If Europe and Japan can have small, cheap EVs, why can’t America? | Hacker News Reader

If Europe and Japan can have small, cheap EVs, why can’t America?

arstechnica.com

43 pointszdw109 comments

The US is all about Big and Powerful, and the last 20 years of SUV marketing did the job, too, so small cars simply don't sell.

But lest my fellow Europeans feel smug and superior: the same thing has been happening in the EU. What is being marketed is mostly SUVs and in lower-income countries (like Poland) they have become the "prestige" car to get as a result. And if you want to get an electric which isn't tiny and isn't an SUV either, you don't have a choice. There is no reasonable electric BMW 3 Touring.

Mh, I'm European, I have two "SUV", I see USA vehicles in USA, yes they tend to be bigger but not that much these days, we are not in the '60s anymore, that's not size the real difference but engines: USA engines are terrible, big in physical size/weight, far less powerful than EU one for their size and consumption. That's the substantial difference.

A 4 liter Jeep can easy be towed by a 2 liter EU engine, one against the other, that's the point. Perhaps cheaper oil prices and lack of environmental regulations have made the industry far less interested in expensive engine research preferring just aesthetics and optional on board.

> vehicles in USA, yes they tend to be bigger but not that much these days

Hmm? A recent Ford F-150 won't fit in any parking space you can find in the EU.

> The US is all about Big and Powerful

Many Americans have a fundamental psychological insecurity that they try to hide by driving large vehicles.

Driving a car with >= 200 horsepower is fun as hell. Performance is one of the main reasons that Tesla stans are into the brand. Generally, people buy smaller cars because they can't afford larger ones.

I'm sure it is. But lots of people buy smaller cars because they're at least slightly better for the environment, or they just realize people generally don't need bigger cars.

People buy smaller cars because fuel is expensive, and repairs for the most popular small cars are cheaper since material costs predominate.

In the US, fuel is inexpensive due to a lack of fuel taxes, food and other house home goods are sold in large containers leading to a cost savings if you can buy them and your big car can transport them, and labor is relatively expensive so repair costs flatten out when comparing car models. Lastly roads are huge so no one feels a pinch driving a big SUV.

That’s basically it, the economics of the US make it reasonable to drive a big car.

Bigger cars are actually safer in accidents. Not just cowboys, soccer Mom favoring big SUV is practically paying life insurance by paying the cost of gas. My guess is this is more true in rural areas.

Funny thing. I'm from Poland and never heard that having SUV is any "prestige". It's a car like any other.

Oh, marketing really pushes the "prestige" line and you can clearly see people buying overly large cars just to show off how wealthy they are. It's a thing. We don't think this way, being rational human beings, but most people really do.

Advertising is a funny thing. In the US Stella Artois is portrayed as classy.

Because the distances people travel via car within Europe and Japan are an order of magnitude shorter than the US?

Because European and Japanese towns/cities are much closer together whereas in the US they're much further apart with much more rural/wilderness land?

Long drives in cramped cars _suck_.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's the opposite -- public transit is much better in Europe and Japan and used for most daily commutes that in America would be by car, so cars are reserved for longer journeys.

While public transit is a lot better than in the US, a very large fraction of all commutes is still by car. Even in big cities like Berlin a quarter of the commutes is by car. In even slightly rural regions, it's a lot closer to 100%.

Perhaps $6/gallon will nudge some new passenger rail projects forward.

Long drives in SUVs are no ways better than in a decent sedan.

The real dynamic is carmakers promoting huge trucks as Patriotic and American, with super bowl ads showing these trucks moving houses around.

That leads to a significant number of people buying these massive vehicles.

And once these vehicles are on poorly designed American roads where safety is barely an afterthought, everyone driving in more normal sized cars feel even more unsafe, leading them to replace their sedans (which are already oversized compared to Sedans even a couple of decades ago) with CUVs, SUVs and trucks.

You will see this dynamic play out in household to household where people are essentially being forced into buying bigger, harder to handle, and more expensive cars because it truly feels unsafe to be driving in a normal car next to these monster trucks.

