E-scooters are essentially street-legal golf carts, and they are exploding in popularity.

Unfortunately, US regulations and road behavior make small cars unprofitable to sell over here. See: the Ford Mustang EV, which is an SUV with a muscle car's name. Or VW, who will only sell the ID.4 in NA, no electric hatchbacks. Or the Chevy bolt, another SUV with sedan lineage.

IMO, plenty of people would jump for cheap small EVs if they could buy them, but nobody will sell us one.

Cheap, Small, Large Production Volume. Pick two.

Companies can not sell you something they can not make.

But... there are plenty of cheap, small, large production ICE cars. And we've been told that EVs are less complicated, with the president of Ford, last week, claiming they take 1/2 the labour to build.

There is no reason this three cannot exist together. None.

If there are, then why are you complaining that they "won't sell them to you"?

> There is no reason this three cannot exist together. None.

Mineral resources to make the batteries? Why do you think that Tesla has a waiting period of months.

I complained about no such thing.

Mineral resources to make the batteries? Why do you think that Tesla has a waiting period of months.

Certainly not for this reason. Telsa has always been months, even years behind on deliveries.

The three will exist together, like the Corolla, Camry etc. But it will take a while to scale up to that. People are expecting Rome to be built in a day and whining because it isn't.

You can buy small, cheap, mass-produced EVs in most of the rest of the world today, just not in North America.

The article author (me) lives in Wisconsin, where the weather is currently snowy and 18 F. Golf carts are a nonstarter.

Besides, an electric golf cart's range is only about 25 miles, which gets you around a golf course a few times but not much farther.

If you want to make a serious argument that's understood, then perhaps avoid the hyperbole.

Without the hyperbole, though, the argument seems to fall apart, because there are many car models that are significantly cheaper than Teslas.

The problem is that you are anchoring your argument on the price of the Tesla.

A company that wanted to bring, e.g, an all-electric version of the Honda Fit/Fiat 500/Peugeot 100/Renault Twingo/etc wouldn't be competing with Teslas, they would be competing against the ICE version of a compact/economic car.

Price-sensitive people are never going to buy a $18-25k electric car, if the ICE equivalent version costs half of that. "Oh, but it's cheaper than a Tesla" is not relevant.

Most people are price-sensitive. This doesn't mean they purchase exclusively based on the cheapest price. If the wealthy can spend more to save the environment, why can't the non-wealthy? They just can't spend the same total amount.

Let me put another way: if the market for smaller EV cars were an actual profitable opportunity, don't you think that at least some of the car companies would be going after it?

I've been arguing that Musk's motive is profit, not saving the Earth.

If he truly believed the Earth's environment was in danger, and saving it was his life's goal, then I don't think the question of "profitable opportunity" would stand in his way.

I'm not interested in evaluating Musk as a businessperson. I'm interested in his self-promoted reputation as a "humanitarian".

Making EVs is not inherently a humanitarian act. The other auto companies are doing it now too, and nobody ever thought they were trying to save the Earth. There's obviously a lot of money to be made, and Musk has made it. As I see it, he's really good at making wealthy people feel good about themselves.

There is absolutely nothing that can be done on a large scale if you don't have any type of economic power. Don't forget that even today none of his post-PayPal large ventures have turned any actual profit. People are only investing in Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity and etc because they believe that it might be profitable. If it was known to be a money sink, we would still be stuck in the status quo.

> I'm interested in his self-promoted reputation as a "humanitarian".

And I don't care at anyone's ideology or their intrinsic motivation. Just look at the whole FTX saga to see how an "Effective Altruist" is responsible for the largest scam of this generation.

What matters at the end of the day is that Tesla broke the dominance of the big car companies and turned EV cars from mere prototypes into actual vehicles that people can buy. (Yes, it is still the exception, but soon it will become the rule)

We are still stuck in the status quo as far as global warming is concerned.

> And I don't care at anyone's ideology or their intrinsic motivation.

Then we're just talking past each other.

1) No, we are not. Rich nations have been systematically reducing their carbon emissions (per capita and per GDP, and in some cases even in absolute numbers)

2) Most of the pollution comes from developing countries, and unless you want to halt any economic development in the global south, they will first need to become wealthy and then focus on carbon emissions.

3) None of what I said above relates to Musk. It seems like the action that you can see as virtuous would be if gave away his money to some "cause" (which?) that would help (how?) to fight climate change.

> Then we're just talking past each other.

Possibly. But that doesn't exclude the possibility that your argument is nothing more than a bad rationalization to justify the Musk hate.

And I realize the Model Y isn't cheap. Yet. But it will likely be the highest selling car in the world next year, replacing Toyota. You can gripe about them not being economical but replacing the use of fossil fuels is the bigger issue being addressed. And isn't having the wealthy and people with expendable income fund that transition what we want?

