I’m back in a diesel after 4yrs running both EV & PHEV. What needs to change to get me to go back?

Why I’ve gone back to driving a diesel after 2 years with an EV and then 2.5 years driving a PHEV as our family car. What needs to change to get me to go back to EV?

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Harry Metcalfe

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well welcome to a new Harry’s Garage video and this one is going to be a sort of Deep dive in what on Earth is happening in the market and also how did I end up buying a diesel car as our latest family car I did a video a few months ago where I was deciding really between going pure EV again or pev we had a um plug-in hybrid Range Rover for two and a bit years and I was looking to go back to electric um we ran the last time we ran a pure electric as a family car was 2018 we had an ipace and at that time it didn’t work for us and that’s why we went p and what were we going to go into next now these cars are on lease so they there is an end date and we have to change them and I’ve ended up with a diesel Range Rover Sport so in this video I’m just going to quickly go over that bit but also look at what on Earth is happening in the EV Market at the moment particularly secondhand prices what’s going on why is the value of them dropping so why are we getting so frustrated with them and then just do where I think there’s some changes need to be made in the direction we’re heading in also to discuss what Akia Toyota said at Toyota he’s chairman of Toyota he thinks the the at the end of the game when we’re all going through this radical change pure El Vehicles will only make up 30% of the global market but just kicking off how we ended up with diesel rather than plugin hyate on this it’s money I’m a private buyer I’m not a business buy I’m a private buyer and depreciation is critical and just costs of running these cars and I look at it pretty closely cuz I’m a bit mean but if I wanted to replace with the new Range Rob plug-in hybrid it’s a P4 60 the monthly payments if you just go on to the Land Rover website and put in a 20,000 deposit 3 years 10,000 miles the new Range Rover plugin hybrid £ 1,382 a month payment you’re going to make on that well just not entertaining that idea p460 I don’t really need that much horow it’s pet or and they’re so heavy now I just I just doesn’t gel well with me so I thought no what about looking at Range Rover Sport it’s it’s they’ve grown I think this is the wrong name for this car is Sport it is not sporting it’s a sort of Range Rover S car got all the space in it I think it looks pretty sharp I I it’s a personal buy there better cars out there I’m sure I just quite like the design of this one so I looked at those if I wanted to plugin hybrid one of those p460 game 1,25 using the same 20,000 deposit if I want a D300 like this one on £600 a month hang on a minute that’s half the price well it’s £425 saving over the plugin hybrid and you just think that’s I I I noticed that and Diesel actually suits these cars We’ve Ended up in this size of family car because diesel made them affordable because they’re very good on fuel and we found that with this one as well but I don’t want to sort of just dwell on this I think there’s just something thing happening in the marketplace at the moment how we got into this position where cars have got so expensive and now we’re seeing huge depreciation on various cars it’s right across the board what’s happening there and I think there’s a number of factors at play here another interesting thing happened today and that was the SNT released the figures for their sales in January so that’s the car market in the UK what has happened and the big change is well electric cars are make up 14.7 of the market and Fleet buyers make up 63% of the market and private buyers are 35% they’re right down private buyers are not buying cars at the moment why is that why is electric going further down what’s gone wrong with this revolution that we were all expecting I was expecting I am not someone who doesn’t like electric cars they just don’t suit our needs as a family car we we do uh big trips I to a big trailer around and it they just don’t quite work at the moment I like the idea of them as if you’re a regular viewer of this Channel and you look at my Harry’s Farm Channel as well you know I installed heat pump at the house 2007 so I was an early adopter on that we’ve got solar everywhere here we’ve got I’ve got nearly 30 Kow of solar uh energy coming into the house and up here in this car store so I I like the new tech but I’m not buying electric I’ve ended up with diesel what’s gone wrong with the electric Market well I think there’s a number of factors first of all I think right when this all began the industry was in a bit of a pickle was 20145 there was something called Euro 7 which was a new engine standard coming from U Brussels saying you’re going to have to meet this and it was a real C chain on on the regulations and he had to really change the internal combustion engine to meet the new Euro 7 also tesler was on the scene and the Green Revolution was happening there was lots of discussion and suddenly politicians got hold of EV hang on a minute this is the answer zero emissions fantastic we ought to do this car makers were spooked by Euro 7 thought well look at the growth in Tesla perhaps we ought to have a bit of this action and that s sort of why we’ve ended up where we are now and we’re very much on this journey but I’m not quite sure if the customer is quite as the at the point where the manufacturers are they turned off their internal combustion engine development because of Euro 7 they’re going to go electric and we’ve got a number of car companies doing that and I worry that these manufacturers have’ gone down that route early took their eye off what a customer actually wants from their car and just looked at the regulations and started just focusing on the regulation hoping the customer come too and what we’re seeing in 2024 the customer isn’t