SF Becomes First U.S. City Where Electrified Cars Make Up 50% of Sales | Hacker News Reader

SF Becomes First U.S. City Where Electrified Cars Make Up 50% of Sales

carscoops.com

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Important qualifier that their definition of “electrified” includes any type of hybrid.

There’s a little more detail available from the source [1] they’re referencing.

In the San Francisco DMA, 34.2% of vehicle sales were electric vehicles, while 16.8% were hybrids.

In the rest of the country, Electric made up 9.3%, and hybrids 7.3%.

Surprising to me that EVs have already eclipsed hybrids nationally.

Also interesting that nationally, Rivian, an automaker that didn’t exist a few years ago, sold the 3rd most EVs in the country. (Though, a small fraction of Tesla’s sales).

[1] https://www.spglobal.com/mobility/en/research-analysis/first...

> Surprising to me that EVs have already eclipsed hybrids nationally.

I think a huge amount of the people interested in hybrids viewed them as an intermediary for fully electric.

And the other 50% are poor.

If you want everyone to drive an electric car, then you need to make it the value buy when it comes time to replace their current car.

People are keep cars longer, might be time for another cash for clunkers program with an extra incentive to replace it with a electric. But until interest rate go down and car price level off, people are not rushing to get cars.

I think it’s fine that used cars (for now) are ICE. We’re still supply constrained on making and selling electric cars, so taking a bunch of ICE off the road would only raise prices.

Part of environmentalism is knowing when not to buy new. What we should do is a cash-for-clunkers exclusively for trucks and SUVs that get replaced with electric sedans. They’re lower fuel efficiency, and way more dangerous.

> I think it’s fine that used cars (for now) are ICE

I hope that I'll be able to buy used ICE cars for the remainder of my life, at least.

I've soured on all modern cars, and especially electric cars, because of their data connections. That's a dealbreaker for me.

If you manage to find an electric model that allows you to pull the modem, that represents ultimate freedom. Think about it: Right now you are dependent on gas stations which can collect info on your transactions via CC or when you visit via surveillance.

With electric, if you set up a solar panel and battery system you have a greater ability to stay private by detaching from the grid and external dependencies(at least until you need to buy a part to fix/maintain your car).

Right now is probably the golden era because its before a lot of the OEM have gotten their act together on making a fully locked down system like Tesla but it still is the EV era so you benefit from the example above.

> If you manage to find an electric model that allows you to pull the modem, that represents ultimate freedom.

Yes, I agree. But it's not a thing that would impact my life enough to bother hacking to accomplish it. I can just buy old ICE cars and be fine.

I only have a limited amount of time in each day, and I have to prioritize things.

>But it's not a thing that would impact my life enough to bother hacking to accomplish it.

Well then you have a limit to how much you actually care about your privacy. So really whats the ultimate point then?

Sounds to me like you just don't like change. If you actually valued privacy this would not be your answer.

Buying used ICE cars is likely for the rest of your life, unless you are extremely young.

Gasoline, however, may become harder to come by. You may have to plan your long-distance trips around the remaining gas stations. I imagine that by then there will be apps to help you plan that trip.

If you look at TCO, electric cars are actually competitive with some of the cheapest ICE cars on the market.

https://cleantechnica.com/2023/06/04/tesla-model-3-lifecycle...

I don't entirely buy the author's depreciation argument, since that assumes you're trading in your car every 5 years as opposed to driving it for 15-20+ years until it ready to literally fall apart.

But even still, when you consider significantly reduced maintenance and fuel costs, it's not that far off.

Depends. My current SUV costs $1100 a year to insure including tax. I just got a quote for a Tesla Model 3 for the same level of coverage. As of today it's $6014 a year without tax.

I don't drive enough to make up a difference of $5000+ a year in gas and maintenance.

Counterpoint I just ensured a PHEV Tucson and Ioniq 5 (full ev) for $1800 a year. Pretty reasonable. It’s probably a Tesla specific problem because they are in the luxury segment or maybe it’s their atrocious build quality.

