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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

#91

Post by dylan604 »

voisin wrote: post #70
rootusrootus wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect a whole segment of people would be willing to consider a no-frills EV at a comparable price point. GM made that play with the Bolt. It was routinely available for just over $20K. Still sat on lots, not getting a lot of love. People shopping for new cars want nicer toys, people who cannot afford new shop used and enjoy getting those nice toys at a discount. I bet the subset of buyers looking for a bare bon…

> People shopping for new cars want nicer toys It is worth recognizing the role that ZIRP played in all of this. Artificially low interest rates allowed payments on more expensive premium vehicles to be much more manageable for a much larger portion of the population.

I think this is something people just don't want to admit. It's easy to overlook prices being ridiculous when your monthly payment is all principal. That period of time of ZIRP constantly had me wondering how financing was making money.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#92

Post by KptMarchewa »

p1necone wrote: post #42
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.

The biggest downside of a plugin hybrid is the complexity and therefore higher service costs, likely shorter lifetime etc. You have all the maintenance requirements of a regular ICE vehicle and an electric motor + battery on top of that. Also the full electric range is likely much lower than an electric only vehicle so running costs would be higher. Some EVs have full charge range that's not much less than a full tan…

In theory, yes - however, after all this time, 00s Priuses are typically lowest maintanence (or, overall TCO) cars.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#94

Post by burnt-resistor »

underseacables wrote: post #58
r14c wrote: post #47

The only EV I'm even interested in is an Aptera. They're building a new class of vehicle that takes advantage of the affordances of full electric. I want a small efficient car that can go long distances and nobody else is building anything like that. Even US capital markets don't understand the appeal of this class of vehicle, but luckily they were able to fill their funding in global capital markets. I'm pretty pess…

I love Aptera! I just don't think it's ever going to take off. There's just not enough investment and demand. It looks ridiculous but it's an awesome concept of aerodynamics.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but unless there is another solar option, the 100 kWh pack will take around 40 days to charge by solar at 700W from 20% to 80%. Otherwise, it seems like the solar part is greenwashing with a bit of '70's-style geodesic dome and Balans chair styling. I'm all for cheap(er) EVs that don't involve Tesla like Scout or BYD.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#95

Post by _ea1k »

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.

There are small, ~20k cars in the US, but this isn't where most of the sales volume is. Trax starts at ~20k and isn't even that small.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#96

Post by schaefer »

015a wrote: post #54
9x39 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's only one reason why US cars are more expensive than CN cars: People will pay it. All that other stuff is window dressing. The US is way, way better at financial engineering than China; we can sell an $80,000 Tahoe to a single mom between jobs on zero down and 10% APR, somehow she'll take that deal, and somehow the system doesn't explode into a fiery deathball; so you get $80,000 Tahoes. That's it. Short-term…

In general, I’m not an anti-regulation person. But American regulations on cars add cost compared to other countries.

One specific example: mandatory back up cameras (and a monitor to watch them on).

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#97

Post by renewedrebecca »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #37
wlesieutre wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The trend to exclude CarPlay and/or Android Auto really is awful. Not only is there a high risk of notoriously underpowered head units becoming increasingly laggy over time with updates, there’s also the risk of the automaker deciding that shipping new updates for your only slightly old EV is too much of a cost to bear and dropping support, making the head unit slowly become more and more useless over time as apps st…

Indeed. I won't buy a car that doesn't support CarPlay.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#98

Post by lenerdenator »

Consider who builds American EVs:

1) a SV/Texas "tech" company, which, by its very identity, must yield insane returns to shareholders 2) Legacy auto companies who must yield insane returns to both shareholders and, to a lesser extent, retired employees. In their defense, the second group actually did work

Compare this to Chinese EV makers who are dumpi - I mean, willing to take less return on their sale in order to establish market dominance globally.

Yeah, no wonder American EVs are expensive.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#99

Post by declan_roberts »

VeejayRampay wrote: post #93

the only manufacturer that does this right is Aptera, the rest is a bunch of gimmicks / subsidy fraud that doesn't solve any actual problem with cars

Never even heard of them, so I doubt they're the only ones "doing it right" vs other car companies that actually sell EVs.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#100

Post by tirant »

worik wrote: post #22

> “I think having a regular $25,000 model is pointless,” Musk said a few weeks ago. “It would be silly.” ROTFLMAO! Says the richest person in existence. What an entitled nasty person.

That lacks context*

Obviously it might be pointless for a company like Tesla, as it might not favour their financial numbers.

It is actually a phenomenon going on specially with European brands. They have abandoned low margin cars, it is, cheapest segments, to improve their financial performance numbers (ROIC...)

* That was mentioned during Tesla's earnings call in October this year, in the context of the shift of strategy towards FSD and the Robotaxi.

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