Audi CEO: sale of ICE cars will collapse in 2026

They should, but they don't! Because they are ignorant…

Ignorant of what exactly ?

That's clever alright.

In fairness I dont think there a need for that last sentence for the want of a better word! One of the main reasons people wont buy these cars is they are very compromised owing to their short range. Grand for a 2nd/3rd car if you know you'll never need it for more than 40-60km in any one day during the winter, otherwise they are a complete pita requiring 100% soc every morning and a top up during the day. For eg I dropped kids to school this morning used 7% of L30 range. Then had to do a 30km journey to pick up a item and returned with 17% SOC. I then had to plug in for a couple of hours before heading off again to do some other pick ups etc. Now normally Id get away with a full charge overnight but the problem with short range cars is that they have no capacity to deal with the unexpected which for many is a no no!

But Unkle feels everyone should be driving electric cars because he says so and everyone who doesn't well, they're just ignorant.

So while some people consider it ignorance, others just see a car that doesnt fit their use case. However, IMO used EVs from about 2019/20 onwards will make very good value used options in the years ahead, as even with slightly degraged batteries they will have still have 250km+ range even on a bad day which is far more attractive and flexible that a degraded but cheap 60km range Leaf.

It doesn't even matter if electric suits someones use case, if people don't want them then that's fine too, people should have the choice to buy what car they want and I do know a lot of people are turned off the look both inside and out, a lot of car interiors now look like Sh1t.

As Ive said before early Leafs are one of the main reasons people I know are delaying switching to a used EV. Im sure people will harp on nostalgically about them in the future but really they represent the past in terms of EV motoring. Long live the early Leafs, great cars pity about their batteries

No one I know even when I had the Leaf will tell me today they are interested in EV even seeing me on my 3rd EV a lot of people just don't like all the tech and would rather a car that's cheaper with less annoying tech that goes for both EV and ICE.

Why is this cheap to run BS so entrenched in this country?

Lets wind the clock back to 2006 for a minute, before Gormley and the greens used their green logic to distort the market. Back then I was looking at the cost of ownership with a view to purchase, not the cost to run. I ran the numbers on at least 4 different vehicle makes, using acceleration performance as the main comparative criteria. Back then it was comparing diesel vs petrol.

In every instance the petrol was cheaper to own up to 100-120k km, by which time most people would have changed cars. Why would this be when diesels have far better fuel economy? It was because petrol was cheaper than diesel, which is the natural economic reality of refining oil where you get a lot more petrol than diesel per barrel. But the biggest reason was that diesels are significantly heavier, and so were more expensive to manufacture and so had significantly higher purchase prices - not to mention higher maintainance costs.

Initial purchase price matters a great deal in terms of overall ownership cost. It's also a far larger entry barrier for those on low incomes than running costs.

EV's are todays diesels. They are very heavy and consequentially require a lot of expensive and exotic materials to manufacure and are therefore very expensive to make compared to a petrol ICE. They are a terrible purchase option for those on low incomes who will all have to borrow likely the full amount to purchase. They are cheap to run only if you have a driveway, which in itself might be an uncommon prerequisite for those on low incomes.

There is nothing 'liberating' about an EV being cheap to run when they are so expensive to buy and finance.

Look at this nonsense:

But on a home charger at €0.43, a complete battery top-up would mean
just €0.05/km, slightly more than half the cost of the Astra petrol. If
you could run it like this permanently, you would soon recoup the
additional €3,848 purchase price of the electric model in saved energy
costs alone.

Soon? WTF! That's a difference of €0.04c per km, so 96,200 km to break even. The Irish average annual kilometerage is a bit over 14K, so soon is around 6.8 years.

Call me abnormal, but my definition of soon is a lot shorter than the time for a child to complete their primary education.

As for your ICE costing five times more per km to run claim, a link would be nice.

You only get a cheaper night time rate by paying higher standing charges and higher daytime rates, so you should shift these increased costs over to your EV charging costs.

The reason you’ll need to shift at least 27% is that although NightSaver meters are “free” to install, there is an additional fee added to your standing charge (around €45-€50). As such, you won’t see any benefit from cheaper night rate electricity unless you push for more than 27% of electricity consumption at night.

A NightSaver tariff is a cheaper price of electricity for the nighttime usage. While the daytime unit rate on this tariff is slightly more expensive than a regular daytime rate.

People need choice, but there are those here and in Government who would love nothing more than to remove this choice and remove ICE from sale tomorrow if they could and one big reason is they're big tech heads and feel piston power has no place in 2024 simply because it is old tech. Emissions aside for a moment, there are genuinely people who believe we must have the latest and greatest tech for no other reason than because it's the latest and greatest in their minds and all the tech and screens appeal to many tech heads, those who must have the latest iphone etc.

The technology needs to progress naturally and when it's good enough at a good price people will swap, I did it mostly because I'm nuts at the best of times, I certainly wouldn't have bought a Leaf, an i3 or a much more expensive id3 tour 5 if there weren't some screws loose.

For the majority of people cars are something to transport them and their families and they are just tools nothing more and people need to stop judging others and respect their decisions whatever they buy, banning ICE or whatever cars people want will just force more and more to keep their cars longer and longer.

Of course you won't be able to drive an EV and in 10 years have the same range, you'll be even more limited and fast charging will get slower and slower as the internal resistance of the battery increases, it could even reach the point where acceleration is effected too if it degrades even more.

Add to this the depreciation, my id3 tour 5 has lost a lot on depreciation and the extra range of the larger battery hasn't held any value more than the lower range battery.

Yeah like the rest of them the cheap 9 hr off peak is gone replaced by new more expensive peak rate and only 4 hr EV rate lol.

What is a low income salary these days 40 k and below ?

Anyway, ICE doesn't cost hundreds a year to maintain if driving 15k kms or less, if I were a low income car buyer with a family, mortgage, bills, my concerns would be the cost to buy and the cars ability to bring me anywhere I wanted without restriction that being range and recharge times.

MY missus has a Opel Cross country as a courtesy car while the Outlander waits for clutch slave cylinder and clutch replacement, the bings and bongs infuriate her as the car constantly beeps at here to keep in lane despite here being in lane, she said she'd definitely not buy a modern car if this is what they do, many think the same, tech is grand and all until it becomes annoying.