- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
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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.
Keep dreaming.
I’m just refusing to buy a car newer than 2008. Really an arbitrary cutoff, but that seems to be about when every car started to get as many electronics into them as possible.
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.
It’s the batteries. They are the biggest cost in an EV. The margins on such a car would be too low. Even the new Volvo XC30 is 35k plus which is one of the cheapest and most barebones EV.
But Volvos have never been cheap. Also big and heavy forever.
Make an eFit for $15 - 20k and sell a bazillion of them.
https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/advice/best-new-cars-under-20000?slide=6
An EV at that price was always unrealistic the battery is 75% that cost. But an ICE under 20 is easy. People just want nicer shit when they see the vehicles or have to head to Mitsubishi.
Everyone’s super obsessed with 300-400 mi ranges though. 100mi would be totally fine for most people and would require a small fraction of the battery (bigger batteries give decreasing returns)
Until it’s not, and then it’s an expensive pain. I travel 500 + 700 miles three times a year and renting a car for a week isn’t viable. There are enough edge cases just like that for most people.
Nobody wants to stop for 25 minutes (if you are lucky and don’t have to wait in queue) on their longer trips.
The actual solution you agree looking for is PHEV. That’s the middle ground that’s perfect for most individuals.
The phev f150 is the most functional auto/tool for travel and work I’ve ever seen.
Got exactly that with a VW e up.
You know that the e up was cancelled by VW?
Yes
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.
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.
The Bolt EUV is the only reason we have an electric car now (personally, I would have gotten the smaller and cheaper Bolt but it was a family decision to go with the EUV). It was reasonable for what you get. The only downside is the slower charging compared to other EVs but I don’t plan on taking it for longer trips. We have an ICE for that.
This. It’s even worse in Australia. The only affordable ev is a Tesla 3 @ 55k AUD. Which even then is out of reach of most.
Why not make a 30k EV? Penetrate the majority of consumers.
I’m on a great wage and even I shake my head at 80-120k range of most EVs here. Then you get bwm releasing 180k+ EVs… who exactly is buying them?
When you price a technology out of the reach of people, the tech isn’t the failure.
You can buy a BYd Dolphin for $38k ($24kusd) mate.
https://bydautomotive.com.au/configurator/byd-dolphin?ref=website
I went for a hoon in a BYD the other day, it was awesome fun. Not the dolphin, the other A*.* one that’s everywhere.
I believe they’re a cheap EV but it has all the bells and whistles, goes like the clappers, can do cool stuff like start the AC remotely so by the time you walk from work to your carpark it’s nice and comfortable, gets 450ish on a charge and can be topped up overnight on a standard power point for most people’s commute.
I’m so keen to own an EV, all I need is a justification… Right now I have a work vehicle that carries a tonne (literally) at all times which makes an EV less appealing.
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…
Because batteries are expensive. So by default you’re targeting a luxury price, whether it’s luxury sports car or a luxury SUV.
Electric cars make zero sense for the less well off. No one wants to go and sit some where for 45 minutes for 80% of a charge when they can go tonangas station and fully gas up a car in less than Five minutes. Also that is if there isn’t a line to one of the few public charging. Imagine working a shit job for 40k a year and then having to go and sit and wait for wven an hour to get to charge your car that then takes an hour to charge it self
Imagine working 40 hours a week and having to breathe gas fumes while you bike to work because your homeowners insurance doubled and now you can’t afford your ICE car.
No one thinks the transition to electric will be fun but it’s necessary because we waited 30 years to even acknowledge climate change. If you want to drive an ICE, you should have to pay for the destruction you’re causing so we can subsidize public transport. But failing that, EVs are the bare minimum.
I guess you are walking around with your phone until it dies, charge it for 5mins and then repeat? … or do you just plug it in over night or when you are not using it? That’s really not a good point you are bringing up here. You could critisize, that there are only few public charging stations (with user friendly terms) or what the comment you answered to is critisizing or even that there are so few alternatives for (really) climate friendly transport, but your point is just ‘what if I am not able to think at all??’
I think the assumption in Pasta4u’s scenario is that home charging overnight is not an option.
The less well of typically do bot own thier own homes.
More to the point people who rent in apartment complexes or own condos can’t just have a new breaker put in at thier condo or apartment complex. Some places have large parking lots and would require a lot of work to wire all the spaces woth thier own chargers. Also while it’s simple for you to get a 240v breaker put into your electrical box, what about an apartment complex that has a 100 cars ? It can require expensive work to support that much power drain and most people will commute during the day. That means all the load will happen after 6pm and before 9am.
Also in the mean time what do you do of you don’t own your own home? Buy an ev and hope the complex you are renting at will put in a charger or two ? What about all the hoa fighting adding chargers and so on.
Like I saod this will affect the less well off.
Yes, you are right. It only makes sense if you jave the option to charge at home, at your work or similar. Anyway, I’m happy I don’t have to think about this kind of shit. I get on my bike and just drive, if something is broken, it’s usually a $15 fix I can do by myself in an hour.
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.
AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!
