I was hanging out with a friend who works as an automotive consultant, and I introduced him to a colleague as someone involved with autonomous vehicle companies. He quickly corrected me “Actually, more aerospace now.” It was a very telling correction. Just a few years ago, everyone was talking about autonomous cars and now the hype has died. Are electric cars the next hype bubble?
The risk with a morning news roundup like The Morning Dump is that as conflicting data assaults us from multiple sides, we get lost in the cannon fire—the fog of war. Our goal here is not to describe the sounds of battle as much as it is to explain what the battle means and where it’s headed. Ideally, the data builds upon other data to create a clearer and fuller picture. I think a lot of the last month of these TMDs has been thesis clashing with antithesis and it’s probably time for a little bit of synthesis.
Recriminations and I-told-you-so reactions are coming fast in the electric vehicle space. Is that fair? There are a few data points I want to look at that I hope will better position us to understand what is and isn’t possible in the electric vehicle revolution. And then I want to look at labor because, guess what, that’s related as well.
Then a look at 0% financing, which isn’t a thing so much anymore.
EVs Are Dead, EVs Are Alive, WTF Is Going On?
The big stories from the Japan Mobility Show were the re-ascendance of the Japanese auto industry after years of mediocre performance and mixed feelings about electrification. Everyone is losing their minds about electrification. We’ve talked at length about this and about GM’s slowing of its electrification plans.
Here’s a fun stat: Ford lost $36,000 per every electric vehicle it sold in the third quarter of 2023. That number comes via InsideEVs, which notes that:
Despite the higher volume, EV losses continued to rise in the third quarter, with the company posting an operating loss of $1.3 billion, up from $1.1 billion in the previous quarter and more than double its loss from Q3 2022.
This means that Ford lost around $36,000 for every electric vehicle it sold in the quarter, surpassing its estimated $32,350 loss per EV in the second quarter. For the entire year, the carmaker expects a full-year loss of $4.5 billion for its EV unit. Why is that, though?
Ford said the Q3 loss is “attributable to continued investment in next-generation EVs and challenging market dynamics.” Regarding the latter, the carmaker noted that “many North American customers interested in buying EVs are unwilling to pay premiums for them over gas or hybrid vehicles.” This puts pressure on EV prices and profitability, according to Ford.
This is a fun way to look at the numbers, though it’s not a perfect one-to-one. Investments in EVs do not perfectly track sales because there’s a huge lag time between investment and production for a company like Ford. The first F-150 of every generation sold, for instance, likely loses hundreds of millions of dollars until those investments are recouped as more copies of that original truck are sold. Still, the gap for EV investment is getting worse for the company.
Toyota has been resistant to electrification, stating that electric cars are further out than “the media would like us to believe” as Akio Toyoda said last year. Was he correct all this time? There’s a piece in Automotive News today with the headline “Japan’s slow walk to EVs starts to look wise.” Here’s the gist of it:
Toyota CEO Koji Sato echoed the zeitgeist. Carmakers shouldn’t rush EVs if the products aren’t ready and demand isn’t sustainable, he said. Japan should step up its game in EVs — but electrics are just one arrow in a quiver of technologies that will help rein in carbon emissions, he said.
“Battery EVs are the missing piece,” Sato said. “But we are not going to launch something imperfect just because there’s a deadline. We will ensure they are developed to perfection.”
There were a lot of EVs at the Tokyo show, but not much that was going to be on sale this year. Or, likely, even next year.
Here’s some weird conflicting data: Battery electric vehicles (that is, full EVs) are projected by S&P Mobility to have reached a 47% year-over-year increase in sales in October.
Continued development of battery-electric vehicle (BEV) sales remains a constant assumption for 2023 although some month-to-month volatility is expected. October 2023 BEV share is expected to reach 7.5% and bringing year-to-date BEV sales growth to an estimated 47%. Looking at the remainder of the year, beyond potential future pricing developments by Tesla, the launch of several new BEVs is expected to produce incremental sales gains as the year comes to a close.
