Vauxhall closing van plant in Luton

  • Drivingforfun's Avatar
    Just watching about this on the news yesterday

    They said it's due to incompatibility of the van market with govt. quotas - in other words they'd need to make electric vans to fill quotas and then just leave them unsold. Very green!

    The final nail in the coffin was the increase in National Insurance for employers so as to "not impact on working people". Many losing their jobs... which seems rather impactful to me 🙁

    I wonder what peoples thoughts are?
  • 6 Replies

  • Beelzebub's Avatar
    @Drivingforfun
    Stellantis have also announced a major investment in the Ellesmere Port plant, creating "hundreds" of new jobs. So maybe the NI increase in the Budget was not such a big factor after all.
  • olduser's Avatar
    We have just come through Covid, and a bout of inflation, I am not surprised the demand for any vehicles has fallen.
    On top of that, the cost of an EV is high, (mostly battery) it's too soon to know what an EV's life will be, and it's true used value.
    A very large part of the price is the battery, and a replacement battery ought to be the first major cost.*
    The motor and electronics should out live the bodyshell.
    The most common battery failure will be one cell getting out of step with all the others, so far I have not read of a charging cycle to correct this.
    I notice on an American Nissan website there are people claiming to have replaced a faulty cell/s but it very risky, we need to be sure the battery has no charge at all before starting. (the battery is made up of lots of small batteries connect in series for the voltage and parallel for the current.)

    There are other battery technology ready but it appears no one is willing to invest to get them into production.
    These could give faster charging, lower cost, and much less environmental problems.

    Just like in the early days of petrol cars, and petrol pumps, there are not enough charging stations but this is a chicken and egg situation.
    Not enough cars because there are not enough charging points, and not enough charging points and so on.

    The companies that have invested in charging, bought the cheapest equipment, or perhaps they did not understand what they were doing, so now many charging points are not working when you find them, and when one is found the cost of a recharge is far too high but they are in short supply so they can demand whatever they want.

    We should have been at this stage at least 30 years ago but no one wanted to think about it back then.

    *I bought a used Nissan Leaf 40,000 miles three years old, lots of people were telling me I would have to buy a new battery (£7,000 I am not sure if that was correct) but there was still four years left on the battery warranty so I bought it.
    The battery tested as good as new, whatever that meant.
    I spoke to the previous owner, (I bought the car from a EV specialist) he had not had any trouble in three years and had replaced it with another.
    He had sold it on the advise of his employers accountant, I assume because cars on company books are usually written off after three years.
    I ran it for a year before I stopped driving due to age.
    My insurers wanted to charge more for the EV but when I said I would go elsewhere they halved the EV surcharge.
    I lost about £100 when I sold it, and apart from electricity, and insurance it cost me nothing more.
  • NMNeil's Avatar
    Stellantis is laying off thousands here and moving a lot of production to Mexico, same as GM and Ford after the unions went on strike demanding more money.
    https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/09/business/stellantis-to-lay-off-up-to-2-450-factory-workers-as-classic-ram-production-ends/index.html

    https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/reuters-events-chrysler-brand-ceo-says-mexico-plant-expansion-is-relief-valve-2024-10-22/

    Put the 2 articles together to see that it's all about the greed of the unions making their cars and trucks too expensive to produce in the US and nothing to do with EV's.
  • Mark07's Avatar
    Community Manager
    The final nail in the coffin was the increase in National Insurance for employers so as to "not impact on working people". Many losing their jobs... which seems rather impactful to me 🙁

    I wonder what peoples thoughts are?

    I wonder how long it takes for a large company to complete their due diligence, and put all the processes in place to announce a potential plant closure?

    Is it possible within 4 weeks?
  • NMNeil's Avatar
    @olduser Sodium batteries are for sale as we speak.
    https://srikobatteries.com/product-c.../sodium-cells/
    And some are actually produced in the US
    https://cleantechnica.com/2024/04/30...ttery-factory/
    CATL, the biggest maker of lithium based batteries in the world is now producing sodium batteries.
    https://www.batteriesinternational.c...odium-battery/
    And cars with sodium batteries are already available, but not everywhere; yet.
    https://electrek.co/2023/12/27/volkswagen-backed-ev-maker-first-sodium-ion-battery-electric-car/
    So the days of the dangerous lithium based batteries are slowly coming to an end, and as the world is awash with sodium, those batteries are a lot cheaper.
  • Rolebama's Avatar
    It will be interesting to see what happens to the used EV market re battery replacement costs. The market fell flat for used Maestros and Montegos because of the cost of ECUs. Most manufacturers were charging around £35 for an ignition module, compared to £250/450 for an ECU for Maestros and Montegos, which were comparable to models which used the £35 units. (FWIW I used to fit the £35 units to Porsches, which were the identical models, (Bosch units - OEM parts), for which Porsche priced at £192.)