You don't see poor people buying new cars that much. Which for now is pretty much the same thing as not buying EVs, since almost all EVs on the road are relatively new.
That's starting to change here in Norway. There's a decent amount of used EVs entering the second-hand market. And if you can deal with the short range it's definitely preferable to buy one, since they're way more reliable than on older used ICE.
The other things helping people buy cheaper EVs here is that it's easier to deal with the shorter range since you have fast charging stations everywhere now.
So what needs to improve is: - More used EVs (just have to get middle class people to buy more EVs and wait 5-10 years) - Better charging infrastructure (again, get the middle class to buy EVs to help fund the build-out) - Cheaper EV batteries (again, just get whoever can to buy more EVs, to fund R&D and drive economies of scale)
That's why it's so damaging when countries make EV incentives with caps. Just make it a percentage of the price (or cut all taxes) and don't worry about the benefits going to rich people buying luxury EVs. Increase income taxes on the rich instead if that's a problem. This is like the one case where trickle-down economics kind of work, since buying expensive EVs now makes future EVs and charging stations cheaper.
And I think cheap BEVs will be a HUGE benefit to poor people in the future, since it saves on gas and maintenance costs in the long term.
The may be a lot of people who have the time, inclination, space, and access to tools to do a conversion but are blocked by the cost barrier. That probably includes at least some poor people. Mostly I'm thinking of young college-age people who might not necessarily be experiencing poverty but also don't have any significant wealth either. Maybe they live with their parents and are having trouble finding work.
I'd like to see EV conversions have the same level of subsidy as OEM cars; that could make it a worthwhile and cost-effective endeavor for a lot of people. It could also provide jobs for local mechanics, for customers who don't want to do the work of converting the vehicle themselves. There are a lot of gas-powered cars on the road. They aren't all worth converting, but some of them are. It seems a waste to replace them all rather than convert the ones worth converting.
I suspect that if I ever convert my Highlander to an EV (which is something I'd like to investigate should its current drivetrain eventually give up the ghost), it'll likely entail needing to remove the transmission entirely (and maybe replace it with a fixed gearbox of some sort?). And given that it's AWD, that complicates things further, since there are very few AWD/4WD EV conversions.
That said, if there are solutions to this problem, and said solutions prove viable, then this makes EV conversion a lucrative business, and opens it up to most cars on American roads.
Converting something with a manual is probably easier than an automatic (especially if there's some software controlling when to shift the automatic based on some engine sensors which aren't there anymore), but there's no fundamental reason why you couldn't just keep the transmission even in an automatic. Especially if bolting a motor on where the engine was is far simpler than re-engineering half the drive train. (You might be able to get rid of or disable the torque converter, though.)
At this point I think the biggest roadblocks to EV conversion are cost and availability of parts so you don't have to design and build everything from scratch. And I think subsidizing conversions would help with both of these. If there's a big enough market, you might even get reasonably priced kits (possibly from the original vehicle manufacturer) that has everything you need including battery boxes and can be installed by someone who's done it before in less than a week.
(Battery boxes are usually the most difficult and time consuming part of a conversion, since they're usually constructed in an ad-hoc way to fit whatever battery you're using into wherever they would fit. Having something that's actually engineered and possibly even crash tested would be great.)
I’ve been wondering whether the opposite is true. We might find the cost of replacing the battery puts a floor on the price of old EV’s. I wouldn’t be surprised if we are coming to the end of bangernomics.
Even if the battery does die, I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of secondhand batteries with half a million Ks of mileage put up relatively cheap. You don't need to go straight to brand-new.
I believe the same, if you race for the lowest cost possible, eventually an EV will be cheaper than the cheapest IC powered car for those exact reasons.
... But as I said above. Wuling MiniEV costs like $5500, which is cheaper than low-end Chinese petrol, or diesel engined sedans priced at $7000-$8000, but is still massively, massively outsold by IC cars in its price bracket despite China's massive subsidies for EVs, and quite draconian curbs on IC powered cars.
200 miles (on the EPA cycle) really is the minimum for a pure electric car IMHO. 250 miles, really. Otherwise it looks like less of a value than an IC car.
Economy of scale is a thing, and imo it's OK to use the rich and the wealthy as 'guinea pigs' of sorts (which mostly is voluntary as the wealthy are more likely to make riskier bets on new tech than people living paycheck-to-paycheck).
As EV market extends downwards on the economic 'pecking order,' I'm really hoping even more drastic cost reduction and lower barriers of entry into the EV market for folks that are not rich.
Even in Europe there are plenty of countries where many people can't afford an EV. They can afford second-hand ICE cars. So unless there can be a second-hand market of EVs for about 6K without worrying about the battery, and with a similar functionality of a second-hand ICE car, then yes, EVs will be for upper income brackets.
And I'm not even mentioning that most people lives in apartment buildings, and it's very likely that your car sleeps in the street.
