Volkswagen launches its first all-electric SUV, the ID.4 | Hacker News Reader

Volkswagen launches its first all-electric SUV, the ID.4

abc7.com

216 pointsfinphil632 comments

I feel like the prices on electric vehicles are starting to become their biggest hurdle (instead of range, availability, or charging which are solved enough).

If you're from California or New York, I'm sure $40K starting for this or a Model Y seems complexly within your means, but there's a large chunk of the US (by population AND land) where <$20K new sedans remain popular and "nicer" vehicles are still in the $20-$30K range (and we're talking about SUVs and other family sized vehicles rather than small sedans).

People love to spam $40K US "average" while entirely ignoring that the average is a highly abusive figure containing $80K+ trucks and luxury vehicles, as well as a few $15-32K vehicles dragging that figure down. It doesn't really reflect anything useful.

Go look at this map[0]. How many of "the most popular car by state" are $40K? Zero. But yet an electric is going to replace a $21K Honda Civic by 2025? Really?

And I'm not dumping on the manufacturers here: From what I understand batteries remain the lion's share of an electric vehicle's total production cost (I've heard as much as $16K/vehicle). So this isn't profiteering, this is the tech not yet being ready price-wise for the mass adoption everyone seems to believe will come soon. Worse still as electric vehicles become more popular the rare earth metals that seemingly remain popular within the batteries may increase in cost offsetting our future reductions.

To be clear: I want to own an electric vehicle. I'd trade my current Subaru Outback ($27K) in tomorrow if I could buy a comparable electric. But those start in the $40K range (and honestly the cheapest trim is just a hero model, they don't intend to sell many, and blackmail buyers with missing basic features accordingly).

[0] https://insurify.com/insights/most-popular-cars-by-state-202...

Isn't this short term thinking? That is the upfront cost. What about the total lifetime cost of the vehicle?

People buying cars for $20,000 are generally not people who can invest twice upfront for lower maintenance costs over the next ten years. Being poor (relatively speaking) is expensive, especially when you are financing.

Isn't this situation a bit different?

You're financing your car anyway, so its "free" to finance a car that $75/mo more expensive if you spend $75/mo less in gas savings. Factor in not having to pay for maintenance and it really is cheaper month to month.

This is different from the classic example of having to buy cheap, low quality boot every month for $10 instead of buying really nice boots for $200 that would last a decade. The upfront cost of the nice boots (and the insane interest rates for credit cards) make the nice boots impossible to afford.

EDIT: This is besides the point, but I don't think people dropping 20k on a car are "poor" in the way we are discussing anyway. Anyone buying a brand new car obviously has some money to spend

Also 20k buys lot of maintenance, and gas. I wonder if at that price difference the maintenance and gas even is cheaper. Ofc, depends on driven distance, but still.

I an in a fortunate position to earn much more than a average salary. Yet our family car is a 2005 10k infinity fx35. Car is reliable and modern enough. A perfect fit for my family of 4. I considered buying a 80k Tesla model X, but went for a 15 year old Ferrari f430 (same price). Still have the practically and a lot of extra fun. I never understood why people would buy a car younger than 15 years old.

Safety features.

> I never understood why people would buy a car younger than 15 years old.

15 years typically translates to 180K - 200K miles for average use cases.

15 year old cars are generally not in great shape. Finding low mileage, well-maintained unicorns is not as easy as it sounds.

The difference in safety between a 15 year old car and a new car is breathtaking.

There are several reasons. First of all, cars that old usually have a quite used up interior even to the point of being unpleasant.

But the big thing is maintenance. If you can't do repairs on your own and with cars just 15 years old that gets increasingly more difficult, maintenance and repairs will kill you. At a certain point the upkeep will exceed the amortised costs of buying a new car.

15 year old cars might be better economically. But if your in a car accident, your definitely going to want to be in a modern vehicle.

Gas is down to $3 and electric $12/kWh, with the state now charging electric vehicles higher registration fees yearly to offset the gas tax savings. There's likely small savings every year, but we're talking almost $20K price difference, maybe $12K with federal (and no state) rebate, you aren't going to be breaking even.

Plus fun fact: My insurance would go up a lot with a Model 3 from my current vehicle, 25% more a month. Why? I have no idea, but I'm guessing higher write-off or repair costs.

The Model S was at least notorious for long and expensive repairs if you got into a crash. Not sure if that's the case for the Model 3 but Model S insurance rates are most probably high because of that.

Still the case for Model 3/Y.

Repairs can take months due to lack of spare parts.

I think you mean 12 cents a kWh? (So, a 60kWh battery can store $7.20 of electricity. Charging isn't perfectly efficient, so more like $8 to fully charge.)

Let's say you can go 200 miles with that $8 of energy, that's 4 cents a mile.

Let's say a gas car is 30 miles per gallon of $3 gas, or 10 cents a mile. Over 200,000 miles, that's $20,000 for fuel, versus $8,000 of electricity in the EV. Seems like the total cost of ownership just about breaks even with federal rebates, and ignoring maintenance costs (generally expected to be higher with the gas vehicle) and ignoring that paying the cost up-front for an EV removes the potential for that money to accrue interest (which favors the gas vehicle).

I'm hoping the EV costs continue to fall until we get to close to parity in terms of vehicle purchase price. This can happen either by battery prices falling, or for people to adjust their expectations and accept shorter range, or for the need for large batteries to become obsolete due to electrified roads that let you charge while the vehicle is still moving.

Am I understanding this right?

You're saying that gas is $3/gallon and electricity is $12/kWh?

Over here gas is around $7,50-$8 per gallon and electricity is around $0.05/kWh. A 100km drive in an EV costs around 2€, while in a petrol powered car the cost is 8.5€ for a low consumption car.

No wonder Americans drive huge cars with no regard to consumption :D

Which country do you live? Here in the Netherlands we pay roughly 20 dollar cents per kWh and 10 dollars per gallon

I am 100% certain that ($12/kWh) is a typo.

Even in CA, with some of the most expensive electricity, it's about $0.20 - $0.25 / kWh...

Electricity costs an average of $0.12/kWh in the US, not $12. It varies between about $0.083/kWh in Washington state to as much as $0.40/kWh in parts of Hawaii.

If anything the lifetime cost of electric deters me. Usually they come with 10 year warranties for the power side of the car, but I kept my last car for 20 years. If I buy electric I assume I essentially need to buy a new car or pay for an expensive overhaul after a decade. So the math is more along the lines of 20k for a gas car that will last for 20 years, or 40k for an electric car that will probably last 10 years. Yes, you save some on energy but probably won't offset total cost difference.

For some reason you're downvoted.

I think that's a reasonable fear, dunno what the failure rate on large components will look like, especially batteries. One problem is that electric cars are bound to advance more quickly than something as mature as ICE-based ones. It would be easy to end up with something that's obsolete or poorly supported from a parts standpoint.

Don't forget to factor in fuel cost and maintenance.

and insurance. and government tithes (additional highway taxes are probably on the way)

If you're keeping your car for 20 years, there are at least three or four timing belt/chain replacements and a ton of maintenance if you are putting typical miles on. Plus you're always one bad part away from blowing the engine, and there's no way to stop the inevitable long term decline of engine compression and replacing your transmission/clutch.

Electric vehicles outperform ICE powered vehicles on every metric, including price. Electricity is getting cheaper and cleaner over time, and so are batteries. In 10 years today's $10k battery pack might be twice as potent and half the price. I would stick with VW or other manufacturers, as Tesla is being cheap about battery chemistry for long term performance.

What do you mean about Tesla's battery chemistry?

> Tesla also uses a different battery chemistry — aluminum, in addition to the standard nickel and cobalt — than other major automakers. The battery researchers said that choice has led to maximum range because of a higher-capacity battery chemistry, though downsides included a higher fire risk and shorter cycle life, or life span over hundreds of charges.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/10/tesla-b...

On the other hand, fewer charges.

I don't see any difference between Tesla and other cars on https://www.geotab.com/fleet-management-solutions/ev-battery...

Battery lifetimes were initially cast at 5 years and more than half the car cost to replace. They have both got cheaper to replace, and have retained value after out of the car, and have had lifetimes extended. So, your input maths needs some adjustment. Maybe not "its zero" but its not as bad as you fear.

You didn't calculate TCO for the ICE maintenance costs and you need to: EV have significantly smaller maintenance so the component of high cost in a retained old petrol engine or diesel motor, is strongly in favour of the EV. I had two clutches and a gearbox replaced across the 17 year retention of my Mazda 6 on top of the expensive six monthly motor service.

Not downvoting you, but noting, you skewed the cost exposure risks i believe, quite badly.

> on top of the expensive six monthly motor service

Please elaborate.

Elaborate what? The car had six monthly service cycle and it was not cheap. The clutches and gearbox were down to careless driving technique. Electric motors don't get deployed with clutches and are mostly electronic continuously variable gearing and the service costs are significantly cheaper on average than for an ICE. It's that simple.

A Mazda 6 is a regular consumer car. Usually the only thing you need to do every 6 months is change the oil and filter and check fluids.

Per https://www.mazdausa.com/siteassets/pdf/owners-optimized/201... , the only thing you need to do every 6 months is change the oil and filter and check fluids, and lubricate the locks. Google says you can use conventional oil in a Mazda 6.

Please elaborate what you mean by expensive six monthly service. Did your regular service visits include additional items? What and why? And how much did they cost? I am curious what makes Mazda 6 regular service more than other ICE cars.

It was a 2003 model, we kept 17 years. Oil and filter and fluids and engine mounts and that nasty judder which developed. We never got out the door under $300.

Oh, oh, I can answer this, given ownership of a ten year old Leaf ($35K) and a fifteen year old Scion xB/rebadged Toyota Echo ($20K): the $20K car is still going to win in TCO. Because the Leaf already starts out $15K in the hole. That's a lot of oil and coolant changes. That's a lot of brake pads. And those are pretty much the three things an ICE needs done versus BEV. After 100K miles, the Scion needed a $1500 clutch job. After 50K miles, the Leaf needs a new $5K battery pack (it'll last a few more years, but it's coming).

The Leaf still needs tires. It still needed the 12V accessory battery changed out. It still needs a cabin air filter changed once in a while. The Leaf has been reliable, nearly maintenance-free, and pretty appliance-like. But the Scion is a close second. We'll probably never buy an ICE again, that's how much we've like the Leaf and BEV in general. But "out of touch" doesn't even begin to describe someone arguing that those willing to spend $20K should spent twice as much because "TCO".

You left out the very important and difference making cost of gasoline. Which over 10 years of driving would more than make up the difference in cost.

That may depend on where you live, and what your electricity consumption already is. In CA, for example, with our tiered billing and PG&E's award-winning business practices, it's pretty easy for an electric car to rack up quite an energy bill. If you were already using electricity up to the top of your tier, the add for the car will be at $$$ rate.

So they also have non-tiered plans for electric car owners but those are time of use. If you use them at peak for whatever reason, $$$ again. It's a little tricky.

It won't be as expensive as liquid fuel, to be sure, but the savings over time might not be as high as you'd expect. Offsetting with solar seems to be the popular option around San Jose, where homeowners tend to be particularly affluent.

Beware NEM 3.0.

Note that the CA utilities are working to try to keep milking you even if you have solar. The most loathsome part of it is that the utilities are trying to charge you $10/month/kilowatt-peak for the array you own, even if they push zero energy onto the grid. From my perspective, that's ridiculous rent-seeking. Personally I'm working towards getting off the grid entirely.

The $10 a month is a service charge to be connected to the grid with a meter, so you can send energy to the grid to get money back, or use the grid when your solar isn't generating enough energy.

I think that's fair. It pays for the meter, the transformer you're connected to, the grid circuit, etc.

It's only fair if the people making polluting electricity pay to clean up the pollution they create

Your reply is nonsensical / a non sequitur. Where I live the local utility is 100% renewable anyway.

Then it's fair.

However people making electricity by polluting our planet are stealing from us, so should have to pay more, have to disadvantage those people more than you disadvantage solar producers

You've misinterpreted the proposal. It's $10/mo per installed kilowatt-peak of solar panels behind the meter. There's _another_ fixed charge that is more reasonable.

You're paying for that difference upfront, however. Is gasoline in the U. S. likely to go up faster than the, say, S&P 500, where one could put that extra $15K until it's time to buy more gasoline? Historical data say "no". Gas was $3-$4/gallon when I moved to Seattle 20 years ago, and it continues to stay between $3-$4.

There's lots to like about electric cars (again, so much so that I'll never buy another ICE), but IMO any cost savings is going to be pretty far down the list. After ten years of EV ownership, I'd almost pay the difference in price so I never, ever have to go out of my way to visit a gas station again. Man, what a hassle that is once out of the habit. But EVs are just generally better vehicles that make an ICE seem like the rattling, primitive contraption that it is. That doesn't sell cars because one needs to own an EV to realize that. So to get folks to the ownership, we tell them it'll save money on gas. Which is technically true, but not the reason to buy EVs.

We’ve put 50K miles on our Leaf. Assuming 35mpg like our Scion xB, and that’s about $5K worth of gas. Assuming electricity to be free, it still doesn’t make up the difference. Of course the savings go up the more you drive, but how many miles are you going to put on a car that can only go 100 miles at a time on its best day?

What range do you get on a 10yo leaf? My GF had to sell hers (2016) because she couldn’t get more than 70mi out of it. Which unless you kill the battery all the way, it gives you anxiety past 25mi one way. In Florida that’s just going to school for her. Getting groceries on the way would’ve put her out of range.

50-60 miles these days. Used to get 100 when it was new, if one didn't have a leadened foot. IOW, yeah, it's a city car at this point. Redmond->Seattle and back is about the limit these days.

TCO/month has been 200€ for me for a cheap ICE. This includes car purchase, yearly servicing, random repairs and gasoline. There is no way for me to spend less money without buying used.

The Dacia Spring would cost me 200€ TCO/month. A Kia Soul EV with 60kWH could cost me 250€ TCO/month for a slightly bigger car and more range+max speed. I wouldn't save money, but I also wouldn't break the bank.

Right now it's a wash. I haven't calculated CO2 tax increases into the TCO though. Give it another 5 years and you would have to be stupid to buy ICEs.

Not only that, there are entire continents where electric vehicles are simply not feasible. You cannot drive an EV 100km through mud and forests to get to a town just to charge it. Those EVs are not only very heavy and will sink in mud, they turn into bricks when empty. Have fun getting electricity into the jungle. A gas canister can be brought by anybody and filling the car up is quick. So most likely you will be hauling around generators - gas powered of course.

These are problems I don't see discussed anywhere when car manufacturers are claiming to go full EV by 2030.

To be fair: vehicle density in rural Africa or South America or wherever you're thinking of is extremely low. To first approximation all cars are in cities (because to first approximation all people are in cities), and so to first approximation all cars can be feasibly replaced with EVs.

It's true there will always be edge cases best served by some other technology, but that's true about any device, not just cars.

How many of these places drive 2021 model cars right now?

Probably none, and most of them can't even afford a used car with AWD. Every time I hear about Americans buying offroad cars as a status symbol I think of people in Cameroon getting stuck in the muddiest dirt roads on the planet with their Golf 3.

I live in Suburban Chicago. AWD and ground clearance are not “status symbols” here: there’s a thing called snow 1/3 of the year.

Our last big snow storm of the season required me to pick up my in-laws and take them to the doctor. Their BMW 5-whatever sedan couldn’t even make it out of their parking garage.

Yup! Plus in the US the majority of all cars are not parked in a garage or driveway. How do those charge?

I see power cables running out to a car parked in front of a house fairly regularly.

In inner Sydney suburbs with terrace houses, the 2sigma distance to your street parked car might be 100 metres. You can't run an extension cord that far

How impractical is assigning parking spots?

The government/local councils seem to be able to work out how to power the parking meters. There's no reason why each parking spot couldn't have a charging pole installed with smartcard or NFC via mobile app registration and payment.

There are plenty of solutions, what's needed is the will of government to deploy those solutions.

Chargers are installed in parking lots everywhere. Just because you haven't noticed them doesn't mean they aren't there.

> in the US the majority of all cars are not parked in a garage or driveway.

Source? That seems highly unlikely

The US as a whole is 65% homeowners, but population density drives that down. The Bay Area is below 44%. There are hundreds of thousands of apartments here with street parking where you can find it, or rows of carports in 2–3 story complexes that may or may not be lit but definitely no metered outlets.

Yep, I live in the city – most folks in apartments don't have a car. Id still hazard to say that most cars in America live in a garage or driveway and OP didn't back up their claim so :shrug:

Charging points installed on lamp posts, due to lamp posts switching to LED lights there's lots of spare power capacity.

It would be interesting to see an EV design that's appropriate for the Third World.

Look at some of the Chinese market cars. They are much closer to what you are thinking of.

Honda Super Cub with a battery.

That's probably because car manufacturers are not making electric cars to traverse the jungle. That is an extremely niche use case compared to the global car driving population and a straw-man argument.

electric car drove on the moon we are fine... give enough time and people in jungles will be using electric eventually, hydrogen or battery

well you could go to town and get a tank of hydrogen and fill up your tank and go?

seriously we drove a electric car on the moon and your telling me we can't figure out how to drive in remote places?

Hydrogen transport is actually quite complicated. There are many villages where you buy gas in cola bottles, so I wouldn't bet on hydrogen to be available, even in 20 years. Gas powered generators will be more likely.

> seriously we drove a electric car on the moon

How else would you drive on the moon? ICE needs oxygen for combustion.

take your hydrogen tank with you.... plus you can generate hydrogen anywhere using solar power.

using a ICE engineered for low gravity? with your own supply of oxygen?

I think you underestimate the amount of pressure hydrogen tanks are under. You need pretty large solar panels to power the compressor alone. So large that you can better charge a battery over a day or two.

Why engineer a new kind of ICE when electric engines and batteries are already ready to go as they are both needed for the flight to the moon? Also, you don't want explosions in space. Especially not when supplied with oxygen tanks.

>Have fun getting electricity into the jungle.

There is already generators there, solar power and batteries will replace that. But people in the jungle either don't drive, or there is a river with boats. Is a small electric motor boat that much different to one running on petrol?

Actually the market for new sub-$20k vehicles is quite small. Most people with budget concerns buy used. The median new passenger vehicle is something like a $40k minivan or pickup. So these EVs really aren't very far off the mark financially.

Indeed. These EVs will filter down to the used market over time, satiating demand from those not of means to afford a new car.