I don't believe this is actually the case. I spent 15 years driving in the US. I'd say 95% of my trips or so were under 6 miles.

First, tThe fact that you believe that 6 miles each way is a short distance only confirms the original point.

And second, you seem to be quite an outlier when it comes to USA commute. The average daily commute in the USA seems to be over 40 miles [1]

[1] https://www.answerfinancial.com/insurance-center/which-state...

> The fact that you believe that 6 miles each way is a short distance only confirms the original point.

Never been to USA but <10km here (CEE) is short distance even for bicycle.

That's assuming that most people do long travels in the US, I'm not sure that's true and wouldn't be surprised that the main need is commuting which small cars are really sufficient for.

You're assuming that the daily commute is short for most people.

I live in a fairly dense US city, and there is a fair percentage of downtown office workers that live more that 40 miles out, which given the routes they have to take and the traffic involved can often take 45 minutes to an hour.

Same here.

In Rome 1.5 million people a day come to the city to work, over a population of ~3 million residents.

In Milan it's 1 million people, over 1.5 million residents.

Still on average cars are much smaller than in NY or Los Angeles, I'll say that in Rome and Milan cars are much smaller than the Italian average, because parking space is very limited.

The western World is not that different everywhere you go, except some traits of US, which are not that western if you ask me, they are more similar to countries that just discovered market economy and consumerism.

There are folks out in the (mid)west who have 3-4 hour commutes to work. In fact, the further you go in that direction up until a couple of hours from the west coast, that's closer to normal.

It's still short enough for a small electric car. You're often one or two in the car. And you can still buy a comfortable small car.

When I lived on the west coast, living 10 miles from work took (much) more than 45 minutes for the commute.

Like, I've done multiple drives across the US in various directions and most of your time is spent looking at trees or vegetation.

Meanwhile I've been watching robcdee this past month bike across Japan on roads that are virtually 99% in a town of some kind with very little time spent anywhere undeveloped.

Also cities in Europe are significantly denser then most US cities.

TBHi heard that the main reason why american cars are bigger it't because americans are fatter.

Europeans are catching up. Not as fast as the Brits did but the EU is still majority overweight.

Don't know if this thread is sarcastic or not, but Europe is not catching up.

https://obesity.procon.org/global-obesity-levels/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_r...

US ranks very high

   12 United States of America 36.2%

First European country is Ireland at #51, first continental Europe country is Greece, at #54, my country is ranked #107.

Hey, Lithuania and Hungary are still in Europe. They haven't moved anywhere and they are #42 and #43 ;)

oops :)

you're right

I've missed them

Anyway the difference is negligible.

I didn't say obese. I said overweight.

59% of the EU measures as overweight, per the WHO this month.[1]

Globally, human beings are moving in this direction and the reasons why are quite poorly understood.

[1]:https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20220503-world-health-org...

the study says that 59% are overweight *or obese*

so people overweight and not obese are less than 59%.

While in US

The U.S. adult obesity rate tops 40 percent; highest ever recorded.

The U.S. adult obesity rate stands at 42.4 percent, the first time the national rate has passed the 40 percent mark, and further evidence of the country’s obesity crisis. The national adult obesity rate has increased by 26 percent since 2008.

so the difference is still significant.

average weight shows that

  Europe 70.8 kg (156.1 lb)

  North America 80.7 kg (177.9 lb)

European population 606 million adults, North America 263 million.

being overweight is not a severe condition, obesity is.

https://www.tfah.org/report-details/state-of-obesity-2020/

No that's not true. Americans drive only a little more kilometers per trip than Europeans.

Because the people who buy new cars don't buy small cars. The USA is a horrible market for small cars, EV or no - most people who would like small cars already drive used cars.

And especially during a shortage, no manufacturer is going to prioritize low-margin product.

Yeeep, Honda Fits arent sold anymore and and good luck finding a Prius in the lot without going out of state.

Because US average family size is 3.3, especially in suburban areas, while Europe is 2.7, less in the wealthier countries. Ever tried fitting 3 car seats in a Nissan Leaf?

Moreover, US suburbia, with its huge distances between home, school, sports and entertainment centers, has a tradition of kids car pooling. In Europe distances are shorter and biking or walking are more popular.

