Also, the latest version of the map you shared shows the F-150 being the most popular vehicle in 18 states, none of which are California or New York: https://insurify.com/insights/most-popular-cars-in-america-2...
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[1] https://www.autobytel.com/ford/f-150/car-buying-guides/why-t...
[2] https://www.autoweek.com/news/trucks/a32945300/ford-averages...
Its the median price that the average American is willing to pat that is the most informative metric here.
Nevertheless, just googled it:
--- People also ask: How much does a 2020 F-150 cost? From $28,745 2020 Ford F-150 / MSRP ---
Nobody is using electric for anything that we'd relate to as "critical" or "high availability". In fact, there are trucks that just bring gasoline to bigger trucks.
Source: I live at 8300ft in Colorado.
The same people used to drive the smaller Japanese pickups (like Toyota Hilux) before, it just stopped making sense buying these when F-350 costs less due to the tax reasons above.
So it's funny like that when among the regular hatchback and compact car mix you see in any European country you encounter more F-350 monsters than you see in the USA (relatively speaking).
For personal driving, either fugly SUVs or wagon types offer much better... well everything. Operating costs, much better driving experience, you can actually park it everywhere.
That said, I will definitely be trading up to a Cybertruck as soon as it’s available.
I don't even live in a rural area. I live in DFW.
Actually, they kept the brand alive by buying the product.
Without those people they'd have died long ago.
(and lest you think I'm joking: https://www.dpreview.com/news/9864312105/leica-releases-limi...)
And I say this as someone who has previously owned and shot with a Leica M6 and currently owns and shoots with a Leica IIIf.
Couple being sub-par with being much more expensive and you get something that is moreso useful for image than as a tool.
And it's a buyers market.
I disagree, the Company was founded in 1903 and was did well into the 90's and then the 50 plus crowd decided to be some kind of poser biker gang type and destroyed the brand. Not very different than what happened to the Corvette and all the 6o plus folks buying them the last 20 years.
All of a sudden in the 90's a lot of these 40-60 year olds started to try and recapture their youth or that coolness they never had. They started buying Harley's and dressing in Leather and making these ridiculous club patches and driving around revving their motorcycles everywhere. It was so cringe that you actually felt ashamed for them.
Here is a good clip from South Park that kind of sums it all up.
I’d really like to get away from this phrase.
Some of the most avid off-roading Jeepers I know are women. And mothers. And for all I know they take their kids to soccer.
“Soccer moms” is a terrible phrase.
Just like the phrase "Indian giver". That one is just straight up racist and I will never use it, but sadly I haven't found a substitute for it either. "Someone who gives a gift and then takes it back" just doesn't roll off the tongue...
Besides, even if you haul sth bigger 2x a year, renting a little trailer of the right size is really a no-brainer. That's what I do.
I'm wondering the same thing, especially since I see more and more of those trucks in Paris, France. Now I've never been to the US, but one thing with European cities is that there are a lot of old, small streets. We also never really had big cars like in the US, so parking spots, etc, are tiny for those cars. Hell, I have an older C-class coupé and it barely fits in street parking spots.
We also have our share of off-road vehicles that have probably never left Paris, seeing how they have huge rims with low tires. But I guess since the streets are in a horrible shape and getting worse, an off-road vehicle may make some sense.
However, I guess that's the whole point of "status". Something that's practical and affordable (financially or otherwise) for everyone can't confer status.
So when it comes to status-seeking, those metrics being outrageous is actually a feature, not a bug.
Yep, this trend exploded almost everywhere in Europe and I think I found the answer to why. Lots of my male colleagues at work (devs in Europe) are married and have kids on the way and when discussions came at lunchtime about buying a new family car for taking the kids places it seemed like the choice is always a SUV. Whenever I ask them why a SUV, even though they usually prefer sleek sedans, the answer is always "my wife/girlfriend says she feels safer in a big, tall car", which mostly makes sense as throughout history, females' reproductive and nesting choices have had a major impact on shaping male behavior and various aspects of society like real-estate and now car choices.
It's sad that this kickstarted what is basically an arms race on the road since nobody feels safe anymore driving their kids in the traditional European compact car when everyone else is now in big heavy SUVs with poor visibility and easily distracted by their phones or infotainment touch-screens so this fear drives them to one-up their "competition" with bigger and heavier cars to make sure their kids have a perceived higher safety in case on an accident.
And it's not just compact cars, modern SUVs, except the ones destined for workhorse off-roading, are also lower to the ground than they were 20 or so years ago since they never leave the city/highway anyway.
They also release a large amount of carbon into the air.
So yes, their use as a recreational or status symbol should be discouraged.
This is human nature. Wanting more than you need is actually important to capitalism in countries as rich as the U.S. so I cut people a break.
They’re not popular here. Except for those that need them. (Maybe RWD and light tail and snow.. ). SUVs are it here.
I was surprised how much of the rest of the rural US uses trucks as a day to day vehicle.
I lived in Bama for a couple years and everybody and their brother had a pickup.