It's ideal really; those who can buy new eat the depreciation, while those who can't afford new end up with a vehicle that will be able to go hundreds of thousands of miles before end of service life (perhaps with some cosmetic blemishes, but not much more of concern considering powertrain longevity). Not everyone needs a new car, many simply need a reliable car.

We sort of know what to expect with powertrain longevity on used vehicles, but I'm not sure we know the same for electric vehicles just yet.

Consider: I had my last car purchase (which I knew would be used) between a BMW 4 Series, a VW Golf R, and a Subaru STI. I went with the 4 Series. The Golf R and STI are often used as track cars, and 40k miles on a Golf R may very well be the equivalent of 100k miles on a regular Golf.

I admit this is a very specific use case, but there are other specific use cases (e.g. police car - probably spent 80% of its engine's life idling and not racking up miles) that we know to look for, that we simply don't know to look for in the EV market, because they haven't presented themselves yet.

It's really just "battery" longevity. The EV-unique part of the power train on most of these vehicles is a single-gear electric motor with one moving part. There are broadly similar devices in service today that have been working more or less unmaintained for literally a century (think elevator motors in old apartment buildings, etc...). It's pretty well travelled territory.

But yes: batteries age and need to be replaced. But while that's quite expensive in materials, it's actually very feasible as a maintenance task. A 2012 Model S could have its battery swapped and no doubt drive for another decade with minimal fuss.

Are those EVs that are going to become decent sub $20k buys at say 5 years old even in existence yet? Even if they are there aren’t enough of them being sold new yet.

I seems to me probably another 5 years to get enough volume in solid lower end EVs that are bought in quantity and have a decent lifespan. Then another 5 years for them to filter down to the used market with decent prices.

I bought a 2017 Golf last year for around $15k. In Australia the only thing you can get electric wise at that price point would be a 2013 or so leaf with 100km range, and even then there is basically no supply.

Not in the "no compromise" Tesla class, no. The vehicles are too new and too in-demand and are holding their value too well in the used market to depreciate enough. That's a good thing, it means the market is growing and manufacturers have incentive to produce more cars.

You can get a ~2016 Leaf for around $10k though.

The "small" market for new sub-$20k vehicles includes: the Toyota Corolla, Hyundai Elantra, Mazda 3, Nissan Sentra, Hyundai Kona, and Kia Soul, depending on options. Sometimes you can get a new base Civic for just under $20k. All of these are very popular cars. Basically the entire subcompact car or crossover segments (non-luxury), and most of the compact car segment (depending on options).

Of that list, only the Soul has a starting MSRP under $20k I believe, the others all have $20k as a floor. And I'm not saying that no one buys those cars, just that the market isn't large and that most new cars are significantly more expensive. This link puts the average (I couldn't find a median) at $41k, for example: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2021/01/07/new-car...

So a bunch of EV's sitting 20-30% above that level aren't being priced out of the range of popular cars. They're very feasible purchases for most buyers.

All those cars sell for well under $20k after discounts and rebates. MSRP != average transaction price: you need to check the KBB value (and some of them also have an MSRP under $20k, like the Hyundai Elantra, Nissan Sentra, and most of the subcompact crossover segment).

I understand how car pricing works. Nitpicking about the threshold isn't the point. Cheap new cars are a real, but small part of the total market. EVs don't compete there well now, but that says basically nothing about the ability of EVs to penetrate the broader market.

Average price of new cars purchases in the USA crossed $40k for the first time in 2020 [1]. So I don't think it's that outrageous.

[1] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/average-new-car-price-202...

I'd definitely like my next car to be electric, and to be an SUV, and I don't want it to be cost much more than a fairly basic configured Honda CR-V. 2021 CR-Vs start at about $26k.

My current car is a 2006 CR-V with about 80k miles on it. It's in good shape and I drive less than 1200 miles/year so should be able to stick with it it for a long time.

My plan is to keep driving my CR-V until:

(1) an electric SUV comparable in price and features to the then current basic CR-V becomes available and switch to that, or

(2) rules change to prevent future sales of new ICE cars, in which case I'll decide if I'm OK with an electric non-SUV. If I am, I'll switch. If not, I'll buy a new ICE CR-V (or Hybrid CR-V if that is still only about 20% more expensive than the base ICE model like it is now), which should be able to last me for the rest of my life, or

(3) the CR-V actually needs to be replaced, in which case I'll do the same as in #2.

1200 miles/year is an atypical use case for a vehicle in the US and your options can be anything, including many older cars, and also possibly human-powered transport and/or electric-powered scooters/bikes/skateboards. We have a '12 CR-V w/ 120k miles which right now is doing standby vehicle duty, our Tesla Model 3 takes all the miles (15-20k/year).

At 1200 miles a year, you should possibly question whether you need a car at all, tbh. Renting when you need one might work out cheaper.

> but there's a large chunk of the US (by population AND land) where <$20K new sedans remain popular and "nicer" vehicles are still in the $20-$30K range

A Dacia Spring seems to be generally in the 10-15k EUR range after incentives, in most countries. A Renault Zoe is about 20-25k.

The US does seem underserved in terms of low-end electric cars, tho.

The best-selling[1] vehicle in America, the Ford F-150, had an average sale price of $47,174 in 2018[2]. I'm sure it's only gone up since.

Also, the latest version of the map you shared shows the F-150 being the most popular vehicle in 18 states, none of which are California or New York: https://insurify.com/insights/most-popular-cars-in-america-2...

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[1] https://www.autobytel.com/ford/f-150/car-buying-guides/why-t...

[2] https://www.autoweek.com/news/trucks/a32945300/ford-averages...

This shouldn't surprise anybody. Those are used for work like farms and are tax deductible.

I'd bet a ton that most F150s never see dirt. I'd also bet that most F150s see >5 year car loans.

I would side with you on this bet. Lots of brodozer and parking lot princess F-150s up here in Michigan suburbs.

tons of pavement princesses here in AZ.

F150 was the minimum truck when I worked in landfill construction in the Northeast and NY. They’re decent on the site dirt roads. But they ride hard and I found the handling on the road pretty bad.

They’re not popular here. Except for those that need them. (Maybe RWD and light tail and snow.. ). SUVs are it here.

I was surprised how much of the rest of the rural US uses trucks as a day to day vehicle.

Anyone who's driven on a highway in Texas knows this is likely untrue, at least for most F150 owners. I see a shocking number of pristine, washed and waxed F150s every single day when I'm driving. Those and Ram 1500s dominate the roads here.

I don't even live in a rural area. I live in DFW.

I live in DFW also and you are correct. I'd take a guess that 80% of F150 owners live in a quiet suburban neighborhood and have never used the truck bed. What really is insane is the folks like a neighbor down the street who has an F250 Diesel Monster truck that has never seen any off road action except the time he drove on his grass backing out of the driveway. Same with all the Jeeps with oversized tires and 12k in tricked out off road gear, driven by soccer moms. I suppose it's some kind of status symbol like all the old farts buying Harley's and pretending they are some kind of bikers...shame they destroyed the brand.

> like all the old farts buying Harley's and pretending they are some kind of bikers...shame they destroyed the brand

Actually, they kept the brand alive by buying the product.

Without those people they'd have died long ago.

Sounds kind of like Leica to me: orthodontists running around Africa or Asia pretending to be Steve McCurry with $11,000 'Safari' cameras destroyed the brand for me. Yeah, sure, the company is still technically alive, but at what cost?

(and lest you think I'm joking: https://www.dpreview.com/news/9864312105/leica-releases-limi...)

Are the cameras not good anymore? Or is it that the “wrong people“ are using their products that bothers you? If it is the latter, then you are just trying to buy an identity through brands, and you are as much part of the problem.

Leica glass is still top notch. GP is just making some weird status thing out of it.

Then just buy the M43 version?

I prefer the APS-C version.

Leica glass is great. Leica cameras are great. I wish the company would focus on turning out high quality products that are meant to be used to create photographs, as opposed to turning out the camera equivalent of a Birkin bag.

And I say this as someone who has previously owned and shot with a Leica M6 and currently owns and shoots with a Leica IIIf.

The only good thing about Leica cameras is the handling, arguably and subjectively. They are behind in every single other respect. Leica lenses are good, though.

Couple being sub-par with being much more expensive and you get something that is moreso useful for image than as a tool.

The same thing is true of guitar manufacturers and probably most other manufacturers of music gear.

You are correct. This very entertaining 11 minute video from Fortnine (still one of the best channels on YouTube) does a great job explaining exactly how HD wound up where they are today: https://youtu.be/EOwxxsPaogY

>Actually, they kept the brand alive by buying the product. >Without those people they'd have died long ago.

I disagree, the Company was founded in 1903 and was did well into the 90's and then the 50 plus crowd decided to be some kind of poser biker gang type and destroyed the brand. Not very different than what happened to the Corvette and all the 6o plus folks buying them the last 20 years.

What did these people do to the brand image? I guess I don't understand what it was like before this happened.

Harley's were synonymous with Motorcycle Gangs (Ex: Hells Angels, etc) or with young cool men (18+).

All of a sudden in the 90's a lot of these 40-60 year olds started to try and recapture their youth or that coolness they never had. They started buying Harley's and dressing in Leather and making these ridiculous club patches and driving around revving their motorcycles everywhere. It was so cringe that you actually felt ashamed for them.

Here is a good clip from South Park that kind of sums it all up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGyKBFCd_u4

They installed a CEO who didn't know how to ride a motorcycle but he could make tshirts move off the shelves.

Wrong, the brand hung on and is dying out with boomers. Everyone knows that the younger kids get crotch rockets. It wasn’t the hold people that ruined the brand, it was the brand marketing to Boomers for shortsighted gains. Harleys are for Boomers. Harley made sure that was the message. Now they pay for it.

charging 30k for a motorcycle didn't help

Made all the worse than the 30k motorcycle is slower and handles worse than a 13k motorcycle.

Not to mention breaking down constantly.

The only upside with the rediculious "Live to Ride", or whatever rediculious marketing slogans they use is most used Harley's are bringing 1/2 of what they were in the nineties.

And it's a buyers market.

Producing crappy, noisy, stupidly big, and overpriced products is what destroyed the brand.

> driven by soccer moms

I’d really like to get away from this phrase.

Some of the most avid off-roading Jeepers I know are women. And mothers. And for all I know they take their kids to soccer.

“Soccer moms” is a terrible phrase.

I agree with you, but the problem is, there is no suitable replacement. When someone says, "soccer mom", you know exactly what they mean. And there is no phrase like it.

Just like the phrase "Indian giver". That one is just straight up racist and I will never use it, but sadly I haven't found a substitute for it either. "Someone who gives a gift and then takes it back" just doesn't roll off the tongue...

Since I started realizing how sexist it sounds to me, I’ve not found a need to use it, other than gatekeeping, of which I’m also not fond.

I think it’s nearly always better to avoid using personality labels entirely.

"Suburban parent" doesn't have the same ring to it. I've also heard the term "Mum's taxi" in Australia.

Mommybus

Why such concern about people owning things that they may not truly need? I'd say it is a bit of a slippery slope. Many things are not truly needed.

A slippery slope to what? Cutting down on pointless consumption and needless environmental damage?

My point is the discussion should be entirely about carbon footprint, not whether CO2 emitting processes or machines (in this case large vehicles) are truly "needed".

Large utility vehicles like pickups are, by dint of their mass, their high centres, and their poorer visibility, dangerous to other people on the road.

They also release a large amount of carbon into the air.

So yes, their use as a recreational or status symbol should be discouraged.

I have an older Ford Ranger. It is only 300 lbs heavier than the heaviest Prius models. Put a pair of super sized Americans in there and their gross weight is more than my dangerously heavy vehicle.

Isn't that insanely inconvenient? It takes so much more space, needs so much more fuel, is so much more bulky to drive .. is that bit of "status" actually worth it?

Besides, even if you haul sth bigger 2x a year, renting a little trailer of the right size is really a no-brainer. That's what I do.

> Isn't that insanely inconvenient? It takes so much more space, needs so much more fuel, is so much more bulky to drive .. is that bit of "status" actually worth it?

I'm wondering the same thing, especially since I see more and more of those trucks in Paris, France. Now I've never been to the US, but one thing with European cities is that there are a lot of old, small streets. We also never really had big cars like in the US, so parking spots, etc, are tiny for those cars. Hell, I have an older C-class coupé and it barely fits in street parking spots.

We also have our share of off-road vehicles that have probably never left Paris, seeing how they have huge rims with low tires. But I guess since the streets are in a horrible shape and getting worse, an off-road vehicle may make some sense.

However, I guess that's the whole point of "status". Something that's practical and affordable (financially or otherwise) for everyone can't confer status.

So when it comes to status-seeking, those metrics being outrageous is actually a feature, not a bug.

>especially since I see more and more of those trucks in Paris, France

Yep, this trend exploded almost everywhere in Europe and I think I found the answer to why. Lots of my male colleagues at work (devs in Europe) are married and have kids on the way and when discussions came at lunchtime about buying a new family car for taking the kids places it seemed like the choice is always a SUV. Whenever I ask them why a SUV, even though they usually prefer sleek sedans, the answer is always "my wife/girlfriend says she feels safer in a big, tall car", which mostly makes sense as throughout history, females' reproductive and nesting choices have had a major impact on shaping male behavior and various aspects of society like real-estate and now car choices.

It's sad that this kickstarted what is basically an arms race on the road since nobody feels safe anymore driving their kids in the traditional European compact car when everyone else is now in big heavy SUVs with poor visibility and easily distracted by their phones or infotainment touch-screens so this fear drives them to one-up their "competition" with bigger and heavier cars to make sure their kids have a perceived higher safety in case on an accident.

Another thing is today's compact cars are getting ridiculously low. I don't want SUV, but I want to drive on crappy gravel roads with confidence and park close to curb without scratching bottom of the bumper. Regular cars used to allow that 2 decades ago. Now I'll need a „raised“ car for that :(

That's for fuel efficiency reasons. Cars lower to the ground get much better mileage at highway speeds since they have less aerodynamic drag.

And it's not just compact cars, modern SUVs, except the ones destined for workhorse off-roading, are also lower to the ground than they were 20 or so years ago since they never leave the city/highway anyway.

Yup. And then many people opt in for SUV to get back to classic ride height. Which is kinda funny.

Surprise! People buy cars that are not functional but aspirational. Can we add: - SUVs that are are really just wagons or hatchback with big tires. - Sports cars that will never see a track and couldn't possibly be driven safely at half their top speed. - Trucks with reinforced bumpers, headlamps and gas cans so that they are ready for Baja or more likely Target. - Your BMW or Mercedes that convinces me you are really rich because you can afford a lease or a 72 month loan.

This is human nature. Wanting more than you need is actually important to capitalism in countries as rich as the U.S. so I cut people a break.

I give SUV drivers a bit of merit. Many (most?) come with a third row or at least the option for one so they are the most practical way to carry around up to 8 people at once safely.

Minivans are the most practical for this purpose. The third row seat in most suvs are for children at best.

As a former child, I can attest to this fact as I have ridden (rode?) in the back of an SUV many times. This is a great value-add as most children cannot drive themselves.

That does not change the fact that they are tax deductible.

You're kidding yourself if you think most of the buyers for these actually need a pickup truck.

I lived in Bama for a couple years and everybody and their brother had a pickup.

Of course the most common price is just as useless as the mean price when describing this highly skewed distribution.

Its the median price that the average American is willing to pat that is the most informative metric here.

Could most of those be base model work trucks with the average price heavily skewed by the luxury pickup market.

According to AutoWeek, who I expect knows of what it speaks,

"The most popular model [of the Ford F-150] is the SuperCrew XLT with the 302A package...That pickup, upgraded to 4X4 and the 6.5 foot bed, comes out to $50,020."

https://www.autoweek.com/news/trucks/a33584476/this-is-how-y...

Need to seat 4 and the dog plus tow the boat or camper. Also the bed is good for Home Depot runs.

dang, $29k starting price and you don’t even get power windows? What happened to the F150??

They’re bought primarily either as status symbols or for business use.

Or because it's tax-preferred in farming. Generate a profit for the year = buy a top of the line truck "for the business."

A truck as a status symbol? In Russia or the balkans the rich mobsters use Mercedes SUVs for that.

(Collective) 'farmer' is used as an insult in Russia so no wonder cosplaying hard-working man of the land is not popular.

IMHO, power windows are just another thing to inevitably break. I have yet to have a manual window break.

Power windows are nice when you're driving and want to open the passenger side window but other than that, it's mostly a luxury.

It was a luxury in the 90s, now it's standard trim. Even Renault Symbol has electric windows.

Two cars i’ve owned for 10 and 14 years and the power windows broke once (on one side). cost me $150 i think. Pretty good value imho.

It's something of a hotrod if you get the V8 in a regular cab shortbed.

'round these parts, a 4wd pickup is a pretty practical thing to own. I'd much rather own one than a Subaru.

It’s their primary money maker so it’s priced and advertised to maximize revenue. There’s a reason so many electric cars have ugly designs and it’s not because they don’t know how to make a good looking vehicle.

Yeah pickups and SUVs tend to cost more (and have much higher profit margins) than sedans and they're everywhere outside of NYC/LA. I would not be surprised to find out pickups and SVUs out number sedans in those areas.

But frankly, it's a light truck. It's contractor's vehicle, or farmer's, but it's hardly a commuter car. It may be reasonable for countryside, like a boat may be reasonable for seaside.

Nevertheless, just googled it:

--- People also ask: How much does a 2020 F-150 cost? From $28,745 2020 Ford F-150 / MSRP ---

lol if you think trucks are primarily driven by contractors or farmers. You should visit the south, trucks are most definitely used as commuter cars.

They are, but the reason they are mostly sold is contractors and farmers. And work fleets, etc etc

Trucks as commuter vehicles in the south generally still get used as trucks. You're more likely to see trucks with perfect paint out west.

Clearly you haven't lived in urban Texas.

I live in urban Texas. At a glance, my truck has perfect paint. You can't see the 3rd party liner I put in and the gouges in the truck bed. Most of the time you aren't going to see all the gear or trailers I haul for different organizations. Sure, some people buy trucks to compensate for something, but some of us who have an entry level Ford F150 or Ram 1500 do in fact use them as trucks when you can't see it.

It's a very light truck. Especially these days. Seems like a vanity vehicle mostly. If you're hauling you have a bigger truck, and if you're offroading you have a jeep or something.

