Automakers must build cheaper, smaller EVs to spur adoption, report says | Hacker News Reader

Automakers must build cheaper, smaller EVs to spur adoption, report says

arstechnica.com

29 pointsrntn75 comments

I was very close to buying an EV this summer but ended up not getting it. It felt like I could get an equivalent ICE car for about $20K cheaper.

I did a lot of research about EV charging and the more I read the more I felt I didn't understand how it would practically work. I make a long trip every month or so and it sounds like the EV charging network isn't quite to where the point where it's as easy, quick, and cost efficient as filling up gas in an ICE car.

I think I'm going to wait for another 8-10 years for the kinks and range to be worked out. PHEV or Hybrid for me until then.

If you get a Tesla it is solved now. The charging is seamless and reliable pretty much everywhere except the very most out of the way places. All the rest though that can't yet use Tesla's charging network I would agree total trash if you want to do a long trip and need charging. This should change in ~2 years when manufactures start making more EVs that are compatible with NACS (aka Tesla's super charger network)

This is going to sound like a real dumb reason to avoid a Tesla but it disappoints me that they don't have Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. I tried them in rental cars over the past year and now that's a must-have in my next car.

Agree - I will not buy a car without CarPlay no matter what other benefits it may offer.

I have the same feeling.

Also, a number of domestic mfrs are switching over the the Tesla charging plug, some as soon as the '24 year models. Don't know what the arrangements for using the network will look like though.

> If you get a Tesla it is solved now. The charging is seamless and reliable pretty much everywhere except the very most out of the way places

There are still places that aren't out of the way but lack Tesla network chargers.

I'm on the other side of Puget Sound from Seattle, and Tesla's charger map shows nothing over here [1]. The nearest Tesla network chargers are in Seattle. Getting there and back is almost $30 in ferry fares, plus 1 to 2 hours on the ferry (depending on which ferry route you take). There is also one in Tacoma, which is about 90 minutes round trip plus a Tacoma Narrows bridge toll.

[1] https://www.tesla.com/findus?v=2&bounds=47.94252518054602%2C...

If you have a house, or apartment with access to a L1 or L2 charger, charging at home should cover 100% of your local trips and any longer trips, you'll inevitably pass by a Tesla supercharger in Sequim, Forks, Seattle, Tacoma, Burlington, Cle Elum, etc.

The fuel savings are dramatic in Washington with our low-cost electricity and relatively high gasoline prices. For example, I pay $0.11/kWh and EVs get 3-4mi/kWh. so thats about 3 cents per mile travelled.

Assuming 30mpg and $4/gallon, that's 13 cents per mile travelled or more than 4 times the cost per mile. And there are plenty of ICE vehicles that get less than 30mpg and gasoline is often more expensive than $4/gallon

Indeed. Washington is the state where EVs have the most advantage. A while back I did a comparison between a Chevy Bolt EV and similar non-hybrid ICE cars. EV wins on energy costs per unit distance whenever G/E > 9.4, where G is the cost of gas in $/gal and E is the cost of electricity in $/kWh.

G/E is around 36 right now in Western Washington.

Even in the state with the lowest G/E, Hawaii, G/E > 11 so EV wins.

I'm fine with the capabilities and the charging side of things, it's the complete lack of (available) competitive PHEVs or full EVs.

They seem to be using it to tack $10-20k more, even before credits. $20k is quite a bit of gas.

If you qualify for the tax credit in the U.S., a standard Model 3 is just under $30k. You simply cannot buy a comparable new ICE car for $10k.

> I did a lot of research about EV charging and the more I read the more I felt I didn't understand how it would practically work

You carry the gas station with you. From time to time you need to charge at a bigger gas station.

Isn't the upsizing of vehicles because of consumer demand, though?

They can sell crossovers and trucks into the consumer base at such volume and margin that it is worthwhile to simply stop making sedans.

There are people like me who just want an electric honda fit but it seems like there aren't enough of us to be worth the effort.

That and the way the curves are made by the gov. Many small cars they just can not make because they would not fit the requirements set by the gov. So they classify them as trucks (different set of curves).

I think EVs would not have difficulty meeting those small car fuel economy standards, even though they are very strict.

But they may not feel safe on a road surrounded by Dodge Rams and Raptors.

