Gary C:
Hi, I'm Gary and this is Episode 219, EV Musings, a podcast about renewable electric vehicles, and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. On the show today we'll be looking at how much things have changed in the electric vehicle space.
This season the podcast is sponsored by Zapmap the free to download app that helps EV drivers search plan and pay for their charging. Now before we start, I want to do give you a final reminder of next week's roundtable episode. In it, I'll be speaking to three guests who will all be discussing topics on the theme of difficulties with electric vehicles and fill in the blank. We'll be talking about accessibility issues with a disabled EV driver, buying an EV as a female living without a home charger. And I'll be talking about why there aren't actually charges everywhere.
Now our main topic of discussion today is about well, let's call it EV nostalgia. I've been driving an EV for almost six years now. And in that time, things have changed and moved on considerably. With a large number of new EV drivers on the road, it's often easy to forget just how far things have come in such a short period of time. So this week, I want to talk a little bit about the sort of changes we've had since people started driving electric. Now every guest who's been on the show this season, has answered the following question. What is the most significant change you've seen in the EV landscape since you started driving electric. Now in a recent fully charged Show podcast episode Quint Wilson, Robert Llewellyn were reminiscing about the time they picked up a 60 mile range Mitsubishi IMEA in 2009. Quentin talked about how his kids used to have to sit with full coats and gloves on because the range dropped precipitously when the heating was switched on in winter. Quentin, also famously on this very show told us of the day, he picked it up, ran out of charge on the way home and had to sit with some old woman drinking tea and making small talk for three hours while his vehicle charged on her 13 amp three pin plug after he knocked on her door, wanting to charge. Now remember, this was the time before the charging infrastructure was anywhere near what it is today. And charges simply didn't exist outside of the motorway service areas. And these are the true innovator issues from the very, very early adopters
in the sphere.
But I'm not quite that entrenched in EV. World I received my first EV in 2018. Even so, in those intervening few years have been some spectacular changes. And that's what today's episode is all about. So let me start with my thoughts. When I started driving the number of different brands of EV on the road was quite limited. At the charger I would if there was anyone else there usually encounter a Nissan LEAF or a Renault Zoe, maybe a BMW i3. Driving down the road and seeing another EV was a bit of a thrill. We'd actually wave at each other. Imagine that. And nowadays, the number of electric vehicle models on the road count in the dozens and it's no longer a thrill to see them. I was shuffling along the M40 recently and noticed that there were two EVs directly ahead of me one in the lane next to me and one behind me. Five years ago, that only happened when they were all heading to somewhere like the Fully Charged Live Show as it was then. Nowadays, that's
just well, Tuesday. I'm also seeing such a huge number
of manufacturers playing in this space now. Hyundai and Kia and GE Volvo still antes Mercedes, BMW, Porsche, a large number of Chinese brands, they're all They're a notable by their absence. However, a vast majority of Japanese manufacturers Toyota, specifically, who, with one exception, are still hitching their waggon to the hydrogen and mild hybrid train. Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda said earlier this year that he doesn't see battery electric vehicles reaching more than 30% market share, no matter how much technological or cost reduction progress is made with them. The remaining 70% he thinks will be taken up by hybrids and fuel cell vehicles, which are the main products produced by *checks notes* oh, Toyota. So no bias there then. But enough about Toyota let's move on to some of our guests and see what they think. First up, James Court from UVA England, and now he seems to agree with me when it comes to the range of models.
