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Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

Electric cars are going to become extremely compelling very soon. A 300 mile electric car is close to the same cost as an IC engine over it’s lifespan. But, where IC engines have a hundred years of development and economies of scale electric cars are getting significantly better very quickly.

Charge infrastructure is expanding rapidly due to current rates of adoption which further makes electric cars more appealing every year.

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While electric cars will cost less over their lifespan (due to much less maintenance), they still cost a lot more initially, and I think that's the biggest hurdle right now.

A lot of people can't drop $40k on a car, but they can spend $25k up front and another $15k over the life of the car.

I think the major changeover will be when I can buy the equivalent of a Honda Accord, but fully electric, and for the same price.

The Tesla Model 3 was supposed to be that, but in reality, it still costs more.

Very few people spend $25k up front for a car. They lease it or finance it over 60 or 72 months.

Unless you’re referring to the psychological sticker shock only and not the actual cash flow implications.

And that ignores the fact that the majority of car sales are not new cars, so the average purchase price of a car is lower still. Even once the majority of new car sales are EVs, we still have a long way to go (with both energy generation and the long period before the majority of miles driven are in EVs).

Not really in the market for one, but in the US the 2019 Hyundai Ioniq (range of ~120 mi, so not ideal if you don't have a charger at home) is $99/mo with $1000 down for a 3 year lease, which is dirt cheap. I'm guessing after three years the battery will still be valuable, so they can be aggressively pricing it this way.

I think if Tesla had better leasing, you'd see way more of them

I have no idea how the price is so low in the US then, that's insane. We looked at the Ioniq for my wife last year and it was something like £3000 upfront and then £400 a month for 4 years - it's just a lot of money. For comparison, you could have a brand new VW Polo for £1000 upfront and £200 a month - and there's absolutely no way she could use £200 worth of fuel every month, even if petrol doubled in price.

California has this concept of a “compliance car”. There’s a legal requirement to sell X electric cars, so the manufacturers practically give away small, cheap cars to enable their IC business.

Fiat-Chrysler did it with the 500e, and back in the day the big 3 did it with subsidized Cavaliers and Escorts.

We need something like this in Europe but fat chance when the regulators are bought and paid by the auto industry which still prefers ICE cars.

What are you talking about? EU is tightening the screw on manufacturers so hard that they are literally panicking right now, as there is literally no way they can meet the regulations as is. Currently there is a requirement that fleet averages have to be below 100g/km for CO2, soon that falls down to 75g/km and then 50g/km - with every car sold above that threshold incurring heavy penalties. We're seeing literally every manufacturer rapidly moving towards hybrids and pure EVs, because there is no way to meet those targets otherwise - VW has completely axed all ICE versions of the Up(and their Skoda and Seat equivalents) going full electric, just to bring their averages down. Even Fiat, whose market was always low-end, cheapest of the cheap vehicles, axed ICE Fiat 500, and has gone full electric. Panda(!!!) is now a hybrid! Even Dacia, which is literally bottom-bin of cars, is introducing a hybrid and potentially a full EV soon.

All of this is only happening because of the pressure from EU regulators.

Currently there is a requirement that fleet averages have to be below 100g/km for CO2, soon that falls down to 75g/km and then 50g/km.

To see how these norms are effectively impossible to meet with ICEs, note that these translate to fuel efficiency of 4, 3, and 2 liters/100 km, or for American folks, 58, 78, and 117 mpg respectively.

Unfortunately, heavy cars are allowed higher limits, and that's part of the reason the automakers are pushing heavier cars like hybrid crossover SUVs.

The advertised US price likely includes the $7500 federal electric car incentive (which goes to the leasing company) and may even include the $2000 California rebate (subject to income eligibility limits.) Sales tax (VAT) is also excluded from advertised prices in the US.

I would imagine the upcoming release of the VW ID.3 is going to be a game changer in Europe.

€23.000 ID.3 vs €20.000 ICE Golf in Germany, from what I understand the Golf is one of the best selling cars in Europe. Also I believe many European countries exempt or greatly reduce emissions taxes on EVs, so that difference could probably be made up quickly.