I don't seen any reason to use a big truck as their daily commute.
"The most popular model [of the Ford F-150] is the SuperCrew XLT with the 302A package...That pickup, upgraded to 4X4 and the 6.5 foot bed, comes out to $50,020."
https://www.autoweek.com/news/trucks/a33584476/this-is-how-y...
'round these parts, a 4wd pickup is a pretty practical thing to own. I'd much rather own one than a Subaru.
I've seen this same figure for current EVs. But it's important to look at the trend. Lithium-ion battery prices have decreased by 97% since their introduction in 1991. The price decrease curve is amazing [0]. Teslas were at least $80K in 2015; today a Tesla with similar range (Model 3) can be had for $40K. That decrease is largely the result of Tesla and Panasonic improving battery energy density and battery production economies of scale. There is every reason to believe this trend will continue, especially if solid-state batteries can be scaled up.
As for rare-earth metals, cobalt is the worst one w.r.t. rarity and human labor. Tesla's next generation of batteries (starting in late 2021) eliminate cobalt and substitute nickel and manganese, which are far more plentiful and don't require child labor.
Not trying to sanctify Tesla here; I just follow them more closely than other battery manufacturers. The others are probably working toward similar goals.
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/EE/D0EE0...
The problem to date has been poor cycle life but people are working on it:
- https://oxisenergy.com/technology/
- https://oxisenergy.com/wp-content-uploads-2020-11-press-rele...
- https://theconversation.com/batteries-made-with-sulfur-could...
But are they really? Especially for charging, I'm still not convinced.
The articles makes a case that you can go and grab a coffee while your ID.4 charges in 30 minutes at a high-speed charging stations. Sorry, but "30 minutes" and "high-speed" in one sentence seems somewhat misplaced. Who can afford to just waste 30 minutes for charging on a regular basis?
I currently live in a suburb in central Europe. I just checked on https://chargemap.com/ for my area - I don't know how up-to-date their map is but there are only a few charging stations within 20 minutes from my house, none of which is a high-speed charging station.
And unlike houses in North America, almost none of the houses on my street has a drive way, i.e., me and most of my neighbors park on the road, sometimes a few houses down from mine - so, no chance for charging a car over night at home. Of course, before I moved to the burbs, I sometimes had to park a few streets away at night because apartment buildings here typically don't offer parking garages (they exist, but it's not common).
Unlike some people with strong opinions, I'm actually in favor of electric cars. However, the practicability is just not there for the way a lot of everyday life is currently organized in many parts of the world.
The idea is that charging is done at home overnight, so that the high speed charging stations are only used whenever one is doing longer drives on a single day.
As you point out though, not everyone has access to charging at home. Some employers do have charging stations, which can help since many cars do stay several hours at the office every day.
As per your comment from 19 days ago [0], is it possible for you to write down something about your air quality sensors project? That would be awesome.
I think it heavily depends on your job.
If you want an electric car, get it. Charging is not the problem with them: affordability, availability, and matching the range to your lifestyle are.
I know that at my work, which is in a fairly modern office building meeting all the latest hotness in LEED and whatever, there are basically just a handful of spots with electric and there is so much demand for those spots that you're not allowed to park there for more than two hours at a time.
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Parking has the double whammy of being entirely an expense, and possibly being outmoded. If you buy the electric autonomous fantasy of people no longer owning cars and relying on Uber-like shared fleets, that basically makes the vast majority of parking spaces obsolete, and so developers understandably are trying to make their parking lots easy to tear down and redevelop. (You can't really reuse the sloped floor plates of a parking garage for much else since all other building uses tend to need flat ground, and in any case the runoff from parked vehicles is quite nasty stuff.
However lately the city has made some improvement to public charging stations at the train station, a couple streets even have charging spots. And businesses like IKEA are starting to have charging ports.
Still too impractical for me, but I can see it being more feasible now than even a few months ago.
These kind of “it’s solved” statements are very much picking the facts to fit the conclusion, rather than the other way around. Pointing this out usually elicits a “well you should change your lifestyle to better suit the features of an electric car”. If you tried to say that about software features most of us would intuitively know how dumb it is, but it’s supposedly a much more reasonable argument when made about transport.
At one point, gas stations were hard to find and the horse/buggy reigned supreme. Gas cars were actually much cleaner then than the alternative. I’m glad we made that transition and I look forward to this new transition which will undoubtedly require at least a little change from just about everyone.
I don't think $40k electric cars (or even the long-range Tesla models) are for people who use cars for work and require frequent/long distances.
This is more for the guy who does 15-30km/day commute, then maybe few km to the mall and has a driveway in his house. Maybe once in a while does 100km trip to some mountain.
Best you can do for now is a hybrid.
The only issue is when going to a city more than 300 km away, then yes, a 30 mins coffee. Charging stations are everywhere here (eastern Canada).
There is also the additional friction from winter tires, and in summer drag from a bike rack. A bit similar to gas consumption, but does require planning stops on long trips.
