It’s a bad sign when more choice results in less desire, but that seems to be the case with electric cars. More new electric cars and trucks are hitting the market seemingly every week and, yet, a new survey shows that fewer and fewer potential consumers think of those vehicles as something they’d like to own. What’s going on here?
We’re going to explore that in this episode of The Morning Dump, as well as look at the curious case of ZEEKR’s IPO and what it portends for Chinese electric car companies looking to reach outside of their home market.
Plus, more proof that now is the right time to buy a Stellantis product and, hey, President Joe Biden thinks all auto workers in the United States might get unionized. Or, at least, it’s convenient for him to say that.
The One Chart That Shows How Bad It Really Is For Electric Carmakers
Other than the difficult-to-parse colors, I enjoy this chart from S&P Global Mobility that shows a survey of about 8,000 global participants and their openness to purchasing either an electric car or a hybrid car.
What’s amazing to me, here, is that in 2021, at the height of the pandemic, 86% of respondents were open to purchasing an electric vehicle and a whopping 93% were willing to consider a hybrid. In the two years since, according to the survey, consumer desire for electric vehicles has dropped to just 67%, while hybrid purchasing desire slumped to 72%.
Why is this happening? Thankfully, the survey also breaks down some of the reasoning. It’s not necessarily charging networks, as only 46% of the respondents said they were worried about charging time. It’s also not just range anxiety, as most respondents would be content with a car producing less than 300 miles of range.
All of the above are factors, but the biggest factor is affordability according to the study:
[P]rice fatigue has set in, driven by rising interest rates and inventory shortages that have only recently seen relief, said Brian Rhodes, director of connected car and vehicle experience for S&P Global Mobility.
Depending on where an EV is manufactured, changes to the tax-credit program in the US now force consumers to lease – rather than purchase – many models. Frequent media reports about charging network reliability shortcomings have not helped either. At this point in the evolution of EVs, adding more models simply cannot cancel out these issues.
I underlined that last bit because it’s so important. The constant drumbeat of $50-60k EVs is a bummer if you’re even considering something like this, which is why vehicles like the $35k Volvo EX30 are so important.
Granted, since 2019, consumer purchase for both of these drivetrain types has risen and, frankly, the world cannot support 67% of the world buying a new EV yet so there’s still plenty of room for EVs to grow.
Chinese Automakers Need The United States, Too
Here’s a small complaint: Zeekr apparently had a drive of some of their vehicles at Monticello Motor Club, not too far from me, recently. I wasn’t invited. This is a shame. I really want to get inside that Zeekr 09 and try it out.
Why would Zeekr be trying to appeal to journalists in the United States, anyway? Because the Geely Auto-owned company wants to build goodwill ahead of a potential listing on the New York Stock Exchange. This is seemingly part of Geely’s strategy with its subsidiary companies and it makes a lot of sense from a financial standpoint.
The problem is China. Or the United States. Or Taiwan. It all depends on your perspective, but China’s government ultimately gets to decide which companies do or do not list, and the United States gets to decide how particular it wants to be about regulatory issues. Taiwan fits in because Taiwan is, historically, the issue that China and the United States can’t agree on, but it’s also just a proxy for the general interoperability of the two companies, which has been low lately.
The listing of Zeekr isn’t just a big deal for Geely, it’s also an important test of whether the relationship between the U.S. and China is chill or chilled. Here’s Reuters on the big picture:
The listing could mark the first major float in the U.S. by a Chinese company in two years, after the delisting of ride-hailing giant Didi Global from the New York Stock Exchange.
Didi had angered Chinese regulators by pushing ahead with its $4.4 billion New York listing despite being asked to put it on hold.
The episode, together with a longstanding audit dispute between China and the U.S., stalled Chinese companies from seeking U.S. listings. Only six mainland China-based companies launched U.S. IPOs in 2022.
Since then, however, Beijing has softened its stance towards companies looking to list internationally, unveiling a set of rules earlier this year to revive such listings, after the U.S. accounting watchdog and China resolved the audit dispute in December 2022.
I just want some sweet, sweet vans.
