Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

By silly decisions I mean things like removal of turn signal stalk, removal of parking sensors, lack of a gauge in field of view(y, 3), etc.

I love ability to buy online.

I hate the lack of an online parts catalog where I can purchase OEM parts. This is a big issue for me. I have enough experience to do anything on ICE car myself, engine rebuild included.

The cost of a replacement battery is astronomical. I can replace an engine in an ICE vehicle for $2k.

It also appears that Tesla is more expensive to insure.

That is lot to save on fuel and maintenance... Which I would estimate to be around 500 a year for maintenance...

The vehicle is literally paying for itself based on my usage.

Now, if you’re driving less the math may not work out but the cost of fuel alone has to factor into those annual maintenance costs.

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/06/22/toyota-corolla-vs-tesla...

If you qualify for the EV tax credit, I would argue the car is too expensive for your budget.

If you don’t qualify barely, a brand new ICE vehicle is going to last years and be cheaper. Is it really worth it to push budget?

If you way don’t qualify, definitely buying an EV. Also congrats on your income.

These electric cars are going for full gimmickry and just look like a giant long term ownership nightmare. Built to be disposable status symbols for your average American trying to appear wealthier than they are instead of practical vehicles for the mass market.

With thousands fewer parts, cheaper fuel, and the time savings of not having to go to a gas station, EVs have a lot of things working in their favor to make them cheaper to operate.

I purchased my corrolla off the lot in 2004 and _chose_ to go with manual everything for because it's cheaper and more reliable.

here we are 20 years on and that car is rock solid reliable with 168k miles and regular maintenance. I'm hoping to get another 20 years out of it.

When I decided I needed a minivan I went out and bought a 2007 Honda Odyssey, put a few thousand dollars into it and it runs like a champ (has just under 190k miles on it). But the Odyssey has an ongoing problem I'm trying to figure out and rectify ... the power sliding doors. I'd honestly rather just open them manually.

People love their convenience, but you know these vehicles with all their fancy whizbang features are going to be a maintenance burden during their lifetime.

There's something to be said about simplicity.

I'm going on vacation next week, driving with 2 young children. It'll be about a 11 hour drive which is not crazy for a US vacation. I don't want to plan where I stop and stop for 45 minutes to fuel up with 2 toddlers in the car.

And they're all much more expensive than a nice 5 year old gas car.

The value of my leased Volvo C40 has already fallen off a cliff and is less than my residual value. Once my lease is over there will be an NACS EX-30 that will be cheaper brand new, than what Volvo are charging for me to keep my old connector used battery car

But reading the room leads me to believe that there are a lot of people in your target demographic who think that EVs are for city dwellers.

The biggest issues for getting from 10% to ~50% are communication, price, and availability.

The real solution we seem to roughly agree upon is getting cars as a whole off the road where possible

Permanent investment in mass transit and any tech which plugs the gaps is the way forward in our view

The often subpar urban planning in North America (think Phoenix not Montreal) is simply incompatible with a sustainable and decarbonised future

Insisting on EVs over hybrids in the 2020s is a laughable total solution to the current situation we find ourselves in

Trouble is that pricing is awful, availability is also awful (there's still no date for when the Buzz will be around in the US) and I'm pretty happy with the gas price at the moment, so other than hype to buy a Tesla there's not much reason to buy electric at the moment.

We got the Leaf for $11k used, and if the EV were our only car we'd have had to spend significantly more on a car with much more range (at least 230 miles or more) and we'd have required the installation of a fast charger to handle the longer range. (120v charging is really pretty suitable for a car with only 100 miles of range.) All of these would have introduced significant costs and constraints, which were only offset by the very low price of a used Leaf, and the fact that we always have a backup option.

From what I’m reading EVs are around 1% of total cars and around 10% of new car sales in the U.S., while at least 60% of housing units are single family homes.

This is a big factor and one I note to anyone I know who is thinking of buying an EV. You don't want to be stuck with a dead end tech. Buying a non-Tesla that hasn't already adopted the north american charger is a foolish move at this point. I'm sure there will be conversion kits for many models at some point but that's another cost and one you likely want to have a professional do. Best to either buy a Tesla or just wait a year or two.

If they are full EVs and not PHEVs they also make the most sense for households that have multiple cars where one of the other cars is a gas car. While the vast majority of trips are short, and charger networks are improving, a lot of people in the US drive longer distances at least occasionally, so it is much easier to replace one out of two cars in a household an electric car than switch to only using electric cars.

I think that once enough people have EVs and the charger networks are better this will be less of an issue, but a lot of people seem to downplay this issue, which I think is not a good idea, because I think there's a genuine risk that there could be a chicken and egg problem to mass adoption of EVs where the market of people who are able to use an EV in 2024 could be saturated before enough people are using EVs to build out the charger network sufficiently.

