Americans remain resistant to the lure of EVs, which are still unaffordable | Hacker News Reader

Americans remain resistant to the lure of EVs, which are still unaffordable

arstechnica.com

6 pointsPaulHoule13 comments

I am an auto enthusiast. I tried a Tesla Model S P85D to give it a fair chance, something many of my fellow auto enthusiasts thought was an insane idea. I ended up getting rid of it after just 3 months for a number of reasons. A few were:

• The added weight of the battery made the 4 door sedan have worse handling and braking performance than most minivans, or encumbered pickup trucks. This was quite literally a safety concern.

• The charging infrastructure just isn't there yet. I am not a homeowner. At the time, I lived in an apartment complex with non-Tesla EV chargers. I'd get about 1% charge per hour on these, meaning I often got less than 10% charge restored overnight if I came home late and left the next morning. Tesla chargers near me were constantly packed, with lines for a spot forming during weekends and after 5pm on weekdays.

• Even the Superchargers at my locations took an hour or more at times for a full charge. The advertised charge capacity isn't a fixed charging speed, it decreases dramatically at higher charge levels, such that 90%-100% might take as long as 40%-65% did.

• Some people suggest not charging to full capacity and simply charging more frequently. In addition to logistical challenges with this, I found that my state of charge worked similarly to a gas gauge in an ICE car: going from 100% to 90% would get me up to 45 miles. Going from 20% to 10% never got me more than 25 miles. Meaning a 90% charge was not 90% of the 300 mile range, but perhaps closer to a 260 mile range.

• Power delivery is not consistent. Admittedly, this is less of a concern for ordinary users, but for automotive enthusiasts with a love for performance, the fact that my car went into something of a soft limp mode after 3 launches in under 10 minutes made me miserable. My 0-60 would go from about 3.1 seconds to about 4.8 seconds. My Mercedes AMG's, Corvettes, Nissan GT-R's, and Porsches have never had performance degradation like this.

• This is more of a Tesla issue than an EV issue, but I got a scrape/gash in 2 body panels (not just paint) from someone who didn't leave a note, though it was only about 6 inches long and less than half an inch deep. Tesla service center wanted to replace both entire panels and repaint the entire car for $17,000. My buddy's body shop fixed it so well for $2,000 the dealership I bought it from couldn't tell anything happened when I sold it back to them.

Obviously take this with a grain of salt (as you should any N=1 study), but I suspect I'm not the only person with these gripes. To simply paint EV adoption as a price issue is an oversimplification.

What a pointless article. Any car that needs a $10k battery is going to be more expensive than an ICE vehicle. You’ll save money most of the time over the life of the vehicle in the form of lower fuel and maintenance costs. Once again Americans get stuck on the upfront cost, not the total cost of ownership.

At this point I have to wonder what the motivation of articles like these are and how much money is behind them.

> You’ll save money most of the time over the life of the vehicle in the form of lower fuel and maintenance costs.

In theory, this is true. In practice, Teslas are very expensive to repair, don't have a very good reliability track record, and there isn't the secondary market yet for independent mechanics and part suppliers to be able to challenge factory repair costs. This is why Tesla sets aside roughly the same amount for warranty reserves as their competitors, meaning they expect to spend the same amount per year doing repairs on their cars as do the ICE makers.

Really the auto industry itself is making the cars unappealing by locking things down with DRM and trying to change the ownership model of cars, even being able to block you from starting the car remotely. So we have propriety charging stations that are owned by the automaker, a repair ecosystem controlled by the automaker, and powerful software in complete control of every aspect of the car communicating constantly with the automaker. In that type of environment, expect to get milked constantly regardless of the theoretical advantages EVs have in terms of cost. A truly open platform electric car -- one that is highly modifiable and customizable and mechanically much less complex -- that's a DIY/hobbyists' dream, and it should have much lower maintenance costs.

But automakers are standing in the way.

My son is looking at getting his first car, he wants a "classic car" but given upstate NY winters I think we are going to add whatever economy car we can find to the motor pool at the farm.

He absolutely hates the idea of a "connected car" and if affordable electric cars are glorified cell phones he is going to stick with old gas cars.

That’s coming to all cars, even old ones. (A new car now in 20 years will be a beater).

This is mostly just a societal choice, not familiar with Canada but know that both the US and Australia have lagged on this. Many brands simply won't ship EVs to Australia as without incentives they can sell them much more relieably in Europe, so those well run countries get the cleaner healthier air and reduction in imported fossil fuels.

Being from Canada and ready to start a family it’s is not affordable to purchase an electric vehicle size of SUV and doesn’t have a reliable network of chargers doesn’t help either. Also there are not a lot of incentives for electric vehicle buyers.

how much of this reticence is due to EV charging infrastructure, or lack thereof? One of those where state intervention is needed - you got to lay the infrastructure out to service future demand - free market isn't going to do it

Umm, Tesla built a nation–wide charging infrastructure from scratch on their own dime a decade before anyone else. That seems like a free market success to me. If we look further back in time we see the free market building zillions of gas stations without needing much help from the government.

There is one important way that electric charging infrastructure differs from gas stations though. Most people who use an electric car as a daily driver will simply charge it at home. They might need to spend a few hundred bucks to upgrade to a 40A or 50A circuit, but they won’t need a supercharger every day of the week. I don’t think it will be very long before apartment complexes are advertising that they already have charging infrastructure installed, and eventually it will be ubiquitous. Everywhere you can park will have a way to charge your car, and gas stations will be few and far between.

hmm....didn't Tesla do this via subsidy from government? The funds definitely didn't come from revenue of cars sold. We can see the clear chicken / egg challenge with EV - no one is going to buy a car if they can't reliably move it. State intervention is not a bad thing, 'free' market is not necessarily a bad thing

No, the billion dollars for the global Supercharger network came out of their own revenue. They only consider opening the network to non Teslas where required by law (EU) or where gov subsidies are provided (which is rare).

thanks - appreciate the correction!

I surface it only to highlight that these critical pieces of infrastructure don’t get built or paid for magically. Someone had to eat the cost and time.

Electrify America only built theirs because the US gov required it as part of the Dieselgate settlement.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/vws-2-billion-penalty-for-di...

This is not to say Tesla is without fault, it is to say if you want to build and sell EVs you should have to contribute to the shared capital costs instead of spending that revenue on share buybacks or other shareholder enrichment mechanisms.

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