I don't want to renew my relationship with a dealer. Especially not with an electric car where I really would be beholden to them until the independent shops catch up - if they ever do.
The practice is ... different.
It doesn't matter matter if there are only 50% as many parts to service if servicing those parts costs three times as much.
At the end of the day, this is all revealed via depreciation.
Cars experiencing a lot of depreciation, by definition, are viewed by the market as more expensive to service over their usable life, as depreciation is just the forward payment of future maintenance costs:
Say a car will last for two periods. In the first period, the repair costs are zero, and in the second they are 15K. Now the car costs 35K new. Total ownership costs for both periods are thus 35+15 = 50K for 2 periods. Split evenly, that's 25K per period. But the buyer in period 2 will pay 15K in repair costs and 10K for the car. The buyer in period 1 will pay 25K in depreciation. Both parties pay 25K. If they didn't, and one party was paying more than the other, the put-upon party would prefer to buy new and resell instead, or buy used, etc, so in equilibrium, both parties pay for half the purchase price plus half the lifetime repair costs, except the new car buyer "pays" for their half of repair costs via depreciation whereas the used car buyer pays out of pocket.
Now you have a situation where Tesla Model 3s are depreciating at rates comparable to the dreaded BMWs -- notoriously expensive to maintain cars. E.g. they are losing 44% of their value after 5 years of ownership (source: https://caredge.com/tesla/model-3/depreciation)
So it doesn't particularly matter that there are fewer moving parts, etc, as for some reason the market believes these cars are going to be about as expensive to maintain as BMWs, which have lots of moving parts (and lots of plastic parts).
Now if we know that, we can come to a few conclusions:
* the market is just wrong and out-of-warranty Teslas will be cheap to maintain, in which case there is an arbitrage opportunity to sell Tesla warranties and make lots of arbitrage profits. Feel like getting into that business? Me, neither.
* The theory is wrong and the fact that there is a simpler drivetrain doesn't have much to do with overall maintenance costs due to all the other stuff modern cars do that don't have to do with moving down the road. Uhh, maybe.
* The theory is right and the electric car makers are just screwing the pooch by managing to sell expensive to maintain cars even though there are fewer moving parts. I tend to favor this theory.
But in either case, arguing that because there are moving parts, the cars must be cheaper to maintain is a fallacy. It's a confusion of theory and practice in one of the many situations where out of warranty car owners are screaming in pain at their repair costs, and countering "muh moving parts" is missing the point.
Anyone who doesn't agree with this is probably riding a car or a truck and never rode a bicycle or motorcycle on the streets.
The model 3 is cheaper but not the same class of vehicle.
[1] https://electrek.co/2021/04/22/tesla-increases-model-3-y-pri...
What's surprising to me is that you were seriously considering a mid-size SUV, but settled on an e-bike. (My main commute vehicle (when I was commuting) was a bike, but that bike is in no way comparable to an SUV)
Given how SHIT other people are at driving, I have no desire whatsoever to be on a bicycle in front of them.
Cars are 1-2 ton machines that can kill you as a cyclist or pedestrian, and humans are awful at operating them. The solution is therefore apparently to put more of those machines on the road (for self-protection) instead of reducing the risk altogether?
Possibly my most important safety measure is route choice. The streets that I ride on have very little car traffic. This includes separated bike paths, but also quiet neighborhood streets. Fortunately this is possible in the town where I live. In decades of riding, I've never experienced a collision with a car, and my near-misses have been rare.
At the same time, this is used by a lot of people as an excuse to not get a bike. In fact, it's not that dangerous as you make it out to be as is proven by statistics I guess (didn't look them up)
Bikes are definitely far more dangerous than cars. Not as much as motorcycles, but that’s scant comfort.
If you look at the absolute number of deaths, biking is reasonably safe. As I said before, cities can do a lot to make it even safer, such as good bikelanes, better traffic lights for turns, better driver's education and so on.
I also disagree with looking at absolute numbers. Of course bikes look better there because compared to cars, very few people cycle in most places. Relative numbers are the only ones that make sense. Apart from this, I drive and cycle, and it seems obvious to me that cycling is considerably more dangerous. Everyone I know who cycles accepts that it's a case of when, not if, something goes wrong, and the consequences are obviously much worse on a bike.
The problem is mostly just infrastructure. Almost no California cities have more than a piddling amount of safe transportation biking support.
Cities with lots of hills in Europe don’t have as many bikers or biking infrastructure. Eg Lausanne unless you want to go for a jaunt by the lake. Cannes was the similar during a short visit I made 20 years ago. Hilly south Europe (Athens, Rome) doesn’t seem to like bikes very much either.
Yes, even in -40 and beyond temperatures I rode. In fact, Whitehorse has the highest rate of bike ridership in Canada!
