Comment by Yizahi
5 days ago
EVs are fine and dandy, but it is a luxury class of cars for now and it shows really. Most other countries are far far away from mass deployment of EVs or restricting ICE cars. EVs can win if either a) the car is cheaper than the same class ICE, or b) operational expenses of using EV car would be cheaper. Neither of which is happening yet. And the car do need to have some advantage, since EVs already come with inherent disadvantage of long and inconvenient charging, small batteries, limited locations for charging with buggy and broken stations, not working apps or cards etc.
What's silly is that the reality you describe is a choice that's been made, not something fundamental to EVs. Cars like the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Bolt are supremely inexpensive. China's BYD cars are extremely cheap for what they are.
American/European car makers realized there is a large class of people who are wealthy and will buy a high end EV for status reasons, and started chasing that market instead.
Which Leaf? Leaf 1st gen with 150km range in summer and 100km in winter and which are already decade old? Those yeah, cheap, but also useless. Leaf 2 are nothing like that. Even base model with small-ish 40kWh battery is 30k euro, and 60kWh model is starting close to 40k euro. And for that price it's a small c-class hatchback, competing with way better cars, like large and packed d-class sedans or SUVs. And charging EV on a commercial station is currently more expensive than filling up a tank of a similar ICE with 95 petrol, per km of range. The only way to charge EV on a cheap, which is possible, is to own a house and charge it on a home line at domestic rates. And owning a house in EU is an expensive luxury.
Unfortunately, infrastructure need to improve a lot before the switch may happen.
The 1st gen Leafs are absolutely not useless. They have a specific use case, which they excel at. That use case is simply different from most cars, which are general use and can drive many hundreds of km. If your use case for a vehicle matches the 1st gen Leaf, it blows away anything else except a bicycle in terms of cost per distance.
In the US, DC fast charging costs ~$0.50/kWh. A typical EV gets around 3.5mi/kWh, which is $0.14/mile. An ICE car that gets 30 mi/gal sees breakeven at $4.30/gallon for gas. Which, while currently higher than the average gas price for most of the US, is less than the average for some states and certainly within the range of possibility countrywide.
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Even the Ford Lightning (by far the best work truck on the market) was modestly priced compared to other Fords.
Ford claims there’s no market for “expensive” $60-70K trucks in the US, but go to any Ford dealership in the bay area, and they’ll have used ICE Ford trucks that cost that much.
(And I don’t mean the giant specialty super duty trucks — these are tricked out suburban kid transporters that look like they’ve never seen a camp ground, let alone a Home Depot).
Anyway, the Lightning was a fantastic model line. I hope someone else builds quarter ton EV trucks moving forward. I’m rooting for Rivian and Slate.
I would argue the EV Silverado goes toe to toe with the F150 lightning and wins. Similar price, better range, better features.
Yeah, visiting my ex-Gf family in Norway, I realized how much richer Norwegians are that it's not even funny. It's not really a market representative of the average buyer. Same how neither Switzerland, Luxembourg or Monaco are.
I am living in a working class neighborhood of apartment buildings in West-central Europe with average to below average earners, and there's zero EVs parked here on the streets, basically 90% of people have old diesel cars. Only when you go towards the suburbs with rich(inherited wealth) people living in single family homes you see everyone has an EV.
The distinction is quite clear, do you live in a house or have your own parking space and possibility to install your own charger? Then EV 100% no brainer. Otherwise people stick to ICE.
I do live in a house, could easily afford an EV and have plenty of solar to keep it charged. And I still don't have one because all of these EVs feel like the worst of the computer world applied to automotive. The last thing I need is a computer on wheels and I'm old enough that I know my current car is likely my last. For my kids it is different, and I'm sure that they'll go electric at some point but I hope that they'll be able to do so without buying a mobile privacy violation instrument.
The Dacia Spring proves that it doesn't have to be the case. The base version doesn't even have a touchscreen, let alone internet connectivity. It is a cheap car, in every sense of the word, but is shows that not every EV has to be like Tesla.
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>they'll be able to do so without buying a mobile privacy violation instrument.
Tell me you don't bring any mobile device when you ride/drive a car.
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Ironically society would benefit tremendously from “computer on wheels” because when you inevitably have a heart attack on the road your car won’t swerve onto oncoming traffic or crash into people.
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> the car is cheaper than the same class ICE,
To give you some perspective, the most popular EV in China costs $6000 (Wuling Mini). New. The second most popular costs $10000 (Geely Xingyuan). I tried both, and they are far less crappy than they have the right to be. They are cheap cars for sure, but they're perfectly adequate for regular use.
And Geely Xingyuan has a 40kWh battery in the basic configuration! This is utterly ridiculous for a car that is _that_ cheap.
So China basically murdered the global ICE market. It's gone. There's no going back. Once China figures out the logistics and sales, ICE vehicles will be dead in all of the less affluent countries. Especially because EVs combine almost too perfectly with solar generation.
Out of curiosity, do they support one pedal driving correctly (i.e., let you set it and forget it, and never unexpectedly accelerate from a stop unless you turn it off explicitly).
BMW used to, but broke it on the i4, and presumably all the newer ones. Kia’s implementation is completely broken.
I ask, because that’s the number one thing I’ll check for with future EV purchases, and it’s purely software.
I have not driven the Wuling myself, only traveled as a passenger. On Xingguan it's "normal", just like on Tesla or anywhere else.
The Geely did not come to a complete stop on regen braking, I had to use the brake pedal for the final ~5 km/h. Perhaps there was a setting to override this, but I did not check.
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yes, there a lot of outdated perspectives in these threads. The world has changed, EVs are the cheaper option now, its just going to take awhile for some places to catch up.
In NZ cheapest EV right now (I think it is clearance) is 15.8K USD.