These, with proper marketing, almost forces US families to have at least one large car. Whether it's gas or electric is a matter of status, disposable income, area of living (suburbia has less charging stations because population density makes it less profitable) and local political climate.

E-bikes are an even better alternative for most tasks we do around town. BUT: Bike thieves. I'd be riding my e-bike everywhere if we actually held bike thieves accountable to the same level of car thieves. If I leave my e-bike outside alone for more than 30 minutes it's virtually guaranteed to be stolen.

Bike thieves are the scum of the earth

E-scooters?

I feel theft, portability, and price are the big reasons why E-scooters are taking off like crazy while E-bikes are not.

You can just fold up and bring a $500 E-scooter into your apartment and office, and also charge it while you work. Not to mention onto public transportation.

Unless you're very lucky to have an accommodating place of work and home, you probably can't do that with a E-bike.

Yes I know folding bikes exist (I personally have a Brompton), including folding E-bikes, but they're still not as convenient as a scooter. As much as I love my Brompton, I'm tempted to replace it with an E-scooter.

Edit: all of the above applies in comparison to normal non-electric bikes too.

Is having a bike shed/bike parking spot accomodating?

I thought that was default, given how dirt cheap they are per employee vehicle stored.

Is it internal and/or fully secure? And doesn't require you to get your bike out by 5PM sharp? If so, yes.

Is it just an outdoor space or rack you lock your bike to? If so, no.

Would love to have a barebones, no frills EV. Just give me a dumb "thin-client" LCD screen that I can project CarPlay into, otherwise no fancy technology gizmos and doodats.

Current dream car would be something like an Elise or S2000, just electric. Ok, so it wouldn't be as light, and it wouldn't have a manual transmission.

Forget all that fluff. I don't need CarPlay. I have no desire for my car and phone to be in any sort of relationship. I need a car that starts when asked and gets me where I need to go. Electric or gas, I don't much care so long as the thing functions when needed.

That said, at the moment I haven't found any electric car that would handle winter where I am. Temperatures regularly below -30 and occasionally below -40c still seem a non-started for reliable electrics. They cannot be left unplugged/unpowered for more than a few days at such temperatures without issues.

CarPlay (and Android Auto) is not a relationship between your car and your phone.

It is a second screen for the phone that is restricted to certain functions and has a different UI. The only integration with the car that I have seen is knowing when the lights turn on so the screen goes into dark mode and vice versa.

Edit: I guess the other place it interacts with the car is for the steering wheel controls and maybe a microphone. But these all seem like pretty basic and reasonable integrations.

I'd actually be fine with a simple slot you can mount (and charge) an iPad onto. i.e. the whole "let's glue a fake tablet onto the dashboard" aesthetic some manufacturers, most egregiously Mercedes, did for a while.

Debating whether I'd want some basic steering wheel bluetooth-based controls to help operate it though. Maybe a simple 4-way arrow/directional pad and a "ok" button?

Wasn’t the Nissan Leaf just that? A barebones EV . Probably needed better range which I think it does now.

In Europe Volkswagen e-UP is this https://www.volkswagen.co.uk/en/new/e-up.html

Or the Skoda CITIGOe iV version https://www.skoda.co.uk/used-cars/citigo

No touchscreen, just basic dashboard in both versions https://cdn.skoda-storyboard.com/2019/09/11_CITIGOe_iV_inter...

The range is "up to" 170 miles (270km) in both

If memory serves, the o.g. Tesla Roadster was based on the Lotus Elise.

Though it looks like an electric refresh of the Elise (probably renamed) is coming in a few years.

TIL Europe has cheap EVs. The article only talks about cars that will be available perhaps sometimes in the future at some projected cost.

Europe even has cheaper electric cars. Like the Opel Rocks E or the identical Citroen Ami.

Now that is really stretching the definition of a car - I can't imagine why anyone want one over an E-bike or an electric scooter.

Weather proof, better crash protection, ...

The Bolt has been sold in the US for years - prior to this supply chain nonsense, you could easily buy a Bolt in the Midwest for low ~30k USD ish, new.

