A leaked report by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries has forecast that cheap electric cars are at least a decade away. Only 14% of mainstream new cars sold will be electric by 2030, and only 21% 3 years into the next decade; unless you can afford luxury models: 60%-70% of those sales will be EVs.

The cost of EVs will remain high because of the cost of technology and the vast mineral resources required to make battery packs.

Joe Blow will be left behind, with the cheapest electric cars 50% dearer than petrol equivalents.

The report makes a mockery of the political claptrap being bruited about. There is no grasp, it says, of the technical challenges by the "special interest" groups making wild claims about the expected proliferation of EVs.

Just 3 years ago I could buy the battery for most of my remote control planes for A$5. Currently they are A$20 for the cheapest version of the same battery.

I really doubt the EV revolution will grind to a halt once people realise that a second hand EV is virtually valueless as the cost of the replacement which will be needed soon in even a 5 year old car, is greater than the cost to buy a new ICE car.

With the current threat of blackout [load shedding, or demand management to avoid the fact] in the UK due to their stupid windmill policies, will charging of EVs be allowed to take precedence over domestic use of the power? Only an idiot would buy one at the moment.

In fact anyone who has to rely on a vehicle for transport would be well advised to buy & restore an old carburetor car, as at least they can be powered by a wood gas generator, as used during WW11, as our fuel supply, & our electricity supply could be seriously challenged with our new government love affair with renewable, [unreliable] power generation, & out petroleum coming from Singapore.

I remember reading about a strange phenomena in the marketplace of electric cars (specifically Teslas) a few months ago.
Teslas that were a few years old were selling on the second hand market for more than brand new ones. Bizarrely, their cars appreciated in value instead of depreciating rapidly like normal cars and the sellers were making a profit.

The reason why, according to what I was reading, is because the global demand for Teslas (and electric car in general) has exploded over the last few years. So much so that even given the selling price increases for new Teslas (as much as 30% on some models I believe) the demand has vastly outstripped supply and consequently the wait times for a newly ordered cars is now many months (past a year on some models). So some people will pay more for a 2nd hand car in order to have it sooner rather than wait for the production of a new one.

PS: it should be noted that this article was writing about a foreign country's market- no idea what the situation is like in Australia.

Thinkabit in the Australian market my ICE Honda S2000 has appreciated from $30,000 a few years ago to somewhere near $60,000.

You not comparing apples to apples Hasbeen.

Your car is no longer produced so new supply can't increase. So one would naturally expect the price to go up if demand was steady*.

However, Tesla's are still being produced- in fact the rate of production is rapidly increasing. And yet the price of second-hand cars is exceeding that of brand new ones. Nothing like this has ever happened before as far a I know.

In fact I saw a YouTube video a few months ago that said that the number of EV's on order globally was in the low millions (I think it was 2 point something- can't remember exactly) and they claimed that this was more on order than for all other sorts of car at any point in history! (This by-the-way, is why I dead against government subsidies for EV's. It will do nothing but increase the price, there is no demand problem for EV's. Subsidies won't cause more EV's to be sold as the economically illiterate greens imagine it will.)

The switch to EV's is happening right now, not 10 or more years in the future. It's happening whether you like it or not.

Personally, I actually like it, though not mainly for environmental reasons. But because, in my opinion, they're better cars generally. I drove one a few months ago and they're really nice cars to drive- real zippy and quite. Also, they're more convenient: you just plug them in at home and charge overnight. The plugging in bit takes mere seconds as you leave the car, about the same amount of time it takes to plug in a kitchen appliance. No more stuffing around going to the servo to fuel up! (You probably have to charge them a more often than you would go to servo, since most don't travel as far on an overnight charge as comparable ICE cars do on a tank of fuel - but in total you save time: plugging in the car twice at home is still vastly less time than refueling once.)

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There is also typically less maintenance on an EV, since there are no motor oil, oil filter, spark plugs, etc. replacements and way less brake wear (EV's can use regenerative braking- which significantly reduces brake pad/rotor use).

* In addition to this is the fact that you're talking about a long time span on a decades scale while the Telsa situation is spanning just a couple of years. So there is inflation to consider- and inflation accounts for a larger proportion of the price increase of the Honda than for the Tesla.

Dear Hasbeen,

Here is the car for you mate.

It recharges itself from sunlight giving the typical German owner a range of about 15kms per day of range.

In a hot country like Australia that is expected to double to 30kms per day.

All without having to plug it in.

It is very affordable to boot and you can even make money off it by recharging other vehicles.

Bit of a game changer really.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjoHimaqqfY

Thinkabit,
Morgan cars, built in the UK, have enjoyed rhe phenomenon of being worth more second hand than new price for years, they are the only car, afaik, that one can sell the option of buying one from the factory at a profit, price depending on remaining waiting time.

