Low end EVs

[renegademaster]

BYD Seagull is sub-£8000 electric supermini for China | Autocar

What exactly is stopping cheap EVs being imported into UK. Is it safety regs (has the EU imported any?), LHD, or just demand? The government wants everyone in EVs, but when the cheapest is £25,000 atm , and the used market is a bit crap, sub 10k cars like this would be a godsend for lower income people when 2030 comes.

 

[Ken H]

BYD Seagull is sub-£8000 electric supermini for China | Autocar

What exactly is stopping cheap EVs being imported into UK. Is it safety regs (has the EU imported any?), LHD, or just demand? The government wants everyone in EVs, but when the cheapest is £25,000 atm , and the used market is a bit crap, sub 10k cars like this would be a godsend for lower income people when 2030 comes.

why would you want one of those when there are good ICE cars on the 2nd hand market that fit peoples requirements better.

 

[Snow1964]

Many Chinese cars are also designed for right hand drive (which is used in India, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Japan etc), and often made as both.

Yes European regulations are bit tougher, than China, but not just Chinese that can be cheap, Tata sells EVs for under equivalent of £10k in India. Presumably they don't want you buying all your family a Tata Tiago or Tigor (ie 5 or 6 cars, instead of one Jaguar or Land Rover for £60k)

There are EVs on sale in Europe, eg Dacia Spring for under £21k

Part of the reason is down to UKs crazy company car market, where adding features to turn the car from a means of transport to a posers mobile office causes silly specs. Given choice who would specify most of the features added if they could buy without them and get a car for nearer £10k brand new.

 

[philosopher]

From what I gather, the main reason EVs are so expensive are due to the battery packs. Therefore is there anything therefore stopping car manufacturers selling EVs with smaller battery packs that give say a 50 to 100 mile range instead of 150 to 300 range, perhaps as a cheaper option. Those drivers who use their car mainly for short urban trips and never or hardly ever undertake longer trips they may not be so bothered by the limited range.

 

[skyhigh]

From what I gather, the main reason EVs are so expensive are due to the battery packs. Therefore is there anything therefore stopping car manufacturers selling EVs with smaller battery packs that give say a 50 to 100 mile range instead of 150 to 300 range, perhaps as a cheaper option. Those drivers who use their car mainly for short urban trips and never or hardly ever undertake longer trips they may not be so bothered by the limited range.

Not sure there's much point in that when second hand is an option. Looking on Autotrader there are 2020 50kWh Zoes with a real world 180-220 mile range and remainder of 5 year vehicle/8 year battery warranty for less than £11k. If you don't need that much range there are older 40kWh and 22kWh versions available too - for example there is an example for £3k that will have a real world range of 90-100 miles. The advantage with those vehicles being that you have the choice of either battery lease (which gives you ongoing warranty cover) or you can buy a battery owned car if you want.

 

[Ken X]

Saw a really small Citroen in Horsham recently. Turned out to be an "Ami." Not my thing as I am able to walk to everywhere I need to get to, but suspect there is a market for city based travel.

We had a couple of Twizzys at Gatwick Airport for a short period a few years back. Great fun but even less practical for urban travel.

The small EVs are out there but you need to hunt around a bit.

 

[Noddy]

BYD Seagull is sub-£8000 electric supermini for China | Autocar

What exactly is stopping cheap EVs being imported into UK. Is it safety regs (has the EU imported any?), LHD, or just demand? The government wants everyone in EVs, but when the cheapest is £25,000 atm , and the used market is a bit crap, sub 10k cars like this would be a godsend for lower income people when 2030 comes.

My understanding is that it probably is coming to Europe (no doubt including the UK) just like its larger sibling the Dolphin. But as it only just been launched a couple of months ago in China, like with all cars, it takes a period of time to go on sale in other territories.

In terms of the price you will need to add 20% for VAT, import tariffs (we’re not exactly besties with China), and the fact the cheapest version has a fairly modest 30KWh battery. This will probably not be that popular/available in the European market so a more expensive larger battery will likely be sold instead. All increasing the price.

