Make. An. Affordable. Car.
Why does every new ev for the US have to be mega deluxe luxury SUV? No one in the US is buying your affordable EV because you only sell them in Europe!
Yeah, a surprising number of people don't want these hyper complex cars with thousands of microchips and millions of lines of code operating them. Give me an electric 2012 Honda fit/Toyota matrix equivalent that just fucking works and costs $20k or less new.
Yes please. I want my car to work without tracking and software updates.
Yeah, I don't care about color changing LEDs in the trim or talking computers, just give me a cheap android-auto-compatible head unit (replaceable please, none of that integrated bullshit), a cheap instrument cluster and a real handbrake.
I currently lease a 2 years old Renault Zoe (very compact car) for 200€ a month (0€ upfront). It was a special deal in Germany for a few months. I charge at home with solar panels and rarely drive more than the 300-350km range.
It honestly feels like the holy grail of electro mobility.
There’s no margins there. Just like in real estate, the best margins are at the high end. They won’t make affordable cars while they can make more money on expensive ones.
Other companies can, but the big ones can't? Yeah, no. I don't buy that for a second.
Because people are buying all the mid- and high-end EVs. If it's more profitable, there's some sense to it until that saturates (although it sounds like that's finally happening maybe)
GM tried real hard for the lower-end. And cars like the Bolt EUV ended up actually really good especially for the price. Then they cancelled it because they just weren't making enough money or volume or scaling like they wanted.
And at the moment ALL the carmakers have gone kinda nuts with pricing. And sales are still super strong overall. Just...softening. Apparently especially for EVs.
Also, people are paying way, way too much for cars. It's insane how many people making $60,000 a year or less are buying cars worth almost that much, and taking out these ridiculous loans. I guess the interest rate hikes are putting a little damper on it, but it's been just stupid.
Why does every new ev for the US have to be mega deluxe luxury SUV?
Because car manufacturers don't give two shits what people need, nor what's best for the environment, they're in the profit making business, and that's all that matters.
We're at the point now where this shouldn't need to be pointed out, the fact it does goes to show just how successful (from their viewpoint of course) their propaganda is..
EVs aren’t working
EVs are the highest growth sector for personal vehicles but are growing a little less than expected, and we can’t make big profits yet
This is a huge point. The other considerations are: EVs are balls expensive compared to ICE counterparts and often require $500-2k worth of electrical work at your house (assuming you even own it) to put in a charger. If you live in an apartment, good luck.
And oh, btw, the chargers aren't standard. Each charging site has different plugs, apps you have to download, etc. Then there is the lack of charging stations that highlights the range anxiety people have with EVs.
Adoption would be so much faster if EVs cost $15-25k and there were adequate standardized charging options available.
the chargers aren't standard. Each charging site has different plugs
IDK where you're from, but in europe it's all standardized and all cars, regardless of brand, use the same plug for both AC and DC charging. The whole app/rfid tag mess is true though.
Are we doing it in a stupid way? Yes.
You know exactly where we're from.
EVs cost more up front and then cost less with fuel, maintenance, and longevity.
Dealers: We inflated the ever living shit out of the ALREADY inflated MSRP on all our EV's during a global recession and now no one wants to buy any of them!!
Manufacturer: The customers have spoken, EV's are dead.
Seriously, the electric f150 had a 100% markup at some dealerships. The build quality was absolute crap on those too.
The Tesla strategy
Mercedes: the EV market is challenging at the moment.
Also mercedes: pay 100k for this car with limited autonomy and dubious software in early beta stages...
Typical misleading headline from pro-profiteering Business Insider on an article about how charging too much while people are suffering extreme inflation isn't a great idea but the self-serving execs are blaming the very concept of an alternative to killing millions of people a year 🤬
Bullshit. They make expensive electric cars because thats where the money was. Here in the eu tons of people want to drive electric, but at the prices they offer in this economy, they'll only reach the wealthy.
The only reason these "c level" directors and managers are coming out and saying this is because the easy money is gone and now they really have to innovate. Which is expensive.
In the usa the poor don't really have anywhere to charge these cars even if they were cheap enough to afford.
It is impossible to compete with a less than five minute fill up for 300+ miles range.
Not to mention that reports place charging on public charges to be more costly than gas.
Poor people also can't afford to buy brand new vehicles, so this is kind of a moot point, though something that will need to be addressed in the coming years.
So we can start focusing on real solutions to climate change. Like building cities that don’t depend on cars for transportation. Right… right?