That’s a lot of cars. Here’s a quote from analyst Lee Hyun-soo in The Korea Times this weekend talking about Hyundai I think sums it up pretty well:
“Even if the EV market is exhibiting double-digit growth, its pace is slowing down,” the analyst said. “Price competition is also getting tougher. Sales for EVs account for only a slim portion out of total auto sales, the change in market circumstance bodes ill for the automakers’ valuation.”
Alright Georg-y boy, let’s synthesize a bit.
Most automakers have at least one sports car for sale, with some automakers offering multiple sports cars. If you combine the sales of all Challengers, Camaros, and Mustangs last year you get about 127,000 vehicles sold in the United States. Through the first nine months of 2023, there have been 873,000 battery electric vehicle sales in the U.S., and the market will almost certainly reach over 1 million. That’s a lot of vehicles, though spread across a lot of models (or, more accurately, spread across two models from Tesla and then everything else).
The conundrum here for automakers is that Tesla has such a lead in cost and branding that it’ll take a gargantuan effort to catch up, and every one of those automakers will lack the advantages that Tesla had as a first mover (lack of competition, high-income buyers willing to pay a premium, government incentives in the form of carbon offset credits). But to make that investment means to spend so much money with no promise that, as an automaker, the market or the customers will be there.
So was Toyota right to slow-play EVs? I don’t think so.
If GM, Ford or Toyota could have seen the opportunity and built a true Tesla-fighter, any one of those companies absolutely would have. The EV market will continue to grow, though perhaps not at a fast enough pace to absorb all these new EV models. The problem is that GM, and Ford, and Toyota were too late. GM was the closest with the Bolt and I’ve already complained enough about that.
But it is convenient for Toyota that, given that it was late to the party, it can be more strategic with how it catches up with Tesla and BYD. The medicine has to be swallowed eventually, however, because government mandates and Tesla/BYD lowering costs mean that automakers risk being left behind at some point, even if it’s not clear when that point is.
I see three ways out for traditional automakers:
- A huge technological breakthrough, like solid-state batteries, massively lowers battery costs and improves performance.
- An automaker finds a niche that isn’t well filled by Tesla products (Ford’s T3 truck could be one).
- Automakers suck it up and spend until they can reach price parity and use their advantages (name rec/customer loyalty/dealerships) to soak up on-the-fence buyers.
It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible.
BYD Reported Record Quarterly Profit In Q3
Chinese electric automaker BYD is that country’s answer to Tesla (although some Teslas actually use BYD batteries). Once known mostly as a prominent maker of cell phone batteries, BYD has fought its way to becoming the biggest maker of electrified automobiles (i.e. hybrids and BEVs) in the world.
The company is also printing money, making a record $1.42 billion in profits in Q3 2023.
Net profit for the third quarter reached 10.41 billion yuan ($1.42 billion), a 82.2% increase from a year earlier, on a 38.5% rise in revenue to 162.2 billion yuan, BYD said in a market filing. It flagged earlier this month that third-quarter net profit could as much as double.
That was a smaller increase than the second quarter when profit was up 145%. The third-quarter earnings was within its forecast range of between 9.55 billion yuan and 11.55 billion yuan.
See. It’s possible to be a successful EV automaker, though it certainly helps to live in a country that handed out billions in automotive incentives and already have a longstanding battery business.
GM And UAW Reach A Tentative Deal
Details are scarce at the moment, but it sounds like General Motors and the United Auto Workers union have reached a tentative deal, according to CNN and multiple outlets.
Terms of the deal are not yet known, but it is expected to be along the lines of the deals already announced at Ford and Stellantis, including an immediate 11% raise in the top hourly wage rate, additional pay hikes totaling another 14% during the four-and-a-half years of the contract, as well as a return of the cost-of-living adjustment meant to protect workers from rising prices.
It’ll be interesting to see how the battery plant issue was resolved.
RIP 0% Financing
When money was cheap, it was much easier for companies (and dealers) to offer 0% financing to customers. Money is no longer cheap and 0% financing has basically vanished.
