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The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

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Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#21

Post by worik »

jmward01 wrote: post #11
bartvk wrote: post #2

https://archive.ph/9oIT4 I wish it would have adjusted for inflation. One quote: "The average transaction price for a new vehicle sold in the U.S. last month was $48,623, according to Kelley Blue Book, roughly $10,000 higher than in 2019, before the pandemic." However, about 9200 euros of that is due to inflation according to this calculator: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ That's a nitpick though. All in all,…

Privacy is in my top two concerns for EVs (and any vehicle purchase I make). I am increasingly avoiding every privacy destroying option out there, be it cars or services in general. It is, unfortunately, becoming nearly impossible to be privacy aware but the more resistance people put up the better chance we have of maintaining some privacy.

> Privacy is in my top two concerns for EVs

Yes.

But it does rue out every single modern car on the market.

Very frustrating

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#23

Post by gonzo41 »

AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #9
bartvk wrote: post #2

https://archive.ph/9oIT4 I wish it would have adjusted for inflation. One quote: "The average transaction price for a new vehicle sold in the U.S. last month was $48,623, according to Kelley Blue Book, roughly $10,000 higher than in 2019, before the pandemic." However, about 9200 euros of that is due to inflation according to this calculator: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ That's a nitpick though. All in all,…

If even ICE cars are now super expensive, why isn’t this a screaming opportunity for some auto manufacturer to target the low end of the market? I’ve never spent more than 20k for a car. With prices like this, I’m just going to keep my old one as long as I can.

I bring you https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/toyota-hilux-champ-lau...

You can't have it because of existing tarrifs.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#24

Post by worik »

The Chinese are going to clean this market up.

The British made the same mistake back in the day with motorcycles. "Who cares about the market for 125 cc machines?" they said.

The Japanese did, and now they have the market, the British used to have, for luxury and high powered motor cycles. As well as most of the 125cc market

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#25

Post by Swizec »

jopsen wrote: post #16
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I don’t understand the advantage of EVs really. Isn’t a plug in hybrid the best option? You can do everyday short trips on battery but also have the gas engine for longer trips. Sure it is more complicated but Toyota has shown that you can make this super reliable.

For most people, their daily trips are well within the range of what an EV can do. And most people don't do long trips every week. Personally, I try to optimize my life to avoid spending a considerable part of it in a car. With charging at home EVs are just easy. For long trips charging every 2-3 hours isn't too bad (most humans benefit from a break anyways).

> And most people don't do long trips every week

Most people don’t own multiple cars and wouldn’t rent a car for those rare use-cases when they already own a perfectly fine car. It may be overall cheaper to do that, but people don’t think that way.

One or two annual holiday roadtrips to go see the family and oops that EV starts looking like an annoying option. Every friend I have who doesn’t own a house and bought an EV ended up returning it because of how annoying the charging was to deal with.

It’s not that charging was _hard_, it’s that they had to think about it.

edit: this may be an urbanite take. Even folks with cars don’t really use them to commute regularly. Semi-rare trips only.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#26

Post by 9x39 »

warner25 wrote: post #17
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #4

Something has to disconnect here. Everyone complains that everything costs so much, but the average Americans' paycheck is not rising the same way, so they can try all they want to sell $95k electric vehicles because of thin margins for cheaper products, but if purchasing power doesn't rise with inflation, then that market that "sucks" is going to be the only real market one day...

Yeah, I think the pendulum swings back and forth. My recollection of the 2007-2009 recession, with $4 gas and the failure of GM, was that it spurred a lot of interest and innovation in smaller, more efficient, economy cars after many years of the automakers pushing (and people buying) larger and less efficient trucks and SUVs. I think we're at an extreme point in the cycle again now with American automakers all but a…

I think you're right about pendulums here, but we might be about to see a US auto maker vs China auto maker inflection point like I read about in the 1980s with US vs Japan.