James Court :
The most significant thing has been the just shift in models and range. I think when I was first started doing this until May 16, they're really well like, not even a handful of electric vehicles. And then it moves through, and then you start seeing electric vehicles actually look like vehicles. And then as I've sort of 2020 2021, nearly every model, every marque and every model had an electric version in some way, shape or form. So just the scale and shape and help wickley It has happened is kind of mind blowing that since 2016 2017, from a standing start, we're now up to where we are. So that's, that's just huge. And I think in the future, what I what we really need to see now is charging, being as good, if not better, than the petrol Telesis. That's the next step. And as I look at how quickly we got there with the cars themselves, I think within the next two or three years, even the charging debate is going to be one that it just doesn't exist, I think it will be, I think we're gonna get to that point where there is a good coverage of it. And it is better and easier and hopefully cheaper than than petrol. And I think we'll get to that point, I think we will get to that point where technologically, there will be 500, 600, 700, mile EVs, if you want to buy them personally, and I don't I want to I'll probably as I say to a lot of people, I will be I have over batteries, I will be going down to 120 he- 130 range for my next car, and saving myself the huge cost of the battery at the moment, I've got a Kia Nero, it's about 280 miles, I drive 280 miles in one go twice, three times a year. And the cost of those batteries will be such that I think people will go to smaller batteries, if we can get the charging infrastructure in place. And I think the charging infrastructure should be a simpler, it should be more simple and hopefully going forward, it will be easier to put them energy to put them on
Gary C :
The topic of models and the sort of vehicles you can buy. Ben McDonald of Nodem highlighted something that piqued his interest a little bit,
Ben McDonald :
I think it is undoubtedly the impact of Chinese entrants into the UK market. When you're starting to see a huge range of electric vehicles on our streets that are made in China, it gives you an indication as to what the future might be like, depending on obviously government regulation and so on what they've managed to do and achieve over the last 20 years with some clear strategic thinking and some future planning has been quite quite remarkable. And that that will continue. It will help drive EV adoption. Having an electric vehicle with a price point of of £25,000 is very, very different to what it's been like in the last five years or so and I'm going to be really intrigued to see how the Xiao Xiao Mi comes out. When you saw Apple fail with their project, does it tighten or whatever. But Xiao Mi seems to be smashing it with that little one that they've released in China. And that's that's coming out for their incredibly favourable price point. So yeah, interesting times,
Gary C :
But by far, the biggest change that most people have seen in the last few years relates to charging. Alex Thwaites, who was with us in Episode 207, from OVO energy. He was the first to mention it.
Alex Thwaites :
Just seeing more and more public charge points pop up, not necessarily at motorway service stations, but more just generic and accessible locations like down the road. So I live in a fairly small market town. I've got three different locations within like a two minute drive for me. So I just think that's awesome. And I just think that is one of the biggest pain points for petrol and diesel drivers. i My assumption and what I hear is actually that it's not so much for charging at home. It's the perception of how difficult it's going to be to charge on the road when I need to. And what if I need to do a longer journey? So I actually just think that the infrastructure improvements that have come especially over the last 12 months has been awesome. And I just see that getting better and better. And I think the more accessible and the more visible public charging is I think more Non EV drivers would start to leave and have a little bit more confidence to make that switch. So I think from personal perspective, it's from a what do I What have I seen and think is really exciting is actually the number now of auto OEMs that are starting to think about VTG capability in their cars and the additional every child quote manufacturers that are starting to come out now with we're going to have VTG hardware. So I'm thinking there's a decibel wallbox Indra, I've just seen the mobile eyes I think is mobilised power bank, you know. So when we ran the V2G projects in 2018 are only really two players. Actually you're starting to see more and more manufacturers getting into the VTG space now, which I think is super exciting for the future.
Gary C :
Now we'll come back to V2G in a little while because someone else actually picked up on that. Simon Acton from Irish car dealer next eco cars was on episode 212. The car dealership episode. He also talked about the infrastructure.
Simon A. :
I suppose for me it would be charging infrastructure. I think particularly when I started driving EV here in Ireland 2017 the infrastructure wasn't great. It was often a struggle to to get between the rapid charges if you were driving at 24 kilowatt leaf, which is pretty pretty much what I was doing. So that and also equally kind of in the UK, because I used to bring calls back from the UK is to drive them back. So brims up, bring them on to Holyhead and put them on the ferry and get them to Dublin. So yeah, I mean, that infrastructure is night and day different in that time, and poor, and we're still not there, obviously. So this, what people need to remember about charging infrastructure is that, you know, it's a moving feast, you know, we're not, when nobody is certainly saying we're finished, at any given point, it's going to continue getting better. So, for me, that is the one biggest change, it's just got a whole lot easier to own an Eevee, because the charging infrastructure is improving all the time.
