they’re too fucking expensive. i won’t pay more than $20k for a car.
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While I agree with most of the articles points, even if they and the title are nearly all phrased in very hyperbolic language and the extent of the “slowdown” has been rather overstated given that sales are still increasing, I take issue with it citing Norway’s 89% EV sales as insufficient becuse only 20% of vehicles on the road are EVs yet.
Namely, the average lifespan of a ICE car is 12 years. While it’s definitely better for the environment to replace a functional ICE with an EV after two to four years, buying a new car when you don’t need to is a big financial cost and so it shouldn’t be surprising that many people are waiting until their cars get old to replace them.
While I also agree that simply replacing every ICE with an EV isn’t enough on its own and that trollybuses and other electric mass transit need to be part of the solution, it’s not a question of one or the other. If we are to have any hope of staying below 2C, we need to be doing both and a whole lot more beside, especially when it comes to cleaning up industry.
We simply don’t have the time left anymore for any one solution to be expanded to the point it can solve the problem on its own, if that was ever possible to begin with. We need solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear to generate clean power in the first place. We need heat pumps and geothermal to turn that into the heating and cooling necessary to keep people safe in a world with increasing dangerous temperatures.
We need trollybuses, metros, and high speed intercity rail to electrify the transport of people. We need denser housing in our cities and EVs in our rural areas and service and delivery vehicles. We need overhead cantanarys to electrify our railroads. We need green hydrogen to decarbonize farming, steel marking and a thousand other processes. We need net zero bio and synthetic fuels for ships and aircraft. We even need carbon capture and sequestration to deal with the industrial processes that can’t otherwise be decarbonated.
Any framing that expects a single one of these to solve the problem on its own ignores the things it can’t cover. Our current actions are insufficient to tackle the scale of the problem, that is not a sign we should roll back one in favor of another, it is a sign that we need to be pushing increasing the scale of all of the above.
We simply don’t have the time left anymore for any one solution to be expanded to the point it can solve the problem on its own, if that was ever possible to begin with.
This is such an important point. We are too late in the game to have the luxury of choosing a single sector or a single solution to pursue before the others. We need to hit all sectors with a diverse barrage of solutions, and we need to do it yesterday.
To quote UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, “In short, our world needs climate action on all fronts – everything, everywhere, all at once.”
Namely, the average lifespan of a ICE car is 12 years. While it’s definitely better for the environment to replace a functional ICE with an EV after two to four years, buying a new car when you don’t need to is a big financial cost and so it shouldn’t be surprising that many people are waiting until their cars get old to replace them.
Precisely! And while the ongoing environmental cost of burning gasoline is a concern, there’s also the environmental impact of the chassis, the internal electronics. That’s a sunk cost right now. And that’s not counting making sure you have access to charging infrastructure. When I was renting, I simply didn’t have street access to a regular home plug. And my workplace also didn’t have any electrical infrastructure in its parking lots (despite years of begging from employees.) There are still a lot of reasons an EV might not make sense for individuals.
All that said, my next vehicle will definitely be an EV since I can charge at home now. But only when our car gives up the ghost from a cost to repair perspective.
I’m trying hard to hold out buying a new vehicle until I can move into somewhere I can charge an EV. Sold my last ICE when I moved overseas, and current apartment has no charging places.
While I agree with most of the articles points, even if they and the title are nearly all phrased in very hyperbolic language and the extent of the “slowdown” has been rather overstated given that sales are still increasing
I’d argue it’s an outright falsehood. “Slowdown” implies that sales are going down. They’re actually going up, but the pace of acceleration has gone down. The subtitle in the article here:
Fewer people are buying electric cars — the slowdown hints at a problem at the heart of America’s EV push.
This is literally false. More people than ever are buying electric cars.
What has actually happened is that the EV market went from supply-constrained (where manufacturers were building them as fast as they could and selling each one they built to waitlisted customers) to some models becoming demand-constrained (where manufacturers are building them faster than they can sell them).
This is due to a number of things, only some of which apply to the industry as a whole. First, there are some models that just aren’t really that heavily desired by the public, at the price points they’re being sold at. The Ford F-150 is a pretty good example, where Ford misinterpreted the demand from people who signed up on the waitlist, and then chose to prioritize the highest priced trim levels (rather than the entry level F-150 Lightning). So even if people are interested in the entry-level $50,000 F-150 Lightning still have to wait (and oh, by the way, Ford is raising the price to $55,000) while the $90,000 models pile up in dealer lots.