There Are So Many Stellantis Products On Dealer Lots
The ongoing saga of Stellantis building cars that American consumers seemingly do not want continues. I joked earlier this year that a strike was probably good for the automaker because it meant it had an excuse to stop building cars it couldn’t sell, but that seems like less of a joke today.
In spite of the strike, the total supply of unsold inventory nationwide across all brands (on lots or in transit) rose to 2.4 million vehicles, up about 62% from last November, when supply constraints were still plaguing the market. Given the current pace of sales, Cox Automotive estimates that this represents a 67-day supply (a good supply is considered somewhere close to the 60-day range).
For Stellantis, though? The Dodge brand is up to a whopping 186-day supply on average, followed by Chrysler at 135 days’ supply, Ram at 129, and Jeep at 123.
While Ford, Lincoln, and Buick are all above the national average (and Toyota and Honda are way below it), no automaker is quite in the position that Stellantis is. So, if you need a new car, expect deals at your local Dodge/Ram/Jeep/Chrysler dealer.
Joe Biden Wants UAW Deals For All U.S. Autoworkers
Donning a bright red UAW tee over his usual shirt-and-tie, President Joe Biden was full of spit and vinegar when he arrived at Belvidere, Illinois yesterday. You can see the above speech and judge how much of it is spit and how much of it is vinegar.
Here’s the key thing he said, after applauding the recent tentative deals:
“But I’m a little selfish, I want this type of contract for all autoworkers, and I have a feeling the UAW has a plan for that,” said Biden. “The future of the automobile industry will be made in America by American union workers.”
That sentiment should be no surprise to anyone who regularly reads this morning news roundup, though whether the UAW can accomplish this or not remains to be seen. It also remains to be seen whether or not the union will officially endorse President Biden, though a meeting like this points to that potentially happening.
The Big Question
Rank the reasons why you wouldn’t buy an EV from the following:
- Cost
- Range
- Performance
- Charging
As someone who spends a lot of time on scientific graphics, that circle picture is TERRIBLE.
Totally agree. Even after parsing the key to the colors it still doesn’t read well at all. So, so many good ways to present this kind of data and it looks like they went deliberately to find the worst way. Oh, wait, I know, it was AI generating the chart from the data.
As someone who specializes in business intelligence and data, I completely agree.
Phew, I thought it was just me.
I think what has happened is simply that reality has set in. 2-3 years ago EVs were the shiny new thing on the block. Everyone was interested in them due to the novelty, clout, et cetera. Manufacturers then vastly overestimated how much they could get away with charging for them in an attempt to force everyone into more and more expensive vehicles. They also inexplicably decided that they all had to be rolling tech showcases on wheels that took a “more is more” approach to design.
Unfortunately it wasn’t sustainable. The amount of people that can afford to drop $50,000+ on a vehicle is finite. But I also think the reality of what a nightmare the charging network is has set in, as well as the fact that EVs are very limited in certain climates, etc. They’re also horrific investments. If I ran out to finance a $60,000 Mach E 2 years ago and was sitting on a car that’s worth $30,000 today I’d be furious.
Then you have the price slashing wars dropping values further, the fact that the most usable EVs are made by a company who’s owned by a fascist manbaby, I mean it’s a perfect storm right now. At the end of the day the technology isn’t ready for prime time yet and governments put the cart before the horse when it came to regulations. Surprise! Here we are.
For me personally driver engagement is the biggest factor keeping me away from an EV…followed closely by the prohibitive costs and range. Mainly costs, because there are simply more appealing ICE vehicles for the same price as the type of EVs that would interest me. Charging doesn’t really matter to me personally because whether it takes 15 minutes or 45 it’s going to be a pain in my arse either way. I also don’t want to own a car that looks like what someone 30 years ago would imagine a future car to be that’s controlled by a goddamn iPad that’s been tacked onto the dash with command strips.
I’ll be happy to reconsider in a few years when the technology improves. We will be looking at a hybrid or PHEV for my wife’s next car and I’ll be in my Kona N for a long time at this point. As of now I’d like a spicy luxury sedan after it (IS500, Integra Type S, CT4V BW), but who knows what’ll be on the market by the time I’m looking.
