Audi CEO: sale of ICE cars will collapse in 2026

The youngest of which is 11 years old and the oldest is 12. There's another 13 year old that I suspect will drop below the 4k mark soon enough, but what's important to note is these cars are very much close to the first introduction of BEVs in Ireland. It's very hard to find stats on BEV sales back then, but as an indicative figure, there were 58 sold in 2013. 2012 was a better year, but still only 192 by November that year. So those five cars represent roughly 5 out of a total of 250 or 2%.

Using the same criteria <€4k (2012-2013) petrol and diesel cars, you get 646 cars from a total car sales from those years of ~140k it would work out to 0.5%.

So although you can say that the stock of reasonably priced second car BEVs is tiny, it represents a far higher percentage of the new stock of the time compared to ICE vehicles. So survival rate is potentially better by a factor of 4.

This is just a snapshot and the small numbers involved make this a very fuzzy stat. But nonetheless interesting. Also worth noting that if you just look for BEVs from those years without a price cap, you get 20 (8%). A similar exercise with petrol and diesel you get 6.9k (4.7%).

Disinformation works. You only have to look at the last referendum campaign to see that. Intelligent people arguing in the weeds about the difference between "strive" and "endeavour". As I said to one, strive means you'll break a sweat, endeavour means you'll get to it after lunch. An entirely pointless distinction in the greater scheme of things, but it got people going down a rabbit hole. The same with EVs, there's been one distraction after another, the latest being "some other technology just over the horizon that will make EV technology redundant". All to keep the oil wells pumping.

Anyway, I found that exercise interesting. Would be great if we could get a better picture of just how many of that era of BEVs has survived to this day.

and yet there are solar panels appearing on every second house. It’s hard to understand what’s going on with EVs.

Arguably people would save a lot more switching to EV. Especially us country folk with high mileage.

Another one of my neighbours finally bought an EV recently while other neighbours have also upgraded from PHEV to EV last year. These neighbours are a retired couple, hardly ever go anywhere further than 50 km from home and they also have a second car, an ICE. They had already figured out that an EV would work them well but still wanted to have a chat with me. I reaffirmed them that it was good fit for their usage case and that they should just get a charging station with a fixed charging cable installed.

They scrapped a well used 2007 1.6 petrol after owning it for about 15 years. I suspect their new 2 yo e208 will serve them as well into 2030's. Fingers crossed. They could have bought a cheaper EV still but as they always keep a car for a very long time this almost new EV made sense really.

Another neighbour was very interested in PV already last year. He had a chat with me about how the EV batteries will only last for a short time and will cost tens of k€ to replace but that next year there will be be a really cheap EV batteries. I rebutted saying that we have a 8 yo second EV that has well over 100k on a clock and it still has the same range as our 9 year old first EV had when it was brand new. And the other more modern EV we have is still at 95% SOH after 3 years and 75k and will probably last for 20 years and 300000 km before the range drops too much. I think that got him thinking but we shall see.

My point is that even though the idea of an EV as a second car is desirable the market for them doesn't exist right now.

It will be when the 2019/2020 become available on the second hand market at reasonable prices that there might be greater take-up, but that will still be a few years away.

I'd love an EV as a second car but there is only 1 car on all of DD within my budget, compared to a multitude of ICEs.

I agree that they suit certain use cases, especially people looking for a cheap second car in a reasonably urban setting. My young lad is looking to get a car and Ive offerred him the Leaf as a starter and he rather eloquently responded "Fcuk no, sure where could I go in that!!" 😂 In fairness he's been caught out on more that a few occasions in the past where the other car was away and the Leaf didnt have enough range to get to where he wanted to be dropped.

Friends of mine drove from Ireland to France to Slovakia in their EV last summer, no issues.

If I could afford to buy a new car tomorrow I'd buy an all electric car without hisitation. I bought a plug in hybrid for herself a year and a half ago or so and I regret it - once the electric power is gone you are lugging round dead weight. Wish we'd gone fully electric on that one.

The same ones you're on that has you miss this presumably: "This is just a snapshot and the small numbers involved make this a very fuzzy stat."