Global sales of combustion engine cars have peaked | Hacker News Reader

Global sales of combustion engine cars have peaked

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239 pointsmyroon5341 comments

Even in cities that are pretty hostile to bikes, electric bikes/scooters are an amazing middle point between walking and all the expense of a car (purchase, loans, fuel, maintenance, insurance, registration, tickets, etc.).

I want an electric bike but I want to go places with it and I’m worried about it getting stolen when I lock it up outside a shop. Do you have one?

I'm lookimg at a folding e scooter

I wish they were half as heavy with 1/4 the range. Lightest ones are still like 10kg+?

Yes, but 10-15 kg is still comparable to a regular bike or a heavy bag of groceries. I rode a 19 kg one (50 km range, street legal), carrying it up to the third floor at work wasn't a problem.

True if it's just point to point commuting to a place with safe storage. But then I can't take it by strapping it on my backpack and going to shops, etc where a bike would get stolen.

If it’s a short stop a “cafe lock” for back wheel is super convenient

I got a cargo e-bike (Aventon Abound) and I have a cafe lock and a chain lock. Luckily the bike doesn't look "cool" so I am less worried about thieves. It's also quite heavy so the cafe lock is almost always enough. If I am leaving it downtown for hours then I also use the heavy duty chain.

I have the same model, it’s so much fun to ride. Love the abound.

Lean to buying/doing a conversion vs "polished" ebike.

Buy the best lock you can afford - it should be a grinder resistant one such as hiplok or litelok.

Note that while the lock may be resistant, the thing it's locked to may be easier to cut if the thief gets frustrated and has time to steal it.

Nothing will stop someone who has the time and batteries/discs from stealing your bike.

I don't. Theft risk and storage is definitely a challenge. A lot of commuters find somewhere to stash them at work. The problem might get better as ebikes become more common and lower in price.

Unfortunately, I doubt that. Where in live, bike theft has been rampant for ages, even before electric models were a thing.

Insurance

I get around on an acoustic bike, but have a lot of friends with e-bikes. I believe this is extremely locale-dependent. For instance there's relatively little bike theft in my locale, except around the university where it's just really easy pickings.

I think you can learn a lot by looking at how bikes -- acoustic and electric -- are already being parked and locked in your district. For instance my daughter is attending grad school in a big city, and while we were walking around, I noticed that the most decrepit old bikes were secured with giant U-locks plus chains. Hmmm. So my daughter rides a bike of similar ilk, and secures it in a similar fashion.

And I noticed the most beastly of chains and locks in New York City.

Plus, people generally seem to prefer e-bikes where they can take the battery pack with them.

TIL "acoustic bike" is a phrase

It's not. It's an unfunny insider joke.

oh come on, it made me chuckle

Not even an insider joke, everyone knows what an acoustic and electric guitar is. and funny is subjective, I had a good chuckle and will use the terminology now

Until you posted this I was non the wiser what an acoustic bike would be.

Same here, despite spending a decade of my life playing both acoustic and electric guitars.

Get with the program, hippie!

I do prefer acoustic versions of Route 66, On the Road Again, and King of the Road.

which are better listened to, in an acoustic transmission car

Its a completely hilarious distinguisher.

I find it charming and enjoy seeing it in the wild.

It is now!

I like “analog bike” but it doesn’t make any sense either

I've been getting around on acoustic bikes for 35 years. 7 of them have been stolen in that time, yet still I've saved tens of thousands of dollars relative to the cost of relying on public transit, and hundreds of thousands of dollars relative to the cost of buying and operating a motor vehicle.

I've been extremely lucky: No bikes stolen ever. Part of the credit goes to my Anti-Theft Aesthetics (tm).

I got and old rusty one and put some paint on it so it's not very nickable. I leave it out at night but remove the battery.

I use normal D locks but are tempted to get an angle grinder resistant one although they are expensive - £150+.

This is also a big problem for multi-modal commuting. Do I really want to lock up my bike in a location that screams 'the owner won't be back for 9 hours', knowing police won't investigate bike theft?

If all those e-scooter rental startups can have remote GPS tracking and theft alarms then it really shouldn't take much to implement that into personal ones too. I mean people leave those things absolutely everywhere and they never get rightfully stolen.

A 4G modem would probably be overkill, but one might be able to do it for free with lorawan. Or alternatively a big label saying "this bike is GPS tracked" with absolutely no extra hardware at all and hope that bike thieves are dumb fucks.

That advice might not travel well: until recently I lived in a city where the bike rental service pulled out because too many were thrown in canals.

Let me guess ... probably drunks so guess drinking culture. Maybe UK. Big city with enough canals for this to be an issue ... probably Birmingham?

Close, think more northern.

Liverpool was my other guess

It doesn’t have to be drunks. I know plenty of people who, if they’re forced to move hire bikes left blocking the pavement, will do so carelessly as a matter of principle.

It's everywhere. Here's some American news stories:

NY:

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2024/09/12/the-river-wild-bikes-...

Michigan:

https://www.mlive.com/environment/2024/08/seriously-waterway...

DC:

https://irrigationleadermagazine.com/not-so-convenient-why-s...

Ohio:

https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/columbus/30-electronic...

Rental bikes use heavy, incompatible components so it’s pointless to steal them for resale, or to strip for parts. And they have a tracker.

My bike, on the other hand? A thief could just find and remove the tracker - or strip the bike for parts.

Time to start using bikes made out of heavy incompatible parts and welding on the tracker then?

But yes I do partially agree that it probably wouldn't help much, since it's more about the thieves not wanting to mess with a company with funding and a legal department behind it vs. some random bloke who they can rob with impunity. Private bike security firms might be an answer to the issue, you pay a monthly subscription, they put their own trackers on your bike, employ licensed people who retrieve stolen ones at gunpoint and guarantee protection up to some total cost. Probably not cost effective though I guess, given that the police themselves have given up.

I know this is not a very helpful w.r.t. protection, however there is https://bikeindex.org/ - recently I was listening to a Darknet diaries podcast https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/153/ which has a nice story about stolen bikes and what to do about it.

I typically use a heavy cargo bike. I only use its built in front wheel lock, it's so heavy, it can't be easily stolen, so I never lock it against posts and such.

I always lock and secure my road bike against street furniture, though.

Yeah, a lot of the cargo e-bikes are closer in size to a moped than to an acoustic bike, which makes them much more difficult to steal. A heavy-duty chain and a keyed ignition are typically an effective deterrent.

Consider an electric unicycle (EUC). It's much more compact, so you can easily bring it into shops and other buildings, as well as it's much less troublesome when you use public transport (most models can be easily kept between your legs).

From the safety point of view it's not as bad as it seems on the first glance, especially if you don't plan riding on it faster than 20-30 km/h.

Those must not be used on public roads in some countries though.

When I go down this chain of thought, I eventually end up at --

Legs. I have legs. They are built in. I can just use them. I can always bring my legs onto the subway.

If they don't go fast enough, then I have two options:

1. Give myself more time.

2. Jog or run. This will make me sweaty. Maybe I will want to shower at the office. That's an option. It will make me healthier, if I do it.

There is also a third choice:

3. Obtain real estate in such a way that substantial travel is not required.

Clearly most people will look at these options and say, "FooBar, you are insane."

It's simultaneously the easiest solution to the problem, and the most difficult.

Consider a Hiplock D1000 (not affiliated)

I bought one for my expensive gravel and have been happy with it so far.

Insurance on a 2000 EUR bike runs 10 bucks a month at the most.

Motorcycle

Yup, order of magnitude more electric micromobility vehicles than electric cars:

https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-280-million-electric-...

The problem with electric cars is charging infrastructure in cites. An electric bike or scooter can be brought indoors to charge.

That's part of it. I had a look in central London and I could sort of charge but the costs are very different too - something like £20k for a car whereas I got a used ebike for £180 and it's much quicker to get around on and you don't have the parking issues.

It’s not so much of a problem due to the average daily drive being a fraction of range. So long as you can charge at home, city life is fine for electric cars.

Most countries still do not mandate that new apartments include charging ports for parking spots. So densely-populated areas will still be plagued with non-EC compatible buildings for decades to come. That's what "city life" mean in several countries.

Agreed, but they're not that complex to retrofit to a parking space. I can foresee a future where each space has a port and an account card reader - they'd make the buildings more valuable, the supplier to that space has a basically guaranteed income stream, and the government has an easy emissions reduction. Wins all round, so why wouldn't it happen?

The operator could demand an exclusivity contract from the landlord, provide faulty equipment, then charge high fees to repair it, eventually leading to many stalls non-functional until the contract is invalidated in court or the two parties settle, the chargers are ripped out, maybe with purposeful permanent damage to the wiring to make it unusable, and another mildly more honest provider comes in and does something slightly better but not by much.

Or, an enterprising landchad could realize they can charge 10% more kWh than people actually pull (blaming efficiency losses), along with a healthy margin for "maintenance".

Lots can go wrong.

Sure, it's a market with massive abuse potential, but we have a world full of them and we regulate to control the abuses. The underlying service is clearly of societal benefit and would clearly be profitable to all parties, so it's worth doing and working out the regulation to make it viable.

Cities shouldn't have to mandate carparks, let alone charging in them. Having no car at all should be viable and we should build toward that.

Pre-empting, obviously many places still require cars, but we shouldn't codify cars into the building code. It makes everything that bit more expensive, and it's a waste of valuable city real estate.

At the moment the cost per square meter in Melbourne and my city means a single carspace is worth more than my salary. That's ridiculous.

"Having no car at all should be viable and we should build toward that."

Yeah its sounds great until you need mass transport system to support this idea which means only mega cities can benefit the most when tier 2 and tier 3 cities is having a hard time investment

see: japan

Tokyo has a great subway system (for the most part--there are locations that aren't that well served) and there's good train service between many moderate-sized cities in Japan. But my experience is that, once you get to a city outside of Tokyo, the public transportation options aren't great.

I’ve personally never felt like I needed a car in fukuoka, osaka, or kyoto. What places did you have a bad experience at?

Not really a bad experience but I was able to walk as a tourist to where I wanted to go because the areas were pretty centrally located. The one time I took a bus to somewhere--don't remember location--it wasn't that convenient.

Kyoto has a lot of buses, so maybe that’s where it was. I’ve found that they’re usually on time and not too crowded, but maybe you had a different experience.

You don't need a car, but you won't be able to reach everything outside the cities. It's fine since everything you need is in the cities, and you would never run out of stuff to see, do, survive with. So "need" is a strong word, but certainly if you explore further out you will want a car.

