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Comment by baz00 | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone looked at the fact most people are too poor to buy new vehicles? Here in the UK the average vehicle age is 11 years old, most vehicles are second hand and the EV battery warranties top at 8 years. The financial risk of an out of warranty EV vs ICE vehicle is much much higher and the second hand price is higher. There is also zero bangernomics model for EVs either, which is really what a hell of a lot of people who drive vehicles are running.

The problem is not solved and may not be which is what I think the original poster is considering. The bottom rung of society is going to lose their transport.

Edit: I know everyone is blinded by EV hype at the moment but the entire financial model is drastically different and that will impact people heavily. Even the infrastructure and housing here doesn't necessarily mean it's viable.

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> The bottom rung of society is going to lose their transport.

And in many cases, they're also going to lose their jobs. Politicians are incapable of thinking beyond the M25, so are probably expecting everyone to just hop on the Tube or frequent London bus services instead.

People can't move closer to workplaces (or better public transport links), as the #1 goal of every UK government seems to be pumping up property prices to ever more ridiculous levels. (You can't allow the supply of housing to increase when rich people are getting richer from the rising prices!)

We're incapable of building transport infrastructure in the UK. Look at the state of HS2. Something like £500 million per mile of railway (largely down to those property prices), and it might not even reach London at the current rate, let alone be extended north of Birmingham.

Even for those that can afford an EV, huge numbers of people are unable to charge them at home (living in flats, relying on on-street parking, etc). There's hardly any visible growth of public charging infrastructure, and you just know that public chargers will be a huge bait+switch, eventually charging extortionate amounts compared to home charging (if only to minimize the queues...)

All that. And also, the environmental cost of producing batteries is terrible. That cost is hidden (in the mining and making of batteries, and probs the disposal) as opposed to during the lifetime in the fuel that is burnt. This is to say, it's that the environment justification doesn't hold either.

So why are governments committing to these non-sensical goals?

Crossrail has just been an incredibly success in terms of public infrastructure. But outside of London its true. There are cities that are huge from a European perspective without even a basic S-Bahn tunnel.

The UK is the perfect place for High Speed rail, and part of the problem with it is the idiotic bending over backwords for NIMBYs and the generally terrible rail planning practices. Not having built this in like the 80s is insanely dumb.

If we are talking about poor people then bus reduction in bus service is actually by far the biggest deal.

Transport becoming more expensive and housing becoming more expensive is linked at the hip.

Where is the most expensive property in the world? For the most part, next to ports, next to railways, next to subways, next to anything that makes makes it cheap to move people and things.

Demand for housing and transport is rising beyond the means of the infrastructure to actually sustain this. Most of the whinging I see against governments surrounds their unwillingness to restrict investment and immigration, which they won’t do because their books are balanced around the notion that they will “grow out of debt”. Likely we will arrive at a point where we have a bunch of infrastructure we built that’s infeasible to maintain that will turn into ruins when the population gets around to contracting.

IF you have lots of railways and subways then almost everywhere is gone be next to those things. And it also leads to a situation where your combined transport and housing cost are actually small. That is the right way to improve society. In Switzerland there are tons of really cheap places with fantastic rail connections.

The idea that rail infrastructure isn't sustainable is kind of nonsense, even with smaller population. Road infrastructure maintenance is far more expensive and in a bad economic situation you can run 30 year old trains. Its simply a matter of what your society puts priority on.

Main part of Britain specifically is so densely populated that even with massive collapse in population most of the rail network would still be vital.

I agree, so it will be the infrastructure connected by no better means than roads which will turn to ruins first.

Yet we are still building up such infrastructure, even if emphasis is gradually shifting to more sustainable infrastructure. I still am sceptical that much of what is being built now can survive a century. It seems most plausible that transport costs are going to climb up every year over the next few decades and I don't see how that doesn't break the back of many many communities.

Why is the expectation that "most people" should buy new vehicles? Seems likely we're addicted to 0% rates and consuming.

The financial reasonable thing for the wealthy has always been to buy off lease, at a steep depreciation discount, excellent service records, a dealer warranty, and 2 years and 20k miles.

I'm cheap, I last bought a 7 year old car for ¼ of its sticker price and 100k miles with detailed service records. I still drive it 13 years later at 20 years old, though, I only put 5-10k miles on a year. My most common trip is 150 miles in a neighboring state. That and track and autocross. I get 32mpg on mid grade gasoline.

I did consider a Tesla recently, a 2016 model s is about ⅓ of it's original sticker price, though Tesla is one of the few companies that the new car is cheaper than it was 6 years ago. With a 20% price drop.

There's obviously lots of reason why "most people" want a new. An unblemished interior, the newest self driving features, the longest range. But you'll find the 2-6 year olds still have 80% of the range, the same safety features, and some form of self driving that your old car (that as rates increase you should keep 7 years instead of 4) didn't have.

I think you are right and that the financial model is a total blind spot to the lawmakers. Never mind the fact that Volvo (or any other be maker) makes the bulk of its money from new car sales. Volvo used to make a lot of money from spares and repairs but that company was divested many many years ago. Now all the money is coming from new vehicle sales.

Average price of a new car in the US is almost $48k, regardless of powerplant. Your concern is extremely valid, but the only solution is a combination of engineering our way to cheaper EVs and targeted subsidies. We have the wealth, simply need to shift away from fossil fuel subsidies and redirect towards EVs.

That's the average. The median price of a new car is $25k.

https://www.cars.com/articles/2023-cars-com-affordability-re...

? from your source:

> The median new-car price among Cars.com dealers was approximately $42,500 in December — a 10% increase from December 2021 and 18% higher than December 2020.