My commute to work was only ~15mins on the bike, and for the first half I was a bit cold, and then the second half I was unzipping my jacket and would even stand outside the office with no jacket of toque or gloves for 3-5 minutes in -40 temps to cool off. The steam coming off me was always fun :)
With a longer ride (my landlord rode 40 mins each way) you stop after about 20 minutes and change layers - usually go for windproof with minimal insulation to prevent overheating/sweating.
side note: i snooped your profile a bit and i'm intrigued by the path you've chosen. i am moving in a similar direction, and no doubt could benefit from referencing your experience...
On my feet I wore thick wool socks, and very well insulated winter boots. They were always hot, even just standing still past -40
For my face I had a toque under my helmet and a big thick merino wool neck warmer that I would pull up until it was right under my eyes - so it covered my ears entirely.
Half way to work I would pull down the neck warmer, unzip my big jacket, etc. in an attempt to not sweat too much.
.. haha, yeah, my path has been a different one, and I'm a thousand times happier than when I sat at a desk. I'm TheRoadChoseMe around the web, and my email is dan @ that .com if you want to get in touch!
I remember biking home from school during the winter when it was snowing heavily. The sidewalks were completely snowed in with heavy snow so the bike just really went where it wanted to go and very slowly. I eventually decided to move over to the road but I was soon tailgated by a bus. Since the bus was honking at me, I had to pull over to the next bus stop to get him out of my ass. I think it was about at that moment that I decided to ditch winter biking once I could own a car.
Single lane roads with no shoulder can be very dangerous in the winter. Fortunately where I am in Canada, there's adequate space for cars to pass on the roads I take.
> bicycles are still quite horrible in the winter. I find the opposite. The activity itself is fine, but the winter is quite horrible on bicycles. Salt and slush can really make a mess of the mechanisms.
I’m not saying it’s possible for everyone. I would probably not do it if my commute was longer than 20 km one way. But many more people can define do it for the benefit of their health and the environment.
Hell, Oulu has high biking rates and is one of the northernmost cities on the planet.
Of course, if my guess is wrong, ignore me. And be more clear next time. :-)
I’ll use the ebike when I’m tired so I end up using it a lot more.
You can turn them off the power then your riding around with 30 extra pounds if you need more workout...
https://ijbnpa.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12966-017...
On a conventional bike, it takes some training (and thus, skill) before you can ride 25+ mph for any length of time, but you can take an eBike out on your first ride and ride that fast.
Still not quite as affordable considering we're talking about a top trim Subaru, but definitely getting close. And after state rebates / if someone factors in gas costs, the ID4 can come out ahead.
A quick google search came up with this from an organization that (from the name and content on their site) appears to be an oil industry lobby group:
https://www.americanenergyalliance.org/2020/10/under-bidens-...
> Our Northern neighbor has some experience with a carbon tax as well as other mechanisms for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. In 2019, Canada implemented a carbon tax under the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act supported by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The carbon tax started at $20 per metric ton in 2019, and is scheduled to increase at $10 per metric ton per year until reaching $50 per metric ton in 2022. The carbon tax will stay at that level unless the legislation is revisited and revised. > > A $20 per metric ton carbon tax equates to a 16.6 cent per gallon surcharge on gasoline. In 2022, the $50 per ton carbon tax would increase Canadian gasoline prices by about 42 cents per gallon or about 8 percent.
Even the $50 per ton tax doesn't seem like it actually raises prices all that much. I mean, if you're poor and need to buy gas to get to work it's a detrimental change, but gas prices fluctuate more than that just from oil production changes and geopolitics, and it hasn't stopped price-sensitive purchasers from buying gas-burning cars.
https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/14...
So it's perfectly possible to live while paying enough tax to clean up the CO2 caused
You could however raise it a lot more to make it have bigger effect. E.g. In Sweden you pay about $200-250/ton (for gas). Then you could argue that there are other emissions from gas such as NOx and similar. A little bit outside my comfort zone but I'm sure it would have some effect at least to make electric vehicles more attractive!
The main problem is that fuel tax should be increased slowly so people can change their consumption accordingly.
I'm all for a fuel tax, but I'm also a huge proponent for a decent alternative to the single car transport system that America is so very reliant upon. People talk about biking, but being able to bike to a decent and available transit station would be a dream come true to a huge swath of the American population.
/end rant
Regardless it is definitely not the case that people drive less in Europe because they are taking public transit way more - EU and US basically have the same modal share - maybe !0% more people taking transit that driving, but not really a huge difference.
What is very different is the length and distance of commutes in the US. The average american drives 3-4x more distance than the average european, so fuel taxes can be 3-4x higher in Europe than US and the consumer pays the same. This is really a result of the inefficient urban design many places in the US have, with huge sprawl leading to enormous commutes. This is a much harder thing to fix (and it also precludes better transit systems due the very low population density).
Whether American urban design is "inefficient" depends on the value you place on mass-affordable spacious housing. I personally think this is a dumb thing to optimize for, but a lot of people are really attached to it. I think they'd look at a European transit-centric home as ideal for a group of college friends, but balk at the idea of raising a family in close quarters or with strangers walking by.
The difference is European suburbs tend to be much more densely populated so commutes are less in distance.