Nobody is using electric for anything that we'd relate to as "critical" or "high availability". In fact, there are trucks that just bring gasoline to bigger trucks.

Source: I live at 8300ft in Colorado.

Personally, I drive an F-150 because I visit Home Depot quite a lot for home projects, take the kayaks down to the lake, and because just generally being able to haul things when I need to is enormously useful. It just seems to happen a lot in normal suburban life.

That said, I will definitely be trading up to a Cybertruck as soon as it’s available.

The difference in what’s called “light” in the US and Europe is huge. The F-150 is, to me (a European), a very substantial vehicle. Its front end is the height of a medium-sized family car!

Yeah almost nobody drives those here. They would take every single time 2 parking spaces and stick out big time, and as mentioned in this thread its mostly a vanity car. Most of the underground parking wouldn't be accessible with it. Contractors/small companies have vans which are much more useful for actual work (ie load capacity, permanently covered) and cost less to buy and run. Which are the most important criteria to run a business successfully.

For personal driving, either fugly SUVs or wagon types offer much better... well everything. Operating costs, much better driving experience, you can actually park it everywhere.

The operative word is “truck”.

In Israel there are no F-150s, but their larger siblings like the F-350 and the Silverado are very popular (admittedly with contractors, you don't see white collar people buying them). Reason is, they are classified as proper trucks for tax calculation, so you get all kind of write offs and don't pay VAT (17%) on them.

The same people used to drive the smaller Japanese pickups (like Toyota Hilux) before, it just stopped making sense buying these when F-350 costs less due to the tax reasons above.

So it's funny like that when among the regular hatchback and compact car mix you see in any European country you encounter more F-350 monsters than you see in the USA (relatively speaking).

Especially the Texas folks after 3 days without electricity. A lesson learned for sure.

Most of the new F150s and other full sized trucks sold now are four door models. They are entirely grocery getter commuter vehicles with their stubby 5 foot beds. It is now rather difficult to get pickups with smaller cabs.

Perhaps something should be done to discourage Americans from buying bigger cars than they require.

I don't seen any reason to use a big truck as their daily commute.

This is why it’s political. Gas is cheap in the us, credit is easy and to some extent, there’s a cultural aspect (at least here in Texas). Generalizing people like big cars here. Ironically enough my 4 door VW Passat had more backspeat space for my 2 kids which was my primary motivation. So it’s not about hauling kids around — at least for most. it’s about the size in general, the lack of disincentive, the occasional usefulness of a truck bed, perception that it’s safer (when you get hit by another truck, you probably don’t want to be in a small car like mine). combine with general ignorance of the climate issue and there’s little reason to not get one. Hence why so many do. I’ve heard quite a few people describe small and electric cars as hmmm various forms of “non masculine”. So all together... it’s a LONG way to go to improve the situation sadly.

thats new cars. most people dont by new cars. they buy used sedans.

Trucks can be used for towing or hauling large and heavy goods. I am yet to see an electric vehicle do the same and retain any notion of a practical range.

Yea, I had a ID.4 pre-ordered but canceled it after I realized how absurd the price is. I bought a utility e-bike instead and that was probably one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I barely use my car anymore and biking is way more fun and greener than any car.

Yeah, California is one of the very few places on Earth where you can do that.

and many places in Europe, Asia, ...

Do what? Use a bicycle for tasks many use a car for? If my guess is correct, I have to ask why you think California is unique in that respect given the absolutely huge set of data to the contrary? I mean, you have heard of the Netherlands, right?

Of course, if my guess is wrong, ignore me. And be more clear next time. :-)

Literally every other person responding figured out that they were talking about weather, so I don’t think they had issues with clarity.

I think you are being a bit overly negative but you do have a point. Where I live (northern Europe) I could never get by with any kind of "open" vehicle (i need a roof and heating) and snow tyres.

You can get snow tyres fitted on a bicycle (I had some as a youth) but bicycles are still quite horrible in the winter.

I remember biking home from school during the winter when it was snowing heavily. The sidewalks were completely snowed in with heavy snow so the bike just really went where it wanted to go and very slowly. I eventually decided to move over to the road but I was soon tailgated by a bus. Since the bus was honking at me, I had to pull over to the next bus stop to get him out of my ass. I think it was about at that moment that I decided to ditch winter biking once I could own a car.

Modern snow tires like Schwalbe's Ice Spiker Pro are a far cry from what existed in the olden days. Nowadays it's mainly a matter of having the quads (or electric motor) to drive them. Even with kids in the bicycle trailer, biking as primary transport is straight-forward on 95% of the days in winter.

Fat tire bikes work great in the snow.

I bike through winter in Canada. I take the bus for a day or two after a blizzard, but after that the salt is down and it's fine if you bundle up. Heavy gloves, a balaclava, and splash-pants make all the difference.

Cars are pretty horrible in heavy snow too. The solution we have for cars is clearing the roads. This can be done for bike paths too.

I've found similar. Clearing all paths is not always a priority. In the winter it is was necessary for me to find alternate routes for my bicycle commute.

Single lane roads with no shoulder can be very dangerous in the winter. Fortunately where I am in Canada, there's adequate space for cars to pass on the roads I take.

> bicycles are still quite horrible in the winter. I find the opposite. The activity itself is fine, but the winter is quite horrible on bicycles. Salt and slush can really make a mess of the mechanisms.

I’ve bicycled as my main mode of transportation for thirty years, all year round, in Stockholm and in Umeå. They sell excellent studded tires for bicycles.

I’m not saying it’s possible for everyone. I would probably not do it if my commute was longer than 20 km one way. But many more people can define do it for the benefit of their health and the environment.

Seriously? You know the Netherlands and Denmark are both in northern Europe, right?

Hell, Oulu has high biking rates and is one of the northernmost cities on the planet.

I lived in the Yukon, Canada for 4 years, and rode my bike 365 days a year.

Yes, even in -40 and beyond temperatures I rode. In fact, Whitehorse has the highest rate of bike ridership in Canada!

Wow that's pretty amazing. I'm a Californian in Boston and I managed to ride when it was about 0F out and I thought that was a bit much. How do you dress for such a venture? I find that either I'm freezing cold when starting off until I get warm through exertion, or I'm comfortable starting off and am sweltering by the time I get where I'm going.

It's a tricky balance, and usually you want to start a bit cold, knowing you'll get warm "Be bold, start cold" - but of course you have to watch out for frostbite.

My commute to work was only ~15mins on the bike, and for the first half I was a bit cold, and then the second half I was unzipping my jacket and would even stand outside the office with no jacket of toque or gloves for 3-5 minutes in -40 temps to cool off. The steam coming off me was always fun :)

With a longer ride (my landlord rode 40 mins each way) you stop after about 20 minutes and change layers - usually go for windproof with minimal insulation to prevent overheating/sweating.

i find that my hands, toes and ears seem to be weak points. i might have to find some earmuffs that work with a helmet for next winter.

side note: i snooped your profile a bit and i'm intrigued by the path you've chosen. i am moving in a similar direction, and no doubt could benefit from referencing your experience...

I used to wear a pear of very thin merino wool gloves and then a MASSIVE pair of very well insulated mitts. After leaving the house I had to take off my mitts to unlock my bike, and I knew it was cold (past -35 or so) when I couldn't feel my fingers after 20 seconds of no mitts.

On my feet I wore thick wool socks, and very well insulated winter boots. They were always hot, even just standing still past -40

For my face I had a toque under my helmet and a big thick merino wool neck warmer that I would pull up until it was right under my eyes - so it covered my ears entirely.

Half way to work I would pull down the neck warmer, unzip my big jacket, etc. in an attempt to not sweat too much.

.. haha, yeah, my path has been a different one, and I'm a thousand times happier than when I sat at a desk. I'm TheRoadChoseMe around the web, and my email is dan @ that .com if you want to get in touch!

This is a bad statement. California isn't even bike friendly. The Netherlands or Denmark, or hell, Germany are all VASTLY more bike friendly than California.

Not to mention those places tend to be much flatter. In the west Bay Area you have to ride next to 101 unless you don’t mind hills.

Most of the heavily populated places in the bay area are fairly flat, so that's not really a problem. Plus, with ebikes these days, hills just aren't the barrier they used to be.

The problem is mostly just infrastructure. Almost no California cities have more than a piddling amount of safe transportation biking support.

These days have little to do with historically. The bay is hemmed in by hills and water. LA is similarly hemmed in, creating a nice bowl that traps pollution. Seattle and Portland are both hilly, you are not at a flat grade. Berlin, Amsterdam, Copenhagen are all flat in contrast.

Cities with lots of hills in Europe don’t have as many bikers or biking infrastructure. Eg Lausanne unless you want to go for a jaunt by the lake. Cannes was the similar during a short visit I made 20 years ago. Hilly south Europe (Athens, Rome) doesn’t seem to like bikes very much either.

Good thing we’re talking about ebikes with great torque that make short work of hills, right? LA is ten times less smoggy than when I was a kid, thanks to cleaner cars and no electric vehicles.

Should be "also electric vehicles."

I'm looking to do a similar thing. What was the e-bike you ultimately ended up getting?

RadRunner Plus with the large basket accessory and their dog carrier.

I bought the Radwagon and it's been amazing! Pretty much a second car for my family.

I'll never understand this. You presumably are biking on the street, at best in a bike lane, at worst in the shoulder, and are placing so much confidence in other people to not hit you.

Given how SHIT other people are at driving, I have no desire whatsoever to be on a bicycle in front of them.

I wonder how we escape this trap.

Cars are 1-2 ton machines that can kill you as a cyclist or pedestrian, and humans are awful at operating them. The solution is therefore apparently to put more of those machines on the road (for self-protection) instead of reducing the risk altogether?

Yea, it's a conundrum. I personally would love nothing more than to cycle to work, but it's not worth the risk of serious injury or death. The only solution I can see is at a city level legislating bicycle only roads which are totally void of vehicles.

It's important that cities build great biking infrastructure to alleviate this problem.

At the same time, this is used by a lot of people as an excuse to not get a bike. In fact, it's not that dangerous as you make it out to be as is proven by statistics I guess (didn't look them up)

Here are the stats for New Zealand: https://ehinz.ac.nz/indicators/transport/road-traffic-injury...

Bikes are definitely far more dangerous than cars. Not as much as motorcycles, but that’s scant comfort.

This is a bit misleading. With bikes, you usually only do a couple of km per day, whereas with your car you probably do 10x that.

If you look at the absolute number of deaths, biking is reasonably safe. As I said before, cities can do a lot to make it even safer, such as good bikelanes, better traffic lights for turns, better driver's education and so on.

Not really - most of this subthread is about people replacing their use of a car with a bike. In that case, you have to do the same number of km. They're probably not people who commute 50 km each way, but there aren't that many of those anyway.

I also disagree with looking at absolute numbers. Of course bikes look better there because compared to cars, very few people cycle in most places. Relative numbers are the only ones that make sense. Apart from this, I drive and cycle, and it seems obvious to me that cycling is considerably more dangerous. Everyone I know who cycles accepts that it's a case of when, not if, something goes wrong, and the consequences are obviously much worse on a bike.

I'm a cyclist, and use my bike to get around town, though I also own a car. Of course I can't completely dismiss your sentiment.

Possibly my most important safety measure is route choice. The streets that I ride on have very little car traffic. This includes separated bike paths, but also quiet neighborhood streets. Fortunately this is possible in the town where I live. In decades of riding, I've never experienced a collision with a car, and my near-misses have been rare.

This 100%. When I bike to work I take a route that is 2 miles longer than when I drive. Just to avoid a few left turns and a few busy roads witch sketchy bike lanes. Now that I have an e-bike the commute is actually really fun and I get to work with energy.

The only way that changes if cities get better cycling infrastructure, and the only way they get better infrastructure is if they stand up and get counted on the road.

Regular bikes have the benefit that they improve your health, it's not exhaustive once you get a better stamina. E-bikes are a bad product I think in todays society

E-bikes are not bad at all. For a lot of people normal bikes are not an option because they are lazy or don't have the physical fitness. It's much better if they get e-bikes instead of cars for everyone involved.

You get just as much exercise with an electric bike—you just go faster, and changes in grade are effectively flattened.

I have switched from a normal bike to an ebike. My yearly mileage went from 1000 to 1800. I still use my old non powered bike for short trips.

I’ll use the ebike when I’m tired so I end up using it a lot more.

You can turn them off the power then your riding around with 30 extra pounds if you need more workout...

Exactly this--I have a bike rack and saddle bags for the ebike. I will get groceries with it. With my regular peddle bike I took it out way less. It is replacing car trips for me now.

You can control the amount of pedal assist. My heart rate still hits about what it does for a light jog. I’m losing weight too, all without really breaking a sweat.

E-bikes also improve your health compared to cars.

In addition to the anecdotes provided by the others, studies are finding a positive health benefit as well. Here's a couple of examples.

https://ijbnpa.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12966-017...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22005715/

I'm an almost-exclusive cyclist, and don't own an e-bike, but e-bikes are an absolutely great product. They lower the entry barrier to people who are not that fit, need to carry kids/stuff, or just don't feel like turning every trip into a workout. Plus the more cyclists on the road, the safer it is for everyone else.

The worst thing about eBikes is that they can let people ride beyond their ability. Just because you can ride at 25+ mph on a mixed use path doesn't mean that you should ride that fast when you're sharing the path with walkers, joggers, and other cyclists on conventional bikes.

On a conventional bike, it takes some training (and thus, skill) before you can ride 25+ mph for any length of time, but you can take an eBike out on your first ride and ride that fast.

I was thinking about an ID.Buzz until I took my Golf to a dealer for a 20K service. Then they tried to sell me tires for 4 x the price of Discount Tire - the tires on the car are absolutely fine - almost 1/4". Then they decided not to rotate my tires due to "tire condition" - to spite me? - and nickel and dimed me on a pair of wipers.

I don't want to renew my relationship with a dealer. Especially not with an electric car where I really would be beholden to them until the independent shops catch up - if they ever do.

Yeah, but electric cars have so many fewer moving parts that they just don’t need much maintenance at all. As someone who has an EV now, I’m never going back because EVs are just so much better overall.

This isn't really true in my experience. I have an Outlander PHEV and the costs associated with maintaining the electrical system have dwarved the ICE maintenance costs. The other major expense has been tires, which electric cars also have.

That's the theory.

The practice is ... different.

It doesn't matter matter if there are only 50% as many parts to service if servicing those parts costs three times as much.

At the end of the day, this is all revealed via depreciation.

Cars experiencing a lot of depreciation, by definition, are viewed by the market as more expensive to service over their usable life, as depreciation is just the forward payment of future maintenance costs:

Say a car will last for two periods. In the first period, the repair costs are zero, and in the second they are 15K. Now the car costs 35K new. Total ownership costs for both periods are thus 35+15 = 50K for 2 periods. Split evenly, that's 25K per period. But the buyer in period 2 will pay 15K in repair costs and 10K for the car. The buyer in period 1 will pay 25K in depreciation. Both parties pay 25K. If they didn't, and one party was paying more than the other, the put-upon party would prefer to buy new and resell instead, or buy used, etc, so in equilibrium, both parties pay for half the purchase price plus half the lifetime repair costs, except the new car buyer "pays" for their half of repair costs via depreciation whereas the used car buyer pays out of pocket.

Now you have a situation where Tesla Model 3s are depreciating at rates comparable to the dreaded BMWs -- notoriously expensive to maintain cars. E.g. they are losing 44% of their value after 5 years of ownership (source: https://caredge.com/tesla/model-3/depreciation)

So it doesn't particularly matter that there are fewer moving parts, etc, as for some reason the market believes these cars are going to be about as expensive to maintain as BMWs, which have lots of moving parts (and lots of plastic parts).

Now if we know that, we can come to a few conclusions:

* the market is just wrong and out-of-warranty Teslas will be cheap to maintain, in which case there is an arbitrage opportunity to sell Tesla warranties and make lots of arbitrage profits. Feel like getting into that business? Me, neither.

* The theory is wrong and the fact that there is a simpler drivetrain doesn't have much to do with overall maintenance costs due to all the other stuff modern cars do that don't have to do with moving down the road. Uhh, maybe.

* The theory is right and the electric car makers are just screwing the pooch by managing to sell expensive to maintain cars even though there are fewer moving parts. I tend to favor this theory.

But in either case, arguing that because there are moving parts, the cars must be cheaper to maintain is a fallacy. It's a confusion of theory and practice in one of the many situations where out of warranty car owners are screaming in pain at their repair costs, and countering "muh moving parts" is missing the point.

In most places (in the US), riding a bicycle on the road is not very safe though. Even worst then motorcycles.

Anyone who doesn't agree with this is probably riding a car or a truck and never rode a bicycle or motorcycle on the streets.

The price is high compared with ICE but for what you get as an EV it is well priced. Significantly cheaper than model Y [1] now that model Y standard range has been discontinued, especially as VW still gets the $7500 fed subsidy. You are looking at $14k more for the Tesla. You will get much more acceleration, all wheel drive and 70 miles range for that $14k if you want to spend it.

The model 3 is cheaper but not the same class of vehicle.

[1] https://electrek.co/2021/04/22/tesla-increases-model-3-y-pri...

Maybe they're priced like that exactly because of the subsidies?

$40K ($32K after tax incentives) doesn't seem absurdly expensive. Most cars in that size class seem to be in the $30K range.

What's surprising to me is that you were seriously considering a mid-size SUV, but settled on an e-bike. (My main commute vehicle (when I was commuting) was a bike, but that bike is in no way comparable to an SUV)

Yes, very true, though prices will come down as volume goes up. We should all hope that these new models are a success and the prices drop.

Though, if you're budget-conscious, why buy a new car at all? Used cars are a better deal. Leave the new cars for people with more money.

The range is the issue, the "suburban and rural retards" probably have more expensive vehicles than NY and San Fran dwellers. But nobody wants a car that can't run on gas unless you live on an Interstate corridor, the 101, etc.

(Not sure why you introduced that slur with scare quotes given that no one used it upthread, nor even suggested anything similar... This sounds a bit much like you're trying to pick a fight.)

Almost no one, even in the US, lives legitimately far from an interstate corridor or other major infrastructure path.

These EVs can absolutely be made to work in the red state exurbs. You'll find plenty of Tesla owners in those regions already. Where EVs tend to hurt most isn't with diffuse exurb commutes (where a 300 mile range does just fine!), but in long distance road trips where you have to charge more frequently and for longer periods than a gas car. And I assure you us cityfolk take just as many road trips as you red staters.