Steele,

Good video; I’ve had a solar panel for some 40 years that still charges batteries, I bought it back when I had a small yacht to keep the batteries charged, it is a deck mounted walk on model, but it hasn’t been walked on for over 30 years.
I could be interested in a Sion.

IsMise: I will admit that for my "Nothing like this has ever happened before..." comment you have found a counter example. However, you're not comparing apples with apples.

The Morgan Motor Company is an obscure boutique manufacture of handmade cars (so obscure I had to look it up: at 850 cars a year it's understandable that I've never heard of it). You can easily believe that a product so small scale, specialised and exclusive could have such a high second hand price. This is common many the products of many fancy artisan hobby scale businesses.

On the other hand Telsa is main stream mass producer. How big is Telsa? Well next year the Telsa model Y will almost certainly be the world's top selling car! In fact this video makes the argument that it is possible that even this year the model Y could be number one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xThx1-KVlnw .

What's most amazing about fact is when you realise that Tesla has only been around for about 20 years (it was incorporated in July 2003). And the model Y was unveiled in March 2019, with first deliveries in March 2020. So if by the end of next year it is the world's best selling car (that is quite a safe bet), then the Model Y will have gone from zero on the roads to best seller in less than 4 years.

As I said above: The EV revolution is happening right now.

The reason second hand EVs, not all, are selling for more than new
is because the manufacturers are not keen on supplying Australia.
It has something to do with the emission rules for IC cars.
Some people can't wait till next December for their new car.

Anyway it does not matter what governments or people say EVs are
coming because the oil companies gave the car manufacturers the drum
that they are getting out of the oil business earlier than expected.
As far as Hasbeen said the vast majority of EVs do not need to be
fully charged every night. A friend of mine charges his about two
nights every week. He drives it to work every day for about 50km.
That is what the majority of cars do each day.

Unfortunately I agree, we will not see a fall in EV prices for quite
some time yet. The situation with the decline in range due to the
battery performance falling is real but an industry development will
happen where independent companies will replace failing cells.
There is a company in Brisbane already doing this for some brands.

Thinkabit,

I was comparing apples with apples, Black Diamond variety with Granny Smith’s.

Is Mise:

You made me smile with that last comment. :)

EVs in Aus are still a joke.

They cost an order of magnitude more than petrol-driven cars and the emissions they cause by using fossil fuel-generated electricity is roughly the same as the petrol cars.

PS

The resale value of an EV car after 5 years is a fraction of the original value.

Morgan is a perfect example of what a car manufacturer can be if they don't chase economies of scale, & build more of their cars than the market wants.

I ordered my mew Morgan +4 in 1961, it arrived just over 12 months later in 1962. It cost 1,444 pounds, a little more than an MG & a little less than a Triumph.I sold it 2 years later for 1000 pounds.

8 years later it was sold for 64,000 dollars & shipped to France.

As with my appreciating Honda S2000, it pays to be more discerning & buy something rather than the run of the mill shopping trolley

shadowminister: "The resale value of an EV car after 5 years is a fraction of the original value."

That's complete BS as far as Teslas are concerned. To prove it, you can go to this webpage : http://www.carsales.com.au/cars/tesla/ , then limit the search to cars before 2017 and sort by price (low-to-high) and see the results. You will find that Tesla's hold their value well compared to other mass produced cars.

Though, I suspect that you won't bother doing what I suggest so I'll give you the first 10 results which happen to be all model S's. Model S was the most commonly newly sold Telsa back then - it was before the model 3 and model Y were released.

Firstly for comparsion, the price for a brand new Model S back in 2015 (according to http://www.drive.com.au/news/tesla-model-s-prices-rise-due-to-australian-currency-struggles/ ):
70D - $106,900
85 - $114,900
85D - $121,000
P85D - $148,000

And now for the search results (these excl Govt charges):
1) 2014 Tesla Model S 85 Auto (191,000 km) - $66,000
2) 2014 Tesla Model S P85 Auto (131,102 km) - $69,990
3) 2014 Tesla Model S 85 Auto (61,563 km) - $74,986
4) 2015 Tesla Model S 85D Auto AWD (69,899 km) - $77,990
5) 2016 Tesla Model S 75 Auto (65,550 km) - $79,000
6) 2014 Tesla Model S 85 Auto (61,176 km) - $79,999
7) 2015 Tesla Model S 85D Auto AWD (124,500 km) - $83,500
8) 2015 Tesla Model S 60 Auto (99,851 km) - $84,500
9) 2014 Tesla Model S P85 Auto (81,000 km) $84,990
10) 2014 Tesla Model S P85 Auto (80,000 km) - $85,000

So that's less than a 50% decrease in 7-to-9 years, that's not a bad for a mass produced car. And remember, we went for the 10 *cheapest* 2nd hand Tesla's available on the web-site!

