Sales of Electric Cars are tanking

Yes that's true. I was reading a review of an electric motorbike made by a Western firm. They wanted 12 grand for it, and it was nothing special, like the power of an old 250cc. The Chinese thought it was an insult and were saying who has that kind of money and that what we want is a motorbike so the people can afford it. It was basically a trendy rip-off. Similar for Huawei phones. They were not out to make the poshest most expensive phone of the conspicuous consumption economics much like Apple do, and just got a reputation for good, cheap and reliable/does the job fine.

So you’ve chosen to stick with diesel. Fine. 

We do London to Paris about five or six times a year. It also can be a six and a half hour drive, but we usually have a break about a couple of hours down from Calais. If we needed a 30 min charge to 80%, it wouldn’t break the bank or keep us from travelling — autoroute refuelling with essence or gazole is also expensive and wouldn’t make our stop shorter.

We could also charge while waiting at Folkestone, but don’t need to. 

Travelling on to Burgundy hasn’t proved a problem — there’s a private charger we use at relatives in Paris. The same in Burgundy. There seem to be plenty of fast chargers should we need them.

I admit I was a bit apprehensive when we did our first long trip, but no concerns since.

I’ve enjoyed my diesel and petrol cars. Now I’m enjoying an EV. I’ll probably enjoy the next development too…

In China only about one in three people in a main city managed to get a permit to drive. When EVs came along they said anyone who gets one gets automatic entitlement to a permit. I think there might have been some sort of subsidy, but aside form that I can't really see China's government acting any differently to our own. If you go back 10-15 years, do you recall every BBC and Channel 4 bitch was poking their fingers at China calling them the world's biggest polluter. Well of course their government did not take too kindly to the hostility, but they did say at the time they would become more green, and they not only kept to their word, but are the world's largest green energy manufacturers. The figure is their solar power is half the price of what Western firms can produce it at, so now from lagging coal burning people, they are making a big change. You'd think the Western leaders would pat them on the back, but now they are bitching about subsidy and "oversupply"! Never happy, are they?

Not if they don’t want them . Europe is a hot bed of the net zero cult . They will be buying them soon.

The trouble with electric cars (especially those powered by batteries) revolves around energy density. The energy density of oil is huge. ENough energy to take a car 400 miles or more can be put in a tank in minutes. The same amount of electric energy would take hours to put in a battery - except by using fast chargers that are few and far between and would require vast and expensive upgrading of the national grid.

That was all true 100 years ago when ICE cars won out over electric battery powered cars - and it's still true now. Except for a few niche users (who drive low miles and can charge up at home)  BEVs are basically useless.

That's why their sales are flatlining or declining. The market is already saturated as far as BEVs are concerned.

In China's case I can understand. You get rewarded from the people for driving electric  because you save the people's health, so it is a two way exchange. If it were not for health reasons of other people I would agree subsidies would be bad.