In China EV’s are now cheaper than ICE cars.
Beyond the more transparent levels of trade protection, Governments also manipulate the market in re-registration of second hand vehicles and other technical barriers to trade, at times masquerading as environmental or safety measures.
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My current engine is 24 years old and going strong. If we could educate people to look after their engines (and batteries), we’d have a lot less waste (it’s always perplexed me that at school we all had to do trigonometry and calculus, but never learnt about basic car maintenance).
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In Belgium, there was a car age limit of 2-3 years on the registration of around 3-5 years.
Additioally, there was a bias against PMVs from Asia , based on claims that they were more rust sensitive from the salt used to clear snow and ice on the roads.
Belgium was doing nicely as a manufacturer of components or assembly of the likes of Golf PMVs.
To be honest, it worries me a tad that I am told there is no maintenance on my Tesla. I find it hard to believe as there are a lot of moving parts, not as many as ICE but telling me that all I need to do is rotate the wheels seems hard to take after years of getting cars serviced regularly.
Tesla Australia is on a catch up on maintenance and repair. It headhunted a mechanic running that second hand PMV program near Tulla to set up systems in ANZ. Stressed out of his brain, constant travel to fix problems , recruiting and training competent staff.
Ball joints, shock absorbers and suspension rubbers will wear out eventually (probably not much to worry about before 150 000km). I guess in NSW, where there is a pink slip inspection every year, these things are more likely to be picked up, but in Victoria you could be driving a car for years without an inspection.
Tesla doesn’t view these as cars. It’s just an electric appliance to them. That’s fine if it’s a phone or something like that, but a piece of machinery like a vehicle needs to be treated not like a throwaway item. I wouldn’t take the risk.
It’ll be intriguing how these stats age
Not 100% a fair comparison now without accounting for age of vehicle.
(I’d be very sure older ICE cars were over represented in the fire stats, and EV have really only been a thing for a decade)
Old batteries, poorly maintained batteries… might be different, might not change a whole heap.
Theres actually sfa moving parts on a standard EV(like a Tesla).
Read some article on it and there are actually thousands in a typical ICE vehicle whereas in an EV the number is more like 200.
Was years back - it was when they first came out and mechanics were up in air worrying about their future.
Edit: its even more dramatic if this source is correct Electric car servicing explained: What do EVs cost to maintain?
One of the big arguments I see against EV’s are that they depreciate far more than traditional ICE vehicles. I took at a look at my current ICE car and did the numbers and it only stacks up if you at final values in isolation.
Example: My $70k ish ICE car. I do 25,000km per year and after 4 years and 100,000km I might be lucky enough to get $35k for it. The cost of fuel is around $15 per 100km or $15k for the 100,000km.
So, not including any additional cost like rego, maintenance, insurance, etc. the car has cost me around $85k and I sell it for $35k for a loss/cost of $50k.
Now, an EV on a novated lease at $70k ish will cost in the ballpark of $40k to $45k. The same 100,000km will cost me around $1500 in electricity ‘cost’ (it is charged from.my excess solar that I get paid 5cents per Kw for pumping into the grid - the actual cost is less than 5 cents because I am capped at 5Kw/h back into the grid that my system can now produce more due to the car sucking up extra power - I am assuming 20Kw/100km).
So, after 4 years the EV has cost me $45k buy ‘cost’ plus $1500 'fuel. So, as above not including maintenance, rego, insurance, etc. it has cost me $46.5k.
So, as long as I don’t pay someone more than $3.5k to take the car off me, I am ahead of the ICE equivalent from a deperciation/cost perspective.
Let’s say the EV is worth half of the ICE car after 4 years, so $17.5k… I am $21k better off than the ICE car, or $5.25k per year.
This is not including the fact that all the other costs are 37% (in my tax bracket) cheaper due to being paid out of pre tax dollars with the EV.
Rego, insurance, maintenance, tyres, car detailing, etc is 37% off. So the value factor swings even more in favour of the EV.
Yes, the ICE car can be bought on a novated lease too. The numbers still dont swing in favour of the ICE as less than 50% of the costs come out of pre tax dollars. So its closer to 18% savings on car costs vs the 37% I would get with an EV.
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if they are going to ban cars and everything that is connected to the internet that is made in china . what is there left after that?
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Thats a lot of number crunching to come to the conclusion we already knew.
Cars are money pits! 
Its probably not all fear mongerinf.
And we have the same issue.
Theres no reason complete chaos couldnt be created with a lot of vehicles on the road capable of being controlled remotely.
Dumb Q, why can’t there be manual override when security is needed or if Chyna were to jam?
Id have thoughr Tesla and their autonomous driving and being hacked is just as possibly risky.
Just comes with the territory if your going to have autonomous driving.
I did the calculation on $ for $ and I reckon it’s 30% better in favour of the EV. Plus I could buy one now, not wait for the ICE to be delivered in 2 years.
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Well, this should well and truly put to bed the EV depreciation argument now that your EV can make/save you money while it sits in the driveway.
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I haven’t read the article. But I have an EV and know a little bit about this.
It’s not as simple as just plugging in your car to the house and you get power to the house, or even power back to the grid.
You need to have the right model car, and then your house needs some pretty significant upgrades.
But yes, in principle it’s a great idea. Charge at work, discharge at home.
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