[Note: of course shadowminister could be pedantic here a say that 1/2 is still a fraction, but it is clear that he is trying to claim that the resale value is a vastly smaller fraction that this.]

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Also, he claims that "They cost an order of magnitude more than petrol-driven cars..." which is simply not true. An order of magnitude is at least 10 times more. But if you compare say, the Kona Elite (petrol 2.0 liter) model at $35,750 to the Kona Electric (standard range) at $58,400 the EV is about 1.6 times more expensive. The reason why it is sensible to compare these cars as an example is because these two are basically the exact same car- except one has an electric engine while the other is ICE.

Did you know that EVs can be charged from a suitable IC powered portable generator?
There are also trailers with battery packs that can be towed as backups; handy apparently when going on long trips where outlets may be a problem.
Also a battery trailer with solar panels gives greater pease of mind.

Thinkabit,

Teslas have a bit of a snob value. I saw 2015 Nissan Leafs going for about $15000 compared to the new price of about $65000.

My friend had an e-type Jag that he bought in the 70s for about $5000 and sold it recently for $250 000

TAB,

In engineering terms, the order of magnitude of base 2 is frequently used.

SM: "In engineering terms, the order of magnitude of base 2 is frequently used.".

But even using this definition the difference in price between the ICE and the Electric Kona is still less than an order of magnitude (log base 2 of 1.6 is less than 1).

SM: "Teslas have a bit of a snob value."

Really? To have snob value you typically need something 1) considered luxurious/exotic, 2) exclusive (ie: rare), 3) preferably with a long established elite brand name history or a brand name that is new and exciting that the market hasn't seen much of yet. But Teslas are mass produced cars the majority of which are just family targeted cars, in fact this year the company could take the title as the manufacturer of the world's most sold car of the year, the Model Y. The Model Y is just a family SUV. Regarding the sales date I gave above, the model S has been on sale for just over a decade so is neither well a established decades old model nor an exciting must have new thing. Or as IsMise puts it- when comparing apples to apples, Teslas are Granny Smiths.

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SM: "I saw 2015 Nissan Leafs going for about $15000 compared to the new price of about $65000."

Firstly, is the $65000 the price for a new Leaf today or the price at the time (you don't say which and I'm curious to know)?.

But anyway:
Here are the top 5 *cheapest* Nissan leaf's from 2016 and 2017 (ie: about 5 years old) currently available for sale on www.carsales.com.au
2017 Nissan LEAF S AZE0 Auto (131,000 km) - $26,888
2016 Nissan LEAF X AZE0 Auto (54,131 km) - $26,999
2017 Nissan LEAF ZE1 Auto (44,544 km) - $39,990
2017 Nissan LEAF S AZE0 Auto (89,000 km) - $23,900
2017 Nissan LEAF ZE1 Auto (64,400 km) - $35,000

Now compare that to the Nissan Pulsar ST hatchback 2017 (I believe the Leaf was based on the Pulsar ST so it makes sense to compare it). This webpage: https://www.carsguide.com.au/nissan/pulsar/price/2017 says that cheapest it has available is $8300 for an ST manual to most expensive available at $17,100 for an ST-L auto.

Unfortunately, I've had a quick look but can't find any websites giving me the original price for a Pulsar ST back in 2017. And since it is no longer available I can't even use a current 2022 price. But looking at these prices above my suspicion is that the Leaf has held it value well when compared to the Pulsar. If you can find a site listing the original Pulsar price then let me know.

"According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned.

Cost is approximately (and varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery. $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 Mpg = $0.10 per mile!
"The gasoline powered car costs about $25,000, while the Volt costs $46,000 plus. So, the [g0vernment] wants loyal [citizens] not to do the math. But, simply pay twice as much for a car, that costs more than seven times as much to run, and takes three times longer to drive across the country!”

For example, the tests fail to account for the fact that when driving, very few of us do so without the radio on, air conditioning, or our heated seats, all of which drain the battery at a faster rate. Similarly, the tests do not consider the weight your new EV might be carrying, say a carload full of kids and all their sporting gear, your vacation luggage, or the trailer you are hauling.

TAB,

The resale price list from Nissan is less friendly to 2nd hand electric cars.

Note that the prices you quoted were asking prices not sale prices.

http://www.carsguide.com.au/nissan/leaf/price

Volvo cars take 9 years of driving before you get net zero emissions. The battery lasts 10 years and to replace the battery costs $14,000 and is more than the value of a ten-year-old Volvo car. Then the new battery takes years before the car produces net zero emissions.