Bolt sales were very low. Then came the fire recall and supply chain issues. The mid cycle refresh Bolt is now in production but dealers are asking $37K.

Not much meat here. The "reason" stated in the article is: "The automakers will argue that small cars are not profitable in the US".

It's because culturally we don't like them because we grew up with space. Small cars don't have enough space. We dislike small cars same way we dislike the small hotel rooms in EU.

Also, why do you care about the small size of an ev? Since it is electric powered it's not more polluting. Yeah, you can't park as many but dig deeper or build up.

Big EV are absolutely more polluting. They require more resources in their construction — which is a major driver of overall pollution footprint. Larger EVs also require more energy (eg electricity) to propel them, and all electricity sources have a pollution footprint (sometimes directly but always at construction/clean up).

Even your “dig deeper/build taller” for parking carries additional pollution costs.

Plus their tires degrade faster on the road.

That's pretty weak... next you will argue sports cars shouldn't be a thing because they burn through tires in less than 10k pretty often.

I’m not here to win an argument. I provided a fact and nothing more. If sports cars also burn through tires quickly they’re causing pollution of this type as well.

Digging deeper/building taller lets you removing parking roadside and street level though that makes things way more walkable and just better in a lot of places.

Larger vehicles are more dangerous for people walking or cycling, as well as taking up more space and reducing visibility for other road users.

You need hard seperation on roads between cars and pedestrian traffic regardless of size. That has been shown to be true. Most european countries keep resisting this, again because their streets are way to small, but everyone would be happier if you fixed it.

There are situations where they can mix reasonably well, but it means making the roads uncomfortable for driving, something few authorities are willing to do. If you look at Autoluw streets they are narrow, have lots of visual obstructions (trees, etc.) and are the kind of place you only drive if you really need to. Which is why they're such nice places to walk!

Remember the Smart car? They're not sold in the US any more, but they're still produced, so it's entirely a demand issue; they're not worth the hassle of importing, marketing, selling, and servicing.

I drive one of the smallest production cars sold in the US in the last 3 decades, unfortunately they only sold them here for just 4 years as they didn't sell well. The original design was made by Toyota for the European market, where it sold well in the City Car category, a vehicle category that is essentially nonexistent throughout US vehicle history. I love my little car, not the least of which because it's extremely versatile and handles well due to the short wheelbase.

I'd love to have an electric version of the car I have now, and I know something similar is being brought to market in the EU, however it'll never be sold in the US. It's not just small cars either. I also love station wagons, which unfortunately fell out of favor in the US in preference to these awful crossovers. The Subaru Levorg is a fantastic vehicle I wish I could buy but it's not sold in the US, instead one of the last remaining wagons on the US market was converted into a crossover (Outback).

When I look at the state of the current vehicle market in the US, it reminds me of some of the opening of Snow Crash, and how everybody drives around in horribly designed minivans. Well... guess what, we pretty much have that excepts it's crossovers/CUVs and SUVs. It makes driving a worse experience on the road for everyone who isn't in a massive vehicle because you can't see through the rolling roadblocks, and they're worse in every case for everyone else in an accident, and they're more difficult to drive with worse vehicle dynamics, and the type of people who buy them are generally the worst drivers (because they see it as insulating them and their family from the consequences of their own poor skill/behavior).

It doesn't have to be this way, but unfortunately it is, and I don't see a way to fix it. I really wish we could legally import vehicles from Europe and Japan without waiting 25 years (that stupid import rule). I would really like a Kei sports car as a weekender and a tiny EV hatchback as a daily, but neither is available for sale in the US unless I want something made in the 90s that's got 100k miles on it.

Mh, so far in EU we have ONLY ONE "cheap EV", Dacia Spring, PERHAPS (since I do not test it) useful for mild city usage since it have just 30kWh battery capacity, hardly useful elsewhere. For such use and expected lifetime, without local incentives (vary from State to State but are around 4-6k€) it's not even that cheap. Others EVs on sale here can't hardly be called cheap.