I'd say that the more general issue with rural areas is the increasing complexity of cars and the death of small car dealerships. This area lost 100% of it's dealerships during the real estate crash and I'm not sure that an independent shop can fix a new BMW (or F150).

The "problem" in the US is the cheap gas, at least compared to EU. Taxing gas according to the CO2 cost would make it drastically different in TCO.

Half of the US population lives paycheck to paycheck and they need cars. I'm not sure their minimum wage can afford them carbon taxes.

It’s weird because I associate car ownership with wealth! I’m in my 40s in London in the UK earning an ok salary and neither me nor many of many friends have a car.

yet in rular Poland, only rich people (or disabled, elderly, wihout driver license, who have no other choice) can live comfortably without car

London has the Tube and buses and bike lanes - try living in the US without a car... ( ex-pat Brit now in the US)

In the US people may be homeless, but they'll still have a car. It's THAT essential to living...

where I live, having reliable transportation (i.e. owning a car) is pretty much a job requirement wherever you work.

a lot of people don't exactly understand just how _sprawling_ the US is.

Outside of the big cities in England almost everyone has a car too. Most of the US is like that.

I don't know much about London, but in the US the arrangement is that expensive cities provide work and hoards of minimum wage workers live in exurbs 1-2 hours away from those cities. They have to wake up at 6 am, spend an hour or more in atrocious traffic on a highway with other minimum wage workers, then do the same in the reverse at the end of the day. On a bus it would take 2x longer. They don't have a choice. Now if you force them to swap their rusty gas cars for ev ones (beware, 3k usd for them is a massive expense) and force them to spend 1 hour a day recharging those ev cars, the US economy would stall as the wealthy hipsters in the cities won't do the service jobs.

Just one point of contention here:

You don't "spend" time recharging an EV unless your one-way trip is longer than the maximum range.

You get where you're going, plug in and come back to more power than you had before you left.

Or we could just allow construction of more housing in cities?

Maybe provide a fleet of clean, well run, electric, regular scheduled, buses and they won't have to sit in the traffic in their individual cars.

Provide bus depots with car parking in the exurbs so that there is the possibility of short driving commutes to/from the depot.

Use smaller, much more frequent, shuttle buses to pickup/drop off "on demand" between houses and those hub depots, then they don't need the car to get there.

Do what Canada does; add a carbon tax and distribute the proceeds. This is generally a progressive tax scheme so low income people end up with MORE money.

Not sure that matters when their house is burning down in the much more common forest fires or flooding due to more extreme storms.

The optimal solution for that is better city and regional planning so waitresses and the like can find low cost housing near work and for it to be generally viable to make life work without a car.

These kind of suggestions prompt a snarky response. Imagine an emergency meeting to discuss the leaking co2 problem in a 200 story tower we live in. Everybody knows that the source of the leak is the old plumbing and rusty electrical wiring. Suddenly, someone shows up in the midst of the discussion and presents a solution: we just need to replace plumbing and wiring.

It's a little more like saying:

Everybody knows the source of the leak is old plumbing and the root cause is an old handbook effectively denying residents the right to repair. Let's update the handbook so that residents can do some repairs.

Poorer countries in Europe tax fuel more. If you raise fuel tax, people will find ways to buy less fuel. Generally this means more efficient (often smaller) cars, and perhaps prioritizing living more near to jobs etc.

The main problem is that fuel tax should be increased slowly so people can change their consumption accordingly.

The difference is, even the poorer countries in Europe have a better bus and train system than the majority of America. Now, granted, America is much larger so I hate these comparisons. Many European countries are the size of an American state, but compare any US state and the bus and train system will almost certainly pale in comparison.

I'm all for a fuel tax, but I'm also a huge proponent for a decent alternative to the single car transport system that America is so very reliant upon. People talk about biking, but being able to bike to a decent and available transit station would be a dream come true to a huge swath of the American population.

/end rant

So change fuel/carbon taxes not just slow enough for people to adapt but for infrastructure to adapt.

This isn't really true. My experience in Europe is that cities over 500k population generally have decent public transit systems that you can use all the time. Below 100k population they are likely terrible, infrequent and not enough routes (there are exceptions, but it is rare). In between 100k and 500k it's a coin flip whether they are good or bad.

Regardless it is definitely not the case that people drive less in Europe because they are taking public transit way more - EU and US basically have the same modal share - maybe !0% more people taking transit that driving, but not really a huge difference.

What is very different is the length and distance of commutes in the US. The average american drives 3-4x more distance than the average european, so fuel taxes can be 3-4x higher in Europe than US and the consumer pays the same. This is really a result of the inefficient urban design many places in the US have, with huge sprawl leading to enormous commutes. This is a much harder thing to fix (and it also precludes better transit systems due the very low population density).

Does the European everyman get a 2400sqft detached house on a quarter acre?

Whether American urban design is "inefficient" depends on the value you place on mass-affordable spacious housing. I personally think this is a dumb thing to optimize for, but a lot of people are really attached to it. I think they'd look at a European transit-centric home as ideal for a group of college friends, but balk at the idea of raising a family in close quarters or with strangers walking by.

Again, I'm not talking about transit oriented. Most Europeans live in suburbs with poor transit and drive.

The difference is European suburbs tend to be much more densely populated so commutes are less in distance.

Instead of 2400sq ft houses, you're probably looking at 1500sqft with some garden space but far less than a US one. Tbh they are totally fine for raising a family.

I have a 1300sqft house in the US built in 1930 and it originally had five bedrooms plus a sleeping porch. Americans have developed crazy notions about how much house they need since they became investment vehicles.

Not hard to add a good bus system, buy 1000 electric buses from China, done.

Buying electric buses from China is a good way to get yourself un-elected as a US politician. Especially as there are vehicles made here which also generate jobs.

Heck, in Chicago there was a big stink when the city started putting in “foreign made” decorative street lights and bus stops a few years back when there were locally-manufactured alternatives.

That's like reducing the oxygen level for lab rats to see how they would adapt. These people have 500 bucks in savings and no health insurance.

Get rid of the need for health insurance. That'll save them the worry and they'll end up healthier.

I wonder how you would do that. Healthcare in the US is the way it is because many powerful people profit from it. They are effectively above the law and can use the judicial branch to protect their interest.

> The main problem is that fuel tax should be increased slowly so people can change their consumption accordingly.

Not necessarily. Even if you implement really high CO2 tax, as long as it's fiscally neutral - i.e. it gets paid back to the population, instead of the government spending/wasting it - and it's paid out quickly (e.g. weekly or monthly, instead of yearly with a long delay) it would work just as well - people would adapt as quickly as they can/want to, and everybody who changes their consumption faster than average, would benefit.

The US is far richer than Europe, with an average GDP per capita of over 10000$ higher than most western European countries. Alabama is about as rich as Germany, for instance. So if Europe can do it, then the US could easily do it.

It would be more accurate to say that Alabama residents are about as rich as Germans per capita. Germany's overall GDP is roughly 16x as large as Alabama.

Overall GDP isn't a measure of richness. Luxembourg is richer than India, it doesn't matter that India's overall GDP is higher.

A lot of these people live paycheck to paycheck because they throw a large chunk of it at an oversized car loan.

Canada uses a revenue neutral system where effectively all the money goes into a big pot and then is divvied up evenly, so it doesn't impact COL. The math says the majority of Canadians, particularly the working poor, come out ahead.

As the program grows, the payout check is switching to quarterly (up till now it was annual on your tax rebate)

These kind of changes have to be gradually phased in so that people and economy can adjust. Be it raised wages, living closer to work, using other means of transportation or just more economic cars. The actual fuel costs paid per kilometer driven are probably less for the average european car than for a truck in the US, as the average european car uses so much less fuel.

This argument is being brought up every time someone talks about any (especially environmental) fix that would cost money. By now I believe there is a certain part of the political spectrum in the US who need the poor just to make these arguments, because otherwise maybe someone would've done something about the issue. Ironically the ones who shout loudest about the poor people who can't afford these measures, are also the ones with the strongest resistance to fixing the huge economic disparities in the US.

Even if we implemented a carbon tax, I don't know if it would actually make that big a difference unless it was very high.

A quick google search came up with this from an organization that (from the name and content on their site) appears to be an oil industry lobby group:

https://www.americanenergyalliance.org/2020/10/under-bidens-...

> Our Northern neighbor has some experience with a carbon tax as well as other mechanisms for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. In 2019, Canada implemented a carbon tax under the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act supported by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The carbon tax started at $20 per metric ton in 2019, and is scheduled to increase at $10 per metric ton per year until reaching $50 per metric ton in 2022. The carbon tax will stay at that level unless the legislation is revisited and revised. > > A $20 per metric ton carbon tax equates to a 16.6 cent per gallon surcharge on gasoline. In 2022, the $50 per ton carbon tax would increase Canadian gasoline prices by about 42 cents per gallon or about 8 percent.

Even the $50 per ton tax doesn't seem like it actually raises prices all that much. I mean, if you're poor and need to buy gas to get to work it's a detrimental change, but gas prices fluctuate more than that just from oil production changes and geopolitics, and it hasn't stopped price-sensitive purchasers from buying gas-burning cars.

The Umweltbundesamt of the German government estimates the externalized cost of a ton of CO2 to be between 195€ and 680€ (depending on the discounting function used)

https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/14...

Petrol emits 2.31 kg of CO2 per litre, so 1 tonne is 432 litres. In UK we pay 58p per litre in tax, that's £250 or 285 euros.

So it's perfectly possible to live while paying enough tax to clean up the CO2 caused

Thanks for sharing! Obviously ignorance on my side.

You could however raise it a lot more to make it have bigger effect. E.g. In Sweden you pay about $200-250/ton (for gas). Then you could argue that there are other emissions from gas such as NOx and similar. A little bit outside my comfort zone but I'm sure it would have some effect at least to make electric vehicles more attractive!

New prices are quite prohibitive but the state of things actually isn't the worst for used EVs if you can stomach low range. My family does a two-car approach:

1. Hybrid SUV for actually getting places and moving things

2. ~$4k a used 2013 Smart car. ~45 mile range is good enough for short commute, grocery runs, etc. Charge at home or at work (we have the uncommon situation of no charging at home since we live in a condo complex, and free charging at work).

$4k is like the price of a nice electric bike. We didn't do any maintenance to the car for 3 years (we probably should replace the brake pads). It's working just fine and is an incredible workhorse for the price.

This is probably going to be the most common combination. EVs really shouldn't be cars, they can have so many form factors to fit every lifestyle. For long travel or nature, EVs are overkill

$4k for a 2013 smart? You got some amazing deal, they usually sell for twice that amount. Hard to find any decent one for less than $7-8k

For $7-8K you can get a Nissan Leaf in excellent condition with a 75-100mi range.

I think the difference with cars is that manufacturers make many more of them. Building bikes is still a very manual process with a lot of human touch, but waaaaay more options available. You see something similar with mountain bikes vs. dirtbikes. How can I get a 300lb machine with full suspension and an entire combustion engine for $3k and an FS MTB, with a fraction of the parts costs the same or more? Well, Honda probably make 50k CRF250s a year or something, and Norco make maybe 1/20th the number for any particular product line?

Might be because I live in silicon valley and lots of people have EVs. One tricky thing about the 2013 smart car is that I had to pick it up, which means I had to live at most ~30-40 miles away. And when I sell it, I'll have the same problem, someone within the same radius has to want it. I comparison shopped before buying this, and at the time it didn't seem like an insane deal or anything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_electric_drive ?

The Volkswagon ID.4 will be, after the $7,500 credit, in the low 30's. Still not cheap but much better than any other similarly spec'ed vehicle.

And consider it saving 10k in gas over 5-6 years, it's pretty close to Honda Civic price parity. Maybe not 100% there, but getting close!

If USA would actually tax fossil fuels properly then you'd be saving twice as much

Comparable to a Subaru Outback in what way?

Maybe take a look at a 2-3 year old BMW i3; that's what I bought for ~$18k US with only 6k miles on it. They're BEV with a range of only ~130miles which is pretty much all I need for local commuting; longer trips we rent a gas SUV, or at least that's the plan when our 3 month old is older.

I’m not sure the larger batteries are even necessary.

With an EV you can start each day fully charged. You just need enough battery to handle your daily commute and the few errands.

What’s missing is something to handle those few occasions when you need to drive that extra distance. It seems kind of silly to try and cram that extra flexibility into the same vehicle.

> I’m not sure the larger batteries are even necessary.

They are not. What's needed is expansion of the infrastructure. And that's not even about quick chargers. In cities you don't need them. What you need is standard level 2 chargers wherever you may want to go. Work, school, shopping, movie theaters, whatever. Most vehicles spend most of their day parked somewhere. They should be charging then.

Larger batteries are only really going to be needed in very remote regions.

Big batteries would be nice for long trips. I'm working on an EV conversion right now that ought to get me a hundred miles of range when I'm done, which is good enough for about 98% of my regular driving. (Getting more range with a conversion can be tricky, as it would mean adding a lot of weight to the vehicle.) Sometimes it's nice to go to the beach, though... 100 miles would get me to the beach, but it's not enough get back. Most of the places I'd want to park my car for a day at the beach don't have chargers. And quick charging isn't going to be an option.

I hope eventually we get to point where we start adding electrification to major highways, so that vehicles don't even have to stop to charge. Then range will be much less of an issue.

Congrats on the conversion...it should be done more, just a thought .... would a portable EV charger be the solution? just a quick google let me find Blink Mobile EV charging station...but maybe there are cheaper/smaller/lighter solutions....or solar panels on your roof?

The J1772 ports we have in the United States are basically just 110 or 220 volts with a fancy plug and an electronic handshake. I could bring an "EVSE" with me that can plug into a regular 110 or 220v electrical outlet, but finding an electrical outlet near where I want to park is probably more difficult than finding a J1772 charge port, unless I'm visiting someone's house.

The "charger" terminology is especially confusing, since technically there is a part called the charger that goes in the car -- it converts external AC power to DC at the voltage needed to charge the battery. The chargers normally installed in conversions aren't typically capable of charging quickly. The charger I'm looking at [1] maxes out at 3KW, which could charge a 27kwh battery in about 9 hours. If I spend the money to get a second charger to run in parallel, I could get that down to 4.5 hours.

Solar doesn't really work for long trips; the power you get is just too low. I'm in favor of solar panels being installed on EVs generally, as it would reduce the amount of power you draw when you charge, especially if you only drive a few miles a day on average. It just isn't a solution to the range problem unless you're willing to wait a long time to charge (like weeks) and/or manually deploy a giant solar array any time you stop like Mark Watney.

This conversion car I think just won't be a road trip car, and that's okay. Maybe eventually aftermarket batteries and chargers will improve to the point where I can plausibly install a 200-mile range battery with a half-hour 80% charge capability and keep the whole battery pack under four or five hundred pounds.

[1] https://www.thunderstruck-ev.com/tsm2500-and-charge-controll...

It’s partly about convincing new buyers to be comfortable with them. Buyers are not fully rational and will often overestimate their need for long range and will overvalue the anxiety of needing to charge. Short range cars are seen as to much risk even if the price is lower.

Once enough people have some experience with EVs and the market grows enough, there will be more interest and a demand for cars with a limited range at a cheaper price point.

> What’s missing is something to handle those few occasions when you need to drive that extra distance. It seems kind of silly to try and cram that extra flexibility into the same vehicle.

I wouldn't be surprised if rental battery trailers become a big thing due to that.

When using the EV for every-day stuff the internal batteries will be enough. Going on a long trip? Add a battery trailer for more range and extra cargo/baggage space.

I wouldn't be surprised if UHaul started this as a service. Seems like a perfect fit to me.

Neat idea, but electric charging stations are pretty well established, at least along coastal and central California. If you look at plugshare you might be surprised how many quick charge (>50amp) stations are available along, say, I5 or US101.

> Worse still as electric vehicles become more popular the rare earth metals that seemingly remain popular within the batteries may increase in cost offsetting our future reductions.

That's one reason I'm hoping that we start seeing more lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells in mid-range cars, as they don't require nickel or cobalt. (They still require lithium, which is starting to approach where nickel and cobalt prices per ton are, but I'd rather deal with one bottleneck resource mostly mined in Australia versus 3 bottleneck resources, one of which is primarily sourced from Congo.)

here in Alberta e3 is building a project to direct extract lithium from old oil wells, way cheeper,cleaner and ethical

This. I made a business case for keeping my old car or buying a similarly-sized electric one. No matter how high the downtime cost, my old beaten up car wins financially.

Feels like electric cars are still designed to "signal greenness" and not actually save the planet.

That’s true for any car, regardless whether the new car is an EV or not.

>and blackmail buyers with missing basic features accordingly

It's what VW does best!

Remember that the first car looked like horse wagon and did for quite a while. The same can be said about the infrastructure as well.

> But yet an electric is going to replace a $21K Honda Civic by 2025?

What's the average selling price of a Civic? With options the Civic can sell for over $35k.

Edmunds.com shows the MSRP range for a 2021 Civic ranges from $21,050 - $28,100.

Go price one on Honda.com. I got my upper by kitting out a Touring Edition with options.

> From what I understand batteries remain the lion's share of an electric vehicle's total production cost (I've heard as much as $16K/vehicle).

I've seen this same figure for current EVs. But it's important to look at the trend. Lithium-ion battery prices have decreased by 97% since their introduction in 1991. The price decrease curve is amazing [0]. Teslas were at least $80K in 2015; today a Tesla with similar range (Model 3) can be had for $40K. That decrease is largely the result of Tesla and Panasonic improving battery energy density and battery production economies of scale. There is every reason to believe this trend will continue, especially if solid-state batteries can be scaled up.

As for rare-earth metals, cobalt is the worst one w.r.t. rarity and human labor. Tesla's next generation of batteries (starting in late 2021) eliminate cobalt and substitute nickel and manganese, which are far more plentiful and don't require child labor.

Not trying to sanctify Tesla here; I just follow them more closely than other battery manufacturers. The others are probably working toward similar goals.

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/EE/D0EE0...

Lithium sulfur batteries are also interesting. They're cheaper, lighter, and the cells don't use cobalt, manganese, or nickel.

The problem to date has been poor cycle life but people are working on it:

- https://oxisenergy.com/technology/

- https://oxisenergy.com/wp-content-uploads-2020-11-press-rele...

- https://theconversation.com/batteries-made-with-sulfur-could...