You can charge any of them off a standard socket, so no, just no faster rate charging at the house.
Having a dedicated circuit installed with materials for the wire, breaker fuse, and conduit was $600 including electrician labor.
There is a universal charging standard. The ONLY company that doesn’t follow it is Tesla, but they too can use the universal chargers which also have multiple plug heads to use at source or you can carry one in your vehicle.
As for the lack of charging stations, you obviously don’t own an EV. The sheer mass of stations makes it possible to drive from 29 palms to Manhattan without worry. The cars will auto-add and find them for you on your route, and tell you which you need to hit with what charge time. You can even filter on types and cheatgrass rates for them to calculate your trip. This of all the things you stated is a tribal non issue that only gets even less with time.
There is a huge problem with charging but electrical connections and smart circuit load balanced charging at various times on the grid is easily doable in the time ranges of adoption we are seeking. There is a current chicken and the egg problem where government doesn’t invest in massive infrastructure because private companies haven’t crossed the tipping point on making it their primary focus… who haven’t done so because their customers lack the charging infrastructure and so around around it goes.
Having governmental targets like California’s are ways to break that cycle and force investment that makes public infrastructure changes viable to due to economies of scale.
It is a problem now. It doesn’t have to be.
EVs cost more up front and then cost less with fuel, maintenance, and longevity.
This is kind of true. A lot of the maintenance requirements for ICE vehicles is not needed for EVs. So you save money on things like oil changes and if you can charge at home then charging is probably cheaper than gas. But that battery probably needs to be replaced after about 5 years and that is a very expensive maintenance cost.
An independent analysis of 15,000 EV batteries finds that most don’t need to be replaced until they’re well over a decade old.
I have a 2016 leaf. I’ve changed the tires. That’s the maintenance. It’s like $3 to ‘fill’, and that’s about the same as three gallons of ICE distance.
The battery is around 90% of what I bought it at.
I have yet to hit any of the problems people are afraid of, but I might just be lucky.
No oil, timing belt, transmission. EVs are incredibly simple vehicles. Many years ago Tesla wanted a million mile battery, they are constantly getting better.
My EV is just over 5 years old and the battery is fine. I know it’s anecdotal but the batteries last longer than projected.
My 5 year estimate may actually be outdated already fortunately. First article popup about it shows 8 to 12 years now depending on the company and battery type. This is actually fantastic to see that as I was quite worried the tech would stagnate eventually.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/how-long-do-ev-batteries-last-study-says-longer-than-you-think
I have a 2015 leaf and while the estimated battery range has gone from 90’s to 60’s on mileage, it’s still kicking and gets me around the city just fine.
That might be true for older cars that didn’t have good thermal management systems (like the old Nissan leaf) but not true anymore. Electric car batteries now regularly reach over 100k miles with only small degradation. If you baby it, it seems that 200k miles with only 10% range loss is to be expected now
the chargers aren’t standard. Each charging site has different plugs, apps you have to download, etc
– US has 2.5 common plugs. An old one that’s mostly gone, the standard one, and Tesla. However Tesla opened theirs as a standard, and it looks like they will be de facto standard across the US
– The protocols are compatible. The adapter for my Tesla to use the other standards is mostly plastic and dumb. You just need something to fit a different socket
– yes, the state of apps sucks. Everyone wants to maximize their profit. However I thought most non-Tesla chargers had a credit card reader, so as long as you can find it and it works, you can use it without an app. Tesla is another story, but does seem t add a lot of convenience with their app
Yeah so I looked into this little while ago and I own my own house so in theory I can put the box in. The problem is I only have on the street parking and the house is set back away from the road and there’s a garden between the road in the house.
So how the bleeding hell am I supposed to charge a car? I’d have to run a long cable through the garden, over the fence, over the pedestrian walkway, over the grass verge and to the car. Someone is going to trip over it and then think they can sue me.
Or the government could just install a street furniture like they do parking metres, but I have no way to force them to do that.
Personally? I’d have an electrician install a standing charger by the curb. I might end up doing that if my wife switches to a plug in hybrid next year.
I’m not sure how that’ll work with the easement though. But that’s future me’s problem.
So how the bleeding hell am I supposed to charge a car? I’d have to run a long cable through the garden
Personally I’d replace part of the garden with a driveway and parking space. Sure, it’s ugly. But it’s what billions of people around the world have.
Or the government could just install a street furniture like they do parking metres, but I have no way to force them to do that.
Most cities have a plan to do that (though it might just be a plan, with no funding allocated yet)… But there are challenges - in particular vandalism. They have been more successful/cheaper to maintain (and more likely to actually work when you park there) at locations with 24/7 security guards and quick police response times.
They also prioritise short term daytime parking as it’s better to charge EVs when direct solar is available - far cheaper than other power source (except hydro, but hydro generally can’t produce enough power). And they prioritise somewhere like a shopping district where you might only park for 45 minutes allowing dozens of people to charger their car per day instead of just one overnight. Shopping districts are also setup to prevent vandalism as well (and prevention is cheaper than repairs).
