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Power Transportation United Kingdom

UK Electric Car Inquiries Soar During Fuel Supply Crisis (theguardian.com) 210

Posted by BeauHD from the supply-and-demand dept.
Electric car inquiries are soaring as petrol stations in parts of the UK have started running out of fuel on Friday. The Guardian reports: While scenes of chaos play out at petrol stations across the country amid shortages, for many electric vehicle (EV) dealers the fuel crisis has led to an unexpected surge in inquiries and sales. EVA England, a non-profit representing new and prospective EV drivers, reports a rise in electric car inquiries and in interest at EV dealers, particularly in the last week. Along with existing factors such as the expansion of London's ultra-low emission zone, the fuel crisis has proved to be another trigger point, he said. "People were using it as 'this is the moment where I'm not going to put this off any longer,'" [said Martin Miller, owner of an electric car dealership in Guildford, Surrey].

The EV market is no longer the preserve of innovators and early adopters, he said, with the most popular models the Nissan Leaf, Volkswagen ID 3 and Jaguar I-Pace. Ben Strzalko, the owner of Electric Cars UK in Leyland, Lancashire, said that as a small business it would take a few months to feel the knock-on effect of the fuel crisis on sales. But every time there are problems with petrol or diesel, he said they acted as "one more tick for people making that transition to electric cars." Matt Cleevely, the owner of Cleevely Electric Vehicles in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, which specialises in used EVs, had a surge of inquiries over the weekend and on Monday morning from customers citing the fuel crisis as a reason for switching to electric. He expects enthusiasm to continue rising, with petrol shortages adding "fuel to the fire." Further reading: Europe's Energy Crisis Is About To Go Global As Gas Prices Soar (Bloomberg)
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UK Electric Car Inquiries Soar During Fuel Supply Crisis More

UK Electric Car Inquiries Soar During Fuel Supply Crisis

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  • I thought that the there was a huge increase in the electricity price in UK also recently, would such things not reduce the wish to have EVs?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by AidanApWord ( 691712 )

      No, gas prices surge.

      And even if electricty prices surge then:
      1) even doubling would make home-charging still massively cheaper to run an EV *per mile*
      2) a tripling of the electricity price in the UK (starting to approach fue prices in the UK) and the whole country would have to turn their lights off, not just driving about.

      • Well, september 28 last year the UK electricity spot price was 43.87/mwh and september 28 this year is 160.02/mwh.

        That is more than a tripling.(*3.65)

        • You're off by 9 orders of magnitude.

          • 9 orders of magnitude on spot prices last year compared to this year?

            Those are official Nordpol spot prices, that is what the electricity suppliers in UK pay for their electricity for things that are not on fixed price contract.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Rei ( 128717 )

              No, they're not. </pedantry>

              • More basically....

                What's causing a fuel shortage over there?

                First I've heard of this.

                • Re:Did not UK also have a surge in Electricity pri (Score:5, Informative)

                  by luvirini ( 753157 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2021 @08:46AM (#61840909)

                  A combination of many complex things, but the clif notes version is:
                  - Traditionally a fairly large part of UK low wage jobs have been taken by workers from eastern Europe
                  -The pandemic hit
                  -Many of the workers went back home
                  -UK left the free movement area ,so they cannot easily go back
                  -Thus there is a serious lack of truck drivers
                  -This has hit many sectors like food delivery to supermarkets and petrol delivery to petrol station
                  -Then some stations ran out
                  -This was widely published
                  -Thus people started panic buying
                  -And many many more stations ran out

                • Oddly enough, it's not a shortage of gasoline, but if truck drivers to deliver it.

                  This story says the trucker shortage is a combination of Brexit and Covid chasing away the drivers many of whom were foreigners.

                  https://www.bbc.com/news/expla... [bbc.com]

                • More basically....

                  What's causing a fuel shortage over there?

                  First I've heard of this.

                  The press.

                  1. One oil company (BP) announced they had temporary trouble delivering to 5 of their gas stations, due to lack of tanker drivers.

                  2. Fox News-level journalism turned that into "MASSIVE FUEL SHORTAGE!"

                  3. Panic buying

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Entrope ( 68843 )

            The earlier comment wrote mwh, in context clearly meaning megawatt-hour, not milliwatt-Henry. If you are going to be pedantic, at least be consistently so!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rei ( 128717 )

          Ignoring the... issue... in your post, it's not temporary spot prices that matter, but average end-consumer costs. which are quite stable [statista.com].