I've seen this discussions around here. People won't buy EVs in the near future because they are expensive, have very low range, you have to have a house, or own a flat (because nobody will pay for a charger installation in a rented flat) with garage, etc.
What people is buying is little electric Scooters. Most of them are <500€ and you can charge em everywhere. It makes sense for travelling inside a city. Spending 20K for not being able to go from Santiago to Madrid, doesn't make any sense.
That hardly qualifies as a second-hand market car.
> Street chargers are scarce, and usually expensive
In the past they didn't exist. Today they're scarce. In the future it'll look different. This thread is about trends after all.
> And I have a hard time picturing a charger in every parking space in my city.
We can start smaller of course, it only needs to be scaled up with EV adaoption, not reach 100% penetration immediately. The electric scooters you mentioned would benefit too.
Where did you get this idea? People pay for an AC, a conciege, a cycle room, a roof terrace, a fucking gardener but they wont pay for a charging point? Also why does it have to be rented?
People in Switzerland, Norway, or maybe some part of Germany may have no problem. For me it's a rather heavy price.
Not to mention dumping capital on an asset which isn't even yours. No thanks.
When I hear “expensive toy for the rich”, I think of a millionaire’s 3rd lambo, not Bill’s Silverado lease. Initial Teslas were sports cars, and now it’s squarely in middle class territory. Still a big improvement and a big market, and in several years, that leads to a good second-hand market and even cheaper EVs.
I think for many (not all, of course) people the problem is not price as much as practicality. I could probably be convinced to spend more for an EV, but without chargers in most apartment buildings and with limited charging networks where I might go, it’s not justifiable yet.
The drop in diesel and gasoline prices recently only cements the value of an ICE vehicle.
It costs me about $6.00 to charge my 60kwh EV, which has a range of 238 miles.
You can't buy an EV if you can't charge at home. And you won't buy an EV if you can charge at home if you're not sure you can charge it if you move. (Not to mention if you think you might move to another state, not being able to drive your car there is a question mark)
But many people, including myself, think that EVs are better in general. If I was comparing a $15k car to a $20k car, I could be convinced to spend more on an EV if I was just comparing the vehicles themselves in an ideal environment. But that decision doesn’t make sense until the “practicality” problem is solved.
People buy BMW but they are not the most cost-efficient cars. People buy cars in London , using public transport is cheaper. Cars are prestiege, a point of pride, 'Freedom', an obsession, a place to have sex, and more to all kinds of people.
In a handful of countries.
I'd say EV are making inroads there exactly because of no infrastructure, and tech.
In Vietnam, people choose electric scooters over petrol largely because their maintainance free nature, and no need for fluids, or waiting at petrol pumps.
People like that they don't risk expensive, and lengthy breadown of their scooter when their job depend on it.
Jeep has backed off, yet again, from producing an all-electric Jeep Wrangler. They originally announced one for 2020. Then 2021. Then 2022. They shipped some "mild hybrid" things. They just showed an all-electric Jeep Wrangler, but it's a "concept car" only. And, for some reason, has a 6-speed manual transmission.
Even when Jeep was still talking about a 2022 Wrangler EV, it was announced as being available only at the highest "trim level", priced 2X over the base product.
Ford just slipped the electric Ford F-150 to the 2023 model year. "The estimation for the base price is $100,000" says one source. For a pickup truck whose current base price is $28,940. Ford's electric Mustang starts at $61,000. The base gas-powered Mustang is $27,155.
This seems to be a pattern with US manufacturers. Electrics cost 2x the price of the gas model.
You do, however, see upper middle class people buying them. Which wasn't the case a decade ago, when the Leaf came out [1].
Poor people buy 5 to 15 year old used cars. There aren't that many 5-15 year old used EV's.
Yet.
Now they have a much, much better car for significantly lower price produced at much, much higher volume.
This is just gone continue, each generation produced will move down market.
Poor people will never buy new cars, but 2nd hand Bolt EV are already a bargain considering what you save on fuel cost.
As more EV are produced, more EV are gone be sold second hand. And at the same time new cheaper EV are gone be interceded in the market.
There is no inherent reason why an EV should be more expensive then a gas car, but there is a 100 year technology and infrastructure gap, this gap needs to be filled by the rich, upper middle class and now the middle class.
This is basically the same with every new mass technology.
https://electrek.co/2021/02/18/bolt-ev-recall-chevy-software...
Well, you don't see poor people buying EVs that much. That's car manufacturer statistics, which I believe deserves a good degree of trust.
In the market for new cars, poor people buy cheapest IC cars, but not cheapest EVs.
I will take the point that middle class is now buying budget EVs, but you don't have real economy class EVs selling that well in the West, and in China as well.
Wuling Mini EV will classify as a true economy class EV, but what people lauding it don't say it that Chinese IC vehicles in the same price range outsell Mini EV many, many times over.