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Electric cars: Sales of used pure vehicles reach record high

May 23, 2022Electric Cars, News, Reviews and Comment, UncategorizedRepost

Sales of used pure electric cars have reached a record high, according to new figures.

Some 14,586 used battery electric cars were bought in the UK during the first three months of the year, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said.

That is more than double the total of 6,625 during the same period last year, with the market share of used electric vehicles rising from 1.6% to 3.6%.

Sales of used hybrids and plug-in hybrids also changed hands in greater numbers between January and March, up 35.3% and 28.8% respectively.

That is compared to the figure for new car registrations over the same period, which was 34.1%.

Overall, the number of used cars bought in the first quarter of this year increased by 5.1% compared with 2021, boosted by the 14.3% drop in new car sales, which were hit by a global lack of semiconductors.

SMMT chief executive, Mike Hawes, said: “With the new car market hampered by ongoing global supply shortages, growth in the used car market is welcome, if unsurprising especially given we were in lockdown last year.

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The future is electric: next generation set to drive an EV as first car

May 20, 2022Electric Cars, News, Reviews and CommentRepost

A new YouGov survey of nearly 500 existing and prospective learner drivers in Britain, commissioned by the Motor Ombudsman, has revealed that nearly half (42%) of respondents would prefer their first car to be fully electric or in part electric i.e. a hybrid, after passing their driving test.

The research also found that male provisional licence holders are more likely than their female counterparts to want to adopt zero emission motoring when starting their vehicle ownership journey (30% versus 23% respectively).

With electric cars sparking the most interest amongst the next generation of full driving licence holders, the study showed that just a fifth (21%) of those polled would want to get behind the wheel of a petrol-only variant once they had lost their L-plates.

Just 6% of study participants said that they would opt for a diesel-engined vehicle once they passed.

The remaining 30% of those quizzed stated that they didn’t know what kind of car their preference would be once they gained independence on the road.

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Toyota Is Trying to Catch Up in the Crowded EV Race. It May Be Too Late.

May 19, 2022News, Reviews and Comment, Toyota, UncategorizedRepost

Toyota Motor became the world’s most successful car company through the spirit of or continuous improvement. Now, with electric vehicles on the rise, kaizen might prove to be its undoing.

Kaizen is all about evolution and refinement. It helped Toyota (ticker: TM) break into the U.S. market with the Toyopet Crown sedan in the late 1950s, take 5% of market share by the 1980s with its fuel-efficient Corollas, and finally become the top-selling auto maker in North America. Along the way, it became the car manufacturer to emulate,…

Investors have piled into energy stocks this year, sending prices sharply higher, but bargains remain in the sector. Shell, the United Kingdom–domiciled energy giant, is one.

Shell (ticker: SHEL) has some of the most attractive assets in the global energy business, notably the world’s largest liquefied natural-gas business and the biggest network of service stations. But at a recent $55, its U.S.-listed shares trade for just six times projected 2022 earnings of $9 a share. Exxon Mobil (XOM), at $86, fetches nine times estimated…

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Farewell, BMW i3: how EV changed the face of motoring

May 18, 2022BMW, i3, News, Reviews and Comment, UncategorizedRepost

We take one last look at pioneering city car which forged the i-brand template a decade ago

The year is 2013 and the BMW i3 has just been launched.

Cast your mind back: the world was mercifully free of Covid, we were still three years away from teenagers TikToking, Prince Harry was mates with his brother and no one had yet thought that chucking a bucket of iced water over your head would lead to millions in charity donations.

It feels like a lifetime ago, and in car terms it was. Nine years is a life cycle and a half in most model runs, yet here we are today, still looking at a new i3 and still marvelling at it. And mourning it, because production will end in July.

It has been tipped as a future classic, no less than in our recent Autocar-Beaulieu Future Classics competition, and little wonder. There were other EVs before the i3 (heck, BMW itself had one with the Mini E trial fleet), but the i3 is the one that felt – and still feels – like it defined an era. A movement, even.

Why? I think it’s due to the integrity of the idea: the i3 was born electric.

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Volkswagen says its electric cars have ‘sold out’ for 2022 as demand for EVs in Europe doubles

May 17, 2022Electric Cars, News, Reviews and Comment, VolkswagenRepost

German carmaker Volkswagen has “sold out” of battery-electric vehicles in the United States and Europe, meaning new customers will have to wait until 2023 to get one.

VW Group CEO Herbert Diess told the Financial Times that the company’s brands – which include Volkswagen, Porsche, Škoda and Audi – had a backlog of 300,000 orders for EVs in western Europe alone.

“We have very high order books and… order intake on electric vehicles,” Diess told the FT.

“We are basically sold out on electric vehicles in Europe and in the United States. And in China, it’s really picking up,” he added.

Volkswagen delivered 99,000 EVs worldwide in the first quarter of 2022, according to a report in the Financial Times.

Top rival Tesla, the world’s biggest electric car maker, delivered over three times that number in the same period, at 310,048.

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SMMT figures show battery electric vehicles bucking the trend of declining new car sales

May 16, 2022Electric Cars, News, Reviews and Comment, UncategorizedRepost

Battery electric vehicle (BEV) sales have continued to rise year-on-year despite overall declines in the new car market according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).

The SMMT figures show that during April 2022, 12,899 BEVs were sold, an increase of 40.9% on the same month last year. New car sales overall, however, fell 15.8%.

BEV sales during April 2022 made up 10.8% of the market, up from 6.5% last year.