          In developed countries the world over, average electricity costs for end consumers are usually pretty stable, at least for residential and small commercial buyers (if you're some big alumium smelter or whatnot and are buying in bulk, you might negotiate a rate plan that charges you dirt-cheap prices when power is in abundance but gouges when it's not, so you can just curt

      • Arent a lot of homes in the UK outfit with antiquated wiring? Its the curse of older historical homes. You would ideally need both adequate power service and a garage for an EV to be practical. Do most homes there meet that criteria? I read an article this morning to suggest that people are going around and drilling holes in peoples gas tanks. With that sort of blatant vandalism, street parking an EV seems unwise.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Bert64 ( 520050 )

          Even if the internal wiring is antiquated, the power has to enter the house and the car will usually be outside of the house too so you'd only need to update a small amount of the wiring, and then hang the rest of the antiquated house wiring off the back.

          People are drilling holes in gas tanks to steal the gas, if that kind of thing is happening i'd much rather park an EV since it won't have any gas they have no reason to target it.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by e3m4n ( 947977 )
            you arent thinking this through. Lets assume people stealing the gas are not phd level educated individuals and dont readily identify your car as an EV. How much damage do you think they will do trying to get at a gas tank that does not exist? And after wasting all that time, how much more damage are they likely to inflict for having the nerve to deprive them of the gasoline they were rightfully stealing? Most criminals of the sort are not exactly rocket scientists, ya know. They might even target an EV fo

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by johnw ( 3725 )

          Arent a lot of homes in the UK outfit with antiquated wiring?

          Not particularly. My house is over 100 years old. Probably when built it didn't have much if any electrical wiring. It has however been steadily upgraded over the years. We moved in 25 years ago, at which point we had it completely rewired. 10 years ago we had the consumer unit replaced to bring it up to modern specs. The oldest thing is probably the connection coming in from the road, but that's still rated at 100A.

          To have a 7kW car charger installed simply involved putting another breaker put in the

      • No, gas prices surge.

        And even if electricty prices surge then:
        1) even doubling would make home-charging still massively cheaper to run an EV *per mile*
        2) a tripling of the electricity price in the UK (starting to approach fue prices in the UK) and the whole country would have to turn their lights off, not just driving about.

        The electricity price surged because gas-fired power stations.

    • Re:Did not UK also have a surge in Electricity pri (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Bad Ad ( 729117 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2021 @05:15AM (#61840371)
      I think the thought is - increase electricity prices still mean you can get to work, the shop, family etc. It just costs you more. With the fuel "issue", if you cant get any, you aren't going anywhere.

      So this works well, presuming there's no electricity supply issues

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by DraconPern ( 521756 )
        If there's electric supply issues, you can't get gas either. The pumps at the stations won't work.
        • If a station has fuel but no electricity, I would think some gas generators would resolve that problem.

      • If indeed there's a huge increase in wholesale electricity prices, then it'll lead to a "surge" in home PV systems. We only get to sell electricity back to the grid at the wholesale rate here, which for most of the time makes so little sense that you're better off using any excess you have to heat your hot water tank. However, if the wholesale prices were (say) double what they normally are, then you can pay back your PV investment (at least a small amount) with it (assuming the cost of PV systems doesn't a

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      If by "huge increase" you mean exactly the same price as it was in 2015 with only a brief dip by a couple of pence per kWh in between then sure yeah the price went up recently. But unlike electricity prices which are still steady, petrol prices did actually increase over this time.

      Mind you electricity will need to go up a shitton more if you wanted to use the narrative that it would be more expensive than petrol. Right now electric cars have a cheaper TCO over 5 years despite the premium price of the vehicl

      • I do not know the consumer prices in UK, but the wholesale prices of electricity went up a LOT between 2015 and 2021.

        The last full month: August
        2015: 40,62/mwh
        2021: 106,83/mwh

        So that is a 2.63 times the value.

        Of course it would need to go even more up to be more expensive than petrol. But a more than 2.5 times is a big raise.

        • The wholesale electricity price fluctuates with all sorts of market conditions. Specifically the price is the same as it was now at the end of 2019, but it was around 50/mWh in April of this year. It's really all over the shop, and quite irrelevant to the cost of an electric car for a consumer.