Instead of 2400sq ft houses, you're probably looking at 1500sqft with some garden space but far less than a US one. Tbh they are totally fine for raising a family.
Heck, in Chicago there was a big stink when the city started putting in “foreign made” decorative street lights and bus stops a few years back when there were locally-manufactured alternatives.
Not necessarily. Even if you implement really high CO2 tax, as long as it's fiscally neutral - i.e. it gets paid back to the population, instead of the government spending/wasting it - and it's paid out quickly (e.g. weekly or monthly, instead of yearly with a long delay) it would work just as well - people would adapt as quickly as they can/want to, and everybody who changes their consumption faster than average, would benefit.
As the program grows, the payout check is switching to quarterly (up till now it was annual on your tax rebate)
Everybody knows the source of the leak is old plumbing and the root cause is an old handbook effectively denying residents the right to repair. Let's update the handbook so that residents can do some repairs.
You don't "spend" time recharging an EV unless your one-way trip is longer than the maximum range.
You get where you're going, plug in and come back to more power than you had before you left.
Provide bus depots with car parking in the exurbs so that there is the possibility of short driving commutes to/from the depot.
Use smaller, much more frequent, shuttle buses to pickup/drop off "on demand" between houses and those hub depots, then they don't need the car to get there.
a lot of people don't exactly understand just how _sprawling_ the US is.
Not for regular working class people, far from it. A car that costs more than your gross annual wages isn't anywhere close to being within your means.
Los Angeles median income in 2019: 28,072 USD
NYC: 32,320 USD
Nearly half of Los Angeles residents pay more than 50% of their income on rent[1].
In NYC, 42% of renters pay over 30% of their income on rent, 23% pay more than 50% of their income.[2]
[1] https://news.usc.edu/179928/los-angeles-rent-burdened-househ....
[2] https://wherewelive.cityofnewyork.us/explore-data/housing-co....
1. Hybrid SUV for actually getting places and moving things
2. ~$4k a used 2013 Smart car. ~45 mile range is good enough for short commute, grocery runs, etc. Charge at home or at work (we have the uncommon situation of no charging at home since we live in a condo complex, and free charging at work).
$4k is like the price of a nice electric bike. We didn't do any maintenance to the car for 3 years (we probably should replace the brake pads). It's working just fine and is an incredible workhorse for the price.
I live in a state with some of the cheapest electricity in the USA, the Tesla Model 3 is almost free for me to drive and I can charge in off-peak times for truly mind blowing MPGe values. I also hadn’t thought about how the car retains its value. My gas cars depreciate rapidly. My brand new Tesla cost 40k when all is said and done and used Teslas several years old were going for 38,500 or so. The test drive of the Tesla sold my girlfriend and I on it completely. It was the first car I’ve ever driven that felt like what the future should and could be like.
I seems to me probably another 5 years to get enough volume in solid lower end EVs that are bought in quantity and have a decent lifespan. Then another 5 years for them to filter down to the used market with decent prices.
I bought a 2017 Golf last year for around $15k. In Australia the only thing you can get electric wise at that price point would be a 2013 or so leaf with 100km range, and even then there is basically no supply.
You can get a ~2016 Leaf for around $10k though.
It's ideal really; those who can buy new eat the depreciation, while those who can't afford new end up with a vehicle that will be able to go hundreds of thousands of miles before end of service life (perhaps with some cosmetic blemishes, but not much more of concern considering powertrain longevity). Not everyone needs a new car, many simply need a reliable car.
Consider: I had my last car purchase (which I knew would be used) between a BMW 4 Series, a VW Golf R, and a Subaru STI. I went with the 4 Series. The Golf R and STI are often used as track cars, and 40k miles on a Golf R may very well be the equivalent of 100k miles on a regular Golf.
I admit this is a very specific use case, but there are other specific use cases (e.g. police car - probably spent 80% of its engine's life idling and not racking up miles) that we know to look for, that we simply don't know to look for in the EV market, because they haven't presented themselves yet.
But yes: batteries age and need to be replaced. But while that's quite expensive in materials, it's actually very feasible as a maintenance task. A 2012 Model S could have its battery swapped and no doubt drive for another decade with minimal fuss.
So a bunch of EV's sitting 20-30% above that level aren't being priced out of the range of popular cars. They're very feasible purchases for most buyers.
Rare earths are only used in NiMH batteries. Some hybrids have those, but probably not this vehicle.
Though, if you're budget-conscious, why buy a new car at all? Used cars are a better deal. Leave the new cars for people with more money.
To clarify: rare-earths are required for the magnets in EV motors. Cobalt is rare, but not a rare-earth, and is used in the batteries. The supply of lithium and nickel may affect prices at high production volumes (widespread adoption) but is not currently a significant factor. Replacements for cobalt in batteries are the object of recent research; replacements for rare-earth metals in magnets have been sought for decades, with Fe16N2 and AlMn leading the pack at a treacle-esque trickle.
Not necessarily; they're just convenient, but not strictly required. Model S vehicles use induction motors and they seem to work just fine.
