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Sakos

I wonder. Are people who aren't well off able to afford cars if nearly all cars sold are EV?

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I just bought a 1 year old Nissan Leaf for $15,000 in San Diego California.

The aversion to EVs in the US is mostly just american idiocy.

In the US 2/3 of people live in single family homes. That means NEVER using a public charging station.

Most of those households also own more than one car. So it's easy to retain a ICE vehicle for when it's really needed.

Let's just face the facts, the Scandinavian governments, and the Scandinavian people are just smarter than americans...

p.s. I expect this car to pay for itself in ~5 years, due to savings on gas. How long before your ICE vehicle pays for itself? Like most long term investments, it requires a smarter population.

I think a lot of people are also radically overrating their likelihood of going on extended road trips. As the cost of even ICEs increases, I’ve known people to rent for a long drive rather than rack up the mileage on their personal vehicle (also if they can save on fuel economy) and I think more people are going to follow your lead in having a small EV for daily commuting to save money every trip, and maybe consider a rental if they actually decide to drive cross-country without stopping.

I priced PG&E electricity vs gas/hybrid, and gas/hybrid won. Especially because PG&E keeps increasing their rates.

That's the unfortunate truth about PG&E rates, though that's only true because the terrible external costs of gasoline pollution are not taxed and compensated. For almost everywhere else charging at home is 1/3 the cost of gas. Superchargers are also pretty comparable to a hybrid. As home solar and batteries gets cheaper and cheaper, that's also a backstop to limit the price increases of PG&E. Sort of.

> Let's just face the facts, the Scandinavian governments, and the Scandinavian people are just smarter than americans...

Citation needed. Norway has a population of less than the Bay Area, a massive sovereign wealth fund due to oil exports and is about the size of the average state in the US. I drive an EV but the state of charging infrastructure outside of CA is pathetic. I get why Americans don’t want to drive cars they can’t fill up on a roadtrip unless it’s a Tesla.

I just bought a second hand EV for 4k, cheaper than and ICE of the same age.

Old Leaf? What range does the battery have?

The median new car price is around $50k and you can get new EVs well under that amount. If we weren’t in a trade war, BYD would sell you an EV for the same price as the cheapest ICE options.

BYD (but not only) is heavily subsidised by chinese government.

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/06/13/what-brussels-...

https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/news/chinas-massive-sub...

Sure, but they’re hardly the only manufacturer for whom that’s true (e.g. Tesla) and from a consumer’s perspective they might care more about their personal budget. Moreover, if we’re going to avert trillions in annual GDP losses due to climate change subsidizing electrification seems like a good idea.

How are Tesla subsidized by the government?

You know that $7,500 tax credit people got for buying their products? That’s the most obvious one but the bigger one is the carbon regulatory credits: governments require other car manufacturers to buy credits to offset their high-pollution vehicles, and since Tesla doesn’t make any of those they can sell something like half a billion dollars of them per quarter as pure profit. This has been most of their profitability in some quarters.

> You know that $7,500 tax credit people got for buying their products? That’s the most obvious one

The same tax credit applies to qualifying vehicles bought from any automaker. This has nothing to do with Tesla.

> the bigger one is the carbon regulatory credits

Again, every qualifying automaker can do exactly the same thing.

> China gave BYD $3.7 billion to ‘win’ the EV race.

That amounts to $1k per vehicle, way less than EU or US subsidies.

https://electrek.co/2024/04/12/china-gave-byd-an-incredible-...

Depends on your definition of not well off.

I think the age of $1000 beaters is going to disappear. Just the raw metals in a completely dead EV battery are worth more if you recycle it.

Even more if it's only "dead" for EV use, there's still dozens of kilowatts of usable capacity for other uses as-is.

I think this is just about new car sales? Less well off can still by used ICE, which is what they would be anyway. Or even used Model 3 are in the low $20k USD here. Used Chevy Bolt are $10-20k, some leafs are cheaper.

A new Tesla and a Camry are about the same price, given the ICE taxes.

So no, many people can’t afford cars, but actually the EVs are the affordable options.

Its only the new cars that are almost all EV.

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