        • That is most likely a (accidentally) cherry picked day ahead or even an hour ahead price. And not by any means a 'whole sales price'.

          • Yes, as I said they are the current and year ago spot prices, and yes, day ahead ones. But even the month end prices are conserably higher, though looking at other months, much less so.

            But each month end of month price has been higher this year than any other year since 2013, when one month was higher and all others much lower. Some months much more, others only marginally more than the highest ever (since the avaiable starstics starting in 2013) previous price for that months end.

            • Yes, as I said they are the current and year ago spot prices, and yes, day ahead ones.
              Ah, I must have overseen that.

              But even the month end prices are conserably higher, though looking at other months, much less so. Nevertheless for ordinary customers (households), and that includes also businesses: the spot market is irrelevant.

    • Re:Did not UK also have a surge in Electricity pri (Score:5, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2021 @06:03AM (#61840475) Homepage Journal

      UK electricity prices went up because there was a fault affecting one of the interconnects that brings power here, and also because the UK left various Europe wide groups when it committed brexicide. That means that the UK can no longer buy energy with other countries to smooth out demand and spikes in price, so gets hit with high prices.

      Multiple electricity suppliers have gone bust because of this.

    • To me paying more for electricity seems more desirable than not being able to buy petrol. Call me crazy, but of those two bad choices, I would prefer the one where I could still use my car.

  • Imagine a crisis where you want to go fill your tank with high premium expensive gasoline, probably $100 for a full tank.
    And then you come home with a $100k EV, and a loan over $75k for -0.75% interest.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Rei ( 128717 )

      The year 2008 called. They want their pricing figures on entry-level EVs back.

      • Well,
        I never really looked at prices.
        A friend of mine bought a EUR 110,000 Telsa half a year ago, with handing in a Prius and 3 or 4 years specific tax breaks (don't know the details) and a -0.75% loan (note the minus), the purchase price went town to 55k

        So if he pays 10years, it is roughly EURO 500,- per month. However: he saves EUR 300,- per month in fuel. (He lives in France so his charging is relatively cheap).

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Rei ( 128717 )

          So they bought something like a Model X Performance, one of the most expensive EVs on the market. You're using this as your price-comparison EV why?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Or you can drive a plug-in hybrid which costs less than $30k and you fill up maybe seven or eight times a year. I was amazed at how "electric" a PHEV turns out to be for day to day driving. I get 30 miles per charge, which isn't enough for an EV, but plenty to do all my daily driving on electricity over 90% of the time. When I do have to drop back to gas I get around 55 miles per gallon.

      Forget being green, if you're a cheapskate nothing beats a PHEV; currently many places even let you charge for free alt

      • The only practical drawback is there isn't a lot of cargo or passenger space

        It depends on what it is. If it's a Prius then you're probably in good shape, their ICEs are monstrously reliable. Otherwise, you've got two power systems to fail.

  • EVs are freedom (Score:3, Funny)

    by Aroma 7herapy ( 814263 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2021 @06:22AM (#61840527)

    This is one thing I've never understood. Freedom-loving people having so much hate for the EV.

    No car is less reliant on government and big business than a low budget EV. No gasoline infrastructure needed, government cannot detect which outlet you used to charge the battery, so special 'fuel' taxes are impossible.

    It may take a while, but with just a solar panel in the backyard you will eventually store enough power to drive your car.

    • special 'fuel' taxes are impossible.

      The future will tell, but "Impossible" sounds a bit too strong in my opinion.

    • Except that several governements are planning "distance driven" based taxes..

      As example here in Finland they have planned that for quite a while, it has so far been defeated, but it is only a question of time i think..

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbialac ( 320955 )
      A few reasons:

      First, they are marginally better than an ICE running on gasoline. If you ignore ethanol sources that aren't based on corn, and look at other sources (Brazil and sugar cane or search for "Boeing Ethanol"), the advantage goes away completely if you properly dispose of the leftover biomass. In this scenario, the ICE becomes a far superior engine as far as overall carbon footprint is concerned; the fuel makes the car carbon negative.

