At one point I was completely fascinated with the Fiat 500e. Here was an electric car that was stylish, quirky, and could be had on the used market at a great price. But as I got further into it I realized that FCA hated producing this car. Its only reason to exist is to allow them to produce more pollutant vehicles as a regulatory balance. And if it did have a future there would be the barest minimum invested into it. So I'm back to looking at Teslas, even though I haven't liked the styling since the Lotus designed Roadster.
EDIT: Please buy that Tesla and support a company who actually cares about selling EVs.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/8/18300393/tesla-fiat-chrysl...
That's an interesting interpretation. FCA is buying ZEV credits in the market, of which Tesla has a large supply. Would you describe Facebook buying servers as "Facebook paying Intel billions so they can keep selling advertisements online"?
>Please buy that Tesla
Every time Tesla comes up and there's negativity, there are accusations of "paid short-sellers", which I am not. What about your disclosure? You own a Tesla, are you a shareholder? Do you have a financial interest in people buying the cars? Is it fair to be constantly flooding these forums with Tesla rumours, often from vapid fan sites, when you stand to benefit?
Why is acceptable from one side, and not the other?
They need these ZEV credits in order to sell their ICE fleet. This is also indisputable.
And absolutely, yes, Facebook pays Intel billions of dollars to power the servers they use to serve ads on the internet. Now hopefully more AMD though.
[1] - https://electrek.co/2019/05/07/tesla-tsla-2-billion-fiat-chr...
Elektrek is not a source, it's a Tesla PR mouthpiece. Here's a better one:
https://interestingengineering.com/gm-and-fiat-chrysler-unve...
Fred has an article up based on an Elon Musk tweet within half an hour, and has repeatedly printed baseless rumours.
Disclaimer: TSLA investor, Model S/X owner. If I ask you to buy a Tesla, it is not to help my stock, but to help move the world to electric transportation faster. If you find a better EV product, I encourage you to buy it regardless of manufacturer. I will hold my Tesla stock all the way to zero, and climate change keeps me up at night (seriously, it's terrifying; Rome is burning and the band plays on). Any sources I cite regarding Tesla have been and will continue to be from reputable online publications.
If you consider Teslarati, Eletrek and Cleantechnica "reputable", not sure what to tell you.
That said, I appreciate the disclosure. You may have not whined about "short-sellers", but I've got it often here. It's ridiculous, and says more about the person making the accusation than anything. Even sama and pg got on-board on Twitter. We can disagree about the prospects of Tesla without resorting to conspiracy theories.
That's a specious comparison. ZEV credits are a punitive measure designed to make automakers want to convert their fleet to electric where the market itself can't force it. Facebook buying components for their datacenter from said manufacturers of components has nothing to do with it. A more apt comparison would be Facebook being forced to pay doubleclick for each ad served on facebook.
One of these passed me on the highway the other day. I've only seen a handful of Lotus in my life and never a Tesla Roadster.. it really is a beautiful little car. Pretty small (and impractical for cargo/passengers I'd imagine) though.
The Lotus philosophy is to create small lightweighted sport cars, after all.
There is an all-new electric Fiat 500, based on a new electric-only platform, in development for a 2020 release. This will be built in much higher volumes than the old 500e, on a dedicated production line in Italy.
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motor-shows-geneva-motor-...
> What counts as a trick? Roughly, it's something done with contempt for the audience. For example, the guys designing Ferraris in the 1950s were probably designing cars that they themselves admired. Whereas I suspect over at General Motors the marketing people are telling the designers, "Most people who buy SUVs do it to seem manly, not to drive off-road. So don't worry about the suspension; just make that sucker as big and tough-looking as you can." -- http://www.paulgraham.com/goodart.html
The original versions of the Fiat 500 itself, the Morris Mini, the Beetle, and the 2CV would disagree. Ok, you might have a point on the 2CV, but it's owners loved it.
In cars there is a lot of hidden value in buying popular models.
As an environmentalist this vehicle goes against my ethics. It exists to allow them to sell more pollutant vehicles in California. It's all sizzle and no steak. There are better EVs out there. Most car manufacturers will take customer feedback to incorporate into newer models. FCA is having none of that with the 500e. They aren't interested in customer feedback just government CAFE regs.
Lots of people want a small pickup like the Ranger (Toyota also followed along - compare sizes of the Tacoma of the 90s vs today - I suspect they all changed in size), but they can't buy one. It has something to do with CAFE rules, plus some weird calculation of area - so the larger the vehicles footprint, the more it'll pass or offset or something; I'm not sure how it works.
But something changed in the 1990s - and now we have this.
I got mine almost two months ago for 10k off msrp + state and federal.