But we do already know that Chinese cars are significantly cheaper than everyone else’s (as evidenced by the MG4 and MG5), partly as the Chinese rather cleverly absolutely cornered the battery market. Hence the scramble in the US/Europe and, to some degree, here to develop gigafactories.

 

[jon0844]

Saw a really small Citroen in Horsham recently. Turned out to be an "Ami." Not my thing as I am able to walk to everywhere I need to get to, but suspect there is a market for city based travel.

We had a couple of Twizzys at Gatwick Airport for a short period a few years back. Great fun but even less practical for urban travel.

The small EVs are out there but you need to hunt around a bit.

The Ami would likely suit a lot of people but the speed is limited because it's not actually a proper car. If only used in town, fine, but if you have roads of 40, 50 or higher speed limits then you might not feel comfortable in something that doesn't even reach 30mph.

I'd probably want even basic air con too, even at a higher cost, because owners have said they're like ovens in the sum.

They're cheap though, at least for UK pricing, as the same price would get you a much higher spec real car in China or India.

 

[Peter Sarf]

I was thinking. A short(er) range EV might end up costing less in tax (vehicle tax and/or road pricing) due to being a lower weight. The batteries are quite heavy aiui. There is also no point carting around all that extra weight in the form of a larger battery and using more electricity to shift it if you only need a daily range of say 25 miles.

But then again. The car would be useless for the odd longer trip. Unlike a petrol car where it is up to the driver how much petrol is put in and the unused part of the petrol tank is a negligible cost and weight. Then again for me almost all of my short trips are done by walking, bus and train. So a bigger battery would be important as I tend to keep my cars so long I would want some range left at the end of 20+ years life. Battery life is very important as the battery seems to be far more expensive then an ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) and engines don't often need replacing.

I never buy new cars, ten years or older is more likely. That means I will be very interested in how battery life turns out in reality. So a low end EV might turn out to be extremely unattractive. In the meantime I really need to find myself a petrol car that will last me twenty years or until the nearest petrol station is far away in another part of London !.

 

[jon0844]

For a lot of people, a lighter small battery EV would make more sense as it would be much cheaper, more efficient (lower weight) and quicker to charge (smaller capacity). For occasional long drives, it would mean more stops but quick ones - so perfect for toilet/leg stretch breaks.

Sure, some would see that as being inconvenient but if you do just one or two long drives a year, I doubt people would have an issue. It's more a fear that people have before they get an EV, thinking having a 500-600 mile range on standby is somehow necessary despite doing 10 miles a day on average...

 

[jupiter]

A solution would be to have standardised, modular, battery packs that can be replaced automatically from under the car by driving over a pit. Pull in, old battery disconnected, released and dropped, charged one of what ever capacity you require installed, all by machine. Pay and go, five minutes.

 

[jon0844]

A solution would be to have standardised, modular, battery packs that can be replaced automatically from under the car by driving over a pit. Pull in, old battery disconnected, released and dropped, charged one of what ever capacity you require installed, all by machine. Pay and go, five minutes.

I don't think such trials have proved very successful. While batteries are proving to be very reliable, I'm not sure a car owner wants to swap out their battery for something unknown. I could see a future where unscrupulous companies could seek to shift damaged batteries or even counterfeit ones (with a higher safety risk) that way.

I do agree that batteries should become more standardised and you could also split them into smaller packs (as many smartphones and laptops do) so you could perhaps buy a car today with a smaller battery and add another to increase range during your time of ownership of you wanted. Currently you'd need to swap out the whole battery, if you could do it at all.

 

[Devonian]

Part of the reason is down to UKs crazy company car market, where adding features to turn the car from a means of transport to a posers mobile office causes silly specs. Given choice who would specify most of the features added if they could buy without them and get a car for nearer £10k brand new.

