European manufacturers have struggled with the take up of electric vehicles since day one and are no longer the leaders in the field. I blame European governments and the uptake of their green washing agenda’s or rather goals. EV’s have never been as green,as they have been made out to be, the high costs alone are enough to make them a no choice option for the majority.
Europe jumped on the train both unprepaired and blind in the face of China, who have the commodity of raw materials, leaders in battery manufacturer and the ability to produce vehicles on par with any mainstream or premium brand. European manufacturers are joing forces with China to either have vehicles built there and shipped back or are forming joint ventures and sadly that also includes premium manufacturers such as BMW and Mercedes. I only said to a friend last week , we will all be driving a vehicle powered by some Asian battery.
At the same time European battery manufactures are trying to reduce the price of batteries, which on the face of it, it may look good but, when you look deeper into it it, you really see where costs are cut. For example. A group of former Tesla exec’s have recently agreed to take over a loss-making Welsh battery developer DG Innovate. The sting in the tail though, is to eliminate the use of Lithium, the king of battery matterials and develop a battery purely by using Sodium. Sodium is in ambundance in the sea around us, by extracting the salt you in return make Sodium. The big problem here is that Sodium batteries produce the lowest watt-hours per kilogram of all battery chemisty’s. In English a vehicle powered by a Sodium battery, won’t travel as far before a charging stop is required. At least China with its LFP batteries use Lithium as do NMC batteries.
Anyway bak to the point. Take BMW for example. You can walk into one of their showrooms and purchase a 3 series petrol from as little as £36,600. In comparison, the entry level i4, which incidently is mainly powered by CATL batteries, starts from £50,000. That is a difference of £14k or alot of petrol for the average punter. Even charging at home the average person won’t make that difference up. Its a similar story with every manufacturer.
As Motability customers, we are protected to a certain extent from these huge price variations. Away from Motability this protection is lost, yet how many Motability customers can hand on heart, say they would own an EV if the scheme did not exist or they lost access to the scheme!
Back to the point! Take BMW for example, you can walk into