There was a thread on Slickdeals a while back about it https://slickdeals.net/f/13163326-21-000-off-msrp-2019-volks...
Unfortunately they don't/didn't ever sell the e-Golf here. Looking at used car sites the nearest ones are in California (about a two day drive). Still might be worth the drive at those prices (although charging it to get it home might require some pre-planning).
It's regressive in the sense that you need to be buying a new car to get it. But it passes to used car owners in the form of a lower residual value for the car. A one year old plug-in hybrid lease-return can be a great deal.
The biggest cost of an electric car is the battery; and the cost of batteries is dropping very fast. Everything else is significantly cheaper in an electric vehicle except for the cost of the battery.
(Tesla used to say there's a "Moore's Law" of battery capacity, which is that every 7 years the capacity doubles for the same cost.)
Everyone (in the auto industry) knows this, it's just a matter of deciding how to plan for this. Either you can make a lot of hybrids for a decade; or you can sell EVs side-by-side with conventional cars.
When I bike around Seattle, there are a plethora of Radpower eBikes with various modifications, either for towing, or hauling kids. Cost, traffic and the convienence of parking has driven this modeswitch, as you can park near anywhere and rarely have blocking traffic like in traditional cars.
Electric Scooters are also extending the range people are willing to walk, making short trips much more convenient, and leveraging distant transit much easier.
I think a case could be made for us already being at that point, if the total lifetime cost of car ownership is factored in. ICE vehicles are obscenely mechanically complex. That complexity inevitably leads to lots of repair bills over an ICE vehicle's lifetime.
Contrast that with the average electric car, which doesn't even have a multispeed transmission, just a single-speed step-down. About the most complex mechanical systems in an electric are differentials and shocks. I'm sure someone will pitch in here with a horror story about a high repair bill on an electric, but I'd suggest that's because economies of scale on electrics' parts haven't ramped up yet, and there isn't a large corps of electric-experienced mechanics.
EVs lose out here because of battery degradation. You can quite happily buy a 10 year old ICE car and get good reliability at a good price. Trying to do the same with an EV just gets you a car with a worn out battery and low range.
The batteries for EVs need to get cheaper and more durable for the second-hand EV car market to be competitive with the second-hand ICE car market.
You're absolutely correct. That's why every Tesla with over 100,00 miles on it has been sent to the junkyard because it no longer takes a charge.
Oh, and one consequence of rapidly falling battery prices is that if at some point your battery capacity eventually does get too low, you can buy a replacement at a small fraction of what the original cost.
For how much? If your future cheap battery costs $100 per kilowatt hour at the pack level, you're spending $8,000 for an 80 kilowatt hour battery. That's a large small fraction.
An that is the basic point the OP was making. EV's are already a better deal, it's just that they are new and so most people don't realize it.
And one more point. Once the swing to EV's starts to happen in a few years, then the resale value of ICE's is going to plummet, and you would lose a lot more that way if you bought one than you would pay for a replacement battery.
You've fallen victim to wishful thinking. Show me even one projection at that price point.
> then the resale value of ICE's is going to plummet
Which makes it a buyer's market which is even more reason to buy a secondhand ICE vehicle over a secondhand EV.
Battery prices have been falling rapidly. They went down 35% in the last year alone. This is partly due to improved technology and partly to increasing economies of scale. Those two trends are predicted to continue.
>Which makes it a buyer's market which is even more reason to buy a secondhand ICE vehicle over a secondhand EV.
The problem is that if ICE resale prices drop, then the effective price of buying an ICE new goes up, which steer people toward buying an EV instead. EV prices are predicted to reach sticker price parity with ICE's around 2024. And their total lifetime ownership costs are already lower. When that happens then ICE sales are going to drop rapidly and be replaced by ICE's.
Remember, the original article is about GM and VW giving up on hybrids and switching to battery EV's. They are doing this because they are aware of what is going to happen and realize they will go bankrupt if they don't switch as fast as possible (and they make their money selling new cars, so people buying used ICE's is not going to save them).
Show me a single projection that claims $25 a kwh at the pack level in 10 years.
Can you back this up with actual data? Because this is simply not true:
https://www.tesloop.com/blog/2018/7/16/tesloops-tesla-model-...
TESLOOP’S TESLA MODEL S SURPASSES 400,000 MILES (643,737 KM)
"Battery degradation over the course of the first 194,000 miles was ~6% with multiple supercharges a day to 95-100%, instead of the recommended 90-95%. Between 194,000 and 324,000 miles Tesloop experienced battery degradation of ~22% (see below for details)."
What's important to note is that the vehicle was mainly charged using dc fast chargers (often multiple times a day). Had this not been the case, degradation would have been even lower.
Additional data: https://www.tesloop.com/blog/2019/2/6/tesloops-high-mileage-...