Surely, MOST people change cars after just few years, BUT they do so because cars have a certain re-sale value, since EVs re-sale value here is normally considered ZERO a reasonable life expectancy is FAR longer, and hardly an EV last more than 8 years with a still usable range for the owner.

Long story short: for those like me WFH so with a reduced car usage, living in an area where p.v. or eolic or micro-hydro are options, well, they might be an option, but for most people diesel need to be 4€/liter to make them economically sound. Artificially pushing oil prices so much will result in riots so probably BEFORE EVs became spread we probably have eVTOL as normal stuff for a little cohort of population, while most others have converged to social-housing depending 100% on public transportation at their conditions. And no, that's not good at all for humanity.

Honestly I'm convinced by the deep need of a change, but the ongoin change as advertised it's not that convincing, with enough room to suspect very very very terrible things underneath.

The old electric Chevy Spark was a great one for an around-town car.

But the new gas Spark gets the same fuel economy as the Saturn I bought in 1999, which--to drive the point home on how zero we've come in terms of compact car fuel economy--was 23 years ago.

It's a pity about lack of smaller cars in the US. I've always preferred them, whether cross country or around town. Cheaper to buy, cheaper to own, easier to park, harder to crash.

Just because someone might presume that people would “obviously” want small cheap EVs, does not actually translate to reality.

Small and cheap cars do not sell well in the US.

And it’s not just as easy as sticking some cars on a ship and putting them on a lot. There are different regulatory environments around the world which have different requirements. Kei cars are an example of a vehicle designed to very specifically meet a set of Japanese laws at the expense of many other attributes that might make it viable in other markets. Vehicles much larger and more powerful are criticized as being underpowered and cramped in the US.

The top 3 best selling vehicles in the US can fit a kei car in their cargo compartment.

https://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e15/garysewell/IMG_0109.j...

I think doing your part in driving a smaller vehicle works until you adopt the soccer mom mentality.

That is, there are a lot of other trucks and SUVs on the road. So you look at the risk of being in a sedan that crashes into a heavier vehicle. Do you really want to fall behind in that arms race with your own kids?

The Aptera is going to be pretty cheap compared to other EV manufacturers in the US.

https://aptera.us/

https://www.youtube.com/c/ApteraMotors

This looks awesome, and almost sounds too good to be true. Certainly I'll be investigating this one some more. I wonder what the expected lead time is for a pre-order? (and what the actual lead time might be). Couldn't quite tell from a quick glance if any have been delivered and what their run-rate is. Anyone know if it would qualify for the $7,500 federal tax credit?

https://fueleconomy.gov/feg/taxevb.shtml

I placed an order for an Aptera around 2008, but they never delivered and eventually refunded my $500 deposit in 2010. Rumor had it that they couldn't produce the body shell. After the Aptera debacle, I ordered one of the very first Nissan Leafs instead. I kept it for 8 years (about 60K miles) but ended up selling it when the range had dropped to around 50 miles. The 2011 Nissan Leaf had the worst depreciation of any car produced in 2011. I no longer own an electric car (but I'm no longer commuting).

Thanks for the first-hand insight into Aptera. Sounds like vapor-ware. For the Nissan Leaf, looks like the depreciation is still the worst, at least according to:

https://caredge.com/ranks/depreciation/popular/5-year/worst#...

...would you say the depreciation was justified? Maybe mostly because of the battery range reduction? Did it start to need repairs or were other things generally wearing out? Other maintenance higher than expected? Do you think the $7,500 tax credit for new Leafs (Leaves?) is/was playing a part in suppressing costs for used Leafs? (as in, why by a used one, when you can get a new one with a $7,500 discount). I guess probably not, since that list isn't dominated by the other EV's eligible for the tax incentive. What was the range when it was new? I see this site says it was ~100 miles:

https://www.cars.com/research/nissan-leaf-2011/

If you order now it probably won't be delivered until late 2023 at the earliest IMO. They hope to be in production later this year.

I don't think it will qualify unless they are successful with lobbying the government.

IMHO, they should just put a curb weight restriction on non-commercial vehicles. 1000kg should be plenty enough, although I would like to see even smaller cars on the roads in the range of 700kg, at least within city limits.

