I want an EV to be more reliable and save me more money in the long run. EVs start out ~10k more than the Corolla most people should buying. They then compromise the long term reliability and maintenance cost with high tech gee whiz features. I’d sooner have manual roll up windows than touch screen controlled air vents. When you integrate sensors and software controls into every little thing, we know those things will start failing and your intricate and overly proprietary systems will be expensive to repair. Their marketing says the electric motor will run longer, but a Toyota is already dead reliable for 300k miles and the bits in the cabin will last without repairs too. ICE cars are so reliable I don’t think anyone in my extended family has spent over $1k fixing them in any single year, with most years just the cost of an oil change.
That is one of the issues for me. Plus, the only viable EV now for me is Tesla, but they keep making silly decisions and are just an odd automaker.
By silly decisions I mean things like removal of turn signal stalk, removal of parking sensors, lack of a gauge in field of view(y, 3), etc.
I love ability to buy online.
I hate the lack of an online parts catalog where I can purchase OEM parts. This is a big issue for me. I have enough experience to do anything on ICE car myself, engine rebuild included.
The cost of a replacement battery is astronomical. I can replace an engine in an ICE vehicle for $2k.
It also appears that Tesla is more expensive to insure.
The batteries have an 8 year warranty, by which point it will be cheaper to replace them. You probably won’t have to since NMC batteries will last 1,000 cycles x 200 miles = 200,000 miles. LFP batteries will be 3x that.
Edit: not sure why this is attracting downvotes
Here is proof of the 8 year warranty:
> 8 years or 100,000 miles
( Note: I chose to quote the lowest mileage to avoid controversy )
> A key advantage of LFP is its longer life cycle, resulting in less degradation concerns. LFP packs are capable of more than 3000 full recharge cycle counts compared to NMC at around 1000 to 2000 cycles.
> I hate the lack of an online parts catalog where I can purchase OEM parts. This is a big issue for me. I have enough experience to do anything on ICE car myself, engine rebuild included.
It seems you're not aware that not only the parts catalog is available online for basically everyone [1] but also their repair guides / service manuals [2]?
None cost anything to access, [2] is a free subscription and only costs something if you need their software ("Toolbox") which you can book for a certain time.
I don't actually mind the center screen on mine - it is actually fine and there is no 'wheel overlaps gauge cluster' issue. I also like the 'air directly hits my face though the wheel factor' That said, I'm weirder than most about airflow.
The auto wipers suck, there is no dance around it.
My issue is that the silly choices seem to be rapidly worsening.
My 2018 model 3 has fantastic parking sensors. The new cars without them will conveniently tell you to stop when the wall is currently sitting on the hood of the car after you hit it. It is a dumb choice that doesn't work.
No turn stalk is just why most drivers don't use signals anymore...which sucks.
No drive stalk means confusion about drive direction and if the throttle is armed. I ALREADY have this issue in my model 3, it is incredibly easy to end up going the wrong directly rapidly. The lack of creep means that a model 3 in autohold is easy to confuse for a car in park. They really need to make the P icon bigger.
No online catalog sucks, though I think with volume, that will happen via a third party. A big issue is the fact they they did agile changes to cars in a single model year so it is hard to know which part you need in some cases.
Battery - eh. For a comparable ICE vehicle - my old Volvo XC40 - A motor replacement is not massively far off from a battery, easily close to $10K.
I hope that solid state batteries make huge jumps.
My tesla was $30/mo more to insure than the XC40 - that is material. I do save more than $30/mo on gas though, but the Xc40 was a 25mpg premium gas car so that is exceptional.
Seriously. Just give me a NORMAL car with a modern electric drivetrain and I’ll be happy. I have my 4Runner for longer trips and “electric grid down because Texas is a 3rd world island in a 1st world country” situations.
These electric cars are going for full gimmickry and just look like a giant long term ownership nightmare. Built to be disposable status symbols for your average American trying to appear wealthier than they are instead of practical vehicles for the mass market.
If you can get a very base model Nissan Leaf, they're pretty basic. Bonus points if it's a bit older. Ours is extremely old fashioned, and except for the sound when driving is basically indistinguishable from a mid-2010s Honda Fit.
One minor comment, but if the electric grid is down, then it's likely you won't be able to pump gas either. At least, most gas stations have not planned to be functional without electricity.
If you were spending $500/month on gas at typical prices that's anywhere from 125 to 170 gallons, if you're only getting 20mpg that's close to 3,000 miles a month, maybe 35,000 miles a year. That's a lot of driving compared to the average person.
I kind of agree actually on your cost points. It’s still a luxury purchase. I am a bit more conservative of a saver but feel priced out and sadly went ICE.
If you qualify for the EV tax credit, I would argue the car is too expensive for your budget.
If you don’t qualify barely, a brand new ICE vehicle is going to last years and be cheaper. Is it really worth it to push budget?
If you way don’t qualify, definitely buying an EV. Also congrats on your income.
> If you qualify for the EV tax credit, I would argue the car is too expensive for your budget.
The AGI limit for a couple is $300K. I'm pretty anti-new car as a financial move, but even I have to admit that a couple pulling down $250K-$300K/yr is probably going to be able to fade buying a new car if they want.
Unfortunately they're hard to find in stock and without a mark up. There's probably some 2+ hours away from here, but I wish there was at least one nearby to test drive first before committing to a 4+ hour drive...
With thousands fewer parts, cheaper fuel, and the time savings of not having to go to a gas station, EVs have a lot of things working in their favor to make them cheaper to operate.
I purchased my corrolla off the lot in 2004 and _chose_ to go with manual everything for because it's cheaper and more reliable.
here we are 20 years on and that car is rock solid reliable with 168k miles and regular maintenance. I'm hoping to get another 20 years out of it.
When I decided I needed a minivan I went out and bought a 2007 Honda Odyssey, put a few thousand dollars into it and it runs like a champ (has just under 190k miles on it). But the Odyssey has an ongoing problem I'm trying to figure out and rectify ... the power sliding doors. I'd honestly rather just open them manually.
People love their convenience, but you know these vehicles with all their fancy whizbang features are going to be a maintenance burden during their lifetime.
100%. My S.O. wants my next car to be an electric, but I'm hesitant because my current car (an 05 Civic LX) has been running non-stop like a champ since the day I started driving it 17 years ago. I've been going to the same mechanic in all that time, and repair costs have always been low thanks in part to the OEM market, but also to the self-repairability of older Hondas. I dread the day I have to get a new car only to find out I can't self-repair the car as much as I do now.
Their most expensive electricity scenario is 20c/kWh. Maybe that was realistic when the article was written 5 years ago, but electricity is definitely more expensive than that in California now, even with a special EV rate plan.
EV’s currently make the most sense for people who own a single family home or otherwise live in a community with readily available near-home chargers, where EV’s are on average more convenient than gas cars. People who rely on street parking and apartment dwellers would likely find EV’s more inconvenient than a gas car.
We may be close to saturating the market for the former group.
Another factor that could be at play is that all the non-Tesla EV makers have recently announced they will switch their chargers to NACS, but this will take a couple of years to roll out, so it’s not a great time to buy a non-Tesla since it already has legacy charging hardware.
I'm in that first group and I don't see how it makes the most sense. They are not more convenient. I can "charge" my gas car in 2 minutes basically anywhere in the country.
I'm going on vacation next week, driving with 2 young children. It'll be about a 11 hour drive which is not crazy for a US vacation. I don't want to plan where I stop and stop for 45 minutes to fuel up with 2 toddlers in the car.
And they're all much more expensive than a nice 5 year old gas car.
My wife and I own a single family home, a gas-powered car (Toyota Rav4), and an electric car (a standard range Tesla model 3). The electric car is much more convenient for us for city driving and the gas-powered car is much more convenient for road trips.
Refuelling the Rav4 is an errand that takes time, planning, and mental energy. For my wife it's also a low-level danger: women find gas stations spooky, apparently.
Refuelling the Tesla is automatic and effortless. After you park at home, if the charge is <40% then plug it in. The next time you need to drive somewhere it will be full. It took me an afternoon hanging out with my electrician cousin and about $400 in parts from Amazon to build our own at-home electric refuelling station.
Road trips with the Tesla, however, are currently impractical: we end up adding another ~30% to the drive time. With only a ~220 mile range the Tesla needs to stop about every 150 miles for 40 minutes which is brutal. Range anxiety also becomes a much bigger factor driving through more rural areas and your route choices weigh supercharger locations above everything else.
We've got used to the self driving convenience of the Tesla but the Comma[1] on our Rav4 is just about as good for highway driving.
