Are US EV sales a disaster or a booming segment? The answer may be both
bbc.com
bbc.com
Takes 5 minutes to get gas, gas stations are everywhere, but having to find a charging station for your EV and having to sit there for an hour or longer is just not appealing if the tradeoff is the good feelings of one's microscopic contribution to saving the planet. You want me to pay more for extra inconvenience.
I'm sure that will change eventually, but at this point it works best for home owners with garages, which isn't everybody.
“per 100,000 cars sold in each category, electric vehicles had the lowest number of fires.”
Source: https://www.popsci.com/technology/electric-vehicle-fire-rate...
The possibility of EVs catching fire all together inside an underground parking garage in a high rise should scare the hell out of anyone sane. Sprinkers will do nothing for that, and all that heat could permanently damage the building. The gasses could suffocate anyone unlucky enough to get stuck down below.
And EV fires are even rarer.
The people who study fires disagree with your other points:
https://www.ri.se/sites/default/files/2020-12/FRIC%20D1.2-20...
> Observations during the fire indicate that electric vehicles did not contribute to the fire development beyond what is expected from conventional vehicles.
Insurance companies are drastically raising rates on EVs as more information comes in: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/sep/30/the-quotes-wer... There are many reasons for this, among them the fire hazard. The EVs cost more to fix, of course, but EV batteries can reignite weeks or months after being damaged or catching on fire. So they must also be stored very far apart while being repaired.
Ferries do not want EVs on board because of the fire hazard: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/norwegian-ferry-company-b...
This firefighting expert says why these fires are much worse than ICE fires in a thorough presentation at a conference. The audio sucks but the info is gold: https://youtube.com/watch?v=AIXTP-TgPEw
I can't say if this battery replacement costs more than the car because of fire hazards. But I think it was deemed in need of replacement because of possible fire hazards. You be the judge: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/yikes-the-60000-hyundai-i...
If you do a little actual research about lithium battery fires, all of what I'm saying will be very obvious. Idk where your slides came from but they sound very wrong.
There are 100k vehicle fires every year in the UK yet the small amount of EV fires make headlines. The petrol and diesel fires are so common you don’t even hear about them.
The fact that you quote the daily mail is the cherry on top - remember when the diesel car burned down Luton airport? The daily mail commenters were calling for the banning of EVs over this.
One ferry company with two ferries banned EVs as an overreaction.
Insurance costs went up for lots of cars, but for EVs it was the high repair costs.
If you do even a little research you will see that EV fires are at least 20x less likely than ICE car fires. The spreaders of misinformation will have you believe that ICE cars are easier to put out - maybe, but why didn’t the TWO fire extinguishers put out the diesel car before it burned down the car park at Luton? What about the car park at Liverpool?
Even with the larger proportion of NMC batteries out there the fires are 20x less likely. LFP batteries are even less likely to go into thermal runaway and they are becoming more prevalent.
What exactly is misinformation about insurance rates going parabolic? Or the fact that these fires are self-oxidizing and much hotter than others? Or that ferries in progressive countries don't want to carry them? Or the videos and testimony of an expert at a fire safety conference showing that poison gasses rapidly escape from batteries as they enter the well-known process of thermal runaway? Or a replacement battery for the Hyundai Ioniq costing $60k, more than the MSRP of a brand new one?
>The spreaders of misinformation will have you believe that ICE cars are easier to put out - maybe, but why didn’t the TWO fire extinguishers put out the diesel car before it burned down the car park at Luton? What about the car park at Liverpool?
Many people believe that the media is lying about Luton, and that it was a hybrid battery that caught fire. Regardless of that, isn't it a huge problem if any EV catching fire can cause inextinguishable, toxic fires to spread through a whole car park full of them? I don't know about Liverpool off the top of my head. There are so many terrible parking garage fires now. I never heard of it happening in my whole life until recently, and I'm sure it's because EVs make it dramatically more likely to happen and more damaging.
You ought to consider the incentives behind the media push to assure people that EVs are safe. A large number of politicians behind mandating these death traps would be very embarrassed if the truth was recognized. Instead of waiting for the technology to develop and mature naturally, if that is even possible, they want to force it on us against our will. So forgive me for not giving two shits what any fake stats say on the issue. It will take much more time to settle the question of safety than these jokers are suggesting.
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/norwegian-ferry-company-b...
> Li-Ion batteries in electric vehicles pose a significant fire risk, which was further emphasized after the Felicity Ace cargo ship sank almost a year ago.
The Felicity Ace sank and therefore no cause was found. How are they coming to these conclusions? And YOU talk about the media pushing a narrative?
