Comment by margalabargala
5 days ago
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.
Theoretically there is a use case for 100km range car, I won't object that. But in practice such a use case is extremely unrealistic, if alternatives exist at all. 100km range car is city-only car cheap car, basically locked forever to a single location. But cheap car is not a cheap thing in general, it is still 10-20 thousand dollars and requires all the car things - insurance, changing, parking spot, yearly maintenance etc. So with a very few exceptions no one would buy it as an only car. And buying a second car in a city is even higher luxury than a house. And even then, an intra-city car is competing with public transit in many cases.
What this means is there is no real market for 100-150km range cars, with a few exceptions where rich people can buy a stylish, expensive and impractical EV like a Mini EV. They won't consider Leaf 1. And non-rich people wouldn't buy such a limited and impractical car which still costs a lot.
In actual reality, Leaf 1 were popular in the period 10+ years ago, when there was almost no options in that segment. And during that time exactly two categories of people bought them in my country - taxists and people with private EV changing spots or private houses. My colleague bought Leaf 1 as a ICE Clio replacement, but only because he had a garage where he could charge it on a very cheap rate. Taxists the same, they were optimizing like hell. But Gradually, both categories replaced their Leaf 1, and now taxists are on hybrids mostly, and private citizens upgraded to more rational and expensive EVs. There is no market for very short range EVs today. Except as toys for rich.
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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.