> Electric cars being much, much heavier than petrol cars

This is one of those comments that continues to come up but has never added up. Certainly if you are comparing a Tesla compared to a compact or a Euro version of a compact. Absolutely there is a weight difference. The problem is if you did a like for like comparison..a Model Y is the same Weight as an X3. A Model 3 is a couple hundred pounds heavier than a Toyota Camry.

Comes mostly from comparing interiors in my experience. A camry has a full interior and is still ~400lbs lighter. If you compare minimal interior to minimal interior you're getting into Dacia with extra dynamat territory (can't think of a largeish stock ICE with good sound deadening and minimal interior) which is safe <1500kg. A Jogger is apparently 1261 kg kerb.

Difference between a petrol and electric Volvo XC40 is about 200KGs, so not insignificant but not as much as it's sometimes portrayed. EVs built from the ground-up may be able to knock a few of those KGs off too as they won't have structures designed for ICE components.

According to carsized.com an ICE Volvo XC40 (not sure whether that's a plug-in hybrid, probably not) weighs 1580 kg, while the BEV one weighs 2040 kg. That's a difference of almost 500 kg. The BEV weighs almost 30% more, that seems pretty significant to me.

Batteries are heavy!

https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/volvo-xc40-2017-suv...

> much, much heavier

Stop that. 10 - 15% doesn’t constitute “much, much”.

IMO it does, that’s the difference between a sedan and an SUV for a lot of brands.