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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

#531

Post by underlipton »

ben_w wrote: post #514
underlipton wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HOA and lease restrictions. Also depends on what exposures you have. One place I lived was exclusively western, the other eastern.

Rhetorically: Do HOA/lease rules that forbid PV not also prohibit AC dangling out the window? If they allow one and prohibit the other, can they not be changed to allow something else that also dangles from the window?

There'll often be a broad restriction of adornment of any kind outside of a strict list, and/or at the discretion of the HOA/property manager. Many don't allow window AC units. There's a general air of paranoia about anything that could potentially bring down perceived property values, or that might otherwise project a sense that the neighborhood is anything other than a Flanderization of affluence. (There's also a element of social control.) Think historical preservation codes, but for a pile of sticks built in the 80s or 90s.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#532

Post by jdeibele »

redwall_hp wrote: post #419
latentcall wrote: post #227

I would love a 10-15K BYD. I was told recently desiring a BYD is un-American when I can spend 3 times the price on a Tesla. No thanks! I’ll hold out for something truly cheap. Cars in America are insanely priced.

I will never buy an American car. I remember my parents' multiple Dodges and Fords catastrophically failing before they switched to Toyota. US car companies have created the lasting idea that cars are dead at 100K miles, because those companies' cars absolutely were. Meanwhile, I bought my Honda at 148K and it's over 210K now and doing fine. Tesla seems to live up to the legendary Ford quality, with hilarious workman…

We have 2 Chevrolet EVs, a Bolt EUV made in the US and an Equinox EV made in Mexico.

They're great. I have rotated the tires twice on the Bolt and I'm getting some different wipers for the windshield because my wife doesn't like the noise the factory ones make. Oh, and I got floor mats for both cars.

I have Car Play in the Bolt and GM's own system in the Equinox (Android for Autos or something like that, not the standard Android Auto) and they're both fine.

I use SuperCruise whenever I can. That's only on freeways with the Bolt and a lot more other places with the Equinox. I was backseat in an Uber Saturday and it was neat watching the Tesla Model 3's AutoPilot system. Very cool. On the other hand, GM was reporting no accidents with their cars, which include ICE vehicles, too. https://gmauthority.com/blog/2024/02/gm-super-cruise-users-t...

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#533

Post by throwawaymaths »

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.

People hated the prius too, when it first came out. But then Leonardo DiCaprio bought a Gen2 and pretty soon everyone wanted one. This is particularly funny because Honda built the insight first which looked crazy and nobody bought it, then Toyota built the Gen1 which looked like a normal car, then pivoted. Then Honda's Insight2 copied the New Prius vibe and this car ALSO failed, poor honda.

Looking unlike anything on the road catches eyes. Yesterday I was walking through an outdoor mall and I saw a bunch of kids crossing the road that jumped up and down and shouted "cybertruck!" when a cybertruck passed by.

Anyways, I happen to know the person who worked on the aptera's marketing campaign the first time around in 2009. Best Buy desperately wanted to get in on the EV market, and so they piloted showing Apteras at a few best buys, and they were laughed out of the room by all of the soccer moms walking in to store. It's pretty clear the market wasn't there in 2009... It's clear there is a huge vibe shift now, and the market is ready enough to at least launch the vehicle. Whether or not it will stick is a real question, but i think it would be silly to assume that the company can't get to say 100k cars on the road for lack of a market. Execution failure is, of course, still a possibility.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#534

Post by bluGill »

jmward01 wrote: post #51
worik wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Privacy is in my top two concerns for EVs Yes. But it does rue out every single modern car on the market. Very frustrating

I always buy used so I have some time left, but not much. When I bought my last vehicle the person had one of those insurance GPS devices in it. I can't even begin to understand why anyone would do that. It is so obviously going to be used against the driver and it is also obvious that it will eventually become 'required' and that just depresses me.

If you drive the speed limit and otherwise follow all those things they teach you in drivers ed but almost nobody does once they pass their drivers test those will save you money. The average driver is really bad.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#535

Post by acdha »

wannacboatmovie wrote: post #477
bane wrote: post #434

I can't believe that the average price of a car in the U.S. is almost $50k. For rapidly depreciating assets. Here I am working out TCO costs for a range of mid-sized cars for my next purchase, and trying to decide if the extra $2k for a Prius Prime over a Prius will beat the differential in fuel costs for my driving situation. I feel like a chump, but I know it's the smarter thing to do with my money. I coworker of m…

> coworker of mine just spent $100k on a regular old pickup truck > It gets like 11 mpg and uses the 92 octane fuel. I understand hating on pickup trucks is an easy way to farm upvotes on HN, but there is no 'regular pickup truck' in existence that gets 11 mpg. The closest that comes to that is the F-150 Raptor with turbocharged V8 which is a preposterous performance vehicle with a racing engine. It is a luxury item.…

> there is no 'regular pickup truck' in existence that gets 11 mpg

Point but e.g. the 2024 Silverado gets 12mpg in city driving. Go to any office parking lot here and you’ll see a lot of that size truck which have clearly never been used harder than going to Costco - and even the better ones are barely approaching ⅔ of the mpg of the pickup my grandparents bought in the 1980s.