Second, dealers are actively sabotaging EV sales. Everyone I know who has tried to buy an EV from a traditional dealer has been steered towards a hybrid or a traditional ICE vehicle, and sales staff seem to be intentionally ignorant about the EV models sold by their dealership. The EV maintenance model is a threat to dealer business models, where service/maintenance is a very important part of their revenue, so the incentives of the dealer aren’t lined up with the incentives of the manufacturer.
Third, the traditional automakers released their EVs into some headwinds, because interest rates have increased, and Tesla had the profit margins to simply be able to drop prices in a way to make the newest non-Tesla EVs seem like a bad deal in comparison. The average Tesla transaction dropped from $65k in October 2022 to $50k in October 2023, with big price cuts on almost all of its models.
So electric vehicle sales are up. The difficulties that some manufacturers have even in this climate of sales going up is, in many cases, specific to those makes and those models.
Exactly. Normally when I see this story their careful to say things like the EV market falls short of projections or EV adoption slows, which are arguably true, if wildly misleading.
Cars pilling up in dealers lots isn’t unusual, and indeed is the default for nearly all ICEs. It also means that now manufacturers might just actually have to try and make what customers want, instead of just being able to assume everything they make selling out immediately.
They completely whiffed on the most important and obvious part. That whole article could be replaced by the words “THEY’RE TOO DAMN EXPENSIVE”.
It’s framed very inaccurately in the news as well. You’ll see articles about how ford reports people aren’t buying their electric lineup. Meanwhile the dealership is marking them up so high that they are now priced too high for the target market. But the articles never mention that part
The article doesn’t whiff on this, it lays out why it’s too expensive.
- The strategy was to replace gas cars with EV 1-to-1 to solve the climate crisis and save the car industry.
- Gas cars have gotten bigger over the years because of marketing, bravado, “safety”, and regulation-skirting.
- EV-makers have largely bought into that and made all these huge EVs.
- Huge EVs require bigger batteries which are more expensive in raw materials and manufacturing.
- Huge batteries are heavy and dangerous.
- Range anxiety has encouraged even more oversized batteries on already oversized cars.
- Huge batteries are the main source of cost, meaning EVs end up being a luxury.
So, yes–they are too damn expensive, however a vehicle that meets our actual needs wouldn’t be, if it existed in North America.
Large batteries are a must-have to get anywhere near a comfortable range.
I wonder if larger battery packs fit in small cars. And it would also push the price beyond the level that people expect to pay for smaller cars.
Range anxiety is what pushed me to buy a Bolt over other EVs, but I do find that practically I don’t need as many kms as it offers, especially in the summer.
Opinion: 400km is overkill for city driving in warm climates. Half the battery/range would be fine for virtually all daily use. I know everyone will anecdotally state their use case on why 200km is insufficient, but that’s basically what the article is saying is part of the problem.
It’s also worth nothing that in the US, 200km is more than sufficient to navigate the entire interstate highway system from end to end and coast to coast. Moreover, when going on long trips charging speed is more important than range, so long as your range is over that 200km barrier.
Now the system is not perfect, especially out west where the state highway system is more important and I can personally attest to a few 600km gaps, but the solution to that problem is to put in a few dozen infill fast chargers in the small forgotten backroads towns, and in the mean time just eating the fifteen percent longer detour to use the interstate highway network.
People also forget that rental cars exist.
For the handful of actual long-range drives a typical person needs to take in a given year, it’d almost certainly be cheaper to rent a different car rather than spend extra to get a huge-range EV. But relatively short-range EVs are basically not a thing because of how universal these range anxieties are. Not to even mention that the available rentals aren’t a great situation either, given how universal it is for people to own these long-range vehicles.
Our society is a damn prisoner’s dilemma.
A lot of that range anxiety will start to evaporate as charging (both slow and fast) becomes more ubiquitous. If I can charge to 80% in 15 minutes I don’t need a lot more than 2-3 hours of drive time on a single charge, so long as there’s a charging station at that interval.
