And not that Iam a petrolhead to start with, but:
And as if that were not challenging enough, he is also charged with navigating Aston Martin’s transition to electric propulsion while maintaining its appeal to luxury car buyers who are loath to wave goodbye to the internal combustion engine.
That task just got harder after the Government said it would go ahead with plans to bring forward a ban on new petrol and diesel cars by five years to 2030. That’s just four years after Aston Martin plans to put its first electric model to market.
The government are being insane, of course.
However, and this is tentative here as I’m not a petrolhead, despite having mused a little about thinking about an old version of something like one of these.
I can, roughly, see an electric Rolls or Bentley working. They are, sa far as I get it, a living room – possibly a salon, or drawing room even – on wheels. The aim is to whick you somewhere in luxury. It’s entirely possible that an EV does this better than an ICE. The luxury, no noise, 3 tonnes of housing on wheels.
But an Aston? I thought not just part of but the point was 12 cylinders of roaring testosterone? The noise being a large, if not the, point? So how does that work with an EV?
Now, obviously, I could be wrong with this. But of the varied car brands that will be able to make the move to EV I’d have thought Aston would be one of, if not the, which would fuind it most difficult?
You get a lot more acceleration with an EV.
Astons were always primarily performance cars, so as far electric’s concerned, you should get plenty of that. As WB says, sub 3 second 0-60s should be a shoo-in. But for Aston buyers, the performance is really the bulge in the Calvin Klein underpants. Very few of them are capable of using the performance. As the numbers of these sorts of machines wrapped around various bits of geography often indicate.
Like putting electric in Rollers, it depends whether they work with the life style. Someone paying that sort of money for image doesn’t particularly want to be seen queueing for a recharging point in a service area on the M25.
I’m no petrolhead either but those who are seem to care more about noise and handling than acceleration.
t he Government said it would go ahead with plans to bring forward a ban on new petrol and diesel cars by five years to 2030
I must say the shitshow is accelerating remarkably under the new government. Makes a Tesla Plaid look sluggish. Car manufacturers are going to have to restrict ICE sales this year to meet their EV targets. EVs are still no use to anyone without a drive (more than 7 million households) and still will be in 2030.
I rather like EVs, especially the new black cabs, but no amount of legislation is going to make them work for everyone within a decade.
Like Marius, I am finding this wonderfully entertaining. It’s like a giant game of chicken. They pursue a 2030 phase out of ICE vehicles, car sales will fall off a cliff. For probably a majority of vehicle users electrics aren’t yet practical. And I doubt they ever will be. The limits for battery capacity & charging rates have been hit. And if they hadn’t, the infrastructure need for charging isn’t going to be available for 2050, let alone 2030.
I think most people forget (or don’t know) that the average car journey in the UK is less than 5 miles – taking the kids to school, going shopping on the edge of town, etc. For that a little electric runabout is fine and only needs charging about once a week, and cheap Chinese EVs would be perfect if it wasn’t for governments slapping tariffs on them.
The problem for most people comes when you want to go on holiday or visit distant relatives. The little runabout is simply not up to that, so you need a second car which is an extra expense even before the EV premium. The same in spades for those who commute long distances and can’t use railways.
Reps and the like who travel long distances as part of the job can be dealt with by fleet cars, and petrol heads are a pretty small (if very noisy) minority. As EVs have to make a noise for safety, just give them ones with recorded Lamborghini (or F1) noises.
One of my sons hired an EV while on holiday. It’s a completely different experience to driving a proper car. No aircon. Pray the meter is more accurate than a petrol gauge. Get to your charging point in plenty of time because you don’t know when you can plug in. Take a good book or make sure your laptop has plenty of charge unless you can find a rapid charging point in which case a Sunday paper or magazine might occupy you for a couple of hours.
And that’s before there are a few hundred thousand other drivers competing with you. Government ministers obviously forsee a future where they’ll be in power for ever (quite likely with this lot making every other party illegal) and always have Plodcar reserving their space. Or, again with this lot, just putting two fingers up and saying “we’re very important so we need special cars.
Reps and the like who travel long distances as part of the job can be dealt with by fleet cars,
How the hell would that work? They travel from home to some sort of depot where they pick up their “fleet car” to travel to their appointment. Then return it to the depot before going home. You could be adding 2-3 hours to the working day. They get paid for it?
I have driven various Prius hybrids for around 15 years. All of them non-plugin. They have all been good for long distance trips. If I had a plugin model, it would be great for the short trips that make up most of my motoring now.