I watching this video which lays out some fundamental diffs between US companies, like GM and Chinese companies, like BYD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXvcwM977D0 * Short term vs long term focus * .gov subsidies stronger in key markets in CN * CN companies extremely rapid in development (as low as 1.5 yr vs 6 yr in the US) * Lower wages and input costs

Things will probably have to get worse before they get worse. Corporate people know the machine (public traded US auto makers) keeps lumbering forward without change until it can't, and all handouts, bailouts, and other tricks have been played.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#27

Post by blackjack_ »

jmward01 wrote: post #11
bartvk wrote: post #2

https://archive.ph/9oIT4 I wish it would have adjusted for inflation. One quote: "The average transaction price for a new vehicle sold in the U.S. last month was $48,623, according to Kelley Blue Book, roughly $10,000 higher than in 2019, before the pandemic." However, about 9200 euros of that is due to inflation according to this calculator: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ That's a nitpick though. All in all,…

Privacy is in my top two concerns for EVs (and any vehicle purchase I make). I am increasingly avoiding every privacy destroying option out there, be it cars or services in general. It is, unfortunately, becoming nearly impossible to be privacy aware but the more resistance people put up the better chance we have of maintaining some privacy.

Not good privacy by default, but as a hack you can also just buy a Bolt EV for like ~14k or so, then disconnect the location tracking antennae which takes like 30 mins of fiddling and $12 of parts.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#28

Post by coding123 »

navane wrote: post #10
bartvk wrote: post #2

https://archive.ph/9oIT4 I wish it would have adjusted for inflation. One quote: "The average transaction price for a new vehicle sold in the U.S. last month was $48,623, according to Kelley Blue Book, roughly $10,000 higher than in 2019, before the pandemic." However, about 9200 euros of that is due to inflation according to this calculator: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ That's a nitpick though. All in all,…

Is the car 10k more expensive because of inflation or is the inflation so high because the car costs 10k more?

yes

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#29

Post by wlesieutre »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #7
rootusrootus wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the EV car market is lacking demand There is scant evidence for this. Every time prices improve, sales surge. Sounds like the demand is there, but price matters. As it always has.

Yep. Midrange-to-expensive EVs have been around for long enough that pretty much everybody in those market segments who are currently interested have already bought one. Additionally, the segment has been flooded with midsize SUVs, with the odd midsize sedan — variety is sorely lacking. Between these two, quite a considerable market is being left unaddressed. The first to fill these niches with affordable models that…

I'm hoping for manufacturers to pull back on the "all controls are via touchscreen" and "you can't have carplay because we want to charge you our own monthly fees" trends.

Taking Chevy for example, they have physical HVAC controls, but they're counting on the average consumer being too clueless to realize they only have Google Maps in their car because it came with a free OnStar trial. Eventually people are going to notice that they spent $1000+ to buy the larger screen upgrade, and now Chevy wants them to shell out $300/year forever to be able to use it for maps.

The other big unknown is lifespan of car software platforms, if these end up being like phones where they get laggier and laggier with continued software updates, until eventually it's unusable, people aren't going to be happy about it. But we won't know for 15 years exactly how bad that problem is.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#30

Post by p1necone »

AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #9
bartvk wrote: post #2

https://archive.ph/9oIT4 I wish it would have adjusted for inflation. One quote: "The average transaction price for a new vehicle sold in the U.S. last month was $48,623, according to Kelley Blue Book, roughly $10,000 higher than in 2019, before the pandemic." However, about 9200 euros of that is due to inflation according to this calculator: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ That's a nitpick though. All in all,…

If even ICE cars are now super expensive, why isn’t this a screaming opportunity for some auto manufacturer to target the low end of the market? I’ve never spent more than 20k for a car. With prices like this, I’m just going to keep my old one as long as I can.

I would imagine the most price sensitive buyers wouldn't be looking at the new market at all - there might not be enough demand for "cheap, but still nowhere near as cheap as a second hand car" to make the price point worth targeting as a manufacturer.
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