I just bought a Perodua Nippa for a laugh, to give away tonight for £10 as a booby prize, however, it got me thinking….
This little car has done 60k miles, it’s probably made out of the cheapest, easiest to find materials and it’ll probably last forever. It’ll never break down, it won’t consume lots of parts and materials in it’s life cycle, it’ll be good on fuel, doesn’t take up much space, doesn’t have a huge array of complicated and expensive electronics…. it’ll just work. Forever.
So, if you want to save the planet… Unplug a Tesla. Then buy a Nippa! That’s gotta be a T shirt slogan hasn’t it.
But there is something very serious to be said here, isn’t there? All these lines of Teslas parked at service stations with people smugly thinking they are saving the planet, when actually it’s quite the opposite.
Why hasn’t someone come out with a really good looking small car, that does 100mpg, 90mph, is cheap to buy and maintain and is made from recyclable materials? It takes me back to that South Park episode with Hybrid cars, where the people can’t manage to own them without bringing down a huge cloud of ‘smug’ on the city. This is the problem, isn’t it, it’s image.
So if you combined the VW UP with an early Smart car and a Perodua Nippa, employing the BMW MINI approach to styling, colours and individuality… You’d have a planet saving car that doesn’t require being plugged into the mains and wouldn’t start at £60k. Just a thought.
Anyway, tonight from 8pm live on FB. Maybe get a Nippa.
EDIT
I did a bit more digging around on this one, and came across this article, which is worth a read. Can anyone else clarify any extra bits…?
“Ian would have to do 31,111 miles in a 29.5mpg Saab to produce the same amount of gases (14 tonnes) produced in creating a 48kWh EV”
^^^ this is really interesting, considering the average mileage per year in the UK is 7,600. So you’re talking 4 years of EV use to EVEN OUT the argument about whether its greener to buy an EV or keep your internal combustion car, and that’s of course based ONLY on the BUILD of the EV. So it’s 4 years use before it even starts to catch up with your existing car on green credentials. How long do people lease these EVs for? 3 years.
“And don’t worry about the battery life because, while the maximum range will drop over the life of the car, modern electric cars have been around for long enough to prove that it’ll only be by roughly 15–20% over 100,000 miles. You are far, far less likely to need a new battery in an EV than you are a new engine or gearbox in an ICE car.”
^^^ this is also very interesting. The kind of cars we all buy and love blow the final argument out of the water, because the cost of replacing say, a blown engine in a 2.0 turbo Saab 9-5 is nothing compared fto the cost of replacing the batteries in an EV.
^^^ also, it an electric car has a range of 250 miles when brand new, and it loses 15-20% over 100,000 miles, that will give it a pathetic range rendering it virtually useless to the vast majority of people. Further compounding the problem, where your Saab 9-5 2.-0 Turbo will happily run on to 300,000 miles or more if it’s well cared for.
^^^ finally, these figures are based around a car only doing 29.5mpg… which is low, for most of the cars that we all buy and love. Even my Mercedes S320 CDI does more than that. So this is very interesting food for thought.
SOURCE:
https://www.boundless.co.uk/be-inspired/driving/is-keeping-my-old-car-greener-than-buying-a-new-ev