My wife and I own one that was very comparably equipped to a similar luxury crossover / SUV, and the type of driving we do in that car is perfectly within the capabilities of our range & charging habits. Never going to gas stations or getting the annual oil change is a nice convenient perk for us. But we fit right in this targeted demographic:

1) Can afford an expensive, new car 2) Own a home and can install an EV charger 3) Have a second ICE vehicle for long trips

However, I can't imagine many people wanting EVs who fit this criteria don't have one by now. If the manufacturers want to keep selling EVs, they'll need to figure out how to replace the 2015 Accords and Tahoes without access to charging at home.

The reality is that range just isn’t there for most people, and the extra cost of an EV is far more than fuel savings.

It’s going to take a better battery chemistry. That’s it.

EVs cost more.

EVs take more than a couple of mins to "gas up".

EV range is still lacking, compared to available charging stations, imo.

When the market gets it right, I'll jump in with both feet, but I'm not spending twice the money on a car, then deal with horse shit like Tesla and others when it comes to service visits, scheduling, etc.

there will be adapters that will make current models compatible with Tesla's network once the switch is made(at least for Polestar, not sure about other brands)

Not even close. Maybe 6% of the households in my neighborhood have an EV, and I have no reason to believe we don't represent the average upper middle class neighborhood. I would imagine that percentage to be considerably lower in middle class neighborhoods. That's why I say we're not even close to saturating the single family home market.

Not everything is a conspiracy.

Generally speaking the article exposes that the pace of adoption as stated by DoT didn't grow enough to meet their 2030 goal (i.e. The second derivative is going down), and goes on to explain why.

I think the article is fair, I think its title also is, I think the HN title is problematic unless you slap "than required to meet 2030 goals".

Alfred Nobel at least felt guilty for introducing high explosives to warfare. The prize was his penance.

Everything I learn about Pulitzer says he’s a piece of shit, and I don’t know why anyone would want to win a prize named after either of those two oligarchs. But it does say something very on the nose about the epicycles in news reporting.

> Instead of seeing EVs as one piece of a plan for more sustainable transportation, America has focused on using EVs as a one-to-one replacement for gas guzzlers. But this one-size-fits-all solution fails to address our broader transportation problems, meaning emissions targets are likely to be missed and other transportation problems will continue to go unaddressed.

and

> People in Norway own more cars than they have in the past, in part because EV incentives encourage people to buy more cars, and the government has no plans to reduce how much people are driving.

"The government has no plans to reduce how much people are driving"? Huh? Obviously, the narrative of this article is anti-car. That's the "broader transportation problems" that they're referring to in the first quote. They could care less if the cars are producing emissions or not, they're just trying to manifest an anti-car future.

Maybe you live in a place where winter storms are not a reality but where I live the range isn't the problem it's the weather combined with the range. EVs range go down during winter and it's already worse, the risk of getting stuck in a snowstorm is thus higher.

But yes, during summer and perfect road conditions an EV would be great. That is not the reality of my life though and that is just speaking about the range issues. I live on the country side as well and I need a car that can handle roads that are not in perfect condition. EVs are also generally sedans and wouldn't even fit my family while being a lot more expensive, adding the risk of freezing to death in the car is just making it a no-go for now.

Back when I had feet, there were so many days where I had anxiety over forgetting to tie my shoes. Sometimes I would start the day with my shoes untied. Other days I'd obsess over which knot to use. And additional worries over my shoe becoming untied during the day.

I found out the solution to these problems wasn't about just remembering to tie my shoe tightly in the morning like an adult -- the real solution was to cut off my feet so I never needed shoes again!

If you can, that's nice. But that assumes being able to not only charge at home but to have fast charging infrastructure installed at home.

We charge at home but the car doesn't fully charge overnight. That works all right since my partner only commutes every other day. On occasions where two consecutive commute days (or other special trips) come up, there's a lot of range anxiety involved.

> I think EVs give me LESS range anxiety overall.

This is difficult to understand. Sure, it's nice if you can start on full charge at home every morning. Nonetheless, some day you'll need to go farther and then a gas car is inevitably easier and faster to fill up.

It's not even Joe Schmoe that's looking at the up front costs. I don't think EVs pencil out as profitable for people that aren't doing more than average amounts of driving. For someone borrowing for the car I cannot image ever getting ahead compared to traditional vehicles if you get $10k-20k more into debt at 6%apr for 60 months. That's an additional $3500-7000 in interest which buys you a lot of oil changes and gasoline. I guess I'll do the math again in 2031 when it's time to start looking at a more modern car and see if they are a good deal or not.

