Robert Llewellyn talks China, the importance of the Toyota Prius, and the key to mass-EV adoption
Ahead of the Everything Electric show in London, the Fully Charged founder explains how China wrong-footed Europe in the EV stakes, why brand new cars are a sure-fire way to lose money, plus the economics behind switching to all-electric motoring.
“I think what’s happening with the Chinese EV industry is mindboggling,” explains Robert Llewellyn. “Looking at what’s happened over the last five years, it’s almost as if the legacy carmakers in Europe completely underestimated what was happening in China and just got a bit complacent.
“Now you see Chinese EVs everywhere! I was in Australia recently, and my sister-in-law has a BYD Atto 3; my niece has a BYD Seal, and her mate up the road has a BYD Seal. If you look back 10, 15 years, nobody really knew who BYD were – and that’s because they made batteries. Now they’re the biggest EV maker on the planet!”
On the eve of the Everything Electric London show on April 16 – 18, Llewellyn joined EV Powered for a chat. He’s just as enthusiastic and upbeat about electrification and the world of electric vehicles as I’d hoped. If – like me, you’re of a certain vintage – you may also recognise Llewellyn as Kryten from Red Dwarf or the presenter of Scrapheap Challenge.
Robert Llewellyn on: surpassing legacy carmakers within the EV world in just a few years
Back to cars, though, and it’s China’s almost-overnight emergence as a global player in the EV market that’s currently Llewellyn’s biggest area of interest in the EV world.
“I think the key to understanding how the Chinese manufacturers have managed to do what they’ve done in such a short space of time, is looking at the sheer manpower they have,” he says. “When I first encountered Tesla and the Roadster back in 2008, they were a really small company with only 50 or so employees.
“Fast-forward however long it’s been since then, and they have around 124,000 employees globally. That’s impressive.
“But when you consider that BYD has that number of people working in Research & Development alone, then you can begin to grasp how they’ve managed to do what they’ve done in terms of battery tech, charging infrastructure, and models brought to market over such a short period. They employ almost a million people, if I’m not mistaken.”
To put that into perspective, BYD has a 900,608-strong workforce. The population of Luxembourg is 645,357. Meanwhile, Estonia has 1,369,285 people living within its borders. Were BYD a European country, it would be around the 42nd most-populous out of all 51 the continent.
“Basically, the economies of scale that China has at its disposal are beyond anything we can envisage here,” Llewellyn continues. “The UK is a third-stage economy, meaning it’s service-sector based. China is very industry heavy and not at the point that we are yet, so they’ve managed to completely outdo us and the rest of Europe.
“They can produce stuff quicker and sometimes better quality than we can, and that’s good news for ordinary people who want a car that won’t break the bank, because cars – like everything else! – are so expensive these days.
“It’s very easy to forget that before you or I were born, that Britain was the industrial powerhouse of the world. We built tons of amazing stuff – cars, bridges, planes, boats, you name it! – and it’s incredible to consider what this little island could produce.
“However, I think we have to accept that those days are behind us, and while we should remind ourselves of them, we can’t trade on those memories anymore.
Why the Toyota Prius still matters
Despite keeping a firm eye on the future of China’s role in the global EV industry, Llewellyn doesn’t shy away from the fact that early 2000s California was where electrified motoring started for him over 20 years ago. Cue the Toyota Prius hybrid. The Prius launched in 1997, and is still going strong today; especially with the arrival of the swoopy new fifth-gen car.
“The Toyota Prius was a real gamechanger for ‘normalising’ EVs,” Llewellyn explains. “I remember being in California 25 years ago or so filming for Scrapheap Challenge, and the air quality was appalling. It wasn’t just ‘a bit smoggy’, it was like Shanghai a few years ago. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.
“Much of taking action against this was actually instigated by Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was state governor. His people carried out some research, which found that kids who went to a school next to a highway had lower IQs than those who didn’t, and this wasn’t a case of ‘good area vs. bad area’ – it was just mainly down to the sheer levels of pollution at the time.
“And where did it come from? Well, people would go down the shops in a thumping great 7.4-litre V8 pickup for a carton of milk, and that sort of thing makes you think ‘just wind your neck in, will you?’” Llewellyn laughs.
“Toyota was the most popular carmaker in California during the late 1990s and early 2000s and it was the people from the California Air Resource Board who tasked them to make a zero emission – or at least low emission – vehicle as a way of alleviating the pollution issue problem.
