ARE ELECTRIC CARS JUST DISPOSABLE RUBBISH?
Electric cars just disposable Rubbish it’s something that’s said quite a lot in various comments whether it be on my videos or on news articles or basically most places EVS being discussed online people will pipe up with oh these electric cars are just disposable rubbish they’re not built to last and you’ll be scrapping them by the
Time they’re 3 years old 5 years old delete as appropriate these claims are normally just Shrugged off and dismissed as the rantings of an idiot at the end of the day most modern EVS come with long battery warranties 8 years and 100,000 miles being sort of typical and
Very little attention is paid to people that are saying oh you’ll be scrapping after a couple of years you’ll be scrapping after three years they’ll barely last all that stuff because let’s be honest there just isn’t that much truth in it however it’s quite a different ult thing to prove it’s quite
Easy to say well the manufacturers will stand behind the warranty for a long period of time therefore they must have confidence but is there actually any data we can use to back that up and can we actually prove whether or not EVS are or are not as long lasting as the petrol
Or diesel equivalents well you may have heard of a website called how many left it uses dvla registration data to show you as the name suggests how many of a given Mak model are still on the road it’s often used by classic car enthusiasts so they can be saying like
Oh I have the one of three of these that are left on the road in this exact spec and people get really excited about that kind of thing if they think they’ve got something that’s really really rare uh and that is mostly what how many lefts
Data tends to be used for I’ve used it before myself to show that how many Camis are on the road for example uh so for people are interested in how many of a certain model actually sold it can also be useful for that but I also think
It can be used to look at how some EV models are fairing up and how that might well compare to a petrol or diesel car so uh I’ve done this for a few different models and I’ll put the screenshots from how many left up on the screen so you
Can see uh but obviously you can go and look them up yourself as well and basically it will log for a given make and model exactly as it appears on the registration document how many are currently taxed how many are sored and you can also see how many were
Registered in a given year so let’s start then with the BMW i3 very popular EV own one myself and it is uh one that was around in 2014 cuz we were swamped with EV models now but there weren’t actually that many out there if you
Wanted to buy an EV in 2014 so we were a little bit restricted and what we can look at but the BMW i3 was a solid Choice it’s just starting to appear on the market then 551 i3s and that is just the one that is registered as BMW I3 so that’s not the
Range extender model that’s the normal just battery only model 551 of those were registered in 2014 today or based on the most up-to-date stats that how many left have there’s a little bit of a lag in them getting the data from dvla usually around a quarter or so 456 of
Those are taxed and on the road 14 are Sor so that means a you have disappeared and are no longer registered now a car will be no longer registered for a couple of reasons generally either it was written off by an insurance company and scrapped because the damage was too
Great for it to return to the road normally if you get things are like a a cat B right off Etc they’re stripped for parts and then they’re scrapped uh or it was uneconomical to repair and so somebody scrapped it you know it suffered a mechanical or electrical
Failure and it was sent to a scrapyard for that reason therefore it is no longer registered and no longer on the road it used to be a little bit muddier than that so when you start looking at Old much older cars a lot of cars were never actually properly scrapped and
Therefore they stay sort of on the system and tend to show up as either Sor or untaxed because they were never actually issu with a significant of Destruction and and removed from the dvla registers but today it is much much more likely that a scrapped car will
Just not appear as a registered car because they’re a lot more strict these days on issuing a certificate of Destruction and actually removing it from the register so 85.2% of BMW i3s that were registered in 2014 are still registered today and 82.7% of those are taxed and therefore
It’s fair to say they are still on the road the ones that are Sor I think we can say could have something wrong with them and that’s why they’re laid up and they’re saor and they’re not on the road but the ones that are taxed it’s very
Very likely they are are still driving around the Tesla Model S another popular EV model that burst onto the scene in 2014 719 of those were registered in 2014 607 of them are taxed and 11 are Sor so 85.9% of them are still registered and
84.4% of them are still on the road and then we take a look at the Zoe another really common EV model that you would find in 2014 alongside the leaf it was probably one of the sort of Best Selling in terms of volume there’s quite a lot
Of different Zoe models in terms of trim levels and all that stuff and this is where how many left gets a little bit complicated because every one of those has its own entry on the database because that’s what it says on the V5 but the most common zoy is the dynamic
Intense Auto is what it says on the V5 and 840 of those were registered in 2014 today 709 of them are taxed and 24 are sored that means 87.2% of those are still registered and 84.4% of them are still taxed and on the road exactly the same percentage of
Taxed and on the road as the Tesla Model S which is quite interesting when you consider the difference in price now everyone’s favorite EV the Nissan Leaf is a little bit of an outlier 2,300 Nissan Leaf asenta where registered in 2014 and that is down to
1,600 taxed and 57 sa so 72% of them are still registered and 69.5% of them are still actively on the road that is a bigger drop and you know so we’ve got the I3 and the Tesla Model S and the Zoe all very very similar in
How many are still on the road whereas the leaf I would say is a little bit of an outlier and we’ve seen a sharp drop in those suggesting more Leafs are scrapped now do they cost more to repair if they’re crashed or more likely are they suffering from battery issues with
That them having the weaker battery chemistry and the sort of lack of cooling and stuff that the early leaves have well all leaves have a lack of cooling but the earlier ones obviously much more susceptible to degradation and more likely to have been scrapped because people don’t want to live with
Them anymore and also see there is a decent amount of scrap value and even a a degraded battery therefore it could be be economically not viable to keep going with it but I am quite surprised that the leaf represents quite a big drop versus those other