quite on the same journey and there’s a mismatch happening and it’s all going a bit wobbly next one there is always been this incentive from the government they got hold of this this is a political ambition to go zero emissions we heard Theresa May first of all do it we’re going to ban uh internal combustion engines in 2035 and then Boris bought it to 2030 and then we’ve had that change at 2035 and they made it attractive for business to buy electric cars to save tax and if you’re a business and you want to save tax well you can save more tax the more expensive car you buy mad scheme nothing to do efficiency or anything and so we ended up with people buying Tans Audi Rons all sorts of expens ensive cars cuz that way you save more tax marvelous and uh that isn’t what the you know the private buyer actually wants he’s got no incentive to save tax you only save tax if you as your employee but as a company you get the savings on the capital AMS 100% right off against tax fantastic and we just fueled a sort of drive towards very expensive great big electric cars and to make them more attractive they added more horsepower and things like that oh dear it didn’t go down very well we’re now seeing almost because of that we’ve ended up with a glut a very big very powerful very expensive when new cars with a private buyer with high interest rates and hearing that the range uh that these cars do isn’t as great as the manufacturers claim they don’t really want them the other one in here the motor tray don’t like Electric cars either they don’t trust them they don’t understand them they’re not sure where the bares are and they bid really low on any electric car that they’re offered they just don’t know what the value is and the car dealer himself he doesn’t want a secondhand electric car really either because he’s got to meet the new government scheme that you got to sell a minimum of 22% of your cars have to be Electric in 2024 and that ramps up to 80% of the market by 2030 if he has a a secondhand electric car on his for court what’s the bar going to buy or he’s not going to buy the new one so yeah we’re getting rid of them we don’t want secondhand electric cars in our dealership we just want to sell new and they’re very high price so now we’re seeing all these discounts coming in how are they going to move these really expensive electric cars car now I’m just going to wind back why we ended up with diesel rather than the PF I thought I was going to buy that BMW x550e but the thing that niggled me about it was I’m not sure about design I struggle with BMW design I’d like a car to look as though it has been designed rather than designed by committee and that’s how these cars look that’s a BMW and so I struggled on that and the other one I struggled on it’s 500 horsepower it’s 4 point something into 60 I don’t need such a ballistic missile as the family thing just to cruise and do the general local runs it’s too powerful for it’s own good if I want to drive something quick I’ve got the toys I just want a sensible efficient family car but no they have to chase horsepower for whatever reason that has made the insurance very expensive it’s just one group off the top group of 50e BMW and I’ve spoken to insurance companies about why has Insurance gone up rocketed up on electric cars and it’s really it’s these high performance 100,000 cars takan the new Lotus Electra those sort of cars are attracting a very high insurance cost and they the insurance companies one they don’t really like electric cars either because they find the having to write them off for less damage than perhaps in a conventional powered car the parts are tricky Tesla in particular they find that it goes in for repair it goes in for an awful long time they’re having to find a courtesy car for a long time uh for simple things so there is a aggro with the electric cars and also they got these family cars of 600 horsepower plus they don’t like the idea everyday use in these really powerful cars the the 900 horsepower Lotus Electra is a nightmare to Insurance Company this is his family car we don’t like insurance so insurance will continue to rack up they say it’s less of an issue with the um cheaper end of the market that are made by mainstream manufacturers the Mercedes the BMWs the Audi’s K because they are repaired by the dealer it just goes through the normal net work for repair so the insurance is not ramping up as quickly on those sort of cars as the more expensive one just while we’re talking about insurance and as the Range Rover Su here I did also speak to the insurance company about that and it’s the previous generation of Range Rover and Range Rover sport where the issues are and the that sort of thing that and I understand new Shake Range Rover and Range Rover Sport are one of the least stolen cars in the UK not the the media General Media are saying that but it is the previous generation so that’s just the story with Range Rover the next thing I want to talk about battery degradation the battery on electric cars and plugin hybrids Fades with time and it was something I noticed on our Range Rover we had previously that the range wasn’t as great on pure electric as it was when it was brand new we had it 2 and a half years but it annoyed me that I couldn’t find out what figure it was I could just see that the range we got when I charged it 100% used to be 30 and it went down to 22 miles and if it was cold it was 19 miles but it frustrated me when I took it to the dealer I said I want to know battery decreation what is the state of the battery in my p400e and they couldn’t tell me they plugged it in and they said we have to keep it for a day and I didn’t have a day spare this is mad that battery degradation is a thing and there’s a guy I started for in in Norway and he’s the only one I can see doing proper tests it’s quite geeky but he is testing to see battery health how long it keeps a charge how quickly it charges what makes a difference to um battery degradation how do it degrade which ones degrade the most his name is beon nand