I feel the same way and after speaking with many EV people i've realised the main benefit is how cheap they are to run. This comes down to the increase in efficiency compared to an ICE - ~80% of the battery energy finds its way to the wheels on EV's, vs ~30% on an ICE. If you live somewhere where electric costs are very low then a 0 to full charge your EV costs about $10. (Someone please correct me if i'm off on this one)
Depending on your mileage, by saving $3k-$4k a year on gas theres certainly a case to be made for an EV being a more sensible financial decision in the long term especially given government tax incentives
One of the biggest reason for the massive disparity in efficiency on EV's is due to regenerative braking (16-25%). So what's interesting is when you compare an EV to a Hybrid ICE vehicle then the efficiency disparity becomes a lot less and you still have the benefit of being able to take long trips and not needing a home charger.
Anyone thats driven a Hybrid Toyota will tell you that fuel consumption is dramatically less, in my real world scenarios I use about 2.5x less gas in something like a Toyota Corolla Cross compared to my not overly thirsty ICE BMW.
Another benefit to Hybrids is they only require a ~1kWh battery instead of needing a huge 60-70kWh battery like an EV. So you could create 60 or 70 hybrid vehicles for the same amount of lithium mining as one EV.
One has to wonder why the governments aren't just pushing everyone into Hybrids instead of EV's? If a young person was asking me to recommend a car and they didn't have a home charger I wouldn't hesitate to recommend something like a new Toyota HEV / Honda e:hev - they are basically an EV with an on-board Atkinson engine as a powerplant.
I drove from Reno to LA recently in a Model Y and my charging stops all lined up with bathroom breaks and food. I never actually waited for the charging process itself. It doesn't take 45min and it's not like I have any interest in sitting for more than 3h-4h straight without stopping at all. I've done plenty of long distance trips with my kids and the Tesla and, really, charging is a non-issue.
The only actual negative I have is that chargers aren't as present in remote locations and if it's not a Tesla charger, it's not real. Also when towing a camper uphill to Yosemite, it was stressful but we made it on top.
I’m in that first group too and I bought a new car in 2023. I went ICE ultimately because I didn’t see many electric options I would want. Cars are part fashion so I wanted to “like it”. But I also mostly car about reliability and longevity as I usually buy new but keep for 10-12 years and don’t want the inconvenience of maintenance beyond the routine stuff. In the past, this put me in a Honda/Toyota but this time I was open and even wanted something more luxurious/expensive.
Most EVs are just unproven in my opinion. Just because it says Mercedes, nice test drive I don’t want to be their EV Guinea pig in terms of long term ownership. Companies like Rivian, cool but way too new for me to even blink an eye at. This basically left me with Tesla as an only option. If you do any research at all you’ll hear/see how hit and miss their build quality is. Seems worse on certain models, but ultimately I also know too much about Musk’s management style and it does the opposite of instilling confidence in the product. I also happen to just not “like” the interior/dash setup. So, I just felt like I was sacrificing /risking too much with EV. The other issue in some cases, the EV has been announced with a release date and accepting deposits but I couldn’t actually purchase one like I needed/wanted too; Too much friction in 2023.
I ended up in a Lexus. Basically the luxury Toyota. So i essentially kept my purchasing behavior unchanged due to not finding any compelling EV, but i kicked some EV tires.
I don’t think I’ve ever done a 45 minute charge stop in many trips between California and faraway places including Colorado, Montana, and Texas. These are not day trips. People read stuff and just believe it without questioning. Most of my charge stops are much quicker than what you think. 10 minutes usually. Sometimes 20 or
more ahead of a long desert stretch where gas stations are also few and far between, but usually 10.
The most priceless thing though is safety for your family. I read about accidents people had in their nice 5 year old
gas cars, and it’s just sad to me that they didn’t see the options for what they were, and could have easily afforded a much safer car, but instead based their choices on bad information about supposed long charging times and supposed long lines at chargers.
It all depends on how much importance you put on those few road trips per year. With an EV those few road trips definitely take slightly more time, but the rest of the year (assuming you can charge at home or work) you never go to a gas station or charging station and almost certainly save vastly more time over the entire year.
> I don't want to plan where I stop and stop for 45 minutes to fuel up with 2 toddlers in the car.
With fast charging you typically only stop for 15-25 minutes, the infotainment or app does the planning for you, and the frequency you'll have to stop at matches the natural frequency people typically need to stop anyways by design.
Realistically having done road trips, it's stopping every 3 hours and it's not 45 minutes, it's basically the amount of time it takes to get 2 kids out of the car, in to use the restrooms, and back into the car.
Tangent: As someone driving a gas car, I would like to know how your car takes only 2 minutes to refuel. 5 minutes? Certainly, if the station is not getting heavy traffic (which seems to slow the pumps), and on a long trip it's quite likely it will a busy interstate-side station that might get to ten minutes due to slow-flowing gas.
Even so, as we both know, it's unlikely to reach 15 minutes as discussed else-thread, and while I do need breaks on a trip, 15 minutes is about the maximum I want to take unless I'm eating.
We're in the first group and it definitely makes sense for us. 90% of our driving is in town, and we can recharge at night in our garage for a small fraction of the cost of gas. We also have 2 young kids. For vacations, camping trips, etc., we would take our Forester (which we already had before we bought an EV), but otherwise we don't need to use it. If we only had one car (and we did for years), we'd keep the EV and would rent an ICE SUV for long-range vacations (which, this being the U.S., we get precious little of), and still save tons of money.
I've charged my EV at a public charging station less than 5 times in the past year. Instead of a 5 minute stop once a week at a gas station it's 5 seconds every time I get home to plug it in.
Any trip within a 3 hour drive is possible round trip on a single charge. Any trip within a 5 hour drive is possible with no stops and destination charging, actually saving a stop.
Any trip over a 5 hour drive generally takes less time and costs less to fly (I'm sure with many edge cases around rural destinations). Even on long road trips, charging from 20-80% takes 15-20 minutes and most drivers will at least need a bathroom break every 3-4 hours.
New Tesla Model 3 prices are comparable to entry level sedans like the Civic and Camry. Used Chevy Bolt's are abundant at <$20k with much less ongoing maintenance costs versus used gas cars. There aren't yet affordable large SUVs and trucks if those are your only vehicles in consideration.
>I'm going on vacation next week, driving with 2 young children. It'll be about a 11 hour drive which is not crazy for a US vacation. I don't want to plan where I stop and stop for 45 minutes to fuel up with 2 toddlers in the car.
How often do you do this? Once, maybe twice a year? With my current commute i have to go out of my way to get gas every week. It takes at least 15 minutes extra on my way home (but thats only because the gas station on the route is about $1 a gallon more). i'd be prepared to add an hour twice a year in return for getting 15 minutes back 48 times a year. And the annoyance of having to make an unexpected trip when i was planning to get gas the next day (whereas i could keep an EV charged abouve 50% at all times).
I would guess most single family home owners have two or more cars. This is a total guess based on my own situation and those of people I know who own EV’s but most EV owners with a single family home will also own a gas car.
So an EV is more convenient than a gas car for daily commutes because you never have to go to a gas station. For the rare times you go on a long trip, you just take the gas car or you put up with having a longer trip in the EV.
Based upon the amount of comments here this must be a controversial comment but I can’t imagine how you do this. With one toddler, she can barely make a 1 hour trip let alone 11 hours. I could use an electric vehicle with a 90 mile range for that trip because that’s about how often I would need to stop. Props to you for keeping 2 toddlers in the car for 11 hours
EV stops have a big advantage in that they force you to get out and move around a bit. Sitting in a car all day is bad for you. Taking a break every few hours is good. Walking around during that break is ideal.
You don't want to give yourself a blood clot on a family vacation.
I'd think a bit of inconvenience would be worth it for a better future for your children as well as all the world's children, but I've been around long enough to come to the understanding that that's just wishful thinking on my part; truly you are just one incredibly minuscule drop in the ocean of carbon emissions that will doom us. I don't envy young children the future world they're going to inherit.
I’m excited to one day own an EV, but the prices need to come down and charging infrastructure needs to continue to improve. I have a house that I’d do most of my charging at, but I want to feel comfortable driving anywhere in the country just like I currently experience with gasoline powered vehicles.
I just did a road trip with my family (four kids aged 6-13). If we had an EV, I would have simply topped off the battery any time we stopped for a bathroom break (I get excited whenever we're able to pass a service plaza without someone needing to go).
I think the market for the current lineup of EVs is tapping out.
My wife and I own one that was very comparably equipped to a similar luxury crossover / SUV, and the type of driving we do in that car is perfectly within the capabilities of our range & charging habits. Never going to gas stations or getting the annual oil change is a nice convenient perk for us. But we fit right in this targeted demographic:
1) Can afford an expensive, new car
2) Own a home and can install an EV charger
3) Have a second ICE vehicle for long trips
However, I can't imagine many people wanting EVs who fit this criteria don't have one by now. If the manufacturers want to keep selling EVs, they'll need to figure out how to replace the 2015 Accords and Tahoes without access to charging at home.