“So, it wasn’t Toyota in Japan who originally came up with the idea of the Prius, neither was it any of ‘Big Three’ US carmakers in Detroit, and nor was it some Silicon Valley nerds.”
Fast-forward over two decades, and the fuel-sipping Prius remains one of the best-selling cars in the USA. During the first quarter of 2024, sales of the Prius grew 136% year-on-year.
According to Llewellyn, the substantial savings made through electrified motoring are where the appeal lies in terms of energy consumed, EV discounts offered by manufacturers, plus various ownership plans such as salary sacrifice schemes.
“When I came back from California, I’d spent quite a lot of time with Prius,” he recalls. “In light of that, the Volkswagen Golf R32 I was running at the time just didn’t make a lot of sense any more.
I bought the Golf brand new because I was earning good money at the time, and it was a silly thing to do. I’ve not purchased a brand new car since, because as soon as you turn a wheel, you’ve just lost £12,000, £15,000 pounds.
“I’d only had the Golf for about eight months until I decided to part-exchange it for a Prius. The Golf was a fantastic piece of engineering, but I was doing something like 12 miles per-gallon.
“When I drove the Prius back from the Toyota dealership, I took my socks off because that way you’re very sensitive to your throttle inputs. I averaged 72mpg, and it became a bit of a no-brainer, really.”
Robert Llewellyn on: Changing hearts and minds via Everything Electric
Since then, Llewellyn’s EV history has owned several automotive curios, including the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, which he describes as “a brilliant little car” and fondly recalls charging the world’s first highway-capable, mass-produced EV with a 22 kilowatt charging supply in a Welsh farmer’s grain barn.
His fleet has also comprised a Renault Zoe and a Tesla Model 3; two cars universally-acknowledged to have moved the automotive industry forward when it comes to promoting the mass-adoption of EVs and “turning the tide of negativity” away from electrification.
When discussing how to get more UK drivers to make the transition from internal combustion engine (ICE) to EV, Llewellyn believes there are two factors involved: Firstly, encouraging motorists to try an EV for themselves; secondly, economics.
“I think a lot of people who have never driven an EV don’t really know what to expect,” he says. “I get that, because they’re something quite new and something relatively different. It’s normal to be wary of something if you don’t know much about it, or you’ve only read some negative comments on the internet.
“But when we put on events such as Everything Electric with our test drive zone, we do thousands of test drives a day with everyone from Renault to BMW. When you ask people afterwards what they thought of their experience, most of them are positive. I don’t think we should be pushy about things, but I would definitely suggest sceptics get a taste for themselves.
“As for the economic side of things, I can see why that’s an initial turn-off,” Llewellyn admits. After all, the average price of a brand EV is £46,000. However, he believes that the used EV market can play a significant part in converting motorists.
“Like I said before, buying a brand new car is a sure-fire way to lose money,” he reaffirms. “But if you look at pre-owned cars, then you can find EVs for about £10,000, £8,000. There are also leasing options, which is the route I’ve gone down with mine as it makes things much more affordable.”
Those “bloody hippy weirdos” down the street.
The other aspect of the economic argument Llewellyn advocates is running costs. Over the course of a year, an EV is around £528 cheaper than its ICE counterpart. This is due to home-charging costs being as low as around 7 pence per-kilowatt hour, plus the ability to sell energy back to the grid depending on electricity supplier and tariff.
Prior to April 1st this year, EVs were also road-tax exempt.
“Imagine the street you live in,” concludes Llewellyn. “Let’s go back five years. If a family who lived there got fully kitted up with solar panels and an EV, there would have been some snide comments about them like ‘look at them virtue signalling, what a load of bloody hippy weirdos’, and that sort of thing.
“But as time goes on, you’ll notice that there are now four people on your street with electric cars, and seven with solar panels. The long and short of this is that when people see others doing something and it affects them in a positive way, then they’ll gradually pick up on it.
“When savings can be made – for example, generating your own electricity for your car from the solar panels on your roof – people quickly change their minds!”
“Ultimately, I’m all about encouraging drivers to try EVs, because I don’t think we should shut ourselves off from new things.
“While I’m 100% aware it’s anecdotal evidence, it’s always nice to hear people say ‘oh, I’d never have bought an electric car until we tried one at the Everything Electric’. That’s something all of us involved can definitely be very proud of.”