Heres’ a wild stat via Automotive News:
If there’s a company that’s offering 0% financing it could mean that product isn’t selling or the automaker is hoping to make up some market share. Carfax has a list of cars with 0% financing deals and it’s a pretty telling mix that includes also-rans like the Nissan Armada, Ford Edge, and Subaru Solterra, and market share plays like the Nissan Rogue.
The Big Question
Would you buy a Ford Edge if you got 0% financing? What about a Nissan Titan? How big of a deal is that to you, right now? Or are you holding off on buying until rates (maybe) get better?
Toyota is wrong. The problem is not EVs. it’s expensive to tool up for any new vehicle. Tesla is doing great with BEV and while their market share may be going down, they are selling more cars every year with good margin. Tesla spent its way to profits and almost disappeared a couple of times.
Automakers do not want to make affordable cars so they have built extremely expensive BEVs and then blame the consumer. Sure, Teslas are not cheap, but they are much more affordable than many competitors and offer the best ownership experience. If you think Tesla service is bad, then own an EV from any other maker and take it to the dealer network.
The best part is how much I heard that the big 3 would eat Teslas lunch once they started building BEV because they know how to make cars. The legacy makers need to change how they do business. You can’t have 100 different suppliers that do not let you have control over the software running everything. Sure, you have CANBUS but the software on all their controllers is proprietary to different companies.
Tesla’s market share of BEV’s is going down, but their market share of Auto’s is going up.
One huge issue that EVs will have to overcome is that Americans buy cars based on what they Can do with them versus what they actually use them for.
The big 3 half tons are 3 of the biggest sellers in the US. Do many of them use all 12-15K towing capacity regularly, or even the bed? Probably not…but they can!
Will most people take crazy roadtrips that span thousands of miles regularly? Probably not, but stopping every 2-3 hours for a 30 min charge is too annoying for most.
Until EVs can match the capacities that ICE cars can, while recharging in similar times as ICE cars, and selling at similar prices, they will not sell in the same capacity. Also, they seriously need to address battery degradation that makes the car a paperweight after 10 or so years. A 9 year old Toyota is worth a premium, as it is known to be reliable, but an aged Tesla is a 10-15k battery gamble.
Yeah the famous age-old sales tactic of “It’s adequate for your needs and will not excite you even though you have to spend a ton of money on it! Rather than brag about it’s capabilities, we need to kinda say it’s a bit disappointing and not really that aspirational and maybe that will cause you to lust over it!”
These are big purchases, and to justify a big purchase, you gotta have something be aspirational. If you are shopping for something “adequate,” you’re gonna buy a used Corolla, or if you really just need the tool and have no pretense of care or lust, you’re gonna buy a beat to shit used Chevy Cobalt for $3K and it will “do the job.” “Doing the Job” is the sales tactic that needs to be used for the current EVs, not the aspirational pitch, but “Doing the job” isn’t a sale pitch for a $60K product
That’s because the $60k product is the wrong product!
It’s definitely the road trip aspect which has ordinary people nervous about BEVs.
Sure, BEV’s already have equivalent, maybe even better range than the same class ICE vehicle when it comes to urban commuting (considering city MPG vs city EV range), and BEV’s fast charging is arguably already fast enough since the average rest stop is 15-20 minutes. But when it comes to road trips–many of which aren’t necessary meticulously planned with refueling in mind–then ICE may always have the advantage in flexibility, even if BEV range and charging availability is roughly equivalent, as long as there’s a gas station at nearly every off-ramp.
There’s just something about needing to plug in which causes anxiety just like how most people feel the constant need to charge their mobile phones not because they have to, but because just in case. As such, many non-early adopters will have the need to plug in gnawing at them at every stop, and the thought of most rest stops including the ritual of finding a place to charge, waiting for the session to complete, and dealing with issues of charging etiquette (choosing the right KWh charger, moving your fully charged car so others can charge, dealing with dopes who MUST charge to 100%, etc…) sounds exhausting.
I would like to read more about any charging statins you are aware of that can charge, say the 300 mile lightning from 25% to 100% in 15-20 minutes. that seems improbable.
