Comment by baybal2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by baybal2 | Hacker News Reader

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> Is there any credible doubt that electric cars are the future?

No, but the future will look very different from what is the current "industry consensus"

Legal side of the question, consumer preferences, and how the developing markets will react to the trend make it all more likely that switch to EVs will not be a drop in replacement for regular cars.

Some conventional car concepts, and even entire car classes simply make no sense if converted 1-to-1 to electric propulsion.

Few current trends will hold in EV era:

1. The global general trend of car turning smaller will continue. Two-seaters are very likely to turn mainstream. Twizzy like microcars will also have a good chance to make debut outside of niche markets.

2. Battery capacity will be becoming more, and more of an irrelevant metric, as people discover that even basic EVs fully satisfy their need for a commuter vehicle. Thus all extensive investments into battery tech and manufacturing, may well go... sideways

3. New manufacturers from the developing world will actually have more headway than established ones as they are there creating brand new markets, while established makers will still be trying to sell electrified versions of "car 1.0"

4. New EVs will themselves see strong competition from "new mobility" and "public transport 2.0"

5. Same will go for two wheel transport. "The 150cc world" has long been thought to be a developing nation only thing, but it is the one currently expanding, and heading West. I am seeing more and more of maxi scooters, and other "Asian type" motorcycle varieties in the West these days. I think that's a very natural consequence of people adjusting to continuously worsening traffic.

I disagree with almost all of this. Cars are getting bigger, not smaller. At least in the US. Very few people are interested in an tiny car suitable only for commuting. They want an all-purpose car that they can use for commuting, shopping, and 700-mile/day vacation drives. People don't trust new brands in cars until they've seen them on the road for a few years. Tiny cars and especially two-wheelers are seen as unsafe by most motorists. That goes back to why bigger cars sell better. Look at the number of people driving around town in full-size SUVs or 4-door pickup trucks.

Most people don’t live in the US. The cars that are popular in the US are already less popular outside. That trend can continue while everyone else moves to smaller electric cars.

Americans still don’t use metric. That hasn’t stopped everyone else in the world.

> Look at the number of people driving around town in full-size SUVs or 4-door pickup trucks.

Unfortunately it is difficult to impossible to get a 2-door standard cab pickup truck any more. And forget a short bed.

I wish, wish, wish I could purchase a new Ford Ranger (ideally 4wd), with a standard cab and short bed - but that's an impossibility. I can't even get something comparable from any other manufacturer.

The only thing I've seen that may be possible is to get such a vehicle as part of a "fleet purchase" - it seems like you can get such a vehicle if you purchase a ton of 'em. But I'd have to somehow sneak one of those in (ie - know somebody buying a fleet and willing to do such a deal for me). So - zero chance there, too.

The sad thing is - Ford sold a version of the Ranger that was fully electric. It's range and hauling capacity were terrible (it used lead acid gel cell batteries), but it was an option back in the early 1990s. They didn't sell many; the few they did went to mainly electric utilities or enthusiasts.

I think you're sadly right. The events that could pull Americans out of mega cars like SUVs and 150's are (IMO) highly unlikely:

1. Cities ban large vehicles in an attempt to fight traffic fatalities, pollution, or congestion.

2. Simple income inequality puts SUVs out of reach for most people where a $10k micro" EV gets the job done.

3. Graduated licensing and insurance makes SUVs economically unwise.

The rest of the world might go for it though. Certainly Europeans are happy with normal sized cars and could go smaller.

> 2. Simple income inequality puts SUVs out of reach for most people where a $10k micro" EV gets the job done.

If that happens, SUVs will become cheaper. It's not like it's significantly more expensive to produce a single SUV vehicle than to produce a smaller car. It's more about market segmentation rather than actual production costs.

> That goes back to why bigger cars sell better. Look at the number of people driving around town in full-size SUVs or 4-door pickup trucks.

