Comment by S_A_P | Hacker News Reader

Comment by S_A_P | Hacker News Reader

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At 272k plus taxes I don’t think we need to worry about this being a peoples car. I think that all manufacturers realize that ICE is on the way out. The new generation of electric cars on the horizon are very compelling and seem to be capable of even better performance than ICE vehicles. The Lucid Air and Rivian truck( along with Tesla and traditional car makers) are bringing prices down more quickly than I personally expected. I think that FCA(now stellantis) hellcatting all the cars was/is a great way to send off the old technology. Making high profit vehicles like this is also helping stellantis bankroll the transition to electric cars.

I say all of that to say that big gas guzzler vehicles are an easy target for judgement but in the scheme of things they’re about 29% of CO2 emissions. Cars are getting more fuel efficient and the average car is not a supercharged v8.

Also what’s wrong with the fetishization of cars? There is a lot to geek out to in vehicle engineering. Not all cars are a giant eff you to the planet. Just like not every computer is a 500gpu crypto miner.

"Making high profit vehicles like this is also helping stellantis bankroll the transition to electric cars."

And keeps regular people from affording an EV truck. Although, I also hate how much stupid tech they put in them.

"Cars are getting more fuel efficient and the average car is not a supercharged v8."

I was surprised that I recently got 20.5 mpg hauling 1200 lbs of lumber. That was almost double what I expected to get.

"There is a lot to geek out to in vehicle engineering."

I absolutely agree. Prior to computer (and phreaks, and ham, etc) hot rodders where hackers. There's still a lot of interesting tech and concepts to explore.

>And keeps regular people from affording an EV truck. Although, I also hate how much stupid tech they put in them.

They don't have the money to transition so they could either sell these high margin vehicles to fund the transition to EVs or sell off the business and dump all the non useful assets like the engine/transmission factories. Either way, you aren't getting your cheap truck until there is sufficient volume and the second approach will make it harder to get to that volume.

Not just volume, but also the scarcity/demand for inputs (battery materials mostly).

> And keeps regular people from affording an EV truck.

It's unlikely that many normal people will be able charge an EV, even if they can afford one. About 1/3 of houses lack a garage, and I highly doubt that apartments will offer chargers in their lots. Electrical generation may be an issue if large numbers of EVs are being charged every night. Lower repairability and the large costs associated with battery packs mean the used market won't be large. It's going to be very hard to live outside the city.

I don't think being charged at night is an issue when electricity use typically drops at night. Some searching shows that peak usage in the summers is about 2x the usage at 3-4 am: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 . You can also see this reflected in Time Of Use (TOU) plans power companies are switching to that de-incentivize electricity use during peak hours. For me this ends at 9pm, and my car (and my charger) already support delaying charging times to when prices are lower.

For a small number of cars, that's true. I wonder what that will look like as more of the grid switches to renewable, including solar, and adoption of EVs exceeds 50% of vehicles on the road.

> > "Making high profit vehicles like this is also helping stellantis bankroll the transition to electric cars."

> And keeps regular people from affording an EV truck.

How, exactly?

AFAICS, if Stellantis didn't have the profits from stuff like this, they'd have to charge even more for other stuff... Like electric vehicles. Or go out of business -- and then they wouldn't sell any electric vehicles at all. Which would lower the overall supply-side of the EV market, lowering competitive pressure on other manufacturers so they all have less of a need to compete on price. Now that would keep people from being able to afford an electric truck!

The exact opposite of your thesis.

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