It follows March being the best ever month for sales of BEVs, with more sold in the month than in the entirety of 2019. This is of particular note as overall new car sales in the UK fell by -14.3%, making it the weakest March since 1998.

The SMMT April figures can be compared to figures from New AutoMotive, released earlier this week, which put the market share of BEVs at a very similar 10.77%. However, New AutoMotive’s figures show there were 11,685 BEVs sold during the month.

SMMT’s figures, meanwhile, show that to date this year, there have been 77,064 BEV sales – a 88.3% year-on-year increase. Sales of BEVs to date this year therefore represent a 14.4% market share, compared to a 7.2% market share this time last year.

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Volkswagen already sold out of electric cars for 2022

May 13, 2022Electric Cars, News, Reviews and Comment, Uncategorized, VolkswagenRepost

Volkswagen is “basically sold out” of electric cars for this year in Europe and the USA, according to Group CEO Herbert Diess, as persistent bottlenecks in the supply chain are affecting global production.

In the first quarter, the Wolfsburg-based group handed over 99,100 BEVs to customers worldwide across all brands. In Western Europe alone, the order backlog for the electric vehicle models stands at 300,000 vehicles, Diess now stated in the context of the announcement of the business figures for the first quarter of 2022. Customers who now place orders for electric cars in Europe and the USA would not receive their vehicles before 2023.

VW’s 99,100 BEVs made it the world’s second-largest EV manufacturer in Q1 in terms of volume – but market leader Tesla delivered more than three times as many vehicles to customers, with over 300,000 units.

VW is targeting a total of around 700,000 electric vehicle sales for 2022 as a whole. However, production has been hampered, especially in China, where only 28,800 electric cars were sold in the first quarter due to pandemic-related lockdowns.

Despite the restrictions in China and the shortfalls in Europe due to a lack of Ukrainian-made wiring harnesses, Diess said demand had remained robust. “We have very high order books and […] order intake on electric vehicles,” Diess added. “That accounts for all of our models from ID.3, ID.4, the Audi models — [all] are extremely well received in the markets, Škoda models are also very well received in Europe.”

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High Gas Prices Are Pushing Electric Car Sales to a Tipping Point

May 12, 2022News, Reviews and CommentRepost

When Eric Dirksen received his first electric car in December—a new Tesla Model Y—he didn’t know gas prices would spike a few months after. But with fuel costing about $4.20 per gallon on average this week, he’s happy with the decision.

“Very fortunate at the timing,” he says. Dirksen spent $62 on charging in the last month, roughly the same amount as 15 gallons of gas. “I wanted to be more intentional with ensuring I was doing what I could to ensure a sustainable future for my daughter. It was the obvious choice,” Dirksen says of his purchase. “The savings are still mind blowing to me.”

With gas prices painfully high for the third straight month, more Americans like Dirksen have been turning to fuel-efficient vehicle alternatives as a way to save money, new data shows.

An unreleased report from CarGurus, an automotive research and shopping firm, shows that 53% of active shoppers say they are considering a more fuel-efficient vehicle in response to high gas prices. The data, shared with TIME, looks at consumer sentiment toward electric vehicles based on an online survey of 2,176 U.S. automobile owners at various points this year. It finds that 40% of Americans now expect to own an electric car in the next five years, up from 32% in February and 30% last year.

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Oil has long been used as a geopolitical weapon. Could electrified transport change that?

May 11, 2022News, Reviews and Comment, UncategorizedRepost

Petroleum industry associated with wild price swings and armed conflict

Climate scientists have been clear that if we want to reduce carbon emissions and slow the pace of global warming, one crucial step is moving from a transportation system run on fossil fuels to one powered by electricity.

But it’s possible that doing so might neutralize other toxic aspects of the petroleum industry, such as volatile prices and armed conflict.

The sun sets on drilling (Image: Pexels)

“The ability to electrify transportation and get off combusting fossil fuels, and oil specifically, means we would solve massive geopolitical problems, which have been just a plague for the last 100 years,” said Adam Scott, executive director of Shift, a Toronto-based charity that advocates for sustainable investing.

Oil has always been an impetuous commodity, susceptible to wild price swings owing to a variety of economic and political factors. But between the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the last couple of years have been especially nervy.

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Electric vehicles: separating the fact from the fiction and scaremongering

May 10, 2022Electric Cars, Energy and Climate Change, News, Reviews and Comment, Pollution, UncategorizedRepost

The transport industry is currently on the precipice of a revolution. 27% of all emissions in the UK come from transport, meaning it is a race against time to decarbonise. This revolution is most apparent with the fast roll-out of electric passenger vehicles. Data from New AutoMotive shows that over 190,000 electric vehicles (EVs) were sold in the UK last year, making up 11.65% of the new car market, just nudging past the diesel share. 2022 looks set to be another record-breaking year for EV sales, but it could be even higher with the right government policies. Despite the fact that EVs are a hugely popular practical solution to the climate crisis, considerable misinformation is stalling progress.

Common anti-EV myths

The term ‘technology agnostic policy’, for the most part, is the strategy the UK government is implementing in order to reach the Net Zero by 2050 target. They are not choosing a certain technology to get us there but simply pushing the market to reach the target in the most viable way possible. However, a common criticism levelled at the transition to electric is that the market is being artificially pushed by the government and neither the market nor consumers want this change. The reality is that these things are not mutually exclusive and in order for a fairly distributed transition to occur some government intervention is necessary. Over 40 countries have signed up to gasoline and diesel phase-outs and many major OEMs have pledged to transition to an all-electric fleet. And the customers have followed in increasing numbers—an estimated 4.2 million EVs were sold worldwide last year.

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