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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

#871

Post by mathiasgredal »

garte wrote: post #835

Reading this thread gives me the creeps. So much entitlement. As if owning multiple cars or being able to drive 1000s of kilometres for holidays is a human right. Having kids and reading this thread is fucking depressing.

Yeah, people here don’t seem to realize that burning fossil fuels is the primary driver(~90% of CO2 emission) of global warming: https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/science/causes-effects-c...

Still they can’t be inconvenienced the slightest by driving an EV, even though they have a much lower carbon footprint: https://lutpub.lut.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/163938/Kandidaa... (see figure 4)

I reality we could do much better than EV’s, since their production still has a large impact on the environment, and we should instead be focusing on cycling or using public transport, instead of driving everywhere.

I don’t have much hope for this, given what I see here.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#872

Post by AlgorithmicTime »

lmpdev wrote: post #684
outlace wrote: post #627

EV’s currently make the most sense for people who own a single family home or otherwise live in a community with readily available near-home chargers, where EV’s are on average more convenient than gas cars. People who rely on street parking and apartment dwellers would likely find EV’s more inconvenient than a gas car. We may be close to saturating the market for the former group. Another factor that could be at pla…

All people in my network have moved on from EVs being the “solution” to transport The real solution we seem to roughly agree upon is getting cars as a whole off the road where possible Permanent investment in mass transit and any tech which plugs the gaps is the way forward in our view The often subpar urban planning in North America (think Phoenix not Montreal) is simply incompatible with a sustainable and decarboni…

[dead]

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#873

Post by BirAdam »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #223
rdtsc wrote: post #66

> 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…

That's about to change. Prices are coming down rapidly. The US is lagging the rest of the world mainly because its car industry is a bit uncompetitive (except for Tesla) and because manufacturers there are spoiled with a market that just has an insatiable demand for pointlessly large and expensive vehicles. That's still a growth market and very lucrative. Which means that US manufacturers are dedicating their very li…

Eh... as the Ford Maverick showed, people in the USA do want smaller and more efficient vehicles. Likewise, the Civic and Corolla have remained in the top vehicles for quite some time. People keep buying F150s because Mavericks became unobtainium really quickly, and the car space (as opposed to truck) has renewed competition from KIA and Hyundai which has dropped the overall sales figures for Japanese and American sedans.

Also, vehicles under a certain size and weight are illegal in many US states so anything similar to a kei car is outlawed. It is therefore unknown whether or not Americans would like even smaller and more efficient vehicles, but demand for some small-ish models seems to indicate that they would.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#874

Post by garte »

mathiasgredal wrote: post #871
garte wrote: post #835

Reading this thread gives me the creeps. So much entitlement. As if owning multiple cars or being able to drive 1000s of kilometres for holidays is a human right. Having kids and reading this thread is fucking depressing.

Yeah, people here don’t seem to realize that burning fossil fuels is the primary driver(~90% of CO2 emission) of global warming: https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/science/causes-effects-c... Still they can’t be inconvenienced the slightest by driving an EV, even though they have a much lower carbon footprint: https://lutpub.lut.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/163938/Kandidaa... (see figure 4) I reality we could do much b…

Producing cars at the scale we're currently at is what's most troubling. EV's won't save us, we have to reduce individual car ownership and push for alternatives (car sharing and public transport).

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#875

Post by LUmBULtERA »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #40
TexanFeller wrote: post #15

I want an EV to be more reliable and save me more money in the long run. EVs start out ~10k more than the Corolla most people should buying. They then compromise the long term reliability and maintenance cost with high tech gee whiz features. I’d sooner have manual roll up windows than touch screen controlled air vents. When you integrate sensors and software controls into every little thing, we know those things wil…

The new Prius prime finally has EV range comparable to the Volt. That should be most people’s sedan pick if they aren’t looking for a budget option.

Unfortunately they're hard to find in stock and without a mark up. There's probably some 2+ hours away from here, but I wish there was at least one nearby to test drive first before committing to a 4+ hour drive...

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#876

Post by iamthirsty »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #867

The article nails it really. The core problem here is that a small minded swap from ICE to EV is only a mild implementation improvement on top of an already fragile transportation system that is riddled with problems. The government could really get the ball rolling by incentivizing a switch further by by adding more stick along with the current carrots, adding a carbon tax to make ICE vehicles less appealing, but th…

> adding a carbon tax to make ICE vehicles less appealing

Taxes are already built in, heavily so — on fuel, registrations, etc.

The #1 way to push the stick would be to dramatically raise fuel prices.

I'm personally an overall fan of ICEV over EV, but if you wanted to do it, raising fuel prices at the exact moment ICEVs in the U.S. are becoming bigger & heavier would greatly increase the incentive to move to EV.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#877

Post by insane_dreamer »

Article is spot on about the problems, but as much as I'm a huge fan of European style mass transit, we really need to let go of the idea of "push more public transportation" as some sort of solution in the U.S. IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. The US as a country has for the past 100 years been built around cars, both in cities and rural areas, and it would probably take another 100 years to change that if there was even the willpower to do so (which there is not). So whatever solutions we implement need to just accept that fact; it's fanciful and counter-productive otherwise.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#878

Post by pwthornton »

atestu wrote: post #664
outlace wrote: post #627

EV’s currently make the most sense for people who own a single family home or otherwise live in a community with readily available near-home chargers, where EV’s are on average more convenient than gas cars. People who rely on street parking and apartment dwellers would likely find EV’s more inconvenient than a gas car. We may be close to saturating the market for the former group. Another factor that could be at pla…

I'm in that first group and I don't see how it makes the most sense. They are not more convenient. I can "charge" my gas car in 2 minutes basically anywhere in the country. I'm going on vacation next week, driving with 2 young children. It'll be about a 11 hour drive which is not crazy for a US vacation. I don't want to plan where I stop and stop for 45 minutes to fuel up with 2 toddlers in the car. And they're all m…

EV stops have a big advantage in that they force you to get out and move around a bit. Sitting in a car all day is bad for you. Taking a break every few hours is good. Walking around during that break is ideal.

You don't want to give yourself a blood clot on a family vacation.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#879

Post by insane_dreamer »

outlace wrote: post #627

EV’s currently make the most sense for people who own a single family home or otherwise live in a community with readily available near-home chargers, where EV’s are on average more convenient than gas cars. People who rely on street parking and apartment dwellers would likely find EV’s more inconvenient than a gas car. We may be close to saturating the market for the former group. Another factor that could be at pla…

> not a great time to buy a non-Tesla since it already has legacy charging hardware

there will be adapters that will make current models compatible with Tesla's network once the switch is made(at least for Polestar, not sure about other brands)

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#880

Post by DoubleDerper »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #867

The article nails it really. The core problem here is that a small minded swap from ICE to EV is only a mild implementation improvement on top of an already fragile transportation system that is riddled with problems. The government could really get the ball rolling by incentivizing a switch further by by adding more stick along with the current carrots, adding a carbon tax to make ICE vehicles less appealing, but th…

"and walking is made more viable at the stroke of a pen simply by changing the zoning and building code to actually allow people to build walkable neighbourhoods with retail amenities,..."

This is an easy claim but unrealistic in North America. For the Boomers that have lived in single family housing for decades, those who also represent the larget voting block in most major cities, you're expecting them to forfeit their percieved "quality of life."

Have you seen large apartment projects in US cities, they are atrociously designed, with the vanity of walkability but rarely deliver the NYC or San Francisco level of walkability that they are selling.

Yimbys would do well to insist upon better replacement products.

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