Between these two, quite a considerable market is being left unaddressed. The first to fill these niches with affordable models that don’t have weird quirks or make strange tradeoffs will likely do well.
Taking Chevy for example, they have physical HVAC controls, but they're counting on the average consumer being too clueless to realize they only have Google Maps in their car because it came with a free OnStar trial. Eventually people are going to notice that they spent $1000+ to buy the larger screen upgrade, and now Chevy wants them to shell out $300/year forever to be able to use it for maps.
The other big unknown is lifespan of car software platforms, if these end up being like phones where they get laggier and laggier with continued software updates, until eventually it's unusable, people aren't going to be happy about it. But we won't know for 15 years exactly how bad that problem is.
Not only is there a high risk of notoriously underpowered head units becoming increasingly laggy over time with updates, there’s also the risk of the automaker deciding that shipping new updates for your only slightly old EV is too much of a cost to bear and dropping support, making the head unit slowly become more and more useless over time as apps stop running.
CarPlay/Android Auto is an excellent hedge against both of those scenarios, even if one prefers the onboard experience. It never hurts to have an escape hatch.
Yeah, we could go back to suction cup phone mounts on the windshield if we had to, but that feels pretty stupid when the car has a 12" screen in the dashboard.
And is not tariffed to the point they are not competitive.
I'm on the fence as to whether tariffs are good or bad, but I do wonder if an external player might not be able to come in and shake up the US auto industry.
I feel like the working class in the U.S. are paying way too much for what amounts to a necessity for their livelihood: the automobile. We'd all benefit (the planet that is) if the options included inexpensive electrics rather than merely gas and diesel.
The US is one crisis away from our expensive to maintain road infrastructure being unsustainable. The American people are one crisis away from their $60k SUV being worth nothing and still owing a four figure note against it. They're also one fuel crisis away from being unable to pay to use it. And we don't really have any alternatives at a scale to handle those sorts of things.
We're really going to have egg on our face at some point. And the only option will be to import affordable EVs the rest of the world has been building and developing.
So for example, if the goal is to stimulate domestic automakers to be more competitive without unnecessarily risking killing them off entirely, a moderate tariff that pushes the price of ultra cheap foreign cars up to a level that’s reasonably achievable by the domestic automakers but still well below the average price could be a good thing.
Where tariffs are just plain bad is when they’re so high that domestic manufacturers don’t even have to think about trying to compete and can continue to drive up prices unabated.
I don't get it. We already have an EV. Why would I buy more EVs? The one that gets commuted in every day is already in our driveway. It already does the work. It doesn't need replacing, or adding to.
I'm a car person. There are so many cars I want to own in my life, so much to experience. I will admit I briefly considered buying a 10 year old BMW i3 BEV because it seemed like a fun runabout for not much money, but most of the _other_ EVs on the market serve the "practical" market, or are too expensive. I bought a Fiat 500 Abarth because it's an absolute insane hoot to drive. I bought a roadster. These are not exactly markets served by EVs. At the very least, we need another decade or two of sales to build up the inventory of interesting/unique/quirky models that get introduced by manufacturers over time.
But mostly, I want something fun to drive with character- a nice gearshift, an exhilarating powerband, ... not another competent appliance. We have a competent appliance at home.
The EV market isn't saturated, but just because an EV owner doesn't serially buy EVs doesn't mean the shine has come off. It just means the 100,000 mile, 6 year old Model 3 does exactly what it did the day we bought it, and there's no reason to replace it.
I’d really love to see an EV that’s in line with the virtues of the Honda Fit, Honda Element, and Toyota Matrix — not sexy or fancy, but cheap, insanely practical little “everything cars” that can take on anything you throw at them with tons of cargo space, fold flat seating, stock roof rack, etc — cars that are made for doing things instead of impressing the neighbor or acting as a status symbol.
There’s absolutely nothing like this in the EV space right now. The closest thing that’s upcoming is Rivian’s R3, which isn’t likely to be as cheap as the Fit/Element/Matrix were.
