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Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

businessinsider.com

921–930 of 1001 posts

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#921

Sorry, but in what world do sales of electric cars going up and market share of electric vehicles increasing lead to the thesis that "fewer people are buying electric cars?" Oh - I get it. It's the world where this publication wants clicks for ad revenue. "Sure, electric vehicles are becoming more and more widely adopted, but wouldn't it be better for this article if they weren't?"

Two quotes you can read between the lines for:

> Instead of seeing EVs as one piece of a plan for more sustainable transportation, America has focused on using EVs as a one-to-one replacement for gas guzzlers. But this one-size-fits-all solution fails to address our broader transportation problems, meaning emissions targets are likely to be missed and other transportation problems will continue to go unaddressed.

and

> People in Norway own more cars than they have in the past, in part because EV incentives encourage people to buy more cars, and the government has no plans to reduce how much people are driving.

"The government has no plans to reduce how much people are driving"? Huh? Obviously, the narrative of this article is anti-car. That's the "broader transportation problems" that they're referring to in the first quote. They could care less if the cars are producing emissions or not, they're just trying to manifest an anti-car future.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#922

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the market for the current lineup of EVs is tapping out. My wife and I own one that was very comparably equipped to a similar luxury crossover / SUV, and the type of driving we do in that car is perfectly within the capabilities of our range & charging habits. Never going to gas stations or getting the annual oil change is a nice convenient perk for us. But we fit right in this targeted demographic: 1) Can af…

You definitely don't need a second ICE car for long trips. We don't have one. Long trips in our EV work perfectly.

How do you camp in the remote wilderness?

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#923

Until they can produce an EV that doesn’t feel like a massive downgrade in connvience, performance, cost, basically all the ways normal people measure the decision of buying a car, I’m not sold. I like the fact it takes a few minutes to refuel my car, and it’s the same process regardless if I’m traveling 5 miles or 500. I don’t need to deal with charging stations, and if I run out of gas I can take a gas can to the c…

> I like the fact it takes a few minutes to refuel my car I guarantee you spend more time fueling your ICE than I do my EV in a given year.

I'm not sure. How long does it take you to plug in and unplug every day? Sure it is only a few seconds, but those add up. The ICE is a few minutes every week or two.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#924
post #684

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…

What about for non urban?

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#925

Can someone advise me when you have a family of 4 kids? Thinking of buying a Ford Explorer. About 30k for a 3 years old one. I believe there are no equivalent EVs. An old model X is just not practical.

3 kids, and lack of better options is why I'm still driving my 12 year old minivan. Your options are find something with an ICE and convert it to EV - while this is possible it isn't practical for most. The id.buzz comes this summer, which looks like the first practical option.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#926

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got some bad news for you...

What's that? That I can only buy old vehicles? I already know that, it's been true for a while now.

For how long before those old vehicles are not practical? You will end up spending more in $$$ (or time) in the bodyshop than the car is worth. You will be rebuilding engines and transmissions. Sure it is possible to keep old cars working as daily drivers, but it is more cost effective to replace them after a while with something newer - modern assembly lines are very cheap ways to build something. (or course a car only a few years old is cheaper year)

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#928
post #665

I think EVs give me LESS range anxiety overall. In my gas car days, atleast once a month I was late for work or an event AND low on gas. Having to remember and think about getting gas was constantly on my mind because I have a pretty long commute. With an electric car, I start every day, always, with a full tank. No matter how late I'm running, I know there won't be a surprise that I need gas in addition to being lat…

It's funny how the people who suffer the most from range anxiety seem to be those who don't own EVs.

I got an 80 litre tank and 5x 20 litre containers. How can you have range anxiety with an ICE?

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#929
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…

This is entirely because manufacturers thought they saw a way to pad margins and then US politicians added tariffs to Chinese EVs to protect them from lower-cost competition. As the other reply mentions, this isn't an issue in China. And now that the bet on expensive EV growth allowing manufacturers to have fat margins forever isn't panning out, they're all freaking out about cheap Chinese models and pivoting to desi…

The Chinese EVs are very unsafe. Many many fires are happening with them, but you don't see it reported due to the journalistic repression there.

The sales numbers of Chinese EVs also look good because they'll buy hundreds of cars from their own stock and then park them in a field to rot, just to make the numbers look good.

IMO there shouldn't be a tariff on Chinese EVs but an outright ban.

Re: Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

#930
post #760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add a lifetime carbon tax to car purchases and EVs would make a lot more sense. Even without that they will make sense soon. Expecting new tech to start out at the same place on the mass-production supply chain curve as the internal combustion engine is idealistic. It takes time to reach economies of scale but it will happen.

As the article says, the best approach to addressing climate change is not to replace cars with EVs 1:1, but to rethink invest in public infrastructure in high-population areas so that people don't feel like they have to buy a car. This is a more thoughtful approach to addressing the problem than simply levying a tax on people who can't afford what still appears to be a rich man's toy.

EVs would still have a carbon tax greater than public transit.

People who can't afford a carbon tax on a new vehicle purchase probably aren't buying new vehicles anyway. Most people don't buy new vehicles at all.

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