The comment was about needing a car in the cities, so that’s not really relevant

This is a chicken-egg problem. Those cities became tier 1 cities over time because of their proactive public transit strategies.

If you want a house with a carpark you can build it, or find that in a rental.

See: the Netherlands. Or Switzerland, for counterexamples.

If anything, properly built small cities and towns are actually even better for public transit, since they're small. You don't need to cover a lot of ground.

Heck, everyone talks about self-driving taxis. Self-driving trains and buses, that's where it's at, actually. A decent chunk of the cost (and limitations) for public transit is the need for human drivers. Self-driving buses could have longer routes, could drive around the clock, etc, etc.

Ah, forgot, they could also be much smaller, but still cost effective. Think 10-15 places for smaller routes. That would do wonders for connectivity in more remote places.

> If anything, properly built small cities and towns are actually even better for public transit, since they're small. You don't need to cover a lot of ground.

Agreed, with the caveat that everything is crazy expensive now so smaller cities struggle to afford to build even a small amount of rail. We had excellent public transport in the 1900s, it was torn up for the automotive revolution, and now we can't afford to put even a 10th of it back. We struggle to put an extra station into an existing line, let alone new lines.

One of the big issues is that property is so expensive in the modern west that buying up the land to build is prohibitively expensive. The old game of private rail companies making money off property around public transit stops isn't working here at least, because property is already so unaffordable, there's no room for price growth.

What they could do, if the political will is there, would be just to build lots of bus lines. The lanes for sure are there and buses are much cheaper. You can run a lot of bus lines for 1 tram/light rail/metro line.

Electric self-driving taxis are going to be big in the medium-term. Or some other personal transportation method. Static routes and stations are not really up to the job.

(Edit: not that these necessarily need car parks, but they'll need to wait somewhere when they're not carrying passengers)

> Electric self-driving taxis are going to be big in the medium-term.

This claim has been made for years now and a number of big companies like Google, Uber and Tesla have tried to jump into this market, but does this hold up?

I vaguely recall a self driving taxi service being active in some areas, but how are they doing?

Anyway, static routes and stations work fine for big parts of e.g. the Netherlands, but you need a good structure of bus routes and transit hubs. It's a fact that it takes longer than driving for most trips though and IMO the cost should be a lot lower, but that's the tradeoff made.

In my regional UK city, most of my trips look something like: X minutes by car/taxi (although driving you need to park, and taxi you need to wait), 1.5-2X to cycle (direct but need to contend with hills, rain and much increased risk), and 2-4X to use public transport (total time, door-to-door, need to rush to get the thing and wait outdoors for 5-10 minutes) (2X being the ideal case of home to centre, 4X for point-to-point two places outside the centre).

It's not even remotely competitive, and for that reason private cars are used for some ridiculously high proportion of journeys (90% of passenger miles overall).

In the UK only 17% of commuters use public transport, and 5% use "other" including bicycle/motorcycle/taxi.

Sounds like cars should be slowed down in your city, and public transport should be expanded

> 1.5-2X to cycle (direct but need to contend with hills, rain and much increased risk)

I think a lot of what you're saying can be solved with cheaper ebikes and better bike infrastructure. Even the rain :-)

If it rains a lot you put on a big bike poncho, which turns you into a big sail and slows you down, and that's where the <<e>>bike part of ebike comes in, since you pump up the assist and still go fast.

Your experience matches mine here in Australia, and it's fine justification for why we don't take public transport, but not why there shouldn't be more and better public transport. I would much much prefer to be taking a train from nearby into the CBD as it is faster point to point, more predictable and less stressful. The trouble is I live too far away from a station so every train journy starts with 30 minutes of car travel in the wrong direction.

The consensus seems to be on my side in spite of lower share of total commutes, because housing near stations is significantly more expensive. From that I infer two things, public transport is desired, and there's not enough of it to support demand.

I agree it's something that would be nice, but it's so far away - decades at the current rate. We can't even build housing in the UK, never mind infrastructure or industry.

> Static routes and stations are not really up to the job.

This is only because of the suburban sprawl we built not being compatible, but I agree it is a problem to solve one way or another.

Your argument seems to be that cities shouldn't mandate carparks.

Nothing in your argument goes against what I think edwcross's proposal was: "IF an apartment has parking, that parking must have charging."

Densely populated areas shouldn't have surface-area-inefficient cars as a main mode of transportation at all! Good public transport and the other 2-wheel modes should do just fine, but of course those aren't as profitable.

Good public transport is the key part and I can tell that in most European cities, not the capitals that everyone visits when they say they have been on country XYZ only hanging on the city center without even venturing into the suburbs, that is quite far from where they were supposed to be.

A lot of people look at Europe through the lens of the tourist areas of large cities. As someone who has spent a lot of time in the UK countryside and smaller towns, there is absolutely not a good public transit system even if there might be a few buses during the day.

Heck. I arrived by train from London to a town where I found the busses to the start of my walk were basically non-existent. Fortunately a taxi pulled up as I was trying to find a taxi service by cell as the train station didn't have any staff.

Yep, exactly my point.

Bus deregulation wrecked public transport for much of the smaller places in the UK.

One of the positive things labour has done is allowed local authorities more control over this, which should help - I can also imagine them being very bad at communicating this if it does.

Of course I'd prefer a bunch more investment too, more train lines and go ahead with many of the previously touted tram schemes.

It’s a great ideal state, I just happen to think it’s several decades away. Most people reading this will never witness it. We’ve already heavily invested in what you say should not exist. Financial inertia is strong to keep things on that path. However if we, US, shrink our vehicles we can double or triple the throughput of current roads.

Countries should mandate not owning a car.

>It’s not so much of a problem due to the average daily drive being a fraction of range

Most people who own a car in cities in Europe also use it for long commutes to visit family in weekends or on holidays, often crossing borders. Range is then a problem since most families can afford only one car so edge cases matter. Maybe the wealthy Benelux and Scandinavia have top EV charring infrastructure but a lot of central, eastern and southern Europe is lacking.

It is the 1% or 10% case. Like for me going to bigger airport. Renting a car would be complete waste for it to sit a week there. And for range I would want something that can get me there in one go and back also in one go, with week of sitting idle. As adding extra 30 minutes to 1h travel time on top of all time it takes is less than ideal living. And public transport would add even more time or less flexibility those types of trips.

Also there is some possibility that there is no power at for example summer home...

>It is the 1% or 10% case.

Not based on where I live. Many people I know routinely drive hundreds of KM on a weekly basis to their families and renting a car for that doesn't makes sense.

The Hyundai Ioniq 6 has a range of over 500 km, and typical 20-80% charging times are around 20 minutes. Where in Europe can you drive 350 km and not pass a single charger?

Where did I say there are no chargers? Charging on long trips increases the time of the journey by a lot. And many EU drivers don't have money for a new Ioniq 6.

So my last really long drive was Prague to Amsterdam, last year. We did three stops, first to fuel the car and grab some breakfast, then for a bathroom break and to grab some lunch, and the last one was to get a McFlurry and another bathroom break. The total time spent on the stops was easily over an hour.

If I punch the same trip into one of the EV trip planners online and set the car even to something meh like an MG4 with the 51kWh battery, which is cheap EV that doesn't charge very fast, it's telling me I'd have to stop 4 times (instead of 3 times) and for 1.5 h total (instead of a bit less than that).

I don't know what you do for a living or how much you hate traveling, but for me this is a non-issue. I make maybe 1-2 trips like this a year (and <10 trips around 500 km) and spending like 15 % more time on the road is something I wouldn't even notice, much less care about.

It increases it by 30 min every 3 hours, rounding down. My family used to do 7 hours once or twice a year, roughly 500km, so an EV would have added an additional hour. But we also typically stopped for roughly 30 min for lunch, so it would have only added 30 min to our half-country journey. Add an extra 30 min to the journey if we had a cheap EV with sub 160 km range, or an extra 15m to each stop for a top-up for comfort. This of course depends on charging infrastructure, but I'm betting it's developed enough for most trips at this point.

This was pretty rare for us, though we had family that did 12 hours trips in 2 segments with the same frequency. They already stopped for lunch, so they could in theory have gotten away with only charging then, not adding any time to their trip, but more reasonably it would add an extra 30 min to each leg.

Interested to know how often this stuff happens in the EU.

This you?

Maybe the wealthy Benelux and Scandinavia have top EV charring infrastructure but a lot of central, eastern and southern Europe is lacking

What was incorrect about that statement? Are you saying EV infrastructure in Bulgaria and Poland is on par with Benelux and Scandinavia?

So are you saying there are not enough chargers or not? You seem to be contradicting yourself from my perspective.

No trains? Inter-city trips is where they shine.

For me it is only the visiting family use case, where rental doesn't make sense. We have car sharing in the city (Miles) which fixes almost all use cases. Driving to the airport only when without kids, as they both still need car seats, that I can't leave. Otherwise car sharing rental is perfect to get to the airport.

We're thinking of switching to an EV, and we're basically one of the anti-examples that people like to use. Central Europe (Prague), we live in an apartment, we park our one and only car on the street, no street charging options anywhere. I don't commute to work daily and my neither my nor my wife's workplace has chargers.

But it turns out that the Lidl that we go to has a charger, there are like 10 chargers on the 110 km trip to our families (and they both live in houses with driveways, so "granny charging" is available). Our last two holiday stays were in hotels that had chargers.

Just looking at the options, it doesn't seem like range will be a factor at all. And we're actually looking at cheap cars with 50 kWh batteries, not even the current high end.

Maybe if you live in suburban single family house, but not if you live “in cities”.

I'm in US and most of our cities are mainly comprised mostly of suburban single family houses, but even if you don't live like that, you could also easily seek out a weekly/biweekly charge station and cover most of your needs. The problem comes with long range drivers and charging station availability concerns

Heck I can't plug my car in at home and it's still fine. I simply plan for the fact that I might spend 20 minutes here or there at the charger, at most once a week. Best case I do some grocery shopping, worst case I just sit in the car watching YouTube, either way is fine.

I don't know, I'm kind of annoyed to have to go to the charger. My parents' house has a plug and the car is always full, whenever I need it. It does make a difference in convenience, so I'm installing a charger in my garage in a few days as well.

However, many parking lots have slowish AC chargers nowadays, so it's very convenient to have the car charge for an hour or two while I do my shopping or whatever.

Basically, it's the difference between having to wait specifically for a charge or whether I'm doing my own thing and charging the car as a bonus.

Solar freakin' parking lot roofs.

Or get rid of parking lots and build other infrastructure. Solar roofing is quite expensive and it is also much easier to do on an existing building which requires less investment.(Thus is done first). I've seen some happen but only as trail-by-subsidization or because the owner didn't care about the cost.