- https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/1/eaay2757

Here’s the chart of interest: https://img.electronicdesign.com/files/base/ebm/electronicde...

thanks for sharing. what sources do you find reliable for breaking down EV production costs and forecasted breakdowns for the next few years?

Cobalt is not considered a rare-earth metal. It's actually relatively common. Lithium-ion battery cells do not typically contain any rare earths, but permanent magnet motors in EVs do.

Batteries are quite likely to continue to decrease.[1] Most industrial processes follow a learning curve inverse to the cumulative units produced. And it makes sense: each efficiency improvement has a fixed cost, and only gets made if enough units get shipped.

Estimates I have seen are that LI is on a 13% annual decrease, which means that your $16k pack will be $4.5k by 2030.

By then, I would bet that the Honda Civic EV is cheaper than the Honda Civic ICE. In addition to the batter, there are fewer moving parts and simpler assembly, which means less labor; this type of manufacturing has barely started to scale up. Not guaranteed, but my estimates might turn out to be conservative.

And as for rare earths: as demand increases, it becomes increasingly profitable to extract marginal deposits. That's what fracking is, after all.

[1] https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/20/5276/pdf

That link must include new registrations for used cars, and exclude trucks. After all, the Focus was discontinued in 2019.

All the manufacturers report new US car sales, and except for the RAV4, in 2019 the cars on the list were outsold within their their own brand by cars not on the list.

For instance, the Nissan sold 209k Altimas in 2019 to 350k Rogues, or Honda sold 267k Accords and 325k Civics to 384k CR-Vs, or Chevy sold 132k Malibus and 45k Impalas to 575k Silverados, or Ford sold a mere 12k Focuses to 898k F-series (don't see a further breakdown...)

> If you're from California or New York, I'm sure $40K starting for this or a Model Y seems complexly within your means

Not for regular working class people, far from it. A car that costs more than your gross annual wages isn't anywhere close to being within your means.

Los Angeles median income in 2019: 28,072 USD

NYC: 32,320 USD

Nearly half of Los Angeles residents pay more than 50% of their income on rent[1].

In NYC, 42% of renters pay over 30% of their income on rent, 23% pay more than 50% of their income.[2]

[1] https://news.usc.edu/179928/los-angeles-rent-burdened-househ....

[2] https://wherewelive.cityofnewyork.us/explore-data/housing-co....

That's true, but then Americans also famously pay much more than they can afford on car loans for cars that they don't need.

Exactly. All this hullabaloo about the f150 being too expensive for the average american is ignoring the fact that the average american is in debt up to their eyeballs.

hate to nitpick, but NYC's median household income is ~$58K -- nearly double the figure you cited.

> Worse still as electric vehicles become more popular the rare earth metals that seemingly remain popular within the batteries may increase in cost offsetting our future reductions.

Rare earths are only used in NiMH batteries. Some hybrids have those, but probably not this vehicle.

> If you're from California or New York, I'm sure $40K starting for this or a Model Y seems complexly within your means

Keep in mind that being in CA also means quite a bit of your income goes to housing for a lot of people. It's pretty common to be house poor in California. I know I'm sure not looking to add more than absolutely necessary to my monthly payments.

>rare earth metals that seemingly remain popular within the batteries

To clarify: rare-earths are required for the magnets in EV motors. Cobalt is rare, but not a rare-earth, and is used in the batteries. The supply of lithium and nickel may affect prices at high production volumes (widespread adoption) but is not currently a significant factor. Replacements for cobalt in batteries are the object of recent research; replacements for rare-earth metals in magnets have been sought for decades, with Fe16N2 and AlMn leading the pack at a treacle-esque trickle.

> To clarify: rare-earths are required for the magnets in EV motors.

Not necessarily; they're just convenient, but not strictly required. Model S vehicles use induction motors and they seem to work just fine.

range, availability, or charging which are solved enough

But are they really? Especially for charging, I'm still not convinced.

The articles makes a case that you can go and grab a coffee while your ID.4 charges in 30 minutes at a high-speed charging stations. Sorry, but "30 minutes" and "high-speed" in one sentence seems somewhat misplaced. Who can afford to just waste 30 minutes for charging on a regular basis?

I currently live in a suburb in central Europe. I just checked on https://chargemap.com/ for my area - I don't know how up-to-date their map is but there are only a few charging stations within 20 minutes from my house, none of which is a high-speed charging station.

And unlike houses in North America, almost none of the houses on my street has a drive way, i.e., me and most of my neighbors park on the road, sometimes a few houses down from mine - so, no chance for charging a car over night at home. Of course, before I moved to the burbs, I sometimes had to park a few streets away at night because apartment buildings here typically don't offer parking garages (they exist, but it's not common).

Unlike some people with strong opinions, I'm actually in favor of electric cars. However, the practicability is just not there for the way a lot of everyday life is currently organized in many parts of the world.

It’s solved for people with driveways.

I have a drive way, and it’s not solved for me. My driving needs would require me to be frequently filling up at charging stations.

These kind of “it’s solved” statements are very much picking the facts to fit the conclusion, rather than the other way around. Pointing this out usually elicits a “well you should change your lifestyle to better suit the features of an electric car”. If you tried to say that about software features most of us would intuitively know how dumb it is, but it’s supposedly a much more reasonable argument when made about transport.

> My driving needs would require me to be frequently filling up at charging stations.

I don't think $40k electric cars (or even the long-range Tesla models) are for people who use cars for work and require frequent/long distances.

This is more for the guy who does 15-30km/day commute, then maybe few km to the mall and has a driveway in his house. Maybe once in a while does 100km trip to some mountain.

Best you can do for now is a hybrid.

My less than $40k Leaf has a 350km range. I charge at home, drive in the city, and use it in the weekends to drive long distances.

The only issue is when going to a city more than 300 km away, then yes, a 30 mins coffee. Charging stations are everywhere here (eastern Canada).

Genuine question- have you found winter temps to be much of an issue in terms of range loss?

There is loss, around 10%. One way to reduce it is to pre-heat the car while charging. Heat pumps in EVs are efficient/fast, and less annoying than waiting forever for a gas car to defrost.

There is also the additional friction from winter tires, and in summer drag from a bike rack. A bit similar to gas consumption, but does require planning stops on long trips.

Thanks for the reply. That's actually less loss than I would have guessed,I appreciate the info.

Not at all, there are a lot of people commuting 100+ miles per day in EV’s here in CA. A lot of people have mega-commutes because housing is so expensive. An EV gives you access to HOV lanes, which can cut commute times in half. And, you can charge at home while you sleep and never again waste even a minute at a gas pump.

It’s more than just “transport,” it’s the environment.

At one point, gas stations were hard to find and the horse/buggy reigned supreme. Gas cars were actually much cleaner then than the alternative. I’m glad we made that transition and I look forward to this new transition which will undoubtedly require at least a little change from just about everyone.

The importance of other factors don’t make UX obstacles magically disappear. If that’s the point a person is trying to make, then that’s what they should say. Not “UX is solved now”.

> Who can afford to just waste 30 minutes for charging on a regular basis?

The idea is that charging is done at home overnight, so that the high speed charging stations are only used whenever one is doing longer drives on a single day.

As you point out though, not everyone has access to charging at home. Some employers do have charging stations, which can help since many cars do stay several hours at the office every day.

Total off topic, as comments on older posts are off.

As per your comment from 19 days ago [0], is it possible for you to write down something about your air quality sensors project? That would be awesome.

(0) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26690347

Sure! Let me clean up the code a bit and write a quick post about it, should be able to get it done this weekend.

Great! Enjoy!

Haven't forgotten about you by the way, I actually just got a VOC sensor in the mail about an hour ago. Will get that written up soon! :-)

Took a bit more time than expected, but here we go: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27107037

As someone with an electric car, it's really not a big deal for me. I can do all my (admittedly short) commutes and go to the gym and barely use 5-10 percent of the battery, so can charge once a week or at night.

I think it heavily depends on your job.

Apart from at night the other long period a car is not used is when people are at work. I hope governments give tax incentives for companies to install chargers in their parking lots as this is also the time where solar power is abundant so the electricity used for transport would be cleaner compared to night charging in most cities and countries.

Most big garages, unless built recently, probably don't have the power required to make a substantial amount of spots with chargers, and parking garages are generally so optimized it's hard to run more.

I know that at my work, which is in a fairly modern office building meeting all the latest hotness in LEED and whatever, there are basically just a handful of spots with electric and there is so much demand for those spots that you're not allowed to park there for more than two hours at a time.

---

Parking has the double whammy of being entirely an expense, and possibly being outmoded. If you buy the electric autonomous fantasy of people no longer owning cars and relying on Uber-like shared fleets, that basically makes the vast majority of parking spaces obsolete, and so developers understandably are trying to make their parking lots easy to tear down and redevelop. (You can't really reuse the sloped floor plates of a parking garage for much else since all other building uses tend to need flat ground, and in any case the runoff from parked vehicles is quite nasty stuff.

Similar situation here in Western Europe. I don't even have direct road access, need to take some stairs. So when I was buying a car electric made no sense.

However lately the city has made some improvement to public charging stations at the train station, a couple streets even have charging spots. And businesses like IKEA are starting to have charging ports.

Still too impractical for me, but I can see it being more feasible now than even a few months ago.

I live in Europe, with no possibility of home charging. My closest charger is 20 minutes away. My wife charges when she goes to work, rarely these days. Otherwise, we combine a shopping trip and charging, or a walk and charging. The first 50-80% of the charge goes fast, so you can easily pick up 100 km of range in the time it takes to go to the garden center.

If you want an electric car, get it. Charging is not the problem with them: affordability, availability, and matching the range to your lifestyle are.

The ID4 is precisely the next step EVs need towards affordability. The base ID4 will cost $33,690 after federal tax credit (and after destination fee). A top trim 2021 Subaru Forester costs about $32-34k (MSRP is $36k, this is the price after dealer discounting according to KBB).

Still not quite as affordable considering we're talking about a top trim Subaru, but definitely getting close. And after state rebates / if someone factors in gas costs, the ID4 can come out ahead.

their biggest hurdle apparently is inability to design EV's that don't look ridiculous and not a crossover/SUV. Many people I know would be getting one by now if they can just come out with something that looks like a normal car like the model 3 performance but doesn't have Tesla's poor quality control and customer service.

Keep in mind that the $40k price is eligible for a $7500 federal tax credit, plus in CA you’ll get a $1500 instant rebate at purchase from a utility company fund, plus any middle class buyer will get a $2500 (I think) state rebate. That takes the net price down to under $30k.

This electric car "revolution" is also a very good way to keep the poor people firmly in their place, at least here in Europe.

As a low-income single-mom you might have used to drive your kid to a better school in a 15-year old 1.2 Opel Corsa while living just outside Paris, where rents are cheaper and the social environment is better (i.e. no gangs) Tough lock, that's hardly allowed anymore. It doesn't matter if that means that your kid you'll have to attend a worst school or that you'll have to move closer to the city (and to the gangs) in order to get some chance at public transportation, that car is a threat to society.

Also, gently look away while the government fills the pockets of middle-class people with thousands of euros (even more) representing electric-car "subsidies".

I used to think a Tesla was beyond my reach completely but then I started doing the math on how much gas I was buying per month with a regular car, how much I was spending on repairs and oil changes etc. All my time working on the cars. Driving old run down pieces of crap until the inevitable head gasket failure that costs more than the vehicle is worth to fix. I said enough is enough I’ll get a damn car without a head gasket!

I live in a state with some of the cheapest electricity in the USA, the Tesla Model 3 is almost free for me to drive and I can charge in off-peak times for truly mind blowing MPGe values. I also hadn’t thought about how the car retains its value. My gas cars depreciate rapidly. My brand new Tesla cost 40k when all is said and done and used Teslas several years old were going for 38,500 or so. The test drive of the Tesla sold my girlfriend and I on it completely. It was the first car I’ve ever driven that felt like what the future should and could be like.

http://chooseev.com/savings-calculator/

Total cost of ownership makes the electric car much more competitive than simply just looking at the price at purchase.

> "as electric vehicles become more popular the rare earth metals that seemingly remain popular within the batteries may increase in cost"

This is a myth. Lithium ion battery cells do not typically contain any rare earth metals.

Permanent magnet motors in EVs do contain rare earths (such as neodymium). As do the catalytic converters in combustion vehicles.

We are at the beginning of ev and you already can buy them at affordable prices just not yet in every category.

Give it time. Right now a ton of money gets invested into batteries and co.

When you look how much impact proper market penetration is for prices (see smartphones, solar energy etc.) It will come and fast.

Is it their electric car or is it their car, electric ?

I don't want your electric car.

I don't want your e-initiative i-mobile green-tech tron-car.

I want one of your actual cars, just electric.

I don't want an ID.4 - I just want a Passat. I don't want the polestar e-initiative i-concept - I just want a V90 wagon. I don't want a future space truck, I just want a Silverado - but electric.

God. Dammit.

It looks like a Honda CUV or Toyota Rav-4 to me. Not sure where your outrage is coming from.

No, I'm asking - is this a VW, but electric, or is this an e-initiative space-car ? Genuinely unsure.

I would classify the Chevy Bolt (which we own) as the latter .

Well, it's the same platform as all their other cars. So I'd say it's a VW.

I went from a Bolt to now having an ID4. So far it seems to fall in the VW but electric category (although this is my first VW, so take that with a grain of salt). Major things I prefer over the bolt: nicer (in my opinion) interior, more interior space, travel assist is pretty awesome, slightly longer range, and higher fast charging rate. The higher fast charging rate is what's making it more viable for us to take that instead of my wife's gas car for trips, since charging stops don't need to be as long.

The ID.4 could be considered to be an electric version of the VW Tiguan. It is similar in internal size and capacity and it targets the compact CUV customer but with electric drive train. It does use a newer platform. Even the styling is quite restrained and conservative compared to other EVs.

Well, not typical for HN, a lazy question. But I'll bite. You could have looked at the video, it's only 2 minutes. ID.4 is a pretty boring/normal looking car.

Now, for the e-initiative, it's an e-initiative all right. A $86 billion over 5 years e-initiative (https://www.reuters.com/article/volkswagen-strategy-idUSKBN2...) :-)

ID.4 is based on an entirely new VW platform (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group_MEB_platform) which is already used for 6 models and it will probably be used by 60+ in 2 years' time.

It's practically VW's future. They're betting the farm on it.

It’s boring/normal looking relative to other EVs but it’s still a bit of an e-concept compared to a typical ICE car.

Compare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_ID.4 vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_Q3

I think that if there is any real difference, it's really minute and not worth arguing about...

I do actually want the Polestar 1, since it's drop dead gorgeous. Unfortunately it's a very limited run hybrid car that costs as much as my apartment.

Also weirdly Polestar is also falling into this EV design pitfall. They release a petrol car and it's gorgeous. Then they release an EV and it's misproportioned and ugly.

Polestar 1 is , indeed, Beautiful. However it is not an electric car.

It definitely is. It's a plug-in hybrid.

I see what you mean, but that is not always going to be a good idea as electric cars is more than a change of motor.

Much more aerodynamic, lighter, different frames for lower centre of gravity, different controls, dashboards, etc. (I am not a car designer). So a car designed from scratch will complete these much better than a simple conversion.

OK, but BEVs are heavier than gas-powered cars because of the the battery is heavy.

The had the eGolf, which was the Golf, but electric. They were almost indistinguishable. The eGolf range was 125 miles, the ID.4 range is 250 miles. That's why they have new specific electric models. Electrifying existing models is generally underwhelming.

Yep. It goes beyond just range.

To make space for the battery they had to use up a chunk of the bootspace. Additionally the massive extra weight means the eGolf handles rather differently (particularly cornering) from a regular Golf.

An ePassat would maybe look like a normal Passat but it wouldn't be as practical, it would have barely any range and wouldn't drive like one.

Designing an electric car has a lot of different design tradeoffs than a gas car, so cars that are designed from the ground up as electric are going to perform better than gas cars that are electrified.

The biggest two factors are that the battery is large and heavy, but is flexible in the shape it assumes. For good handling, you'd like to have this weight as low on the car as possible, and close to the center. The almost universally accepted solution is the skateboard design, where the batteries sit under the passengers, spread out over a large area.

The electric motors are also small and you can do away with a lot of systems like the transmission, exhaust, starter motor, alternator, gas tank, various pumps, pollution controls, etc. This means much less need for under hood space.

Once you take these factors into account, the designs of various EVs make a lot of sense.

But Tesla's cars are exactly this - they are largely gas sedans that look normal and are electric.

People don't want some dorky looking electric car like Volkswagen's or BMW's. They want a normal car that's electric.

You forget all the handwringing over the fake grill-less nose when the Model 3 came out.

Teslas are not “gas sedans”. They are purpose built EVs. They are sedans and are one of the few sedans that are still selling. Most other manufacturers had seen their sedan market evaporate to the point that they have dropped those models entirely.

Since the current EV market is still very small, manufacturers target the most popular body style to maximize their sales. That is currently an SUV/CUV in the US and in many markets. It is to be hoped that, once the EV market gets large enough, there will be room for different body styles such as sedans or smaller hatches. Personally, I would prefer something closer to the ID.3 but that is not something I expect to see in the US any time soon.

The pseudo-fastback sedan actually wasn't nearly as popular until around the time the model S came out. Then I started seeing it in a lot more cars, especially luxury, where the rear window comes down almost to the edge of the trunk. I'd always credited the S with kicking off the trend.

The 4-door coupe body style became popular in 2007/8. Mercedes and VW both brought out new models with that profile with the fastback rear roofline tapering down to the the trunk.

No. You probably have never driven one if that’s what you think. A Model 3 is inherently different.

What’s interesting is that Tesla succeeded in spite of its dorkiness. Yes, you may think it is a “normal” looking car now, but sedans were dying, hatchbacks were dying, and you would be made fun of mercilessly if you had a spoiler on your SUV. But Tesla made cars like that and then succeeded in spite of those design cues and now Tesla owners are trying to make those things cool again.

Tesla might as well come out with a minivan and a wagon, they could probably make people think they were cool.

A cyber mini-van and a wagon is all I could ever want from Tesla.

This is all completely orthogonal to the exterior styling and cladding. If you look at many of these electric vehicles, they have odd two-tone color schemes (eg i3), strange C pillars (Leaf, Prius, Bolt), and some twisted attempt by the designers to make them look “futuristic”.

How else would they justify the 2x price premium for all-electric?