Three so now those numbers are all well and good we reckon on average 85% of 2014 registered EVS are still on the road if we think about the I3 the Tesla more less and the zoy but the leaf is definitely a little bit of an outlier but none of this really means anything
Unless we compare to internal combustion cars now comparing these is easier said than done because as I said the entries and how many left are based on the exact make model and sort full model name that is registered when you look at V5 and if you look up something like a Ford Focus
Which obviously has been around for a long long time has many many many different model variations and special editions and all that stuff there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of entries for them same with the Vox asra same with other a common volume internal combustion cars there’s
Absolutely loads of them one day we’ll be in the same position with EVS but it it took a bit more searching to find ones where I could see a considerable number of them were registered in 2014 because that is what we’re comparing but we did managed to do that
So a Nissan kashai asenta DCI probably at the time a reasonable alternative to the leaf if you’re in a Nissan dealership 1900 of those were registered in 2014 and 1,600 of those are still taxed with 16 saor that means that 85% of them are still registered and 84.2%
Of them are still actively taxed and on the road and that sounds very familiar and over with the Ford Focus 8,900 Ford Focus ztec TDCI were registered in 2014 7,400 of them are still taxed and 8 or sa yep you guessed it yep you guessed it 85.3% of them are still registered and
83.1% of them are still actively taxed and being used on the road so Nissan kashai diesel Ford Focus diesel okay that’s only two trim levels but I there’ll be no reason why a cash Kai a center would be scrapped more often than another model or a for Focus ztec TDCI
Would be more likely to be on the road than an equivalent focus with a different trim level so I think that is a fair comparison and they’re broadly the same as the I3 the Tesla Model S and the Renault Zoe roughly 85% of them are still on the road and
Therefore apart from Leaf which I think the shortcomings of the this and leaf are well known and well understood it there is no direct link between a car being an EV and being less likely to still be on the road after 10 years so I think you need to look a bit
Closer when people say they’re just disposable and they’ll never last and you’ll be scrapping them after 5 years and all this stuff there is just no proof of that we’ve seen three out of four models that were commonly available in 2014 are still on the road at the same
Rate as two very common diesel cars therefore I there is no correlation between being an EV and it being more likely to be scrapped due to Mechanical failure vast majority of stuff being sold today brand new in 2024 has significantly different battery management and Cooling and all that
Stuff that the leaf didn’t have at the time so therefore if you’re saying today you shouldn’t buy a brand new EV because it will be scrapped after 5 years 6 years 10 years then even looking at 2014’s cars versus today suggest that that is not correct and that it’s no
More likely to to suffer an early end than any other car 15% roughly of the focused diesels and the kashai Diesels that we we’re looking at here are scrapped and they’re no longer registered and that again will be accident damage but it will also be gross mechanical failure you know if a
Seven eight NY old car suffers catastrophic engine failure well not everyone’s going to bdge in a secondhand engine from a scrap car and all that they’re going to get the massive repair quote from the dealer to actually fix it properly and say sorry scrap it or buy
Something else I and I have no reason to believe that that’s happening more or less often with EVs and actually what you might find with modern bioch chemistry where they are properly thermally managed and all that stuff the degradation is so slow that they might actually keep going for longer because
They’re less likely to suffer this s serious failure what I think we might see right off older EVS is like power electronic failures and stuff like that and then there was a story recently uh about someone with a Zoe that had been quoted a massive bill by Renault to fix
It and they were struggling to find an independent to look at it and that kind of thing might well be a problem but the independent repairers are gearing up to fix these things clely for example can fix this problem with the Zoe and they can fix it relatively cheaply and
There’s going to be more of that they’re not going to have the Monopoly on repairing EVS forever people are going to realize that there’s a real viable business there carrying out repairs of these things that the main dealers don’t want to get involved in fixing and that’s no different than for petol and
Diesel cars there are various garages out there that will Chuck in a reconditioned engine a lot cheaper than a main dealer will and it’s going to be the same for companies that are going to perform repairs to batteries where a module needs replacing or they’re going to recondition a charger unit or
Whatever it is that needs to be fixed the aftermarket repairers are going to be able to do that and it will take a bit of time for that to gear up and the support mechanism to be formed but there’s no reason why it won’t and and
That will mean the EVS could be on their Road for even longer but that was it for this video I I went down this rabbit hole because someone was talking about not seeing very many older Teslas on the road and I I thought that was a good
Source of data to actually see whether or not the claims were correct and as I said there is no evidence that most EVS are more or less likely to be off the road earlier than than anything else and so I thought that was quite interesting and was worth sharing but let me know
What you think in the comments how often do you see a 10-year-old plus Tesla Model 3 bmwi3 Nissan Leaf Etc on the roads and do you think it is more or less representative um than than other cars of that age bearing in mind obviously I mean with a Ford Focus they
Sold 8,900 of them in 2014 they you more than 10 times as many of the any of the EVS we talked about here so you will see them a bit more often just because they sold more of them in the first place but that doesn’t mean the EV models are
Thinning out or anything like that but thank you so much for watching I’ll see you next time
A lot’s said about electric cars reaching an earlier demise than their ICE equivelants – but is there any proof of that?
How Many Left – https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk
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00:00 Intro
01:24 How Many Left?
01:55 Ami stats 👀
03:00 BMW i3
05:06 Tesla Model S
05:51 Renault Zoe
06:26 Nissan Leaf
08:48 Nissan Qashqai
09:18 Ford Focus
12:28 That Zoe story
13:33 Outro