The problem with electric cars is that you're still taking a heavy metal box, a large storage chest, a couch, and two recliners with you whether you need them or not. That's always going to be a problem, no matter how well charging works.

I agree. I'm all for phasing out cars completely, but I don't think it is realistic even if there would be support for it.

Next best thing is to move cars to the edges of districts in urban areas. Create big parking spaces, covered in solar panels and equip them with chargers. Design them in such a way that everybody can walk in 5-10 minutes to their home from these parking spaces. In the space that we save this way we can have cycling lanes and trees. Of course, every house should still be reachable by car, if only just for mail delivery, for moving, for doing groceries etc. And people with handicaps should be able to get a permit to park near their houses.

I know one such district near me and its lovely. And one big city in the Netherlands is planning to build a new district in this way for 10000 people, it should be amazing to live there.

When you couple this with drastic improvements to public transport, I think we can move to pretty much ideal cities within a single generation, without abolishing cars and too much inconvenience. It is much easier for newly build districts, but I think this concept can be retrofitted to existing areas very well, if you can find enough parking spaces or garages at least.

Phasing out cars completely would be a bit much.

But I think they should be completely removed from some very common actions, anyone capable of walking/cycling/using public transit going for non-essential trips of less than say, 5km, should not be allowed to use a car.

Definitely anything under 1km should not be allowed. Those distances are easily walkable or bikeable. Of course, this will require that the built environment allows walking or biking (guess what, that makes for amazingly liveable environments, so it needs to be done anyway).

Anything between 1-5km is debatable, but those distance are easily bikeable and it takes about the same time, especially in a city. Similar problem with walkability/bikeability. At these distances public transit also becomes a solid option.

Anything between 5-10km requires either great bike lanes or at least decent public transit.

Anything over 10km is fair game for cars. Though for good to great public transit corridors, that's definitely a very viable option.

I think if we somehow manage to enforce this, we'd be in an amazing place, including for drivers. Because a huge chunk of the non-essential traffic would be just taken off the roads, leaving roads MUCH emptier, so whoever is still driving would get to where they need to a lot faster.

> An electric bike or scooter can be brought indoors to charge.

Just look at this:

https://www.newsflare.com/video/704902/e-bike-battery-explod...

There are a lot of videos like this that shows the devastation of charging electric bikes or scooters indoor.

Always thought that the parking meters should be changed out for chargers that act as parking meters too. City would get more money and the infrastructure would be there to help with downtown charging. Duel use meters would still allow ICE to use the them too.

As EVs become more popular, big name stores should start adding a few chargers to their parking lots.

Apartment complexes could add them to entice maximum capacity too.

It would be extremely expensive to replace every parking meter with a charger.

It would cost money, but could be done more cheaply at scale and if amortized.

Start by spacing them mostly near housing, and spread them to replace more parking meters as usage increases.

It is also expensive to not switch off of ICE vehicles.

On my street they have attached chargers to the street lights.

As it should be, cheap, park anywhere, and fast enough.

Nope. Is as horrible as it gets. They silently swing by the pedestrians with over 20mph, many drive drunk or don't know/avoid traffic rules and there is 0 enforcement. And if you get hit by them good luck getting compensated for your hospital bills.

Exactly. They are a scourge. My best friend’s son had facial reconstructive surgery due to a scooter crash and a coworker’s son broke his arm, quite a bad break.

But.. it wasn't the scooter's fault, was it?

e-scooters seem incredibly unsafe to me and I think the figures back that up. e-bikes are much more stable.

I've ridden many thousands of kilometers on all kinds of regular bikes, e-bikes, e-scooters (of the small-wheels kind), electrified kickbikes (of the big-front-wheel kind) and actual scooters (of the vespa kind) and it all feels roughly the same to me. If you're an idiot who couldn't be bothered to learn how to ride $vehicle, you will likely crash $vehicle.

The issue is that e-scooters (of the small-wheels kind) are nowadays the weapon of choice of idiots who don't take riding seriously — because they're the cheapest and most portable solution that doesn't require any energy expenditure (unlike a bike) or special skill (unlike a onewheel or similar).

Yeah, I’ve racked up more than 2000 km on my e-scooter too with no issues, and I agree with your assessment - I see plenty of people riding responsibly but some people doing absolutely crazy things on scooters (often riding on busy roads, and at similar speeds to cars - crazy) and think it’s just a matter of time when you ride like that…

On bike paths at the legal speed limit here (25 km/h) you’re far less likely to have problems, especially if not riding while affected by any substances.

Most motorbike deaths are human error, not the motorbike’s fault.

But nonetheless, many people fear motorbikes as they’re particularly human error prone.

Yes, it was. They are quite unstable at the speeds they allow.

What do you mean by “unstable”? All single-track vehicles are inherently unstable and use that for steering.

Been there. It’s a hazard of biking in general. I love riding though.

There are fatal car crashes all the time.

I know far more people who ride bikes and I literally know 1 person that fell and was injured. I think it's very clear scooters are far more dangerous than bikes.

As horrible as the 41’000 that die year from cars in the US? Even after billions and billions are spent on their infrastructure?

How safe would cities with micro mobility be if we spent the same on them?

> As horrible as the 41’000 that die year from cars in the US?

and almost zero percent of that happens in cities.

59% in urban areas:

https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/8135...

Where did you get that idea?

i was referring to drivers&occupants only

How does it matter which side of the bodyframe the death occurred on?

Scooters should ride on the road. There is huge backlash in the Netherlands on the growing amount of scooters and especially fat bikes [1] riding on the bicycle paths, often ignoring speed limits and increasing risks by 10x.

The conversation really should be centered on “normal” e-bikes with light pedal assist, but these monsters are imported at extremely cheap prices and becomes first choice for teenagers and anyone on a budget.

[1] low-rider bikes with very wide tires, basically an electric motorcycle where you barely have to pedal

They are electric motorcycles and without registration, insurance, helmets, etc. they are breaking all kinds of laws. But for some reason the police here in the UK don't give a shit.

The damages caused by small electric vehicle users is not material when put into the context of all vehicular violence, where cars overwhelmingly dominate.

Also an order of magnitude or two better for the climate than an electric car.

As anecdotal example: My diy ebike will do about 80km unassisted (aka peddling for show) with .85kwh. Looking at what scooter should be able to do when not going too fast is a big order of magnitude (but not two) in kwh/100k. Though headwind is going to matter more on a bike/scooter than a car. I guess with a more efficient motor you could get up to two.

Don’t forget materials and manufacturing

Note that electric bikes/scooters get approximately zero consideration from cars. I was traveling in a bike lane last year and a truck just turned right into me. I easily could have died if not for my helmet. (Which received a glowing 5-star review for that performance, btw.)

The tech itself is sound but there appears to be some unresolved issues around sound ridership practices that could be addressed. E-scooters were introduced locally a few years ago by a couple of rental ap companies and attitudes of local drivers have shifted to naked hostility in response to users flagrant disregard for both traffic laws and common sense. Understand I make no effort to excuse the behavior of motorists which varies on a spectrum from negligent to actively homicidal depending on how badly traffic is being impeded. The reality of the situation is pretty resistant to high-minded ideals however and choosing these modes of transportation in many metro areas is intentionally putting yourself at risk.

In my jurisdiction it's literally illegal to make a right turn without ensuring the bike lane is entirely clear. Not to say that legality has ever dictated driver behavior, but what happened definitely wasn't just me impeding traffic.

Allow me to stress my total lack of support for motorist behavior. I rode a liter bike for a number of years and got so inured to motorist-induced near-death experiences that I wouldn't even comment to my coworkers on the days only a single driver tried to kill me on either my morning commute or when I left the office for lunch. I get it, but getting it doesn't change attitudes, aptitude, or attentiveness of the other folks on the road that have a weight advantage measured in tons. Full Disclosure: I loathe cyclists on the road. I find the act of intentionally putting oneself at risk for the privilege of presenting an impediment to normal traffic just insufferably self-absorbed and a troll of the first order. That said I give a full lane when passing or slow to match speed at a safe follow distance if passing isn't a safe option. Just because I find it to be nuisance behavior isn't grounds to hassle or threaten anyone, the roadway is a public resource after all.

This is weird. What am I supposed to do, ride my electric scooter on the sidewalk? It has a top speed of 45mph.

I obey traffic lights just like everyone else, I don't just get in front of people randomly. Though of course, that doesn't stop people from deciding to shove the side of their vehicle into me.

I kinda feel like we're arguing the same side here. There aren't good options available to you if you're on a scooter.

I feel like if you are arguing the same side, it's really hard for to tell since you also talk about how cyclists are trolling you by choosing to impede traffic instead of just getting a car. But otherwise yeah, scooter clearly has risks.

From what I've seen, scooters and electric bikes aren't competition for cars, but for public transport.

Also light transport works great for for single people and dinks. Once people have kids they likely would want a car. By that time you don’t want to do daily shopping and you don’t want to carry four bags of groceries on a bus, plus on average a couple of times a month you need to transport bulkier items -yes you could rent a car for that each time, but people like ad hoc convenience, they don’t like planning things in advance, if they can avoid it.

Not at all. Transport is great for families. Get your groceries delivered.

Cargo bikes exist as well.

Delivered groceries are more expensive, not everyone can afford the prices plus the expected tip. A beater auto is affordable for most families.

People with dough won’t mind the extra expense, that’s usually a given.

not in the UK. its an extra couple of quid for the delivery.

I really don’t think you can argue that buying a car for groceries is cheaper than getting them delivered every once in a while. Even just in terms of gas and taxes it’s already more expensive.

A cheap car costs around 300€ per month (including taxes, repairs, loss of value, etc.), or way more if you drive a lot or if you have a car that is new-ish. I don't think that 4-8 deliveries per month would cost more than 80€ per month in delivery cost. Also, what's keeping you from going shopping by bike? We do it all the time.

Also an e-bike in the snow or pouring rain is miserable if it even works at all. There are some situations where they're great, but cars are just a lot more flexible. One vehicle that does everything.

Where I live public transport allows you to take your bike, ebike or scooter onboard. I think this is the future (maybe not subways but lightrail/bus)

If this graph is the evidence for "Global sales of combustion engine cars have peaked" isn't it also the evidence proving "global car sales have peaked"?

Maybe, but not as strong. Combustion is down or flat every year since '16. Aggregate numbers haven't regained their peak, but are up and down.

Maybe. Less clear evidence of that.

Total cars down by 5-6%, and lower than 6 of the previous 13 years.

Combustion cars down by 24%, and lower than 12 of the previous 13 years.