> Statistics tell us that electric vehicles catch fire from time to time, although those fires are far less common than people imagine.
This part is at least true. I know you said you won’t believe the real stats since you’ve made up your mind based on a narrative you’ve been fed, but here they are: https://thedriven.io/2023/05/16/petrol-and-diesel-cars-20-ti...
> Only 23 fires were reported in electric vehicles in 2022 making up just 0.004% of Sweden’s fleet of 611,000 EVs.
> In contrast, over the same period, some 3,400 fires we reported in 2022 from Sweden’s 4.4 million petrol and diesel cars representing 0.08% of the fossil car fleet.
> This means that in 2022 a petrol or diesel car in Sweden was around 20 times more likely to catch fire than an electric vehicle.
> Furthermore, fires in electric cars are declining. The MSB says the number of fires in electric cars has been around 20 a year over the last three years, although the number of electric cars over that tie has almost doubled. Presumably, this is due to EV makers improving fire suppressing designs in newer models.
Back to your article:
> It’s unclear what started the fire, but the hundreds of electric cars onboard made it impossible to extinguish.
That’s what they said about The Fremantle Highway when it was on fire, let’s see what happened when they towed it back to port:
> However, between 900 and 1000 cars including the EVs appeared to be in good condition, the chief of salvage company Royal Boskalis Westminster NV, Peter Berdowski, told media last week.
Huh, that’s weird. Looks like the daily mail readers were wrong about that too (surprise!).
The Driven |https://thedriven.io › 2023/08/14Sorry EV haters, big ship fire probably wasn't caused by electric cars
Let’s look at Liverpool: Liverpool car park fire: Hundreds of burnt-out vehicles removed https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-46290095
1,000 cars burnt out in a car park fire in 2018. How many EVs do you think were in there 6 years ago? One? Two? It was 99% ICE vehicles along with the one that caused it. I’m sure no toxic fumes were produced as a result of the ICE cars burning lol.
> Many people believe that the media is lying about Luton
Many daily mail readers were saying it was an EV before the fire service even said anything. Here’s what they said:
> The fire service can confirm the initial vehicle involved in the fire was a diesel car.
https://www.bedsfire.gov.uk/news/major-incident-declared-lut...
Funnily enough this fits with the video of the vehicle showing the number plate: https://x.com/andysoullinux/status/1712232395049422942?s=46&...
The video gives an excellent view of those TWO fire extinguishers that failed to put out the fire too. Those ICE vehicles sure are easy to put out!
Facebook and YouTube algorithms are feeding people scary videos and the daily mail and its ilk will happily feed the narrative too. The stats and facts simply don’t back the level of FUD they are amplifying. It’s like refusing to fly over driving over safety fears after looking at a few plane crashes.
> You ought to consider the incentives behind the media push to assure people that EVs are safe.
You ought to do the same, who is pushing the anti-EV narrative? They tried to spread misinformation about range, battery replacement costs (bingo on your post), fires and so much more yet people are realising EVs are viable and cheaper to run. I run my EV for 3p/mile and certain people don’t like that. They are ramping these articles up since sales are still going up ( despite the headlines saying it’s “slowing”). It’s a shame so many people believe it without questioning it.
Even if it wasn't caused by EVs somehow, isn't it a huge problem that this cargo is so dangerous in the event of a fire? Ships are very expensive.
>Many daily mail readers were saying it [the Luton tinderbox] was an EV before the fire service even said anything.
Again, the car from Luton may have been a diesel hybrid. If the battery caused the fire or made it far worse, it counts as an EV fire. Here are some thorough discussions. https://youtube.com/watch?v=zk0MWDsueMY and https://youtube.com/watch?v=QZEku6lHfDM . But how dare anyone investigate independently based on video footage? Furthermore, will the same government that is mandating EV adoption be honest about this? Will the fire chief risk defamation and losing his job to say the right thing, knowing that the media will bury him?
>The video gives an excellent view of those TWO fire extinguishers that failed to put out the fire too. Those ICE vehicles sure are easy to put out!
Ok, there's something I have to clear up here. Car fires are not "easy" to put out because there is a lot of flammable stuff on board a car. But it can be put out relatively easily. On the other hand, an EV getting too wet can cause it to catch fire, and even being submerged will not put it out! https://youtube.com/watch?v=1zaV-JSwzzA
They can reignite months later. That never happens to ordinary ICE cars. https://www.evfiresafe.com/ev-fire-reignition That group is pro-EV and they are calling for caution.
