As many of you are likely aware, earlier this week the BBC came out with a report that strongly suggested electric cars would be more expensive to operate than gas cars in the long run, mostly because they would depreciate (lose their resale value) much more quickly than gas cars. That article has generated a lot of debate on the internet, but I stayed away from it initially because it seemed like such a strange report due to the fact that it's anybody's guess what kind of resale value EVs will have.
So it was refreshing to find out that today, British TV personality and EV enthusiast Robert Llewellyn, released a perfectly salient counterpoint to the BBC article in his Fully Charged video series (you can watch the whole video below).
As Llewellyn points out, Mitsubishi said the i-MiEV "could" depreciate in value quicker than a petrol vehicle. "They don't know, because they haven't made very many of them, and they haven't sold any of them, and no one has bought a second-hand one," added Llewellyn. "It could also be the case, with just as much likelihood, that the resale value of [the i-MiEV] is way, way higher, because there is so much less to go wrong on them." So, why did the BBC produce this report without bringing up that all-important fact?
"It is peculiar that there is a very, very noticeable anti-electric car bias within the BBC and it manifests itself in many different places," said Llewellyn. But Llewellyn is perplexed about what is based on. The biggest part of the calculations the BBC did to tell you that driving an electric car in the long run will cost you more than a gas car is the resale value, but that value is based on a complete guess.
As Llewellyn remarked, "Who knows what a car like this will sell for in 5 or 10 years time?," adding there are two things that are for sure in the next 10 years: fossil fuels will get rarer and batteries will get smaller, cheaper and lighter and will last longer. When considering those factors, the guess at the resale value of an EV in 5 or 10 years becomes much more positive, but the BBC didn't take those factors into consideration. "They were judging it on the current costs of the current batteries and the current costs of fossil fuels," said Llewellyn. "So the total entirety of that argument is completely spurious."
Fully Charged takes on the BBC's "anti-electric car bias."
"What essentially has happened is that Mitsubishi has said to the press 'Our car is a bit rubbish, we don't think anyone should buy them because they won't be worth anything after a few years and we'll lose loads of money and our car isn't as good as a Fiat'," concluded Llewellyn. "Have you ever heard of a motor manufacturer saying anything like that? The only reason they are saying anything like that is to try and... undermine the enormous success of the LEAF."
Llewellyn thinks Mitsubishi is saying that 'Our car is rubbish and so is theirs' because Nissan is so far out ahead of Mitsubishi—only a tiny percent of their manufacturing produces EVs and they have no plans to ramp up like Nissan—that it appears the company is trying to combat Nissan by reducing the appeal of a competing product. But the reason why the BBC is so intent on calling electric cars worthless is still a mystery.
Reminds me a tiny bit of the "study" that showed that a Hummer was more environmentally friendly than the Prius. Everything was predicated on a 300k mile life of a Hummer (you, know, a REAL car) and just 100k miles for a Prius (so you throw it away at that point, and have to buy three of them to get the same life as the one Hummer).
After reading and watching the EV stuff presented here... I'm still at a loss...