he’s in nor way I’ll put a link up the top and I’ll put a note in the description but he’s also if you go and follow him and look on his his YouTube channel there are then these Exel documents where he’s listed every car is tested and he’ll tell you exactly what the battery degradation is and it’s quite interesting reading what’s on there and which cars are better or worse a 2020 Mercedes 2 years old had lost 8 4% of its battery mostly DC charged another one a Tesla S p45 10 years old amazing only lost 14.8% of its battery life I the capacity of the battery to hold Char so you have 100% say it had 200 mile range you have lost 14.8% you would drop about 30 mile range purely because the battery capacity is there as we know from our iPads our our phones Etc the lium battery doesn’t keep 100% for years and years and years which other ones have I got here now this one’s an interesting K don’t seem to come out very well 7year old Kia lost 24% of its battery another Kia 5 and a half years old 19.6% of its battery loss but that was mostly AC charged 100% are there any more on here there’s another one listen Nissen Leaf there we have that 8 years old used in California had lost 54.3% of its battery huge amount so over half of its battery capacity had gone after eight years but used in California what is interesting with battery degradation is it’s very much down to how you use the car and how hot the climate is if you live in a hot climate battery degradation is much more of a problem than living in cooler climbs so that’s an interesting one to watch and the other one that seems batteries do not like um there was well an Audi rron just two years old it lost 8.9% of its battery but it had mainly been DC fast charged a lot is the note so I it annoyed me intensely that I couldn’t find out how healthy the battery was in my range over I believe in the future that is a critical number motor trade hate electric cars cuz they they’re just unknown with a conventional powered car like this it’s all down to how many miles it’s covered conditioned they can see it they can see the milometer they can see the service record they know precisely what the health of that car is with an electric car not knowing that battery degradation you don’t know if the owners always charged it to 100% on a fast charger and he’s lives actually in the bottom of Spain and it’s sitting in cooking in very hot temperatures you just don’t know this stuff I can’t get over that if you leave a battery charged at 100% in a hot climate then that is the fastest way to degrade your battery and it all depends on um the chemistry of the particular battery in your car but we’re seeing uh cars in performance cars crazy cars where we got these hybrid the Ferrari 296 I’m I’m not laboring in these but that type of car performance with battery assist or the Ferrari um La Ferrari or the McLaren P1 those batteries do not last as long as you’d like them to and I wonder it’s because they’re charged at 100% sitting in warm climates and the battery just disappeared and It’s Tricky we don’t know but it’s this un factor that we don’t know and we haven’t got that readout is why the motor trade don’t like them and why they’re really devaluing any electric car that they’re offered I think the other issue with electric cars and the reluctance to accept them it’s Infamous the story about the charge network is it good enough it’s just an inconvenience it’s such a convenience charging at home absolutely fantastic it’s it’s overnight you it’s cheap there’s you know zero VAT on it and you can get your cheap rates and you have a full car if you require more range than is in a battery charge then you are exposed to the outside charge Network and you have to be a bit more organized it about it and find the charges but then it’s expensive isn’t it I can’t get over that you’re charging at home say 25 30 P current domestic rates yes there are cheaper overnight rates been few hours but if you go to an outside charger it’s 7080 P it’s including vat and it’s such a different price we’re not talking about about one or two P it’s a dramatically different price it is an inconvenience and I feel that an electric car because you have to take longer to reenergize said car then it ought to have a greater range in the first place but you get something like this and it would do 550 if not 600 miles on a on just filling up with one tank of diesel and I remember Jonathan Palmer telling me one time he just bought Mercedes S 320d and he says it’s the ultimate luxury he says I can travel with never having to fill up just once a week or something and he saw it as a luxury feature of that car and I sort of get what it means and that was when it only took like 5 minutes to re-energize said car on an electric car with 200 something mile range it becomes significant inconvenience final bit on running electric car cold temperature running and we sort of ignore this we get that range figure and it’s highly inflated and you think yeah I’m going to get near to that and in the you buy your car in the summer and you you get a little bit less than the ideal range but it’s it’s sort of livable with you get to December and you’re out in Frosty weather and range just plummets it’s what electric cars do and it’s infuriating and it was one of the things that really got us when we had that um Jagger eyepiece that the rain just dis disappears you might think oh it does 220 mies and you get in it and then it’s a cold winter day and you’re going down a Motorway and you’re like 160 miles and you’re having to find a charger it is absolutely infuriating and I noticed car magazine they did a test of three cars I can’t get over how they said oh this wasn’t real world they drove it from Peterborough to Milt and ke they had to do things with photographs around Milton ke up and down and then they did a little bit bucking way and then they they had to fill the cars up and they worked out real world range versus what the claim range but said well this isn’t really real world sorry car magazine that is real world