This is a curse of the classic auto manufacturers. Look at the pricing discussed for the all-electric Ford F-150. Somewhere around US$100K. Where the gas car makers have come out with electric cars in a gas car product line, they've usually had about twice the base price.

Electric power is priced as a super-premium trim level. "More car per car".

This provides a huge opening for Chinese automakers, who don't seem to have that hangup. It ought to provide an opening for Toyota, if they ever get off their hydrogen fixation.

In what way is the price of the ID.4 2X? It’s closest match in the VW family is the Tiguan with starts around $26K. Yes, the ID.4 is around $14K more but that is due to the new technology that is slowly becoming more affordable. The first Chevy Volt’s price was around $40K ten years ago while the most recent Volt’s were around $32K last year. I’m sure that VW would prefer to be able to bring the price down to be more competative but in doing so, it would likely be below their cost to manufacture and that is not a good long term strategy.

They are creating a new brand altogether, much as they did with the Beetle 80+ years ago. This line of vehicles are intended to replace the Passat, Jetta, etc, not be their electric alternative.

Kia Niro, comes in Hybrid, Plug-in/Hybrid, or EV variants

> I want one of your actual cars, just electric.

VW did that for a while; the eGolf. The (rather similar-looking, in fairness) id.3 that replaced it seems to be doing a lot better.

We have a BMW i3, and being designed as an electric vehicle has its advantages. Not having a center console blocking the way between the front seats has been very convenient at many occasions, for example.

Not saying the i3 is the ideal electric vehicle, but I strongly believe a full-electric vehicle designed as one from the ground up will be better than a electric retrofit.

The ID.4 interior has everything I hate about the new generation of vehicles in it. White interior (impossible to keep clean), glossy piano-black trim panels (it's pollen season here - you dare not open a window), no volume knob, and capacitance switches for frequently used functions like the climate control.

It's like the designers got free rein, and they didn't know how people actually interact with their car.

"But it looks cool!" That's the sizzle, where's the steak?

Have you seen the Mustang Mach E? I suspect it will be a popular vehicle partly because it is designed to look like a nice crossover SUV.

"I don't want a new-fangled 'automobile', I want a horse with wheels god damnit!" - probably someone to Henry Ford in 1905.

Do you really want a passat?

why does that piss you off so much lol. is the truth you dont want others to be able to choose another car?

Audi is that way.

But they have a different problem - they are now making some "trendy" design changes that are screwing all their models equally. No physical buttons, virtual cockpit, "futuristic" styling of the dashboard that makes it look like a glossy fridge door, the replacement of B&O with Sonos, etc.

It is way better to buy a car that is designed from zero to be electric, rather than a car that used to be ICE and now they have tried to fit electric vehicle components to it.

My brother in law has an eSomething for his building business.

The most hilarious is that this van still has the fuel-tank hatch. Complete with springs, locks, rubber etc. Just that there's no hole to put fuel in, when you open it.

Probably one of the most literal interpretations of 'I want my Foo to be electric. Give me an eFoo'.

I presume this tank-hatch is there because changing the factory lines that deliver the plate work, is too costly.

I've been following the id.4 release with moderate interest. I previously had a 2016 Golf R 6 speed manual, and now have a 2018 Tesla Model 3.

IMO, the VW is just too expensive. Now, if you're getting the tax credit on the VW, and of course can't get it on a Tesla anymore, that makes the difference. But without the credit, the id4 is virtually the price of an AWD Model Y. For a vehicle that doesn't have AWD, has a ton less power, is significantly slower, less range, and no supercharger access.

Now, those aren't awful hits against a tax-credit-fueled $10k savings (or whatever). But I don't think it's close to there yet.

There are a lot of weird things from the reviews I've seen, too. Spotty voice recognition, "free" charging requires you to use a fiddly phone app, the car only has 2 window switches and requires that you toggle between front and rear with a 3rd button (wtf), and the Nav system is awful and routes you to chargepoint (ultra slow) chargers on a roadtrip, vs DC fast chargers.

So much of this can be changed in software, and maybe VW will drop the price when the tax credits go away, the same way Tesla did.

But, it just seems like far too little car for the money.

well my sister is looking at it for 29k after incentives that is a lot less than Model 3 or Y

I assumed the id 3 is a closer match to Golf and Tesla Model 3. It's 20% cheaper (in Europe) but not launched in the US.

The standard range Model Y, which you can only order in-store/phone (so I'm not even sure if it's still available), costs something like $42k and it's RWD, not AWD, and has about the same range as the ID4.

You also can't just say "without the credit." Once the ID4 loses the tax credit, VW will cut the price of the ID4. Tesla cut the price of the Model 3 when it started losing the credit.

The ID4 "First" edition with RWD only, 201hp 250mi range and 7.1s 0-60 had a $45,190 base price in the US vs a $49,490 AWD Model Y with 326mi range and 4.8s 0-60. (I had to go back and look up all the numbers I was looking at a month or two ago when I was following ID4 reviews. Apologies if you don't feel like this was represented properly in my initial comment).

Credits depend on what state you're in, and whether you're eligible, which is why I don't factor those in for the VW. When we bought our Tesla I think we got $7500 fed and $2500 state, so it took a clean 10k off the effective price.

As you mention, the base RWD Model Y, if you can get one, would be more similar in specs. It doesn't seem to be available anymore. Range was similar, it was sub-$40k, and massively faster I'm sure, than the comparatively glacial ID4 (we have a RWD 3 which is something like low 5s 0-60).

I agree with you 100% on the "without credit" part. Which is precisely why I stated it up front in my original comment. Right down to how VW may cut prices as the credit dries up just like Tesla did.

I'm referring to the base ID.4 Pro, not the ID.4 First. The $7500 federal credit also does not depend on your state.

It’s $17k cheaper than the Model Y you’re talking about (longer range, AWD) after the tax credit.

Tax credit depends on the state, of course. And I suspect your "$17k cheaper" is currently vaporware:

> The ID.4 will eschew Volkswagen's traditional S, SE, and SEL trim hierarchy and instead will be offered in base, Pro, and 1st Edition trims. A base model priced around $35,000 will satisfy value-minded consumers with EV aspirations, but that entry-level ID.4 won't launch until sometime in 2022. In the meantime, the ID.4 Pro and loaded 1st Edition models serve as the ID.4's launch trims.[1]

1. https://www.caranddriver.com/volkswagen/id4

I agree with a lot of this VW seems to have done the “let’s rethink everything,” but much less successfully than Tesla. Not surprising giving their generations-long corporate legacy.

I’m kinda interested in the Nissan Arya, because it looks like they are trying to learn from the Leaf and make it attractive to not-terribly-into-EV buyers. It just looks like a very nice semi-luxury that has been engineered to be an EV, without rubbing it in your face that it’s an EV.

I'm always so amused when I see people complaining about certain cars being too expensive.

The cheapest Tesla Model 3 costs 160k SGD here, which is about 120k USD. And it gets more expensive from there.

Not to mention the fact that your COE expires after 10 years after which you have to pay another 50k to be allowed to drive it for another 10 years.

Ok? I'm saying the VW is too expensive for what it is, in the market it competes in, in the US and I believe in Europe as well.

If you show me how the VW is a great bargain in your country vs the Tesla, that's an interesting argument.

Complaining that cars are cheap in countries other than your own doesn't really relate to the VW's relative place in the market.

You are right.

My thinking behind the post was to suggest that the "it's expensive" argument doesn't really matter, since all cars are so cheap in the US.

This is of course not a great line of reasoning, since people look at the cost of a car in relative terms. I should have thought it through before posting.

This looks like the first vehicle of this sort to even approach affordable (with the $7,500 tax credit it will cost less than a high end Honda CR-V). The fact that it is also well regarded in the reviews I have seen make this the first electric vehicle I could consider buying myself. Excited that something as relatively attainable as this is reaching the market.

A base tesla model3 is cheaper than a base ID.4. It does look like the ID.4 will be cheaper after the tax credits, but not dramatically so.

Right but the model 3 is a sedan while the ID.4 is a compact SUV. Size wise this vehicle is more on par with the Tesla Model Y, not the 3.

It's not.

The ID.4 is 4.6 metres long. the Model 3 is 4.7 metres long. The Model X is 5.0 metres long.

The ID.4 is 1.85 metres wide, the Model 3 is 1.85 metres wide and the Model X is 2.00 metres wide.

The ID.4 is 1.64 metres tall, the Model 3 is 1.44 metres and the Model X is 1.68 metres.

The Model 3 has about 425 litres of trunk space, the ID.4 has 540 litres of trunk space, and the Model X has like 1400 litres with five seats up (this was really hard to source). Seats folded the Model 3 has like 1140 litres, the ID.4 has like 1575 litres and the Model X has about 2000 litres.

I meant the Y, not the X. Brain fart on my part. Sorry you did all the work to look into the details.

Probably more of a Model Y than a Model X,

The ID.4 is similar in size to the Model Y. Diagrams and examples:

- https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/09/VW-ID...

- https://i.redd.it/x56klavmjmu61.jpg

- https://imgur.com/kSmwxah

I guess the "slightly cheaper" part isn't a coincidence ;)

The base ID4 is ~$2.5k cheaper after federal credit and actually has longer range than a Model 3 Standard Range (the off menu Model 3), and it's closer in size to a Model Y.

I do not understand why Chevy dropped the Volt. It seemed ideal to me. Run on electric mostly, but have a little gas generator on board so don't get stuck anywhere.

And it can also mechanically couple the ICE motor to the wheels at highway speeds, when it is more efficient to do so. For a hybrid it was an inspired design.

My parents had it, branded as the Opel Ampera and it was a great car. But I think carrying all this additional complexity around with you is looking less appealing with the ever growing charging rates and battery sizes

The ID4 is a nice car, and definitely on our radar after our Nissan Leaf lease expires.

If you regularly take long road trips you’re going to be disappointed in the user experience with an EV. But EVs right now are perfect second cars. If the average American family replaced one of their cars with an EV it would drastically reduce emissions without requiring people to totally sacrifice the benefits of gas.

I was planning on buying an EV, until I lost power for a week in Texas. My car was the only thing that saved my bacon. Really made me lose faith in being so dependent on electricity for everything lol. Very third-world feelings, but there you go.

Is this why volkswagen.com is down?

There was an unexpected error (type=Internal Server Error, status=500). Redis command timed out; nested exception is io.lettuce.core.RedisCommandTimeoutException: Command timed out after 1 minute(s)

That doesn't bode well for their in car digital services.

chip shortage

I saw one in the wild last week and I am very happy to see that they look great and normal.

On the subject of styling I still find these electric cars slightly off with the plastic where the grill normally be. It just seems wrong - especially with a company like Tesla which has no design heritage to be bound to, one expects better.

The Taycan doesn't have this issue at the front, and I think it's a good looking thing.

Why would you have a grill when you don’t have any need for it?

That's my point, though, the front doesn't need to be that shape any more, do something else (i.e. what Porsche have done with the Taycan, which just tapers all the way down to the number plate).

Sorry I misunderstood. Of all the recently released cars the Mercedes EQS is the only one that is obviously doing what you complain about.

Battery cooling? Cabin ventilation? A/C condenser? Front brake cooling?

The ev car grills are aesthetic only. They are sealed.

I'm simply giving reasons why an EV might have a front air intake with a grill.

Given the location of this stuff, I could easily see some cars using the area-formerly-used-for-the-radiator for other things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xax1HmVPKZY

Partially because people may feel like something is not right. Like seeing a face without a nose. It can feel creepy.

The Tesla model 3 has a weird looking front end that can be off putting to some people. The model S seems a little more familiar.

EU pedestrian crash regulations push manufacturers toward having a crush zone in front and that area can look bland if there aren’t some visual detailing across it.

I keep hoping that someone builds an electric car that looks like an early 911.

Most of the porsche range is going electric, including the Boxster.

If that doesn't scratch the itch I'm sure people will be making Singer-esque EVs with a 911 shell.

Porsches have never really had prominent grilles, not even when the engine was up in the front, so that helps. The Panamera has a very slick front-end despite having the engine in the front.

Interesting. I agree they look normal but to me that means ugly.

I'm kicking around the idea of an electric car, but the ranges of these things just utterly disappoint me. With some companies offering, or planning to offer 500ish mile ranges, it would feel immediately outdated to me to throw 40k on something with a ~200 mile range. Is battery tech that different between companies, is it cost prohibitive?

I think if there was a perspective to upgrade to a more modern battery later on, that would make a huge difference for these decisions.

I wonder how much the actual battery contributes to the production costs. It can't be trivial, right?

Absolutely. If the battery were easily swappable, either by me or a low cost service center, AND a promise of bigger batteries was made, I'd probably bite. But as it sits, it seems like batteries are very central to the car and rather cost prohibitive to swap out.

After swearing up and down that they would never do battery swaps, Tesla demonstrated a 90 second swap back in 2012. They held a few events in California to get enough swaps to meet ZEV benchmarks and get nearly $300mil. When they were called out they removed any reference to the program and pretended like it never happened.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140331102655/http://www.teslam...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.#Controversies

Battery swaps are incredibly costly for the company - those units generally cost more than 10k - sometimes as high as 20k. Given that they are the majority of the cost of the vehicle it's not a great business proposition for manufacturers to offer to replace a battery for anything less than the majority of the cost of a new vehicle which consumers simply won't go for.

You get the uncharged battery back, though, which you can then charge and give to another person. It's like a propane cylinder swap.

...just 500 times more expensive.

Propane capacity isn't going to go down as the tanks age; losing 10% when swapping in an older battery could really suck.

IIRC, when Formula E used to have pit stops, the driver would enter a new car rather than swapping out or charging batteries.

There are companies upgrading the batteries in early Leafs. This seems to work because the newer model batteries are similar enough that they can be made to work. They aren't re-celling the originals.

My guess is as the market grows this will become more common.

>I wonder how much the actual battery contributes to the production costs. It can't be trivial, right?

I would think it's a good portion, at say $200 per kWh of battery a 50kWh pack is $10k.

I’m not informed but it seems all the high range cars are also the expensive ones. Mercedes EQS and Tesla Model S for example.

Don't forget the higher end monstrosity of a cybertruck.

Looks aside, something like that would interest me but I don't need the extras. I don't need extra motors and 4wd. Why not just offer the base version with the bigger battery?

> Don't forget the higher end

Cybertruck will have 250+ miles of range for $39,900, which is the same as the ID.4 this article is about.

what about it is "higher end"?

There are three models of cybertruck. The most expensive, 70k version, has a 500 mi range. That's what I was referring to as higher end.

Interestingly the average car price in the US crossed $40K last year.

I believe the additional motors actually contribute to the longer range. The motors can be individually optimized for different speeds, ie you can have one motor be optimized for the highway and the other for low speeds.

It's a huge cost and weight penalty that makes no sense 99% of the time.

You seem to be stuck in a 2010 mindset - battery swapping in particular is a hilarious failure of an idea. Watch out for the world overtaking you.

As someone who drives about 300 miles each way rather regularly, for me it -is- a real concern.

Re: battery swapping, are you referring to the idea of like, hot swapping batteries on the road, or swapping to an upgraded battery at some point? I'm only specifically interested in the latter.

600 mile round trips are not a common use case. You are going to have to be patient with two full charging stops, or pay a premium.

I agree.

Honestly, I think if I were to drive a seriously long distance, I'd rent a car. Not only does it save wear 'n tear, but it's hard to find something that's more of a pain than a mechanical breakdown a long way from home with something you own.

Look at an EV charge map and see what's along the route. I think the main difference ICE drivers miss is that if you have a home where you can level 2 charge you're leaving the house every day fully charged. I've only used a public charger once just to see if my account worked.

How often do you drive that far? The farthest I drive in one go is 350 miles and I only make that trip once every other year because it's exhausting. (If I could fly there I probably would.) A vehicle with a 100 mile range would cover pretty much all the other driving I do regularly.

Funny. I would not fly for a trip of 350 miles. Being at the airport early, going through security, checking in luggage, all of those are unpredictable. Most of the time i leave home 3 hours before scheduled flight, it can take 1 hour to get to the airport (depending on traffic, usually 20 minutes), and then all of the above. 3 hours can get me almost 200 miles away, and then I'm left with 150 miles of driving.

plus adding in (I think) the magic number is 400 miles when flying becomes safer than driving.

NorCal to SoCal using regional airports (avoid sfo lax etc) can be less than 2 hours door to door. Online check in + no checked bag means you can show up at small airports 30 minutes before takeoff. 50 minutes in the air, 10 minutes to deplane and leave the airport, and less than 15 minutes driving on either end and you have 2 hours door to door (and a lot more leg stretching than driving the 5).

I'm curious... are you in the US? 350 miles is definitely within the realm of reason here-- a couple friends and I made an impulsive 250-something mile trip a couple weeks ago, and my family took a road trip to Florida over the past summer (normally we'd fly, but COVID)-- that trip was actually in an electric car and ended up being about 4 hours longer than it would be in a gas car.

Depending on where you are, 350 miles might not even get you out of Texas!

I struggle to see how an electric car added four hours to a 250 mile trip. Unless you are counting both ways maybe? Even then, a 250 mile range EV would need one or two charging stops. Fast charging could just be 2-3 hours for both stops. At most.

I think they meant it added 4 hours to the total one way trip. "a trip to florida". Electric is pretty good in many cases. But long road trips is not one of them. A full recharge is on the order of an 30-60 mins. You can refuel an ICE car in 5-10 mins and get the same range. 4 stops in a long trip is not unheard of. It would put them in the middle of the united states somewhere going to florida.

For local travel electric is decent and you can work around the 1 remaining issue for electric with some planning. For long road trip the refuel is the bottleneck. I think when electric cars can recharge a 300-400 range in 5-10 mins you will see people switch very quickly.

That was the trip to Florida! It came out to about 1,250 miles and was actually rather enjoyable in the Kia Niro EV. We used the Electrify America charger network the whole way there and back so each stop was 20-40 minutes, perfect to stretch your legs, use a nearby restroom, and grab a bite to eat. Admittedly it got to a bit of a lull at night since it was a 20-something hour trip.

I think it would have been better to have a little bit more range so the stops are spaced farther apart, but charging was cheap and rather fast. The worst part was dealing with some of those chargers; there's usually at least one charger offline at EA stations and some charge really slow (which sucks when you pay by the minute) so there's a bit of trial-and-error.

I honestly kinda liked these forced breaks... usually when we take a long road trip I feel stiff as a board when we arrive, but I felt fine when we got there.

Actually not even half way, depending on origin and direction of travel. IIRC highway I-10 starts around milepost 810 on the Texas/Louisiana border. It's a big state.

