Interesting and good to know. I agree that 8 years is generally a good run with a car and these figures put it into a more ‘normal’ focus.
Having said that, it feels like to me this continuous upgrading / changing cars goes against any climate concern / reasons for using an EV. From all the literature I’ve read continuous consumption and production of new goods will fuel climate change more so than moving from petrol to EV. So it’s likely that it’s more environmentally friendly for me to drive my 2010 Kia than to get rid of it and get a new EV.
I agree that petrol engines suffer degradation but the difference is that power / output is different to range. I suspect the impact on power does not translate in the range you get out of a tank as significantly as with a battery (don’t know).
Tesla range is indeed very good - I’m a sceptic on ranges but even I admit it’s more than enough. Although charging is an inconvenience if you don’ t like stopping for coffee…
Sure. Everyone has a personal decision to make, specific to their circumstances.
My personal reasons for going EV was:
I love tech/performance, they excelled at both
I hate pollution in our cities, I want to try and help with that
I wanted the safest vehicle I could get as I was doing a lot of motorway miles for work
We’ve got a long way to go before we have a really good, sustainable supply chain and lifecycle story to tell for vehicles, but every step helps and we’ve only really just got started on trying to improve it all.
FWIW - I get 250-300 of real world mileage. The variance depends on how heavy my foot is and environmental factors. That’s way more than enough for me. I need a wee and a breather well before I need to charge the car, and when I do need to charge it, it’s far less inconvenient compared to ICE where you have to stand there pumping gas, as opposed to plugging in after parking and letting the car “refuel” itself whilst I go about my own business. I am very rarely waiting on the car to charge. Maybe once or twice a year, if that, when undertaking exceptionally long journeys (like up to Newcastle or something).
Battery tech isn’t the problem at the moment so much as the tech to recycle batteries doesn’t exist, not to the scale of the amount of cars having the cells removed.