It's already hard to convince people to use EVs, convincing them to use public transportation is even harder. It's completely understandable why they don't want to use public transportation tho: it kinda sucks in most countries. Here in germany it's simply unreliable. If you use it to get to work, you can expect to get there late quite frequently and the same goes for the way home. Fixing the issues public transportation has and making cities less car dependent takes time and we don't really have that much anymore. EVs aren't perfect but it's a compromise.
If you want to talk about real solutions to climate change I wouldn't aim as consumer facing things like cars or household recycling. That's all BS to make people focus on what their role in it is to distract from the fact that the vast majority of emissions come from things like:
Industrial and manufacturing processes Electricity and heat generation Transportation (with vast majority being bunker fueled chips, and agriculture.
Me getting 25mpg versus 30 ain't moving the needle on the emissions numbers the same way moving to renewables for electricity generation and eliminating shipping emissions would. Or mitigating agricultural emissions which produces tons of the worst kinds of greenhouse gasses (methan and nitrous oxide).
And then we have fugative emissions from unintentional leaks or more accurately irresponsible processes and maintenance from things like fracking, oil/gas extraction and transport. Quite literally just drilling into gas and releasing it into the air.
But yea, my Honda is the problem.
I'm not saying everyone has a part to play, but don't let the arguments and focus be on anything other than the big culprits of greenhouse gas emissions. We could pass meaningful regulations and provide meaningful incentives and actually move the needle on green house gasses.
And taxing companies that produce a significant amount of carbon emissions?
Most people aren't buying $40k+ cars? Weird.
Sadly, they are. The median new car price in the US last year was $46k.
I want an EV.
I have the money for an EV.
I put a down payment on an EV back in April 2022.
It still hasn’t been ordered, because the manufacturer won’t permit the dealership to order any, and is barely shipping any to Canada, even though they advertise it as their flagship EV.
Meanwhile, lots in the US are full of unsold units.
Maybe it is price. Maybe we all finally realized Musk is a right wing piece of shit, even worse than all the other corporate thieves.
Kinda reminds me of the same argument to why businesses can't find employees, they aren't able to exploit them enough.
Sounds like they are asking for free government money
EVs are expensive because of the battery.
A cheap car is not a novelty, specially for asian manufacturers. There is no cheap EV because there is no cheap big ion-li battery.
Toyota strategy of focus on hybrid and hydrogen seemed weird to me. But over the years has been started to make sense.
The world needs a better battery. Until that, EVs will be heavy and expensive.
Very much this. Lithium batteries are the best battery we’ve got (at manufacturing scale) so far in terms of energy storage density, but the best we’ve got isn’t very good.
Gasoline has an energy storage density of around 13 MJ/kg. That’s a ton of energy, so much so that a vehicle can waste most of it generating so much heat that we have to bolt on a cooling system (with the associated weight) and still have enough to go highway speeds for hundreds of miles on a quantity of fuel weighing less than one of the passengers.
Toyota loves hydrogen because it’s got a storage density slightly higher than gasoline. Hydrogen has some serious volume and storage issues, but the density is there.
Contrast that with lithium ion batteries at ~0.7 MJ/kg (for the really good ones, which usually aren’t used in cars). Less waste heat, to be sure, but the bulk of the vehicles weight, the main factor in speed and travel distance, is the insane amount of material necessary to store the “fuel”.
Electric motors are far more efficient than ICE, but we need orders-of-magnitude improvements in battery storage density before EV can really take advantage of the greater efficiency. Until then manufacturers don’t have a choice, EV will be heavy and thus expensive.
We really need to change our culture to support mass transit and pedestrians more. I live in a town with fantastic bus service and extensive pedestrian infrastructure, and people in my apartment complex DRIVE THEIR CARS to a gas station/liquor store they could throw a snowball to. Hell, I've seen people make a longer walk to their car than it would've taken to get to their destination.
Charging infrastructure is still pretty shit compared to refueling a gas car as well.
Yes and no.
The EV refueling infrastructure while on the road is kinda shit.
The home refueling infrastructure for gasoline cars is really, really shit.
At the root of this issue is dealership exclusivity. Otherwise new companies would make them cheaper sell them privately and dominate that market. Tesla did some of this but still wanted to be premium. We need generic Tesla to come out, and the other EV companies are obsessed with premium.
The elites don't want you to know this, but you can be personally responsible for getting your city off of car addiction.
Similar to a headline that says "Food products not working", without mentioning escalating costs for the average person. Those that could afford and early adopters are limited.
China ate their lunch, now they cry
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