Even the mainstream media admits the truth on rare occasion, mixed with lies like "don't worry, it's SUPER rare!" https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/29/electric-vehicle-fires-are-r... These cars need to be resilient against normal wear and tear, accidents, and also not cause amazingly bad situations in the event of arson.
>They tried to spread misinformation about range, battery replacement costs (bingo on your post), fires and so much more yet people are realising EVs are viable and cheaper to run.
NONE of this is misinformation. The batteries are notoriously expensive and difficult to diagonose. If even Hyundai won't replace its own battery at any dealer for less than the cost of the same car new, that sucks. There are people with an axe to grind for EVs but this is simply a reaction to evil media misinformation.
>Facebook and YouTube algorithms are feeding people scary videos and the daily mail and its ilk will happily feed the narrative too. The stats and facts simply don’t back the level of FUD they are amplifying. It’s like refusing to fly over driving over safety fears after looking at a few plane crashes.
No, I have to go out of my way to find information about this stuff. Youtube and Facebook are beholden to their advertisers and the governments of the world. If this information was easy to get, EV sales would be even more pathetic than they are.
>They are ramping these articles up since sales are still going up ( despite the headlines saying it’s “slowing”).
EV sales ARE slowing. More vehicles on the road increases awareness of problems that people can relate to. While some manufacturers are plowing ahead, others want out. The cope: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/electric-vehicle-sales-slowi...
Toyota knows EVs aren't right for everyone: https://fortune.com/2022/10/02/toyota-ceo-electric-vehicles-... and https://toyotatimes-jp.translate.goog/toyota_news/1055_1.htm...
>I run my EV for 3p/mile and certain people don’t like that.
I don't care if you manage to run it at 3p per mile. If that offsets the extra 10-20k£ and time wasted while charging, go for it. Just as long as I'm not subsidizing it, and your EV does not put me in danger, and nobody is forcing me to get one, and you pay for all the infrastructure that has to be fixed or upgraded due to increased EV usage. That includes: roads, parking garages made to carry double the weight of current ones, fire suppression systems, power plants, and power distribution systems.
So all this means is that the growth is slowing. Meaning, we’re not on a pure exponential curve but we’re on an s-curve. This is absolutely normal and expected of all new technologies.
Did a famously over-optimistic car company use a pure exponential in their predictions and thus fail to meet predictions? Yes. Are manufacturers of overpriced EVs blaming this instead of their own poor choices? Yes. Are the media trying to make everything much more dramatic than it really is? Also yes.
Point is, EVs are following the absolutely normal trajectory of new tech. They are running low on early adopters and must adapt to the desires of the mainstream buyers - or of they don’t, chinese makers will.
Except that whole mandate thing.
>They are running low on early adopters and must adapt to the desires of the mainstream buyers - or of they don’t, chinese makers will.
The Chinese hate their own EVs too! https://youtube.com/watch?v=DwhnArkZTu8 Unfortunately for them their government is basically forcing them to use those too.
> isn't it a huge problem that this cargo is so dangerous in the event of a fire
There are much more dangerous things shipped all the time? Do they need updated procedures? Maybe? But as we saw at Liverpool and the Fremantle any car fire is dangerous even when EVs are not involved.
> Again, the car from Luton may have been a diesel hybrid.
Again, Nope. Why do we need analysis? We have the fire brigade telling us it was diesel. We have the plate, and the DVLA says it was diesel. Or is this all part of a larger conspiracy?
> But how dare anyone investigate independently based on video footage?
JAQing off is a common tactic when distorting the truth, you should learn to identify it. Watch 2 mins of Tucker and it’s as clear as day.
> I don't care if you manage to run it at 3p per mile. If that offsets the extra 10-20k£ (bingo) and time wasted while charging (bingo), go for it.
I’m on a lease. No upfront cost. My time spent waiting to charge is 0 mins - I actually spend less time waiting than you wait filling up your ICE. It charges while I sleep. If you spend 5 minutes a week filling up that equates to 4 hours a year you are standing at a pump that I don’t have to.
> Just as long as I'm not subsidizing it
You wouldn’t like a world like that. We subsidise innovation all the time. And we would have to remove subsidies for fossil fuels too to be fair, which would be bad news all round since we still need it.
> your EV does not put me in danger, (bingo)
thoroughly debunked I think. No point in going over it again but it does appear on the bingo card.
> and nobody is forcing me to get one, and you pay for all the infrastructure that has to be fixed or upgraded due to increased EV usage. That includes: roads, parking garages made to carry double the weight of current ones(bingo),
Forced? Do what you like. Roads? Good news, they can use the same roads as normal cars!