As a driver of a very basic car, I would agree - but the general public seems to have other ideas. Notably Dacia offered their no-frills Access trim level for eight years, originally priced at just £5,995 for a hatchback and £6,995 for an estate car, but it never generated much demand and is no longer available: their cheapest model is now more than twice the price of the Access.

Dacia are due to launch an electric version in the UK: but the electric Spring is likely to be three times the price of those basic petrol cars if/when it launches here, probably at around £18,000; it's lower than anything else on the market at the moment, but still not cheap.

I would jump at the electric equivalent of an Access-spec car (those wind down windows and lack of a radio would help save the battery!) but alas no-one is going to build one just for me.

 

[Nym]

For a lot of people, a lighter small battery EV would make more sense as it would be much cheaper, more efficient (lower weight) and quicker to charge (smaller capacity). For occasional long drives, it would mean more stops but quick ones - so perfect for toilet/leg stretch breaks.

Sure, some would see that as being inconvenient but if you do just one or two long drives a year, I doubt people would have an issue. It's more a fear that people have before they get an EV, thinking having a 500-600 mile range on standby is somehow necessary despite doing 10 miles a day on average...

Except the properly cheap EVs don't support anything more than 3kW charging, so you'd still have a short range and a very long wait.

By the time you include the 50kW charging needed for it to be a 'quick' stop, it's no longer cheap. The new Euro EVs that are 'inexpensive' have only just started supporting this in the latest generation.

 

[MotCO]

How about a car with a range of 100 - 150 miles for town journeys etc, but if you are going on a longer trip, you hire a trailer with a battery pack to give you further range?

(Note it is difficult charging a car with a trailer since most stations are end-on, not side-on. Also few drivers know how to reverse with a trailer.)

 

[A0wen]

As a driver of a very basic car, I would agree - but the general public seems to have other ideas. Notably Dacia offered their no-frills Access trim level for eight years, originally priced at just £5,995 for a hatchback and £6,995 for an estate car, but it never generated much demand and is no longer available: their cheapest model is now more than twice the price of the Access.

The reality is Dacia introduced that £ 6k (well close enough) back in 2013 - so 10 years ago.

In inflation terms alone that £ 6k is now £ 8797 in 2023 prices.

The rest of it is made up through increased costs of production, the fact the new Sandero is a much more modern car than the original one launched a decade ago.

It's been demonstrated time and again that there is little or no demand for a car which is 'stripped out' in terms of features - when they've been offered, customers traded up to the mid range ones which were slightly better specced.

How about a car with a range of 100 - 150 miles for town journeys etc, but if you are going on a longer trip, you hire a trailer with a battery pack to give you further range?

(Note it is difficult charging a car with a trailer since most stations are end-on, not side-on. Also few drivers know how to reverse with a trailer.)

A bigger issue is if you get a licence now, your licence doesn't cover you for towing (changed a few years back), so you'd be introducing a load of extra driving tests - when at present there's a ~6 month waiting list.

 

[Ken H]

How about a car with a range of 100 - 150 miles for town journeys etc, but if you are going on a longer trip, you hire a trailer with a battery pack to give you further range?

(Note it is difficult charging a car with a trailer since most stations are end-on, not side-on. Also few drivers know how to reverse with a trailer.)

Why not just hire a bigger car with enough power for your longer journey? I would dump one of our 2 cars except the nearest car hire place is 16 miles way.

 

[jon0844]

A small car doesn't need to have slow charging. That's more of a problem than the battery size.

It would be well worth the money to address this and ensure the battery can take the high input for as long as possible so users could top up frequently and with maybe 5-15 minute bursts, then to 100% when at a destination or home. A modern battery doesn't even have to worry about degradation in the same way, so 100% charges are fine instead of trying to stop at 80.

We're not there yet, but we don't need a small car with no toys (like no air con or electric windows) which is what most traditional car makers will likely look at to maximise profit and then sell none (the Ami is quite a unique example, which isn't actually a car, and most people here would laugh at it). It will be China that takes the lead, unless the industry succeeds in banning them from our roads.