Hi! I'm one of these people. All three of those conditions are true for me, and yet I don't own an EV. Why? Because it seems like the technology is going to be much much better and cheaper in 5 years or less, and I'd hate to drop a big ball of cash on a new EV today when I can probably get either a better new one or a cheaper used one in just a couple of years.
Uh, that market is far far from tapped out. Just drive around any neighborhood that likely fits those characteristics and the vast majority of cars you'll see are still ICE (maybe hybrid).
EVs aren't cheap either, in 2 years one will get better battery tech and a new connector, plus whatever deprecation the battery will go through if you buy one today. 2023-4 and earlier EVs will lose a huge chunk of their worth once NACS cars with better than 200 mile range become available
The value of my leased Volvo C40 has already fallen off a cliff and is less than my residual value. Once my lease is over there will be an NACS EX-30 that will be cheaper brand new, than what Volvo are charging for me to keep my old connector used battery car
Bolt starts at ~$26k. Civic starts at just under $24k. The Bolt is a mediocre road tripper, but lots of cars in that segment are just commuters that only very occasionally road trip. It'd be a great choice for a lot of people.
What do you think current ranges are? There are very few EVs available with less than 200 miles of range. The Leaf and that Mazda thing are the only ones I know of.
An EV just doesn't do anything that my 2007 Pontiac Vibe doesn't do better. My car is worth about $3,000. It:
- Has a 400 mile range
- Can stop anywhere and refuel in just a few minutes, including very isolated areas
- Plays all the music I want
- Hauls anything I want (ie. I don't care if I trash the interior with a pile of mulch on a plastic tarp)
- I can sleep in the back
- Fits in nicely in my lower middle class neighborhood
- Has plenty of spare parts at the junkyard if I need to repair it
On top of that, it doesn't require a #$@# subscription, doesn't force me into some plutocrat's idea of an infotainment system, isn't tracked remotely, with that data being sold to randos, and doesn't cost as much as a Master's degree. Last thing is that while EVs are probably more environmentally friendly than a new ICE car, they still don't compete with a used one from the aughts over their lifetime.
I'd take that even further. EVs make the most sense when all the conditions you noted are satisfied, _and_ the family can afford at least two cars, and it's not important that both cars have long range, and the family can afford the extra up-front cost of the EV. I've got a Nissan Frontier and a Nissan Leaf. The Leaf is older (2017) and has a degraded battery. (about 80% of its original life, and approximately 100 miles of range) The Leaf is very convenient for my wife, but primarily because she doesn't have a commute, and we have a more practical family car in situations where the EV won't cut it. Her mother lives with us, and also has a gas car as an additional backup.
We got the Leaf for $11k used, and if the EV were our only car we'd have had to spend significantly more on a car with much more range (at least 230 miles or more) and we'd have required the installation of a fast charger to handle the longer range. (120v charging is really pretty suitable for a car with only 100 miles of range.) All of these would have introduced significant costs and constraints, which were only offset by the very low price of a used Leaf, and the fact that we always have a backup option.
I meet all the requirements you listed, but I _also_ need to make a 310 mile trip (1 way) fairly regularly. In a Prius, I can do that on one tank. In an EV, you've added at least 30-60 minutes to each leg of the trip, unless you spring for higher end models.
So you're saying EVs make the most sense for "people who buy cars?"
Can't fault manufacturers for targeting that audience.
Anyway you are pulling on the thread of unique selling points (USPs) which are among the many prevailing traditions in autos sales. I don't know how much they really matter in a secular sense.
> We may be close to saturating the market for the former group.
From what I’m reading EVs are around 1% of total cars and around 10% of new car sales in the U.S., while at least 60% of housing units are single family homes.
I'm on the single family home case and would really like to buy the ID Buzz to replace our Atlas (always wanted to own a Konbi) but it would be the second car in the home, we'd still keep our combustion SUV for the long trips and I think this is a lot of the current market for EVs.
Trouble is that pricing is awful, availability is also awful (there's still no date for when the Buzz will be around in the US) and I'm pretty happy with the gas price at the moment, so other than hype to buy a Tesla there's not much reason to buy electric at the moment.
> We may be close to saturating the market for the former group.
Not even close. Maybe 6% of the households in my neighborhood have an EV, and I have no reason to believe we don't represent the average upper middle class neighborhood. I would imagine that percentage to be considerably lower in middle class neighborhoods. That's why I say we're not even close to saturating the single family home market.
> EV’s currently make the most sense for people who own a single family home or otherwise live in a community with readily available near-home chargers, where EV’s are on average more convenient than gas cars
If they are full EVs and not PHEVs they also make the most sense for households that have multiple cars where one of the other cars is a gas car. While the vast majority of trips are short, and charger networks are improving, a lot of people in the US drive longer distances at least occasionally, so it is much easier to replace one out of two cars in a household an electric car than switch to only using electric cars.
I think that once enough people have EVs and the charger networks are better this will be less of an issue, but a lot of people seem to downplay this issue, which I think is not a good idea, because I think there's a genuine risk that there could be a chicken and egg problem to mass adoption of EVs where the market of people who are able to use an EV in 2024 could be saturated before enough people are using EVs to build out the charger network sufficiently.
>nother factor that could be at play is that all the non-Tesla EV makers have recently announced they will switch their chargers to NACS, but this will take a couple of years to roll out, so it’s not a great time to buy a non-Tesla since it already has legacy charging hardware.
This is a big factor and one I note to anyone I know who is thinking of buying an EV. You don't want to be stuck with a dead end tech. Buying a non-Tesla that hasn't already adopted the north american charger is a foolish move at this point. I'm sure there will be conversion kits for many models at some point but that's another cost and one you likely want to have a professional do. Best to either buy a Tesla or just wait a year or two.
Somebody check my facts here, but isn't the NACS/Tesla charging standard just CCS with a different plug? Shouldn't the CCS-to-NACS adapters available today work seamlessly both now and in the future? Am I missing something here?
> not a great time to buy a non-Tesla since it already has legacy charging hardware
there will be adapters that will make current models compatible with Tesla's network once the switch is made(at least for Polestar, not sure about other brands)
EV range is still lacking, compared to available charging stations, imo.
When the market gets it right, I'll jump in with both feet, but I'm not spending twice the money on a car, then deal with horse shit like Tesla and others when it comes to service visits, scheduling, etc.
> Sure, sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric — but the pace of adoption has markedly slowed
So, from that we're to conclude that electric cars are doomed?
In fact, fewer more people are buying cars:
> Electric car registrations accounted for more than 16% of the market in the first seven months of 2023, up from 14% this time last year. The rise saw the number of electric cars sold rise to 175,978 from 127,492 by the end of July (a rise of 38%), according to the latest official figures from the SMMT.
Sorry, but in what world do sales of electric cars going up and market share of electric vehicles increasing lead to the thesis that "fewer people are buying electric cars?"
Oh - I get it. It's the world where this publication wants clicks for ad revenue.
"Sure, electric vehicles are becoming more and more widely adopted, but wouldn't it be better for this article if they weren't?"
The actual title of the article is "What happened to EVs" and the page title is "Why America's electric car push isn't working". I don't know where the HN title is coming from, whether it's an update of the article's title because of precisely what you're advancing, or if it's heavy editing from the submitter.
Generally speaking the article exposes that the pace of adoption as stated by DoT didn't grow enough to meet their 2030 goal (i.e. The second derivative is going down), and goes on to explain why.
I think the article is fair, I think its title also is, I think the HN title is problematic unless you slap "than required to meet 2030 goals".
So "the fewer people are buying electric cars" canard is still living in a caption under the banner: "Fewer people are buying electric cars — the slowdown hints at a problem at the heart of America's EV push."
We’ve come full circle to Hearst and Pulitzer duking it out for the title of world’s richest liar.
Alfred Nobel at least felt guilty for introducing high explosives to warfare. The prize was his penance.
Everything I learn about Pulitzer says he’s a piece of shit, and I don’t know why anyone would want to win a prize named after either of those two oligarchs. But it does say something very on the nose about the epicycles in news reporting.
> Instead of seeing EVs as one piece of a plan for more sustainable transportation, America has focused on using EVs as a one-to-one replacement for gas guzzlers. But this one-size-fits-all solution fails to address our broader transportation problems, meaning emissions targets are likely to be missed and other transportation problems will continue to go unaddressed.
and
> People in Norway own more cars than they have in the past, in part because EV incentives encourage people to buy more cars, and the government has no plans to reduce how much people are driving.
"The government has no plans to reduce how much people are driving"? Huh? Obviously, the narrative of this article is anti-car. That's the "broader transportation problems" that they're referring to in the first quote. They could care less if the cars are producing emissions or not, they're just trying to manifest an anti-car future.