I don’t think everyone was interested….in fact I often wonder what the survey demographic was and since it says, of the ones that responded, how many more just simply did not care to answer.
I feel like the then new Prez pushing spending on infrastructure and Media Hype was intended to drive public opinion. The amount of tax payer money wasted on subsidizing the push is pretty telling. But now after all of that big push, we are sort more towards acceptance, but all of the old concerns still have shown their ugly head. No more 40K lightning work trucks and Gm and Tesla have not even managed to meet any of their promises from that time frame. not only are those brands trucks not available still, the pricing is already noted to be much more if and when they finally drop.
I disagree that the tech isn’t ready. I think it was ready 30 years ago.
The problem is that the EVs are being designed similarly to how ICE cars are designed, when the battery has a LOT less capability to store energy.
Whenever I see a massive electric SUV with an oversized grille and 22″ wheels, with baroque styling everywhere, that stands out as bad design for the technology used.
Good design? Solectria Sunrise. Mercedes Vision EQXX concept. GM EV1. Aptera 2E. None of these or anything like them is in production.
Ok design? Tesla Model 3. It’s heavy, over-stylized, and has massive drag-inducing wheels, but it is the best we have on the market right now. Lo and behold, its sales numbers don’t lie.
The reason the man-baby’s cars hold their value and sell well is because they are built to be EVs and have no pretense about being anything else. I LOVE the Model 3’s lack of a front grille. It’s an EV, and EVs don’t need grilles. And the Model 3 Performance is perhaps the greatest performance bargain on the market right now, which given the capabilities of the tech, is as it should be.
The problem is that most modern EVs are designed more to appease marketing teams and extract money from the buyer. This is a total misuse of the tech.
Their strengths should be the emphasis. Efficiency. Simplicity. Reliability. Low operating cost. Inexpensive performance. The vast majority of modern EVs are the antithesis of this, and deliberately designed to be such. It makes the ICE competition look good by comparison. THAT is the problem.
While I’m with you on EVs not needing grills, I think there is a place EVs need to be more traditional than they are: controls. We don’t need the car to have everything controlled via capacitive buttons, touchscreens, and voice commands. It makes the driving experience worse and potentially dangerous.
Unfortunately, pretty much every manufacturer is learning that putting more things on a touch screen means more profit. And looking more traditional means better sales, generally. So we get the worst combination.
I’m in full agreement.
Most modern ICE cars have this same problem. The way things are going, I will likely never buy a car made after 2016, because everything is too tech-laden and unrepairable. I despise having my controls integrated into touch screens, because I despise touch screens. Touch screens often think I’m touching something I am not intending to touch, and sometimes develop a mind of their own. And if the screen goes out, the car can be bricked, or at the least be stuck on settings that are ill-suited for the driving conditions.
I like physical buttons controlling everything. It’s generally possible to actually fix what goes wrong when the car is 20+ years old.
An EV that is given physical controls, where everything in the car is accessible and repairable, has the potential to be a “forever” car.
Cost
Charging
Range
Performance
1) Cost up front, and concern about battery repair replacement cost in the long run. Also how that concern effect resale value when it comes time to sell or trade in.
2) Range – how this is effected by 4 Season Temperature swings
3) Charging – This is a concern because so many of the systems currently out there seem to be non-functioning. And the Tesla systems are priced so that the cost per mile if using those is comparable to Many ICE alternatives.
+2) Performance – this is honestly where EV’s peak interest. Though the long term effects of the extra weight on the tires is concerning. If the tires wear out realy fast what about the stuff connected to the wheels.
I do think the E-Ray, and 4Xe hybrid systems, even the Ramcharger to an extent are interesting though. However the cost up front and long term with battery failures is still front and center on purchase thoughts.
