← Back to context

Comment by cucumber3732842

15 hours ago

Typical ivory tower armchair central planner type nonsense. You can't sell a car for "average". If people are gonna take on a $30k+ purchase it needs to also handle some fraction of use cases above and beyond the "average" and handle them without many/any shenanigans.

This is why the F150 is so popular despite the amount of shaming and screeching from blathering idiots about how "you could haul that on the roof of a wagon" and "rent a truck when you need it". This is why the vast majority of EV sales have been dedicated commuter cars or sales to people who's reasonable high end use case is still comfortably within the bounds of what they can do easily. Yes you can road trip an EV (or more realistically, do a 50mi commuting day with no charging at work and then hop in and drive 100+mi somewhere on a Friday night) same as you can haul plywood on a station wagon but it takes a level of care and planning that people don't want to put in.

People.

Want.

Easy.

As the tech gets incrementally better we're seeing incremental increases in adoption, but "oh EVs are good enough now and they would be bought more than they are if people weren't stupid and/or did the math and/or were honest about what their needs are" is not a great take.

But full-sized trucks like the F150 are some of the most amazingly inconvenient vehicles on the road currently? You can't fit them anywhere, can't park anywhere, the ride quality is dogshit without a huge load in the back or off-road, fuel costs are bankruptcy-inducing, they go through consumables like crazy and so on.

Somehow, it doesn't add up to me that people would prefer to face constant daily inconveniences for the sake of the one or two times a year it's useful rather than have a convenient time most of the time and have to come up with something occasionally.