Off-topic but Texan inhabitants I know used to measure the length of the drives in number of beers consumed en route. Austin to Waco was a comparatively modest 5 beer trip, for example.

880 not 810. And surely given TX open container laws applying to a six pack even then they’d shotgun the sixth

Thank you. I saw it only once, from the front seat of an 18-wheeler in 1979 while hitchhiking to Austin. It was impressive.

> ended up being about 4 hours longer than it would be in a gas car

We did some relatively long trips in our BMW i3 last couple of summers. Even though the charging added about 1-1.5hrs to each trip, my SO, which did all the driving, said she preferred it that way. She felt significantly less exhausted when she arrived, thanks to the charging stops.

So not clear cut for all drivers it seems.

You know you can stop in a gasoline powered car and take breaks if you want or feel tired. But I cant imagine being forced to take an extra 1-1.5 hours whether I want to or not.

Of course. But she doesn't feel tired while driving. It hits her later, after we've arrived and unpacked.

Again the i3 isn't a great car for long distance driving due to small battery, and a big part of the extra 1.5 hrs was due to waiting in line for charging (summer vacation, yay). Both of those issues have gotten better and will continue to improve.

If I drive somewhere 2 hours away for the weekend, drive around town while I'm there, and then drive home, that's easily 350 miles between home-charging opportunities.

With less range than that, EV charging becomes a constraint on which lodging I can choose or else how I'm going to spend ~hours of my vacation.

A used Premier Bolt with DC quick charging is a good compromise here.

The car software is well done, and while it isn't updated often that just means you can expect less bugs than Tesla's constantly updated software.

Downsides to the Bolt include OnStar, 3rd party quick chargers are often broken, and their app is absolute garbage. Other than that I think ~$15k for 200+ miles is amazing.

What I don't think people understand is how quick these batteries can be charged. It is a plug in, get lunch, go to the bathroom, maybe stretch a bit, and get back on the road type of deal.

How long does somebody really want to be driving/sitting in a car non-stop?

If your list includes "get lunch" it's not a quick charge. A 1 hour charge time can be planned around but it is still quite constraining.

Meh. If I am driving several hundred miles in a fraction of a day, I am going to be patient and grateful. Doing that on a bike, on horseback, or on foot would be absolutely grueling and take several days or weeks.

I always stop for lunch on long car trips. Sometimes I grab a snack at a gas station but I prefer a sit-down meal as a break from driving. That takes about an hour. Now in my EV, I still stop for lunch; I just do so where there's a Supercharger nearby. The only downside is that a Supercharger fillup only takes about 20 minutes and Tesla will start billing me if the car is full and taking up a parking place too long, so sometimes I have to dash out of the restaurant and move the car in the middle of lunch.

The solution I've found for this problem is to grab lunch first, then go recharge at the Supercharger and sit in the comfortable climate-controlled car and either have a post-lunch quicknap or watch Netflix for 20 minutes.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should. DC high current charging is pretty rough on the expected lifetime of that pack.

The damage caused by DC charging is not huge. If you supercharged your car every day in lieu of home charging (i.e. because you can't home charge), then the effect is bigger, but Tesla superchargers (can't speak for the others) are very careful about how much charge they dump into the battery at any particular instant given the battery's current state of charge, temperature, age, etc. They do this specifically to preserve the health of the battery.

https://teslatap.com/articles/supercharger-superguide/

> What I don't think people understand is how quick these batteries can be charged. It is a plug in, get lunch, go to the bathroom, maybe stretch a bit, and get back on the road type of deal.

I'm guessing you have never been at a busy highway gas station? It is not uncommon to wait for 10-20 minutes at a 20 pump station on a turnpike where cars gas up in 3-4 minutes. Until the charging infrastructure is done to at least half of the current gas stations level mass adoption of EV is a pipe dream.

10-14 hours per day for a road trip is typical for me, with a single 5 minute re-fueling stop each day.

Do you have to buy a "Sport Utility Vehicle"? Sedans like the Model 3 have a higher range.

Unfortunately, I do. I am very tall with bad knees and while some sedans fit me fine, getting in and out of them is excruciating. About the smallest thing I've been comfortable with is a Chevy Equinox, to give you a size comparison. It's more about the ride height than the size of the vehicle, but they seem to go hand in hand.

That is unfortunate. Driving extended periods in a cramped car is definitely a pain. Hopefully you are being compensated appropriately for these arduous trips.

I like cargo space and don't like to bottom out on dirt roads or my driveway (also a dirt road). Although I doubt the ID.4 has enough ground clearance for me.

edit: looks like it has 8.2 inches of ground clearance, so that would be fine. Too bad it's ugly but oh well. Cars don't have to be pretty.

Probably makes sense for you to wait then, I think most people are happy with 200-250 miles (I certainly would be)

250 sounds doable but not 200.

For an EV, maybe consider leasing.

For a conventional car you'd sell after 5 years or drive it for ten to reduce TCO, so you'd want to compare that with the monthly cost for (say) a 36 mo lease.

VW is pretty far behind Tesla in battery technology.[0] Still, this seems like a good car for a large number of drivers. The VW charging network is building out rapidly (I've noticed that VW's chargers are largely in the same locations as Tesla's superchargers. Wonder why?)

The Tesla Model Y Long Range is rated at 326 miles and in my experience that's accurate and completely practical.

As to your criterion of "500ish" miles, that's unrealistic even for most ICE cars. Granted gas stations are more common than EV charging stations but you also cannot recharge your ICE car at home or at your hotel or at an RV park.

Owning an EV requires a mindset switch; if you approach the EV purchase decision from the ICE mindset and all you see is "OMG the range is too low and what happens if I can't find a charger?" then you're probably not ready for EV ownership. If, OTOH you are able to switch to a mindset where you keep your energy status in the back of your mind (and an EV car helps you with this a great deal) then you might be ready.

For me this mindset switch was easy since I've been RV camping for decades; that's another lifestyle where thinking about such things as energy, water, and waste status are necessary. It's not difficult; it's just different. It requires an awareness that assumptions of infinite sources (of water, energy, etc.) and infinite sinks (for waste disposal) are incorrect, and now you must manage them actively.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx1O4kvjn0U

ID4 has 310 miles on its 77KWh, I dunno what "pretty far behind" here is supposed to mean. It's not like Tesla uses some hitherto unknown cell technology…

"Has not been blessed by St Elon of Car", I assume.

In reality, while many manufacturers have grandiose claims of amazing magical batteries Any Day Now (TM) the battery tech being used in real life cars that you can buy today is all fairly similar.

Also makes no sense to me. The advantage of tesla is not the battery capacity but the more efficient powertrain / drag coefficient. Teslas need a lot less energy in comparison.

> If, OTOH you are able to switch to a mindset where you keep your energy status in the back of your mind (and an EV car helps you with this a great deal) then you might be ready.

Honestly that's a huge turn off for me. I have enough things on the back of my mind, tracking my "energy status" would have a significant opportunity cost by displacing more productive things.

Understandable, but with governments banning new combustion vehicle sales, the electric transition and need to shift how vehicles are used will occur eventually. I don't think EVs will reach the exact UX of combustion vehicles, nor do they have to (most charging can occur at home at night, people rarely road trip and need to charge from 0 to 100 SOC in 5 minutes), but people will have to be accepting that the experience might be different than they're use to.

Something to keep in mind is that electricity is ubiquitous in the first world, and the number and density of EV chargers will only increase over time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehic...

Totally, I definitely intend for my next vehicle to be electric despite my naysaying.

I wish that EV vendors would let you "test drive" a vehicle over the course of a week. It's hard to imagine what your day to day charging experience would be by just driving around for an hour.

For most people, myself included, I bet the charging will actually be a non issue, probably even more convenient than gas, but it still feels like a big leap to take.

I agree with you entirely. My Model S has spent more time lent out to friends, family, and others so they can have the experience you describe. Manufacturers must improve on this at scale, as individual efforts alone will be insufficient.

Definitely a complex inflection point we're at, but I have hope!

(disclosure: I do not recommend buying a Tesla currently due to their QC and support failings).

I used Turo.com to rent a Model S for several days in SoCal a couple of years ago, and took it for long drives that required supercharging. I'd probably never have bought a Tesla otherwise.

Turo is a more expensive than an ordinary rental car because not only are Teslas expensive, but with Turo you really should buy the insurance. (I'd read that personal insurance won't cover you in a Turo car like it will in a normal rental. Haven't verified this. Decided not to risk it.) But even with the expense it was a good way for me to get an idea of what Tesla ownership was like.

I'm currently assuming that the inertia is towards EVs. Apply enough engineering money and economy of scale and it becomes more and more reasonable.

Honestly, that's the only type of new car I would buy at this point. I think we are hitting peak ICE complexity at this point and would just as soon not be involved with the mechanical magic that's been introduced to achieve that last bit of marginal improvement with emissions or mileage.

I also track my fuel range in the back of my head when driving my ICE vehicles.

I don't. I drive it until it beeps at me that it's low on fuel (typically at the 900 km mark, after which I still have 100 km reserve). Then I fill up at the next service station I happen to come across and pump $50 of fuel into the tank in 2-3 minutes. I never seek out a service station. For this reason, ICE cars effectively have infinite range.

It is extremely common to fill up any ICE and get nearly 500 miles. It's almost like they sized the tanks to that standard.

Of the 8 cars I've owned so far, only one could do over 800km reliably with one tank (VW Passat Diesel). Most could handle around 500-600km (375-ish max).

My current EV can do around 280-300km in one go and it hasn't limited me once. Back seat needs a pee-break after 200-250km anyway =)

I can get that in my diesel pickup not towing (19 mpg and 30 gallons) but no car I've ever owned can get 500 miles from a tank of gas.

A diesel mk4 VW Jetta/Golf easily gets 1000 km (620 miles) on the highway. Those cars were extremely common in NA at one point.

That was also the point just before the VW scandal proved that diesel engines can be high-mileage or low-polluting but not both at the same time. Which is why diesel VWs are rather less common today.

Mk4 VWs are MY 1998-2005. There's still a heck of a lot of them on the road now, but I think the peak was probably well before 2015 when the "scandal" took place.

My last Subaru (traded in for Tesla Model 3) was lucky to get 250 miles.

Most gasoline cars I’ve driven top out around 300-350 miles range on a tank.

It's really the infrastructure rather than the range that needs to change (for most people). If high speed charging became ubiquitous, then you would only be stopping for 20 min every 2 hours with current technology. Driving any more than that without a rest in my country can result in serious consequences.

Add to that a fully charged vehicle every morning without having to make a visit to a petrol/gas station at any point in the week, and you can start to see how it can become more convenient.

All of this depends on where you live and what you use your car for of course.

> Driving any more than that without a rest in my country can result in serious consequences.

Fascinating! We drive hours upon hours on the regular in Texas, everything is so spread apart. I take weekend trips to see my family every once in a while and it comes out to 3-4 hours and I do that without really hesitating. One of my friends recently mentioned that one of their parents took a job that's 120 miles away from their house(!!) which, while it's definitely not "normal," certainly happens.

If you don't mind my asking, whereabouts are you from?

From the UK, and not everyone is aware of this. But it has been tried in the courts, and I'm aware of one person (friend of a friend) who is in jail as a result if having an accident after driving for 4 hours. I have a friend who works in car insurance, and he's pretty firm about the requirement to not drive more than two hours straight. Our motorways are covered in cameras, so if something happens you generally can't pretend you took a different route or stopped in a (camera covered) service station!

I'll take a range of 80 miles. Enough for a couple round-trips to work with some reserve capacity. I'd pay $20k for a tiny car that provides me with that and I'd keep my gas vehicle for road trips. In order to replace my gas vehicle, I'm going to need 500 miles. That's enough to cover my trip to see family along with a little overhead to handle degredation over time and running the AC in summer. I don't mind stopping to quick charge for 10 minutes once during the trip, but beyond that I'll stick with gas.

If you are willing to go used, you can get any of several models of 1st gen EVs that get in the 75-100 mile range. I would recommend staying away from the early Leafs due to their poor battery management, but most others should be a good deal by now and would satisfy your needs.

Can someone living in an apartment with no charging point at their space get an electric car?

Maybe? Realistically, I wouldn't get it. Wait 3-5 years, let them build out the charging networks, then buy one.

Yes, but... I'd only do it if I had a DC rapid charger nearby (i.e. a supercharger if you buy a Tesla or a CCS if you buy a VW). And keep in mind you're going to pay more for the electricity at the DC rapid charger than you would at home--probably 2x or 3x the price per kWh.

That would negate most of your gas savings as those charging networks charge more than what you can charge for at home. When I charge at a supercharge the rate is equivalent to gas at 3 per gallon. Charging at home is 80‰ cheaper.

Maybe. I had a neighbor who unplugged their electric dryer and ran a cord out the window to charge their Model 3.

Yeah, maybe. It really depends on your use case and the charging you have available to you. If you're mostly going back and forth to work and you can charge there, then definitely yes. If you drive a lot and you don't have access to a convenient Level 3 charger, then probably no.

I had my Model S about 18 months before I could get a home charger installed at my townhouse. I spent a lot of time in the Whole Foods parking lot, charging at 12 mph. Not recommended. Later, I discovered a Level 3 charger (which required a $500 adapter to use), and I'd just go catch a movie once a week while my car charged at 100 mph.

Mind sharing the level 3 location?

Are you in Hawaii? It's at the Temple Valley Shopping Center, across from the McDonald's drive-thru.

highly recommend Munro's 6 short hands-on videos on ID.4

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkiDlGyJnprdkrCXUOh-N...

I was disappointed with these. Yes the VW software is much worse than Tesla’s, but he goes on a 10 minute rant that there are no maps - because he hadn’t figured out that the screen has a home button.

After softball questions when directly talking to Elon and then just needlessly dumping on the VW, it now feels to me that there is a bias in these videos towards the manufacturers that might hire him, and against them that don’t.

I enjoyed previously when there was just raw engineering facts and now it feels a bit off. Hopefully I’m just imagining things.

Tesla didn’t hire him, but when he realized how fast Tesla is growing up and how fast it is iterating on its design in the right direction, he loaded up on Tesla stocks, so I guess TSLA price is the most important for him at this point.

Seeing more and more ID.3s in the streets. I find the look a bit funky though with the headlights and VW logo looking almost printed on. Because they wanted it completely flush for aero probably.

I'm puzzled why EVs are so expensive when they have simpler design and parts. Is it because of the battery? Also, isn't EMF radiation an issue for you?

Batteries are very expensive.

EMF radiation from what?

From the electric motor.

What kind of radiation, exactly? Is it ionizing?

Non-ionizing, but still there are concerns including melatonin disruption as indirect cause of increased cancer rates living near power lines.

Yes, the batteries are currently still very expensive. You're right that engine-wise, they're considerably simpler.

> Is it because of the battery?

That's the big contributor, yep.

> Also, isn't EMF radiation an issue for you?

For who? I mean, if you happen to be an AM radio it may be an issue, but I can't see why it would be a problem for humans.

Good point on the AM radio, my Model 3 does not have AM, but wondering do any BEVs have AM radio?

I think a few do, but it doesn’t necessarily work very well.

You can’t listen to baseball games in a 40,000-50,000 car? Wow.

Some researchers believe non-ionizing EMF can disrupt melatonin production and thus boost cancer development.

What I’m really curious to see is whether or not “electric” is the single killer feature it is often positioned as.

Semi-autonomous driving and overall UX are two places that Tesla is just so far ahead. I think other manufacturers will make progress, but they are likely to be slow. Electric is compelling but it’s only a small part of the overall value prop for a lot of buyers.

n=1 of course, but to me Teslas aren't compelling until they 1) are a company I want to support, 2) building a vehicle I want, at 3) a price I want to pay. They fail #1 in a bunch of entertaining ways, they don't make a vehicle that satisfies #2 either in features/size or in the absence of misfeatures like the center console or the quasi-automated car crasher, and they'd have to take a significant haircut to satisfy #3.

Your mileage, of course, may vary, but right now Hyundai's Kona EV is pretty close to that in terms of features/size/battery/price, for me. It's the car I'm considering as a moderate size upgrade over my current car (a super-compact hatchback). Being electric is a significant plus to me, enough that I'm considering the upgrade even though I don't strictly need it.

I agree with your points in general, the main reason I don't want a Tesla is that they all look the same to me, across models, years, features, they just have a similar look and it's boring. I wish they also offered a wide range of body modifications to add some flavor and individuality to the car.

They really do look like the mid-range car in a video game. Not bad, but just a bit too American and safe for my eyes.

I'm curious what a Cybertruck will actually end up looking like since they seem to have actually gone for risky with it.

It's worth watching Sandy Munro's youtube channel to see what the justification for the Cybertruck body shape is. I changed my mind on them after watching it.

One question I never see answered is how Teslas will deal with collision repair expense once the bugs are shaken out of the insurance and bodyshop system.

I love the cybertruck just because it's so absurd, but unfortunately I think the novelty will wear off the first time you see another cybertruck on the road.

>I don't want a Tesla is that they all look the same to me,

In my eyes, practically all new cars look the same. The badging is the main way to tell them apart. On the other hand, I can tell a 1967 from a 1968 Camaro (hint: the running lights/turn signals in the grill are round vs. a rounded rectangle on non RS cars).

But they always did. If you come to it with a fresh eye, most cars of a given class/size in any era are pretty similar.

As a non-Tesla fan, I think the S has very nice lines. The X and 3 are ugly. As you say, they basically look like the same car, and yet are misproportioned in various ways. My theory is they spent a lot of designer time carefully iterating and refining the S, then fired all the designers. Then for X and 3, simply distorted the S design to wrap around a different car and called it good.

Your reasoning, in my head, lead me to buy a Renault Zoe, and I love it.

Electric cars cannot conjuring to be luxury items if we want to convert the fleet. This is something that Tesla gets distracted on and misses: the Model 3 should have cost 50% of what it does (with the compromises to get there). The 3 is like a slightly less ostentatious S, which is a total market miss for me

A total market miss for you, maybe, but it is a total market hit for the actual market as demonstrated in sales figures.

> 1) are a company I want to support

Really? I mean... as opposed to which automaker?

Paraphrasing Matthew Yglesias[1]: Elon Musk is a raging narcissist asshole. But he built a three-quarter-trillion dollar company that makes electric cars and solar panels. That's... objectively pretty good for all of us, right?