No, many governments have imposed requirements on manufacturers to produce a certain number of low emission vehicles.

> But it will likely be the highest selling car in the world next year, replacing Toyota.

I don't know about that.

> And isn't having the wealthy and people with expendable income fund that transition what we want?

Yes and no. Should they fund it? Sure. But the transition has to expand far beyond their personal vehicle ownership, as the wealthy are only a minority. Tesla gives the impression of wanting to cater exclusively to a certain class of people. Which is fine for a luxury auto maker, but Porsche, Lexus, etc., don't offer the pretense that they're saving the Earth.

We don't really have any time to wait. It may be too late already. Global warming has arrived in force. We're blowing through all the numbers that scientists warned about.

And voting in public officials who will implement mass transit is not Elon's job. It's ours. He's busy doing the things private industry can do, despite criticism and naysayers. Maybe we should get on our part.

Are they even trying though? I don't get the impression that Tesla is trying to produce EVs cheaply. All the self-driving crap is adding to the cost, and even worse it's getting them in trouble with safety regulators, which is the last problem they need. And now all the Twitter crap, how is that helping?

Let me put it this way: Musk has become the wealthiest person in the world, yet no actual environmental problem has been solved. To me, that's very telling. It's mostly promise, hype, not reality. The cars are real, the rockets are real, but saving the Earth is not real. Congrats on the business success, but that's not the same as public service, and nothing about Musk's behavior gives me confidence about his "good intentions" toward the world.

Or here's an alternative take: What else are well-to-do Tesla owners doing to save the environment beyond buying a Tesla? I don't really believe their hype any more than I believe Musk's hype. It's a collective endeavor, one in which you must act as a citizen and not just a consumer.

Self-driving packages are not to save the environment. It's an effort to save lives. And is an add-on and is entirely optional to purchase. If you think making the effort to save some of the 10,000 lives lost in car accidents in the US is a waste of money and effort, I don't know what to say other than I disagree.

It's pretty obvious the gasoline/diesel engine is dying. It was anyways but Tesla managed to push the industry to kill it at least ten years sooner. If you think those emissions are nothing, again, I don't know what to tell you. So yes, that is a major source of emissions that has now found a replacement and the market has forced legacy ICE industry to move rapidly in the direction of EVs or lose profits and market share.

He isn't saving the earth. No one person or solution is. The sources of CO2 are numerous. Personally I prefer the people who get rich because they start a company addressing one of these problems. Rather than, say, Zara, or the meatpacking industry. Getting rid of the gasoline engine is a big deal. One that people in public service or other companies were unable and/or unwilling to do. You are welcome to address that problem however you like. I wish you just as much success in that.

Starting a car company has got to be one of the least likely ways to make money. A major US car company has not become successful since the mid 20th century. And history is littered with failed car companies. There are a whole lot of reasons to not like Musk. Risking his fortune and putting his time and effort into killing off one of the most polluting, wealthy, and entrenched industries when by far the most likely outcome was failure is not one of them. We saw quite clearly how the fossil fuel industry treated scientists and activists making global warming a known issue by making huge efforts to muddy the issues and create disinformation. But I'm sure nothing of the sort is happening regarding Musk just because his companies threaten gasoline and legacy auto industry profits. And anyways, educated liberals are immune to that sort of disinformation.

Social media is a huge source of disinformation and propaganda. Perhaps it really is best for people to rethink their relationship to is or even stop using it altogether.

This is the second time you've personally insulted me in this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33683528 And also this ridiculous straw man:

> If you think making the effort to save some of the 10,000 lives lost in car accidents in the US is a waste of money and effort

I'm done here, and I've flagged this reply. Please follow the HN guidelines in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Total Tesla's sold in 2021: 935,950

Toyota Corollas sold: 1,1 million

Toyota RAV4: 1 million

All Toyota's sold in the US 2021: 2,2 million

Worldwide Toyota sales in 2021: 10,5 million

VW group EV sales in 2021: 452,900

Total EVs sold worldwide 2021: 6,9 million

Sources: Google results

Most major cities outside of the US have been moving towards walkable/bikeable designs, and cars just don’t fit well (delivery and maintenance cars being the exception). I wouldn’t expect a ton of innovation on a segment that officials are openly fighting to reduce.

We can (and must) strive to get rid of car dependency and we will certainly can reduce the amount of car trips in the year, but this is not going to happen overnight. Amsterdam was also a very car-centric city in 70's, and it took them at least a generation to reduce their dependency. Even if tomorrow all US politicians started pushing for laws that made it easier to move away from the suburban model, the US would still have decades of heavy car usage.