Let’s look at weights to debunk your weight claim: https://www.admiral.com/magazine/guides/motor/electric-car-m...
> On average, an EV weighs 200-300kg more than a petrol car because of the weight of the battery and electric motors.
Let’s look at some car figures to compare: https://www.quora.com/Is-a-Tesla-heavier-than-an-ICE-car-of-... Tesla Model S - Curb weight 4,647 lbs Audi A8 - Curb weight 4,751 lbs BMW 7 series - Curb weight 4,244 - 4,848 lbs Tesla Model 3 - Curb weight 3,627 to 4,072 lbs Audi A4 - Curb weight 3,450 to 3,627 lbs BMW 3 series - 3,582 to 4,010 lbs
Looks like you’ll be banning German ICE vehicles from car parks too?
> EV sales would be even more pathetic… EV sales ARE slowing
Slowing… by still rising as expected? The pace of growth is slowing. Just because you are accelerating less doesn’t mean you are slowing. The headlines would have you believe sales are going down.
> LONDON, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Global sales of fully electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) rose 31% in 2023, down from 60% growth in 2022, according to market research firm Rho Motion.
> "The pace of growth is slowing, but that's what's expected in growing markets like this," Rho Motion data manager Charles Lester told Reuters. "You can't double every year."
> Lester said global EV sales last year were largely in line with the 30% growth Rho Motion had forecast. For 2024, the firm forecasts global EV sales growth of between 25% and 30%.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/global...
> fire suppression systems (bingo, duplicate), power plants (bingo), and power distribution systems(bingo).
The UK national grid got so fed up with people spreading nonsense about the grid it made a page about it:
https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/ele...
Key point:
> The highest peak electricity demand in the UK in recent years was 62GW in 2002. Since then, the nation’s peak demand has fallen by roughly 16% due to improvements in energy efficiency.
> Even if we all switched to EVs overnight, we estimate demand would only increase by around 10%. So we’d still be using less power as a nation than we did in 2002, and this is well within the range the grid can capably handle.
Not sure if I covered everything but it gets exhausting addressing every point knowing that you’ll just ignore them and pull out more of the bingo points.
I don’t think there is much point in continuing. There is a narrative that you want to believe and that’s that. YouTube has claimed another victim. It’s sad to see since it happened to a few of my friends with Covid misinformation and they are also eating up this EV stuff same as you. Same story playing out again, despite excess mortality proving them wrong about the covid stuff. The worst part is it’s not even the persons fault, they are just impressionable and the algorithms feed it.
You know, you being so pretentious is wearing thin on my patience. You don't know better than me about any of this. You merely believe what the media says, and don't accept that the corporate interests behind it have their own designs for you. And worst of all you think that makes you a genius. I am humble enough to admit I could be wrong, but I seriously doubt it.
>JAQing off is a common tactic when distorting the truth, you should learn to identify it. Watch 2 mins of Tucker and it’s as clear as day.
Tucker has his faults but it's clear he has 1000% more integrity than the average journalist in the MSM.
>I’m on a lease. No upfront cost. My time spent waiting to charge is 0 mins - I actually spend less time waiting than you wait filling up your ICE. It charges while I sleep. If you spend 5 minutes a week filling up that equates to 4 hours a year you are standing at a pump that I don’t have to.
I spend more time on the toilet than filling up my tank, and I read in both cases. I can also rapidly refill my tank over and over until I get where I'm going with no anxiety at all. But hey, if the EV works for you and you feel it's worth the price, have at it. Just don't tell me it's for everyone, because it's obviously too inconvenient for that.
On the subject of roads, EVs wear roads down quicker due to increased weight and torque specifications, and regenerative braking. They are not currently being taxed at all to pay for the roads in most places. Gas cars pay for this via gas tax, typically. So you should have to pay too.
>Let’s look at some car figures to compare: https://www.quora.com/Is-a-Tesla-heavier-than-an-ICE-car-of-... Tesla Model S - Curb weight 4,647 lbs Audi A8 - Curb weight 4,751 lbs BMW 7 series - Curb weight 4,244 - 4,848 lbs Tesla Model 3 - Curb weight 3,627 to 4,072 lbs Audi A4 - Curb weight 3,450 to 3,627 lbs BMW 3 series - 3,582 to 4,010 lbs
The difference is EVERY EV is heavy. If you load up a garage full of maximal German cars or EVs, you will likely be exceeding its specifications. If someone comes out with a German car mandate I might be on your side here.
>The headlines would have you believe sales are going down.
Because they are. Dealers don't want to carry them. The mandates are killing them: https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/3000-auto-dealers-sign-...