Market-share is a cumulative metric, representing the sum of all purchases over several years. Sales is a flow metric, representing the sum of purchases in a given year. Market-share can increase, yet sales can be down in a given year.
I think EVs give me LESS range anxiety overall. In my gas car days, atleast once a month I was late for work or an event AND low on gas. Having to remember and think about getting gas was constantly on my mind because I have a pretty long commute.
With an electric car, I start every day, always, with a full tank. No matter how late I'm running, I know there won't be a surprise that I need gas in addition to being late.
Yesterday close to where I live there was a big queue that still isn't resolved in a winter storm (over 1000 cars got stuck). With a gas car, you can physically go and get gas and fill it up manually but an EV would run out of battery, die and would need to be towed.
Maybe you live in a place where winter storms are not a reality but where I live the range isn't the problem it's the weather combined with the range. EVs range go down during winter and it's already worse, the risk of getting stuck in a snowstorm is thus higher.
But yes, during summer and perfect road conditions an EV would be great. That is not the reality of my life though and that is just speaking about the range issues. I live on the country side as well and I need a car that can handle roads that are not in perfect condition. EVs are also generally sedans and wouldn't even fit my family while being a lot more expensive, adding the risk of freezing to death in the car is just making it a no-go for now.
Presumably you would have started your day with a full charge, and be unlikely to run out even if stuck for a day. We switched to an EV last month and what surprised me the most was the mindset change required - you need to treat the car more like a phone that you keep topped off, instead of the gas car you tend to run down to near empty to maximize time between refills. The big hidden requirement is to have a powerful charging circuit at home, enough to charge the car overnight (60A/240V circuit for us). Without that the EV would be too cumbersome.
Where I live we have typhoons. The last big one caused gasoline supplies to be disrupted (I believe the tankers could not approach to dock or something like that) and all the gas stations were out of gas for two or three days. The electrical grid didn't even blip so there was no problem for EV owners.
ICE cars are really unsuited for places where the gasoline supply is not guaranteed perfect.
Eh, this event in Skåne is atypical. I live close by a mountain pass in Norway during winter, where people often have to camp for the night to get across, and even there it literally never happened that people would hike for gas. It's such a freak event that no one here cares about that in their choice of car.
Problem is more apparent when you live in a city and have no outlet at home (no garage or driveway).
But the anxiety is very minimal. People are exaggerating. Quick chargers are everywhere, and you just have to change your mindset just a little bit. (sometimes you might have to walk a few minutes from your public charge spot to your home)
I will gladly take that bit annoyance when this leads to better air quality in the city.
That depends massively on having home charging. If you live anywhere without it like an apartment complex, a high rise, with street parking only or a multiplex you'll have to count on charging at work.
In many European cities there are 7 or 22kW chargers on the street, used for overnight charging. Sometimes they're built in to lamp posts, more often they're independent.
Back when I had feet, there were so many days where I had anxiety over forgetting to tie my shoes. Sometimes I would start the day with my shoes untied. Other days I'd obsess over which knot to use. And additional worries over my shoe becoming untied during the day.
I found out the solution to these problems wasn't about just remembering to tie my shoe tightly in the morning like an adult -- the real solution was to cut off my feet so I never needed shoes again!
With a gas car, you can take off on foot and walk to a gas station or call literally anyone to give you a bit of gas. EVs on the other hand have to be towed if they run out. Also, it is far easier to predict how far you can get on a tank of gas, and they are like a mile apart or less in any slightly populated place.
Point is, for day to day driving, you never have to worry about this because you start your day with full range.
So EVs get you the benefit of never having to worry about getting gas when late for something, and never having to get gas in general from your daily commute.
The tradeoff is, the few times you do want to go further than your range, it's a bit harder. But since those trips are usually on my leisure days, I personally don't mind that at all.
> With an electric car, I start every day, always, with a full tank.
If you can, that's nice. But that assumes being able to not only charge at home but to have fast charging infrastructure installed at home.
We charge at home but the car doesn't fully charge overnight. That works all right since my partner only commutes every other day. On occasions where two consecutive commute days (or other special trips) come up, there's a lot of range anxiety involved.
> I think EVs give me LESS range anxiety overall.
This is difficult to understand. Sure, it's nice if you can start on full charge at home every morning. Nonetheless, some day you'll need to go farther and then a gas car is inevitably easier and faster to fill up.
Side note, if you eventually drive 200,000 miles, getting gas every 300 miles, and each getting gas only takes 5 minutes between detour and pumping... You send 55 hours of your life getting gas for that car.
> But an analysis from CarGurus found that EV prices were still 28% higher than gas-vehicle prices on average.
To me that is bonkers. When EVs were becoming popular, I was expecting to see super cheap, under $10k vehicles. That was the promise: forget about all the IC complicated gears, alternators, transmission, fuel pumps and imagine getting a motor and batteries, what could be simpler!". But no, we ended up with more expensive vehicles, which take longer to "fuel up", and more expensive to insure, and they have a shorter range. Then everyone wonders how come not as many people want to buy them.
Sure, for some, it's a moral choice. We are saving the planet so it makes sense to pay more and wait 30 minutes to charge or whatever instead of 3 minutes. That idea is valid but it will run out of steam. In the end, it it has to make sense economically. Even a Joe Schmoe who could care less about saving the planet should be able to price compare and say "Hey, look, $8k for new car with more torque and cheaper to maintain! I'll take it over a $18k Honda Civic". It has to be that simple to make sense financially.
This is entirely because manufacturers thought they saw a way to pad margins and then US politicians added tariffs to Chinese EVs to protect them from lower-cost competition.
As the other reply mentions, this isn't an issue in China.
And now that the bet on expensive EV growth allowing manufacturers to have fat margins forever isn't panning out, they're all freaking out about cheap Chinese models and pivoting to design cheap EVs.
You see this more in Europe than the US because Europe doesnt have the same protectionist tariffs the US does.
The Chinese EVs are very unsafe. Many many fires are happening with them, but you don't see it reported due to the journalistic repression there.
The sales numbers of Chinese EVs also look good because they'll buy hundreds of cars from their own stock and then park them in a field to rot, just to make the numbers look good.
IMO there shouldn't be a tariff on Chinese EVs but an outright ban.
The problem is that if they made a sub $10k vehicle now, "everyone" would buy it. That sounds great, but there's simply not enough battery factories to make the batteries for that many vehicles. The demand for expensive vehicles is still high enough that most of the EV battery factory output of the world can go to those expensive high margin vehicles, so of course the car makers haven't focused on low cost.
There are several dozen giga-scale battery factories coming online in the next few years. That should be a huge enabler to make cheap cars. Once they start to flood the market, the car makers will have to make budget vehicles to stay relevant.
There are also still a whole bunch of expensive R&D work still going on to optimize EV cars. Look at the cyber truck with its 48V and ethernet architecture. It made sense to launch that with an expensive vehicle so they can get a return on their R&D investment sooner. But now that they have it, they can apply it to a budget car and that should help lower cost by reducing the amount of copper wires needed.
Feels like everything is coming together for an explosion in EV growth. We're at the bottom of the ramp of the technology S-curve (logistics curve). We're in what feels a bit like a "false start" phase, but this phase is important for ironing out the kinks for the true mass-scale rollout.
I keep on seeing this problem reduced to the market or a business decision, but is it simply physically possible?
These vehicles require much more energy to produce. And without a reduction in consumption, almost the entire economy accounts for the availability of the same materials in the near future to meet carbon emissions targets. It's not just cars in vacuum.
It feels like we simply don't accept yet that the time of cheap energy is over...
That's about to change. Prices are coming down rapidly. The US is lagging the rest of the world mainly because its car industry is a bit uncompetitive (except for Tesla) and because manufacturers there are spoiled with a market that just has an insatiable demand for pointlessly large and expensive vehicles. That's still a growth market and very lucrative. Which means that US manufacturers are dedicating their very limited EV production capacity (except for Tesla) at that market exclusively. Because that's where the profits are.
BYD, Stellantis, and others are already producing cheap EVs by the millions. There are tiny EVs on the road in Europe that cost as little as 7000 Euros. Not a lot yet but I've seen a few in the wild. Think lots of plastic and not a whole lot of range and speed. Perfect for a city car. Stellantis is launching a proper EV for 24K euros this year; the Citroen e-c3. Modest range and good enough speed for short journeys on the highway. VW is following soon with the ID2. And of course the Chinese market has very different pricing than the rest of the world because it's a much more competitive market. BYD already has vehicles in the price classes you mention in China. You can buy EVs there for less than 10K$.
Producing cheap EVs is a solved problem from a technical point of view. It's being done. They exist. Just not in the US. Not yet at least. But as volume production kicks in that's just a matter of time.