Bolt ev just got a price drop to 20k. It’s not a nice looking car, but would fit 99% of most peoples driving
I love my bolt, but most other EVs are not its size. Only the i3 and the Mini come to mind.
Yeah, but I just mean in terms of a low cost option.
Most people don’t need a big car for their around town driving. I have a kona ev and it’s not much bigger.
Having said that, travelling as a family of 3+dog was tricky in the kona so we just upgraded my wife’s ICE to an ioniq 5
There is also the Fiat 500e. Not many of the original ones I think in the US but a new one is coming.
We have the i3. While we love it and it is by far the best car we have ever had, it is smaller, the looks are polarizing and the range is limited. So even among those it would be a good fit for, there is resistance. It was absurdly expensive new but used are reasonable’ish. And I mean the range is fine for probably almost everyone but you know people are always like, “but what if I want to spontaneously drive across the country?!” as if they will ever do that.
Rental cars are still a thing. Plus they get regularly cleaned and you aren’t responsible for their maintenance/depreciation.
If you live in a city – and if you are getting municipal water/sewer, you definitely do – there’s a car rental place close enough that will doubtless be happy to do a same-day rental.
The car rental may be expensive, but you’re comparing it to owning and maintaining that car year-round for those occasional trips. And if that car is anything bigger than a small suv, it doubtless costs more than the EV would’ve in real terms.
The crazy thing is, outside of the US, small and cheap vehicles are the norm. Both ICE and EV.
I’m still convinced that if a major automaker brought a line like they have in the likes of China or France to the US market, they’d be hugely popular. That people WANT cheap vehicles and are willing to compromise on size to get them – that the reason vehicles are getting pushed bigger is because that compromise is not an option. I think there’s massive untapped demand for things like mini city cars and kei trucks. But the profit margins would be lower for the manufacturer, so even if it was still a profitable business model the US automakers don’t do it and exert their influence in various ugly ways to prevent it from happening (e.g., all the states that have used administrative levers to ban registration of imported keis based on total nonsense safety arguments).
I think there’s massive untapped demand for things like mini city cars and kei trucks.
Not just that, but even the more middle ground small cars. I’d love to have an EV truck sized the way they were in the 80’s/90’s (which was more or less comparable to a midsize sedan, just taller). The push to bigger and bigger wheelbases to take advantage of loopholes in the efficiency standards really doesn’t need to be reflected in EVs, but it’s what all the major automakers are doing.
I ride a bike 95% of the time for my trips, but I have to own and maintain a car because the city I live in, which is FAR better than most in the US, still doesn’t make it possible to let me function without needing an occasional car trip. And the box hardware store near me almost never has its light truck rentals available for those occasional errands. To get to the nearest proper vehicle rental place… you guessed it, I’d have to get in a car.
I was very seriously investigating a Kei import for my needs. They’re cheap, small, easy to maintain, and insanely versatile. I arrived at doing this after researching what kinds of small, reliable trucks I might be able to find for my rare uses and ultimately gave up – all of them are roadboats these days.
Then some state bureaucrat arbitrarily declared that imported keis were somehow less safe for their drivers than motorcycles, bikes, and scooters and so cannot be registered any longer. There’s basically no vehicles for sale that I would want and find useful at this point.
I’ve honestly been looking into setting up a trailer for my bike for hauling a sheet or two of plywood. It might be my best overall option, since I can’t fit them in my ancient Honda.
All that to say: yeah, there’s no middleground anymore. There’s ONLY road yachts for people who view them as status symbols and transit vans for people who actually have work to get done, but either way too expensive for me to justify.
Honestly, i don’t get why more folks aren’t enthusiastic about EVs. I got a used Bolt, and i love it. Much easier and cheaper maintenance, fewer moving parts to wear out, no gas prices drama… never buying an ICE vehicle again.
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The following year Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which created a bevy of incentives for drivers to buy electric and for automakers to invest in EVs.
The mission to replace gas cars with EVs has led to a series of major miscalculations, one of which has to do with the sheer size of the new electric vehicles being put on the road.
EV drivers could get perks like free parking, permission to drive in bus lanes, and, most importantly, exemptions from taxes and fees that could ultimately save them a lot of money.
The problem, Ketan Joshi, a climate-analysis expert in Oslo, told me, is that that stat “doesn’t really give you a good picture of the rate of change.”