very close to it it was cold and chilly and as a private bar owner of these cars you you mirrored exactly my experience during the winter months we spend quite a lot of time being cold in the UK we go out at evenings so I think the cold weather performance is a real put off for me to buy an electric car it’s infuriating I want that range to be stable if I buy this diesel car the difference between hot weather running and cold weather rainning the range is sort of the same and we need to find a way of the electric cars being the same that Lotus uh electric I had in was all F in the cold and I did get a note back from Lotus and they said yeah we know the cold weather performance is not good we don’t have sort of battery monitor heating of the battery on the car we’re hoping to get it in April so that is why that Electro was particularly bad on Range when I had it but I just say this a £100,000 car that can’t get anywhere near its numbers so yeah that is an issue so all that what needs to change for me or I think everyone for the electric car Revolution to really take place number one I think the EU well UK government need to introduce efficiency scales if you think the reason this car can do near 40 MPG is because the EU from 1992 introduced standards on co2 and that meant that we had to have more economical cars and they were targeted the car manufactur were targeted on making their cars more efficient petrol and Diesel and we ended up with much better MPG than we used to do in the ’90s and it’s the efficiency that is completely gone out the window of electric cars it’s very odd when they introduced this zero emission mandate an EV is zero emission and it we’ve ended up with cars that are not efficient they’re gas guzzlers of electricity because there it’s free it doesn’t matter it’s just electric so that’s why we’ve ended up with these crazy horsepower electric cars huge great things three ton monsters that do one and a half 2 miles per kilowatt hour no I am quite impressed with Tesla because they have the best efficiency they’ve looked at CD Factor the how it goes through the air their Battery Technology is very good they’re lighter genuinely than most of their Rivals and they are more efficient but the other manufacturers have creating these monster great cars with no thought on efficiency their way of actually making a bigger range is just put a bigger battery in it no we’ve got to have a Target on efficiency and two we need to know that battery degradation figure going forward the only way true way to Value an electric car in the marketplace at 3 years old how healthy is the battery on it that number should be as proud on the display on the dash as the miles it’s covered because it’s critical that’s what values an electric car if I saw a car 3 years old and the battery health was at 98% that is worth more than the ones at 74% because it’s being constantly fast charged and comes from a hot climate we need that information on the dash and three I just think the world needs a reality check um it’s EV is not going to transform global warming it’s an element of it I know people get all upset about this but that was the journey we ended up going down this EV route was climate change to reduce our CO2 emissions but we need to realize that Road Transport is 15% of man-made Global CO2 emissions but that includes Road HDs commercial traffic it’s not all private cars that’s everything if you strip out commercial size of Road Transport CO2 emissions buses and motorbikes that sort of thing 7% so 7% of total man-made CO2 emissions are from our cars so even if every single car ended up as electric and every single one was charged from renewable electricity we will have only saved 7% of total CO2 emissions so we just need a reality check on that Mr TOA says 30% of all cars will eventually go electric there are a whole number of ways to get this reduction in CO2 Beyond pure electric cars as you know I’ve got sustained fuel in a I’ve got that’s one way of saving fuel that is a journey e fuels with where that ends up we know about hydrogen yes it’s you say inefficient how you create the hydrogen but the goal has to be this reduction in CO2 if this is the journey everybody wants to be on and while in the UK we have dramatically dropped the amount of fossil fuel whe burning to create our electricity in this country it’s still gas made up 35% of electric production in the UK in 2023 much better than it was Coal’s dramatically down we have a lot of re Renewables but we’ve actually also exported a lot of our industry to China so I don’t think we should be patting ourselves the back quite as hard as the government like to do because we don’t make as much stuff as we used to because we’ve got rid of energy and that saved the CO2 from industry not sure that’s great but I don’t want to get into the big picture stuff but we just got a reality check this this Dash to Electric I do not think is ready for Mass adoption I think there’s technology coming I’m amazed that Toyota BMW Mercedes all saying you wait in two years three years we’re going to have really efficient electric cars out there well as a private bar what on Earth do I want to buy an electric car now for if I know it’s going to be superseded dramatically so in three years time no wonder my electric car if I buy one today is going to be worth half what I’ve paid for it in two years time so that is my reasoning why the electric revolution in the UK for electric cars is stalling private buyers have no incentive to buy these cars I do not think they should incentivize business to buy electric cars in the way they have because they’re actually buying them out the country and it’s not actually buying the right sort of car they’re too expensive efficiency should be the name of the game so there you go there’s a backstory and what I feel about the electric car market into 2024 let’s see what happens in the future it’s always hard to predict the future but I hope you enjoyed this video if you did keep watching keep subscribing more videos coming along very soon