The Leaf still needs tires. It still needed the 12V accessory battery changed out. It still needs a cabin air filter changed once in a while. The Leaf has been reliable, nearly maintenance-free, and pretty appliance-like. But the Scion is a close second. We'll probably never buy an ICE again, that's how much we've like the Leaf and BEV in general. But "out of touch" doesn't even begin to describe someone arguing that those willing to spend $20K should spent twice as much because "TCO".
So they also have non-tiered plans for electric car owners but those are time of use. If you use them at peak for whatever reason, $$$ again. It's a little tricky.
It won't be as expensive as liquid fuel, to be sure, but the savings over time might not be as high as you'd expect. Offsetting with solar seems to be the popular option around San Jose, where homeowners tend to be particularly affluent.
Note that the CA utilities are working to try to keep milking you even if you have solar. The most loathsome part of it is that the utilities are trying to charge you $10/month/kilowatt-peak for the array you own, even if they push zero energy onto the grid. From my perspective, that's ridiculous rent-seeking. Personally I'm working towards getting off the grid entirely.
I think that's fair. It pays for the meter, the transformer you're connected to, the grid circuit, etc.
However people making electricity by polluting our planet are stealing from us, so should have to pay more, have to disadvantage those people more than you disadvantage solar producers
There's lots to like about electric cars (again, so much so that I'll never buy another ICE), but IMO any cost savings is going to be pretty far down the list. After ten years of EV ownership, I'd almost pay the difference in price so I never, ever have to go out of my way to visit a gas station again. Man, what a hassle that is once out of the habit. But EVs are just generally better vehicles that make an ICE seem like the rattling, primitive contraption that it is. That doesn't sell cars because one needs to own an EV to realize that. So to get folks to the ownership, we tell them it'll save money on gas. Which is technically true, but not the reason to buy EVs.
You're financing your car anyway, so its "free" to finance a car that $75/mo more expensive if you spend $75/mo less in gas savings. Factor in not having to pay for maintenance and it really is cheaper month to month.
This is different from the classic example of having to buy cheap, low quality boot every month for $10 instead of buying really nice boots for $200 that would last a decade. The upfront cost of the nice boots (and the insane interest rates for credit cards) make the nice boots impossible to afford.
EDIT: This is besides the point, but I don't think people dropping 20k on a car are "poor" in the way we are discussing anyway. Anyone buying a brand new car obviously has some money to spend
15 years typically translates to 180K - 200K miles for average use cases.
15 year old cars are generally not in great shape. Finding low mileage, well-maintained unicorns is not as easy as it sounds.
But the big thing is maintenance. If you can't do repairs on your own and with cars just 15 years old that gets increasingly more difficult, maintenance and repairs will kill you. At a certain point the upkeep will exceed the amortised costs of buying a new car.
The Dacia Spring would cost me 200€ TCO/month. A Kia Soul EV with 60kWH could cost me 250€ TCO/month for a slightly bigger car and more range+max speed. I wouldn't save money, but I also wouldn't break the bank.
Right now it's a wash. I haven't calculated CO2 tax increases into the TCO though. Give it another 5 years and you would have to be stupid to buy ICEs.
You didn't calculate TCO for the ICE maintenance costs and you need to: EV have significantly smaller maintenance so the component of high cost in a retained old petrol engine or diesel motor, is strongly in favour of the EV. I had two clutches and a gearbox replaced across the 17 year retention of my Mazda 6 on top of the expensive six monthly motor service.
Not downvoting you, but noting, you skewed the cost exposure risks i believe, quite badly.
Please elaborate.
Per https://www.mazdausa.com/siteassets/pdf/owners-optimized/201... , the only thing you need to do every 6 months is change the oil and filter and check fluids, and lubricate the locks. Google says you can use conventional oil in a Mazda 6.
Please elaborate what you mean by expensive six monthly service. Did your regular service visits include additional items? What and why? And how much did they cost? I am curious what makes Mazda 6 regular service more than other ICE cars.
Electric vehicles outperform ICE powered vehicles on every metric, including price. Electricity is getting cheaper and cleaner over time, and so are batteries. In 10 years today's $10k battery pack might be twice as potent and half the price. I would stick with VW or other manufacturers, as Tesla is being cheap about battery chemistry for long term performance.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/10/tesla-b...
I don't see any difference between Tesla and other cars on https://www.geotab.com/fleet-management-solutions/ev-battery...
I think that's a reasonable fear, dunno what the failure rate on large components will look like, especially batteries. One problem is that electric cars are bound to advance more quickly than something as mature as ICE-based ones. It would be easy to end up with something that's obsolete or poorly supported from a parts standpoint.
Plus fun fact: My insurance would go up a lot with a Model 3 from my current vehicle, 25% more a month. Why? I have no idea, but I'm guessing higher write-off or repair costs.
Let's say you can go 200 miles with that $8 of energy, that's 4 cents a mile.