I say this because I live it… I wouldn’t mind having a half ton or 3/4 ton truck, just because I might someday need to tow a 15K lb trailer… They are also comfortable, flexible, and can be fairly luxurious.
I ” commute ” 3 miles one way to my job in a 2019 Ram Crew Cab . Fuel cost is almost irrelevant. When we take it on the 650 mile round trip ( 95 % highway ) to Vermont it averages 21 mpg loaded for a two week trip doing 80 with A/C on. I’ve never towed anything with it , but I * could * . It’s my perfect ride .
I’d take a 0% deal if some conditions are met. Namely the car was one I’d be considering anyhow and if it wasn’t some ugly color. The 0% would help sway me toward a particular vehicle.
Also, EV demand is down in the States since it’s nearly holiday time, people are spending on useless crap for gifts, interest rates are up and summer gas prices have receded somewhat. Look for EV demand to pick back up in the spring when it’s pleasant to wander a car lot and summer gas prices spike gas by 10%.
0% on something I want would probably make me pull the trigger. I wish I’d gone for something while those deals were out there. I’m watching a few vehicles now for the right combination of pricing and interest deals, but I may be some time out from my next new car.
Low APR finance deals will pop up but seems like the lengths of the terms are shortening. Nissan with 0% on the Rogue and Altima, sure, but only 36 months. Not that long ago that was a 60 or 72 month term. Pretty much have to have a trade to get 0% and a reasonable payment. (Or big money down, but then why blow it when it’s 0% instead of saving at a higher rate).
Not on the list, because I think they added it partway through the month – Hyundai has 0% for 48 months on nonhybrid Santa Fe and Tucson. The former makes sense as they get ready to put the one on sale, but the latter is surprising since it’s for 2024s too – but also a market share play. Not even their sedans have as good a rate.
Speaking of the Solterra – noticed they also are hawking a 0-down $399/mo lease.
Also I breezed past the question. I had 0.9%/60 when I bought, so it would be a motivator for me if I were in the market, but wouldn’t pull me ahead into the market. Same for my parents if not moreso, who tend to be more sale motivated, though not on any of the cars that you can currently get 0% on.
The problem is with low interest rate offers, we were see 36 month loans on that, and the payments are probably as high as a 5 year loan at a higher rate.
You mentioned three things traditional automakers can do to play EV catch up. I think there’s a fourth, more likely path that they’ve repeatedly taken in the past: rebadging. I foresee a lot of cheap Chinese EVs rebadged as American brands to bridge the gap until they can be price competitive with a domestic product. Just like they did during the last century’s gas shortages.
Tesla has two other advantages traditional carmakers don’t enjoy: no dealers to gouge customers, driving up retail prices, and no unions.
No, I would not buy any of these loss leaders to get zero percent financing, unless one happened to be my dream car. Otherwise, I can get zero percent financing any time by paying cash. That means no new cars, but so be it.
I think they can’t really do this as long as the tariffs are in place, unless they can make the Volvo workaround work for them. So maybe GM can thread that particular needle but not sure about the others.
Tesla didn’t need dealers to gouge their customers: they did it themselves by jacking up the price as high as they could, for as long as they could. That was their right, but also a perfect illustration of why the smart money has been waiting out the insane car market of the last 3 years.
I would definitely be more apt to shell out 60K for a new vehicle if it had 0% financing. With the current used rates up in nose bleed territory, while also having high prices due to shortages that have not fully been filled, it would potentially make new cars cheaper per month, and/or drop the price of used to make up for the monthly payment delta.
I hate when the press/shareholders use “losing X per vehicle” and lump NRC and RC together.
NRC in Non Recurring Costs. ie: the money you spend once to make a new product.
RC is Recurring Costs. The price of each vehicle made.
I’d like to see the numbers based the RC on the Lightning.
Of course, NRC gets spread out during production, but it’s for the life of the product, not the first year.
So, if I invest ten million dollars developing a something and sell 100000 of them per year for 10 years. My development cost is only adding 100 dollars per unit.