Every shopping mall in my city already has a parking spaces where you can charge an EV. In fact it’s often free (or at least, included in the price of parking at the mall). It works well enough but it’s never going to be as convenient as charging at home… those parking spaces are nearly always empty in my city, even though they’re free people would rather pay for the convenience of charging overnight.
Personally I’d replace part of the garden with a driveway and parking space.
Well I don’t really want to have to do that if I can help it because if I did that I wouldn’t really have a garden anymore, but also I don’t think I can anyway because there’s a grass verge and I don’t think I own that, I think the city does, and I would have to pull that up to lay the driveway.
But also if I rented I wouldn’t be able to do any of that anyway so they still need to go the street furniture route. I don’t think vandalisms are particular problem because if they put down load of them they just become common and people would ignore them. Also it’s a housing street, it’s not a random street in the city so the only people around here are people who live around here and vandalising your own stuff seems pretty dumb. I’m sure it’ll happen but I don’t think it’ll be a major problem.
Every shopping mall in my city already has a parking spaces where you can charge an EV.
In my experiences usually some prick with a pickup truck in them. Apparently it’s actually a offence to park in them if you don’t have an electric vehicle, but have yet to see the law enforce. One time I saw a cop parked in one so, there you go.
usually some prick with a pickup truck in them
Yes, but like vandalism, the best answer may be ubiquity. The asshole in the truck can’t get a kick out of offending people if they simply ignore him and goto the next chargers
They are planning to put them on streetlamps where i live. That seems like an effective idea.
Trench for an underground cable, and mount the charger on a pedestal near your car?
I don’t know about other brands but a Tesla charger can whitelist VINs to only charger your vehicle
Yep these are all true points, but not unexpected as with any innovation. Just like how computers were immensely expensive, and without standards for decades.
EVs are relatively new in the scope of technology. Capitalism just wants to make you think it’s an issue. In reality this is gonna take time and lack the profits every company is striving for, which to them is a failure.
Yeah, I keep reading articles saying the same thing. Auto industry and dealers complaining EV sales are slowing down, yet as you said, it’s the fastest growing category.
Of course products aren’t as great now coming off that high during expensive fuel prices the last few years, COVID related shortages causing prices to skyrocket, etc. Not to mention inflation decreasing the value of people’s income.
Automakers also rely on dealers to sell vehicles and the dealers often make most of their money from repairs and maintenance. More than half the maintenance for ICE vehicles is just non-existent on EV’s. Not a lot of stuff to do when you get your tires rotated and your brakes checked every 5000k miles.
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.
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…
Carmakers: (High) increase of the selling prices of all cars, gas/EV.
Consummers: 20k for the simplest car, without options? No thanks, we can’t afford that
Next year - subscription to maintain air pressure in the tyres
You can get an electric Benz way under 100k, probably half that. 100k is S-class pricing and it has always been this high.
Here’s the honest truth though. You hear Benz and you don’t think affordable car. Benz have always been fairly high priced
“We are grossly overcharging for our product and nobody is buying… what could be the problem!?”
More like:
“We are grossly overcharging for our product and nobody is buying… Obviously nobody wants an EV!"
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.
Most people aren’t buying $40k+ cars? Weird.
Sadly, they are. The median new car price in the US last year was $46k.
Sad? Seems like people had more money then they needed and were buying cars 2x as expensive as they needed.
FTFY: EVs aren’t working to rise profits and bonuses.
Auto makers: “We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas”
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.
Which manufacturer?
Hyundai
Kinda reminds me of the same argument to why businesses can’t find employees, they aren’t able to exploit them enough.
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.
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.
Hydrogen cars are basically EVs without the giant battery. So it neatly avoids the huge cost and weight problem. Which is why Toyota thinks they are the future.
Sounds like they are asking for free government money
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.
And if you’re in a European city without off-road parking, at-home refuelling for EVs is shit too.
Yeah, but that totally makes sense if no one is buying. It’s just, that no one is buying, because automakers aren’t really interested in EVs, since gas powered have bigger margins, meaning initial manufacturing cost is lower, so they can jack the prices. When they do it with EVs it’s getting very ridiculous very fast.
Maybe in your country, here the majority of sold cars are electric. And the charging network is great. (Switzerland)
Yeah, I’m from Germany. So we are big petrol heads over here …
Also, my point was about pricing, is that different in Switzerland? I would doubt that.
Well, the majority of Swiss people drives overpriced SUVs anyway… so I guess the margins are pretty good And people here see the saving potential if you use less than 0.35 CHF/kWh 🔋 power compared the often more than 2.0 CHF/L ⛽️ power 1L of ⛽️ has about 10kWh but energy going to the street is way less compared to EV
Source: https://www.econologie.de/Energie-enthalten-in-Liter-Kraftstoff-Diesel-oder-Benzin/
Right. Thanks for sharing.
I hate the SUV trend as a whole, but especially in EVs it’s just so non-sensical. Trying to build more resourceconsious vehicles, but at the same time building them twice as big and heavy as they need to be, while trying to achieve range …
