And even in the US, there are stirrings that suggest that the fossil-fuel industry might soon regret boosting Trump’s reelection:

Democrats urged to link clean energy to affordability as Iran war hikes up prices

Trump’s approach differs starkly from that of other countries that have sought to rapidly reduce their exposure to a faraway conflict. Electric car sales have boomed in South Korea and Malaysia, while in Pakistan electric rickshaws have been selling out. “This is a wake-up call,” Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto said recently. “We will convert all motorcycles into electric motorcycles. All cars, all trucks, all tractors must [also] be electric.”

The European Union, too, plans to accelerate clean energy deployment to help alleviate electricity bills. “Every delayed investment in the energy transition risks greater cost for society at a later stage,” a draft European Commission proposal states. The plan comes ahead of a conference in Colombia this month where representatives from 85 countries will gather to craft a roadmap on how to move beyond the fossil fuel era.

There are electric HGVs, s number of companies make them. At the last count I can find dated 2025, 587 of them had been purchased in the UK.

Amazon eventually plans to deploy 160 eHGVs on UK roads. "Eventually" is a very vague timescale, mind.

Currently 10.7% of the UK's electricity is generated using gas. Gas is a fossil fuel.

Source: National Grid https://grid.iamkate.com/

And I’m hoping that Jan Rosenow, professor of energy and climate policy at Oxford University, can have the (more or less) last words.

Why Electrification Could Cut Global Energy Use in Half!

In this episode of the Everything Electric Podcast, Robert Llewellyn sits down with Professor Jan Rosenow, Professor of Energy and Climate Policy at Oxford University, to reveal why electricity currently only tells 20% of the global energy story.

They delve into tackling the "hidden 80%", the mobility and heating sectors still dominated by fossil fuels; and explore why our current system is "astonishingly inefficient," wasting two-thirds of all energy inputs as heat.

Jan explains how shifting to electrification at scale could cut total global energy demand in half and tackles the biggest myths and milestones of the transition:

The Grid Threat: Why data centers pose a more significant regional challenge to the grid than 100 million electric vehicles.

Critical Materials: Is the world really running out of lithium, or are we entering an era of "urban mining" where 95-97% of battery materials can be recycled? The

China Factor: A look at the "mind-blowing" scale of solar adoption in China and the declining utilization of their coal plants.

Beyond Climate: Why electrification is now a primary lever for energy security and economic resilience in a volatile world.

From the efficiency of heat pumps to the emergence of industrial heat batteries , this episode connects the dots on what the next phase of the energy transition really looks like.

I will end with this one last time: EVs are the future. If they aren’t going to be, we won’t have one.