> an electric honda fit

IoniQ 5 comes close. It's the first EV that made me go "omg I want that!".

One of these days I'll take one for a test drive. Looks so cool, isn't super huge even though it's still big, and doesn't even try to look like a SUV. Although maybe I've been in USA too long and my perception is skewed because Wikipedia calls it a "compact crossover suv".

Maybe battery size is a limiting factor here? The electric mustang looks like an SUV, but has a lower ground clearance (5.1in) than the sports car internal combustion version (5.3in)

SUV is also an over-abused term because it used to only refer to giant vehicles, but now all the various compacts and crossovers are just cars that ride a bit higher.

And all things considered, a car with a trunk will almost always lose to the same vehicle with a more SUV-like end, because it can hold more.

> a car with a trunk will almost always lose to the same vehicle with a more SUV-like end, because it can hold more.

Modern SUV-like vehicles often have such raked back-ends that they barely hold more than the equivalent sedan. The opening and ease of loading is much better, however.

Something like a 3/4 size Subaru Outback would be a really killer EV

IoniQ 5 comes close.

We've got one. Great car, but it's no Honda Fit. As it had to fit in the same garage slot as the Nissan Leaf it replaced, I can confirm with my own eyes that it's only about six inches longer than the Leaf. But, man, a compact car it is not. I look at a Honda Fit as an even smaller version of the Scion xB we also have, and the Ioniq 5 dwarfs the Scion for interior passenger space. Additionally, judging how well a 3/4 acoustic bass fits, even has a bit more cargo space with the seats down. My six foot body could sleep with legs extended in the Ioniq 5 (I even bought a Backseat Bivy[0] for it), but the Scion is shy a few inches for that.

Re: "compact crossover SUV", well, they had to call it something, didn't they? But, no, it's not an SUV. "Station wagon" is close, but it's not one of those, either. It's really a four-door hatchback, but if you're thinking "hot hatch", well, not exactly that, either.

So who knows what to call it? But if one is looking for an electric version of a simple, small car, I don't know that the Ioniq 5 qualifies. Still, as Ferris Bueller said, if you have the means, I highly recommend one.

[0] https://backseatbivy.com

Buy an electric car from a company that didn't bother to put immobilizers on their cars for 10 years? I wouldn't be able to get past "What did they skimp on this time?"

https://www.engadget.com/hyundai-will-pay-200-million-after-...

This is definitely a US mindset. In Europe I look at the Ioniq 5 and think “that’s a huge car”.

I love the Citroen Ami and the Microlino. I very nearly bought an Ami earlier this year (I test drove it. It’s insane and absolutely should not work - but somehow it does!) but decided I’ll hold off for the Microlino

Citroen Ami: https://electricscooters.eu/citroen-ami/

Microlino: https://microlino-car.com/en/

Fiat is releasing a similar one soon, the Topolino: https://www.fiat.com/fiat-topolino/topolino

> electric Honda fit

Are you looking for one specifically made by Honda? Or what is missing from the small electric hatchbacks like the Chevy Bolt or Nissan Leaf?

They are both being phased out/discontinued is one good reason

https://www.gearpatrol.com/cars/a43720198/chevy-bolt-discont... https://electrek.co/2023/05/19/what-we-know-nissan-leaf-ev-r...

"Chevrolet Bolt EV Isn't Dead: It Will Return with GM's Ultium Batteries"

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a44639082/chevrolet-bolt-e...

The Leaf is in a weird position, since Nissan keeps betting (incorrectly) on CHAdeMO even on the latest model Leaf

No, but something that stands out about the Fit is that Honda actually gives a shit and gives you a first rate experience in a small car. Compared to other cars in the same model year, the Fit always gives you more headroom, more interior space, more usability of that space, better visibility out every side, and a smaller overall footprint. Other manufacturers treat the category as just a fleet mpg helper and don't really care about what it is like to live with the car.

My 09 Fit is about to cross 350k miles and if it broke tomorrow I'd probably be cross shopping a newer used Fit and a used Golf. Electric is only a nice-to-have in my personal wants list, and I am not buying new so I don't really care about what's around the corner.

With regards to the chevy bolt, Regular Car Reviews drove a gen 1 Fit for ages so if he says a small car is sad, I think I can trust him.