The demographic of oversized SUV drivers has been quite stable, and it is very visible in survey data. For the last 20 years, that demographic was just getting older. It is a very generational thing.

On other side, the microcars has been only growing, and given that they were a practically invisible minority just few years ago in USA, their growth can be said to be very strong.

I'd say, this can be translated to China in some ways. There is also a sizeable demographic of people with very strong preference for all kinds of oversized car types, but there is an equally big polar opposite demographic who drive small vehicles by choice. And you have to add people who simply don't have money for anything but a small, mini or microcar. They are a little bit apart from ones driving smaller cars by preference, but they only add to their ranks.

There's some weird stuff here in the USA though with the CAFE rules, which strangely makes building larger trucks the thing to do if you want to pass.

There's a large number of people who want smaller pickups, for instance (I'm one of them - I used to own a 4-banger Ford Ranger - I loved that truck and I wish I never got rid of it) - but they are impossible to find any more. You can't even find 2-door standard cab short bed pickups. It isn't that the demand isn't there for them (the Ranger was a very popular pickup, even at the very end) - but that something about the CAFE rules makes building smaller pickups bad for the total sold fleet in terms of certain EPA stuff (I don't quite understand it completely, but I've read articles about it).

Interestingly too - the size of pickups was increased; what really seemed to have happened, is they "pushed up the models" - ie, what used to be the F-150 (say 1995 vintage) no longer exists. What we see as the F-150, today, is actually the size (and price) of the F-250 of 1995. The F-250 is now the F-350, and so on (it kinda levels off after the 400 class, simply because those and larger were mainly niche sales to individuals, or commercial sales). I don't know if that is truthly real, but if you compare the sizes of the vehicles and options, it feels like something they did.

My current vehicle is a 2004 Jeep TJ (if I could have bought a post-2000 Scrambler I would have); I like the short wheelbase, mainly, and found that I don't really need all the room of a full-sized pickup like I had before. That said, I do sometimes wish I had the room my old Ranger afforded me. There are times I see something on the "side of the road" that I used to pick up, but now I can't (yeah, I'm one of those guys). Oh well - more junk I don't need, right?

I'd love to see smaller vehicles make a come back, because it might also mean smaller pickups and a return to smaller Jeeps and other 4wd vehicles, too! But until those CAFE rules change, I don't know if we'll ever see that here.

BTW - regarding the CAFE rules - from what I recall, they have something to do with the "area" a vehicle occupies, not it's overall size or weight class; I also think it applies only to pickups/"small trucks" - and there's something that plays into the overall sold "fleet" of the manufacturer. Maybe somebody else here could explain it to me better.

>Interestingly too - the size of pickups was increased; what really seemed to have happened, is they "pushed up the models" - ie, what used to be the F-150 (say 1995 vintage) no longer exists. What we see as the F-150, today, is actually the size (and price) of the F-250 of 1995. The F-250 is now the F-350, and so on (it kinda levels off after the 400 class, simply because those and larger were mainly niche sales to individuals, or commercial sales). I don't know if that is truthly real, but if you compare the sizes of the vehicles and options, it feels like something they did.

You can't justifiably make this comparison across such a wide year rage because trucks went from utility vehicles to flagship models in this time and there's been some massive improvements in drive-train tech since the 90s. A lot of that "moving up" is simply technological improvement allowing new trucks to do what old ones couldn't. Trucks have certainly grown to occupy more physical space but their footprints have remained close to the same and their weights haven't increased all that much.

>I'd love to see smaller vehicles make a come back, because it might also mean smaller pickups and a return to smaller Jeeps and other 4wd vehicles, too! But until those CAFE rules change, I don't know if we'll ever see that here.

Agreed. Unless you have some other market you expect to sell them in and consider the US a sideshow you aren't gonna invest the $$ to develop those vehicles.

Bring back the El Camino

Battery chemistry improvements will have far reaching impacts, much more than just in cars. Right now it's just that EVs are what currently is most in demand.

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