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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

#471

Post by peebeebee »

genocidicbunny wrote: post #455
peebeebee wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? What emergency? You will always have solar on your roof. I think in emergencies, gas will run out much quicker than electricity? And where do you live that you have a mess of public chargers? The quick charger network is excellent where I live (Benelux)

> You will always have solar on your roof. Methinks you assume too much. Rooftop solar is only really an option for someone that owns a SFH, or is in a townhome with a fairly permissive HOA (In the US). Someone living in an apartment probably has no ability to access reliable solar except via the primary grid (which we assume will be down in case of emergency.) And in other places, like California, having solar panel…

If that is the case, chances are you are in not a good position for any emergency. For ‘emergencies’ you want to be outside the city, with a big stockpile of food and clean water. Maybe enough land to grow some veggies. Extra points for solar and a battery. A gas powered car won’t save you in any real emergency. Do you stock 100liters of gasoline in your home?

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#472

Post by arghwhat »

mvdtnz wrote: post #161
lukas099 wrote: post #78

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…

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…

Quite the contrary - the edge-cases are not important here. Not because they do not matter, but because trying to address them this way leads to worse results.

Instead of having a giant living room with chairs and table space for 30-50 people, you can temporarily set up something on a lawn, in a park, or rent a dedicated space.

Instead of having a pickup truck to carry a heavy thing once, rent a van that one time or have a trailer hitch on a smaller car (for the confused Americans, in EU even the smallest cars have or can be had with trailer hitches for small utility trailers from 750 to 3500kg).

Instead of having a car with a 1000 km range and 10 minute refuel when you only drive 30km a day, rent a nicer car for those trips or take a train/airplane.

Don't optimize for edge-cases - you get better and cheaper results by optimizing for the median and doing something else for edge-cases. Think of it like trying to do everything with a swiss knife vs. using a few good dedicated tools, renting those you rarely use.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#473

Post by jmpman »

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…

The edge case I’m worried about is travel time during the holidays. Between LA and Phoenix is a desolate stretch of freeway running through a small number of essentially truck stop towns. The most isolated one, Quartzite, has an enormous Tesla supercharging station, which just doubled in the last year. It’s virtually essential to stop in Quartzite on the drive in a Tesla. I made that drive a week after Thanksgiving, and the new Tesla superchargers are behind a brand new gas station. While stopping, I asked the clerk how the wait was during Thanksgiving, and he indicated that it was through the roof. Now, Quartzite and its grid can currently handle the peak Tesla traffic between LA and Phoenix on the busiest holiday travel weekend, with significant wait time, but can it handle the 100x increase required for full electrification? I’m skeptical. And the we have square miles of essentially idle chargers outside of this peak travel period? Seems wasteful. How do we feed the peak power demand to these tiny towns? New huge transmission lines to these isolated towns? Diesel generators? Tesla power packs?

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#474

Post by [deleted] »

mvdtnz wrote: post #161
lukas099 wrote: post #78

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…

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…

[deleted]

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#475

Post by Reason077 »

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…

Range anxiety is solved by building out charging infrastructure. There's no range anxiety once you can rely on there being fast, convenient, reliable charging stations along all the routes that you will conceivably travel on. If you're running low then you just stop and charge wherever, and whenever, it's convenient.

You'd have range anxiety about gas cars, too, if there wasn't a reliable network of filling stations on the routes that you are travelling!

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#476

Post by ZeroGravitas »

This headline is false, and it's not the original.

The original sub-head contains the text "sudden slowdown in electric car sales", but the article itself correctly reports that sales are still rising.

The rate of growth has declined, as it often does when things are growing quickly from a small number.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#477

Post by flir »

atoav wrote: post #308
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…

Most people don't ride off the road, yet they get themselves rugged downhill bicycles with crazy big wheels in the city. Other people buy SUVs, in the city, where a smaller vehicle might have a ton of advantages. This is all in a certain sense irrational behaviour, but in another sense it is more about the feeling . People like to buy things that they can imagine them helping in all life situations. A car is not a sm…

I once worked on a magazine for self-builders (building your own home). The readership was assumed to be entirely aspirational - that is, it wasn't written for self-builders at all, it was written for people who dreamed of being self-builders. A hell of a lot of youtube content fits in the same bucket, IMO.

There's also conspicuous consumption/costly signalling to consider, when it comes to things that are on display like bikes, clothes, cars: in some respects, a car is a piece of jewellery.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#478

Post by Reason077 »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #107
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…

It is even worse for people like me, despite having a charger in my home. I almost never drive short distances, I walk everywhere locally. When I do drive, it is very long distances, and in those cases range and refill time counts for a lot. On their best days EVs have inferior range and in many conditions they have markedly inferior range. Add on top of that the lengthy recharge time (topping off a gas tank is idea…

> "We will know EVs have arrived when Americans in the mountain west start trading their Subarus for Teslas."

The sort of people who used to buy brand-new Subarus are already buying Teslas.

The people who buy used Subarus will be buying Teslas (and other EVs) in 5-10 years time when they're going cheap enough on the resale market.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#479

Post by ZeroGravitas »

gamepsys wrote: post #129
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…

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 woul…

A site from MIT that lets you do these calculations, and has presets for state incentives, gas costs etc:

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.)

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#480

Post by pgreenwood »

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…

For occasional long trips; how about a small trailer with a diesel generator, and charge while you're driving?
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