>The UK national grid got so fed up with people spreading nonsense about the grid it made a page about it
More government propaganda. If you do the calculations you'll quickly realize that 100% EV adoption would drastically outstrip production in every country it's been considered. Furthermore, the electricity used by EVs is often produced by dead dinosaur juice. So they aren't even green.
>Not sure if I covered everything but it gets exhausting addressing every point knowing that you’ll just ignore them and pull out more of the bingo points.
You didn't actually cover anything except maybe sales. You ignored most of what I said and said "nah uh" to the rest, didn't watch the videos, and came at me with this bingo shit. I could have said the same about every single thing you said but I have the basic common sense to know that insulting a person's intelligence is not a good way to argue.
>I don’t think there is much point in continuing. There is a narrative that you want to believe and that’s that. YouTube has claimed another victim. It’s sad to see since it happened to a few of my friends with Covid misinformation and they are also eating up this EV stuff same as you. Same story playing out again, despite excess mortality proving them wrong about the covid stuff. The worst part is it’s not even the persons fault, they are just impressionable and the algorithms feed it.
I too don't think there's any point continuing. You believe your propaganda so fervently that you will not entertain the possibility that the government and media have their own dishonest motivations, and that is essential to reach any kind of understanding on this issue. If you take anything from this, it should be a sense of humility. You're not the genius you think you are, just because you believe what the TV tells you. God help us if "geniuses" like you get the authority to tell us what we can and can't say.
It’s sad people buy in to the conspiracy stuff. If you ever find a way out, please let me know as I’d like to help my friends overcome it too.
One thing with the conspiracy angle that absolutely baffles me that maybe you could explain is the whole “agenda” / control narrative that gets pushed, as if EVs are somehow evil and controlling. Can you explain how having a vehicle that you can take completely off-grid, and even fuel yourself by solar panels is controlling? I’ve never understood what the logic could even be here.
I was not wrong on even one of these points, except perhaps sales. You couldn't even admit that EV fires are considerably worse than petrol fires despite being provided a video of a car burning underwater.
>It’s sad people buy in to the conspiracy stuff. If you ever find a way out, please let me know as I’d like to help my friends overcome it too.
It's sad people believe everything "authorities" tell them. If you ever start thinking for yourself and doing your own research, let me know as I'd like to help my friends overcome it too.
Seriously, conspiracies are common. You have to be pretty naive to deny that or say it's all in the past. Conspiracies happen all the time. The same people who smear others about "conspiracy theories" only seem to have trouble with admitting the possibility when it suits their imagined vision of reality. They will come up with their own conspiracy theories if it suits them, all the while smearing "conspiracy theorists" who do the exact same in equally plausible situations.
>One thing with the conspiracy angle that absolutely baffles me that maybe you could explain is the whole “agenda” / control narrative that gets pushed, as if EVs are somehow evil and controlling.
They aren't inherently evil, they are just inferior tech that was known and abandoned a hundred years ago. Now it's back with improvements (sort of).
>Can you explain how having a vehicle that you can take completely off-grid, and even fuel yourself by solar panels is controlling? I’ve never understood what the logic could even be here.
Most people can't afford enough solar panels to charge an EV. EVs are expensive and inferior to ICE cars yet they are being mandated. They are loaded with tech that monitors your every action. It's only a matter of time before EVs drain the grid so much that "smart charging" will be mandated to control when you are allowed to charge, and that will be another level of surveillance and control. So I'm going to fight this until all of these problems are addressed.
lol, that must be the humility you are talking about. When presented with actual figures and facts you post 25 minute long YouTube videos as a response. Your own research apparently doesn’t even involve understanding the articles you yourself try to use as evidence, just believing some random from YouTube. Same as two of my friends sadly.
> You couldn't even admit that EV fires are considerably worse than petrol fires despite being provided a video of a car burning underwater.
The whole point is the risk is so low. Amplifying it is misinformation. Do I worry about ICE car fires even though they are 20x more likely? No. Do I worry about an EV fire? No. Do I worry about plane crashes? No.
You can tell the people who’ve been influenced in to believing that EVs are bad since they list off the bingo points. They don’t have conviction on any one of them so they just cycle through them as they are shot down. When all else has failed they turn to the “they’re not even green” point as a last resort, and you just point out that they break even within the vehicles lifetime even when powered by mostly COAL and they slink off. Mine is powered by wind by the way: https://electricityproduction.uk/in/scotland/
If you just stick to one point then it would be more believable but after it was proven that the risk of fires was lower you had to admit you were wrong or pivot I guess.