Battery replacement costs would be a lot easier to address if large format prismatic LiFePO4 were used. You could get away without a BMS if you really wanted, albeit an OEM could still use a very simple/accessible BMS for liability reasons. If a car had, say, 800V architecture, then a single string of 250 cells in series would be very simple to swap a bad cell out of. If a 32 kWh pack is the desired size, you’d have 40AH cells. Use copper connects/bus bars and Nordlock washers, and the connections would be reliable enough to resist vibration over the life of the vehicle, and by keeping the pack accessible, any illiterate high school dropout could be taught how to repair the pack. Open the battery pack housing, use a multimeter to find the bad cell, unbolt the connectors of the bad cell, pull the bad cell out, put new replacement cell in, re-install the connectors, put cover back on the pack housing. Voila, done in less than an hour with basic hand tools and a $10 Harbor Freight multimeter. Of course, it is slightly more complicated than that given the safety precautions required, but that’s also the case working on ICE cars. The hazards are just different.
You wouldn’t need a thermal management system with hundreds of cooling channels going all over the place, either. You could have an electronic heat source, an electronic temperature monitor for each cell, and a cooling coil or pipe going around each cell, and that’s it. Just a simple, no-bullshit battery pack that is designed to last decades at a time without service.
These packs with thousands of cells, internal fusing/electronics/rats nest of wires everywhere are a problem. Simplifying them and allowing user access is the solution. Fuck stealerships. We shouldn’t be forcing car operators to rely on them.
You want to talk about a price increase? I still use my free Harbor Freight meters from 5 plus years ago on a daily basis. Just have to replace the 9v battery from time to to time.
Come to think of it, I haven’t received any coupons from Harbor Freight or Micro Center (free memory cards) in a while.
Charging
Cost
Performance
Range
Hope the new Charger/Challenger can help out Stellantis.
Charging is #1 with a bullet. At the moment, we don’t own our home and don’t have off-street parking … and even though my work garage has charging stations, the reliability and availability of public charging is spotty enough to give me pause. Fellow Autopian Kevin Williams has written extensively about this, including here: https://www.theautopian.com/the-grocery-store-should-be-the-gas-station-of-the-electric-future/
Cost is second, with range a distant third.
My fiancé is a big Mach-E fan, but until #1 is resolved for us, it’ll likely stay out of reach.
Can we all agree that that’s a terrible chart to communicate this info?
~70% is still a big number. Will be interesting if that continues to decline if the essentials surrounding EV ownership don’t improve rapidly.
Stellantis dealers were the only ones offering incentives during the pandemic. Which goes to show, yes you can get a great deal on a Stellantis car. The problem is, you now own a Stellantis car.
1a/1b – Range/Charging. These are so far above any other considerations and are also interchangeable. Faster and more reliable charging would obviate the need for more range, but barring that, the only solution is a longer range vehicle. EVs need designed for subzero temperatures, not just perfect California weather.
3-10 Other factors not listed. Styling, weird engineering choices (yoke wheel), reliance on OTA updates, etc.
11 – Cost, but only in the sense of value for money. I have the ability and desire to spend $100,000+ for a vehicle if it makes sense. Right now, no EV for any price meets my one most basic requirement for any new vehicle, thus they are poor values for my money.
12 – Performance. I find EV’s single focus on acceleration a bit boring, but I can’t imagine how or why anyone would find fault with their performance overall.
These are good points. I’ll add that I am also ok with the pricing in general too but I am really wanting for the industry to catch up on the sentiment against everything being controlled through the center–stack touch screen. I want a better user interface for the entire car for the high price I’m willing to pay.
And so very much yes on performance. Let’s start working on better handling characteristics and less on HP. I don’t need or even want 500+ horsepower in my daily driver. Give me about 300-350, find ways to lower the weight and maybe some suspension innovation for these hefty vehicles and then we can start talking about how I might be ok spending $60-75K for your cars.
My understanding is the tradeoffs between performance and efficiency don’t exist in the same way for electric motors as they do for ICEs, so reducing from 500 hp to 350 isn’t going to provide any increase in range. In fact, it’s more likely to be the opposite.
That said, if a different battery chemistry can provide longer range at lower weight, I’m all for it.
Even with ICE, the tradeoff between performance and economy is a lot less than people think it is. The fact that the bigger, more-powerful engines tend to go into vehicles that have more mass and worse CdA is what reinforces the perception that the tradeoff is large to begin with.
