The treatment of our betters regarding "nudged" electrification is borderline misanthropic.

For people with a garage or a driveway who can charge at home, EVs are overwhelmingly a better option. The problem is that large swathes of the population are outside of that and you're making their lives miserable by punishing ICE car ownership.

Meanwhile, adoption numbers are thrown about ignoring that for those in optimal conditions, adoption is already very high and cannot grow much more. While for those particularly misaligned with the strengths of EVs, it will often be so painful to own one they will resist with everything they have, and in many cases they will have to admit defeat and stop driving altogether. Which I guess the government will also be content with. But it will take some time.

*typo

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cameronh90 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I have an ICE and don't feel like I'm being punished? It's exactly the same as it's always been. If anything, we're still benefitting from ridiculous subsidies and driving an ICE should be a lot more expensive than it is.

The reason for the EV nudging is it's a chicken and egg problem. The government doesn't want to run a national charging network themselves for obvious reasons, but private investors don't want to build it out either until it can make money.

So they've been trying to fix it from both sides, both by incentivising EV ownership and encouraging EV charging infrastructure. They're also trying to make charging at home easier, even if you don't have a driveway, by installing those little channels you can run the cable through.

Yes, the government are putting their finger on the scale in favour of EVs. Nobody's pretending they aren't. If combustion taxes were as high as they need to be to account for the externalities, the economy would collapse, but we need to get off ICEs for myriad reasons. Seems like they're doing a pretty good job overall and the main problem is just our high electricity price.

	▲	muyuu 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Far from ULEZ/CAZ areas I guess?

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tshaddox 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The problem is that large swathes of the population are outside of that and you're making their lives miserable by punishing ICE cars ownership.

It's obviously not ideal to have an EV if you can't regularly charge at home or at work, but "making their lives miserable" seems like a bit of a stretch. Instead of spending 5 minutes a week filling up at the gas station, you'll spent 30 minutes a week at an EV charging station.

	▲	rootusrootus 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> you'll spent 30 minutes a week at an EV charging station. And for a lot of people that can be 30 minutes at a grocery store where they were going to be for 30 minutes anyway. The nice thing about using the grid for fuel is that we have way more flexibility to refuel anywhere we want.
	▲	muyuu 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		In my area, charging prices have been in the £0.70-£0.90 /KWh for a while. That makes ownership VERY expensive, especially for road trips. On top of that privilege, you have exorbitant insurance costs and terrible devaluation. I rent EVs every couple of years, last time it was recently, just to see how things are evolving. Since anyway it's clear where policy is going. Whatever you think about said policy. Right now, they're lovely commute machines if you can charge at home.

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bee_rider 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It would be interesting to see how the market would shake out without all the nudging.

Petroleum companies also get a lot of subsidies—especially if you count implicit things like the cost of cleaning up all this carbon, and oil based geopolitical problems.

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Thlom 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Eh. A new EV can drive 400-700km on one charge. It takes 20-60 minutes to charge on public chargers depending on the charger. Except that charging on public charges is more expensive than charging at home I don't really see the practical issue. I know many people without charging options at home that will never go back to ICE.

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muyuu 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Except availability of chargers is spotty in most of the country, and charging prices so high that the running expenses are considerably higher. Not even considering insurance, which is also a killer. Been there.

Second hand EVs devaluation is not a product of anecdote. It reflects the current state of the market.

They are a different product and they're great at what they do. In fact, for those in the market for them, "nudging" (state coercion) is not necessary at all.

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Barrin92 4 hours ago | parent [-]

>Except availability of chargers is spotty in most of the country,

the UK is a small country. The average British driver drives 20-30km per day. One full EV charge almost gets you through England South to North. If you're putting a bunch of charging stations next to workplaces for people to charge once or twice per week that's going to cover most drivers.

	▲	muyuu 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What do you suggest? That people spend most of their time on the road going to and from (very expensive) chargers across the country? That is such a prospect it makes our decrepit railways look good.