“But an Aston? I thought not just part of but the point was 12 cylinders of roaring testosterone? The noise being a large, if not the, point? So how does that work with an EV?”
An audio recording and a couple of high-quality speakers under the car, linked to the accelerator.
The solution is simple. Every EV Aston comes with a small boy to make racing car noises for you.
Lotus make an electric SUV, the Eletre. Sub three seconds to 60, 165mph top speed. Only £90k to you guvnor. Wouldn’t have one as a gift.
@BiS: “How the hell would that work? ”
Same as it does now. They have a company fleet car which they take home. You don’t think reps drive their own cars do you?
AtC @ 8.52, exactly the same problem as with electricity generation. You can’t just build and maintain bird choppers, you have to also build and maintain/ gas / oil / nuke/ whatever, for when the wind can’t do the job.
EV/Renewable energy. So cheap you have to pay twice.
Western Bloke: And a quartz watch keeps better time. But all the super-expensive ones are mechanical. People pay for the engineering, to gaze in wonder at a tourbillon, and tell all their rich mates that it’s got one (even if they aren’t entirely sure what it does).
And, as Tim says, it’s the same with Aston. Hand-built V8s and 12s are the whole point. An electric Lotus might make sense since, they’ve never really been about the drivetrain, but Astons? You might as well have Marco Pierre-White come round to pop your pizza in the microwave.
Looks like EVs have just over 8% of the market in Australia now (latest figures) A couple I know have a Tesla3 and aTesla Y. They also have solar panels, very common in Australia, and a Tesla battery. They are very happy with the set up, do trips away most weekends, I am not saying this is the way of the future, who knows. China is about 50% AEV at the moment, I think.
We are sticking with our petrol Subaru, ideal for us for local use, and frequent 1000 k weekend trips to see a grandkid. People have different requirements, each to his own.
Valet charging could be the next motoring status symbol for an AM owner.
decnine
I’d agree that if you want an EV (I don’t!!) your best bet is a plug-in hybrid.
Easy and quick to refuel, plenty of range. Indeed it’s almost as good as a ICE.
@AtC
You seem to be suggesting some sort of solution to the charging problem. But you obviously aren’t. Your company rep still has to factor in charging the car to get to appointments. Do you think all company reps live in rabbit hutches on developments? I can assure you they don’t. Half of them will be street parking without charging facilities. So who pays them for the time spent looking for a charging point they can use & waiting for the charge?
All milk float is a dead end. A tunnel (quite short I suspect) blocked at the end and no amount of subsidy or hindrance to real cars will change this.
Providing an adequate charging infrastructure, even for a tenth of the cars currently on the road, is a truly formidable challenge with actual practical sources of power. For probably 1% of cars with unusables is basically impossible! (look at the struggle now for the handful that actually try to use non-home chargers!)
No imaginable way is any improvement possible by 2030, 2035 or any other arbitrarily chosen date.
Charging points are just a Potemkin village. There is no intention of even dreaming of increasing the actual real power network (although this will have to be done at some point).
Please somebody, announce a UK factory is closing and make it clear why!
There are really only two points that matter.
(i) Liquid hydrocarbons are almost perfect transport fuels.
(ii) As CP Snow said, maybe a little more diplomatically, anyone who hasn’t mastered the Second Law of Thermodynamics and its consequences is essentially uneducated.
Is there a betting shop where I can guess which of their mad agenda goes first in a desperate attempt to regain some popularity / avoid being hung from a lamppost?
Trans?
Locking up the white working class?
Islamophobia?
EVs?
Onshore windmills?
4 star hotels for illegal immigrants?
Dumbing down schools and universities?
etc
etc
I do occasional exam invigilation at a local college. Its full of woke messaging. One message proudly displayed is that there are now more charging points than petrol stations. What it doesnt say is that whilst one ev might be using one charging point for hours on end, a petrol station in that time could have filled up hundreds of cars if it has multiple pumps. I suppose the students (some of whom seem thick as mince) will lap up this rubbish.
Jim itA
You have more or less proved the point, I guess. Houses in Australia tend to be detached with drives and garages and your friends have two cars .
Solar panels are a good idea in Oz, because that fiery thing in the sky appears more often than up here.Horses for courses as ever.
I would probably make an ideal EV driver, most of my journeys are short and I would prefer to travel by train for longer ones. I could, with a bit of effort install a charging point for my house, probably need planning permission though.