A stock C5 Corvette can get 30 mpg doing 70 mph on the highway with its pushrod V8. This is almost as good as the 4-cylinder Chevrolet Cavalier that has a similar CdA value and slightly less mass. The Corvette was a big car, having the length and width of a 2000s Jeep Grand Cherokee. Imagine if that Corvette was downsized a bit, weighed a half ton less and was recreated as a streamliner with half the CdA value, but the same V8 engine we all know and love. You’d potentially have had a halo car for highway fuel economy… with a NA V8.
I drove my Kona N about 150 miles yesterday and it averaged 31 MPG. I was enjoying it too, I had all my parameters set to Sport + other than suspension. For a nearly 300 horsepower car that’s pretty damn good.
And that’s a pig of a vehicle, both aerodynamically and regarding mass.
A vehicle with half the road loading will almost cut its fuel consumption in the same operating conditions by half using the same engine and gearing. Imagine if it were a 2,800 lb economy-oriented streamliner sedan, with half the drag. Fuel economy would see a massive increase, AND the car would be much faster and more engaging to drive, AND the car would be cheaper to build…
Enthusiasts are being robbed.
The 94 mpg Opel Eco Speedster concept was more than 20 years ago.
By your standards, yes. 3300 pounds in a usable package like that is plenty light enough for me. If you’d like to find me something similarly fun that weighs less and can also seat 4 adults I’m all ears…unfortunately the Civic Type R doesn’t count because I refuse to pay $55,000+ for a $40,000 car that Honda is already marking up at MSRP.
The current auto industry doesn’t offer that. Much better is possible though…
The Civic Type R is a victim of a technique called “price discrimination”. It could and should be much cheaper, but it is instead what the market will bear, and kept in limited quantity which naturally drives the price up.
Let me know when I can put a deposit on the Toecuttermobile down then! I’m pro make all the things lighter….although maybe not nearly to the level you are
It’ a dream of mine to start building and selling cars. I don’t know if I’ll ever get there, but I do have some prototypes in progress that I need to finish first.
Admittedly, my own vehicle designs are extremely niche, although if I ever succeeded at something, I’d definitely try my hand at something with more mainstream appeal.
I often wonder about longevity of both motor and battery with those fast draining, high speed launches. It can’t be good for the battery to dump all that energy and get so hot with such a high output.
Mostly I see the ridiculous HP numbers and think it’s just another way to increase the price without much gain. I simply don’t want me or someone in my family wrapping the car around a tree because the car went off unexpectedly.
It costs so little for a manufacturer to increase an EV’s horsepower that even sub-$30k EVs should have 500+ peak horsepower. Provided the right battery to allow this was used from the start.
So an excuse to increase the price is exactly what it is, most of the time.
The Tesla Model 3 performance is kind of an exception to this, at least when compared to its ICE competition. It delivers Dodge Charger Hellcat acceleration, for close to half the Hellcat’s price. But it’s still significantly more expensive MSRP than the base Model 3, and most of that extra added to the price is pure profit margin, which is why it’s “kind of” an exception, because it still does the same crap.
The fact is, an EV that can perform like a hypercar will not have much cost penalty to build vs one that is the slowest car on the road.
While the electric motor itself may not cost more, plenty of other systems on the car do. The component that gets the power from the motor to the tires has to be stronger. The suspension has to be able to handle the power. The car has to be stronger to be able to absorb impacts at higher speeds. The battery has to be bigger to allow that power to be used for more than 1 launch.
All of this is true. However, the control electronics to allow more power aren’t much more expensive than something that is highly restricted, at least in mass production. The difference in cost to produce an inverter for a golf cart and an inverter for a hypercar is in the $1,XXX range if both see production of 1XX,XXX+ units. A more power-dense battery is not that much more expensive than baseline, as most of the cost of mass producing a battery is related to raw material use and scales much more closely to the kWh capacity of the pack than power density of the battery chosen.