Gary C :
Now, so many find that back to the UK, when I first started driving, there was some infrastructure, it was mostly 50 kilowatt chargers. What happened then is we started to get more and more faster, rapid charges, the 150 kilowatts, 350 kilowatts, and then we started to get more and more hubs. So you get a large collection. And rather than having one or two 350 kilowatt units, you get six, seven or eight of them, has that been mirrored in the Republic? Or is it just a case of, you're still gonna get individual or double charges, but the charging speed is higher? How's that sort of worked out?
Simon A. :
Yeah, I mean, it's, I suppose poor, we've seen in the last probably two years in particular is more hubs, there still be quite a lot of single rapid charge units out there. But the eyes quickly changing, and I suppose was what's driven that, to a large extent, and particularly in Northern Ireland is, you know, it used to be pretty much just ESB, e cars. And for a long time, they offered free charging. And so nobody else who's really in the market, and that that changed in the Republic, I think it's five years ago now. But only in the last 18 months in the north, where we've seen particularly in the north is like a huge amount of CPAs have come in and put in huge amount of infrastructure, and very quickly, in Northern Line or when online was really bad. It's now like, a hell of a lot better request short space of time. And yeah, a lot of those locations would be multi charger hubs. I mean, I suppose I wouldn't, I wouldn't, we wouldn't have seen anything yet. In Ireland, where, you know, for some of the places in the UK, I go to I just go, Oh, my God, there's like 30 Rapid charges here. We certainly don't have anything like that. I mean, I think the biggest we have would be kind of six units. And I think some of the IRT locations have six units. There are other ESP EU locations that now have four units, but they have two plugs on each side. So you can charge a call simultaneously, combination of CCS and CHAdeMO. So yeah, it's it's come a long way. But there's still more to do. And I think we certainly certainly around the big cities like Dublin, and cork and Galway, I'd like to see some of those bigger hubs that you're now seeing in the UK where, you know, you've now got upwards of 10 units, because you need that to handle the peak. Because a lot of the you know, a lot of time I'll be travelling around Ireland in my Eevee. It won't be at peak time. And I very rarely run into any issues of queuing or anything like that. But certainly, if you're going out at the weekend, you can run into that issue. And so there is obviously there's a there's a there's a challenge there for the CPOs because it's a huge investment to put in those sort facilities and a lot of time they sit idle, but you do need it to cope with the peak.
Gary C :
And Chris Paytmen-Jones is the chair of ChargeUK and guest on episode 208. The q&a episode also mentioned infrastructure. Yes, I know he would, obviously. But given that he's not the only one who mentioned it. We can forgive of the inherent bias in his reply.
Chris Pateman-Jones :
I think - and I say this with both my Conencted Kerb and my ChargeUK hat on - It's got to be the abundance and the quality of the charging infrastructure that's out there. Now. We're a long way to go from being perfect. But the changes that we're seeing year on year are phenomenally positive.
Gary C :
Chris can that be maintained for a number of years? I mean, we've had what 43% increase in one year. Are we heading for that this year as well or even better?
Chris Pateman-Jones:
Compound.. annual High compound annual growth rates are very difficult to maintain like that. So I doubt you're going to see it continued sustained year on year on year on year. I would expect this year again, you're gonna see a phenomenally strong year. And I would expect for the next couple of years you will particularly with the progress has been seen or the will be seen, hopefully this year through the Levite projects as a huge number of councils that have essentially been holding off on releasing tenders until that's been resolved. I think we're now seeing movement on that. And so you should see a huge number of tenders released this year, which will go into delivery next year and the year after. So yeah, I'm pretty confident you'll see extremely large growth rates in the next couple of years.