The trick here is to understand that the small electric vehicles are an entirely new segment between a bicycle and a car.

There will still be consumer demand for large vehicles, and vehicles the size of a modern sedan or even compact car.

But consider electric bikes: they replace some trips in larger vehicles, and make classes previously too-inconvenient trips happen.

Tiny electric cars fit in above the electric bike use cases, where they enable carrying more cargo, protect the user from weather, can still be parked conveniently in a city, and really poor people can afford them.

BYD Seagull is probably a good Fit alternative.

https://cleantechnica.com/2023/04/29/byd-unleashes-the-seagu...

Don't know if they have US sales planned though.

I guess what a lot of people don't understand is that if we want to keep a livable climate (within our carbon budget), basically every car anyone buys from here on out has to be electric. It's that urgent. If we started decarbonizing many years ago we wouldn't need such a breakneck speed, but alas.

Realistically based on current car prices and people's budgets and lack of charging infrastructure it's not happening as fast as needed. But it is still happening fast which is excellent! I hope it keeps accelerating!

In much of the world you can buy a BYD Atto 3, which sits in precisely this sector of the market.

But not in the USA.

This is interesting because it shows some complexity inherent to a government supporting a domestic industry.

Naively it seems like the government would block imports of the small Chinese EVs so that domestic industry could compete

BUT domestic automakers do not want the segment of a $5k tiny vehicle to exist at all, and will not 'compete' for that market! The margins and sales on such a thing would hurt the us auto industry as a whole. Even if a single US automaker stood to win the whole segment, their revenue and OI would sink because of cannabalizing their own full sized sales.

So we're left with a profound market distortion, where the "government's" (scare quotes because legislation in this area is driven by automakers not citizens) work to support the industry is having a bunch of unexpected effects. Sure, the automakers stocks are doing fine, but this has shut off development of a new technology, which will end up taxing the populace & increasing impact to the environment, and throttling a new domestic industry that will have defense applications in the future.

You can solve the problem "easily" if there's political will for it.

You allow "golf cart" manufacturers to sell "golf carts" that are fully enclosed and meet some lower safety level because they're "limited" to 35 miles an hour, or classified as motorcycles, or whatever.

Then you "officially" prohibit them from freeways, but turn a blind eye to it, until it's so common, that you can relax the laws associated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhood_Electric_Vehicle

A quick clarification - neither I nor the article were talking about mini EVs.

It’s talking about vehicles the size of a Hyundai Kona or a Volkswagen T-Roc.

But you can buy a Nissan Leaf in the USA. They are nearly the same size and same price.

How many times are we going to have to rediscover the supply/demand curve?

Turns out if you steal all the savings from owning an EV in terms of fuel from the consumer, they are less likely to want to buy one.

Will the mysteries of the world never cease?

Agree.. live north of i80 and in the winters here EV’s don’t have the range needed for rural areas. Hybrids works great and efficient ice’s do the trick.

Heating your Tesla and cold’s impact on lithium ion batteries equals really reduced range (40/50 percent loss of range).

It is surprising how quickly it seems people on online forums dismiss hybrids but honestly they seem to make the best sense at the right price point with our current tech. Just my two cents.

This is a natural market progression and will happen. Most automakers built higher cost, lower volume "premium" products for less price sensitive early adopters. As the product and market matures, costs reduce and more mass market products are available at lower costs (Model S->Model 3 -> Model 2 etc). Used cars also become available over time to increase supply and lower costs for a different market segment.

All I want is a car that looks aesthetically like a 2dr Wrangler but fully electric. Is that so much to ask for? In other words: sporty looking, slightly rugged, no frills.

We will see how much Jeep fancies up the electric Wrangler they allegedly have in the pipe:

https://electrek.co/2023/05/12/the-all-electric-jeep-wrangle...

Hybrids will spur adoption faster and cheaper than anything

the good is the enemy of the perfect.

Hybrids doesn't make sense to me. If you need a car that runs on gas then make it a proper ICE car. Why put two engines into one? Seems super wasteful.

Consumer report says hybrids are more reliable than ICE and EVs https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-s...

"Overall, hybrids have 26 percent fewer problems than cars powered by internal combustion engines (ICE)."