At the high-end of the hobbyist market, there are now batteries on the that can make 17 horsepower per pound. They aren’t cheap to buy, but they also don’t see the same production volume that the more conventional batteries used in mass produced cars see either, as they are highly niche. Even then, the cost penalty is not as much as one would think.
https://www.fuel2electric.com/sleeper-cell-12s-module-100-200c-5ahr
For a suspension and mechanical drivetrain components to handle more power, it also helps if the car has less mass, as that also places less strain on the parts, and you get less mass by having a smaller battery pack, and you retain the same range as a smaller pack by streamlining the crap out of the car and saying “Screw you!” to the corporate styling zeitgeist dujour to get there(big wheels and big grilles and ornate creases everywhere are all bad for aero). The Aptera 2E needs less than half the battery per mile of range as a Tesla Model 3, and the Tesla Model 3 needs about half as much battery per mile of range as most of the mainstream electric CUVs on the market, for instance. Simply put, weight savings begets more weight savings in other areas. Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute had an interesting presentation on this subject 3 decades ago.
In the case where the suspension, driveline, and other subsystems do need more mass to handle extra torque/power, most of that is going to be raw materials costs, and is not going to add up to a whole lot compared to the rest of the cost to produce the car. Again, this is how the Tesla Model 3 Performance and Volvo EX30 dual-motor Performance version offer such inexpensive performance while greatly expanding profit margins.
Thermal management can also allow the battery to be used for fast launches until the temperature reaches a certain amount, and then scale the maximum power back to prevent damage, which is what the Tesla Model S PLAID does, and its battery is not exactly the most power dense on the market(not anywhere close).
you are kind of focusing on Tesla’s I see, but honestly the styling thing and OTA is more and more in ICE variants too. The cockpit of a new mustang is downright sad with all the tablet tacked onto the dash, Most others are following this. and all of those seem to have OTA updates.
I honestly don’t care about large screens or the “tablet” look. Basic controls being on the screen is a no-no though.
I’d prefer not to have OTA updates in my ICE cars too, but mentioned it just because every EV I know of does it.
It’s the econom
yics, stupid.Driving feel is an issue because everything is so damned heavy. When your car has barn-door like aerodynamics, you need a bigger battery for a given amount of range.
If someone made a car with a body that had the CdA of a 1967 Panhard CD Peugeot 66C LeMans race car, you could go quite far with a small 30 kWh pack. Its efficiency would be comparable to an Aptera 2E. Such a small battery pack in turn would allow a ready-to-drive curb weight of under 2,500 lbs. Driving engagement of such a thing with RWD and a properly tuned front and rear independent suspension has the potential to be very Miata-like, and depending upon the amount of power/torque output of the drive system, the sky’s the limit regarding acceleration…
But the SUV’s must be made, because the govment (intentional spelling) gives us more money for SUV’s vs small cars
They’re already being made. There’s an unmet demand for something different, that is being ignored in favor of SUVs.
I can’t rank any of those reasons as a factor to why I’m not interested in an EV. It’s much more tactile than that. Every EV is a homely, ugly mess both in the interior ergonomics and the exterior styling cues. The EVs that most people say have a great design are just using other EVs as a benchmark. No matter how hard it gets pushed or photographed, I don’t want a car where it’s four wheels beneath what looks like an illegitimate spawn of Geordi La Forge. I just don’t.
Happy Friday 🙂
Wallets are being squeezed more each day for basic necessities, and EVs in general are not good values, i.e. they’re quite expensive for what you get.
If I buy a new vehicle, I want it to be better than the one it’s replacing; otherwise, why bother? At this moment and for a multitude of reasons, EVs are not better replacements for a lot of people.
Better is subjective of course, but I agree.
I think the scale for “good value” slides to EV if you keep your cars for more than 5 years. *IF* you can charge at home, they are screaming deals. My cost to charge doesn’t jump every time a sheik has a temper tantrum and aside from tires it’s insanely cheap to run. If you keep cars for 10 years it’s very competitive. If you change cars every 2 to 3 years, eh.
For daily use, it really boils down to whether someone can charge at home, or not. But the biggest hurdle remains the higher price (compared to a comparable ICE vehicle). Range is really only an issue if one needs to exceed it on a nearly daily basis, and performance is rarely raised as a concern, except for battery degradation.