I don't think it's Tesla specific, seems more like at least for me EV's in general are significantly more expensive to insure. Mr. Rumor Mill is that part of it is just because of higher rates of cars being written off due to damage to the battery packs. Of course, we all know how trust worthy Mr. Mill is so take it for what it's worth.

> As of today it's $6014 a year without tax.

Wow, that just sucks, even more so if you actually shopped around.

I was quoted $2-300/month for my BMW i4, switched insurance companies and got it back down to $100/month.

I have an S and the cost is $2k a year after tax, about on par with the insurance costs of my old Camry. Probably worth shopping around a bit more if you’re still in the process.

$6k/year for insurance? Wow. I did not expect that.

Yeah it's why I usually have to mention that context matters a lot when talking TCO . Where I live, not only is insurance more costly, electricity is also considerably more expensive (it's hit 20 cents a kilowatt hour though starting to come back down). Then I also have to factor in both the higher upfront costs of the car, but also the costs upgrade my home to support charging the car at home.

For a lot of people that calculation is true, but there's also going to be people like me where the TCO statement is hilariously untrue.

TCO doesn’t matter, financing is not based on TCO it’s based on sticker cost. The upfront costs of EVs are still prohibitively expensive for a lot of people even if TCO is lower.

“Being poor is expensive.”

If you are poor, then you should never, ever ever buy a new car. It simply doesn't make financial sense.

EVs have been in production on the market long enough that previously leased and rented models are going to be available to dealerships to sell as used.

Very, very few. Before 2018-2019 there were less than 100k/year sold in the US.

I bought a $50k+ vehicle recently and it’s not an EV by design. Am I poor?

> Am I poor?

Probably not but the comment doesn't seem to engage with their point. Let's say the government had an incentive program for dealers to collect money for buying back the consumer's current vehicle at an increased price but only if the consumer chooses to purchase an electric vehicle. Would it have been a closer decision, even if marginal (even if you still choose the non-EV option)? Even if you don't, someone else will choose the EV option because it's ultimately cheaper.

There is no EV that met my requirements: 500hp luxury coupe.

Looking past my anecdotal experience, there are many other contributing factors to why people don’t want an EV. Yes, high purchase price is a big driver, but things like a lack of charging infrastructure, battery technology not being ready yet (big agree from me on this one), and people just straight up preferring an ICE are not far behind.

To generalize and say that anyone who isn’t buying an EV is doing so because they can’t afford one is factually wrong.

Source: https://epic.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/EPIC-En...

As someone who lives across the world from San Francisco where electric cars are not currently feasible for year-round driving - how does an electric grid like California's accommodate such a large increase in electricity usage?

I guess there's enough people that are able to work remotely, but I feel like having thousands of electric cars get plugged in to charge at roughly the same time would be hard on the grid - especially when you're also looking at the same people likely turning on high-current loads like air conditioning at the same time too.

Does California ration electricity, or are they able to generate enough power to maintain the system? I'm genuinely curious - we're going to have to develop similar systems in other countries/states if we're going to push for all electric cars for the future.

They do a daily good job off offsetting most people’s charging to midnight-6am by setting high rates per KWH during the day then dropping them to something reasonable during the night time to encourage charging when the grid is basically at it highest capacity

Most of California's electricity problems these days are during a heat wave when dry weather forces the utility company to shutdown grid near the tree line (to avoid being on the hook for another forest fire). Those places are in the country, not the places where EVs are being bought (in urban areas that are mostly far away from fire zones).

Would be interested in comparing this to the used:new car purchase ratio of SFBA vs other areas, along with per capita income. Unfortunately the dataset doesn't seem (obviously) publicly available

Notably, next year CA is slated to cut the volume-based pricing for residential electricity by 1/3 (and add a potentially hefty fixed-charge) which will accelerate this a lot.

SF Bay Area, not just the city itself.

In Oslo it's 90 percent. SF has a lot of catching up to do.

it’s defining “electrified” as hybrid or electric which is a bit misleading but even so, that’s insane.

especially that 1/4 are teslas. people don’t feel lack of individuality buying the same car that everyone else has?