Gary C :
Another trend that guests have seen relates to the tendency for EV sales to be on the increase, which is good. Now a lot of this is due to what Oliver Holt from Geotab mentioned, when asked him the question when he came in for episode 218. Last week,
Oliver Holt:
I've worked at Geotab for four to five years. So really sort of that earlier point of EDI, Evie adoption, particularly in the fleet space. And I'd say that in my day to day in interfacing with customers and users and actually a lot of sort of commercial drivers. I'd say the most significant change in evey landscape is the perception of EVs themselves. Whether it's this negative connotation of small range unsuitable for application, especially in the commercial space, I'd say that this mindset shift shift is happening at quite a rapid pace, particularly the last two to three years, whereby commercial drivers in particular are becoming more and more accepting, and actually, in some cases, quite excited to make that Evie change. So I'd say that the most significant change I've said I could see in the industry over the last few years is definitely the perception of EVs themselves. So driver perception.
Gary C :
Ben Traviss dealer EV specialist with a nationwide dealership mentioned that also on Episode 212,
Ben T.:
I've seen much more of a shift from customers who, once upon a time, would never have ever considered an electric vehicle. Got a quick story. My girlfriend's, Dad, I've been car shopping with him on at least two occasions. One of those occasions was he actually joked with the sales, executive electrification is just not going to be for me. I just, you know, he was just like, Look, maybe in the future, I'll never ever drive an electric car and managed somehow him into an electric car and have a test drive of a car. He now drives guess what an electric car, he absolutely loves it more people are open to electrification than maybe they're letting on. I think there are some huge benefits from cost saving perspective, feeling like you're using, obviously, where you can renewable energy during your bid for the planet, I've seen much more of a shift, which actually, really now represents the amount of customers who are actually driving electric cars these days, the uptake is just been incredible. So going back to what we've been speaking about today, think of the customer gets the right information. And they feel like actually, electrification can work more people are much more open to it. And electric vehicles are no longer this niche market. We're not dealing with people where there's, you know, there's one charger every, you know, 10 or 15 miles and you can have to really travel far to go and find what the infrastructure is. Because you'll love this as well. The infrastructure is not there, get this every single day and map, thank goodness is isn't existing, because we have the more people are open to it more people are considering electrification and that for me over the last couple of years as has been a massive positive for me the fact that people are more open to it.
Gary C:
Then I spoke with Louis Dixon from Gull-e Episode 214, surprisingly enough, he mentioned it too.
Louis Dixon :
There's always been bad press around EVs. And personally, I think a lot of that is to people don't like change, it is a massive change. You know, we've we've only driven automobiles one way, we've only filled them up one way. And it's very easy to stand there and go, well EVs can't do this, or EVs can't do that. I might be being a little bit optimistic here. But in general, I feel that when you do speak to people, and with the technology that's getting better and better all the time, people do actually stand back and go Well, you know, something like a Tesla is, it's like a spaceship. It's amazing what these things can do. And I think as Evie technology increases, and the costs come down, people will continue to actually accept that they are good cars, they you know, it's the way forward. So I said I'm probably being a little bit optimistic because there is still a lot of bad press around EVs, but I think in general, people are saying actually they are good cars and I do want to transition if they haven't got one already. And secondly, it's the second hand car market, particularly when they first came out. It was a huge issue if you wanted an EV you had to buy brand new extremely expensive because they hadn't been around very long people didn't want to buy secondhand because it made them nervous so like it was the batteries don't you know they they associated it with like a phone battery or a laptop battery that just degrades within a year or two. So I think now that this second hand market has got bigger and bigger, yeah actually allows more people to make that transition because they're a lot more affordable. People are worried about buying because they're like well actually is going to keep going for, you know, hundreds of 1000 miles or more. I think the vivid probably the two biggest for me.