Eh... as the Ford Maverick showed, people in the USA do want smaller and more efficient vehicles. Likewise, the Civic and Corolla have remained in the top vehicles for quite some time. People keep buying F150s because Mavericks became unobtainium really quickly, and the car space (as opposed to truck) has renewed competition from KIA and Hyundai which has dropped the overall sales figures for Japanese and American sedans.
Also, vehicles under a certain size and weight are illegal in many US states so anything similar to a kei car is outlawed. It is therefore unknown whether or not Americans would like even smaller and more efficient vehicles, but demand for some small-ish models seems to indicate that they would.
The last time I bought a personal vehicle (2022) I did some math. I drive X miles a year, I pay Y for gas, I pay Z for electricity. I then compared some vehicles in the segment that fits my needs and found the ICE options to have a significantly lower cost of ownership for the 8-10 years I expect to operate the vehicle. So I left the extra 15 grand in stock, which will see a much higher rate of return than an EV would have.
It's not even Joe Schmoe that's looking at the up front costs. I don't think EVs pencil out as profitable for people that aren't doing more than average amounts of driving. For someone borrowing for the car I cannot image ever getting ahead compared to traditional vehicles if you get $10k-20k more into debt at 6%apr for 60 months. That's an additional $3500-7000 in interest which buys you a lot of oil changes and gasoline. I guess I'll do the math again in 2031 when it's time to start looking at a more modern car and see if they are a good deal or not.
I bought an EV because it needs way less regular maintenance. I don't need to do oil changes or replace parts at an interval defined by the manufacturer. I don't even need to go to a gas station.
And every time I leave home, I've got a full tank, charged with cheap electricity.
And as a bonus it's really comfortable to drive, including having the ability to keep itself cool/warm even when the engine is not running.
IF I went purely by numbers the best choice would've been to buy a 2000€ car drive it until it breaks down. Then just call a taxi for the rest of the trip and buy a new similar one online for the next day. I could've bought 20 shitty cars for the price of my EV. But that's stress I don't want in my life.
The motivation behind choosing an EV is not because it's cheaper. People like the features, low pollution, low noise, the imagine, etc. Buying a car is very often not about making the best financial decision. E.g. in Europe, SUVs are now the most popular car model, even though they are more expensive, use more fuel, are more dangerous, noisy, polluting, etc.
You’re valuing your own time at $0/hr that is spent at gas stations, doing oil changes and other ICE maintenance, unless you have a personal assistant to do that stuff for you.
My calculation was 15 minutes/week for gas, 1 hour every 3 months for oil changes, and 1 hour a month on average dealing with other ICE problems (for instance I had a water pump failure cause my engine to overheat on a busy highway, had to wait 2 hours for a tow truck waiting in a dangerous location, then took another 2 hours to finally get home).
So that’s ~30 hours of my time per year. I value my own free time at $300/hr so even at a much higher initial cost an EV still made sense to me.
It's always been true that people who drive a lot every day are the low hanging fruit for EVs. EVs are more efficient when in motion, but most cars spend a lot of their time parked.
But in most places prices have continually dropped so the people who will save has expanded.
(Not checked to see if recent battery sourcing changes are included but either way it's still illustrative if the big picture.)
Yeah. In America it's pretty clear that they're using the high battery cost to say "all EVs are expensive so they start at 50k and only go up" so they can crank their profit margins.
Batteries are unavoidably expensive, but the only market they've been targeting are the wealthy, so they're largely burning through the enthusiasts and people on the border. Of course that market slows down, you've gotta open up the rest of the market to keep it accelerating. Maybe make something other than F-150-alikes.
The F150 is the best selling vehicle in the US. That’s not an anomaly, the top 3 are all trucks, and 5 of the top 10 are trucks. Making a great EV truck is an enormous market opportunity.
No one wants to chase the low end market in the US. Even if the tech pans out it just means more work faster resource depletion given the infra isn't there yet, and less profits. And then you think well a hybrid would fill the void better anyways if you have to sacrifice range for cheaper EVs.
Add a lifetime carbon tax to car purchases and EVs would make a lot more sense.
Even without that they will make sense soon. Expecting new tech to start out at the same place on the mass-production supply chain curve as the internal combustion engine is idealistic. It takes time to reach economies of scale but it will happen.
As the article says, the best approach to addressing climate change is not to replace cars with EVs 1:1, but to rethink invest in public infrastructure in high-population areas so that people don't feel like they have to buy a car.
This is a more thoughtful approach to addressing the problem than simply levying a tax on people who can't afford what still appears to be a rich man's toy.
I think it’s more that the EV battery adds $10k to the cost of the car. So they add lots of cheap bells and whistles (ie touchscreens) to justify that additional price.
Part of that is making electricity cheaper, which means finding better alternatives to renewables, for the time being. Realistically only nuclear can get there until more breakthroughs happen in solar. Instead we're seeing electricity go up and this is only going to make people double down on gas cars, moving to a different state if needed.
Batteries are too expensive for cheap cars. There won't be $1k beater EVs for a _long_ time. Just the raw metals in any decently sized battery is worth 2-3 times that. Even more if the battery cells are still in working condition, it can be repurposed for multiple uses.
Also expensive cars have bigger profit margins - which is the real reason =)
Raw material cost of a car is under 50 percent. An ICE drivetrain isn't really a huge part of that. Interiors, paint, suspension, electronics, HVAC are all still costs in an EV. So even if motors, batteries, motor controllers, cooling were all free, EV costs won't decimate ICE costs.
> When EVs were becoming popular, I was expecting to see super cheap, under $10k vehicles.
And you will see super cheap evs as soon as the market for those thinking they are saving the planet is exhausted. As with any product, it’s easier to exploit emotional buyers. And once tesla and others will want to tap into the practical buyer market prices will drop.
I've lived with an EV for 3 years now, and take some legit road trips from SF: Utah, Vegas, LA, San Diego, Tahoe. I have also been all over the world and done many, many trips (far to many to count). I submit the optimum mix for most Americans right now is roughly 1 EV and 1 hybrid, solar roofing and a battery storage system. The average American has a spouse. Even if we ignore kids, we can roughly assume, unless those suburbs are way more empty than they appear, that both people have a car. Let one have an EV, and one take a hybrid. That way, they can cover the occasional very long drive in relatively remote areas.
Keep in mind, it may very well eventually switch, where gas stations are less common than high power EV chargers in the remote areas. Sort of a Dutch disease issue: once the EV chargers are the dominant market, the gas station market is likely to quickly fade until it's just diesel and finally all electric.
The Mad Max theorists worry that they won't have power for their electric vehicles in the event of an apocalypse. Friends, how long do you think refineries, pipelines, and oil freighters are going to stay going in the event of an apocalypse? Better to get good at rigging some salvaged solar panels, an inverter, and re-learn the old pass times, like dominos, dice, and cards.
1. Range. But this speaks to the failure of the industry to provide charging infrastructure. This was one big thing that Tesla got right.
2. Price. An EV is inherently simpler to build and should cost less. Indeed, early EV offerings were almost affordable, if not for the high cost of the batteries. Now that batteries are less expensive, the automakers are pushing large, expensive cars (because they think they can sell them?). The Nissan Leaf is going away. The Chevy bolt stumbled badly out of the gate on technical issues.
3. Somebody figured that if extravagant pickup trucks are the most popular cars in American, then what America wanted was an electric pickup. The "I want a pickup" idea does not tickle the same brain cells as the "I want an EV" idea.
Make affordable, entry-level EVs and sufficient infrastructure to make them usable by people with HOA restrictions or apartments, and they will sell like hotcakes.
> The "I want a pickup" idea does not tickle the same brain cells as the "I want an EV" idea.
Very anecdotal but I disagree. My dream vehicle might be a hybrid pickup that sacrifices the frunk for an ICE that can give me much greater range if needed, while still having a full size battery I can use for around town and camping.
Also, EV pickups are basically the perfect work truck for people using plug-in power tools. My neighbor is building a new house, and the workers have needed to borrow our power outlet multiple times.
Readit News
By silly decisions I mean things like removal of turn signal stalk, removal of parking sensors, lack of a gauge in field of view(y, 3), etc.
I love ability to buy online.
I hate the lack of an online parts catalog where I can purchase OEM parts. This is a big issue for me. I have enough experience to do anything on ICE car myself, engine rebuild included.
The cost of a replacement battery is astronomical. I can replace an engine in an ICE vehicle for $2k.
It also appears that Tesla is more expensive to insure.
