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Comment by nritchie | Hacker News Reader

Hopefully, in coming years, we will see more practically designed EVs that are more affordable. A practical car doesn't need neck-snapping acceleration, every bell-and-whistle and room for a family of six with a dog. I'd like to believe that as batteries cost drop, the incentive to justify the extra cost will drop. Then we can get back to "just basic transportation" rather than a luxury product for the rich. While $31k isn't exactly cheap, the base new Leaf is heading the right direction.

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At this point most EVs are exactly the way you describe and Tesla is an outlier.

Look at Hyundai/Kia’s lineup. The Niro, EV6, and EV9 are essentially the three major segments of American car preferences. They aren’t particularly fast or exotic.

They don’t really cost a whole lot more to buy/own than alternatives in the same segment especially on a monthly payment or buying one used, they just aren’t chosen at a high rate compared to gas powered alternatives.

Tesla just used the neck-snapping acceleration to market EVs by cool factor rather than by economics. And that was a smart idea to get people in showrooms.

I always drive my EV6 in eco mode because normal and sport feel dangerously fast. I think my 0-60 in sport mode is 4 seconds?

The Niro however is spot on.

The only ev6 that will do 0-60 that fast is the GT, the standard one is in the 6-7s range which is the same as a typical gas crossover.

Cheap crossovers and compact SUVs tend to be >8s. In practice even that makes them sound faster than they are, as they require an aggressive launch and consistent high RPMs to get there.

The 6-7s EVs feel much faster than that!

Nah the awd does it in 5- https://www.evspecifications.com/en/model/9c43348

Affordable EVs exist and are widely available in some countries. They're effectively banned in North America, though.

This has always been true of gas vehicles as well. They're banned for not having some safety feature or otherwise complying with FMVSS or some other regularity body, not because they are "affordable".

I think it's more likely that Chinese EVs are banned in the US because they would absolutely obliterate the domestic car manufacturing industry.

To be fair, a big part of why is the magnitude of subsidies China has given its domestic EV suppliers.

It's less than the $7500 per car the US gave until very recently.

The US gave $7500 per car sold in the US to any manufacturer, with the "Buy American" restriction added only in the last two years of the policy.

I'm also curious to hear your source for the subsidies - from what I can see China has spent anywhere from 3x to 5x propping up the domestic EV industry as the US has over the last 15 years. The US had Tesla which almost went bankrupt multiple times despite the subsidies; China has a dozen EV manufacturers, half of whom are on life support now that the government is withdrawing subsidies.

The Chinese spent more money on an absolute basis, yes. They gave less per car, but built > 10x as many cars, so your number of 3-5x sounds about right.

The best source IMO is the commission that came up with the European countervailing duty of 17%.

I think that it is reasonable for the magnitude of Chinese subsidies to be cheaper per-car. Even ignoring any arguments about purchasing power and government aid, I would expect China to spend less per-car simply because the foundational technical problems in building a good consumer EV had already been addressed by the time they got started.

I'm not trying to attack the impressiveness of the Chinese EV industry, because it's going to be an important part of the future. But saying that Chinese EVs are banned in the US purely because they are too good is incomplete. A big part of why they are banned, and why the US and China have such a frosty relationship, is because Chinese trade tactics are not fair to non-state-backed competitors.

Chinese EV development started in 2001. They started from a clean sheet.

Your point about fairness is interesting because that's a position the US has given up on, especially since 2025. The European EV tariffs of 17/34 percent are fair-ish. The 100% American tariffs never were

That is insane. Smaller vehicles are safer at a social level because they do less damage when they hit something - especially a pedestrian. Regulatory bodies should be encouraging them for that reason alone (let alone all the others).

Think the cybertruck effectively shows that noone cares about the safety of those outside of the vehicle too much

Manufacturers might prioritise the safety of their customers, and people are likely to care more about their own safety than that of others, but regulators should be looking at overall public safety which is definitely improved by encouraging small cars.

The regulatory bodies aren't specifically discriminating against smaller vehicles, they're discriminating against vehicles that haven't proven safety to passengers in crash tests acceptable to the FMVSS. The vehicles may or may not also be missing mandatory internal safety features like airbags in all the right spots, etc.

If Chinese EV manufacturers put their vehicles through these tests, include all the mandatory features, and strip out the forbidden telemetry (certain manufacturers are banned in the US for reporting to the CCP- most notably but not exclusive to Huawei) then they too can be sold here.

If anything is preventing Chinese EVs from the US market, it's almost certainly their electronic components.

Have you seen the BYD Dolphins? Pretty nifty.

That’s hogwash - affordable EVs from one country are effectively banned, but we have affordable EVs. It’s just that nobody wants to buy them.

This is likely confounded by the dealership model. Dealers have practically zero incentive to sell affordable cars, and especially not EVs that they’ll make almost no servicing money on. Some dealers also stock only a handful of EVs (or none) so they may not even have them to sell in the first place.

It’d be nice if affordable EV models were available from direct to consumer companies. If one could go online and buy a $22k electric hatchback that shows up in your driveway with zero haggling, it’s difficult to imagine it not selling well.

> doesn't need neck-snapping acceleration

I thought this was mostly* a side-effect of electric motors inherently behaving differently than combustion motors.

* Not that it can't be deliberately turned off since everything goes through a computer.

There are two different factors here.

One, as you noted, is that electric motors can apply full torque from a stop, increasing perceived acceleration.

The other, and more impactful, is that electric motor power scales with cost much more cheaply than gas motors, so vehicles will oversize their electric motors.

There's a third factor. Ev's need to support fast charging. So they need to do support super high voltages and currents. That's much of the expense of a powerful EV. A powerful motor is relatively inexpensive in comparison.

If you can charge a car in 20 minutes, the battery and some other circuitry can support discharging in 20 minutes, which is an insane power level.

That's not exactly true. There is some shared wiring between the DC fast charger and the motors, but not so much that the powerful motors are "free". The wires that run between the motors and the battery are long.

I think the larger third factor is regenerative braking. That uses the exact same circuitry as powering the motors, and if you want to be able to brake quickly without the brake pads, that's a lot of kW to be absorbed.

Any way you cut it, I agree, it's an insane power level.

There's a reason I emphasized the battery in my comment. :)

Got it, I skimmed that part the first time I read it. We're on the same page :)

A powerful motor needs more copper between the battery and motor and more silicon in the inverter to handle the current. The motor is also heavier. This is all extra cost.

All that fast DC charging requires are cells capable of handling the current.

You don't get a powerful motor for free just because you can fast charge.

> are cells capable of handling the current.

Which is the most expensive part of an EV

My 2019 Hyundai Kona has a 150kw FWD motor. I love my car, but it's power is totally and utterly stupid. I can spin my wheels while going 60km/h and flooring it. It can be downright dangerous in the wet. Thank dog for traction control I need to drive it in 'eco' mode most of the time in order to make the ride feel sane.

I think a motor with half the output would still result in a great ride, but the car would've been cheaper/lighter.

Newer EV's come out with much smaller motors it seems, which makes sense to me.

Yes, pretty much. The torque curve also slopes down as rpm increases, so an EV with really weak low end torque will feel really bad on the highway.

Having said that, there are some that are fairly mediocre without being completely terrible. The FWD Equinox EV as well as the FWD EV9 are acceptable to some people, but also pretty slow cars.

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