You are looking at new car price which factors in all models of vehicle. I am only considering what they defined as "car" here vs suv or trucks. From the article:

"The segment median for cars ($25,745) is $8,450 less than small SUVs, $17,325 less than small pickups and $33,925 less than EVs."

That is a crazy statistic . This past spring I bought a hybrid toyota corolla LE (the lowest end model). It lists for $23K (of course the dealer added various markups that I couldn't opt out of).

What does $23K get? I drive the car like a normal person with no attempt to eek out extra mileage. I'm averaging 48 mpg over the past seven months since I got the car. Even though it is a low end model, it is amazing what technology it comes with. It shows me the speed limit and indicates when I'm over -- not by having a map of the speed limit, but by reading the signs as I drive. It has lane keeping and adaptive cruise control, and warns me when my closing speed is too great.

My ego isn't attached to my car so I don't care it is not flashy. I can't imagine paying twice as much unless I had some specialty need (eg, had to buy a heavy duty truck).

The average US car is actually an SUV or pick-up truck. But the average BEV is closer to being a Corolla competitor. A like-to-like comparison will still find a $15-20k gap in price.

I suspect they'll be a large market for aftermarket batteries (which should be a lot cheaper in 10 years time when this starts to become relevant). In the meantime, people can continue to buy second hand ICE vehicles.

That's already happening for Tesla 3 and Y. There are decent aftermarket batteries available, including smaller capacities for lower costs.

I've read it can cost over 10 thousand dollars to replace a battery in a model 3. That is a total nonstarter for the used market. Plenty of Teslas will probably just end up driven until the battery is totally shot then scrapped.

It is closer to $15k from Tesla :lol

But my comment was about third party options with lower range. $6-10k depending on the range selected, IIRC. For a car with high mileage already, that'd be a good way to turn it into a commuter.

In practice, I'm not seeing a significant difference between the way the 3 is being treated and the way similarly sized vehicles are treated.

You are buying the tesla for what like maybe $10k or so used lets say. Are you really going to pump $6-10k into a car that's only worth $10k? I mean people walk away from cars when they get a $2000 quote for a transmission.

Sure but EV's require significantly less maintenance than ICE vehicles, if a 10k battery gets you a car which runs like new for 10 more years (or more depending on future tech) and you like your car why wouldn't you?

It's a bit like the fact that there is a ton of Iphone8's available, pop a new battery in them and you're still good to go: https://www.gumtree.com.au/s-iphone/iphone+8/k0c18597r10?cat...

Theres a lot more than the drivetrain that goes bad on an old car. In fact depending on the sort of car you have the drivetrain is the absolute least of your problems and might be able to go around the world 10 times.

If the Tesla has a shot battery are you really buying it for $10k or are you probably going to pay less? If a car with a shot transmission isn't selling for $10k when it just needs $2k worth of work, why would you assume the Tesla with a shot battery would still be $10k? Do Teslas with broken batteries actually sell for $10k+?

And even if it is $10k, plus another $10k for a new battery, and from at least a drive train perspective that's practically a new Tesla for $20k that'll last another 100,000+mi.

There's going to be a point where every tesla has a shot battery just like how that happens for literally all our technology with a battery in it. EV isn't any less prone to degradation than any other lithium battery, same old tech as your phone battery or power drill. At that point either you throw 10k into the car or its a 4000lb paperweight. Basically, these cars are going to be totaled and scrapped a lot sooner than traditional cars.

I certainly would think twice about an old car with over 100k on the clock for $20k. There are plenty of other components besides the drivetrain that can go south on you and are expensive to fix relative to the value of the car. Some ICE cars are notorious for the drivetrain going 350k+ miles while the rest of it might rot apart. Honestly modern cars are terrible to drive when they are old. My old 20 year old honda had a leaky sunroof, leaky tail light seals, slow window motors that cut out in the cold winter, every hydraulic line corroded and leaked at one point or another sometimes multiple times, frame rust, shot rubber in the suspension components, shot brake system, rubber and plastic body trim that was just cracking and sloughing off from 20 years of UV bombardment, blown speakers, and a motorized radio antenna that never once worked. The drivetrain on the other hand was flawless being a honda, just needed an oil change with synthetic once a year ($35 or so and 15 minutes of my time mostly passive waiting for it to drain) and it was still on the original clutch.

With a tesla you still have suspension components with rubber. You still have rubber gaskets and seals around windows and doors. You still have hydraulic brake lines. You still have steel components that will rust. You still have electric motors controlling things like windows (and presumably the sexy door handle release) that probably have plastic gearboxes. You aren't out of the woods, far from it.

I definitely meant "a new Tesla" from the perspective of the drive train. Obviously an old car is gonna be an old car. And if the car is otherwise falling apart with the interior plastics crumbling from uv damage, replacing the battery is the least concern. Most would just consider the car dead at that point.

But that's why I don't understand why you seem to assume a Tesla needing a new battery and a worn out interior/exterior/suspension is going to be $10k. Where's the data? Do you actually have listings of Teslas with dead batteries for $10k?

Car batteries wear out less than your phone's batteries, because they build on different technologies, but they do wear out.

Battery pack cost has been cut in half over the past 10 years. The trend is expected to continue even without a revolutionary discovery that is suitable for the mass market.

It's also an issue of material blindness - there's a decent panel discussion on this hosted by Nate Hagens : https://youtu.be/5stPFdegJpg

How long do ICE warranties last in the UK?

Politicians in Europe are making the poor and working class bear the weight of solving climate change. This is likely to self-destruct as a policy.

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