Edit: not sure why this is attracting downvotes
Here is proof of the 8 year warranty:
> 8 years or 100,000 miles
( Note: I chose to quote the lowest mileage to avoid controversy )
https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/support/vehicle-warranty
Here is NMC vs LFP:
> A key advantage of LFP is its longer life cycle, resulting in less degradation concerns. LFP packs are capable of more than 3000 full recharge cycle counts compared to NMC at around 1000 to 2000 cycles.
https://zecar.com/resources/what-are-lfp-nmc-nca-batteries-i...
It seems you're not aware that not only the parts catalog is available online for basically everyone [1] but also their repair guides / service manuals [2]?
None cost anything to access, [2] is a free subscription and only costs something if you need their software ("Toolbox") which you can book for a certain time.
[1] https://epc.tesla.com/ [2] https://service.tesla.com/service-manuals
My 2018 model 3 has fantastic parking sensors. The new cars without them will conveniently tell you to stop when the wall is currently sitting on the hood of the car after you hit it. It is a dumb choice that doesn't work. No turn stalk is just why most drivers don't use signals anymore...which sucks. No drive stalk means confusion about drive direction and if the throttle is armed. I ALREADY have this issue in my model 3, it is incredibly easy to end up going the wrong directly rapidly. The lack of creep means that a model 3 in autohold is easy to confuse for a car in park. They really need to make the P icon bigger.
No online catalog sucks, though I think with volume, that will happen via a third party. A big issue is the fact they they did agile changes to cars in a single model year so it is hard to know which part you need in some cases.
Battery - eh. For a comparable ICE vehicle - my old Volvo XC40 - A motor replacement is not massively far off from a battery, easily close to $10K. I hope that solid state batteries make huge jumps.
My tesla was $30/mo more to insure than the XC40 - that is material. I do save more than $30/mo on gas though, but the Xc40 was a 25mpg premium gas car so that is exceptional.
These electric cars are going for full gimmickry and just look like a giant long term ownership nightmare. Built to be disposable status symbols for your average American trying to appear wealthier than they are instead of practical vehicles for the mass market.
The vehicle is literally paying for itself based on my usage.
Now, if you’re driving less the math may not work out but the cost of fuel alone has to factor into those annual maintenance costs.
My car insurance is very much higher for a Model 3 than a similarly priced car because repairs are more expensive. This should be added to the TCO.
I like the Model 3 still, because it’s a fun car to drive. It’s not cheap though.
To me this seems extreme, what would you say the average gas price is for you and what cars do you drive and what's their fuel efficiency?
If you qualify for the EV tax credit, I would argue the car is too expensive for your budget.
If you don’t qualify barely, a brand new ICE vehicle is going to last years and be cheaper. Is it really worth it to push budget?
If you way don’t qualify, definitely buying an EV. Also congrats on your income.
The AGI limit for a couple is $300K. I'm pretty anti-new car as a financial move, but even I have to admit that a couple pulling down $250K-$300K/yr is probably going to be able to fade buying a new car if they want.
With thousands fewer parts, cheaper fuel, and the time savings of not having to go to a gas station, EVs have a lot of things working in their favor to make them cheaper to operate.
I purchased my corrolla off the lot in 2004 and _chose_ to go with manual everything for because it's cheaper and more reliable.
here we are 20 years on and that car is rock solid reliable with 168k miles and regular maintenance. I'm hoping to get another 20 years out of it.
When I decided I needed a minivan I went out and bought a 2007 Honda Odyssey, put a few thousand dollars into it and it runs like a champ (has just under 190k miles on it). But the Odyssey has an ongoing problem I'm trying to figure out and rectify ... the power sliding doors. I'd honestly rather just open them manually.
People love their convenience, but you know these vehicles with all their fancy whizbang features are going to be a maintenance burden during their lifetime.
There's something to be said about simplicity.
That is lot to save on fuel and maintenance... Which I would estimate to be around 500 a year for maintenance...
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/06/22/toyota-corolla-vs-tesla...
We may be close to saturating the market for the former group.
Another factor that could be at play is that all the non-Tesla EV makers have recently announced they will switch their chargers to NACS, but this will take a couple of years to roll out, so it’s not a great time to buy a non-Tesla since it already has legacy charging hardware.
I'm going on vacation next week, driving with 2 young children. It'll be about a 11 hour drive which is not crazy for a US vacation. I don't want to plan where I stop and stop for 45 minutes to fuel up with 2 toddlers in the car.
And they're all much more expensive than a nice 5 year old gas car.
Refuelling the Rav4 is an errand that takes time, planning, and mental energy. For my wife it's also a low-level danger: women find gas stations spooky, apparently.
Refuelling the Tesla is automatic and effortless. After you park at home, if the charge is <40% then plug it in. The next time you need to drive somewhere it will be full. It took me an afternoon hanging out with my electrician cousin and about $400 in parts from Amazon to build our own at-home electric refuelling station.
Road trips with the Tesla, however, are currently impractical: we end up adding another ~30% to the drive time. With only a ~220 mile range the Tesla needs to stop about every 150 miles for 40 minutes which is brutal. Range anxiety also becomes a much bigger factor driving through more rural areas and your route choices weigh supercharger locations above everything else.
We've got used to the self driving convenience of the Tesla but the Comma[1] on our Rav4 is just about as good for highway driving.
1. https://comma.ai/
Depending on your mileage, by saving $3k-$4k a year on gas theres certainly a case to be made for an EV being a more sensible financial decision in the long term especially given government tax incentives
One of the biggest reason for the massive disparity in efficiency on EV's is due to regenerative braking (16-25%). So what's interesting is when you compare an EV to a Hybrid ICE vehicle then the efficiency disparity becomes a lot less and you still have the benefit of being able to take long trips and not needing a home charger.
Anyone thats driven a Hybrid Toyota will tell you that fuel consumption is dramatically less, in my real world scenarios I use about 2.5x less gas in something like a Toyota Corolla Cross compared to my not overly thirsty ICE BMW.
Another benefit to Hybrids is they only require a ~1kWh battery instead of needing a huge 60-70kWh battery like an EV. So you could create 60 or 70 hybrid vehicles for the same amount of lithium mining as one EV.
One has to wonder why the governments aren't just pushing everyone into Hybrids instead of EV's? If a young person was asking me to recommend a car and they didn't have a home charger I wouldn't hesitate to recommend something like a new Toyota HEV / Honda e:hev - they are basically an EV with an on-board Atkinson engine as a powerplant.
The only actual negative I have is that chargers aren't as present in remote locations and if it's not a Tesla charger, it's not real. Also when towing a camper uphill to Yosemite, it was stressful but we made it on top.
Most EVs are just unproven in my opinion. Just because it says Mercedes, nice test drive I don’t want to be their EV Guinea pig in terms of long term ownership. Companies like Rivian, cool but way too new for me to even blink an eye at. This basically left me with Tesla as an only option. If you do any research at all you’ll hear/see how hit and miss their build quality is. Seems worse on certain models, but ultimately I also know too much about Musk’s management style and it does the opposite of instilling confidence in the product. I also happen to just not “like” the interior/dash setup. So, I just felt like I was sacrificing /risking too much with EV. The other issue in some cases, the EV has been announced with a release date and accepting deposits but I couldn’t actually purchase one like I needed/wanted too; Too much friction in 2023.
I ended up in a Lexus. Basically the luxury Toyota. So i essentially kept my purchasing behavior unchanged due to not finding any compelling EV, but i kicked some EV tires.
The most priceless thing though is safety for your family. I read about accidents people had in their nice 5 year old gas cars, and it’s just sad to me that they didn’t see the options for what they were, and could have easily afforded a much safer car, but instead based their choices on bad information about supposed long charging times and supposed long lines at chargers.
With fast charging you typically only stop for 15-25 minutes, the infotainment or app does the planning for you, and the frequency you'll have to stop at matches the natural frequency people typically need to stop anyways by design.
Get real and get new material.
Even so, as we both know, it's unlikely to reach 15 minutes as discussed else-thread, and while I do need breaks on a trip, 15 minutes is about the maximum I want to take unless I'm eating.
Any trip within a 3 hour drive is possible round trip on a single charge. Any trip within a 5 hour drive is possible with no stops and destination charging, actually saving a stop.
Any trip over a 5 hour drive generally takes less time and costs less to fly (I'm sure with many edge cases around rural destinations). Even on long road trips, charging from 20-80% takes 15-20 minutes and most drivers will at least need a bathroom break every 3-4 hours.
New Tesla Model 3 prices are comparable to entry level sedans like the Civic and Camry. Used Chevy Bolt's are abundant at <$20k with much less ongoing maintenance costs versus used gas cars. There aren't yet affordable large SUVs and trucks if those are your only vehicles in consideration.
