A Third of Drivers Don't Want a BEV - But are They Aware of the Alternatives?

A recent survey by Which? of more than 2,000 people found that the number of people who have ruled out buying a battery electric car (or BEV) over the past two years has risen from one in five (20%) in 2021 to one in three (34%).

Meanwhile UK sales of BEVs to private buyers in the first nine months of 2023 were down 14.3% year to date, while values of BEVs are 19.6% below where they were a year ago. Just to add salt into the wound, there is increasing publicity around insurance companies, which are either refusing to insure BEVs at all, or increasing premiums by an average of 72%, according to Confused.com.

This raises a number of questions.

Firstly, if fewer people intend buying BEVs, why are BEV sales still increasing overall? The reason for that is the huge tax advantage for company cars, as BEVs incur no Benefit-in-Kind charges. It is not that people are actively choosing BEVs, it is that company car drivers are choosing to reduce their tax bill. In the medium term, this could be a problem, as it means big numbers of used BEVs will come back to the market in 2024 and 2025, just as consumer interest seems to be waning. If BEV residual values take a tumble, that will really put people off buying a new one: the PCP rates that people pay for new cars are based on the difference between the cost of the car when new and its expected resale value at the end of the term.

Secondly, why has the percentage of people ruling out BEVs gone up? Which? says that the top three barriers are cost (63%), availability of public charge points (51%), and the cost of installing a charge point at home (50%). As per the figures in our previous blog, the decline in the cost of batteries stalled in 2020, while the price of electricity soared as the result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, consumers seem to have little faith in the public sector’s ability to build a charging infrastructure.

Finally, the recent government announcement that the deadline to phase out petrol- and diesel-engined cars is being put back to 2035 is hardly helping.

It is not that people have lost interest in the environment – quite the reverse. It is that people want a zero-carbon car that costs the same and is as easy to fill up with energy as a conventional petrol or diesel model. They just don’t see BEVs being able to achieve those goals anytime soon.

So how do we meet consumer needs, given that simply shouting at them to buy a BEV is unlikely to work?

The obvious answer is hydrogen. It takes about five minutes to refuel, it has the same range as a conventional car, and it is filled up from a forecourt pump (many forecourts in Europe already sell Compressed Natural Gas, or CNG, so filling up with gas is known technology).

The main issue with hydrogen is cost. Fuel cells (which have a lower lifetime CO2 content than batteries) are currently expensive, because they are not yet mass-produced. However, they are expected to reach cost-parity with diesel engines by 2030. Who says? Bosch, the world’s biggest automotive component supplier which is investing €2.5 billion in fuel cell manufacturing.

Of course, that does not solve the problem of what to do until the 2030s. The most likely bridge technology for the next 5-7 years is hydrogen combustion. Any internal combustion engine can be converted (hydrogen is basically a hydrocarbon minus the carbon). The result is an engine which is zero-carbon, but not (quite) zero emission: anything that burns in air at high temperature produces oxides of nitrogen.

Nevertheless, it addresses the most crucial concern – CO2. We are not saying that BEV owners should convert to hydrogen, but people who do not think BEVs meet their needs can be offered a zero-carbon alternative.

As well as the reduction in CO2 emissions, hydrogen combustion will actually accelerate the uptake of fuel cell vehicles. The faster we roll out hydrogen refuelling pumps, the sooner we will be able to use fuel cell vehicles. Fuel cells have nothing to fear from hydrogen combustion: fuel cells are cleaner, more efficient, quieter and will be cheaper within the next 10-15 years. In this case, the good (hydrogen combustion) is the enabler of the best (fuel cells).