[1] I think. Actually I can't completely remember where I read this but it definitely sounds like him.

He did. Something like "bad tweeter, but good for the world".

Maybe I was unclear. It's not (just) that Elon Musk is a dirtbag who sics his literally millions of stans on random people, though that's part of it; I don't think the way that he, personally, identifies and treats people is a reasonable way for a person with any measure of power to act.

It's also that I don't want to support an automaker that makes cars as poorly as Tesla does. Even to this day Tesla rolls cars out to customers with stuff as simple as body panels totally hosed. And Tesla then gives buyers the run-around when they seek redress. That's when they aren't double-charging folks and making getting that redressed entirely too difficult, too.

I didn't say they shouldn't exist. I said that I don't want to give them money. Tesla's shitty at making cars and shitty at customer service and I don't have a reason to buy from them either from the perspective of a purchaser or as somebody who tries to be at least reasonably ethical with the allocation of my money. As mentioned, my next car will likely be a Kona EV, where the body panels don't fall off and I have some trust in the warranty to actually be honored if I need something done.

It's obviously very personal, but for me, electric alone is a big plus. I find it more enjoyable to drive: No transmission shifting, really smooth acceleration, quieter, and that instant-on torque is pretty nice, too.

Another advantage in California (and likely other states) is that you get to avoid the enormous, rather useless, PITA called 'emissions inspection'.

I think what you're actually describing is the largely fan activist/toy (Yes, Tesla Autopilot is a toy) attitude that's common to a certain kind of Tesla owners. This is embarassing and needs to go so that responsible adults can buy EVs too.

Calling Autopilot a toy seems quite exaggerated to me.

I use Autopilot for ~80% of the miles I drive and I love it. I might think the same about Subaru or Cadillac or whatever if I had those, I'm not sure. But none of them are "toys".

They way they market it is the reason it's a toy. This is not a novel argument in any way.

In some circumstances it's a pretty good at L2 self driving. Until it isn't and it kills you if you don't pay attention.

European BEV sales figures would indicate that Tesla's 'autopilot' is not a huge factor; of late Tesla has generally been 3rd or 4th (behind VW and one or both of Hyundai and Renault) in most markets.

Is this comment meant to be ironic? The removal of physical buttons a main cluster for the driver and the lack of a HUD are all terrible UX decisions. People believe it is all part of the grand "autonomous driving" meme but the reality is that all cars that have been purchased today are going to be used up long before level 4 autonomy is passed through the legislation.

Yeah. I literally just pulled the trigger and am waiting on delivery of a Model Y. The other vendors are at least playing in the same ballpark now. This car, and the Ford Mach-E (I refuse to call a 4-door crossover a "mustang") are both... very reasonable and justifiable purchases. Same price range. Similar (or at least close to) travel range. Similar performance.

But they don't have a supercharger network. They won't have anything like Tesla's autopilot over the life of these units. The software glitz Tesla's app integration brings to the table isn't there, even if the fit and finish is probably better.

It's great to see the traditional automakers getting close finally (almost a DECADE after the Model S shipped!), but... they aren't there yet. Unless you're in love with something very specific about these particular cars, Tesla remains the clear default choice.

It’s interesting to see the word ‘pollution’ seems to have been completely replaced by ‘emission’. I guess the car industry won?

'Mostly peaceful' emission might be the way to go.

Zero emission vehicles still pollute with their tires.

I'll take tire pollution over gridlocked non-moving cars spewing fumes right next to my apartment, thank you.

And don't forget: during production

Yup, but many manufacturers are carbon-offsetting their production a lot more compared to ICE cars.

Also: depending on your country's electricity production profile, EVs tend to become more environmentally friendly around 2-3 years of use according to studies.

And when the production profile changes (more renewables etc.) ALL EVs on the road instantly become better for the environment. There's no practical way of makin ICE cars better for the environment after they're sold.

For sure. I get annoyed when people argue along the lines of "but look how all the power is generated using coal and oil" because people simply don't understand that electricity is the interface that decouples the car's energy source from the way its source. As you said, once electricity is generated using only renewables, bam, instant success, without changing anything about the cars.

The 1st edition is already "sold out". Reserving the AWD Pro S Gradient, a $49,675 car, is $100. So I suspect the 1st edition was around that same reservation cost. Too low. Everyone has $100 laying around. IMO reservations should be 10% msrp so that only serious buyers can make reservations.

Tesla wants $100 to reserve a car, so I'm sure that's why the value was picked. If their buyer backs out and the model is popular, they can always get full price on the car as configured anyway.

10% is a bit high. Would take a lot of nads to drop 5k on a car that may or may not come out in a few years.

$1000 feels more like the sweet spot.

This car is already out; they started shipping them last year.

The last sentence of the guy I was replying to was speaking generally

It's because you can reserve with your credit card and the OEM is responsible for the transaction fee. 10% of MSRP is like $4,000 and 1-3% of that is $40-$120. When saving 1/4 of a cent is crucial at scale, you wont be happy giving up 40-120 bucks.

Is it possible to drive any new cars or charge at any of these stations with privacy?

Looks pretty nice. AWD is about $44k, $36k with the tax credit. Honestly that's a pretty decent option.

$40k sedans were always a bit of a practicality stretch. A sedan is fine for some things but in family with two working family the sedan is a secondary car wheel the SUV is the more expensive work horse.

A $40k electric SUV can be used for commute, ski trips, camping. Perfect for a family's 'main' car. It looks like electric might finally win both practicality and cost.

why does it says that it launches?! It launched last december/this years january in europe. heck, they even delivered some of them already. did it launch that late in usa? I tought it should launch in february in the usa.

I think deliveries from reservations in the US started in March. I bought one a few weeks ago because some dealers have gotten a few that weren't reserved, but for the most part it's still very limited supply in the US.

> very limited supply in the US

haha, thats for every car in the world ;-) in germany our e-up took way over a year to deliver.

Let's hope that this means VW will actually deliver on the ID Buzz in 2023.

You mean "Voltswagen launches its first all-electric SUV, the ID.4".

SUV…

Hopefully (particularly from the French car companies, as they have some interesting little designs from the past to draw from) EVs can provide a kick up the arse for manufacturers to lead rather than shit out SUV after SUV - particularly given that they are using new propulsion that can't afford unnecessary weight and drag.

I’d imagine this is mainly for the US market.

the time will come when cities will stop allowing using so much public space for the sake of one person/family’s comfort.

I wonder what will happen to the SUV vs. car distribution when “gas guzzler” isn’t a consideration anymore. There’s still parking, of course, but most SUVs I see have the same wheelbase as their sedan counterparts. They’re just tall.

Wouldn't the term just be swapped for something like "power pilferer"? (I'm assuming that a heavier EV will mean less miles per KWh or whatever the measure is)

Using excess energy from renewable sources harms only the user's wallet, instead of the whole world.

SUV is the easiest platform for EVs, sadly.

1) add layer of batteries 2) add wheels to battery base 3) slap on some fancy stuff

Ta-dah! An EV SUV.

No need to plan where the batteries need to go to keep the car looking like a car.

If you want a "budget" EV that looks like a car and not a building on wheels, your only options are pretty much the Hyundai Ioniq and Tesla Model 3. The rest are 100k+ premium cars (Model S, Porsche Taycan etc).

I would never spend more than $25k for a car. Period.

When are we getting good looking electric cars? The only good looking EV thus far is the Honda e but it has issues in pretty much every other department.

From the company with rampant electrical reliability problems in their existing gas cars. Hmmmm.

Voltswagen

hahaha, I'm still waiting for the postmortem on what that was.

250 mile range is laughable for that price.

Here is a great no frills review of the ID.4 https://youtu.be/3oC9sUiwyL8

The TL;DR is even if its electric its not a serious competitor to tesla. The UI is terrible as the drive is unable to find a charger while navigating to their destination.

Electric car charging stations are going to look completely different the gas stations as they costs a few thousand dollars to install rather than a cool million for a gas station. So rather than having a bunch of high profile gas stations we're going to end up with somewhat ubiquitous electric charging stations of varying capacity.

Enabling drivers to know where to charge their cars is a killer feature of Telsa and any company that wants to compete will have to make it as easy if not easier to ensure your car is always charged and that you are able to charge on long trips.

> Electric car charging stations are going to look completely different the gas stations as they costs a few thousand dollars to install rather than a cool million for a gas station. So rather than having a bunch of high profile gas stations we're going to end up with somewhat ubiquitous electric charging stations of varying capacity.

Yep, this is the big change people aren't yet getting. Every mom and pop store in a small town can get free advertising just by installing a $1k charger for their customers and having it be visible in charging maps.

I have no interest in stopping to charge at Generic Gas Station #42 with the accompanying Franchise Fast Food Restaurant next to it when I'm on vacation or a road trip. I'll rather pick something interesting.

Hopefully they can update the crappy destination charging through an OTA update. If not, it's DOA.

id.4 comes with Android Auto and CarPlay compatibility. You'd be a fool to rely on the OEM tech.

Tesla loses big in this regard because they don't offer either and their built-in tech is garbage.

Tesla's vertical integration means navigation + charging planning, plus the actual charging, is seamless. I doubt you'd see the same with an iOS or Android app. Every time I read about charging for other platforms, it sounds terrible.

With Android Auto I just announce "OK Google, find charging stations along my route" and it works as you'd expect. It is in fact completely seamless, and unlike with Tesla I get state-of-the-art voice recognition and navigation that works offline.

I park my phone on a magnetic mount right next to the screen in my Model 3, so I get all the Waze notifications and music from Spotify over Bluetooth. Best of both worlds.

I just bought (co-bought) a Model Y, and and the Supercharger network meant that other electric cars were non-starters. Hyundai and Kia, for example, have Model Y competitors, but when I was looking at them, both directed would-be buyers to PlugShare.com for for non-local charging information: I invite anyone to look at that solution, and then look at the Supercharger solution.

I also live in an apartment building, and my building is supposed to install 240v chargers sometime in the next few months. Most of the buildings around me already have them, mostly operated by Chargepoint, but a few by Blink: the change from "can't own an electric car in an apartment building" to "most apartment buildings have chargers" is happening and happening faster than many thought. Once people get used to charging cars at home, as a primary solution, I doubt they're going to want to go back to gas stations.

The best ads for electric cars are the cars themselves. Most of my local friends have driven mine.

Are they going to install chargers in the assigned spaces of all the tenants who want them, or a couple of communal chargers for tenants to fight over? Having to go back out to the parking lot every couple of hours to see if the charger is free, move your car onto it, or move your car off of it, is right down the middle of "range anxiety."

We've got a 3, and I strongly agree. It's a lot of money (to me), and the car needs to be able to do normal-car things like roadtrips.

It would be one thing to buy a $10k commute appliance with limited range, but at $50k, it damn well better be able to be the "nice car" for roadtrips as well as for commuting.

What's interesting is that I did this recently and came to the opposite conclusion. Did you look at the situation when restricted to >= 250kW chargers? It's a completely different story, and that's with only one major CCS provider competing with Tesla. In the long run, those other chargers won't matter, and Tesla's expansion has been slow.

Well... Slow chargers (~20 - 30 miles added per hour of charging) may cost only a few thousand dollars each, but DC fast chargers (100 - 350 KW) cost much, much more than that.

UBS estimated USD250,000 per station in 2017 (unclear how many actual chargers per station).

Slow chargers aren't remotely comparable to gas stations.

(Of course, I understand that, for people who can charge at home, the picture is very different - we own two EVs and no ICE cars and are lucky enough to have charging in our garage.)

My opinion is that the industry has gone in the wrong direction with batteries. Cars should use swappable rechargeable batteries swapped by robots at the charging station. Faster pit stops and simpler batteries (no need for water-cooled, etc) and cheaper cars. And elimination of concern of battery warranty.

Guessing you're a non-EV owner.

I've owned a Tesla for the last 6 months. Here's my experience:

* It charges at home, begining the charge at 12:30AM just after the rates drop. It charges to ~240 miles of range.

* For the 4 days I've wanted to go futher, charged upto 100% and that solved my problem 2 of the 4.

* Other 2 days, I stopped at a charger along my way on a road trip. there was a place to grab food and take a walk. 25 minutes later on was back on the road. No biggie. -- I don't need or want a swapable battery. Rather have a better engineered car that doesn't have this engineering requirement.

I'd assume 99% of Tesla owners would agree.

Tesla Model 3 LR owner. Completely agree. There's no need for all the extra baggage for rapid battery swap. Road trips are easy already without swapping the battery. And the battery is swappable... just not rapidly. I've done many long distance road trips, and some regular road trips where I actually choose a slower (V1) supercharger because it's close to a friend's house and we can meet up for lunch or dinner while I'm passing through their city. The notification on my phone that the charge session has ended always interrupts our meal a bit earlier than we would naturally end it, but that just means no awkward goodbye. It's great.

Also, I couldn't imagine driving an EV now without liquid cooled batteries. How would you preheat the battery when you want it to be nice and warm in preparation for a rapid charge, or to gain performance on cold mornings?

And the new Teslas have a heat pump to recycle battery heat into the cabin. There have been some notable failure reports with this, but so far so good on our Model Y.

Model Y here. Completely agree.

Guessing your not an owner of a vehicle that has a swappable battery ;) And I'm assuming that 100% of non-Tesla owners would agree.

Tesla attempted it and gave up. Given how much Musk loves ambition, there's probably a decent reason for it.

Part of the problem is accounting. Since the value of a battery pack is highly variable depending on its remaining life, the only way it would work is if you subscribed/leased the battery so it didn't matter what the delta in value of the packs are.

Without that, you have to return to the exact same swapping station and pickup your original battery.

You missed the key point of swapping batteries. You don't own the battery nor did you pay ($16K) for the battery. So there is no "original battery". I assume that in ten years we will have "standard units of power" - the equivalent of a large "D" cell battery.

That is an option I kind of outlined as leasing/subscribing to the battery back are the easiest mechanisms to do this.

If the car owner only charged via swapping you could do a system where the cost of the pack was part of the electricity cost (eg: like a propane/co2 tank swap). The downside to this specific one is that you would have to either prevent charging or charge a fee if they did not swap in a specific time period as the battery is a significant capital expense.

Swapping is getting more unlikely as car makers are switching over to structural battery packs which makes swapping the pack non-trivial.

The car equivalent of unrepairable smartphones, and unservicable tractors. That would be terrible.

That would massively increase the complexity and cost of batteries because suddenly they need to withstand being installed and removed thousands of times.

Many companies have tried this; all have failed. The latest to try is Ample [0], and we'll see how far they get. As a peer poster here observed, this idea seems correlated with people who don't have actual experience with EV ownership. It's a solution to a non-problem for the average driver [1].

Besides, Tesla now spends about $250K to build a supercharger. A robotically-operated battery-swapping station would probably cost 10x as much both in initial capital and in maintenance costs.

[0] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/ample-ev-startup-swappabl...

[1] Although it might be the perfect solution for some drivers. Uber drivers maybe, who Tesla doesn't allow to use superchargers and who need to recharge as quickly as possible.

Most EV initiaties have failed, so those failures don't say a whole lot.

> this idea seems correlated with people who don't have actual experience with EV ownership. It's a solution to a non-problem for the average driver

Or there are lots of people it would be a problem for, and so they don't buy EVs. Unless you start handing out EVs at random it's hard to see how much the causality flows in each direction.

NIO succeeded: https://www.greencarcongress.com/2021/03/20210327-nio.html

I am aware that some companies have tried (I wouldn't say "many"). And I know that Apple tried with the Newton and failed - and didn't give up.

I don't think that a battery swapper would be any more complicated than an automatic car wash.

The problem is Gresham's Law as applied to battery packs.

A new EV owner decides to go on a trip and make use of the new swap stations. Their battery pack is brand new and charges to 100%. When they swap it, they're likely to get a 2 or 3 year old pack that only charges to 70%. It was intentionally exchanged at the swap station by an owner who was willing to roll the dice to try and get a newer pack from someone like our new EV owner.

They don't degrade that fast.

Your missing the point and proposal. I'm personally not purchasing a car whose batter costs more than any card I've ever purchased. And I am not alone. If I don't own the battery, I didn't pay fore it either. I've just shaved $16K off the car cost. At that lower price, myself and many other would consider it.

Still going to have to check it to make sure it's not producing smog when the authorities aren't watching.

I’m waiting for the next scandal where we find out that inside their black box electric motor there is a little diesel motor that gets topped up at night by tiny garden gnomes.

But you'll have to be patient; it's still two years away.

No, they did not launch their first all-electric SUV. They announced it. There's a difference.

[EDIT] Sorry, that's the "ID Buzz." A "people carrier in the spirit of the old Volkswagen microbus."

There's one in my driveway right now, I guarantee you it's not two years away

According to the site[1] they're shipping (shipped?) First Edition purchases to buyers in Q1 2021 and will be shipping cars made with reservations starting this summer for the lower trim and Oct-Nov for the higher trim.

[1]: https://www.vw.com/pre-order/

They're delivering ID.4s across the world now. It's currently the third best selling EV in Norway for 2021:

https://elbilstatistikk.no/

It may end up being the best selling model in Norway this year. The Audi e-tron (which is also a Volkswagen SUV) was the best selling EV in Norway in 2020.

Other VW SUVs which will be delivered this year are the Skoda Enyaq (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqdByCvnNQA) and the Audi Q4 e-tron (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ihZXQIlpRM).

I am never buying a Volkswagen after the Volkswagen Emissions Scandal in 2015.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal

Then I guess you’re never buying any European car ever again because it has since come to light that they were all at it. A bit misplaced given the electric push anyhow surely?

Not just European; practically everyone who made diesel cars was at it.

I am curious. Do you happen to have a source for it?

List of the main ones who got in trouble here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal#Fiat_...

And it's not like this was the first time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_device

It's really quite weird that it has become associated so closely with Volkswagen.

I naturally assume that a lot of products with computers that are subject to government testing cheat in some way.

Betcha that some Energy Star appliances can detect when they are being run through a test cycle.

It was everyone's emission scandal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal

They've already paid over 30 billion to resolve the scandal, and they've pledged to invest 86 billion to develop electric vehicles. It's pointless to hold old grudges against companies when the people responsible for the scandal are gone and the company is now moving in the right direction.

If you want to hold a long-term personal boycott against Volkswagon for immoral business practice, I assure you there are better reasons than the diesel emissions testing scandal.

How many "cheating" diesel vehicles did Volkswagen sell in the USA?

Not enough to matter, even if they had no emissions controls at all.

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