It does plenty of things at once: reduces emissions and pollution, improves safety for everyone, decreases congestion and decreases wear and tear on roads.

But it can only work if everyone is driving the same size of car/truck.

In any case this stupid arms race to get the most imposing vehicle on the road needs to end.

Small cheap cars have a margin around $100. It's hard to argue it's worthwhile to build and sell such a car when the total sales may be small and the factory costs $1B.

Erm, I beg to differ. Europe does have some small, cheap EV's but there's hardly a huge choice yet.

In Thailand they use Toyotas as Taxi Cabs. They have a drop in electric engine for the Toyotas and replace the gas tank with batteries and have a small palm tree like device that has solar panels on it. One charge lasts all day. Why can't we do that for old cars in the USA?

I always figured it was due to the heavy regulations on US car design that cover every aspect of it. The same kind of regulations that eliminated SRO housing.

For example, it would be much harder to make a small car as able to protect its occupants in a crash as a larger one.

It's mostly cultural I suspect. There are almost no technical reasons and very few financial reasons why it wouldn't be possible. But to get there you'd have to make cities (as that's where those ares are the most useful) a bit more like Europe and Japan (for living, not for driving around in a big car), and people don't like change and in the US it's even more of a dislike it the change seems to come from an example outside of the country.

Most of this suspicion is cobbled together from my own experience in the US (mostly the costs, not the middle part), and publications like NotJustBikes and about the way some US cities tend to grow outwards because investing in making what's already there healthy to live in is not as profitable as waiting for gentrification-ripeness and building around it in the meantime.

Crash protection is a technical reason.

US car regulations grew up around larger cars.

That would definitely end up in a spiral where you can only keep making bigger cars so they can't get crashed to death by other cars.

Reminds me of the side-effect of car-centric urban designs where it apparently is 'not news' to have people crash their cars into buildings.

Crash protection is also a function of speed and what you'll crash into. Change those, and the car can be different

The existing cars on the road make at least some of that regulation necessary or at least not unmotivated.

That and consumers tend to want a bigger car than their neighbour either for safety or bragging rights.

One thing that always annoys me in the UK is people who buy big SUVs because they live on wet leaves and maybe a slightly muddy road. Totally ruins a lot of British roads (and kills people), and keep in mind that all modern cars have been worked on by a team of vehicle dynamicists to make sure they are safe and stable in slippy conditions.

The number of people I've spoken to who don't causally understand why the car has a gearbox (and thus what gear to be in, in said slippy road) is too many.

F1 cars have also gotten a lot bigger this year due to crash structures since there were a few pretty bad accidents involving cars basically splitting in half recently.

What's the range on those "small, cheap EVs"? For its many faults, gas has really high energy density, which is useful in a country where some people think it's reasonable to drive an hour commute to get to work, and actual trips can be longer still.

A Renault Zoe is 240 miles, and a Corsa E is 220 miles. That's not far off the range of my last two petrol cars.

The issue is mostly the timeline. "recharging" your petrol car is a few orders of magnitude faster than an EV. If I'm doing a long drive of 100 miles, I now need to make sure I recharge before coming back to make sure I'm not stranded, since unlike a petrol car, if I run out of battery charge, I can't just have a friend drive out with a gallon of battery to get me going again.

Filling up a gas car is faster, but it's really not that much difference in real life usage.

I have a VW ID.3 (an electric hatchback). It can easily do a 100 mile round trip without worrying about running out. And if you go further, the car will just navigate you to the nearest rapid charger if it thinks you need charging to comfortably finish the trip. The car software makes it pretty hard to run out. You get back up to 80% charge in like 20 minutes on a 150kw rapid charger.

Caveat: This is in the UK where things are pretty dense and it take some real effort to run out of charge and ignore all the car's warnings without being near some kind of charging point.

Sure, but that caveat is pretty dang important. I'm in a part of the US where it's not hard to be on a highway where there's 10 miles between exits, and some of those exits won't even have a petrol station. I'm planning a road trip this summer that will easily be over 3000 miles, with many stretches through national parks or just barren desert where even my petrol car is going to require me to remember to refuel before I proceed.