It does not get into the "why", but I realize that is hard to determine.

My question is, are these sales for brand new cars or does it include used cars also ?

I know my days of buying brand new ended years ago due to how expensive new cars are. My current car (bought used) is from 2007 and if I have to buy another, it will be used.

So I have to wonder, are people avoiding buying new due to the expense. That could point to a reason. Would be interesting to see charts based upon Country or group of countries.

Every used car was a new car at one point

Every scrapped car is a used car

I think the point about used cars would have to imply that newer used cars are more reliable than older used cars, which would cause the supply of cars in the market to saturate more quickly, thus causing less demand for new cars. Not sure if that's true but it seems reasonable.

This graph shows 2023 only.

Even in 2024 there were still some production issues coming out of the covid years. 2023 had lots of issues.

So it's unclear what's actually going to happen, if normal markets resume.

(At least in North America, the car manufacturing market will go bananas soon with new tariffs)

Presumably 2024 will also be bad due to interest rates. But, of course, that doesn't say anything about "real" demand.

I doubt total sales have peaked. Economic growth and population growth will likely keep that going up.

But EVs are eating enough market share that combustion cars are likely never climbing past their peak again.

not necessarily, people in dense urban areas rely on other transportations at least in EU

EU is a tiny portion of the global population (as is America)

But you’re right, increasing urbanisation globally leads to more public transport which offsets countries getting richer.

> Economic growth and population growth will likely keep that going up.

What population growth?

About 70 million per year at the moment. Current estimates have world population peaking in 2080.

Certainly not all estimates, right? We can certainly suppose different scenarios, with a large specter from humanity total disappearance to discovery of star gates technology opening plenty of inhabitable world without any actual alien threat existing in the outerspace. Also there can be wide gap in evolution from one government influence zone to an other, even at very small region scale — think Haiti and The Dominican Republic.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/07/1151971

Not everyone drives. If population growth is mostly in places where people bike/ebike/walk/train, then your assumption doesn’t hold.

When those people get richer they'll want to drive. We see this all over the developing world. The growth might be less than the growth in mass transit but as populations become richer they become more mobile so the absolute demand will likely increase.

When I got richer, that meant I could afford to move somewhere I wouldn't have to drive all the time. Life is more pleasant here in the "15-minute city".

I have an EV (Kia Niro EV 2024). I don't want ever to go back to gas.

Reasons:

* the driving experience is just much, much better: punch & acceleration, stability, quietness, etc.

* if you charge at home it is a lot cheaper than gas

* it is so easy to "fuel": you plug it in when you arrive home and unplug the next morning

Edit: also, after I installed solar cells at home, I drive almost for free!

Also, if you get into an EV now, before everyone else does, you can still enjoy a cheap fueling experience for a little while longer

I can't see how they can make at home charging more expensive without making all other electricity uses expensive and that will have severe backlash.

On the go DC fast charging is already not cheap. It costs as much or more than gas.

They can mandate separate metering for the charging circuit and tax it to make u p for the lost gasoline taxes.

those gasoline taxes currently pay for roads. and EVs put more strain on roads due to their increased weight.

ICE vs EV difference is negligible compared to 18 wheelers and alike on road strain.

And 18 wheelers pay a lot more road tax than passenger cars do.

It's hard to say, considering studies attribute 50% to 98% of road wear to them.

EVs have heavier batteries and ICEs have heavier engines and drivetrains. Go compare two similar models at most brands and the curb weight will be within 50-100kg. Add in a full tank of gas to the ICE and the will likely weigh about the same.

I guess it's increased/comparable weight + lack of gas tax. There's definitely something thrown off by EVs and the suggestion to tax charging EVs specifically makes sense.

> EVs put more strain on roads due to their increased weight

Only if you trade in a gasoline SUV for an electric SUV. A hatchback EV weighs about as much as a compact SUV, and is cheaper to buy and operate.

Right, but it's not apples to apples. And what about all those people driving ICE sedans?

What about them? 10 years ago the best-selling vehicle in the US was a sedan. Today it's a pickup truck. Nobody said boo about road damage. It's a made-up reason to hate on EVs.

Well if you scroll up to my original point re: gas tax paying for roads, it's not really the same thing.

Because trucks also used more gas. EVs don't.

"Mandate" how? Unless they're doing expensive mandatory periodic inspections nothing is stopping me from plugging my EVSE into an outlet meant for a welder, dryer, pool pump, etc.

And can always charge L1 120v, even if it's unbearably slow.

Most people will have an electrician install a charging station. Sure, some people will dodge it, as they already dodge other building code requirements.

Or, they can just tax the car based on some average mileage statistics. That's what my state does. Registering an EV is substantially more expensive than an ICE vehicle.

Is it more expensive per mile though with all things considered?

Probably not.

We bought a used EV, and I ran the numbers vs. a 20mpg car.

The EV will pay for itself in saved gasoline after about 53K miles.

That’s not breakeven time; that’s “the car is free” time.

Breakeven was less than half that long because the old ICE car would have had non-zero depreciation.

Apples-to-apples break even would have been 10-20K miles (ignoring free charging at work), but it ended up being closer to 300 miles. Thanks to a fuel crisis, the price of the EV increased by $5K shortly after I bought it. (It’s back down now.)

I don't even much care. I couldn't see myself driving back to ICE purely on account of the driving experience. They feel like janky fragile technology from the past with too many moving parts.

My car got totalled in September and I had to replace it. Since I didn't drive much at the time I entertained just getting a super cheap old ICE to replace it. Then I started remembering all the annoying maintenance.

Still, back to DC fast charging... I use it rarely. But it's not cheap. And it's a shit non-standardized, fragmented experience.

Also, with time, we can make effort to decarbonize the production chain of EVs. With ICE vehicles, they reject carbon and there are only so many micro-adjustments we can do.

Right, much safer to expect oil and gas to stay consistent because all those EV drivers will be using pure renewable electricity.

Hertz forced me to take a Kia Niro EV as my rental. "We have no other vehicles left, it is a higher class vehicle than the compact you reserved". Like hell it was! Never again!

I had plans that involved driving 8 hours each way. Electrify America chargers were all broken. Luckily, CircleK chargers "worked", slowly. An hour and 30 min to go from 10% to 90%. Had to charge twice each way. Time I will never get back.

After this experience, I talked to Hertz. There is evidently no way to note "no EV ever" on a reservation. I am avoiding hertz from now on (and dollar/thrifty that they own). Enterprise allows you to note "NO EV" on a rental reservation, and honors it.

Until EVs can charge at every corner and in 3 minutes, no thanks! I have places to be, and those places are not "90 minutes on a deserted CircleK parking lot"

I think you don't want to see it, but if you were willing to do so, here's the point: each usage is different! Each way a person uses a car has different consequences and implications.

My charging takes less than 1 minute, really. I arrive at home at 4:30, it takes 20 seconds to plug the car and then 20 more seconds to unplug it the next morning.

And what about all the 12 hours between that? Well, I am living my life, I am not charging a car! The car is doing the whole work of charging itself, alone.

That's several orders of magnitude better than going to a gas station.

I deliberately rented a Kia Niro EV on my last work trip for the novelty of driving an electric car since probably 2016. I even insisted when they tried to switch me to another vehicle.

Boy, it sucked. Even with a Type 2 charger at work, and maybe 2 miles between the office and my hotel, charging was a huge hassle. And with an ICE vehicle I can refuel before dropping it back off at the airport in about 5 minutes. It's just not practical to recharge my EV after driving 1.5 hours to catch my flight.

The only other noteworthy experience was making an adjustment in a parking space and having 2 or 3 alarms going off concurrently without any indication of what they meant. (Excluding the proximity sensor, if memory serves.)

Yeap, EVs are great when you can charge at home and your journeys are all short enough to return home each night to recharge.

This is what I do. Love it. Never ever going back to ICE.

Those very few times I have to make longer journeys and need to charge? Have found a few fast chargers on routes I take that I try and use, but its majorly inconvenient and stressful compared to ICE. A big downside.

So great for being our personal car for local journeys. Bad for long journeys.

EVs should definitely not be rentals, especially in countries with poor charging infrastructure. The use cases between renting and daily ownership are vastly different and EVs simply don't suit most rental use cases. I see quite a lot of understandable anti-EV comments due to rentals but it's rare to find an EV owner who goes back to ICE. EVs don't need to charge in 3 minutes, they need to charge where you park them, which is easy for owners but very difficult for a short term renter.

Pro tip, don’t charge to 90 or 100% on a DC fast charger. There’s a significant slowdown past 80%.

Bummer about the broken EA chargers. PlugShare has been really great for finding working chargers. People leave reviews and notes on how well the chargers are working and tips about using them.

I think once all cars are NACS and can use Tesla stations too the charging situation will be much better.

> Hertz forced me to take a Kia Niro EV as my rental.

> I had plans that involved driving 8 hours each way.

That's a Hertz problem not an EV problem. The car was patently unsuited to your particular needs on that one trip. Daily commuting doesn't involve 16-hour round trips.

You can either use that non-representative experience to reinforce your pre-existing anti-EV ideology. Or reflect on your EV hate rationally.

The "electric" share here includes plug-in hybrids which, if we're nitpicking, have an internal combustion engine.

Doesn't affect the overall conclusion as even if they were all hybrids the number of cars with internal combustion would still be lower.

I'm very, very bullish on EVs, they're going to take over the world rapidly but this graph isn't great support as you can't see the exponential rise very well and it's swamped by other data inluences.

The conclusion seems pretty shoddy as well, since it relies on a few years worth of data to indicate a permanent shift in purchasing habits, and those years include a global pandemic, supply chain shortages and high inflation/interest.

Really the only conclusion I would make is that combustion-only has peaked, and that much is very clear if you go and shop for a new car. Everything is being hybridised.

Having just bought a hybrid minivan, there are few choices and high demand but low supply. ICE only vehicles are in ready supply at all our local dealerships.

I'm inclined to agree with the conclusion from _this_ data being a tad too early.

But, if one digs a bit into the data then one finds that EV sales in nearly all countries had double digit increases. The two major exceptions are Germany and Italy. But on the other hand the Chinese market both grew substantially and there it is more or less a policy goal to boost local manufactures and those are ~all electric. And if China is not going back to gas-powered cars then the conclusion is a pretty safe bet, isn't it?

That chart used is very low information dense, reducing cars to "electric" and "non-electric", but that's an oversimplification. There's hybrids and plug-in hybrids like you said, hydrogen, pressured air (ok that one never took off), and of course different types of fuel like petrol, diesel and LPG.

I looked into building a compressed air remote controlled boat for fun, to use on a nearby lake where I was worried about putting batteries on something that might sink.