Seems fishy to me. How can a more complex device (ICE + EV) be more reliable than a pure ICE or EV? Also seems like a crap website, their chart show 79% more problems as red and then 26% fever as green.

Because modern ICE cars have freaking overgrown snowmobile transmissions, and a hybrid drivetrain can replace that entirely.

A hybrid can be simpler than an ICE car (by eliminating the transmission and allowing the engine to be power-banded) and cheaper than an EV (because a 10x size battery is more than the cost of the engine and generator).

Still doesn't explain how the EV is less reliable. OK, it's more expensive due to the battery, but surely no ICE at all should make it more reliable.

Most mechanical stresses in the drivetrain are transient and happen in the transmission. In the engine, they happen in the "out of band" power regimes -- very low and very high RPM.

The hybrid moves those transient "stresses," and the imparted maintenance thereof, into the electrical system. The engine never sees them.

This unlocks additional efficiencies. For example, the Prius uses the more fuel efficient Atkinson cycle engine. This is not possible in a standard car, because it cannot provide enough power in those transient regimes. You also get things like regenerative braking which help prolong brake life.

And, there's probably a bit of selection bias as well. I could see that the type of someone who buys a Prius is the type to not thrash it. That probably makes it appear more reliable in the statistics.

PHEV's are significantly less reliable, though. HEV's and PHEV's should have a similar level of reliability. The difference is that HEV's are mostly Toyotas and PHEV's mostly aren't.

My impression is that non-Toyota hybrids are significantly less reliable than gasoline cars, but the article doesn't give enough data to tell for sure.

You might be right. It says one of the only reliable PHEVs is the Toyota RAV4 prime.

Still, I would expect the hybrid Camry to be more reliable than the gas Camry. Simpler transmission, engine turns off when idle, doesn't need to rev as high because of the electric assist.

Sure. Hybrids should be more reliable than gasoline vehicles. But often people point at this article to say that hybrids are more reliable than electric cars, and is why I push back. That's just cherry picking. That statement is hiding behind the stronger facts that Toyotas are more reliable than Teslas and the first year of a new model is less reliable than others.

Electric for 95% of driving, gas to eliminate range anxiety for the few longer trips per year. Use the gas for charging the batteries - no connection between gas engine and electric drivetrain.

But then just rent an ICE car when you go for a long drive... better for the environment.

That makes no financial sense. I bought a car because rentals over time exceeded the ownership of owning. Since many trips are outside the EV range.

Not sure. In the comment I replied to, they mentioned that EV is good 95% of the time. In that case, renting a car, like once a month, for a long range tip would make sense imo. Better yet, public transport, then rent an EV there.

Or just get a PHEV. And then you only need 1/3 of the batteries in your car, and you don't have to deal with rentals. Does it really make sense to have 300 miles worth of batteries that you haul around in your car when 90% of your trips are less than 100 miles?

No, but it makes less sense to haul around an ICE or more battery than needed for 100 miles.

Have you dealt with a rental agency in a population hub any time in the past 15 years? It's awful service and such a pain to do all the research anew on pricing every time you want to do a drive.

Much easier to manage your own predictable resources than try to shove your use-case into another organization's framework.

> Use the gas for charging the batteries - no connection between gas engine and electric drivetrain.

Almost all of them have a connection from the gas engine to the wheels. I don't know if it is still the case today, but no that long ago many hybrid models even reused the same automatic transmission from the ICE version of the car. Hybrids are not designed as an electric car with a generator, the drivetrain is truly "hybrid" and send direct mechanical power form the ICE to the wheels

A Model 3's battery is 82kWh, a Camry Hybrid's battery is 1.6kWH.

In terms of battery, you could produce (82 / 1.6 = 51.25) hybrids per fully electric car.

The total fuel savings of replacing 10+ ICE cars with hybrids is an order of magnitude larger than replacing 1 ICE car with a fully electric car.

For each of those 51 hybrids you need to manufacture an extra ICE engine. Which is not cheap. It's more complex to make a drive train that can seamlessly handle switching from EV to ICE. So it's more difficult to manufacture. Has there been a study that takes the whole lifecycle of a hybrid into account vs an EV or ICE?

Would be super interested if there had been a research that also takes into account that we don't need SUVs that seems to be the go to car in the US.