One thing that always worries me about buying an electric car is the possibility that the rapid technological advances might destroy the resale value of existing models. That sounds like what this VW model might do.

New EV models will soon also destroy resale value of ICE vehicles.

Next gen electric cars are going to hammer the resale price of both ICE and current EV cars.

Might even be worse we're on the verge of the big global warming panic. At the same time the current pandemic has been showing that the world under a semi command economy is more resilient than neoliberals gaslighted everyone into believing. And thus governments have a lot more wiggle room than they thought. One might find that the resale value of your ICE car is zero.

I don't think climate change related policies matter much in the big picture. Maybe it makes adoption a year or two faster.

EVs are better cars for the majority of people. Once drive out price unequivocally beats ICE, EV adoption will skyrocket.

The cost of electric cars goes down every year. We've gone from $100,000 for a useful/ good electric car to ~$30k (Chevy Bolt EV) in less than 15 years. We're already seeing pricing parity on higher electric cars and soon with the Cybertruck, lower end cars will come within the next 10 years or so.

Electric moyors and batteries have had more years of research. In fact the electric motor and battery were researched by scientists in the 1700s.

An engines go back to at least the 1600’s with precursors all the way back into the first century AD. Except cars are really their own thing with their individual needs.

Electric cars are vastly more than just a battery and electric motor. Regenerative breaking, power distribution, heat management, possibly a simple transmission etc etc. The amount of innovation in this space dwarfs what’s happening in the IC space because the problems are so new.

Sort of. The core, kernel issue of fuel weight/kwh is still limiting electric.

I don’t think weight is much of an issue at this point. EV Acceleration in normal driving is fine and their range keeps going up. The new Roadster for example is aiming for a 200kWh battery and still has crazy acceleration. Cost seems like a bigger deal, but economies of scale are driving that down quickly.

EV’s hit 2.5% of total sales in 2019. 2020 is likely going to be odd, but scaling production still seems to be the bottleneck.

1 gallon of gas is 33kwh. And can be 'recharged' into a vehicle in 10 seconds.

So sure the Roadster can hold what, 6 gallons? Like an econo-box. And weighs 2 1/2 - 3 tons. Much of that in battery.

Yes, weight is still the big issue.

An EC engine is a long way from 100% efficient. Model 3 Long Range is 310 mile range on a 75kWh battery. Cars are not hitting 310 miles on 2.3 gallons of fuel.

For the most extreme comparison, a Bugatti Chiron gets an EPA 11 MPG so the roadster is arguably the equivalent of a 56 gallon fuel tank where the Chiron is stuck with 26 gallons.

PS: A better comparison would be a similar ~200,000$ two seater but none of them are optimized for fuel efficiency.

> "And weighs 2 1/2 - 3 tons."

A bit of a tangent but it'll be interesting to see what effect an all electric vehicle future has on the design of roadways, bridges, etc. I imagine that many things will need to be rebuilt to handle the additional load.

They're already built for it. The '73 Pontiac Bonneville I rode around in as a kid weighed 4300 lbs. And as sibling comment mentions, anything not a car or light truck will outweigh anything with batteries. Our Sprinter-based RV weighs 10K lbs. empty, and it is a small RV.

They're already "designed" for 18-wheel trucks which weigh 15-20 times that. Even heavy EVs are nothing compared to heavy transport.

To use your own example, they're designed to handle a certain quantity of 18 wheelers but they're not designed to handle traffic that is entirely composed of 18 wheelers.

Raising the average vehicle weight from 1.5 to 3 tons will definitely have an effect.

But not as much as it would seem, since road damage is a quadratic function of weight and one truck does as much damage as 9600 1 ton cars. Doubling the weight of the car would maybe narrow that by a few percentage points, but vehicle miles for any personal vehicle at essentially any weight is a rounding error compared to one truck.

Bridges at least need to be designed for just 18 wheelers because over 50 years that’s going to happen at least once.

Roads are designed for a certain amount of "axle weight" [1] which basically means to carry a heavier load you need to add more axles to distribute the load.

I would guess electric cars are still negligible in that metric, though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_axle_weight_rating

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