It is monstrously inefficient. A scuba tank might power a vehicle for a half hour tops, though I forget the exact numbers. Scuba tanks are huge and heavy for small hobby vehicles.

I'd love to pick it back up are there other options here?

>I'd love to pick it back up are there other options here?

Higher compression. Scuba is older tech and standardized around relatively low pressures. CNG runs above 3000psi. Paintball guns run air at 4-5000. Carbon fiber tanks are readily available for both as are compressors.

> I'm very, very bullish on EVs, they're going to take over the world rapidly but this graph isn't great support as you can't see the exponential rise very well and it's swamped by other data inluences.

One thing people don't realize is that EVs are going to be SO MASSIVELY CHEAPER than ICE cars that we will see massive changes in behaviour and socioeconomic dynamics in society. I think we will see a day where a new car won't be much more expensive than a new fridge.

What happens when everyone who can afford a fridge can afford a car? And drive it for next to nothing? With car repair basically being a non issue (just throw away and get a new one)?

Some societies are not equipped for that. Roads will need to be repaired much more often (due to EV weight as well). Tire microplastic particles are going to be much bigger problem (but less gas emissions at least). Gas taxes used to pay for road infrastructure in some countries, that doesn't work anymore. Electricity taxes? But then you are taxing people who don't use the roads as much. IoT meters on cars beeping your location to the government (UK actually proposed this)? Battery fire management? Recycling (especially for the batteries)?

Car manufacturing won't be a big industry that matters that much for the overall economy anymore.

Lots of countries where a lot of the population use motorized-scooters/motorcycles will move to use bigger cars. Traffic is going to get much worse everywhere, public transport will become less attractive. Parking demand will skyrocket.

People who already own cars will resist any form of government control to reduce traffic/parking. US car-centric lifestyle will be exported to all of the developing world. If anything the US and Canada are only of the few countries prepared for this new world (the only places where everyone, even poor people, own cars and drive everywhere).

EVs are going to be SO MASSIVELY CHEAPER than ICE cars

Why?

Much simpler than combustion cars and far easier to mass produce. Once it becomes a disposable commodity like smartphones the maintenance supply-chain will be much simpler and cheaper (few issues will be worth fixing instead of just replacing a big chunk of the vehicle or just getting a new one).

Batteries are expensive, but are mostly automated manufacturing. Raw minerals for batteries will become mostly closed-loop in the long-term with recycling (like aluminum). And the prices is going down a lot even without recycling being significant yet.

I imagine you would be able to trade-in your current car and get a big discount for a new one.

This things is amazing.

https://www.bmwmotorcycles.com/en/models/urban_mobility/ce04...

Shows promise, yes.

Looks good for belting about a city on, where I am (rural Australian town) I'm happy with walking or a scooter for local travel .. an 80 mile range just gets me to the nearest town and back with little reserve.

A 150 mile range would be better .. that'll come I guess.

FWiW I rode the BMW R650 (light road bike) for a decade and had a GS 1250 with long range tanks for road|off road trips.

$12K for a very limited use vehicle that has an 80 mile range. Good luck with that.

Its zero-sixty time is 2.6 seconds. That ties the fastest thing here:

https://www.zeroto60times.com/body-style/motorcycle/fast-slo...?

Which has an MSRP of $20K.

I suspect the BMW will sell extremely well.

The BMW links says zero to 30 mph in 2.6

Not bad but it's not zero to 60 mph in 2.6

It looks huge! How the hell do you commute on that thing? Can't imagine lane filtering on it.

Edit: 855mm wide, 1675mm wheelbase, weighs like a 1000cc adventure bike (clearly bottom-heavy, though). That's one Goldwing of a scooter.

The caption says:

European Model Shown. U.S. model only available with clear windscreen.

Is that the piece of orange plastic in front of the handlebar base, that they are calling a "windscreen"?

Yes. And it works (well enough) because at speed the chunk of air it forces up mixes with the air above the bike (that the rider would otherwise hit with their face) and disturbs it so the rider experiences something more a akin to riding in a pickup bed than to sticking their head out a sunroof.

That looks perfect for phone snatchers.

The phone snatchers at least in the UK prefer souped up e-bikes rather than e-motorcycles. That thing the police would stop you if you didn't have a number plate.

Also cycling on the pavement where the snatching occurs is more acceptable on an e-bike, even though it's illegal even for a pedal bike.

The police should still be stopping those bikes as they don't meet the legal definition of EAPC and so require a licence plate. Not that they do.

The have been stopping them and crushing the bikes although it's patchy https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c89yw3wzl9no

Looks like a scooter but twice as heavy and with a mobile app. The only reason you'll see it on the streets are subsidies from public "green" funds.

Historical event. It’s all downhill from here.

Tracking global data on electric vehicles - https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales

Nonsense, China's future is looking brighter by the day!

But I repeat myself, apologies to Twain

Downhill = good, momentum is unstoppable, nothing stops the electrification transition, we’re simply arguing time horizon now; China will be the clean energy and mobility manufacturer to the world.

(50% of car sales in China in 2024 were battery electric or plug in hybrid)

If US allows these cheap electric cars for at least 2-3 years, I would say it would be great for everybody except car companies and Elon.

Unfortunately, the US would rather subject its consumers to legacy auto and Tesla prices and lack of competition vs enabling imports to drive down domestic prices to improve affordability. Poor policy is unfortunate.

And with the rest of the world covering to electric, we can expect negative economies of scale alongside the financial problems of economic contraction for combustion car makers.

The coal companies started going bankrupt long before the end of coal. (hell it's still not over...) Simply because investors could see that it's a shrinking industry, making it impossible to get financing for new plants, mines, etc.

Did you figure out importing BYD vehicles?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39992428

I terminated my in process application to import the vehicle from my property outside of the US for two reasons: I no longer intend to maintain majority residency in the US for the foreseeable future (obvious reasons), and the US government is effectively banning Chinese EVs in the US [1].

Was fun to make the attempt, but sometimes city hall wins. It turns out it is easier to expat than to import a Chinese car.

[1] https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/biden-administration-effect...

> I no longer intend to maintain majority residency in the US for the foreseeable future

I suddenly just became a proponent of in-person voting.

I have similar feelings about both of our votes carrying the same weight. Disappointment in democracy is inevitable.

As of tomorrow morning the US has declared war on its legacy domestic auto industry, too. Take a look at GM's stock. Trump was warned there would be plant closures if tariffs were enacted but he went ahead anyways. Doesn't show much of a preference or concern for those industries at all.

But sure, maybe Tesla. Though I suspect they use parts from Magna etc on this side of the border, too.

UAW and their >500k members might disagree

I feel most people still don't realize that China is facing a demographic crisis. If their demographics matched the United States sure, but its unlikely china will be leading many of these future technological situations. Don't take me the wrong way, they have a great opportunity in front of them but just the resources required to take care of their elderly is going to suck up a pretty hefty amount of resources.

More industrial robots are built and sold in China than anywhere else in the world. This is an intentional choice, the government knows their working age population is shrinking. They will race to automation before their demographic dividend is finished paying out.

To note, the US has no robotics foundries, and already is experiencing labor shortages today.

https://itif.org/publications/2024/03/11/how-innovative-is-c...

China is also authoritarian, has central planning, and deliberately had a one-child policy for a while to prevent the opposite problem.

I'm not saying this would be a pleasant or fun experience for those involved, but I am saying I wouldn't bet against China even on demographics.

The whole developed world is facing a demographic crisis. The US brith rate is expected to fall below replacement levels in 2033.

https://apnews.com/article/population-projections-congressio...

Great data, I wish it was updated for 2024. I think that article will come soon given that current data was from February of 2024 (for 2023 data).

I follow this. Might not be entirely correct for some countries but is as up to date as possible:

https://robbieandrew.github.io/carsales/

I think that combustion engines will make a come back, and we're at a false peak. I believe that due to a poor economic outlook, we see more people purchasing from the used-car market than new vehicles. I personally have seen a recent boom in the UK for road-worthy vehicles under £5k. On the other hand, I have seen used EVs completely unsellable, to the point where forecourts refuse to accept them as part-exchange.

If you see the breakdown graph [1], the likes of Norway is about to peak at 100%. The UK, US and EU are already becoming saturated, and China have saturated their internal markets and now face export tariffs to other significant markets to prevent dumping. The largest driving forces for this trend are essentially saturated.

Just in the EU for example we see that energy prices continue to increase per kWh [2], further reducing the "low cost benefit" of electricity that EVs previously enjoyed. We also see governments beginning to realise that they miss out on vehicle tax for EVs due to incentives, and such benefits begin to be withheld [3].

As the global economy continues to slow, I expect to see EVs and any green agenda items decrease in popularity, and a return to combustion engines and other policies with higher economic growth.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electric-car-sales-share

[2] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

[3] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/vehicle-tax-for-electric-and-low...

It is very strange to see a grayed out comment on top of a thread that has about 160 non-grayed out comments. I thought that highest rated comments go to the top and grayed out comments are rated below zero.

Regarding your points. First the thing about used evs not selling has more to do with the rapid pace of innovation of evs rather than lack of demand. In the 90s it was very difficult to sell a used PC because PCs improved so quickly. That did not mean that PCs were not doing well, in fact PC sales were growing exponentially. And evs do improve fast.

Your second point is silly. Basically you are saying that EVs are doomed because EVs are already selling too much. Thats like the old joke that nobody goes to this restaurant anymore because it is too crowded.

Your third point is about rising electricity costs. That sucks for sure, but electricity costs tend to rise together with gasoline costs. It will be very difficult for those two to diverge so that a gas car all of a sudden becomes more economical. The fact that one can make electricity out of oil and oil products tends to mean that electricity costs will not rise very much in comparison to gasoline costs in a short period of time.

> Your second point is silly. Basically you are saying that EVs are doomed because EVs are already selling too much. Thats like the old joke that nobody goes to this restaurant anymore because it is too crowded.

I found it thought provoking rather than silly. Anecdotally, I've noticed EVs have gone from a type of car frequently seen on road trips to more of a city vehicle. This confines their location and purchasers.

Agree except maybe...

> The fact that one can make electricity out of oil.

If you do that, there's little benefit from car electrification. Also electricity is cheap usually when the car is not charging and vice versa. People arrive home, start cooking, washing clothes and plug in their car. The sun is already set and the local grid's unprepared cable sections cause voltage drops. The energy dilivered by the pv panels at noon is worth less than 10 percent of the nominal price. That is what holding EV usage back right now.