One point of cognitive dissonance with the fire angle that I don’t get - you are literally surrounded by batteries of similar types - your phone, laptop, watch and so on. Everyone you know has the same. You must know thousand of people in your extended network. How have you been convinced that there is a significant risk of EV fires when nobody in your network has had any incidents with batteries in these devices? How many of your friends/colleagues etc have had houses burned down as a result of a battery fire from their phone? If you don’t trust these types of batteries, why do you still have them in your house? Why haven’t you made that link?
Another good exercise is to take the number of vehicle fires you have ever seen and divide it by 20. Do you get a number greater than one? Didn’t think so. That should give you the perspective you lack on the risk factor here. It isn’t just about the ferocity of the fire, it’s the risk of fire in the first place. Any vehicle fire is bad news for you and the cars around you. LFP batteries will be even lower than the 20x reduction of risk.
> EVs are expensive and inferior to ICE cars
You are talking for everyone here so you are wrong for some. Let’s explore how it is for me:
* charge exclusively at home, wake up to a fully charged, preheated and defrosted car * Less waiting than my ICE - no filling up (“reading” in your case) * Costs 1/4 of the price to run * Fast, quiet ride * 900L of storage
No downsides that come to mind. You can get second hand EVs that also get most of these benefits so vehicle cost isn’t really the issue. Are they suitable for everyone? No. Are they viable for many? Yes.
> They are loaded with tech that monitors your every action.
This has nothing to do with the drivetrain.
> "smart charging"
Totally optional. Plug in to an outlet if you like, they can’t track that. Smart charging already exists and allows me to get a special rate in electricity during the night. They can track that all they like as long as I get 0 - 60 in 4 seconds for 3p/mile.
You've proven again and again that you have terrible sources of information, you believe unsubstantiated calculated lies, and you repeat them as truth, and refuse to stop believing and repeating them once you're presented with better more correct information. Why should anyone trust anything you have to say?
A Tesla can supercharge 200 miles in 15 minutes
Where I live (LA) there’s long queues more often than not.
I have a home charger but never use it. I have never once wished I could go to a gas station, and whenever I drive a dinosaur fume contraption and end up at a gas station I’m reminded of what a filthy end to end system the age of fire was. I’m glad to see the age of Maxwell begin.
Next nearest in Switzerland is some 120km away. That's basically a non-existent network. Colleague who has model S told me he can charge at his house cca 9km/hour. With commuting he ends up almost empty at the end of the work week, and has this additional worry constantly. Service outside warranty is supposedly sky high. Not that great a proposition.
But, yeah, I haven't seriously considered an EV. There isn't a model in my sweet spot, I don't drive much on a day-to-day basis and, when I do, it can be fairly long drives to fairly remote areas. Maybe someday but I'm either on a road trip or fuel stops are generally weeeks apart from each other.
Take a look at their map: https://www.tesla.com/findus?v=2&bounds=46.27947171966766%2C...
There are also three within 10 km of the one in Geneva if you are willing to cross the border into France. How open is that border?
I also think the market forces work the other way around. I currently own my home, but it's a condo with a shared parking lot and no way to charge an EV. I've been looking to upgrade at some point, and one of my non-negotiable requirements is that whatever I buy next needs to have a way to charge an EV at home (private garage with power, shared parking with the ability to install charges, etc). As EV market share increased, I expect this to create more and more pressure on the housing market to meet home charging needs.
They keep raising and raising prices and there’s nothing attractive about putting all my eggs in the electric basket in California as long as the rates are controlled by cartels.
PG&E will exploit any electric car progress for themselves and rip off their customers as hard as they can as soon as they thought they had a critical mass worth really rate exploiting and could get away with it.
I know lots of people disagree with me, but low institutional trust is the main reason we don’t have one.
That and we tend to buy and keep our vehicles for decades and I’m quite sure I don’t believe the rhetoric around durability and reliability.
When it’s truly a superior product from a quality and reliability standpoint and not a car body stapled to a battery with a smartphone quality warranty, and I have choice in how to fuel it beyond predatory power companies controlled by corrupt institutions, I’m in.
Nobody ever talks about the profound lack of diversity in the power suppliers, but it’s more than a minor existential risk to electric car viability in many parts of the country.
Oh, and this most recent rate hike was justified to bury cables. All while becoming the most expensive provider in California.
And did I mention that, after announcing a massive across the board rate hike, they decided to start the very expensive program of giving dividends to stock holders.
But wait! THEN they announced that instead of paying for what you use, you’re going to pay for how much money you earn and that you would now need to report income to them like they are the Government. A private corporation? Every rate payer pays on household incomes?!? What?