      Freedom people also like to travel a lot, which makes for a 5

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sique ( 173459 )
        Biofuel does not make the car carbon negative at all. At best, and only if you don't use any artificial fertilizer, any weedkiller and work on your field only with biofuel equipment, you have a quite low carbon footprint. But to actually be carbon negative, you have to add biomass to the environment which does not rot, e.g. is still alive.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by larwe ( 858929 )

      No car is less reliant on government and big business than a low budget EV. No gasoline infrastructure needed, government cannot detect which outlet you used to charge the battery, so special 'fuel' taxes are impossible.

      Is there an EV that does _not_ have Internet connectivity? EVs are basically cellphones with wheels in my experience - lots of telemetry going back to the mothership.

      • A few of the cheap older ones apparently. An aquintance has a tiny electric Skoda that apparently did not even have wireless reading of the engine data, the entertainlemt system was an old style removable radio and so on..

        But all that is changing, almost all newer cars have those systems regardless of the propulsive technology and soon all due to government mandated "Sos systems"

    • You are correct that fuel taxes are essentially impossible, but the governments are already planning for that. As a result of that they will install a GPD tracker in every vehicle so that they can "tax the mileage you drive."

    • government cannot detect which outlet you used to charge the battery, so special 'fuel' taxes are impossible.

      They can easily tax you per mile based on your odometer reading, especially now that most if not all vehicles store a true odometer reading in the PCM which is irrespective of cluster swaps etc.

  • "Unexpected"? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Herbert Gusset ( 8773161 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2021 @06:47AM (#61840557)

    > fuel crisis has led to an unexpected surge in inquiries and sales

    Unexpected by whom, exactly? If EV sales dropped during a liquid fuel supply crunch, *that* would be unexpected.

    • It is unexpected by all those who sold, and believed, the lie that everything about Brexit was oven ready and the easiest thing to do.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It means the EV manufacturers did not expect there to be a fuel shortage in 2021.

      And to be fair there isn't really a fuel shortage as such, it's just that the government said that there was no shortage and the government lies about everything so people panicked and created a shortage.

  • How come there is a gasoline shortage? Why not just raise the price of gasoline until demand drops?

    • Re:How come there is a gasoline shortage? (Score:5, Informative)

      by magzteel ( 5013587 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2021 @07:28AM (#61840657)

      How come there is a gasoline shortage? Why not just raise the price of gasoline until demand drops?

      Multiple news sources say there is no shortage of petrol. There is a shortage of truck drivers to deliver it to the stations.

      As for your suggestion, sure, just price all the lower income people out of driving.
      We should reserve driving for the affluent, the way God intended it,

      • Multiple news sources say there is no shortage of petrol. There is a shortage of truck drivers to deliver it to the stations.

        If the stations don't have it then there are local shortages.

        The effect to the consumer out of fuel and trying to get to work is broadly the same as a national shortage.

    • Unfortunately however the mouth breathers read the headlines of a story about a few stations in northern scotland running out and immediately headed off to drain their local one. As a UK citizen the sheer number of knuckle dragging moronic sheep in this country depresses me.

      • How much hoarding can people really do? Most people have no place to store fuel other than topping off their tanks.

        (Cue the anecdotes about somebody filling up a garbage can with gasoline, but I can't imagine that type of thing amounts to much)

    • Because Europe has consumer protection laws to prevent gouging.

  • But hard to buy with the chip shortages. EVs are just as dependent on chips that are in short supply as ICE vehicles nowadays.

  • But after all that talk of Britain for the British they're just going to turn around and have that work visas like candy. Of course with the way work visas work that means much lower pay for everyone involved including the British. Because if you can hire a desperate worker from overseas and constantly threatened them with losing their job and their place in the country you can pay them a lot less and if you got a bunch of those guys you can pay the British employees a lot less. It's a lose-lose for the Bri
    • Thats the deluded Brexiter attitude for you, they think the world looks up to them and should bow at their feet. They seem to have a strong "master race" complex.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      The point is that work visas are only issued when there are no locals willing/able to fulfil the roles.
      Under the EU, workers from Europe were directly competing for the same roles as locals and then any other foreigners could get visas issued for any roles that could not be fulfilled by local or EU citizens.
      Brexit just moves "EU citizens" into the "any other foreigners" category so they no longer directly compete against locals, and now have to compete against visa applicants from asia and the americas etc.

  • There were probably enough drivers to have kept stations open if there had not been a panic run on fuel. If there was a news story tomorrow that X was in short supply the panic buy would clear the shelves of it, it doesn't matter what X is.

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