> If you do that, there's little benefit from car electrification

Untrue, if you generate power from oil at a big power plant, transmit it down to a house and charge a battery then use the battery to power an electric motor it will still be considerably more efficient than using a car-sized combustion engine (not even counting the energy required to transport the gasoline/diesel to the gas station).

> The sun is already set and the local grid's unprepared cable sections cause voltage drops

It seems inevitable that car-makers and utilities will need to agree on some kind of smart metering for charging cars at non-peak points. Energy costs at 12am->6am are actually cheaper than during the day even in areas with a lot of PVs (baseline power load can't be easily shut on/off). I heard there are some standards about this.

> It is very strange to see a grayed out comment on top of a thread that has about 160 non-grayed out comments. I thought that highest rated comments go to the top and grayed out comments are rated below zero.

I don't mind, I have internet points to spare. I think it's more important we have a proper discussion in this place.

> Regarding your points. First the thing about used evs not selling has more to do with the rapid pace of innovation of evs rather than lack of demand. In the 90s it was very difficult to sell a used PC because PCs improved so quickly. That did not mean that PCs were not doing well, in fact PC sales were growing exponentially. And evs do improve fast.

I disagree. I spoke to several dealerships and they simply cannot sell even a few year old EVs, despite them being able to sell 'new' EVs of that manufacturing date. From what I can tell it's that if you've got the money to spend £30k on an EV, why would you take a risk and buy a used one for £20k? There will be limited warranty and no 'classic' mechanic will touch it. If it's out of manufacturer warranty and you develop a battery fault, the battery and fitment can be comparable to the cost you paid for the entire vehicle. This is extremely unlikely to change soon.

I'm not making that point at all. Whatever the market force is, there appears to be a saturation on the near horizon for percentage of sales. It's not an opinion, it's what the numbers suggest.

> Your third point is about rising electricity costs. That sucks for sure, but electricity costs tend to rise together with gasoline costs. It will be very difficult for those two to diverge so that a gas car all of a sudden becomes more economical. The fact that one can make electricity out of oil and oil products tends to mean that electricity costs will not rise very much in comparison to gasoline costs in a short period of time.

Without taxes, combustion engines are more economical (we're not discussing efficiency). Fuel duty and VAT in the UK represents over 50% of the overall cost of fuel [1]. Some portion of that tax is then used to subsidise green energy projects such as wind turbines and solar panels, further reducing the cost of electricity.

[1] https://www.racfoundation.org/data/percentage-uk-pump-price-...

What internet points do you have to spare? What are these points that let your posts be on the top even though everyone is voting you down. I always had doubts that HN is taking some sort of bribe to force disliked and false posts into people's attention, I did not know they made it so obvious.

So where do you pay to get your HN posts to the top? Let me know, I have some ludicrous opinions I would like to promote too!

I will not respond to the rest of your post, your arguments have deteriorated from being simply false to being incomprehensible.

> What internet points do you have to spare? What are these points that let your posts be on the top even though everyone is voting you down. I always had doubts that HN is taking some sort of bribe to force disliked and false posts into people's attention, I did not know they made it so obvious.

Just to be clear, "I have internet points to spare" refers specifically to the loss caused by downvoting. The point is that I don't care to be downvoted, I don't say things to be popular, I am far more interested in the fruits the discussions lead to.

> I will not respond to the rest of your post, your arguments have deteriorated from being simply false to being incomprehensible.

Sure, make up a conspiracy about why my comment is nearer to the top and disregard my actual points by claiming they are all false anyway. It's great to have these kinds of well structured discussions here on HN.

As the sibling comment says: Ability to resell EVs is a problem. But that's mostly because you can get a new car today (i.e. deliverable and everything) for the same price as an older EV and likely the new car is even better (larger battery, faster charging). That's unfortunate for first adopters and is a significant problem for adaption in lower-income circles (those typically buying second hand), but not a reason for going back to gasoline cars.

At least here in Germany we are rapidly approaching the point where we will require power sinks in order to absorb solar around noon. And EVs are extremely well-positioned for that. Typically the charging time can be shifted around a bit and charging stations will come with their own buffer stage. That means that most people won't pay anywhere near the normal sticker price for electricity for their cars.

All that being said: I agree that "green agenda items" will decrease in popularity (or really: they weren't that popular to begin with). But EVs in particular are just straight up cheaper. If not by construction, then definitely by the air pollution reduction interest of the Chinese government. I'd be highly surprised if incentive reduction has more than a delaying effect, if even that

> That's unfortunate for first adopters and is a significant problem for adaption in lower-income circles (those typically buying second hand), but not a reason for going back to gasoline cars.

I'm not advocating (here at least) for a move back to combustion vehicles, I'm just noting what I have seen. I would say that unless there is a serious used EV market and that the poorer people are able to afford an EV, there will forever be a resistance. You can push poor people out of the urban areas to rural locations with poor shared transport options, but they still need to commute to work.

> All that being said: I agree that "green agenda items" will decrease in popularity (or really: they weren't that popular to begin with). But EVs in particular are just straight up cheaper. If not by construction, then definitely by the air pollution reduction interest of the Chinese government. I'd be highly surprised if incentive reduction has more than a delaying effect, if even that

I think the reversal of most green policies is on the cards as governments struggle to balance the books with an incoming global recession.

EVs are cheaper to run once you tax fuel to a higher price, otherwise they are not. EVs cost about half as much to run, and in the UK the fuel duty is approximately 50%, some of which is put into subsidising green electricity production. EVs are definitely not cheaper to construct, maintain or recycle end-of-life.

The only thing I can think is that they have reduced emissions during the operating life-time of the vehicle, but I haven't seen the numbers to suggest if this includes the entire lifetime. Some quick numbers:

Apparently petrol/diesel vehicles require ~5.6 tonnes CO2 to build, whereas EVs ~8.8 tonnes. I see numbers assuming that combustion vehicles produce ~4.6 tonnes CO2 annually, but it assumes 22.2 miles per gallon (very low fuel economy) and 11,500 miles driven a year (a heavy commuter). I think the assumptions are bad. That considered, then there is the recycling/upcycling of the vehicles. I know that for combustion vehicles this process is extremely efficient, as literally every part is recycled, much reused in the used car market.

> I would say that unless there is a serious used EV market and that the poorer people are able to afford an EV, there will forever be a resistance.

Agreed. And I didn't mean to imply, that there isn't a problem for "everyone gets electric". But that will fix itself with (probably) this year's new cars. So in 2-3 years there will be a fledgling 2nd hand market and in 10 it will be of similar volume as it is now (probably still a bit pricier, since there will be a non-car use for used car batteries)

> EVs are definitely not cheaper to construct, maintain or recycle end-of-life.

There I disagree. The EV price is (still) (mostly) the battery, which is _still_ coming down rapidly. I thought maintenance costs were already cheaper, but maybe not. And end-of-life is mostly a scale question, which will be fixed. Especially since we can reuse the batteries.

The same goes for energy cost and CO2 emissions. I think the EV construction numbers largely assume current (or even worst case) energy mixes, but yeah most of these comparison make at least one questionable assumption (like choosing low efficiency gas cars) and are therefore complicated. Still it's quite a fundamental property: EVs are more efficient and large combustion systems are more efficient. At least CO2-wise it will _always_ be more efficient to burn fuel in a large power plant and run an EV. And the electricity mix is significantly better than that^. Price-wise it's a more complicated story, but at least for Germany, we need to import the fuel anyways. So producing locally should work out better (both personally, where using your own solar is basically a tax break and system wide, where EVs provide a reasonably flexible dispatchable load, which has value)

I think the big question is the time scale here, but fundamentally: The biggest market in the world decided to go EV, that makes the position of any non-EV producer complicated to say the least. Everything downstream (second hand market, recycling, ...) hasn't had time to even develop yet.

^ Assuming we are not tearing down anything already installed..

In the long run, society goes to 100% electric transportation due to global warming. Any analysis that treats this as a simple matter of consumer choice is going to miss the biggest driver of adoption.

Maybe some alternate carbon-neutral fuel for combustion is possible, but all the ones we’ve tried so far have lost out to electric.

Not just global warming but eventually oil depletion. Fracking has given the oil industry a stay of execution but it will work until it doesn’t and the cheapest stuff is exhausted, just like conventional drilling.

We know how to build good EVs now, which means the result of this will be a lot less catastrophic than twenty or thirty years ago. We are lucky the peak oilers back then underestimated.

Yes, I don't think many people realize this but we have like ~46 years of oil left in total. That's not very much. It will just keep getting more expensive. Even if we keep burning coal for electricity, we still have 140 years of that left, so it's just a matter of relatively short time until the optimum flips in favor of electric.

I wouldn't be surprised if we stretch it further than 46 years. All previous estimates have been under-estimates. Still, it's a bit like stock market bubbles. During a bubble bears are wrong many times and right once.

Your estimate for coal is probably low, unfortunately. There are vast amounts of it in places like Alaska and Siberia and elsewhere in the Arctic, maybe Antarctica too if that melts enough. We probably have enough carbon to destroy the world if we really don't give a damn and decide we don't want Florida. We have quite a lot of gas, too, which is not nearly as bad as coal for climate change but isn't great if we keep using it forever and at huge scale.

The bottom line is that transition to electrified everything powered by solar, wind, hydro, nuclear (maybe fusion too eventually), and geothermal, is inevitable. The question is the timetable. Oil will be the first fossil fuel to go. It's already many times more expensive per kWh as a source of energy due to the difficult of substituting it for internal combustion engines and aviation.

>I don't think many people realize this but we have like ~46 years of oil left in total.

My parents remember reading those in 70's

I can't tell whether you're trying to make an argument with this comment or what's the reason for pointing that out.

The point is peak oil as a concept has existed for a long time, and we have extended way past its deadline before. It relies on not having technological advancement for accessing more oil.

Not exactly: it relies on future sources of oil (unconventional oil) having lower EROI (Energy return on investment) than historical oil reserves (conventional oil). Technological advancements could conceivably increase the EROI of some unconventional sources, but they mainly seem to make new lower EROI sources available.

Sure but that's not really argument for anything, it's just hopium. Oil is a finite resource, it will run out. Just because some breakthrough shift the timelines doesn't mean that the analysis isn't sound. There's no guarantee that another breakthrough is always coming.

>In the long run, society goes to 100% electric transportation due to global warming.

This is Western-centrism. In the long run 4 billion people do not go electric because poverty problem solving more important for them, then the global warming problem solving, and another 4 billion people do not consider global warming as a problem at all, the wormer - the better. And under this conditions what the remaining 2 billion people will do is not important at all.

In the long run, we go to 100% renewable electric everything, or civilization collapses and almost everyone dies. Of course, the latter case is probably the more likely one.