Let's say a gas car is 30 miles per gallon of $3 gas, or 10 cents a mile. Over 200,000 miles, that's $20,000 for fuel, versus $8,000 of electricity in the EV. Seems like the total cost of ownership just about breaks even with federal rebates, and ignoring maintenance costs (generally expected to be higher with the gas vehicle) and ignoring that paying the cost up-front for an EV removes the potential for that money to accrue interest (which favors the gas vehicle).
I'm hoping the EV costs continue to fall until we get to close to parity in terms of vehicle purchase price. This can happen either by battery prices falling, or for people to adjust their expectations and accept shorter range, or for the need for large batteries to become obsolete due to electrified roads that let you charge while the vehicle is still moving.
You're saying that gas is $3/gallon and electricity is $12/kWh?
Over here gas is around $7,50-$8 per gallon and electricity is around $0.05/kWh. A 100km drive in an EV costs around 2€, while in a petrol powered car the cost is 8.5€ for a low consumption car.
No wonder Americans drive huge cars with no regard to consumption :D
Even in CA, with some of the most expensive electricity, it's about $0.20 - $0.25 / kWh...
Repairs can take months due to lack of spare parts.
Estimates I have seen are that LI is on a 13% annual decrease, which means that your $16k pack will be $4.5k by 2030.
By then, I would bet that the Honda Civic EV is cheaper than the Honda Civic ICE. In addition to the batter, there are fewer moving parts and simpler assembly, which means less labor; this type of manufacturing has barely started to scale up. Not guaranteed, but my estimates might turn out to be conservative.
And as for rare earths: as demand increases, it becomes increasingly profitable to extract marginal deposits. That's what fracking is, after all.
My current car is a 2006 CR-V with about 80k miles on it. It's in good shape and I drive less than 1200 miles/year so should be able to stick with it it for a long time.
My plan is to keep driving my CR-V until:
(1) an electric SUV comparable in price and features to the then current basic CR-V becomes available and switch to that, or
(2) rules change to prevent future sales of new ICE cars, in which case I'll decide if I'm OK with an electric non-SUV. If I am, I'll switch. If not, I'll buy a new ICE CR-V (or Hybrid CR-V if that is still only about 20% more expensive than the base ICE model like it is now), which should be able to last me for the rest of my life, or
(3) the CR-V actually needs to be replaced, in which case I'll do the same as in #2.
All the manufacturers report new US car sales, and except for the RAV4, in 2019 the cars on the list were outsold within their their own brand by cars not on the list.
For instance, the Nissan sold 209k Altimas in 2019 to 350k Rogues, or Honda sold 267k Accords and 325k Civics to 384k CR-Vs, or Chevy sold 132k Malibus and 45k Impalas to 575k Silverados, or Ford sold a mere 12k Focuses to 898k F-series (don't see a further breakdown...)
A Dacia Spring seems to be generally in the 10-15k EUR range after incentives, in most countries. A Renault Zoe is about 20-25k.
The US does seem underserved in terms of low-end electric cars, tho.
That's one reason I'm hoping that we start seeing more lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells in mid-range cars, as they don't require nickel or cobalt. (They still require lithium, which is starting to approach where nickel and cobalt prices per ton are, but I'd rather deal with one bottleneck resource mostly mined in Australia versus 3 bottleneck resources, one of which is primarily sourced from Congo.)
It's what VW does best!
Remember that the first car looked like horse wagon and did for quite a while. The same can be said about the infrastructure as well.
This is a myth. Lithium ion battery cells do not typically contain any rare earth metals.
Permanent magnet motors in EVs do contain rare earths (such as neodymium). As do the catalytic converters in combustion vehicles.
With an EV you can start each day fully charged. You just need enough battery to handle your daily commute and the few errands.
What’s missing is something to handle those few occasions when you need to drive that extra distance. It seems kind of silly to try and cram that extra flexibility into the same vehicle.
I wouldn't be surprised if rental battery trailers become a big thing due to that.
When using the EV for every-day stuff the internal batteries will be enough. Going on a long trip? Add a battery trailer for more range and extra cargo/baggage space.
They are not. What's needed is expansion of the infrastructure. And that's not even about quick chargers. In cities you don't need them. What you need is standard level 2 chargers wherever you may want to go. Work, school, shopping, movie theaters, whatever. Most vehicles spend most of their day parked somewhere. They should be charging then.
Larger batteries are only really going to be needed in very remote regions.
I hope eventually we get to point where we start adding electrification to major highways, so that vehicles don't even have to stop to charge. Then range will be much less of an issue.
The "charger" terminology is especially confusing, since technically there is a part called the charger that goes in the car -- it converts external AC power to DC at the voltage needed to charge the battery. The chargers normally installed in conversions aren't typically capable of charging quickly. The charger I'm looking at [1] maxes out at 3KW, which could charge a 27kwh battery in about 9 hours. If I spend the money to get a second charger to run in parallel, I could get that down to 4.5 hours.