 

[Ediswan]

A bigger issue is if you get a licence now, your licence doesn't cover you for towing (changed a few years back), so you'd be introducing a load of extra driving tests - when at present there's a ~6 month waiting list.

Source please.

 

[stuu]

How about a car with a range of 100 - 150 miles for town journeys etc, but if you are going on a longer trip, you hire a trailer with a battery pack to give you further range?

(Note it is difficult charging a car with a trailer since most stations are end-on, not side-on. Also few drivers know how to reverse with a trailer.)

Stick a genny in the boot, problem solved

 

[jon0844]

Since going from two cars to one, we have some occasions where a second car would really be useful. However, it's either solved through using a bus, cycling or booking a taxi. At a push, we could hire a car.

I really do think people would be better off looking at their needs for 99% of the time and buying a vehicle to suit that. Then either accepting some minor inconvenience on that 1% of the time (like a long-distance drive, or a trip to Ikea to get big furniture) and perhaps just pay for a hire car/van or whatever. Think of the overall cost savings.

I'll be the first to admit that I used to want a vehicle that was jack of all trades, and suspect plenty of other people are like that - but can be 'unprogrammed' from that way of thinking.

 

[90019]

A bigger issue is if you get a licence now, your licence doesn't cover you for towing (changed a few years back), so you'd be introducing a load of extra driving tests - when at present there's a ~6 month waiting list.

This is no longer true - the rules were changed in December 2021 so everyone with a full cat B licence now automatically has cat B+E without having to take the test for it.

 

[jon0844]

Given the value of batteries, I doubt anyone wants to attach some extra batteries on something so easy to steal.

 

[Peter Sarf]

Charging points. Can I ask how common are they ?. I don't see many in my travels. If you have a low end EV are you more likely to need to charge it when away from home - is that an excuse to get a bigger heavier EV if there are not enough public charging points ?.

A few years ago I read that Paris has more publicly available charging points than the whole of the UK. If that used to be true then what is it like now ?. A small EV means having to search for a charging point more often. I bigger EV means hogging the charging point for longer.

Either way we need to make sure there are plenty of charging points so as to ensure finding one is not an issue.

 

[ABB125]

This is no longer true - the rules were changed in December 2021 so everyone with a full cat B licence now automatically has cat B+E without having to take the test for it.

Furthermore, it was always the case that you could tiw a trailer up to 750kg on a normal B licence

 

[Noddy]

Charging points. Can I ask how common are they ?. I don't see many in my travels. If you have a low end EV are you more likely to need to charge it when away from home - is that an excuse to get a bigger heavier EV if there are not enough public charging points ?.

According to Zap Map at the end of June there were 44408 public chargers at 25521 locations.

https://www.zap-map.com/ev-stats/how-many-charging-points

There will be even more today.

Here is a fairly crude map showing them all the way from Unst (northern most Shetland island) to St Agnes (southern most populated Scilly isle):




One reason you don’t ‘see’ them is there doesn’t seem to be a policy of putting charging stations on road signs. For example services stations/areas on Motorways and main roads usually have a fuel signage on them and within them signage directing you to where the petrol station is. The other reason you don’t see them is they are generally much less visually intrusive than petrol stations.

A few years ago I read that Paris has more publicly available charging points than the whole of the UK. If that used to be true then what is it like now ?. A small EV means having to search for a charging point more often. I bigger EV means hogging the charging point for longer.

That is certainly a lie (googling indicates France had 80000 public chargers at the end of last year) and the only time that will ever have been true was in very very early days of EVs, if for example the first French public charger network was installed in Paris before the first UK one was installed. It certainly wasn’t true ‘a few years ago’.

 

[jon0844]

The size of France would mean a lot of charging points being necessary to reduce gaps all over the country.

 

[A0wen]

Source please.

This is no longer true - the rules were changed in December 2021 so everyone with a full cat B licence now automatically has cat B+E without having to take the test for it.