As the other reply mentions, this isn't an issue in China.

And now that the bet on expensive EV growth allowing manufacturers to have fat margins forever isn't panning out, they're all freaking out about cheap Chinese models and pivoting to design cheap EVs.

You see this more in Europe than the US because Europe doesnt have the same protectionist tariffs the US does.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/fear-c...

Batteries are unavoidably expensive, but the only market they've been targeting are the wealthy, so they're largely burning through the enthusiasts and people on the border. Of course that market slows down, you've gotta open up the rest of the market to keep it accelerating. Maybe make something other than F-150-alikes.

BYD, Stellantis, and others are already producing cheap EVs by the millions. There are tiny EVs on the road in Europe that cost as little as 7000 Euros. Not a lot yet but I've seen a few in the wild. Think lots of plastic and not a whole lot of range and speed. Perfect for a city car. Stellantis is launching a proper EV for 24K euros this year; the Citroen e-c3. Modest range and good enough speed for short journeys on the highway. VW is following soon with the ID2. And of course the Chinese market has very different pricing than the rest of the world because it's a much more competitive market. BYD already has vehicles in the price classes you mention in China. You can buy EVs there for less than 10K$.

Producing cheap EVs is a solved problem from a technical point of view. It's being done. They exist. Just not in the US. Not yet at least. But as volume production kicks in that's just a matter of time.

Even without that they will make sense soon. Expecting new tech to start out at the same place on the mass-production supply chain curve as the internal combustion engine is idealistic. It takes time to reach economies of scale but it will happen.

There are several dozen giga-scale battery factories coming online in the next few years. That should be a huge enabler to make cheap cars. Once they start to flood the market, the car makers will have to make budget vehicles to stay relevant.

There are also still a whole bunch of expensive R&D work still going on to optimize EV cars. Look at the cyber truck with its 48V and ethernet architecture. It made sense to launch that with an expensive vehicle so they can get a return on their R&D investment sooner. But now that they have it, they can apply it to a budget car and that should help lower cost by reducing the amount of copper wires needed.

Feels like everything is coming together for an explosion in EV growth. We're at the bottom of the ramp of the technology S-curve (logistics curve). We're in what feels a bit like a "false start" phase, but this phase is important for ironing out the kinks for the true mass-scale rollout.

And you will see super cheap evs as soon as the market for those thinking they are saving the planet is exhausted. As with any product, it’s easier to exploit emotional buyers. And once tesla and others will want to tap into the practical buyer market prices will drop.

Citroen C3 Petrol is 6.5L while the electric version starts from 13L. A straight 100% markup.

Tata Tiago Petrol starts from 6L while the electric version is 9.5L, with a 50% markup.

Despite this almost borderline stupid markup, electric care sales in India is growing 40% YoY.

I would love to buy an electric car, but I don't think we are getting a cheap one anytime soon. I'd rather wait and drive my old beat up car.

Also expensive cars have bigger profit margins - which is the real reason =)

What geographic locations do you have in mind when you’re recommending solar? Youre in basically the best location for it.

Very anecdotal but I disagree. My dream vehicle might be a hybrid pickup that sacrifices the frunk for an ICE that can give me much greater range if needed, while still having a full size battery I can use for around town and camping.

Also, EV pickups are basically the perfect work truck for people using plug-in power tools. My neighbor is building a new house, and the workers have needed to borrow our power outlet multiple times.

"pace of adoption" = % YoY growth. As the market matures and grows, it will no longer be able to "double" or "triple" in a short amount of time. A market with a fixed cap cannot sustain indefinite exponential growth; it will be a logistic function at best. This is simply a mathematical certainty; anyone who expected otherwise is a complete idiot undeserving to report on markets.

Interesting. For another data point, it turned a "normally" 12 hour trip into about 13.5 for me. (Sacramento to Seattle)

Besides, the technology is seeing rapid iteration of cooling systems and integration with the rest of the vehicle (like structural battery packs). This is not the time for such standards.

"A robot just swapped my electric car's battery" - https://youtu.be/hNZy603as5w

Today: "Nio Power" has gotten a lot further, with more cars and a chain of robo-garages to do the swap in a couple of minutes.

(Still a single unified module, but it's not clear anyone needs to manage several-hundred-pound modules just yet, maybe when it scales a bit more...)

And that was up from the previous time I did the same. We need about double the power density before this becomes interesting.

But the reason that this is not a thing are that most of your assumptions as to why that would be a good idea are probably wrong.

1) Batteries outlive the vehicle. Not always but on average they do. There are plenty of first generation EVs that are more than ten years old now that still work fine with their original battery. And the batteries in the newer ones are far better than those first generation ones.

