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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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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