Ford hits the brakes on $12B in EV spending
theverge.com
theverge.com
My 15 year old car is starting to get some issues so I was browsing some EVs. They are literally twice as expensive as a comparable ICE car, even after tax incentives. With interest rates where they are, 22k vs 44k is a huge difference. They are just unaffordable for a lot of people.
(Also, was looking for a sedan. They don’t seem to make a lot of EV sedans, and I find the hatchback type ones kinda ugly. That’s just me though)
But it did spend its first 6 or 7 years in Western NY, with snowy, salty roads a good chunk of the year. There definitely is some rusty spots and corrosion.
I think people who do stuff like fix their own cars (and lots of other things) very much underestimate the time it takes to acquire the knowledge, and how much intuition they've unknowingly built up while they did it. Replacing a part is relatively easy, knowing what part to replace is its own skill. So cars is one of those things I will happily hand off to someone else to fix, while I focus on home repair or something.
If you live in dense urban housing you probably aren't up for swapping a transmission for your very first time on the curb of a busy street or doing much multi-day work in your narrow numbered parking spot unless you can borrow a friend's garage to have a place to spread out a little bit. You aren't rolling a toolbox down from your 4th floor apartment, and there's usually a relative void of auto parts and hardware stores inside the city. There just aren't many shade tree mechanics in places where shade trees are rare.
I still do minor repairs and things like battery swaps myself and keep an OBD reader in the car for preliminary investigation and research before I call the mechanic. But otherwise I probably average less than $1k USD per year on vehicle maintenance and repairs, tires oil included.
Obviously this excludes things like transmission swaps but those are ideally once in a decade occurrences with proper care and maintenance otherwise
The marketing for these vehicles is also laughable. Instead of advertising real-world range for a 10k towing load, they talk about how it can power your blender.
The mustang mach-e is another flop. A lot of people rushed out to buy one during the supply chain crunch, values shot up, now Ford can't give them away.
Also it's weird to be pushing EVs in areas where they aren't wanted (trucks, motorcycles). Harley Davidson just reported that their electric bike model sold 69 units globally in the last quarter of 2022...That's basically nothing. Their yearly goals are like 500 units.
For $60k, I'll just buy a real truck.
Ford just raised prices _again_ on top of their dealers already adding insane markups without the brand curtailing that behavior. Plus everything they deliver to dealers seems to be optioned out the ass to the point where everything is $80-120k.
My truck-shopping friends (that being most people here in the southeast) are all swearing off Ford and buying used from other brands for way cheaper.
heck, Scotty Kilmer JUST did a video on this...
Maybe buying used from someone's fleet. But then you're buying a used fleet vehicle...it was better for someone to sell it than repair and keep it in the fleet...
If you have a good relationship with a dealer they can order it for you, but they're just as likely to sell it to somebody else on receipt for more money than you were.
Honestly though I kind of prefer vans and I think discontinuing the E250 like they did after 2014 was an enormous mistake.
US has EV incentives explicitly tied to domestic production, so it's about industry protectionism.
US probably doesn't want a repeat of what happened to Detroit industry after Japanese imports.
Tbh, I wouldn't want an EV parked anywhere within 500 feet of my house. And seeing $41k dent repair bills for the Rivian or a non-covered Tesla battery replacement for driving in heavy rain...Well, I really don't think the masses are ready.
The fact that regulators are pushing so hard for EVs is steering us into a crisis in the near future, I think.
A huge number of people like owning cars. If there is price pressure from a law, there will be massive political pressure to change that law.
Move higher up and "personal city on the moon" becomes the status symbol. Move lower down and it's still cars. What type of car, and what modifications it has, etc, become quite important talking points.
A recent SMBC seems to me to explain it well: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/esteem-2
The bonus panel is hilarious!
And the more you customize your truck, the "higher" your status. To the point where you get ridiculous monstrosities like this https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTCPjEi.... There is no point to this besides to declare ones status.
Hell even closer to your bubble of private jets and yachts, plenty of high net worth people collect expensive and rare cars. It is a major status symbol to say they have 1 of 500 La Ferraris made or 1 of 375 McLaren P1's.
For what it's worth, I live in the Deep South and while I do see bumper stickers of that sort every now and then, the sentiment behind it is generally just banter. Most people with one probably have three or four identities more important than "I'm a Dodge guy", whether it be "I'm a Christian", "I'm a father", or what have you.
Anything for that sweet chinese money.
EVs benefit china. Period. Gavin Newsom met with Xi recently. Probably to collect his paycheck for enacting the law to phase out ICEs by 2030.
Why cant democrat supporters connect the dots.
Because there's no dots to connect.
Related: Dems probably know what a question mark is and where it should be used.
You don't see the surging crime in cities as a problem?
You don't see inflation as a problem?
Do you live under a bridge?
How about these for questions.
Democrats have their heads in the sand on these issues. We are a bleeding lamb, it's no coincidence Russia and Iran made military moves because we are
W E A K.
Maybe it is a coincidence to you. Democrats seem more concerned with letting trans men compete un women sports than any of them above.
We have bmw, VW, Mercedes etc here.
A lot of people I personally know work for bmw.
Your conspiracy doesn't make sense. No German politican would ever ty to hurt the German automotive sector.
And we don't have that many it people we have a ton of German engineers
The same German politicians that shutdown nuclear reactors making Germany more dependent on fossil fuels like coal?
The green got there energy politics as promised.
This is not contraire to what I said.
They think the way the world still sees us is and favorable and we project a strong image abroad. The world sees what's happening with the uncontained migration, crime surges in the city, and with the inflation and they see weakness.
How you can be living in this and not see it is beyond my rational.
Perhaps its the same dunning Kruger effect is making you not be able to see that your politicians have sold you out your car industry to foreign entities that include an alliance of Russia China and Iran.
Your auto industry cannot compete. I have lived in China they are so far ahead of the EV market its a joke what's more, they own a monopoly on lithium production who do you think we will come begging to with an ev transition. It's sad. I hope you can start to question the madness these dirty politicians sold us out for.
Not explicitly.
But new gas stations will stop being built [1]. For-hire cars mandated to go electric [2]. Parking spaces reserved for electric cars only. Perhaps HOAs that ban the running of combustion engines on their streets. Nudges here and there that make it more annoying and expensive to own a gas car.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-07-11/californ...
[2] https://www.nyc.gov/assets/tlc/downloads/pdf/green_rides_ini...