Tesla warrants their batteries at 70% capacity for 8 years for the Model 3. The Model S and X have an 8 year warranty with no capacity guarantee:
https://www.tesla.com/support/vehicle-warranty
So that's about what you should expect from a Tesla battery.
In addition, current data indicates that for the first 50,000 miles (100,000 km), most Tesla battery packs will lose about 5% of their capacity, but after the 50,000-mile mark, the capacity levels off and it looks like it could be difficult to make a pack degrade by another 5%.
There's a ton of data and anecdotes on this subject at the https://teslamotorsclub.com forums.
3% degradation after 35k KMs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avGUGFrLrVc
Then 8% degradation 1 year later at 100k KMs and the car now has a reduced rate of charge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loulJ3ResDg
So why would I buy a 10 year old Tesla? If it requires a new battery I'd be better off just buying a different or newer car.
Most of the longer term maintenance costs of Model S's seem to be down to luxury components that aren't necessary (like air suspension, funky door handles, big touchscreen).
An EV Civic could well be bulletproof.
Maybe, but the limitations of electric vehicles still mean it is an apple and oranges comparison. Electric cars are still a long way off in terms of range, towing capacity, utility and winter performance. They might seem great in California, especially as a second car, but they are still a long long way off from replicating how many non-rich people use their vehicles.
We don't all live in SF. Personally, I'd need a stable 1000km/day range capacity, in winter/-30, in mountains, pulling several hundred pounds of people/stuff, before I'd even consider electric for my one and only car. Price is beside the point. I'm starting to think that zero net emission tech (diesel from air etc) might catch up before all-electric becomes the widespread standard.
It took approximately 12 hours in total with approx 1.5-2 hours of charging time.
"8 hours of battery logistics" is something you've just made up.
It's more like you're in range of a rapid charger and it's a non issue, or you're not in which case you cannot do more than a full charge in a day (a European 230V outlet takes more than a day for a full charge, American 110V is slower).
Granted it won't do that in winter in the mountains whilst pulling several hundreds pounds worth of stuff. That's something that, like, 0.5% of car owners actually do. The emissions from that sort of activity are probably less important than stuff like tractors.
And not everyone can afford a tesla. They are still luxury vehicles.
The same for chargers below 22kW. Only for overnight or opportunistic use.
I hope that in 10 or so years there's the equivalent of a Civic or Corolla that just keeps on going - new cars are luxury in general.
EVs are being widely adopted in Europe, with Norway (harsh winters) taking the lead. I don't get the whole "EVs are only suitable in California" narrative.
https://cleantechnica.com/files/2019/07/Europe-EV-Sales-Janu...
I live near Boise Idaho (also harsh winters) and I see 2-4 Teslas in my commute and I only drive to the office 3 times a week.
Around June of last year, we bought a used Model S and eventually replaced my wife's SUV with a used Model X. So far, we do not foresee going back to ICE cars. I haven't been into a gas station in forever.
They can do that today. I;m driving a car from 2010. How are the 10+yo teslas doing? And when I say 1000km/day I mean 1000km in perhaps eight hours of driving, not eight hours of driving plus another eight hours of battery logistics.
>> and I only drive to the office 3 times a week.
So you have a part-time job in an office? That's part of the California narrative. You aren't a forestry worker. You aren't a local equipment rep. You aren't a tradesperson. You are someone with a relatively short and stable commute to a fixed location around which you can plan the battery recharge cycles. That is a luxury many people cannot afford.
>> and I see 2-4 Teslas in my commute ...
So they are still the freak/edge cases then. I saw at least a few hundred vehicles on the highway over the weekend (BC, Canada, proper mountains, sometimes 200+km between gas stations) not one seemed electric, certainly none were teslas. Lots of teslas in Vancouver, but I don't live in Vancouver.
There's a second thing that most people with gas cars don't realize. EVs do REALLY well in traffic. The slower the better. Gas cars continue to burn fuel while idling. When I'm in traffic, my 300 mile tesla goes to 500+ mile range because moving an EV at 5-10mph is optimal conditions.
Unnecessarily rude, and clearly untrue considering the poster displayed an excellent understanding of the logistics of the situation. I don't think he or anyone else is opposed to the infrastructure catching up, but he's alive and working today and needs solutions that work right now.
>> I mean 1000km in perhaps eight hours of driving, not eight hours of driving plus another eight hours of battery logistics.
You are grossly underestimating the current state EV charging (you seem to be just a tad ignorant on the subject). A typical charging session on a Tesla supercharger is only 10-20 minutes.
At most, a 1017+ km road-trip would only add 40-60 minutes of combined supercharging (3 stops https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_uuid=1366ac4f-d815-4e9...). I know because myself and many others have done it.