Bingo. While it sounds great for getting attention, it is seriously misleading.
But it doesn’t make headlines!
And Ford/GM/Stellantis will try to show the maximum costs they can in order to maximize writeoffs, and to get in the news headlines (to combat Elon’s neverending news magnet – good/bad).
Plus in the EV space a lot of the NRC on the first gen will be applied not only to that generation, but the ones after too. Everyone’s starting fresh, so they have a lot less existing tech to use than they would in a new ICE car. That’s a lot less stuff they can evolve a little bit or just straight up reuse on the next generation. And they have to build up infrastructure for new types of parts that they need while with an ICE car you’ve had the same engine plant for years and just need to do some refits.
Yep, this is the same BS that was spouted about the Volt back in the day. People lumped all of the R&D costs into one model year and then said GM was losing $XX000 per car, which was nonsense then and still is.
The same for the Prius as well. The first few years, there were a bunch of articles about how Toyota lost money on every one sold. There was even a “study” about how that meant the H1 was better for the environment than the Prius using the cost of the entire hybrid R&D program amortized across only a couple years of sales.
“This puts pressure on EV prices and profitability, according to Ford.”
I’m not seeing a whole lot of evidence of significant price pressure on anything Ford is selling, EV or otherwise
eh, The big three are already saying the price per vehicle will raise about a thousand buck as soon as the UAW agreement is signed, so you know, gotta keep those record profits as well as blame inadequacies on the labor side.
Tesla spent an estimated 28 Billion dollars before turning a full year of profitability. And it took them how many years to get to profit? At least 8 years after the launch of the Model S. So I don’t really believe we are in a position to judge the EV performance of legacy automakers as compared to Tesla yet. Not until they’ve burned similar amounts of cash and time will we have an apples to apples ability to compare performance in the market.
That was my first thought, too. While I’m not a fan of Tesla on the whole, I am a fan of what Tesla has done to push BEVs forward. It was a big deal when Tesla finally turned a profit for a quarter. Then two. Then when they made profit based only on the actual cars they sold. And it should have been a big deal!
Ford split ICE/BEV/Commercial production into three divisions. If they want to keep playing that game (which I understand), then it’s perfectly fine that the BEV division is losing money right now, they have had to start from scratch, more or less.
The one thing we’ll need to keep in mind is that Ford (et al.) have the advantage of having assembly infrastructure available. While not necessarily “free,” it will lower that eventual break-even point, which is an advantage Tesla didn’t have.
Yeah, my internal question was whether Tesla is profitable when its entire existence is considered, or just profitable if you write off the many billions of VC and other funding it burned.
Especially when you adjust those early costs for inflation. A billion dollar investment was worth a lot more a decade ago.
I agree. The definition of “profitable” can get pretty vague here.
Tesla isn’t the same as the others though since they were starting from scratch, so their R&D costs aren’t going to track the same way.
That’s not quite a fair comparison. Tesla had to (or decided to–see Fisker for an alternative path) create everything from scratch. Tooling, factories, production ops, charger manufacturing and operations, dealers, etc in addition to the proprietary tech (battery, drivetrains, software). The big 3 have most of those already in place. So it really shouldn’t take them years and years or $28Bn.
“Regarding the latter, the carmaker noted that “many North American customers interested in buying EVs are unwilling to pay premiums for them over gas or hybrid vehicles.” This puts pressure on EV prices and profitability, according to Ford.”
Could that be because YOUR premiums are to Godamned high?
BYD and Tesla are certainly not losing $36k on each EV sold. I have a Teslabro friend who is definitely smart, if just more than a little blinded by Tesla fanaticism. One of his repeated statements is that “traditional automakers just either don’t know how or are fundamentally unable to make the switch to EVs”. I guess he’s being proven largely correct
Tesla was absolutely losing money in the beginning though. It’s part of the reason why their models have gone largely unchanged, no new tooling.
