The HN title is wrong and contradicted by the article.
More people are buying electric cars than ever before, but adoption rates aren't quite as high as what the government had hoped for.
Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
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Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#192I've lived with an EV for 3 years now, and take some legit road trips from SF: Utah, Vegas, LA, San Diego, Tahoe. I have also been all over the world and done many, many trips (far to many to count). I submit the optimum mix for most Americans right now is roughly 1 EV and 1 hybrid, solar roofing and a battery storage system. The average American has a spouse. Even if we ignore kids, we can roughly assume, unless those suburbs are way more empty than they appear, that both people have a car. Let one have an EV, and one take a hybrid. That way, they can cover the occasional very long drive in relatively remote areas.
Keep in mind, it may very well eventually switch, where gas stations are less common than high power EV chargers in the remote areas. Sort of a Dutch disease issue: once the EV chargers are the dominant market, the gas station market is likely to quickly fade until it's just diesel and finally all electric.
The Mad Max theorists worry that they won't have power for their electric vehicles in the event of an apocalypse. Friends, how long do you think refineries, pipelines, and oil freighters are going to stay going in the event of an apocalypse? Better to get good at rigging some salvaged solar panels, an inverter, and re-learn the old pass times, like dominos, dice, and cards.
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#193Dumbass "journalists" with the usual clickbait. Explicitly MORE people are buying EVs: > Sure, sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric The only thing they're seeing is "but the pace of adoption has markedly slowed" -- no shit, have you seen the interest rates and price diffs? And which manufacturer grew the most? Oh that's right the only all-EV one.…
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 other macro economic events like the conflict in the Ukraine. Yet, this has barely impacted the growth of the EV market.
The article is rehashing the myth spread by traditional car manufacturers that the reason they are selling so few EVs is that nobody wants EVs. Which is patently false. More people bought EVs last year than any year before. Just not from them.
The actual reason they are producing so few EVs is that they are struggling to produce them cost effectively. There is no demand problem if they price them right. But if they do that, they actually loose money on the few EVs that they do produce. The reasons for all this are complicated and relate to their outdated manufacturing and supply lines that are optimized for their now obsolete ICE vehicles. They can build EVs but they just aren't very good at it yet. Too many parts. Too many suppliers. Too slow to assemble them. Lots of supply chain issues to source batteries, chips. Lots of issues with software. Etc. They are basically about 5-8 years behind technically.
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. Tesla became profitable about six years ago (and ridiculously so). BYD has been growing in China and started expanding internationally only recently. Both are profitable and rapidly growing market share. And they are now able to produce vehicles much more cheaply and are waging a price war that pushes prices down for everyone else too.
And its about to get worse as they are getting ready to mass produce cheap (So, yes the article, and the site it's on are not great. To put it mildly.
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#194> 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…
Dumbass protectionist policies stop western countries from importing cheap Chinese EVs.
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#195> 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…
5-year ownership cost of a Model 3 SR is the same as a Toyota Corolla right now...
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo. > We need a dining room for when we have parties (has a party once every 2 years; room sits empty 99% of the time) > We need a guest bedroom (guests could stay at the hotel down the street) > I need a pickup truck (driver is an accountant who maybe picks up a couple bags of mulch from Lowes twice a year) I'm glad I live in a prosperous society where…
And you’re focusing too little on the impact of edge cases. Think geometric mean, not arithmetic mean.
Usually renting is an easy workaround. For instance you can rent a private room at a pub for your yearly gathering. Or rent heavy equipment when you need it for your garden.
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#197The 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 don’t get it. I own a Model 3 and I’ve done road trips from home (NL) to Paris and south Germany. Paris is especially easy with one single stop at a supercharger next to places to get food.
If people would choose not to get an EV because of having to make one single stop then they’re idiots.
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#198The 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…
Forget range, you can’t even reliably charge non-Tesla EVs without having to drive 20 min to find a working charging station. This is a problem I’ve had in a densely populated NY suburb when I was given an electric Genesis as a loaner car. The car was incredible to drive, and I was sold on the idea that my next vehicle would be an EV until I had 3 miles of charge left after leaving my fourth broken charging station.
Luckily Tesla is opening up their stations very soon.
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#199Is a tow-behind gas or diesel generator a thing for longer trips? Charge the battery as the car drives?
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#200I think hybrids are the ideal car that addresses the current reality and infrastructure as it is at this moment in time. Most trips can be driven electric only, while also having the ICE to address those edge cases and long trips while at the same time removing range anxiety.