2) Replacing the battery is actually not that big of a deal technically if it needs to be done. It's a bit costly but otherwise just a routine maintenance operation that can be done in a day or so. There are of course lots of older EVs with lots of miles that have had a battery replacement at some point to get a second life.

3) most people are a bit irrational about how much battery they want vs. what they actually need. The reality is that most people end up being perfectly happy with a modestly sized battery. Charging infrastructure is rapidly improving and mostly you only need it when you go on longer journeys. My father has had an EV for one and a half year. With the exception of their summer vacation a few months ago, they never use any chargers other than the one at home.

4) Battery safety is just fine. Yes there is the occasional battery fire. But it's far less common that ICE vehicle fires. There are a few hundred thousand ICE vehicle fires in the US every year. And unlike with battery fires, fatalities are very common. Hundreds per year. Unlike batteries, petrol burns fast, hot, and explosively when it burns. Modern batteries are a lot safer than the first generation ones. Manufactures test that by crashing vehicles, shooting at the battery, puncturing them with nails, etc.

I have a Prius Prime, and the charge is enough for driving around town. If it had a 50% larger battery, it could have gotten us to work on one charge. But we don't commute since the pandemic.

There's a lot that can go wrong when a car is in any kind of collision. EV have 'scary' high voltage cables that many repair shops don't want to deal with, but they make up for it with simplicity. Plug-in hybrids have almost all the complexity of both, combined.

My Volt ate some road debris, and it punctured an oil intercooler and two of the three glycol water loops, partly because the radiators sit quite low in a very full engine bay. I suspect many EVs would have been simpler to repair.

The complexity also just makes the product harder for potential customers to understand.

Now, I still like the car, and it has paid for the price premium in saved gasoline. Plug-in hybrids are a great middle ground between ICE and EV. I just wish the concept had sold better.

Sure a shorter range would technically suffice but it's nice to not have to charge each day (since he can't do that at home and uses a public charge points near his gym).

That comes down to roughly charging 1-2 times a week which is no hassle at all and doesn't require a secondary drive train with all it's complexity and maintenance cost.

Hybrid sales are way down here in Germany (relative to EV and the whole market) and they won't come back I think.

> My next car is going to be a midlife crisis purchase, and I'm taking a pretty hard look at a manual transmission ICE.

That sounds like a Porsche 911 Carrera T, at least that would be my midlife crisis choice if I had the money.

And where do you live that you have a mess of public chargers? The quick charger network is excellent where I live (Benelux)

Teslas have adjustable aircon vents, but only through the touch screen (at least on newer models). You can definitely aim/split them.

It's great that we're getting more competition, but since it's more expensive R&D it's all geared for top of market. I had looked at a plugin hybrid but the actual range of the electric engine was underwhelming.

I'm also curious how the EV situation will play out in Canada, it gets damn cold here. How much does that reduce the advertised range on top of running a heater?

There is literally demand for no more than 30 journeys a day in each direction. An hourly bus service would have more drivers than passengers even if it captured 100% of passenger journeys.

A personal car in a low traffic area will always be dramatically more preferred than even the most fancy clean bus.

So yes, I hope everyone starts using public transit, so that my car driving becomes even better.

On the other hand, people with extreme needs, I think, more often write online. It is normal even in my european country seeing a bunch of comments just not agreeing with what a majority if people think.

I have very modest car needs at all, and I seldom write that almost any EV would satisy my range needs. For me its an economic problem instead, just not worth it when driving seldom.

Classic cars are only possible to collect at all because of a lower level of proprietary crap than new cars. If you convert a perfectly working classic car, you're throwing away whatever engineering goodness is inside it to install some inferior bespoke and likely proprietary system. You will probably have to cause permanent damage to the original frame and body of the car. What you end up with is a weird combination that could malfunction in some circumstances, and has inferior range and resale value.

The economics of having a Leaf as a second vehicle just doesn't work very well, especially since my primary job is a remote work from home one which requires no daily commute. Used Leafs, even with batteries in terrible shape that will need an expensive replacement, are priced too high and the days of being able to add additional vehicles to an insurance policy for little cost appear to be gone. From an environmental point of view, using the truck for short trips probably is net better than having an entirely different vehicle, even if it's an EV, but it always feels wrong.

But everything we have now was planned assuming zero interest rates forever and that consumers will always demand more technology regardless of what it does.

Have y'all seen the photos of the new version of Apple Car Play in a Porsche? It's like nobody ever stopped and said "wait, is this a car that people are going to drive? Or a really uncomfortable workstation?"

I sold that car in 2020. Fast forward about 4 years and the EV market is all just soulless massive tanks needing Oversized Load flagging trucks to go through narrow tunnels /halfjoke