Gary C :
Now, Louis mentioned the second hand market there, Ben Whittaker from Kerbocharge, talked about the fact that now that secondhand prices are normalising and the initial depreciation curves of new EVs have dropped. That's helping things tremendously.
Ben Whitaker:
I'd say for me the biggest change is the EVs now coming to a normal depreciation curve, and the volume of EVs coming onto the second hand market, 80% of people buy secondhand cars. And like me exclusively, we never buy a new car. And so what I've been really excited about is seeing all of the cars coming out of company car lease, all of the cars which have come through various programmes for salary sacrifice, especially with the tax advantages of getting a fully electric car. And they're all now coming on to the second hand market. So I've been very much waiting and watching for long distance Evie vehicles to come into the secondary market at a reasonable price. And that's happening now. So I think we're going to see not just early adopters and high income people with EVs, we're going to start seeing normal and lower income drivers adopting EVs for a few 1000 pounds, you can now get a city Eevee you know, 234, grand city, EV, no congestion charges, we're going to see those in towns, and you can now get a long distance over 300 mile, the remaining range for less than 20 grand, I found some for as little as 13,000 pounds for a 300 mile plus second hand, Evie now becomes practical for much longer distances. That, for me is the exciting thing that really shows this is going to become a normal thing. And we've got to put in the infrastructure everywhere to support this. And especially with secondhand Eevee, what when I first got into the Eevee market, there was a huge concern about battery degradation. When you drove an Eevee for a long period of time, you would end up with a car with very minimal range on it, and therefore the secondhand prices will be very low. But what's happened since then is everybody's looks and learns that really battery degradation isn't from use, it's from Fast charging and overheating the battery during the charging cycle. So now we're all having charging regimes and battery monitoring and fans to keep them cool. And battery chemistry is to prevent some of the battery degradation effects hitting. So now, you should expect I think, I think the numbers published by Tesla who've got the largest number of batteries out there in the field that have gone up to you know, half a million a million mile range. In some cases, they found that with a very, very small deviation, or standard deviation, after 100,000 miles, you've had about 8% degradation. And after 200,000 miles, you've had 12% degradation. So if you were looking at a car that had 340 miles range when it was new, if you buy it at 200,000 miles, you're still going to have a car with you know, just shy of 300,300 miles of range. And unlike an internal combustion engine car that's got oil and gaskets and bearings, and lots and lots of pieces, lots and lots of maintainable wearing components.There's almost no parts count. In the drive train and electrics of an EV they're going to actually last a lot longer. I think the motors are good for half a million miles if you don't get them wet. So if you've got a battery that's doing 200,000 miles with minimal degradation on a motor that doesn't have any gaskets and oil and everything else, I think we're gonna see EVs last a hell of a lot longer. And we're going to be doing, you know, let's have a refurb of the interior because everything else or the car is going to last a lot longer. So I really think the world of secondhand EVs is is going to be a miraculous change and and much more reliable than what we see in secondhand ice vehicles.
Gary C :
We talk a lot on this show about the FUD fear, uncertainty, doubt and misinformation. In fact, calling Walker from Episode 200, for the misinformation episode, came on to talk about that very thing. And he has thoughts about why the overall perception of electric vehicles he's changing, and why that's leading to more sales.
Colin Walker :
I would say we it's quite recent, we've reached a point in which majority of people now know someone close to them who own an EV. And I think that's quite a critical tipping point. Because I think word of mouth is going to be the biggest single factor in influencing the decision that someone makes about whether or not to get an Eevee. So hearing from close friends and family they've got an Eevee that all the scare stories that they've heard in the press aren't true actually living with it's perfectly easy and the things amazing to drive and saves you lots of money. I think that tipping point is being reached and I think that will actually accelerate the transition of EVs particularly now that will the early adopters have got them and we're moving into that kind of bigger mass market piece. That food for me feels pretty significant.
