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Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

businessinsider.com

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Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#481

Post by rco8786 »

lukas099 wrote: post #78
rappatic wrote: post #60

The 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…

I guess just depends on how you define edge case.

> I need a bathroom in my house

(Goes to the bathroom 4 times a day and room sits empty 99% of the time)

I agree with you on the trucks one though, but only because of the outsized negative side effects.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#482

Post by boldorange »

I want to buy one as well, but there are few things which i want to know,

1. can I buy a used one? what about the battery life? I live in EU, my primary mode of transport is bike and public transport, buying a car is not a necessity but I would buy mostly for getting around. So I rather buy something bit cheaper. 2. How durable are batteries, been reading that getting a new one cost fortune.

anyone having experience with buying a used one

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#483

Post by sigio »

sgu999 wrote: post #428
audunw wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that if they made a sub $10k vehicle now, "everyone" would buy it. That sounds great, but there's simply not enough battery factories to make the batteries for that many vehicles. The demand for expensive vehicles is still high enough that most of the EV battery factory output of the world can go to those expensive high margin vehicles, so of course the car makers haven't focused on low cost. There are…

I keep on seeing this problem reduced to the market or a business decision, but is it simply physically possible? These vehicles require much more energy to produce. And without a reduction in consumption, almost the entire economy accounts for the availability of the same materials in the near future to meet carbon emissions targets. It's not just cars in vacuum. It feels like we simply don't accept yet that the tim…

With solar (and other renewables) the time of cheap power is only just getting started. It's literally free after building the infrastructure.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#484

Post by Jasp3r »

ttfkam wrote: post #292
screye wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The sustainable alternative to EVs is hybrids, not gas guzzlers. Hybrids can be smaller, cheaper, lighter and gentler on the grid. Each of these matter. Heavier cars cause significantly higher road wear [1], particulate pollution [2] and occupy more space. EVs by necessity, are heavier. This is especially evident in America's favorite product categories : SUVs and Trucks. The Ford- F150 lightning is 1.5x…

I disagree. The sustainable alternative is to get an EV for 98% of the time and rent a purpose-built vehicle for the edge cases whether those edge cases are for long distance, towing, or hauling. Let the rental companies keep and maintain the gas cars.

"Just alter your lifestyle to match the kind of car I want you to buy"

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#485

Post by billy99k »

Some friends of mine bought an electric car, thinking they could go on a road trip about 80 miles away with us (it was fully charged before they left).

They weren't calculating the weight of other things they brought in the car for the trip and would have ran out of charge in 30 minutes.

Full electric is skipping an important step. It's hybrid. Hybrid makes perfect sense. Boost gas powered cars and increase their milage. It allow us to build up the infrastructure to then convert to full electric.

Now, it's a shit-show where major car companies won't ever be interested in electric again because they are losing too much money.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#486

Post by jb1991 »

lukas099 wrote: post #78
rappatic wrote: post #60

The 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…

I’m assuming you don’t live in the United States or have never had the reason to take frequent road trips.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#487

Post by phtrivier »

A missing part of the "flawed" plan: it was relying on expectation that battery ranges would improve exponentially thanks to all the "breakthroughs" that were published on a regular basis to get views on tech news site.

Except, no, it still does not work as a drop-in replacement, so you have to change the whole society instead, which sucks because we're kinda on a deadline here, aren't we ?

To put it mildly "the engineers got their estimates wrong, the salespersons oversold, and now we have to do a massive redesign of the product to give you only 60% of what you used to have".

Or, to put it less mildly, "everyone lied, and now we're in trouble".

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#488

Post by mort96 »

lukas099 wrote: post #78
rappatic wrote: post #60

The 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…

I like that you didn't tackle the actual "need" you're trying to criticize, namely the need for a car which is compatible with road trips.

For some people, it would look like this:

> We need a car which can take us to our vacation home

    (goes to vacation home once per year, it's unreachable by train or bus
    and in a location where having a car is important; they could just rent
    out a rental car for a month for a billion dollars instead of having a car
    which can be used for the trip)
That's the reality a bunch of people are looking at.

Granted, for a bunch of other people, taking one or two stops to recharge at well-maintained and nice charging stations along the way would suffice. But as I'm sure you're aware, that's not the universal experience with recharging EVs along the way yet.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#489

Post by arkh »

jmpman wrote: post #473
lukas099 wrote: post #78

Earlier 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…

The edge case I’m worried about is travel time during the holidays. Between LA and Phoenix is a desolate stretch of freeway running through a small number of essentially truck stop towns. The most isolated one, Quartzite, has an enormous Tesla supercharging station, which just doubled in the last year. It’s virtually essential to stop in Quartzite on the drive in a Tesla. I made that drive a week after Thanksgiving,…

> How do we feed the peak power demand to these tiny towns?

Like petrol station: charge some reservoir batteries during off hours and then you're able to discharge this energy fast. The problem then is the energy density of batteries making it so you'd need a gigantic battery / capacitor to replace a lot smaller fuel tank.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#490

Post by sevagh »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #352
jillesvangurp wrote: post #193

Earlier 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…

We're not in a major economic downturn.

IDK who's downvoting you. We've been in "Schrodinger's recession" for the last 3 years. Everybody has been accurately predicting the other shoe falling every single day while SPY is breaking records and the outlook on inflation looks like a successful soft landing.
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