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/2022/10/ratep....
https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/national-invest...
We’re rewarding failure and the utility is killing people.
I don’t know much about the regulatory environment in CA but I thought there was either deregulation which allowed you to pick your provider or strong monopoly regulation which restricted utility margin. Is CA neither of those?
I would note that drilling, refineries, distribution, and point of sale for oil have all been and still are an assortment of disgusting cartels, monopolies, and nefarious governments hell bent on screwing you and the planet. But they’re definitely at more arms reach as a consumer than PG&E.
I used to believe what you wrote, but my opinion has changed.
PG&E is a 100% monopoly for it's customer with no choice whatsoever.
Solar panels just keep getting cheaper and this plan seems increasingly like a way to nearly do away with power bills all together while still staying on grid.
But until then I tend to agree, EVs aren't as appealing when you can't predict what energy prices will be over 10 years
I have no interest in buying another ICE vehicle, so I'll continue to maintain my current car, but I'm ready to buy once they offer something I'm looking for.
The US car industry seems really determined not to allow anything affordable on the market. It's not just EVs. They also push overpriced bloated gas guzzlers.
Eventually someone will get a cheap reliable decent-range EV like you want into the market and steamroll the entire industry.
This time around the Japanese have been assimilated; it looks like it'll have to be the Chinese to make useful cars.
https://carfromjapan.com/article/industry-knowledge/the-hist...
That notwithstanding, perceived Toyota quality (perhaps in particular) was a big part of their success in probably the 80s/90s.
Some of the legacy mainstream brands used to offer an affordable entry-level model as essentially a loss leader to build brand loyalty with younger consumers. The theory was that those consumers would return in a few years and trade that cheap car in for a more profitable model. But now the brands have largely abandoned that strategy.
As for fuel economy, it costs more to build an efficient vehicle. If consumers are willing to pay a premium for efficiency then manufacturers will be happy to build it.
Me, and apparently many others since manufacturers are cutting their forecasts?
As a consumer I don't really care what makes manufacturers more profit, I just want a product that meets my needs, and the first one to do so gets my money. Many, many cars are sold at a Civic's price band, and it wouldn't be happening if it wasn't profitable.
Legacy car makers can twiddle their thumbs all they want, but upstarts like BYD are going to eat their lunch if they don't become competitive. They're making competitively priced EVs, and building a plant in Mexico, so competition is about to heat up.
Particularly for larger vehicles such as vans it just doesn't make sense. It's more expensive both to buy and to run, the payload is reduced due to the additional weight, and the range is lower.
I imagine in 5-10 years that won't be the case, but for now, there's no point in me being an early adopter.
Vehicle prices have skyrocketed, and while my family makes well in to 6 figures, cars are just not a thing we want to spent lots of money on. Dropping 80k on a vehicle is WAY past what we’d ever consider.
Critical infrastructure is non-existent for highway trips (again, government doesn’t believe in climate change).
For me it’s simply not practical. There’s too many annoying barriers.
Federally some subsidies exist, but provincially, Canada has some real “winners”.
> Dropping 80k on a vehicle is WAY past
You can get perfectly useable EVs for under half that in Europe. Are they not available in the US?
See https://ev-database.org/uk/cheatsheet/price-electric-car. It lists 19 models under 40 kUSD.
But that said, I see that we do have the very low trim options for ranges I would entertain starting at 50k rather than my initial 80k. That’s still more than we’ve ever spent on a vehicle. I will have to wait for better used options, but at the moment, there is no “practical” difference between used or new, at least not in Canada. There is literally no “not abused by someone else” value at all. Value now is basically just choosing kilometers, and even that floors somewhere around 20k (seeing 10 year old vehicles with 300,000 kilometers for 20k was regular when we were shopping a couple years back).
https://ecology.wa.gov/blog/january-2023/saving-washington-s...
https://apnews.com/article/epa-tires-toxic-chemical-salmon-t...
EVs tend to be heavier, so are harder on tyres.
FYI, newer wood stoves have a catalytic combustor and burn the gasses as they leave the wood box 2 or even three times. They are much, much more efficient and drastically less polluting (because all the particulates are burned instead of going out in the air)
They're law for all new installs in many, many places.
We've got 4 of these houses on our street, all built in the mid-50s with owners who are senior citizens now and probably could never afford to live in their current home if it weren't paid off and subject to Prop 13. Their yearly housing cost is $3000. Our monthly housing cost is $10K. They can't really afford to upgrade anything, but as soon as the house is sold, it's going to get a full gut remodel and probably a second story.