Or if I want to go camping, I need to make sure there's either a charger in whatever small town is near the campsite, or make sure I have the charge for a full round trip.

I know a friend of mine with a full long-range Tesla literally carries all the cables to work out how to charge from a basic outlet because his family lives out in the country far from any charger, so often the only way he can get back to town reliably is to unplug an appliance at his family's house and run the cabling out the window to where he's parked his Tesla in the yard to make sure he can get home.

> I'm planning a road trip this summer that will easily be over 3000 miles

For a comparison, my annual mileage, including 1-2 driving holidays a year is about 4000 miles.

> many stretches through national parks or just barren desert where even my petrol car is going to require me to remember to refuel before I proceed.

Are any of those stretches longer than 300 miles without any refuels? Why is it ok to refuel and potentially run the entire range of your gas car, but not your EV?

> I know a friend of mine with a full long-range Tesla literally carries all the cables to work

And? Are you judging him for being prepared? I can make slights about people who drive with litres of water and foil blankets in case they get stuck in the wilderness, but that doesn't mean that they're not completely correct in being prepared for the situations they're facing.

Maybe an EV isn't for you. But for people who don't drive the width of the continental US on a vacation or do spontaneous driving trips that are greater than the range of a petrol car, (which I'd wager are far more common) they are.

You're imputing a lot of malice into what I've written that I didn't intend - I'm a big fan of EVs and would love to get one in the near future. I'm just outlining the sort of issues and complexities that come up if you live outside of the US east coast in terms of normal distances that you need to travel.

On average, I drive about the same amount as you. I have a 8 year old car with around 50,000 miles on it. The issue is that there's a range of common-enough activities outside of my day to day driving that make a 300 mile range more difficult.

I bring up my friend's Tesla situation only to point out the complexities. For a lot of the more rural midwest, there's not charging options that aren't bringing your own cables and hoping there's a plug you can use near where you can park your car. The reason he does it is that the closest charging station that's meant for EVs is nearly 50 miles in the wrong direction, so unless he wants to spend most of 3 hours recharging his car for the drive home, he has to get creative. I certainly didn't mean it as a slight to anything but the US EV infrastructure.

The reason I bring up the distances involved is not to brag about my driving or anything, but to illuminate the differences between EV viability in the US vs. Japan or the UK in the earlier replies. If I had an EV, this trip (to see my family for the first time in 3 years, and an old friend for the first time in 10) would be thousands of dollars in plane flights that are quite a bit worse for the environment.

For right now, as you point out, relying on an EV puts constraints on your life. The long drive to see my family again would go from 14 hours to 16+ if I had to work in stops to fully re-charge my EV. Or I could take a flight, but wouldn't that nearly undo all of the environmental benefit of having driven my EV for the rest of the year?

> For a lot of the more rural midwest, there's not charging options that aren't bringing your own cables and hoping there's a plug you can use near where you can park your car.

Sure, so EVs aren't for the rural midwest then. Living in actual rural areas means travelling with jerry cans in case you get stuck, and keeping emergency packs in case you're caught without transit.

> Or I could take a flight, but wouldn't that nearly undo all of the environmental benefit of having driven my EV for the rest of the year?

Unless you're driving a hyper efficient vehicle already, for a drive that long, depending on how many people you're driving, you would be better off flying. It's ~1.3 tonnes of CO2 for a 2500 mile drive and about 0.6kg CO2 per person to fly the same distance. Cars are a remarkably bad way to travel.

> The long drive to see my family again would go from 14 hours to 16+ if I had to work in stops to fully re-charge my EV

That doesn't sound unreasonable to me, to be honest? Driving 14 hours has got to be in the top percentile of non-commercial trips, and it only being ~15% longer on probably the worst case imaginable is pretty good.

Well that's not what the parent criticised, it was the range. It's not a replacement that you can treat exactly the same way but it does have other advantages. One, you don't need to detour to refuel before you leave. I don't know about you, but my nearest gas station is about a 10 minute drive in the opposite direction of where I want to go when I'm driving any distance trips, and always has 10-20 minute queues on Friday afternoons/ weekend mornings.