Gary C:
Now in every discussion like this is always one guest who throws in a bit of a curveball. At this season. It's Mark Potter from 3ti, who was on our q&a discussion, talking about VTG, no guesses what he thinks is something which has seen a dramatic change.
Mark Potter :
That's been quite a long time for me. And I've been in the industry since since 2008. And there have been lots of them. So narrowing it down is quite hard. But I actually think that one of the most significant changes is is fairly recent, it's smart charging, and it's vehicle to grid. Why is because EVs have gone to becoming part of the solution, not part of the problem. Okay, the decarbonisation of the grid is hard. What it really needs is flexible loads, to deal with intermittent supply, and EVs with smart charging, and EVs with frequent grid technology are massive help to decarbonize the grid. Now,
Gary C:
of course, Mark is absolutely right. One of the USP of electric vehicles, is that because they're basically batteries on wheels, they can both provide an energy store for electricity, but also pump that energy back into the grid, or an office or house or a campsite. Through the veto X functionality. I was comforted to hear that the general perception of people in the industry is that we're seeing three main improvements in the Eevee world, more Evie models that are infrastructure, and improving increasing sales. Now, we're not there yet, but it's encouraging to know that many people have thought about this and think we're heading in the right direction. Many thanks to all my guests who came on and chatted to me over the last 20 or so episodes. This season, we're looking at raising the awareness of carbon literacy with our listeners. And one way we're doing that is with the carbon factors read by carbon literacy trainer Anne Snelson
Anne Snelson:
Want to cut your transport emissions but can't afford an Eevee why not try car sharing instead, every journey you share saves half the emissions. So find someone to travel with. Be social and save lots of money to
Gary C:
it's time for a cool TV or renewable thing share with your listeners. The state owned China ocean shipping group Costco had developed and manufactured an all electric container ship the green water 01, which is now operating a regular service route between Shanghai and Nanjing green water once propulsion system is powered solely by batteries, and saves 3900 kilogrammes or 8600 pounds of fuel for every 100 nautical miles sailed. The battery pack uses LFP cells with a capacity of over 50,000 kilowatt hours. And additional battery boxes can be added for long voyages. And no word on the miles per kilowatt hour this beast powerlifters see heavy shipping going electrical.
And that's the show for today. Hope you enjoyed listening to it. If you want to contact me I can be emailed at info at ev musings.com. I'm also on Twitter EV Musings. Evie. If you want to support the podcast and the newsletter, please consider contributing to becoming an even using patron. The links in the show notes. Don't want to sign up for something on a monthly basis. Well if you've enjoyed this particular episode, why not buy me a coffee, go to coffee.com/evie musings and you can do just that Kayo dash fyi.com/evie musings takes Apple pay to have a couple of ebooks out there if you want something to read on your Kindle. So you've got electric it's available on Amazon worldwide immediately some of 99 Peer equivalent and it's a great little introduction to living with an electric car. If you're looking for installing solar panels storage battery and heat pump try so you can renewable also available on Amazon for the same 99 p and if you've got Amazon Prime and you can use the Kindle lending library, you can read them for nothing. Why don't check them both out. Links for everything we've talked about in the podcast today are in the description. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe it's available on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave a review. It helps raise our visibility and extend our reach in search engines. If you've reached as part of the podcast and are soliciting Thank you. Why not let me know you've gotten to this point by tweeting me EV Musings Evie with the words. It's a clip show hashtag if you're no you know, nothing else. Thanks as always to my co founder Simone. You know I've often asked him if he knows what the main problem is with the declining state of the UK fish and chip industry. What used to be crisp fresh cotton had it it's now slightly grey and uninspiring Haik and other lesser types of fish, not to mention the inclusion of boiled rice in many places. He told me
Ben McDonald:
I think it is undoubtably the impact of Chinese entrance into the UK market.
Gary C:
Thanks for listening. Bye