YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Electric cars are about to overtake petrol in the UK, data shows

10 points tapper 1 hour ago 8 comments

cloudie78 31 minutes ago | parent

Misleading title

From the article:

> At the current pace, electric cars will outsell petrol in the UK within a year. And it could happen as soon as this December.

Not the number of cars on the road - it’s new-car sales.

For reference only 4.9% of cars on the road are fully electric, while 87.8% are petrol or diesel.

spottedmarley 26 minutes ago | parent

What are the remaining 7.3%? Horse-drawn buggies?

graemep 24 minutes ago | parent

Hybrids.

cloudie78 23 minutes ago | parent

Hybrids? HEV and PHEV?

mono442 26 minutes ago | parent

Isn't that due to the UK government increasing taxes on gas cars?

It's not a good news if it's due to cars being less affordable.

tonyedgecombe 11 minutes ago | parent

The increases have mostly been on very expensive cars (> £40,000). Not much has changed for the average driver. Petrol is the cheapest it's been for a long time in real terms.

graemep 24 minutes ago | parent

It says sales will overtake ICE, but its a long way from cars on the road as another comment pointed out.

It also assumes a linear trend continues. I think that is probably true if nothing changes, but there is a lot that could change that. The most likely change be joining the EU's "made in Europe" car policy which would mean far higher tariffs on Chinese EV imports.

tonyedgecombe 16 minutes ago | parent

The UK isn't in the EU and doesn't apply tariffs on Chinese imports (unlike the EU).