How often do you do this? Once, maybe twice a year? With my current commute i have to go out of my way to get gas every week. It takes at least 15 minutes extra on my way home (but thats only because the gas station on the route is about $1 a gallon more). i'd be prepared to add an hour twice a year in return for getting 15 minutes back 48 times a year. And the annoyance of having to make an unexpected trip when i was planning to get gas the next day (whereas i could keep an EV charged abouve 50% at all times).
So an EV is more convenient than a gas car for daily commutes because you never have to go to a gas station. For the rare times you go on a long trip, you just take the gas car or you put up with having a longer trip in the EV.
You don't want to give yourself a blood clot on a family vacation.
Uhhhh, that's crazy to me. I don't know anyone who drives that far for a holiday, especially with kids.
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Dead Comment
My wife and I own one that was very comparably equipped to a similar luxury crossover / SUV, and the type of driving we do in that car is perfectly within the capabilities of our range & charging habits. Never going to gas stations or getting the annual oil change is a nice convenient perk for us. But we fit right in this targeted demographic:
1) Can afford an expensive, new car 2) Own a home and can install an EV charger 3) Have a second ICE vehicle for long trips
However, I can't imagine many people wanting EVs who fit this criteria don't have one by now. If the manufacturers want to keep selling EVs, they'll need to figure out how to replace the 2015 Accords and Tahoes without access to charging at home.
The value of my leased Volvo C40 has already fallen off a cliff and is less than my residual value. Once my lease is over there will be an NACS EX-30 that will be cheaper brand new, than what Volvo are charging for me to keep my old connector used battery car
What do you think current ranges are? There are very few EVs available with less than 200 miles of range. The Leaf and that Mazda thing are the only ones I know of.
But reading the room leads me to believe that there are a lot of people in your target demographic who think that EVs are for city dwellers.
The biggest issues for getting from 10% to ~50% are communication, price, and availability.
- Has a 400 mile range
- Can stop anywhere and refuel in just a few minutes, including very isolated areas
- Plays all the music I want
- Hauls anything I want (ie. I don't care if I trash the interior with a pile of mulch on a plastic tarp)
- I can sleep in the back
- Fits in nicely in my lower middle class neighborhood
- Has plenty of spare parts at the junkyard if I need to repair it
On top of that, it doesn't require a #$@# subscription, doesn't force me into some plutocrat's idea of an infotainment system, isn't tracked remotely, with that data being sold to randos, and doesn't cost as much as a Master's degree. Last thing is that while EVs are probably more environmentally friendly than a new ICE car, they still don't compete with a used one from the aughts over their lifetime.
I would simplify this down to just price. Price is a signaling mechanism in the market, which takes care of both communication and availability.
Nobody would need to communicate the virtues of an EV if it's priced like a Toyota Corolla with sufficient range.
We got the Leaf for $11k used, and if the EV were our only car we'd have had to spend significantly more on a car with much more range (at least 230 miles or more) and we'd have required the installation of a fast charger to handle the longer range. (120v charging is really pretty suitable for a car with only 100 miles of range.) All of these would have introduced significant costs and constraints, which were only offset by the very low price of a used Leaf, and the fact that we always have a backup option.
So you're saying EVs make the most sense for "people who buy cars?"
Can't fault manufacturers for targeting that audience.
Anyway you are pulling on the thread of unique selling points (USPs) which are among the many prevailing traditions in autos sales. I don't know how much they really matter in a secular sense.
From what I’m reading EVs are around 1% of total cars and around 10% of new car sales in the U.S., while at least 60% of housing units are single family homes.
Trouble is that pricing is awful, availability is also awful (there's still no date for when the Buzz will be around in the US) and I'm pretty happy with the gas price at the moment, so other than hype to buy a Tesla there's not much reason to buy electric at the moment.
The reality is that range just isn’t there for most people, and the extra cost of an EV is far more than fuel savings.
It’s going to take a better battery chemistry. That’s it.
Not even close. Maybe 6% of the households in my neighborhood have an EV, and I have no reason to believe we don't represent the average upper middle class neighborhood. I would imagine that percentage to be considerably lower in middle class neighborhoods. That's why I say we're not even close to saturating the single family home market.
If they are full EVs and not PHEVs they also make the most sense for households that have multiple cars where one of the other cars is a gas car. While the vast majority of trips are short, and charger networks are improving, a lot of people in the US drive longer distances at least occasionally, so it is much easier to replace one out of two cars in a household an electric car than switch to only using electric cars.
I think that once enough people have EVs and the charger networks are better this will be less of an issue, but a lot of people seem to downplay this issue, which I think is not a good idea, because I think there's a genuine risk that there could be a chicken and egg problem to mass adoption of EVs where the market of people who are able to use an EV in 2024 could be saturated before enough people are using EVs to build out the charger network sufficiently.
This is a big factor and one I note to anyone I know who is thinking of buying an EV. You don't want to be stuck with a dead end tech. Buying a non-Tesla that hasn't already adopted the north american charger is a foolish move at this point. I'm sure there will be conversion kits for many models at some point but that's another cost and one you likely want to have a professional do. Best to either buy a Tesla or just wait a year or two.
The real solution we seem to roughly agree upon is getting cars as a whole off the road where possible
Permanent investment in mass transit and any tech which plugs the gaps is the way forward in our view
The often subpar urban planning in North America (think Phoenix not Montreal) is simply incompatible with a sustainable and decarbonised future
Insisting on EVs over hybrids in the 2020s is a laughable total solution to the current situation we find ourselves in
Dead Comment
there will be adapters that will make current models compatible with Tesla's network once the switch is made(at least for Polestar, not sure about other brands)
EVs cost more.
EVs take more than a couple of mins to "gas up".
EV range is still lacking, compared to available charging stations, imo.
When the market gets it right, I'll jump in with both feet, but I'm not spending twice the money on a car, then deal with horse shit like Tesla and others when it comes to service visits, scheduling, etc.
> Sure, sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric — but the pace of adoption has markedly slowed
So, from that we're to conclude that electric cars are doomed?
In fact, fewer more people are buying cars:
> Electric car registrations accounted for more than 16% of the market in the first seven months of 2023, up from 14% this time last year. The rise saw the number of electric cars sold rise to 175,978 from 127,492 by the end of July (a rise of 38%), according to the latest official figures from the SMMT.
https://www.electrifying.com/blog/article/electric-car-sales... (and their first citation)
And this somehow means that sales are less than they were? The spin doctors have lost their minds.
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Oh - I get it. It's the world where this publication wants clicks for ad revenue.
"Sure, electric vehicles are becoming more and more widely adopted, but wouldn't it be better for this article if they weren't?"
Generally speaking the article exposes that the pace of adoption as stated by DoT didn't grow enough to meet their 2030 goal (i.e. The second derivative is going down), and goes on to explain why.
I think the article is fair, I think its title also is, I think the HN title is problematic unless you slap "than required to meet 2030 goals".
Alfred Nobel at least felt guilty for introducing high explosives to warfare. The prize was his penance.
Everything I learn about Pulitzer says he’s a piece of shit, and I don’t know why anyone would want to win a prize named after either of those two oligarchs. But it does say something very on the nose about the epicycles in news reporting.
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> Instead of seeing EVs as one piece of a plan for more sustainable transportation, America has focused on using EVs as a one-to-one replacement for gas guzzlers. But this one-size-fits-all solution fails to address our broader transportation problems, meaning emissions targets are likely to be missed and other transportation problems will continue to go unaddressed.
and
> People in Norway own more cars than they have in the past, in part because EV incentives encourage people to buy more cars, and the government has no plans to reduce how much people are driving.
"The government has no plans to reduce how much people are driving"? Huh? Obviously, the narrative of this article is anti-car. That's the "broader transportation problems" that they're referring to in the first quote. They could care less if the cars are producing emissions or not, they're just trying to manifest an anti-car future.
Not everything is a conspiracy.
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With an electric car, I start every day, always, with a full tank. No matter how late I'm running, I know there won't be a surprise that I need gas in addition to being late.
Maybe you live in a place where winter storms are not a reality but where I live the range isn't the problem it's the weather combined with the range. EVs range go down during winter and it's already worse, the risk of getting stuck in a snowstorm is thus higher.
But yes, during summer and perfect road conditions an EV would be great. That is not the reality of my life though and that is just speaking about the range issues. I live on the country side as well and I need a car that can handle roads that are not in perfect condition. EVs are also generally sedans and wouldn't even fit my family while being a lot more expensive, adding the risk of freezing to death in the car is just making it a no-go for now.
ICE cars are really unsuited for places where the gasoline supply is not guaranteed perfect.
Back when I had feet, there were so many days where I had anxiety over forgetting to tie my shoes. Sometimes I would start the day with my shoes untied. Other days I'd obsess over which knot to use. And additional worries over my shoe becoming untied during the day.
I found out the solution to these problems wasn't about just remembering to tie my shoe tightly in the morning like an adult -- the real solution was to cut off my feet so I never needed shoes again!