Though the new-vehicle sales figure is high, data from Statistics Norway indicates the total share of EVs on Norwegian roads in 2022 was only about 20% — there’s still a long way to go until everyone’s driving electric.
Joshi told me that the decline in gas tax revenue due to EV adoption had triggered a contentious political debate about increasing road tolls to make up the difference.
Saved 90% of original text.
I have a plugin hybrid that is less then 10 years old, why would I want an EV until about 2030? After that I will probably buy a Bolt or something similar.
I would guess early adopters that can afford it and where it is a no brainer already have either a hybrid or some kind of an EV so the next increment is harder.
Our Volt has been wonderful but that is just us. It fits our needs really well.
All companies care about is profit margin. This is why automotive companies are so focused on trucks and SUVs. These vehicles cost a bit more to produce but can be sold at multiple times the additional investment. When electric vehicles took off they were a status symbol and sold primarily to luxury car buyers. US manufacturers beholden to share holder value will never focus on affordable transportation. This is why China will eventually eclipse the US in electric vehicles.
This article neglects the state of charging and grid infrastructure. We can’t immediately convert all cars to EV, we don’t have the grid capacity or enough charging stations, yet. Each level 3 (fast charging station) is a custom layout and they take time to design and implement.
Source: I design EV charging stations across the US.
we don’t have the grid capacity
For those not in the industry, “grid capacity” here doesn’t refer to power generation, but power distribution. With renewables, generation is comparatively easy (storage notwithstanding). But getting the power where it needs to go is not. Right now, thanks to a grain-oriented steel squeeze, the lead time on transformers is longer than the commissioning time for an entire solar farm. Switchgear is also hard to get your hands on, especially with SF6 being phased out.
The good news is that these long lead times are caused by demand. Right now, utilities are racing to expand and reinforce the grid in preparation for the next 30 year’s worth of EV demand, renewable storage/transmission, and distributed generation. Utilities are risk-averse by nature, and do not move without conviction, so it’s rare and noteworthy to see this kind of industrial momentum.
Source: I design MV distribution equipment in the US.
We also don’t have the grid support for everyone to start charging at home. At least not where I live. At the moment even solar panels are becoming a problem, major peaks during sunny days, where energy prices even go negative and people with dynamic energy contracts turn panels off.
I agree, but personally I’m glad they’re putting a strain on the grid. The grid has been crumbling for decades, I’m happy to see new infrastructure being built to support the loads - and most of it renewable.
Also, while EVs do take a lot of power, it’s less than an average amarican air conditioner. We rolled those out to most american homes in just twenty years. The current grid build out is less an unprecedented increase, and more a return to form after decades of coasting on our past success by using efficiency gains to avoid capacity expansion.
Exactly. California and Texas were struggling to keep up before EVs (probably because of AC actually). There is no reason they can’t upgrade their infrastructure to compensate.
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For a slightly different take: I want a car that runs on free software, that doesn’t spy on me.
Until then, I can bike, or continue driving my now fifteen year old sedan that I bought with 5% of my annual salary, used.
Well, I can only speak for myself: EVs cost 5-10k more and I can’t charge it in one minute like a regular car.
The cost is certainly a factor, but the thing about fueling up quick is a mindset shift. Imagine instead of fueling up once or twice a week, you start everyday at Full. The places the charge time becomes relevant is road trips, and there are currently cars that can go from 25-80% in 15 minutes. While that is not all, most of them do it in 20-30 minutes. On any road trip that is enough time to use the restroom or grab a bite. Having done road trips in an EV, the longer stops and potentially adding a couple extra stops does not significantly effect arrival time, and I feel way less fatigued when arriving.
Imagine instead of fueling up once or twice a week, you start everyday at Full.
Sure. I can also imagine Taylor Swift sitting on my lap, but that won’t change the reality. If you live in a regular tenement block, charging your car becomes a problem, and you’ll be the one paying for the infrastructure if it’s not there yet (and it isn’t where I live). Add these extra costs to the difference between a regular and EV car. Even if you’re ready to pay, it’s not guaranteed that other residents will approve that.
Apartments are for sure a problem area. In my last place we were able to trade parking spots to the one below our deck. We were able to run an extension to the spot below our balcony, but not everyone is that lucky
Yep, that is a major issue for many people in my country, as most live in apartments.