It's such a shame Honda won't sell the e here. I'm not going to say "I'd buy one in a second" because I'm not paying new car prices for one, but I wouldn't have bought a Fit new either. And yet, people bought the Fit new. And I'd happily buy a used Fit, it was actually on my runabout shopping list as well. (Fit with a manual trans).
With an electric car, how can one tell if the pack has been charged all the way up to 100% all the time (vs. the much better 40-70% range)?
This is the "term premium" of batteries it seems, and I honestly don't know if there's a reliable answer.
I'd feel a lot better about the state of the battery if I bought one used, rather than the state of the ICE. It's possible to borescope it, but you have no way of telling how long the previous owner went between oil changes, if they flogged it out to redline regularly, etc.
Getting into the technician menus on Teslas is well documented, they also report a ton of data and can do a lot of diagnostics on the battery.
My observations, which certainly don't reflect the current state of the tech (although if I'm buying a used EV, I'm not buying the current tech). But that's my bias nonetheless. I do think I overemphasized this, though, because while this is what makes me shy away from the idea of used EVs, it's not the reason why I avoid buying cars that are too new (which includes pretty much all EVs).
Here's the truth based on an observation: Tesla's battery capacity degrades 12% after 200k miles. Source: https://insideevs.com/news/664106/tesla-battery-capacity-deg...
200k miles is effectively the lifetime of a car. Average US person drives 10k miles so that's 20 years of driving.
Tesla's warranty "guarantee at least 70 percent retention of battery capacity over 8 years and 100,000 miles or more". Source: https://www.motortrend.com/features/tesla-battery-warranty/
And latest chemistries are even better. In 2020 Jeff Dahn (who leads battery research group in Canada funded by Tesla) published a paper about million mile battery. Source: https://www.electrochem.org/dahn-unveils-million-mile-batter...
Since Tesla funds Dahn's research, they get the IP. This is just in the lab but those advancements are trickling, over time, to Tesla's battery making (and not just Tesla: every battery maker does research to make batteries cheaper and last longer).
Key word: WAS
Of course, modern EVs, and basically all Teslas, have bigger batteries with better cooling, so it's no longer an issue. But the belief won't die, just like how people still make memes about Java being slow as if it's still 1998.
So if you're looking for a car with the least amount of battery degradation between purchase and EOL, buying a used EV rather than new is actually the better decision.
-At 50k miles; EVs $600, Plug-in $1,050, ICE $1,400.
-100k miles; EVs $2,000, Plug-ins $2,600, ICE $4,400.
-200k miles; EVs $6,300, Plug-ins $5,900, ICE $12,300.
EVs use about 30kWh to go 100 miles [3] and at the US national average for electricity [4], that would be about $ 9,978 to drive 200k miles. ICE vehicles vary, but 35 mpg combined is pretty average for compact cars. At the US national average for gasoline [5], that is $ 17,548 to drive 200k miles. Plug-in hybrids use about 29kWh to go 100 miles and about 48 mpg. Just assuming 50/50 driving on gas or electric, that’s about $11,220 to drive 200k miles.
So maintenance and fuel cost over 200k miles would be roughly:
-EVs $18,852
-Plug-in Hybrids $17,120
-ICE $29,848
[0] https://thedriven.io/2024/09/19/new-study-finds-vast-majorit...
[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/research/a32758625/how-many-mil...
[2] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/10/owning-an-electric-car-...
[3] https://www.perchenergy.com/energy-calculators/electric-car-...
Batteries last a LONG time assuming the vehicle manufacturer has put proper heat and SoC management into the battery controller (ie, not a Nissan Leaf).
I thought my 7 year old Ford Focus EV would be half the range of its 110mi battery by now but it still posts near-perfect range (it's lost about 5%).
Sedans are nothing. Just barely, finally, after all those years, we have electric kombis - VW ID.7 Tourer and Audi A6 Avant e-tron.