> If I'm doing a long drive of 100 miles, I now need to make sure I recharge before coming back to make sure I'm not stranded.

If your car has a range of 220 miles, you can do a 200 mile round trip without recharging in between. If 100 miles is considered a long drive for you then an EV is almost guaranteed to be good enough in range for your normal usage. If you're driving 250 miles or so in a one trip, you're likely stopping at some point along the way for 20-30 minutes _anyway_.

> I can't just have a friend drive out with a gallon of battery to get me going again.

Which friends of yours would you call to drive 100 miles to give you a fuel top up if you ran out on the way? Frankly if one my friends called and told me they ran out of petrol 90 minutes away from me and they wanted me to come rescue me I'd help them call for recovery, not drive 3 hours and go get them

Sure, but range and timeline to refill that range are intimately linked. You can think of it as "time spend refueling per mile driven". My current ICE car, I spend maybe 5 minutes refueling every 300 miles. Looking at the spec for the VW ID.4, the fast charging mode they highlight is 70 miles in 10 minutes. There's certainly advantages in being able to get in charge on your EV while you're in a shop or otherwise, but that requires ubiquitous infrastructure that's only just becoming a thing in the US.

EVs, for good reason, are mostly optimized for smaller trips where you top-up the battery after. If you're doing a trip that's beyond the range of the car, then you have to factor in the recharge time to go the rest of the required distance.

> If your car has a range of 220 miles, you can do a 200 mile round trip without recharging in between.

That may be true, but I don't know if I'd trust the range estimate to be that accurate. And yes, I'd likely just stop to charge somewhere before coming back, but that's the point - I'd need to make sure I'm going for dinner somewhere with a charger, or that the friend I'm visiting has a way to let me charge. It's not insurmountable, but it's a new wrinkle when gas stations are everywhere for the most part.

I, likewise, don't have a convenient gas station near where I live, but that's not an issue, since I can just stop once I'm on the highway at the cheapest price I see. That's not really an option in an EV. If you don't top up before a longer trip, you'll just have a bad time.

> Which friends of yours would you call to drive 100 miles ... I'd help them call for recovery.

I feel like you've entirely missed the point. I'm not trying to compare what my friends are willing to do for me. As far as I know, I can't get anyone, friend or professional, to re-charge an EV by the side of the road. At very least, I need someone who is specifically prepared to do so. The odds that the auto shop in whatever small town I've run out of charge near has the equipment to drive out and recharge me seems low, but maybe that's more common that I expect?

Volkswagen e-UP/Skoda CITIGOe iV has a range of "up to" 170 miles (270km)

Where the blood alcohol limit is over 0.02%, the number of flat intersections converted to roundabouts is a similar number, people drive 4 ton trucks with licenses they got in cereal boxes then you simply don’t want to drive a really tiny car even if you could.

Small cars are efficient but you can't beat the comfort of a large car when parking is easy as it is in most of the US. I have a compact and my wife has a large car. No comparison, friends.

I think the other reason for small cars is the illusion of safety, and distance. Smaller car with a smaller battery, means less range, or rather a perception of less range.

I want an electric motorcycle (not e-bike) and sidecar.

I'd like to have something like the Lit Motors self balancing enclosed motorcycle.

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=lit+motors&ia=web

because the oil companies bribed congress to require that cars be large and heavy enough to provide better safety...coincidentally, that decreased gas mileage a lot and increased oil demand...totally a coincidence...the oil companies pay congress to prevent small vehicles from being sold in america

Easy... you just have to beat the Toyota Corolla on price, comfort, dependability and resale value.

I had the Fiat 500e in the US. Amazing little thing but 80 miles is so limiting in the US.

Easy answer - because cars are a status symbol. Safety possibly plays a role too.

Because in the USA everything is bigger

...because mostly cultural trends towards ever more inefficient (but peakcockishly loud) big vehicles (e.g. SUVs) and the political football that is saving the petrochemical industry from those dirty commie renewable energy...companies.

I won't buy a car smaller than most cars on the road. It's a safety issue.

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