Of course in the US building the above is often not affordable. We need to fix that problem, the more we can afford to build the more we will build and the faster we get away from the car only mindset.
I’ve had an EV for over seven years now. We are on our second Tesla and looking at a Rivian. I could not go back to an ICE vehicle and this is coming from a long time automotive enthusiast who has competed in rallys and track events. For my family’s lifestyle it is just so simple to own an EV with low to no maintenance, home charging, solar panels cost savings, pet modes, simple to operate, and almost appliance like. We have one vehicle and a motorcycle. When I ride I can focus on manual operations like changing gears or using two brakes. But if I am honest it is rare I want such a taxing ride. I still commute at least twice per week on a two wheels. Eventually, I will get an electric motorcycle.
I had range anxiety in my first month of EV ownership but you quickly realize that most trips rarely require a charging stop. Admittedly, I am in California but even traveling through the desert only one time did I need to use my mobile charger.
The articles discussed often specifically claimed the sales were dropping (at least in the headline, usually admitting that's not true in the text) which would give a much less wishy-washy headline.
These graphs are getting mighty steep with no letting up. Any business or market segment in the world would be hailed a massive success with growth like that. [1]
The Tesla model Y is the 2nd best selling vehicle in the US, behind only the F-150. The sales compared to legacy OEMs are insane. And that is just Tesla, there are plenty of other EVs that are selling in huge numbers now, with more showing up every day.
Anyone who says EVs are not a smashing success is blatantly denying the hard facts as they exist, and clearly is not interested in being truthful. Akin to someone saying solar is not growing and has no demand.
[1] https://cleantechnica.com/2023/09/22/electric-vehicle-sales-...
While this doesn't change the point you're making, according to this, the Tesla Model Y was 5th best selling in the U.S. in 2023. Can you show me where you got 2nd?
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g43553191/bestselling-cars...
Exert: "Remarkably, the Model Y was the second most popular vehicle of any kind in the US after only the Ford F-150 pickup truck"
> The EV doubled US registrations in January-April 2023
But it lost ground to end up at Number 5 for all of 2023.
You can't really say it "is" the second best selling vehicle, though you can say it briefly "was."
It may be the way Tesla reports their sales. It looks like they were at 127k for Q1, while the Chevrolet Silverado sold 126k in that time period.
But over the course of 2023, the Silverado sold 543k, while the Model Y sold 386k. Not sure when the big slowdown was for the Model Y.
Give it another quarter or two :)
It appears that insideEVs article used 4 months of Tesla sales to represent a quarter, which is misleading. If we look at monthly figures, it's around 100k per quarter now, which is in line with the 385k they sold in 2023. And that explains why it seemed like they were number 2 when they were actually trailing several models.
Currently it peaked in April (and repeated the same number in June) but is selling around 30-31k Model Y each month in the U.S. There's no current sign of acceleration.
https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/tesla-model-y-sales-figures/
https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2023-us-vehicle-sales-figures-...
My ev is so more agile and makes a lot of fun.
True not cheap and getting the electric right was like 1.5k on top but hey still a ton cheaper than a normal car with speeds anything close to my ev.
For me there aren't any EVs on the market that hit the balance of practicality, comfort, and affordability that I am looking for. I'm still optimistic though that by the time I am ready to replace my current car, there might at least be options worth considering.
I'm much more agile when I take over another vehicle.
Comfort is for me higher too because I charge directly at home.
Let's see how long it will take for evs to get cheaper. I hope sooner than later.
As for anecdotal evidence I don't see a lot of EVs driving around in my mid sized midwest town (~200k pop). At most I notice 2-4 Teslas a week and as of today I've seen my first Rivian. If they're popular they ain't popular around here.
> We had been warned to expect the range to be cut in half when towing, but the effect of towing these travel trailers proved even more significant. With the smallest and lightest trailer, we measured a range of just 115 miles. That figure fell to 100 miles with the middleweight camper and sank to a mere 90 miles with the 7,218-pound Grand Design trailer. [1]
Maybe when solid state batteries make their way into EVs by the end of this decade, that will change. [2]
[1] https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/ford-f150-lightning-elect...
[2] https://spectrum.ieee.org/solid-state-battery-production-cha...
That'd be nice. I figure I'll revisit EV tech in ~10 years when I'm ready to start shopping again. Fingers crossed.
Also its roof area might be significant enough to put on solar panels and charge on the way...
Heavy vehicles should benefit significantly.
But I reckon they'll push through the pain points.
Take it to the track if you want to go fast.