If you can, that's nice. But that assumes being able to not only charge at home but to have fast charging infrastructure installed at home.
We charge at home but the car doesn't fully charge overnight. That works all right since my partner only commutes every other day. On occasions where two consecutive commute days (or other special trips) come up, there's a lot of range anxiety involved.
> I think EVs give me LESS range anxiety overall.
This is difficult to understand. Sure, it's nice if you can start on full charge at home every morning. Nonetheless, some day you'll need to go farther and then a gas car is inevitably easier and faster to fill up.
To me that is bonkers. When EVs were becoming popular, I was expecting to see super cheap, under $10k vehicles. That was the promise: forget about all the IC complicated gears, alternators, transmission, fuel pumps and imagine getting a motor and batteries, what could be simpler!". But no, we ended up with more expensive vehicles, which take longer to "fuel up", and more expensive to insure, and they have a shorter range. Then everyone wonders how come not as many people want to buy them.
Sure, for some, it's a moral choice. We are saving the planet so it makes sense to pay more and wait 30 minutes to charge or whatever instead of 3 minutes. That idea is valid but it will run out of steam. In the end, it it has to make sense economically. Even a Joe Schmoe who could care less about saving the planet should be able to price compare and say "Hey, look, $8k for new car with more torque and cheaper to maintain! I'll take it over a $18k Honda Civic". It has to be that simple to make sense financially.
As the other reply mentions, this isn't an issue in China.
And now that the bet on expensive EV growth allowing manufacturers to have fat margins forever isn't panning out, they're all freaking out about cheap Chinese models and pivoting to design cheap EVs.
You see this more in Europe than the US because Europe doesnt have the same protectionist tariffs the US does.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/fear-c...
The sales numbers of Chinese EVs also look good because they'll buy hundreds of cars from their own stock and then park them in a field to rot, just to make the numbers look good.
IMO there shouldn't be a tariff on Chinese EVs but an outright ban.
There are several dozen giga-scale battery factories coming online in the next few years. That should be a huge enabler to make cheap cars. Once they start to flood the market, the car makers will have to make budget vehicles to stay relevant.
There are also still a whole bunch of expensive R&D work still going on to optimize EV cars. Look at the cyber truck with its 48V and ethernet architecture. It made sense to launch that with an expensive vehicle so they can get a return on their R&D investment sooner. But now that they have it, they can apply it to a budget car and that should help lower cost by reducing the amount of copper wires needed.
Feels like everything is coming together for an explosion in EV growth. We're at the bottom of the ramp of the technology S-curve (logistics curve). We're in what feels a bit like a "false start" phase, but this phase is important for ironing out the kinks for the true mass-scale rollout.
These vehicles require much more energy to produce. And without a reduction in consumption, almost the entire economy accounts for the availability of the same materials in the near future to meet carbon emissions targets. It's not just cars in vacuum.
It feels like we simply don't accept yet that the time of cheap energy is over...
EVs are also competing for batteries and mines with renewable energy infrastructure development.
BYD, Stellantis, and others are already producing cheap EVs by the millions. There are tiny EVs on the road in Europe that cost as little as 7000 Euros. Not a lot yet but I've seen a few in the wild. Think lots of plastic and not a whole lot of range and speed. Perfect for a city car. Stellantis is launching a proper EV for 24K euros this year; the Citroen e-c3. Modest range and good enough speed for short journeys on the highway. VW is following soon with the ID2. And of course the Chinese market has very different pricing than the rest of the world because it's a much more competitive market. BYD already has vehicles in the price classes you mention in China. You can buy EVs there for less than 10K$.
Producing cheap EVs is a solved problem from a technical point of view. It's being done. They exist. Just not in the US. Not yet at least. But as volume production kicks in that's just a matter of time.
Also, vehicles under a certain size and weight are illegal in many US states so anything similar to a kei car is outlawed. It is therefore unknown whether or not Americans would like even smaller and more efficient vehicles, but demand for some small-ish models seems to indicate that they would.
It's not even Joe Schmoe that's looking at the up front costs. I don't think EVs pencil out as profitable for people that aren't doing more than average amounts of driving. For someone borrowing for the car I cannot image ever getting ahead compared to traditional vehicles if you get $10k-20k more into debt at 6%apr for 60 months. That's an additional $3500-7000 in interest which buys you a lot of oil changes and gasoline. I guess I'll do the math again in 2031 when it's time to start looking at a more modern car and see if they are a good deal or not.
And every time I leave home, I've got a full tank, charged with cheap electricity.
And as a bonus it's really comfortable to drive, including having the ability to keep itself cool/warm even when the engine is not running.
IF I went purely by numbers the best choice would've been to buy a 2000€ car drive it until it breaks down. Then just call a taxi for the rest of the trip and buy a new similar one online for the next day. I could've bought 20 shitty cars for the price of my EV. But that's stress I don't want in my life.
My calculation was 15 minutes/week for gas, 1 hour every 3 months for oil changes, and 1 hour a month on average dealing with other ICE problems (for instance I had a water pump failure cause my engine to overheat on a busy highway, had to wait 2 hours for a tow truck waiting in a dangerous location, then took another 2 hours to finally get home).
So that’s ~30 hours of my time per year. I value my own free time at $300/hr so even at a much higher initial cost an EV still made sense to me.
https://www.carboncounter.com/#!/explore
It's always been true that people who drive a lot every day are the low hanging fruit for EVs. EVs are more efficient when in motion, but most cars spend a lot of their time parked.
But in most places prices have continually dropped so the people who will save has expanded.
(Not checked to see if recent battery sourcing changes are included but either way it's still illustrative if the big picture.)
Batteries are unavoidably expensive, but the only market they've been targeting are the wealthy, so they're largely burning through the enthusiasts and people on the border. Of course that market slows down, you've gotta open up the rest of the market to keep it accelerating. Maybe make something other than F-150-alikes.
Even without that they will make sense soon. Expecting new tech to start out at the same place on the mass-production supply chain curve as the internal combustion engine is idealistic. It takes time to reach economies of scale but it will happen.
This is a more thoughtful approach to addressing the problem than simply levying a tax on people who can't afford what still appears to be a rich man's toy.
Citroen C3 Petrol is 6.5L while the electric version starts from 13L. A straight 100% markup.
Tata Tiago Petrol starts from 6L while the electric version is 9.5L, with a 50% markup.
Despite this almost borderline stupid markup, electric care sales in India is growing 40% YoY.
I would love to buy an electric car, but I don't think we are getting a cheap one anytime soon. I'd rather wait and drive my old beat up car.
Becoming dependant on the industrial base a hostile communist dictatorship? Now that's dumbass.
Dead Comment
Also expensive cars have bigger profit margins - which is the real reason =)
Tell that to BYD.
And you will see super cheap evs as soon as the market for those thinking they are saving the planet is exhausted. As with any product, it’s easier to exploit emotional buyers. And once tesla and others will want to tap into the practical buyer market prices will drop.
Corolla - $32,475
Model 3 - $49,089
https://www.edmunds.com/car-comparisons/?veh1=401921005&veh2...
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Keep in mind, it may very well eventually switch, where gas stations are less common than high power EV chargers in the remote areas. Sort of a Dutch disease issue: once the EV chargers are the dominant market, the gas station market is likely to quickly fade until it's just diesel and finally all electric.
The Mad Max theorists worry that they won't have power for their electric vehicles in the event of an apocalypse. Friends, how long do you think refineries, pipelines, and oil freighters are going to stay going in the event of an apocalypse? Better to get good at rigging some salvaged solar panels, an inverter, and re-learn the old pass times, like dominos, dice, and cards.
What geographic locations do you have in mind when you’re recommending solar? Youre in basically the best location for it.
2. Price. An EV is inherently simpler to build and should cost less. Indeed, early EV offerings were almost affordable, if not for the high cost of the batteries. Now that batteries are less expensive, the automakers are pushing large, expensive cars (because they think they can sell them?). The Nissan Leaf is going away. The Chevy bolt stumbled badly out of the gate on technical issues.
3. Somebody figured that if extravagant pickup trucks are the most popular cars in American, then what America wanted was an electric pickup. The "I want a pickup" idea does not tickle the same brain cells as the "I want an EV" idea.
Make affordable, entry-level EVs and sufficient infrastructure to make them usable by people with HOA restrictions or apartments, and they will sell like hotcakes.
Very anecdotal but I disagree. My dream vehicle might be a hybrid pickup that sacrifices the frunk for an ICE that can give me much greater range if needed, while still having a full size battery I can use for around town and camping.
Also, EV pickups are basically the perfect work truck for people using plug-in power tools. My neighbor is building a new house, and the workers have needed to borrow our power outlet multiple times.
Most of the people that buy pickups.