Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US • Hacker News Board

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#551

Post by t43562 » Thu, Jan 04, 2024, 1:06 PM UTC

The car manufacturers have been going after the top end of the market for obvious reasons - it's the first thing to do when your battery supply and manufacturing capacity and electronic components are or have been limited.

There's got to be a point where that stops working. Perhaps it has arrived more suddenly than expected because of inflation due to ...... natural gas and petrol prices.

As for range, it's obvious that people who drive a lot will get a Return on Investment from an EV sooner than the rest of us and thus they can justify the purchase to themselves. So their demand for range is what is being satisfied. My need is for a car with modest range that I can easily afford - no need for fancy infotainment or acceleration or status. I'm not a good target for car companies till they have satisfied higher profit segments of the market.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#552

Post by m463 » Thu, Jan 04, 2024, 1:07 PM UTC

screye wrote: post #242

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 disagree. The sustainable alternative to EVs is hybrids, not gas guzzlers. Hybrids can be smaller, cheaper, lighter and gentler on the grid. Each of these matter. Heavier cars cause significantly higher road wear [1], particulate pollution [2] and occupy more space. EVs by necessity, are heavier. This is especially evident in America's favorite product categories : SUVs and Trucks. The Ford- F150 lightning is 1.5x…

beware, lots of hybrids are basically scams.

Range extenders probably aren't what you expect - You still have to charge.

For example the bmw i3 range extender won't let you drive on gas. It will put charge in the battery while you are driving or stopped, but it won't generate nearly enough power to keep up with freeway driving.

Other hybrids are basically ICE cars that can capture a little power and feed it back.

and hybrids have twice the complexity - all of ICE + all of EV.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#553

Post by GiorgioG » Thu, Jan 04, 2024, 1:08 PM UTC

JacobThreeThree wrote: post #302

jillesvangurp wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Tesla, BYD, and others don't have these issues because they built their EV manufacturing from scratch and have been optimizing how that works for the last ten years. The fact that Tesla and BYD don't have large, entrenched, auto unions to deal with is the biggest factor in keeping costs low.

I'm not pro-union, but that's the dumbest thing I've heard this year.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#554

Post by vertnerd » Thu, Jan 04, 2024, 1:08 PM UTC

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.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#555

Post by NoGravitas » Thu, Jan 04, 2024, 1:09 PM UTC

theshrike79 wrote: post #440

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…

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 =)

> Batteries are too expensive for cheap cars.

Tell that to BYD.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#556

Post by itsoktocry » Thu, Jan 04, 2024, 1:09 PM UTC

jliptzin wrote: post #524

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…

The whole article is crap with an obvious agenda https://electrek.co/2023/12/05/us-ev-sales-pass-1-million-20...

>obvious agenda

Yeah, Elektrek, a site dedicated to EVs with affiliate links, has no agenda.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#557

Post by GeertB » Thu, Jan 04, 2024, 1:10 PM UTC

This article really confuses the problems that legacy car manufacturers have with switching to EVs, with EVs in general. EVs work, just look at countries farther ahead in the transition, or ask the 1.8 million people who bought a Tesla last year. The transition is in full swing.

Tesla's excellent supercharger network is already more than sufficient for roadtripping in the USA and Europe, and now is open to non-Tesla EVs. This piece of writing is just a poorly researched bit of trash.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#558

Post by usrusr » Thu, Jan 04, 2024, 1:11 PM UTC

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…

How many trips are done alone? And yet people don't buy single-seater cars. People also don't draw boat or horse trailers most of the time, yet they buy cars as if that was all they ever did. The reality is that car purchases have been driven by very rare usage scenarios, often even by completely hypothetical usage scenarios ("what if I'd have to compete on Nürburgring?“) long before the topic of BEV came up.

The only way I see to change that pattern, outside of getting rid of cars completely, is a full switch from ownership (or "ownership" aka leasing) to fine-grained rental.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#559

Post by NoGravitas » Thu, Jan 04, 2024, 1:11 PM UTC

TexanFeller wrote: post #15

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 wil…

While you are right on the whole about the gee whiz features, those are also an increasing problem in ICE cars.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#560

Post by ubercore » Thu, Jan 04, 2024, 1:12 PM UTC

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's a shame charging infrastructure seems to lag so much. In Norway (and more broadly in Europe), I don't even think about range any more, even on multi-day road trips. There's enough charging to never take you too far out of your way, and the stops are actually really refreshing. I can understand anxiety if it's not that easy, though.