Okay the various car commercials that advertise basic economy cars by portraying owners of all other cars as sheep or similar works.

Essentially all cars are sold in the tens and hundreds of thousands to people who live in generic suburbs with HOAs that mandate beige conformity.

A. Looking the same apparently is not a real issue for most people, although simultaneously fake individuality is used heavily in marketing.

B. As nearly all modern commercial items are mass produced and generic, personalizing them would be done by customizing them after the fact, not by buying a similar but different mass produced item. This customization is almost never done, see point A.

Even gearheads... we buy the car we like, then we customize them. Some of us do like more oddball cars, but it's not necessarily about showing our individuality, as much as we like the experience of those quirky, unique vehicles. Most of us even have a boring, every day daily driver that looks like everybody else's.

> especially that 1/4 are teslas. people don’t feel lack of individuality buying the same car that everyone else has?

I felt it, and I intentionally did test drives for alternatives before even considering a Tesla, but it just didn't make any logical sense for me to get something different after evaluating all the factors.

The factors I was considering were price, range, acceleration, how fun to drive it was, size (I didn't want a giant SUV, and I would rather get a smaller 2-seater car similar to Subaru BRZ), and the ease of charging/not having to worry about charging on trips or preplanning it. The whole autopilot/FSD thing wasn't even a factor for me, and I still ended up going with Tesla.

4 years later, I feel the lack of individuality with that car even more, and the market for new EVs from other manufacturers certainly looks much better than it did in 2019, but I still would have picked Model 3 even today tbh. Just not ever having to ever worry about preplanning my charging on any trips (or having to think about it at all ever) is amazing. And I am saying that as someone who lives in an apartment in the middle of a city, without my own dedicated garage.

I would love to get a different car that is not a "everyone drives the same one" car that hits all those factors at least just as well. But even with the current state of the EV market, i feel like it will just end up in me replacing my Model 3 with a souped up Model 2 a few years down the road.

P.S. I feel like the lack of individuality due to everyone getting the same car sucks, but it usually happens for a good reason. One of my favorite cars of all time to actually drive was a honda civic, and it definitely was also one of those "everyone drives the same one because it addresses a lot of important factors and is a good value for what you pay for it" types of a car (under the whole civic/accord/corolla/camry umbrella of car models). And I just ended up convincing myself that if i really cared about the lack of individuality of the car model i have that much, I would just customize it with a non-stock color or finish vinyl wrap. Which I ended up never doing, as I realized it just doesn't bother me that much yet.

The idea that you could achieve "individuality" by purchasing a mass-produced item just because it has 1% instead of 25% market share was a lie sold to you by the manufacturers of those items

disagree, the 1% one is more unique and does display individuality

Only if your best way of expressing yourself is in what you buy

Bay Area's always preferred to define individuality by what you do and not what you own. That's why every party conversation starts off with "So...what do you do? What are you working on?" but the billionaire who founded a trillion-dollar company might be sitting next to you in rollerblades, ripped jeans, and company schwag.

Anecdotal but I've noticed that there are merely a small fraction of cars with bumper stickers these days. As a child it felt a lot more commonplace. This is wild conjecture, but maybe the average American doesn't need to project individuality via automobile anymore?

Maybe.

I know that I've never viewed a car as a personal statement of any sort. It's a tool for transportation, nothing more. For years, in the US, this made me a bit of a weirdo.

But over the last decade or so, it hasn't done that. And while I still am in the minority, I find more and more people who think the same as me as time goes on.

It might be more that people are more aware of OPSEC. It's why people who own firearms don't fly Gadsens or put those bumper stickers on their cars as much anymore. It's basically a "smash this window and get a free Glock"

Also on tesla:

https://electrek.co/2023/05/25/tesla-model-y-is-now-the-worl...

impressive but helps to only effectively have 3 models.

obviously differnt if toyota could lump all sedan sales together. or all suv sales together

Also: China is making big push on EVs right now, where a lot of those Model Ys are made and sold.

4 (S3XY), but yeah, the point still stands.

i said effectively because the s isn’t really in reach for most. i mean even the x isn’t really

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