Earlier quoted context omitted.
People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo. > We need a dining room for when we have parties (has a party once every 2 years; room sits empty 99% of the time) > We need a guest bedroom (guests could stay at the hotel down the street) > I need a pickup truck (driver is an accountant who maybe picks up a couple bags of mulch from Lowes twice a year) I'm glad I live in a prosperous society where…
So would you buy a car with a 50 mile range?
Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
221–230 of 1001 posts
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#222The article talks about range concerns as if they're simply incorrect or ill-founded: > Niedermeyer said that while an electric car can meet most people's driving needs, it struggles with edge cases like road trips because of the need to recharge. Since Americans have been promised a one-to-one substitute for their gas cars, this seems like a failure; an EV should be able to do everything a gas car can. This idea per…
I don’t get it. I own a Model 3 and I’ve done road trips from home (NL) to Paris and south Germany. Paris is especially easy with one single stop at a supercharger next to places to get food. If people would choose not to get an EV because of having to make one single stop then they’re idiots.
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#223> 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 $10k vehicles. That was the promise: forget about all the IC complicated gears, alternators, transmission, fuel pumps and imagine getting a motor and batteries, what could be simpler!". But no, we ended up with m…
BYD, Stellantis, and others are already producing cheap EVs by the millions. There are tiny EVs on the road in Europe that cost as little as 7000 Euros. Not a lot yet but I've seen a few in the wild. Think lots of plastic and not a whole lot of range and speed. Perfect for a city car. Stellantis is launching a proper EV for 24K euros this year; the Citroen e-c3. Modest range and good enough speed for short journeys on the highway. VW is following soon with the ID2. And of course the Chinese market has very different pricing than the rest of the world because it's a much more competitive market. BYD already has vehicles in the price classes you mention in China. You can buy EVs there for less than 10K$.
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.
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#224I disagree with this article. I have a 2023 Polestar that I've had for about 10 months. I will be trading it when my new gasoline Audi arrives in the next week or so. I'll never have another electric vehicle. They tell you things that are not true. The cost of ownership of electric vehicles is much higher than gasoline, especially if you travel. It takes twice as long for a trip. A trip that used to take me normally 7 hours turned into 15 hours for charging and waiting.
You're going to be shocked by the electric bill. We're having to pay 0.22 cents/kW here. Many of the charging stations charge more than it costs to fill up a gas powered car. If you leave your car on their charger, they charge you for parking, and it is expensive. Don't charge your car, then go to dinner, and the movie.
They burn through tires. I have almost 30,000 miles on mine and I already need a new set of tires. I don't accelerate hard. I would be curious about others experiences. My friend still swears up and down about his Tesla, but he never goes anywhere. He has a 2018 Tesla w/ 40k miles. Maybe they're perfect for people that live in the city. If you have to drive, be warned.
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo. > We need a dining room for when we have parties (has a party once every 2 years; room sits empty 99% of the time) > We need a guest bedroom (guests could stay at the hotel down the street) > I need a pickup truck (driver is an accountant who maybe picks up a couple bags of mulch from Lowes twice a year) I'm glad I live in a prosperous society where…
The edge cases are the important cases though. Those parties I throw are the highlight of my year. My parents staying here with me is important to me, I wouldn't have it any other way. Yeah I have a desk job but that landscaping work I do in my weekend is one of my favourite hobbies. I refuse to live my life as if these things aren't important to me. I refuse to average my entire life style down to my median day. My…
This is exactly how I feel
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#226The article talks about range concerns as if they're simply incorrect or ill-founded: > Niedermeyer said that while an electric car can meet most people's driving needs, it struggles with edge cases like road trips because of the need to recharge. Since Americans have been promised a one-to-one substitute for their gas cars, this seems like a failure; an EV should be able to do everything a gas car can. This idea per…
Battery running down? Go find a Supercharger station. If you're in a Tesla, it will even route to these automatically. It will tell you in advance how many chargers are operational, and how many are occupied, and it will reroute to a less busy station if available.
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#227The article talks about range concerns as if they're simply incorrect or ill-founded: > Niedermeyer said that while an electric car can meet most people's driving needs, it struggles with edge cases like road trips because of the need to recharge. Since Americans have been promised a one-to-one substitute for their gas cars, this seems like a failure; an EV should be able to do everything a gas car can. This idea per…
We all want a cleaner planet and we need to be able to talk about how to solve the charge time problem without the hysterics and the bullshit.
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#228The cheap and tiny EV is a no-fuss/no-worry car that zips me around town for my daily driving. It's small and nimble, and I don't really care about what happens to it. I park in spaces a lot of other people would pass up because they're too cramped and they're worried about door dings or whatever. By now it has about 50 miles of range, but I never get close to that on any given day. In fact I tend to go several days in a row between plugging it in.
The other car is a PHEV that only has about 20 miles of range. It dips into the gas tank here and there, but that's so infrequent that stops at the gas station happen only maybe once every month and a half. And when it's time to do a family vacation or other out-of-town trip, it's only using gas, which is super-easy to come by and only requires 5 minutes to replenish. Best of all I don't have to deal with any rapid charger drama.
My next car is going to be a midlife crisis purchase, and I'm taking a pretty hard look at a manual transmission ICE. The idea of buying something like a Taycan and then having to roll the dice with the substandard rapid charging infrastructure doesn't sound appealing to me at all.
I know Tesla superchargers are a thing and that they will be available more broadly in the years to come, but I'm also looking to reduce the tech in my car, in particular anything that reports my location all the time to some mother ship.
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#229Dumbass "journalists" with the usual clickbait. Explicitly MORE people are buying EVs: > Sure, sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric The only thing they're seeing is "but the pace of adoption has markedly slowed" -- no shit, have you seen the interest rates and price diffs? And which manufacturer grew the most? Oh that's right the only all-EV one.…
Correct. Tesla just closed another record quarter. And BYD just surpassed them as the largest EV producer in the world. Both of those things are true because the overall market keeps on growing very rapidly. Which means Tesla can break it's own records and yet not be the largest anymore because another company is growing even faster. We're in a major economic down turn because of things like global pandemics and othe…
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#230The article talks about range concerns as if they're simply incorrect or ill-founded: > Niedermeyer said that while an electric car can meet most people's driving needs, it struggles with edge cases like road trips because of the need to recharge. Since Americans have been promised a one-to-one substitute for their gas cars, this seems like a failure; an EV should be able to do everything a gas car can. This idea per…
People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo. > We need a dining room for when we have parties (has a party once every 2 years; room sits empty 99% of the time) > We need a guest bedroom (guests could stay at the hotel down the street) > I need a pickup truck (driver is an accountant who maybe picks up a couple bags of mulch from Lowes twice a year) I'm glad I live in a prosperous society where…
I'm not sure I can think of a strong argument for consciously living your life in a way which ignores potential failure modes, unless you're pretty sure you've projected the hidden costs and are prepared at any moment to pay them.
The cost of finding and paying someone else twice a year to haul wood or supplies can easily justify the extra cost of a larger vehicle, for example.