Hacker News Reader

Comment by kevinqi | Hacker News Reader

does anyone have a data-backed reason as to why US market share has capped out around 10%? is it economics + lack of access to chinese EVs? range anxiety?

View on HN

We have just about the cheapest gasoline in the developed world. Partly because we make it here, and partly because we refuse to raise taxes on it. (The federal tax was last raised in 1993. It has be 18 cents per gallon ever since.)

If gas were 2 to 4 times as expensive, as it is in much of Europe, there would be a lot more demand for electric cars.

It doesn't help that we exclude all of the new BEVs from China, which are considerably less expensive.

And there it is, we're keeping competition out of the states to protect our auto industry, instead of giving we consumers other options. I've rented cars in Aus/New Zealand, if I lived there I'd own an EV, hands down.

The only way to make our auto makers change is to "make" them change by competition. Consumers want this change, why else do we buy so many Japanese cars? (Beside the fact they are superior.)

EVs continue to be expensive in the US. But the trajectory is the opposite in the rest of the world due to the benefit of Chinese exports. In Brazil, for example, new car prices have a now a discount of up to $10K, all due to increased competition from China.

I’d guess a greater percent of car owners in the US are working class. A lot of cities car modal share is like 85% or higher which shows how much car ownership is democratized in the US compared to asia or eu, where ownership might be higher relative income and more able to afford new ev premium prices vs cheap used gas cars.

Another interpretation of the high modal share of cars in the US is that there are no viable alternatives to driving in many US cities. In Europe, public transport and biking are viable forms of transportation, so we're not forced into car ownership to participate in society (although the situation can definitely still be improved further). I believe this to be a more "democraticed" outcome than an inescapable 85% modal share for cars.

There are people in those cities that don’t have cars and might rely on bussing, biking, sourcing rides from others. That being said you can get cheap cars in the US really easily.

We're talking about new cars, which in the US the average price of is $50K. The working class tends to buy used cars, of which 3 times more than new cars are sold each year.

Doesn’t matter the price really. People will lease new cars for a couple hundred a month. Or finance them to about that monthly. No one is paying $50k day one. This makes it so people you wouldn’t expect to afford a 50k asset actually do have one, because they can afford to part with like $200/mo.

You brought up the working class as sensitive to price and now you say they aren't. That doesn't seem like a logically consistent position but maybe I'm not understanding what you are saying.

Europe doesn't seem to have this financing environment. There are places that you don't even need credit or down payment to finance a used car here.

probably gas price

And range/charging infrastructure. The middle of the US is large and mostly rural. There's no charging infrastructure to speak of. But even the smallest towns at least have a gas station.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com