I do agree that from a pollution standpoint we should treat all inefficient vehicles as the problem but large trucks and SUVs have significant immediate downsides for everyone around them. They’re far more lethal when they hit pedestrians or smaller vehicles, they produce higher tire and brake particulates which are known to cause health issues, they take more space to park, and at least where I live there are streets which could previously handle bidirectional traffic but now require someone to pull over to let oncoming traffic pass because there isn’t enough room for two large vehicles. In contrast, sports car drivers pose less risk because they’re low to the ground and the drivers are far more likely to see you and avoid an accident.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#536

Post by bluGill »

FergusArgyll wrote: post #377
jogjayr wrote: post #5

Money quote: “As automakers were profit maximizing during the supply chain crisis era, you are going to prioritize the bigger vehicles, the more expensive vehicles with their higher margins,” Tyson Jominy, vice president of data and analytics at J.D. Power, told me. “Now we just don’t have” these cheaper models.

Why did they just start "maximizing profit" recently? Did all the bad bad no good CEO's just read The Prince or something?

They started long ago. Ford himself was doing that. However what makes for maximum profit has changed over time. As cars last longer more and more people are not buying new cars so they have to make cars for the people left. If you want me to buy a new car it needs to be cheap - my 25 year old truck is paid off and still runs fine.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#537

Post by numpad0 »

Kudos wrote: post #181
vundercind wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't make great use of a full EV but would love more AWD PHEV options, of which there are currently few and they're mostly very expensive. A PHEV can be my everything-car that runs entirely on electricity for 90% of trips. I assume there's some reason they're not a more widely-supported option, but damn, I wish they were more common.

From what I've read most PHEVs tend to have really bad batteries that are unreliable, complicated and expensive to replace. It makes sense that they cut corners when there's a whole other powertrain to mask it.

It's Toyota cheaping out as always. They put a 1.5kWh NiMH pack in the trunk, and charge $5k for replacement. That's almost a big power bank capacity, and using that small of a battery strains it too. Cost for enclosures and control circuits don't scale with capacity so dollar/kWh figure is atrocious.

It works. People hates it. The issues with it are mostly theoretical or matters of preferences. That's hallmark Toyota, isn't it...

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#538

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

kjksf wrote: post #341
JohnFen wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand where this thinking comes from. My observations, which certainly don't reflect the current state of the tech (although if I'm buying a used EV, I'm not buying the current tech). But that's my bias nonetheless. I do think I overemphasized this, though, because while this is what makes me shy away from the idea of used EVs, it's not the reason why I avoid buying cars that are too new (which include…

It's not an observation because it's not something that you've observed. Here's the truth based on an observation: Tesla's battery capacity degrades 12% after 200k miles. Source: https://insideevs.com/news/664106/tesla-battery-capacity-deg... 200k miles is effectively the lifetime of a car. Average US person drives 10k miles so that's 20 years of driving. Tesla's warranty "guarantee at least 70 percent retention of b…

Supposedly, first-gen Leafs were known to have pretty nasty degradation due to lack of sufficient cooling. Combined with an already short-range battery, and the belief that you'd need to replace the battery frequently was justified.

Key word: WAS

Of course, modern EVs, and basically all Teslas, have bigger batteries with better cooling, so it's no longer an issue. But the belief won't die, just like how people still make memes about Java being slow as if it's still 1998.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#539

Post by epistasis »

jerkstate wrote: post #503
epistasis wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not fully sold on this reasoning. Electricity on the local distribution node has a value equal to the cost of generation plus the distribution. That's the value of it, what we pay. So by supplying the kWh locally to neighbors, the grid costs have been avoided. But the value is still the same. Now, the T&D infrastructure has already been built, and the utility wants to get paid no matter what, but if they were a p…

Your excess solar power is not worth the retail power cost because it is not as reliable or plentiful as utility power. If you think your neighbor would pay you the same rate for your unreliable excess power as they pay the utility, you should start a power company! The infrastructure has not “already been built” - it is constantly under expansion and maintenance, and the bonds used to fund construction also need to…

My frame of mind is that residential solar has the potential to dramatically reduce transmission and grid costs, but there is no way to force the utilities to shift to that model, because they will make less money. And regulators are asleep at the wheel and beholden to the utilities they regulate.

Grids are sized for peak, and without solar that peak is midday in most places, meaning that distributed behind-the-meter solar makes the grid cheaper.

Utilities, when they argue that solar is worth less, are not arguing on the merits of the issue but only selectively advancing arguments that benefit them. They will never present the totality of the issue.

It is up to others to push back against utilities' narrow views with a more complete view of the picture and what's possible.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#540

Post by kube-system »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #497
kube-system wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem in the OP -- EVs in the US sell only when they are premium vehicles. Cheap EVs don't quite drive like a Model 3. People don't buy a Leaf over a Prius Prime because of a better driving experience... and something cheaper than a Leaf is going to be similarly utilitarian.

Then we are pretty much aligned? I don't think, at least in the USA, that cheap EVs make much sense. The value proposition definitely changes in other countries with higher gas prices.

Yeah, gas prices are having less and less influence in what cars people buy. The overlap between [people squeezed by gas prices] and [people who demand cars from automakers] is dwindling. Fun fact, only about 26% of cars sales are new cars. The vast majority of drivers have no say in what is made.

It is possible to make cheaper cars, but they aren't competitive against nicer used cars. Back when cars didn't last very long it was viable to sell a car with basic amenities, like keyed locks, roll up windows, a single exterior mirror, no stereo, no AC, etc. But now, few are going to pay the prices that would demand when a used car for around the same price has all of those features. This pressure extends to cars of any drivetrain type.

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