At least in the Bay Area, charging at home has gotten a lot more expensive thanks to PG&E.
Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
301–310 of 1001 posts
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#302Dumbass "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 othe…
>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.
The fact that Tesla and BYD don't have large, entrenched, auto unions to deal with is the biggest factor in keeping costs low.
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#303My biggest beef with EV buyers is their obsession with range, and their complete and utter disregard for efficiency. Why do we obsess over fuel economy for our ICE cars but have zero awareness of what the equivalent figures are for the various EVs. Imagine 2 seemingly environmentally conscious buyers debating between a Corolla and a Hummer: "How far can the Corolla go on a tank? 325mi. OK, well how far can the Hummer…
Nobody is concerned about the range of a gas car because we can fill their tank in five minutes and there are gas stations everywhere.
The only times I've been concerned about the range of a gas car was when crossing Australia east to west on the Great Central Road on a Toyota Landcruiser. There was a gas station every 400 km and I couldn't skip one because the car couldn't do 800 km. Yet, we could refill in 5 minutes. No need to stop for the night at each roadhouse.
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#304The 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…
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…
>People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo.
Edge cases can mean life and death sometimes. Is my vehicle going to get stuck in an emergency if no one plows snow on a 1 mile stretch of unpaved road between my home and the major road?
If unrest/war/natural disaster happens and major infrastructure is non functional can I pack my family in to my car and just go 3k miles without worrying about charging infrastructure? You can just siphon fuel from other vehicles. Good luck doing that with an electric car (especially with some random half destroyed car dumped on the side of the road).
Edge cases may not matter much for daily life, but when they become important, they are really important.
Also, there is one thing regulators (and car makers) could do to make EVs a lot more interesting for everyone. A compatible modular batteries. Why were standardised batteries invented (AAA etc?)? So you can swap them yourself even if rechargeable. Imagine your Tesla, a Mercedes eqe or VW ev had their battery as a number of 10/5kWh user replaceable units? Perhaps you can't afford, or you don't need a 120kWh battery pack, so you buy a new car with 20kWh only. You could benefit from a car lighter by few hundred kg and you could buy the rest later (assuming total capacity was 100kWh let's say).
Then, on an old car, you could put new battery modules, or you could keep them when selling your car to stick in a new one.
It is an obvious thing to do, why are regulators not even talking about it? Would you rather have a single, horribly expensive part in which tiny element fails and the whole vehicle is essentially scrap value, or am ability to swap it part by part? If we're in any way serious about EVs being a true replacement for Ice cars, and not just a toy for wealthy people to feel better they need user replaceable batteries.
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
Related Tom Scott video: "A robot just swapped my electric car's battery" - https://youtu.be/hNZy603as5w
As mentioned in the video, building these stations is expensive and the company building them (Nio) is losing massive amounts of money.
Then again, Tesla was also losing massive amounts of money while it scaled up its infrastructure initially.
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#306The 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…
Range, time it takes to fuel my car at a station (3 minutes to pull up & pump n go) vs. time to charge an EV fully and gas station infrastructure (oodles & in ever nook & cranny in the US) vs. EV charger infrastructure (no way the same).
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 othe…
>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. The fact that Tesla and BYD don't have large, entrenched, auto unions to deal with is the biggest factor in keeping costs low.
Where can I learn more about this?
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#308The 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…
Most people don't ride off the road, yet they get themselves rugged downhill bicycles with crazy big wheels in the city. Other people buy SUVs, in the city, where a smaller vehicle might have a ton of advantages.
This is all in a certain sense irrational behaviour, but in another sense it is more about the feeling. People like to buy things that they can imagine them helping in all life situations.
A car is not a small investment for many and if you have the choice between one that perfectly serves 95% of your trips and might suck at the rest and another that serves 100%, but the 95% are slightly worse/inefficient/expensive, that is a choice one can make. In certain circumstances it could even be the rational choice. E.g. if the charging infrastructure where you live isn't there.
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#309The 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…
This. I'm not sure why plugin hybrids are not a thing.... actually, I don't even want a plugin "hybrid" I want an EV that never uses the ICE unless you run out of power, then it's just an ICE vehicle entirely... In other words I want something they will never build.
That was the BMW i3 with range extender. But also it seems discontinued in 2022.
Although the range extender was a generator for the electrics, so maybe didn’t meet your definition of ICE entirely.
I wanted to buy one but my wife hated the look of it. It seems like car companies used to give their electric cars to design interns and say “draw something that looks like it’s electric”.
Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
#310It’s the same problem it’s always been from my point of view.
There’s nowhere to charge. No charger at my apartment, none at my office and according to internet charger maps it’s a 45 minute round trip to go get a charge and then I have to both save some of the range to get there and waste some getting back.
Doesn’t appear that anything will change on the next few years to gain a charger at my apartment or work either.
Also EVs all appear way more expensive than the used ICE cars that I would buy.
I don’t have the faintest desire for a luxurious car. I just want a super simple basic cheap car to get from point a to b.