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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

#721

Post by syntheticnature »

atestu wrote: post #664
outlace wrote: post #627

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 pla…

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 m…

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.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#722

Post by ben7799 »

davidy123 wrote: post #609
jillesvangurp wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some manufacturers actually do this. NIO particularly does this at scale in China and I believe they are starting to expand to the US and the EU now as well. But the reason that this is not a thing are that most of your assumptions as to why that would be a good idea are probably wrong. 1) Batteries outlive the vehicle. Not always but on average they do. There are plenty of first generation EVs that are more than ten…

Isn't there something wrong to you if a "routine maintenance" takes a day? The whole thing makes me think of home renovation, apparently the majority of landfill is cast-off material because re-use isn't a consideration. I don't think "most people" arguments are great. People want freedom and flexibility, they don't want to have to sell their car and buy a new one if their conditions change. I hope the first mainstre…

Something that happens zero or 1 time in the lifetime of the vehicle is not "routine maintenance".

And if you haven't had maintenance on a gasoline powered car that lasted more than a day I would wonder if you've ever owned a car?

Every gas car I have had has had several maintenance issues that took a day or two and the dealer had to give me a loaner car.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#723

Post by mips_r4300i »

phtrivier wrote: post #487

A missing part of the "flawed" plan: it was relying on expectation that battery ranges would improve exponentially thanks to all the "breakthroughs" that were published on a regular basis to get views on tech news site. Except, no, it still does not work as a drop-in replacement, so you have to change the whole society instead, which sucks because we're kinda on a deadline here, aren't we ? To put it mildly "the engi…

A typical high end 18650 cell in 1997 was 1600mAh. A typical high end 18650 cell in 2023 was 3200mAh.

So it took us 25 years to get a 2x density improvement in li-ion cells.

We desperately need higher density but it is very slow going. The density necessary to "save" EVs for the layman is unfortunately not coming soon.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#724

Post by pentae »

atestu wrote: post #664
outlace wrote: post #627

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 pla…

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 m…

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.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#725

Post by volkk »

bragr wrote: post #676
atestu wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

> 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.

this isn't quite accurate. fast charging isn't available everywhere. did a road trip within california a few years ago and our model 3 ruined our trip on the drive from yosemite to sequoia national park. fast chargers became non existant to the point where we had to stop for 2 hours to wait for some low charge place to get us to 40% so we could make it to the next fast charging place.

i'm sure happy path traveling is great, but it becomes stressful as hell very quickly

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#726

Post by avgDev »

moepstar wrote: post #353
avgDev wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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 so…

I am well aware of the parts catalog. I was specific about being able to see pricing.

For me this smells like a dark pattern. Tesla gets you in the car at a reasonable price point but why can't they show part prices online? Or even better sell them online? They are a tech company.

Right now, I can tell you the cost of a part for literally any main stream car with just a simple search. I can tell if the parts in stock or if they are out of stock how quickly I can expect to get them.

Why can't tesla do this, if legacy automakers have been doing this for years?

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#727

Post by troyvit »

_ea1k wrote: post #675
outlace wrote: post #627

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 pla…

Yes, EVs are most convenient for well over half the country. I'd say that we are nowhere near saturation. 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.

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.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#728

Post by tshaddox »

outlace wrote: post #627

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 pla…

> 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.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#729

Post by everdrive »

hotpotamus wrote: post #716
atestu wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

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.

Don't worry, at some point those children will grow up. They'll cease to be innocent victims, and will be forced into the same moral compromises that all adults are forced into. My only hope is that some of them will realize how silly their youthful generational blame had been.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#730

Post by kaiken1987 »

atestu wrote: post #664
outlace wrote: post #627

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 pla…

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 m…

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.
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