CostRangeChargingPerformanceA PHEV would meet all my needs. I could do electric for my daily commute and have easy refueling for longer trips. No range anxiety, no worry about operational chargers, no worry about the charging connector.
Also that circle chart is the worst chart I have ever seen. It does not easily convey information.
I genuinely want an EV for my next car, but “my next car” isn’t going to be coming for a long time. I mean, when your grocery bill has effectively doubled over the past year it’s not really at the top of the priority list to switch out your vehicle.
All of the above. Does not fit my mission. EV would be a fine second vehicle. But so does my motorcycle
I’ve been a pretty big EV advocate for about 10 years now, and have daily driven a handful of EV’s / PHEV’s during that time. I currently drive a cheaper ICE truck because I don’t drive much and it just made sense from a cost standpoint.
Anyway, I think it’s a cost/charging/range issue. Along with that, it’s a technology issue – I think we’re on the verge of pretty big advances in battery tech and charging performance. So in 3-5 years, I expect it to be a much different landscape.
I’d have bought a Lightning PRO, or maybe even a XLT in the early days of holding a reservation – back when getting one would have been between $35-45k after the tax credit…but that deal just got worse and worse.
Hoping the value/cost proposition looks a lot better in a few years…
I’ll just add that I find driving an EV a much better experience overall, aside from I like driving stick in my truck, and that charging is still an issue (albeit, not too far off). A $40k standard range lightning would be pretty close to suiting my needs…but the 30-40min charge it would take to get to my parent’s place ~250 miles away is a non-starter for this somewhat frequent trip. If that time gets reliably dropped to 5-15min…it becomes doable. I think it’ll be there soon, and my next vehicle will probably be an EV or PHEV.
Two things keeping me from EVs are the initial costs and then long term reliability (ie years 5-10). I like to keep my vehicles for a long time. I’m fairly certain that the 2023 Honda CRV we purchased a year ago will still be 100% functional in 2033. I don’t have the same faith in the current crop of electric cars. My brother has a 4-5yr old Ford Fusion Energi which he can’t charge due to electrical fire risks. I’ll let the market mature for another 5yrs or so and then see whats available.
If I were in the market for a 50-60k vehicle I’d sure go for an EV but I’m not sure I’ll ever be in the market for such a vehicle for the rest of my life (inflation-adjusted).
But we’ll see in a couple years or three once my current car starts getting old and creaky.
Interest rates are high, EVs are not cheap, the charging network sucks.
Stellantis product drops value as a rock (except some Jeeps), you are probably underwater the whole loan. People is putting their money into other priorities like food or paying their mortgage/rent.
Gas needs to be crazy expensive, interest rates low, in order to have electric vehicle sales going up. They should had started with PHEV everything, get people familiar with charging at home benefits, lower their gas usage. Then, when the charging situation gets better, start offering more EVs.
1. Cost
2. Cost
3. Cost
4. Cost
Pretty much this. A niche vehicle with pretty significant drawbacks.
If I could get an extended range Lighting with a sunroof for less than 50k, I’d leave work right now to buy it.
I’m considering an EV for my next purchase. The idea of finding working charging stations on longer trips gives me some pause, but I am not the sort of person who waits until empty, so I suspect I can work around that easily enough. Cost is a concern, though dealers here are throwing cash on the hoods of EVs, so that’s starting to look better. Range is only a concern insofar as the next generation of EVs will probably do better, but improved charging networks will also alleviate range concerns, so longer range isn’t really necessary. Performance is absolutely not a concern in the slightest.
Fewer buyers being open to electric vehicles actually makes a lot of sense.
Post Covid many more people are working from home (much better for climate change than an electric vehicle), and working from home significantly undercuts any cost saving or environmental arguments for an electric car.
It’s not a coincidence that a person who got ultra-rich off of people overvaluing a commodity electric car maker constantly whines about work from home.
An added impact is that there is probably a pretty strong correlation between the people working from home and the people who buy new cars and are open to new technologies.