ICE engines may be more complex, but batteries are still more expensive than a small ICE engine. Have you seen the cost of a replacement battery for a Tesla? $12-20k all day long. You don't need a massive, high performance ICE engine to charge up batteries on the go, or to get your car down the highway. Meanwhile I can get a high performance crate engine for less than half that cost ($5-6k all day). Less than half that for a basic, economical 4 banger.

A PHEV battery is 1/10th the size of an EV battery typically giving about 50 km of range. 90% of most people's daily use is less than 50 km. We could build 10 PHEVs with the battery from one EV. This means instead of an EV cutting fossil fuel use by 100%, 10 PHEVs could cut fossil fuel use by 90% x 10 = 900%.

PHEVs also charge faster due to the battery being 1/10th the size but they don't require buying a 240v charger and can be charged using 120v in 1/5th the time of an EV.

If you don't have anywhere to charge, you'll have to get an HEV.

The best you can get with current pure ICEs is about 35/43/39 mpg city/highway/combined.

A non-plug-in Toyota Prius gets 57/56/57. A Hyundai Elantra hybrid gets 53/56/54.

It's about getting more people using EV more often, and efficiently using the limited resources required for EVs.

Please go read about Toyota's strategy. If you have enough Lithium for 1000 EV batteries, or 10,000 hybrid batteries, it seems pretty easy to see how it is better for everyone, especially given average trip distance.

Not sure why hybrids don't make sense to you, have you done the research to consider all aspects of the change, or are you focused on a specific factor like reliability or wastefulness of the parts used? Don't you think it's wasteful to put a massive battery in a car to give it a long range that will be rarely used in most trips?

Hybrids will spur adoption of EVs?

A hybrid is not an EV, if your goal is to sell EVs then hybrids aren't accomplishing that.

Nah. People don't want small cars. Don't try to sell them yet another Bolt or Leaf they won't buy while the inventory languishes on some sad dealer lot until the model is discontinued due to anemic sales. Focus on revealed preference, not what consumers say they want.

> Yes, it’s true that the Ford F-150 remained the most popular vehicle sold in America last year. No surprise. It has been for 40 years. In fact, the F-150 was the most popular new and used vehicle sold in America last year. Ford moved 726,004 F-150s out showroom doors in 2021, making it the top seller by over 150,000 units. The Ram 1500 finally moved up from third to second with 569,388 and the Chevrolet Silverado fell to third with 519,774.

https://www.autoweek.com/news/trucks/a38752901/most-popular-...

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-best-selling-vehicle-in...

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

Who's buying those F-150s and how amenable are they to EVs? It's not enough to just look at what's most popular if the underlying demographics are more resistant to EVs on an ideological basis.

Great questions. Insights below on the emotional component of consumers in question:

https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-siz...

https://coltura.org/gasoline-superusers-2-report/

https://www.axios.com/2023/10/25/electric-vehicles-politics

https://www.axios.com/2023/09/27/state-politics-electric-veh...

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20231108-three-big-reas...

I wasn't in the market for an F-150, but a minivan, and the EV minivan doesn't exist, the PHEV minivan is way higher priced than the regular one, and the hybrid minivan is nearly impossible to find.

So I have a boring standard one now.

VW is apparently coming out with one next year...

https://www.caranddriver.com/volkswagen/id-buzz-microbus

My suggestion that we move to an 18-24 month gestation were rejected and so a vehicle available today was needed.

Hopefully it does well, but it would be nice to see EV minivans competitive with the low-end instead of being luxury items.

I'm as sticker shocked about inflation as anyone, is there a new minivan that is less expensive than the Kia Carnival (starts at $33,200)? Assuming $40k for the ID.Buzz, minus a $7,500 tax credit, gives about the same ball-park price.

https://www.kia.com/us/en/carnival-mpv

Carnival is what we went with, but after all and sundry, it was $41k out the door (to be fair, we went up a trim level).

I belong to a social group of dads from my son’s school. Most of them are blue collar conservatives. They all have pickups.

Not one is opposed to electric, as long as the details make sense.

But these are camping, fishing, hunting folk. Even the Lightning, which is an awesome product all around, doesn’t have the range+charging network to make it useable away from the home.

So for now, they’ll buy another ICE truck. But they’re absolutely open to it.

Very, very few people are opposed to electric for “ideological reasons.”

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