Pretty much every sentence in this comment doesn't correspond to reality. You should first go look at some real world data before commenting on this issue.

> In the long run, society goes to 100% electric transportation due to global warming. Any analysis that treats this as a simple matter of consumer choice is going to miss the biggest driver of adoption.

As @Ray20 pointed out, this is Western thinking. The only factor that will flip most poorer people is a direct economic incentive. Who cares about the weather when your children cannot eat.

> Maybe some alternate carbon-neutral fuel for combustion is possible, but all the ones we’ve tried so far have lost out to electric.

It was getting more efficient, but this stopped ever since all the governments got together and decided that by 2035 no more combustion vehicles would be sold. All incentives to produce more efficient combustion vehicles went out the window.

We are actually only a handful of inventions away from pretty low emissions combustion engines. There have already been significant inventions, such as the catalytic converter, DPF, fuel additives, turbos, intercoolers, direct water injection, etc.

I suspect we were only years from seeing KERS and MGU-H during acceleration events. I think it is also quite likely there would have been more effort to push for hybrid vehicles where only small batteries are used, again for acceleration events. Improvements in manufacturing processes would allow for high tolerances, increasing internal pressures and combustion efficiency.

Definitely going to be hard to understand incentives if you think it's just "the weather."

Largely agree with your analysis, but wanted to comment on this point:

> Just in the EU for example we see that energy prices continue to increase per kWh

I think we'll see energy prices in the EU continue to rise until geopolitics cool off a bit. I'd be a bit disappointed if the EU looked at the current trends and decided to become even more dependent on oil and gas given how antagonistic the main producers currently are.

I won't comment on geopolitics, but I believe (unfortunately) that the scales have tipped on global order.

Irrespective of geopolitics, I suspect we will see electricity prices come down and then go back up, for several reasons:

1. As more EVs charge on the grid, it will become further under strain. Assuming on average every house owns an EV, and that EV power usage is approximately the equivalent of one house, it would be like the population doubles in terms of pressure on the electrical grid. No country has that kind of spare capacity. They will have to cost infrastructure improvements to the electricity bill.

2. As less combustion vehicles are used, combustion-based taxes will reduce, and the green energy initiatives will lose this subsidisation. This loss will be put onto the electricity customers directly.

3. EVs are significantly heavier (cars: ~25%, sedans: ~30%, trucks/SUVs: ~150%) and cause more wear on infrastructure. That wear will directly correlate with the amount of electricity used, and will be the easiest way to introduce a tax to cover these costs. Costs associated to EVs will likely come from unexpected places, like the additional damage caused in a collision [1], and these will also directly correlate with electricity usage.

If anything the UK and EU appear to be near the peak of the EU sales percentage [2], if any Countries will see a decline in sales of EVs as a percentage of overall vehicles it would be those.

[1] https://globalnews.ca/news/9587791/electric-vehicle-weight-s...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electric-car-sales-share

Can I just ask - forgive the potential ignorance - if EVs have been proven to be less net carbon emitting with their manufacturing and expected disposal emissions factored in?

Yes. The break even is at around 15,000 to 20,000 miles driven for replacing an ICE. This obviously varies depending on electricity source.

Even that's a pretty conservative estimate these days. It's typically less, ~11,000m (18,000km) and the balance keeps shifting in EVs favour over time as the grid becomes more renewables based... https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-21-misleading-myths-ab...

EVs have an initial higher carbon footprint after production than ICE vehicles due to their battery.

However, the initial CO2 footprint is dwarfed when compared to the operational footprint of ICE vehicles. Takes a few years for the scale to tip in EVs favour, to which then there's a substantial difference.

> BNEF studied the US, Chinese, Germany, UK and Japanese markets. It determined the lifecycle CO2 emissions of a medium-size BEV manufactured in 2023 and driven for 250,000km would be 27-71 per cent lower than those of equivalent ICE vehicles.

Another important factor is that emissions are highly dependent on what you're burning to power the grid. As electrification intensifies those effects become even more pronounced. In 15 years or so I imagine most countries with sane leadership will be mostly running on renewables & nuclear.

> In 15 years or so I imagine most countries with sane leadership will be mostly running on renewables & nuclear.

I think it's good to mention that in Europe, 40% of all the electrical energy usage was renewable in 2024 [1]. This number is higher than it was in 2023, and will increase again in 2025 due to many new solar, wind, and battery installations.

In the US, 19% of all the electrical energy was produced by renewables and 20% by nuclear [2].

[1]: https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/european-electricit...

[2]: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

> sane leadership

That's too much to ask

> BEV manufactured in 2023 and driven for 250,000km would be 27-71 per cent lower than those of equivalent ICE vehicles.

(Disclaimer: I know little about cars ...)

My country, New Zealand, is awash with new BEV brands, some also offering ICE, from China and South East Asia. Compared with traditional SEA manufacturers (Japan, Korea) that supply most of our new cars, the prices are apparently ridiculously competitive and packed full of premium features.

It feels like I see a new brand advertised every couple of months. Four new brands were introduced late last year [1] One of whose SSL cert expired a couple of weeks ago and still has not been renewed.

The question is will these low cost EVs last 250,000km? I don't think the batteries will.

[1] https://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/350442392/four-new-chinese-...

[1] https://skyworth.co.nz/

Why do you think the batteries won’t?

> The question is will these low cost EVs last 250,000km? I don't think the batteries will.

> Why do you think the batteries won’t?

I was commenting on low-cost EV. I don't know but I think its likely that given the following (maybe incorrect) assumption:

1. Cheap EVs use cheaper lower-quality cells to keep costs down.

2. Cheap EVs use battery tech that maximises range and performance at the expense of longevity, which would be cheaper than both maximising range and performance AND longevity.

3. Cheap EVs save money with worse cooling of the batteries.

I could be wrong on both points.

There are plenty of stories of EV batteries having low deterioration despite high KMs. But I am not sure these are usually old EVs, just EVs driven a lot.

Lithium batteries experience cyclic degradation (degradation when charged) and degradation over time (calendar degradation). We have yet to see how multiple decades effects them.

This NZ govt. report is an excellent resource [1]. It cites this paper [2] where they charted Nissan Leaf battery deterioration over time under various conditions.

Here in NZ, I looked at our post popular used-car website and 9 year old Leafs (2015 model) which had done 90-100,000km had lost 25-32% of battery capacity. There is not much data for earlier leafs.

[1] https://www.genless.govt.nz/assets/Everyone-Resources/ev-bat...

https://www.genless.govt.nz/assets/Everyone-Resources/ev-bat...

Yeah, that’s a bad assumption. Cheap EVs tend to use chemistries with a poor energy to weight ratio, but those chemistries are relatively long lasting (in particular see LFP). I’d bet on a cheap electric car made today lasting longer than a high end one 5 years ago for this reason.

Some brands (in particular Tesla has done this) even use LFP in low-end versions of a single model, and NMC in high end.

> Yeah, that’s a bad assumption. Cheap EVs tend to use chemistries with a poor energy to weight ratio, but those chemistries are relatively long lasting (in particular see LFP). I’d bet on a cheap electric car made today lasting longer than a high end one 5 years ago for this reason.

Interesting. I may indeed be wrong!

Japan and Korea are not South East Asia [1]...

Are there well known SEA car manufacturers, or exporters? Proton of Malaysia is (or was?) probably the biggest, they owned the legendary Lotus brand at one point.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeast_Asia

Probably just Proton and Perodua. Plenty of manufacturing plants in SEA for the Japanese brands.

Vinfast? Not super well known though

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VinFast

Will that initial footprint come down as recycled batteries become more ubiquitous?

https://youtu.be/6RhtiPefVzM?si=QBYX8y8ArPbZ_oii

It's also worth considering that EVs & battery technology are evolving and over time the impacts from build, use and disposal will most probably lessen. If you start with the industrial revolution, the fossil fuel industry had a couple of centuries and the ICE vehicle industry had about 100 years before they even had to think about the environmental effects of their actions and come up with solutions. The battery industry is really only just getting started and already environmental impact of the full life cycle is a significant consideration and a budding industry in itself.

The question gets asked and answered so often that whenever I see it now I wonder if it is a deliberate attempt to sow doubt.

Some of it’s probably genuine. The oil industry has been pushing this particular lie in various forms for about half a century (comically, it’s a claim that they would sometimes make about _nuclear power plants_), and it has sunk deep into the culture.

Of course it is. The campaigning for fossil fuels is very sneaky and uses great talking points. There is always a grain of truth to every such talking point, so they are very difficult to debunk and discuss.

Yes. There are many myths spread around by the fossil lobby and, as always, there is a grain of truth in every myth, that's why they are so hard to debunk.

See for example https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-21-misleading-myths-ab...

From the source, which more clearly states "we're biased", the massive change is because of EV cars in China.

https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2024/executive...

How long, until it becomes illegal to come up with these feel-good mood-affiliation "reports" that paint Plug-In Hybrids (i.e. combustion-engines equipped with a supportive battery) as Electric Vehicles?

Many of those plugins will almost never use their combustion engine. Particularly in western Europe where most of these are selling, the average person doesn’t drive far enough per day to exhaust the battery.

So it’s not just feel-good, it’s a real impact.

That said, I don’t think that’s what this report is doing?

This contradicts your assertion: https://www.transportenvironment.org/articles/plug-hybrids-n...

Those are massive SUV-type things with apparently rather weak engines (ie almost light hybrids, but with a plug); the typical plugin hybrid is a fair bit smaller. And has a bigger battery; the Mitsubishi Outlander mentioned had a 12kWh battery, vs, say, a plug-in Prius, a much smaller car with a 14kWh battery,

Many plugin hybrids only need to use their petrol engine when they actually run out of power. I would wonder if whoever came up with the above study was deliberately looking for a worst case scenario, tbh; they didn't include any small/normal-sized cars at all (everything they mention is over two tonnes), even though the _average_/most typical plugin hybrid car is probably some sort of smallish hatchback.

(Even then, though, I'm curious what conditions they're testing under. I know someone who has a BMW 5-series plugin hybrid saloon, which is a close relative of the X5 mentioned, albeit a bit lighter and more aerodynamic, and it operates pretty much entirely on battery when charged.)

Somewhat. They're still significantly more efficient than ICE vehicles. Regenerative braking adds 10-25% efficiency on it's own.

The study behind your article has this to say on the issue:

> The share of kilometers that PHEVs electrify results in a total of 15%–55% less tailpipe CO2 emissions compared to conventional cars. This is much lower than expected from type-approval values.