Yep, I’m the perfect example of that case. Even if I was in the market for a new car, an EV wouldn’t be my choice. I work from home full time, since the pandemic the most I’ve driven in a full year is around 8k miles. And a good chunk of those are longer trips to rural KY to see family, a trip not conducive to an EV given the lack of infrastructure in that area. In a world where we are still trying to scale up battery production, it would be a waste for me to have an EV that would spend most of its time sitting in my driveway doing nothing. My Sportwagen TDI nets me upper 30s mpg combined and it’s not unusual for me to get 45 on the highway. I fill it up once a month, at most.
But my fiancee would consider an EV when he needs a car. That’s probably five years or so in the future, but he’s the perfect use case for one. He commutes to work, but probably hasn’t driven more than 120 miles in a day in a year or more. On long trips we always take my Sportwagen anyway.
1 Cost
2 Charging
3 Range
4 Performance
This is exactly how I’d have ranked them.
We need a 200+ mile range sub-$20k RWD sedan or hatchback that can seat 5 adults in comfort. Use this same platform to also build a lighter-weight 2-seater sports car coupe version of the same.
To do this, there will have to be a focus on drag reduction and mass reduction to keep battery costs down. We should be able to reliably get 200+ miles range slightly speeding on the interstate with a 30 kWh pack or smaller. This means a drag coefficient in the mid 0.1X range and a frontal area of under 2.0 m^2, in a car that weighs under 3,000 lbs.
Keep the tech and gadgets to a minimum, and have everything controlled by real buttons. The only screen you need is your smart phone; have a jack to plug it in.
This is doable. Stop caring what it looks like compared to everything else and stop caring about what the marketing people think or what the next quarterly report looks like. This should be a car built to be as inexpensive, repairable, simple, and long-lasting as possible.
It probably won’t sell right away. But if the car payment is LESS than the recurring costs of fuel+maintenance for a 10+ year old ICE clunker, word will get around and it will gain a cult following and sell itself in the longer term.
100% agree (purchase) price is THE main improvement that is needed to drive greater ev adoption.
As someone that likes to keep daily drivers +10 yrs…
I am surprised, given the hv battery is The most costly component to an ev… I haven’t heard maintenance, in particular battery maintenance brought up.
B/C of an understandable concern around a thermal runaway event occurring… A handful of individual battery cells w/in a full (lithium ion) hv pack has the potential to ‘brick’the entire pack.
While know there Has to be others, ‘Gruber’ is the only ev repair place I can think of offhand that can properly diagnose and repair* hv battery packs.
*they focus on Teslas, so they will snip the connection wires between the bad cells and the rest of the pack in order to better isolate them…
I do think the need to repair hv battery packs will (hopefully) be more of an edge case, This is something that gives me pause and I fully expect my next car will be an ev
I want zero part in an ev with pouch cells way too many problems appear with keeping individual cells cool + seems to be greater instances of pouch cells swelling…
Cylinder (lithium ion) or prismmatic Fe cells, I’d be fine with as both should last (happy path) +200-300k miles or more
So for me bf I seriously comparison shop ev makes/models… I will 1st be shopping for a Gruber like ev repair facility that specializes in repairing hv ev packs
I’m fond of having a single string of large format prismatic LiFePO4 batteries, with a very simple BMS and minimal electronics. This is how you make a battery pack that any illiterate drunk can repair with basic tools and which has minimal fire risk. Keep all the tech to a minimum and make everything on the car no more complicated than any ICE car from the early 1990s.
Were this approach taken, I suspect it would be possible to make an electric car that can last a century or longer with regular repairs. It should cost well under $25k. It would be trivially easy to give such a car hypercar performance at the same time.
That is a food point. Currently (sadly) Tesla seem to be the only manufacturer/operator that have figured out (at least in the US) How to make an efficient (end user perspective), reliable charging system.*
So to add to the system you describe above… the bms or at least the charging logic will need to be adopted from one of the now many companies that have inked an agreement w/Tesla to use the Tesla Superchargers. Unless of course Tesla has made their supercharger charging handshake logic open source which I don’t think they have & for potential legal liability I can understand.
*The fact Tesla the only ones that actually have a reliable charging network in the US seems frankly rather pathetic