>> I saw at least a few hundred vehicles on the highway over the weekend (BC, Canada, proper mountains, sometimes 200+km between gas stations) not one seemed electric, certainly none were teslas
I can't tell if your being serious or not. ICE cars have like a 100+ year head-start, not to mention the infrastructure. Of course that would be the case, but not for long...
Google "Tesla Chargers BC". The closest one to me now is literally hundreds of kilometers away. There are places near me, places that I sometimes work, that are literally a thousand kilometers from a tesla supercharger. Please do not assume that everyone lives in teslaland.
Indeed, just came back from a two-week vacation in Northern Germany, had to drive there from the South.
Didn't drive EV, but still couldn't help but notice that at every rest stop we made at a bigger Autobahnrasttätte there was either a Tesla supercharger station or some other brand EV charger. Could probably have made the same 600 km trip with an EV.
Tesla's have also become quite a common sight on German autobahnen, don't really notice the other brand EV's because I'm not much of a car guy.
what? Electric vehicles are vastly superior in towing capacity. The Model X from tesla can TOW a boeing jet -- 230,000 pounds. Now that has some tradeoffs for range, i believe. but in terms of actual towing capacity, it's leaps and bounds ahead of any other vehicle capable of towing. if you'd said 'towing range', i might be willing to accept that.
range itself is also just not really a concern any more. 300+ miles of range on a single charge is more than enough for the vast majority of drivers.
winter performance is possibly somethign to worry about, but when you can charge overnight at your home, you can still leave every morning with a 'full tank', so it's also just not really a concern any more.
The towing capacity of a Model X is around 5k pounds. It's illegal to tow more the door sticker says on public roads in the US. For comparison, depending on what kind of Ford F-150 you get, you can tow from 5k to 8k pounds. According to some [1], you're also looking at a 45-60% decrease in range if you tow something like a camper.
[1] https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1122487_towing-a-camper...
Remember, an electric motor has much more torque than a gas motor. The only obstacle is battery cost.
BTW, go look up Ford's video of the F150 conversion to EV that they did. It towed a crazy amount of weight.
Say hello to 2006-2011 Honda Civic IMA with non cooled non charge balanced battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Civic_Hybrid#Battery_lif...
It's the general high price of new EVs that kept me away from buying one when I was in the market last year, I'm also the type that likes to pay for their car in cash. But second hand EVs are definitely a very intriguing choice for a second/commute-only car. You can get $7k electric Smart for very low mileage (under 10k).
At that price point you need to be buying the car specifically because it's electric, not because it's a good value.
With my commute, suburban+urban with high traffic. Definitely not true. The bolt will be way cheaper.
It will be also quicker, even if it was not meant to be.
Nobody buys a BMW in the US for good value when you factor in maintenance costs & overall TCO. The only reason you buy one is cause you like the driving dynamics. That's a perfectly fine reason IMO.
It doesn't seem there are any limo operators who are going to operate a Bolt and rapidly drive it to 400k-500k miles to find out just how reliable it is. But I really suspect a Chevy could be less of a hassle to maintain than a Tesla.. since GM is a much more established manufacturer and has a long built out dealer/service network it's hard for me to believe it could be worse than Tesla.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/ford-stop-making-all-...
https://www.autonews.com/sales/ford-says-fusion-output-will-...
Or look for a dealer demo car. They tend to list them for exactly $7500 under MSRP.
But yeah, never buy new if you can't claim the full amount, since the value of your car has gone down by that amount when it leaves the lot.
How does it do on potholes? And on ice?
I really wanted to love the i3, but the bicycle tires looked liked they'd be fundamentally unsafe on the ice or on any unmaintained (pothole-filled) road.
I agree the bicycle tires are terrible looking. I actually just bought a 2017 today for 22k and the salesmen mentioned one of the mechanics has an i3 and has tricked his out, including bigger rims/tires. I'm going to reach out and do the same now that I own one (had been leasing a 2017).
As the article says, both companies produced these as regulatory compliance vehicles. Now they're shifted that effort over to electric because the incentives are better for them.
The only companies trying to make hybrids for real are Toyota and Honda. Everyone else is just pumping out low effort compliance vehicles. It is hardly surprising that these vehicles haven't been hugely successful.
I'd love to buy an electric vehicle. Unfortunately prices remain impractical ($30K+ for a sedan) and the federal tax incentive is both expiring and regressive (the richer you are the more you'll get back up to $7.2K, after the new standard deduction ($25K) I'd need to earn near $90K with two dependants to get the full amount).
They're great for those living in California or similar. Our state offers no incentives and actually stabbed people who installed solar in the back (decreased the buy-back amount to almost nothing).