Would the masses take it? Who knows. But I'd be all in on that one.
Maybe relax on the 300mi range and get a Nissan Leaf.
Living in the sticks?
ICEs enabled housing sparsity, reversing that is part of the solution.
I’d like to know what percentage of GDP is done “in the sticks”. It’s one of the more viable ways to address NIMBYISM and locality problems.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/redefining-rural-am...
That census definition of urban/rural is different from the colloquial definition. The census link allows an "urban" classification as low as 2,500 people.
Colloquially-defined rural areas have been decimated by globalization in the last 40 years. The "rural" area I grew up in had thousands of manufacturing jobs; now it may have 200. The drop in GDP goes far beyond urban sprawl enabled by ICE vehicles.
Also critical infrastructure is out “in the sticks” like dams, power infrastructure (lines/plants/storage), and the support of the container trucks. Then there’s agriculture. It all needs to be electrified and reachable by electrics.
Edit Just to expand on this, the current 90/10 split (500 miles gas/40ish electric) has cut my long distance drive gas usage down by something like 50-75%. If it were more like 500 miles gas/100 miles electric that’d probably cut it down to 2-4 gallons of gas per month or less. Around my house is already fully electric with the 10%.
The numbers I have not done are would simply going inline series with the gas be better than having the traditional power train and electric. In line meaning a generator to fire up the amps needed when the batter gets low-how modern trains work. I’m guessing it’s not so obvious since BMW cancelled their range extender.
These luxury features aren't why these products are so expensive. They are thrown in to segment the market and make people feel better about spending this huge amount of money. There is no incentive for the people producing these products to remove these luxuries.
Soon the only option for people who can't afford or simply don't want to buy the new luxury product is to buy an old and rundown version of what was once a luxury product. New affordable alternatives just aren't as profitable so they aren't produced anymore in the quantities that we actually need.
https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/how-often-do-te...
The battery still drives costs to some extent, but the bigger issue is manufacturing capacity; you can only make so many EVs on the existing production lines (including battery factory capacity), and there's plenty of high-end demand to consume the supply, so you're not going to leave money on the table selling a cheap car.
People who want a cheap EV just have to do what every cost-conscious consumer does when a new technology comes along: wait. At some point there will be plenty of EVs for the PMC and it will make sense to build one for the rest of us.
While I think plenty of buyers yearn for a "traditional" car, it's hard to justify one with the added base cost of electric. The Nissan Leaf got pretty close to this (albeit with less range) and while it sold OK, it was far from a barn-busting success.
The marginal cost of adding gizmos and gadgets to an electric car is not very high due to the large base cost sunk into the platform, so we get gizmos and gadgets.
This may be plausible, but is there data to support it? Because, anecdotally, all the add-ons of "gizmos and gadgets" options can blow up the price. For example, a base F-150 is $43,325. The Platinum options package adds over $23k in just options.
I suspect the more likely culprit is manufacturing cost and efficiency. It just makes more sense to make electric windows the default when the majority of people are going to pay for them anyways.
But there are stories of people driving them in below 0 F where if you don't warm it up in the morning (via setting the leave time when charging) they have real loss. This is another area tesla is way ahead, with the battery mgmt system working better in the cold, plus the heat pump. People in cold Quebec also suffer this cold weather.
I'd pay extra for that
We have villages in Eastern Europe that don't have plumbing or gas, yet they have fiber optic cable and free and fast public Wi-Fi, so you see horse-pulled carts carrying villagers with laptops.
That's what I'd feel like in 2023 rolling my own window in an EV.
AUD$35,000 for small subcompact is not cheap.
For the car you're describing, check out the Chevy Bolt EV/EUV. It's the closest car to what you're asking for, although it doesn't have a 300 mile range. It may be hard though, Chevy is moving all they can make.
The Oli is especially impressive in that they've learned that you can sacrifice battery capacity, and if you just keep the car lightweight and aerodynamic enough, you can still get decent range. They're claiming a (pretty phenomenal) 6.2 miles per kWh, and for a car targeting a price point starting at $20k that offers the utility of a small city car, SUV, and pickup truck in a single vehicle, I find it compelling, even as the sort of person for whom this is the least viable car.
And if $20k sounds like too much, the Ami is less impressive, but I think starts at closer to $10k.
I don't care about playing Doom or The Witcher on the giant touchscreen infotainment system in my car, nor do I want any so called "smart" featured that don't work right half the time.
Give me Android/Apple connect and physical knobs and switches and I'm good.
It’s a better car though.
Will cost less and be more weight efficient
However....the decision was made to stick with +12V because, mainly, the Industry pumped out accessories (door locks, fans, you name it) that run on +12, and hence +48 would be 'custom' (read: 'expensive'). Was also true of the actuators. The moby FETs needed to switch the current existed and heatsinking wasn't too much of a problem, and so.... +12V it was. Big-ass thick wires... ok....
It seems some others inside found my memo recently -- or re-discovered what I had found -- and, finally, +48V seems to be moving into vehicles. With a +48V LiFePo battery, it should work really well. And to the original comment here: yes, your copper wiring is smaller because E x I is same but I*2*R is less because I is less for given power. Note the squared term; that is why +48V is a win.
Somehow, it seems like some folks (I am by no means the first!) 'see the future' but for reasons I don't fully understand, The Future seems to take longer to get here than necessary.
Microsoft tried to sell the world on Smart TVs back when most Americans had dial up.
Smart car infotainment back in I think it was 2008 or 2009, complete with voice control.
Sometimes being early can be worse than being late.
(Look at all the early attempts at ebooks!)
1. Their "self driving" adaptive cruise is very bad compared to other brands. Because they dropped radar and don't use proven modules like others.
2. Same for their idiotic attempt to replace well working sensors for automatic wipers with not working cameras.
3. And now this next thing on parking sensors that just don't work.
Still hordes of people are stupid enough to believe Musk claiming it's all great innovation and good for the customer. While in reality things just don't work and Tesla is cutting corners.
Elon Musk is a prime example of an "alternative facts" kind of liar. Keep shouting loud enough and some people start te believe you. He got very far with all his lies, but so did Bernie Madoff...
You can diss the wipers or parking sensors but pretending that the competition is anywhere near autopilot, especially the newest one based on FSD code, is hilarious.
Maybe several years ago. My car stays happily in the center of the lane -and- doesn't veer to the right with offramps, or lane count changes.
One of the problems with some Tesla owners is they buy too fully into the "dinosaur" thinking, and assume that other manufacturers have not adjusted their thinking since the 90s.
My car actively maps the road ahead and will, while staying in lanes, avoid potholes, for one very simple example.
This was a pretty big disappointment for me coming from a 2005 (!) Audi A4 which has auto wipers that work _almost_ flawlessly (and has a physical adjustment on the stalk when I need to override).
I'm very much not a Tesla hater - overall I _love_ the car. I just wish a few details were different (speedometer & nav more directly in line of site, physical controls for windshield wipers, CarPlay integration). I've just been kinda shocked how bad the auto wipers are for a brand new car.
Adaptive Cruise works well for me though, although I enjoy the act of driving so I don't use it all that often other than long straight highways.
This is interesting. What links can you provide backing this up?
The early mobileeye autopilot was actually pretty good, it did traffic aware cruise control and autosteer, making driving easier. Everything after that seems only marginally better.
And yet for some reason GM is planning to remove CarPlay and Android Auto from their EV lineup in the next year or so, because screw you consumers.