Electric vehicles change the future of caravanning
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It is true that you should want to change before you do it. If you have a drive where you can charge the car then it could be economical, although the near £1,000 you would need to spend on a charger might be another barrier. If you cannot charge at home, there is no sense in changing unless you are prepared to pay through the nose for your efforts to save the planet and the claims for that are not totally proven. Other than servicing, everything else looks to cost more and residual values look bad as well.
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I promise to make this my final comment on the subject of EVs. You are dead right that I am not ready for EVs. Moreover, I remain unconvinced that the change over will actually happen - if you mean that there will be a time when everyone is driving electic vehicles. There are plenty of experts in the motor industry who argue that they are not the answer to the problem of climate change in the long run and plenty of climate experts who tell us that they are not doing much in the short term either because not enough electricty is generated by renewables. This is before you start to look at the issues around manufacture of batteries.
Government polices can, and often do, change. I don't agree with Derek Mathewson, who claims there won't be any EVs in twenty years time; that seems to me to be extremely unlikely given the investment by manufacturers and governments. But I do believe that the propaganda promoting EVs needs to be challenged.
You're right that there's a high probability that this will never be my concern. I am 72.3 -
I think wanting to take advantage of an EV is a necessary step before getting into one, especially if you are coming from an "old school" vehicle. My parents (79 and 80) have just traded up from a 2006 Volvo V70 to a 2024 Volvo EX30. The EX30 is like a spaceship in comparison to the V70.
They really wanted to move to EV as they don't like the idea of contributing to climate change by burning diesel, but were waiting for their old car to die before they made the switch. It died, and they made the switch. Getting to grips with the new car has been a very steep learning curve, and I am not sure they had anticipated how challenging it might be. On the one hand, it's incredibly easy to use. They plug in when the get home and unplug when the leave, always having 80% of the battery available to use. It's fantastically easy to drive, has superb 360 degree cameras and will park its self.
On the other hand, it has a hundred things it can do that their old car could not, and that takes some learning.
The new car is undeniably cleaner at the tail pipe, and as all of their electricity production is offset by their own share in a wind turbine (as is mine), is also a low carbon emitter in its use phase.
The idea though that EVs are not low carbon because not enough electricity is produced by renewables is a myth that does need dispelling. Anywere in Western Europe the grid is sufficiently green that the mileage needed to be covered by an EV to repay the carbon debt associated with its battery manufacture is around 30,000 miles. And the greener the grid gets, the lower that number gets. Even if the grid is still powered by some fossil fuel (and in the UK, we now surpassed fossil generation with renewable), an EV is still far more efficient (lower carbon) per mile than an ICE car, which slowly gets dirtier over time.
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Just my own view…
I currently tow my 1400 KG(ish) caravan with a Ford Kuga 2.0D. It’s a pretty good tow car and I’m in no hurry to change it. To come up with a suitable EV tow car at present would require lots of £’s, currently a step too far. As a 69 year old, whilst I’m in no hurry to give up caravanning, the reality is that at some point I’ll have to give up in the non too distant future. At that point an EV would, for me, be the obvious choice. I’m fortunate in that I could easily charge at home and I certainly recognise that it’s an issue for many. I do think it likely that in (say) 20 years folks will look back and wonder what all the fuss was about. Irony alert. I think that as EV’s become more popular/widespread, we’ll see more forecourts make the switch to charging points or at least less availability of petrol/diesel generally. ‘Range anxiety’ ?
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I do feel that if you still want to tow an EV is not for most of us. When the car was last serviced I had a Toyota plug in hybrid as a courtesy car and was impressed and would certainly consider this if anything suitable was available when and if I change. There is still the question of cost to look at but it should provide cheap local travel which would help.
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I think the biggest incentive to change will be the financial penalty for running a Petrol or ICE vehicle by way of taxation. We are already seeing hikes in road tax for these vehicles and an extra sales tax of some sort might be on a future governments agenda. Of course road tax for EVs is going to increase as there is going to be a huge hole in the country's finances fairly soon when petrol and ICE vehicles diminish. So people may not have as much choice as they think.
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@Wherenext I suspect there is only so far they can tax fuel because however high it goes it will always be a diminishing return? I found it rather odd that they didn't drop the 5p fuel subsidy in the budget, at least they could have kept the £2 bus fare? At some point, some Government, has got to bite the bullet on how they replace fuel taxation. OK they will get a bit of extra VAT when people charge EV's at public chargers but they won't be able to apply that to home chargers. My guess is that we will move to some sort of Road Charging.
David
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