I just don’t trust them and their longevity.
We can be sure the 2030 ban isn’t going to happen*. Obviously it physically cannot happen, and if the government response to that is to threaten a massive reduction in car ownership – well, the silly twats will be up for reelection just before it all comes to a head.
* They might fudge it by lowering their standard of what constitutes a “zero emission” vehicle to anything with some level of hybrid electic drive.
They might fudge it by lowering their standard of what constitutes a “zero emission” vehicle to anything with some level of hybrid electic drive.
You’re already too late for that. The design cycle on a completely new car range is about 5 or 6 years from specification to coming off the production line. It’s not going to just be a case bolting a hybrid drive onto an existing platform.
BiS,
I assume like some medieval horse changing post.
Drive the fleet car until the battery starts to go, then pull into a depot, conveniently located off the motorway outside town and swap to a fully charged vehicle to continue the journey.
Car with a flat battery is plugged in to charge for the next rep to come along.
@Philip. I assume the green stuff will go first, when reality strikes. All it needs is a cold winter and no wind for a couple of weeks.
However, it’s the policy supported by the greatest number of angry lunatics so I don’t see how they can really get out of it.
@ Simon Neale.
And some smartass working out the Haxx to (remotely) change that sound to something…. Interesting…. will appear in 3….2…1…..
If ever there was a target for a rather innocent prank…… 3:)
And yes, fully aware that if you can do that, you can also hold the whole car hostage if you should choose to do so.
Surprised that hasn’t happened yet. Possibly because the potential market is still too small…
Like Linux-based rigs not being interesting for hackers, until Android. ( And it turning out Linux wasn’t all that rugged as the Beards maintained, because they had always ignored the Obscurity factor…)
@Daniel If I were you, I’d take my idea to one of the big car hire car companies. At least they already have existing national depot coverage, so don’t have to create it from scratch. Might find a use for all those EV’s they’ve got on their fleets no one wants to hire.
Rüchsprung durch Technik
Rücksprung
If they still have any, of course. I noticed when trying to hire a car recently, there was only model of EV available in this area with just one company. (& damned expensive the day rate was). Don’t how many individual vehicles were available. Gives a good idea how popular EVs actually are with the public.
You have to figure out the true goals before you critique them.
Do they wish to get us all into electric cars? Or, is it that they wish to get as many of us as possible OUT of ICE cars?
Those of us with resources will find a way to afford and charge the EV’s, if they are the only automotive choice.
Those of us without resources will live in 15-minute cities, take buses or walk, and accept our new feudal status.
EU has already put in an exemption for ICE that uses synthetic fuel (carbon capture?) because of pressure from Germany and Italy so the ban is effectively useless there
@moqifen – “there are now more charging points than petrol stations”
It would be a stronger point if it was that there were more charging points than petrol pumps. But since any 13A socket can be a charging point if you have a long enough cable, it’s a pretty silly comparison anyway.
@bobby b
You have to figure out the true goals before you critique them.
Do they wish to get us all into electric cars? Or, is it that they wish to get as many of us as possible OUT of ICE cars?
Those of us with resources will find a way to afford and charge the EV’s, if they are the only automotive choice.
Those of us without resources will live in 15-minute cities, take buses or walk, and accept our new feudal status.
Precisely. I love people telling me that the government is going to drop all of its green plans because of the unpopularity they will engender, as opposed to building vast new
campsjails to keep the wrongthinkers in.There has been a vast paradigm shift across the western world and it continues to amaze and amuse me that even the intelligent, well-informed and sceptical people who read this blog haven’t realised that yet,
Politics is over. Elections are over. Your MPs don’t give a shit, the ministers even less.
1. Lots of sports cars do a lot to muffle the noise inside the car. No one’s driving an Aston for the engine noise.
2. EV’s actually make some sense for a high-end sports car and the sort of people that buy high-end sports cars – lots of acceleration across the speed band and you only drive it for an hour on Saturday afternoon anyway;) Plus, most of these people are going to be old (hence only driving it on Saturday afternoon) and so the massive amount of electronics and computer control are a bonus to them. They just have to press the ‘go button’ and that’s it. Its why 4-cylinder automatic transmission Mustangs are top-sellers.
@Agammamon
1. Lots of sports cars do a lot to muffle the noise inside the car. No one’s driving an Aston for the engine noise.
The engine noise isn’t for the benefit of the driver.