So certainly worse than indicated, but still better than alternatives.

https://theicct.org/publication/real-world-usage-of-plug-in-...

I will never buy an EV, not because of its powertrain but because there is no way to avoid their spyware.

Granted, the same goes for modern gas cars, which is also why I stick to secondhand but premium pre-infotainment cars

Could you unplug the sim and keep driving?

I am also very hesitant on buying an EV. Next to spyware - which is also a problem on my phone, I struggle more with the problem of having a built-in obsolescence. Any device with a dependence on an App, iOS is sooner or later going to force you to buy something new.

I love working and riding 20-30year old bicycles, sailboats, or even an old Toyota Jeep. Less dependency on software compatibility.

From what I've read, telemetry is typically opt-in on both EVs and gas. It's tactile mechanical controls that are more important to me. I'm even considering just doing a custom conversion on mine, just as soon as solid-state batteries show up to make the battery life (and hopefully charging time) worth it for heavier vehicles. Any time now...

In my city you cannot charge your car inside the underground garage. No one will build the required facility to ease electric car fire extinguishing. Therefore the buildings will default to deny.

That's incredibly short-sighted, not least because the number of fires per vehicle is orders of magnitude higher for combustion vehicles. I'd be astonished if that made actuarial sense if actually investigated.

I've seen and used underground car chargers in multiple European cities. They're definitely viable.

Yes, except ICE fires are a lot easier to put out (possibly partly because of long experience developing tools & techniques vs for electric fires). Electric cars were also banned at most racetracks for years (not sure if that is still true).

I'm a software engineer not a firefighter, but my understanding is that it's significantly an experience thing. Lithium battery fires clearly aren't trivial to deal with and do burn hotter than petroleum fires, but they're also very much less frequent and firefighters are learning how to handle them.

I'm not sure what the specific issue would be with race tracks. The average road course is very open and a very controlled environment; if you had to deal with a car fire, it's probably among the best places to do so, thanks to lessons learned in the blood of previous generations of drivers and track workers.

Yup, I think experience and new tools & techniques will have battery fires as controllable as gasoline fires relatively soon.

I'm pretty sure the racetrack issue was related to the garages. The pretty much standard rule I've seen at all racetracks I've been to is and absolute "NO FUELING IN THE GARAGE" as in if they even catch you with an open fuel can in the garage you are immediately banned from the premises. They're obviously trying to minimize the risk of one of their building burning down, especially since once a fire started in one team's bay, it would be likely to spread to adjacent bays. I expect they just consider electric fires to start in broader circumstances.

Also, I think it might be relaxing the rules some, as I just checked and at least SCCA is now working on rules for electric cars on road tracks, which presumably means some tracks are more open to it.

It seems that most tracks in the US allow EVs now. A handful of EVs regularly race in 24 hours of lemons which operates all over the US. They don't have charging infrastructure though, so there have been some...creative solutions.

Huh? I've installed my own charger in our apartment complex underground garage. Many people do that, permitting takes a while and could certainly be made easier, but it's not impossible, and recent laws make it impossible to refuse the installation of a charger. (EU, PL)

I'm PL based. The law made it impossible to refuse, but the fire law renders chargers unusable unless there is a facility. https://moto.infor.pl/prawo-na-drodze/ciekawostki/6604742,el...

Optimistically, the increase of EV sales is good for decreasing overall tail pipe emissions.

But I still see the EV as saving the car industry rather than saving the world/environment. Reducing tail pipe emissions is great, but if it means increased tire wear particles, brake dust, increased wear on road infrastructure and increased demand on lithium supplies.

Are we really better off than before?

I would like to see a future where the private vehicle is _optional_ and public transportation is a viable option. A future where our cities and towns are not built around private vehicles (ie, expensive roads, parking garages, street parking, massive highways, infrastructure maintenance).

That’s a much better goal to achieve than pushing EVs or self driving cars.

This title is a clickbait since the sales peaked... In 2018? Since then it lowered consecutively

What you've said is a re-statement of the title, how is it clickbait?

Federal EV tax credits saved buyers about $1 billion in 2024. Also huge tax credits, tax rebates and tax exemptions. Also subsidized EV charging stations.

In the U.S., states have awarded massive economic development packages to EV and battery factories. Georgia, for instance, gave $1.5 billion to Rivian and $1.8 billion to Hyundai for EV plants. Nationwide, over $13.8 billion has been committed to at least 51 such projects, often funded partly by federal pandemic relief funds like the American Rescue Plan Act.

So the landscape has profoundly changed and it’ll be interesting to see what this does to growth.

This is great news. Of course new car purchases are a leading indicator of the overall makeup of cars. And people might be buying fewer cars if their old ones last longer.

I really wish something like the lit motors c1/aev would hit the market. But it’s been in development for over a decade I believe

https://www.litmotors.com/preorder-aev

What's strange to me is according to the graph it's not just combustion engine cars that peaked, cars overall more or less did too, in the graph.

Are trucks like the F150 not being captured by this data? How literal is "cars"?

This is exactly the problem. It's a game in the existing market without any additional growth.

it's not strange, jeff bezos can buy dozens of yachts, but most people will only buy 1 car for several years

That doesn't make any sense. There are 10s of millions of newly middle class consumers in Asia.

Maybe that's true, but maybe the average cost of a new car in Asia is quite a bit lower, so the overall effect is still declining total overall sales (measured in USD)?

Here's a fascinating video about a city in China that's full of cute electric cars that cost less than $5000 USD each:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AomxytSwrkY

I looked around some more and it seems that it is, in fact, the total number of units sold that peaked, not the total dollars of sales.

I found a good video that outlines all the reasons:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsXxfx_UsVI

that's another problem - inequality in the global value chain,

China is the most important growth market for passenger vehicles for last 20+ years, this is because of China's continuous industrial upgrading, which has gradually shifted from manufacturing low value-added products (such as jeans) to producing high value-added products (such as passenger vehicles).

this brings '10s of millions of newly middle class consumers', same thing happened in Japan/Korea/Taiwan too

but now, china produced 30 million cars (12m evs) in 2024, which means China's passenger vehicle market will quickly approach saturation, even if all Chinese families purchase or replace new vehicles

btw, '10s of millions newly consumers' is a relatively small number

and there will be no other markets with '10s of millions of newly middle class consumers' unless other countries can accompolish industrial upgrading like China's did

and if these countries(India/indonesia/Vietnam) manage to do so, their industrial upgrading will intensify this competition just like what happened in China now

This graph shows covid years, and it was hard to buy new due to shortages and shutdowns, and supply chain issues.

Cars are too expensive new, that's why sales are down, imo

And rates have been terrible, which depress auto loans.

Probably looking at total vehicles on the road would be more useful. Maybe cars got a lot more reliable 20 years ago, and so there are a lot more cars still kicking from the early 2000s which would have been scrapped in the past.

Slowdown in the West. This started before covid but was not visible because Asia is still growing.

Seems unlikely that we'll ever totally move away from combustion engines, simply due to sunk costs plus the advantages of energy density and quick refilling. I expect we'll see net-zero carbon emission gasoline and other hydrocarbons sold at the pump within the next few decades, produced with either solar or nuclear energy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8zOHZINyG8

Compressed natural gas (methane) is even easier to synthesize from the raw ingredients than gasoline or diesel fuels. It's used today in many city buses, fleet vehicles, and private cars in certain parts of the world:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction

Such fuels could become less attractive if we invent lighter, cheaper, and much faster-charging batteries than the current state of the art, but I'm not holding my breath.

CNG/LNG have been around for a while and are yesterday's future. Synthetic zero carbon fuel simply loses too much in conversion to be economic, compared to direct EV. I think China is in the process of demonstrating what the transition looks like.

There will probably be a rump of difficult to convert use cases and long lives specialty vehicles. I imagine tractors will be the last holdout. And military uses.

"ice car engines peaked?" likely wrong there is no charging infrastructur, and no way to retrofit into housing on a mass scale that will deal with the threat of a whole apartment building parking garage going up in flames, resulting in mass casualties. So until there are non flamable solid state batteries at the right price point, electrificationof the transport grid will stall, while demand for mobility will continue to increase, and ICE cars may very well keep or gain market share still.

> a whole apartment building parking garage going up in flames, resulting in mass casualties

Good thing ICE vehicles don't use any explosive components. Any evidence of these "mass casualty" events?

no argument, let me expand slightly. gasoline is exceptionaly flamable, but (and crusialy) is known, and almost never self ignites. the "electrolight" in lithium batteries is in fact a liquid hydrocarbon that would run an ICE engine. this fact coupled with the very real issue of lithium batteries, self shorting, and then experiencing thermal runaway, causing the exceptionaly flamable electrolight to burn in.an inextinguasishable, and re igniting fashion, is new. And new is hard to evaluate, as building code,insurance, product standard, and end user perspective. Insurers will just balk, and say no, building and fire code people are trepedatios. We need true solid state, non flamible batteries, and THEN, we can just get on.with a general electrification of everything........but should there be a "HINDENBURG" level event.....then watch out for extream push back, is what I am getting at!

Ill probably buy a petrol car for my lifetime. As long as there is a petrol station to fill her up.

Why do you hate your lungs?

You forgot the /s

... but they peaked because cars and fuel have got more expensive, not because everyone is rushing to buy an even more expensive EV.

Moderators should fix the title and add "in 2018" to the end, as it's on the chart itself. Omitting "in 2018" part changes message completely and is misleading.

It would be misleading if sales peaked in 2018, then fell, and have subsequently surpassed the 2018 peak. That's not what happened though. And reporting "sales have peaked" 6 years after the peak is reasonable - doing so 2 years after the peak would be premature.

I still support adding it to the title, because it's even more impressive.

The timeframe is even more important due to the macro environment of the past six years - one might have credibly suggested 2019 was a fluke and that 2020-2021 was obviously a major outlier on many fronts, but the trend keeps going into the latest years they have data for, which combined with the increase in EV sales makes 2018 as Peak Internal Combustion pretty much irrefutable from the vantage point of early 2025.

How is it misleading? It would be impossible for someone to credibly claim something peaked in 2024, for example. So it must be some time in the past (and 2018 is not very long ago).

It just reads as present tense. Your point is valid. However, there are going to be how many eye balls that don’t read past the headline and don’t think deeply on it, but now have the impressions that they are currently at a peak

"have already peaked"

It's all because of the crazy regulations and insane taxes that normal people have to pay in order to own a car, and not a refrigerator on wheels, that's the gist of it.

Basically the laptop classes (all actual or wannabe EV-owners) have started revolting against the fact that they have to inhale cancer-igneous fumes on their way to their yoga classes, and this is the result of that.

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