Solar doesn't really work for long trips; the power you get is just too low. I'm in favor of solar panels being installed on EVs generally, as it would reduce the amount of power you draw when you charge, especially if you only drive a few miles a day on average. It just isn't a solution to the range problem unless you're willing to wait a long time to charge (like weeks) and/or manually deploy a giant solar array any time you stop like Mark Watney.
This conversion car I think just won't be a road trip car, and that's okay. Maybe eventually aftermarket batteries and chargers will improve to the point where I can plausibly install a 200-mile range battery with a half-hour 80% charge capability and keep the whole battery pack under four or five hundred pounds.
[1] https://www.thunderstruck-ev.com/tsm2500-and-charge-controll...
Once enough people have some experience with EVs and the market grows enough, there will be more interest and a demand for cars with a limited range at a cheaper price point.
Give it time. Right now a ton of money gets invested into batteries and co.
When you look how much impact proper market penetration is for prices (see smartphones, solar energy etc.) It will come and fast.
Feels like electric cars are still designed to "signal greenness" and not actually save the planet.
As a low-income single-mom you might have used to drive your kid to a better school in a 15-year old 1.2 Opel Corsa while living just outside Paris, where rents are cheaper and the social environment is better (i.e. no gangs) Tough lock, that's hardly allowed anymore. It doesn't matter if that means that your kid you'll have to attend a worst school or that you'll have to move closer to the city (and to the gangs) in order to get some chance at public transportation, that car is a threat to society.
Also, gently look away while the government fills the pockets of middle-class people with thousands of euros (even more) representing electric-car "subsidies".
Keep in mind that being in CA also means quite a bit of your income goes to housing for a lot of people. It's pretty common to be house poor in California. I know I'm sure not looking to add more than absolutely necessary to my monthly payments.
What's the average selling price of a Civic? With options the Civic can sell for over $35k.
[1] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/average-new-car-price-202...
Maybe take a look at a 2-3 year old BMW i3; that's what I bought for ~$18k US with only 6k miles on it. They're BEV with a range of only ~130miles which is pretty much all I need for local commuting; longer trips we rent a gas SUV, or at least that's the plan when our 3 month old is older.
These are problems I don't see discussed anywhere when car manufacturers are claiming to go full EV by 2030.
It's true there will always be edge cases best served by some other technology, but that's true about any device, not just cars.
Our last big snow storm of the season required me to pick up my in-laws and take them to the doctor. Their BMW 5-whatever sedan couldn’t even make it out of their parking garage.
There is already generators there, solar power and batteries will replace that. But people in the jungle either don't drive, or there is a river with boats. Is a small electric motor boat that much different to one running on petrol?
There are plenty of solutions, what's needed is the will of government to deploy those solutions.
Source? That seems highly unlikely
seriously we drove a electric car on the moon and your telling me we can't figure out how to drive in remote places?
> seriously we drove a electric car on the moon
How else would you drive on the moon? ICE needs oxygen for combustion.
using a ICE engineered for low gravity? with your own supply of oxygen?
Why engineer a new kind of ICE when electric engines and batteries are already ready to go as they are both needed for the flight to the moon? Also, you don't want explosions in space. Especially not when supplied with oxygen tanks.
Almost no one, even in the US, lives legitimately far from an interstate corridor or other major infrastructure path.
These EVs can absolutely be made to work in the red state exurbs. You'll find plenty of Tesla owners in those regions already. Where EVs tend to hurt most isn't with diffuse exurb commutes (where a 300 mile range does just fine!), but in long distance road trips where you have to charge more frequently and for longer periods than a gas car. And I assure you us cityfolk take just as many road trips as you red staters.
If you're from California or New York, I'm sure $40K starting for this or a Model Y seems complexly within your means, but there's a large chunk of the US (by population AND land) where <$20K new sedans remain popular and "nicer" vehicles are still in the $20-$30K range (and we're talking about SUVs and other family sized vehicles rather than small sedans).
People love to spam $40K US "average" while entirely ignoring that the average is a highly abusive figure containing $80K+ trucks and luxury vehicles, as well as a few $15-32K vehicles dragging that figure down. It doesn't really reflect anything useful.
Go look at this map[0]. How many of "the most popular car by state" are $40K? Zero. But yet an electric is going to replace a $21K Honda Civic by 2025? Really?
And I'm not dumping on the manufacturers here: From what I understand batteries remain the lion's share of an electric vehicle's total production cost (I've heard as much as $16K/vehicle). So this isn't profiteering, this is the tech not yet being ready price-wise for the mass adoption everyone seems to believe will come soon. Worse still as electric vehicles become more popular the rare earth metals that seemingly remain popular within the batteries may increase in cost offsetting our future reductions.
To be clear: I want to own an electric vehicle. I'd trade my current Subaru Outback ($27K) in tomorrow if I could buy a comparable electric. But those start in the $40K range (and honestly the cheapest trim is just a hero model, they don't intend to sell many, and blackmail buyers with missing basic features accordingly).
[0] https://insurify.com/insights/most-popular-cars-by-state-202...