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Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

businessinsider.com

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Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#231

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

This article makes me even more dismayed at the fact that the Chevy Volt never really took off. I really believe it would be the perfect car for most people:

1. As the article points out, most people drive less than 40 miles a day, and the Volt provided 40-50 miles of electric range.

2. Since the battery is relatively small for an EV, no expensive home charging system is needed - just plug it into a normal 120V outlet and it fully charged overnight.

3. Since it automatically switches to gas power when the battery discharges, there are basically none of the downsides of EVs. No range/charger anxiety, for occasional long trips I just use gas, and it's actually able to utilize a lot more of the battery because it doesn't need a "buffer" (i.e. for a fully electric car most folks are very wary to bring it below 20 miles of range or so). With my Volt a tank of gas would last me about 6 months unless I went on a road trip.

I wonder if, as pure EV sales slow down, that people and car manufacturers will start to see the benefits of plugin hybrids. I think if a plugin hybrid had better styling (as opposed to the Prius-derivative styling of most of them) that they would do a lot better.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#232

Post by elif »

rappatic wrote: post #60

The 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…

After taking an EV on a ~6500 mile road trip a couple months ago, I never want to road trip in a gas car ever again. Highlights:

- by the 2.5-3.5 hour mark between charges, I'm ready for a 25-35 min break and its somewhere nice and not a gas station

- stop anywhere and sleep with air conditioning for free

- never have to use gas station bathroom

- never have to calculate any routes or fuel stops

- also no gas cars drive themselves as well as EVs can yet so driving fatigue is so much better

There were times it felt like I was on my own private train where I got to set the route through national parks, scenic routes, etc and not deal with strangers.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#234

Post by adrianN »

rappatic wrote: post #60

The 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…

Long trips in an EV are not impossible, they are just a little more hassle and take a bit longer because you need to take a route that has chargers. If you don't do these trips weekly, imo, the benefits of an EV outweigh these negatives.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#235

Post by jen20 »

electrondood wrote: post #226
rappatic wrote: post #60

The 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 see how this is based in reality. You're running low on gas? You go find a node in the gas station network. 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.

And how long do you spend at it?

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#236

Post by proc0 »

rdtsc wrote: post #66

> 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…

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.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#237

Post by zlsa »

instaheat wrote: post #173

Good. I've been reading "Cobalt Red" How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives and it is deplorable how the Congolese people are treated. Maybe they'll discover or manufacture a material that can replace Cobalt that has the same thermal stability but by then it will be too late.

LFP batteries[0] are cobalt-free and make up over half of the EV market as of mid-2022[1].

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery

1: https://m.energytrend.com/news/20220520-28100.html

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#238

Post by electrondood »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #193
iknowstuff wrote: post #45

Dumbass "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…

Finally, some sense. Thanks for taking the time to summarize this.

Fun side note... 90% of the DoorDash delivery drivers I see are driving a Prius, because the cost of ownership is lower.

That $25k Tesla is going to eat Toyota's lunch and every one of these delivery drivers is going to be financing one.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#239

Post by inglor_cz »

lukas099 wrote: post #78
rappatic wrote: post #60

The 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…

Depends on the edge, right?

0.1 per cent vs. 2 per cent both look like a banal edge, but it is a 20:1 difference. If you do something 0.1 per cent of the time, you spend 1 day in 3 years doing so. If you do something 2 per cent of the time, you spend 1 week every year doing so.

Also, it matters what the consequences are. I spent nontrivial money securing my home from potential burglary, because I just don't want to experience it, ever. I don't have a guest bedroom, but your example with the hotel down the street actually assumes that there is a hotel down the street; what if the closest hotel is five miles away and taxi services are unreliable?

Etc.

I get that some people overspend, but the original topic was range, and in a country like the US, with its vast rural regions, a lack of chargers on some trips may be a serious concern.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#240

Post by lelanthran »

lukas099 wrote: post #78
rappatic wrote: post #60

The 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…

> People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo.

Not in this situation. If you take a family trip[1] once or twice a year, that's not an edge case, that's an annual case.

The other thing you are missing is that those routes that are longer than the EV range are busy every day!

If you go out, today (non-peak season), and see 2000 cars drive that long route today, that's 2000 car owners today that need that range, or 2000 car owners who would tell you "range anxiety" if you asked them to move to EV.

On peak times, popular long routes get over 2000 cars per hour. We're talking 100s of thousands, if not millions, of this need coming up per year, so its hardly an edge case.

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