Volvo to cease production of diesel cars in a few months (opens in new tab)

EVs will continue to get cheaper, faster, as global auto manufacturers scale up their production. If you can take a bus, a train, or an ebike, definitely do that. But consumers will not stop buying cars (global light vehicle market is ~83M units/annually), so sell them EVs, making them as inexpensive and quickly as possible. China EV sales are already at 9M units/year, more than half total US light vehicle sales in 2022 (~14M units).

TLDR Volume is misleading, pay attention to velocity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects

https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline

https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-...

https://www.reuters.com/technology/ev-energy-storage-battery...

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/used-ev-prices-are-collapsing...

And the cost of (often obligatory, in places like the USA) private transportation is almost like a crony capitalist regressive tax. It disproportionately harms the purchasing power of working-class individuals. Before I broke into the middle class, it was absolutely infuriating how much of my hard-earned money I had to spend on owning, maintaining, and operating my car. But there was no way around it, because the city I lived in was structured such that not owning a car was tantamount to not even having a chance at improving my economic opportunity. The sooner governments are forced to stop making infrastructure decisions that further siphon money out of the pockets of individuals and into the pockets of big automakers and oil companies, the better.

https://youtu.be/uxoRrdE9efk?t=355

Plus, China's middle class has been gobbling up the BYD Qin and Song EVs.

> Sales of EVs surpass sales of diesel models for the first time in Europe, with battery-electrics holding a 15.1% share of the market, while diesels hold 13.4%. (Audi e-tron GT pictured above.)

> Plug-in hybrids have seen gains and losses over time in different European countries, but hold 7.9% market share on the continent overall.

> The Tesla Model Y has been Europe's best-selling model in any vehicle category in the first six months of 2023.

For ic there's the tipping point where the engine is common enough that 'enough' fuel forecourts have the fuel. There's the tipping point where the fuel is in every forecourt.

For EVs there's the tipping point where it becomes normalised, not something that just sandal wearers use. There's the TCO tipping point, there's the purchase price parity tipping point, there's the tipping point where there are 'enough' chargers, there's the tipping point where chargers are everywhere.

I don't object to all these being combined into one grand tipping point, they're all fuzzy anyway.

But I don't think you can put an exact figure on it, and I also don't think tipping point implies it will completely take over the market.

For a start, diesel and petrol both come from oil, using more of one is going to increase supply of the other so if it isn't used prices will fall.

Second petrol and diesel have different strengths and weaknesses, which is why you don't tend to see petrol lorries or diesel scooters.

I think an ev tipping point has more potential to be self reinforcing though. As less of the electorate has ic cars, it's more politically acceptable to increase taxes on it. People will become less accepting of the externalities of IC cars, and ultimately you don't have petrol / diesel piped to your house so as the market shrinks, finding fuel is going to become harder.

I’m so glad you said this. No one understands how big an issue this is. They only have to look at historical examples like how motor vehicles failed to establish as a market because no carriage workers knew how to work on engines

I know mechanics, they have been on EV training courses. The dealerships clearly have trained mechanics working on the EVs they've been selling for years.

I live in the countryside, I see plenty of EVs. Range anxiety is only for people doing long distance 200+ mile journeys every day, as those that commute in the suburbs day to day have the common (and financial) sense to charge at home and leave every morning with a 'full tank'

Judging from your prose, admittedly, I suspect you are North American and as such have a distinctly different worldview from mine.

I suspect this will be relatively easy to build out. They installed them in my neighbourhood over a few weeks. There is already electricity supply to residential streets, so all that's required is installing chargers. Which can be quite simple if they're not fast chargers.

I've also seen people simply running extension cables out of their houses. Which isn't ideal, but it works.

No. Europe's charging infrastructure is much superior to North America's. And the EU has a plan to make it better still:

https://www.fleeteurope.com/en/new-energies/europe/article/f...

Meanwhile, Americans are already killing each other over EV charging:

https://electrek.co/2023/05/03/tesla-driver-dies-fatal-shoot...

It's a cultural thing.

Exactly. As long as you don't drive, and have lots of disposable income, EVs are great.

Europe is completely different, but I get the feeling the charging infrastructure isn't so bad throughout most of Europe.

At some point, the need for something new, whether it's e-fuels or hydrogen or whatever, will become undeniable. We simply won't be building millions of charging stations and place them at every parking spot. If adblue is inconvenient enough to stop diesel cars, then the charging problem will be even more fatal. We must have something that refuels like a conventional car, period.

Or how about the fact that the regulations enforcing use of def cause you to be unable to use your vehicle after 500 miles of it detecting any kind of system fault. So imagine you are 10 minutes into a multi-hundred mile drive and an emissions fault pops up. By the time you get home you have about 120 miles of driving before you will not be able to start your vehicle. Now, you call the 2 dealers within 100 miles and due to a thing called the pandemic the soonest you can get a service appointment is over a month out.

AdBlue is enough of a pain in the ass that it is the reason I had to buy a second car. How's that for saving the environment.

God forbid you have a sensor problem with the SCR system since your modern diesel is programmed to be crippled if it reads there's no AdBlue in the tank. We had a car come in once (a Citroen or Renault I believe, I remember it was some sort of Frenchie) that needed its rear left fender to be removed to replace the damn thing and I'm 100% sure devils designed the way everything attached together.

    EU's war on personal transportation continues.

I can say this with some certainty as I bought a diesel car 16 years ago partly because it would be cheaper.