Corrected accordingly - it was a requirement from 1st Jan 1997 where previously the rules were you could drive a vehicle & trailer combination of 8250kg, this changed to a car plus trailer of 750kg not exceeding a total weight of 4250kg or a trailer of over 750kg providing the trailer wasn't over the weight of unladen weight of the towing vehicle (which it shouldn't be anyway) and the total weight was not over 3500kg. Anything more required a separate test.

It changed in Dec 2021 as the driving test centres had a backlog due to Covid (and still do - it's a ~6 month wait to get a driving test at the moment), so now you can go up to 3500kg total weight without a separate test.

Either way - having a load of extra people dragging trailers around isn't a good idea - not least because they are required to follow lower speed limits - 50 mph on single carriageway as opposed to 60mph and 60mph on dual carriageway and motorways rather than 70mph.

 

[Peter Sarf]

According to Zap Map at the end of June there were 44408 public chargers at 25521 locations.

https://www.zap-map.com/ev-stats/how-many-charging-points

There will be even more today.

Here is a fairly crude map showing them all the way from Unst (northern most Shetland island) to St Agnes (southern most populated Scilly isle):

View attachment 140120


One reason you don’t ‘see’ them is there doesn’t seem to be a policy of putting charging stations on road signs. For example services stations/areas on Motorways and main roads usually have a fuel signage on them and within them signage directing you to where the petrol station is. The other reason you don’t see them is they are generally much less visually intrusive than petrol stations.



That is certainly a lie (googling indicates France had 80000 public chargers at the end of last year) and the only time that will ever have been true was in very very early days of EVs, if for example the first French public charger network was installed in Paris before the first UK one was installed. It certainly wasn’t true ‘a few years ago’.

Thanks for the map.

I suspect that Paris having more chargers than the whole of the UK, if true, might have been very very early on. And how many in each contry are fast chargers of course.

Corrected accordingly - it was a requirement from 1st Jan 1997 where previously the rules were you could drive a vehicle & trailer combination of 8250kg, this changed to a car plus trailer of 750kg not exceeding a total weight of 4250kg or a trailer of over 750kg providing the trailer wasn't over the weight of unladen weight of the towing vehicle (which it shouldn't be anyway) and the total weight was not over 3500kg. Anything more required a separate test.

It changed in Dec 2021 as the driving test centres had a backlog due to Covid (and still do - it's a ~6 month wait to get a driving test at the moment), so now you can go up to 3500kg total weight without a separate test.

Either way - having a load of extra people dragging trailers around isn't a good idea - not least because they are required to follow lower speed limits - 50 mph on single carriageway as opposed to 60mph and 60mph on dual carriageway and motorways rather than 70mph.

Talking of trailers. I suppose ferries etc might charge more for a traiier as your using more space. I think the Channel tunnel has a limit on single axle trailers - free iirc. Then I recall there used to be restrictions on size of gas bottles - wonder if there will be limits soon size of batteries. A small EV has its attractions.

---

I saw on BBC news today that it seems a common worry for prospective users of EVs is range. If so that puts small EVS at a disadvantage.

For me the issues are purchase cost - I tend to buy 10-20 year old cars and hope to keep them as long as possible (last two were 10+ years) so new is irrelevant to me. Range is an issue - more so as I would be buying an EV with 10 year old batteries so a small EV would be too risky. I think charging will always be more inconvenient than filling up with petrol but hopefully eventually will be bearable.

 

[jon0844]

I think people who haven't got an EV think range is a problem. Those who have bought one soon realise it isn't an issue. Most also appreciate potentially waking up every day with a 'full tank'.

Also, most EVs keep quite a big reserve and lie to you a little, so that when you hit '0' you can still drive, sometimes at a limited speed.

Just like a petrol car often has quite some range left when the warning has given up estimating a range. Indeed, I think I did a good 20 or more miles in my diesel when there was the fuel shortage/panic and I had to drive all over the place.