BYD saves money by using slaves to get the raw materials
They absolutely were. You’re totally right. It remains to be seen that a traditional automaker can survive what Tesla went through, however. Tesla was 100% committed to the change. A lot of the traditional automakers are not, or people on their board are not, etc. Will that make a difference? I’m not sure
It did not hurt that the Greenies in Hollyweird loved Elon back then, nor did it hurt that Elon was subsidized by the government practice of Paying him revenue from sales of regulatory credits, I think I read in 2020 those figures surpassed $1 billion. So, much like vice taxes paying for Smokes and booze, the big inefficient vehicle crowd basically propped up Tesla because of the government intervention in this regard.
All the rich greenies buying a model S wanted to rub it in everyone’s face that they were being green. To this day everyone knows a Tesla is an ev, but non-car people couldn’t name a single other EV.
Can’t shout you are green in an F-150 without a grille or a bloated mustang
It’s not that each Ford sold costs the company -$36k, it’s that -$36k = losses (investments)/vehicles sold.
Yup, I bet that as this point all of Ford’s EVs are cash flow positive, it is just that they are investing a lot of money in the next generation EVs.
When Tesla was making the model S, there was a whole lot of “Just wait until the legacy automakers go electric, then the prices will come way down and put Tesla out of business”.
Tesla burned a lot of cash to set up supply chains and get manufacturing costs down. The legacy automakers are going to have to do the same thing.
EVs may benefit from NOT being fancy tech-heavy halo cars but cheap entry-level. also, manufacturers and the gov should get way more chargers out in the world. How about for every EV bought the customer gets a free home charger and the gov/manufacturer installs a charger at a gas station or someplace public?
Urbanists talk about how there is something like 5 parking spaces for every car, passively using up real estate. You’d think we could get to at least 2 or 3 chargers for every EV!
There’s a massive difference between a parking space, which may be nothing fancier than some lines painted on a street, and a charger that needs significant electric service run to it and then maintenance for the rest of its life.
The problem is that the battery costs so much that they can’t sell them cheap unless they make them urban runabouts with small batteries, though now you’re severely limiting your market (and getting compared to the value of buying an e-bike since the uses overlap so much) and the floor for a modern car to still pass safety and other regulations and everything else is still pretty high and not going to be profitable with the low volumes of limited appeal. Cheap ICE cars didn’t sell well enough for their tiny margins and they’re gone. EVs cost even more to make. Part of the issue is trying to make a platform that can be used for a range of vehicles and prices—the only way it has any hope of being built—makes it difficult to get the costs low enough to meet the bottom end or they build to the bottom and those quality cuts will chop the legs out from the high end where the greater profit is in comparison to competitors. The extra BS doesn’t cost the OEMs that much in comparison to the battery drivetrain and they can more reasonably justify asking $60k for a vehicle with that than $45k or $50k as a stripper.
How about quit relying on the government to force the change? If it was good business it would support itself.
throwing my garbage up into the air high enough that it spreads evenly over the entire neighborhood is cheaper for me than paying for a waste management company. that means it’s good business (for me).I bet you’d want some government regulation if someone in your hood was to do this though.
your analogy is so far off comparison it is laughable.
I disagree. Just because the garbage is relatively invisible doesn’t mean that it isn’t garbage.
It’s a classic tragedy of the commons. One atmosphere to share, and some feel that any restrictions on their use of it is unjust. If everyone spoils it as fast as possible to beat the others to the benefits from its use, game over. All of us making rules about how it can be used (that’s government regulation) is the only proven path to survival.
This is a funny comparison. In my neighborhood there is actually a crazy old man (looks to be in his 70s) that pulls around a wagon and dumps his trash everywhere including in the alley behind my garage. The police do not do anything. Much easier to just wait until he dies of natural causes, which by the amount of bloody gauze in the trash should not be to long.
Damn. That’s terrible-for him and the neighborhood
It is actually a pretty nice neighborhood for being inner city midwest with 100 year houses. Very affordable on social security. I would totally let him fill up my garbage can so I do not have to wheel it around the block to the back of the house to pick up.
Yeesh. Way to make it real. Yeah, in your case biding your time seems right.
The government has forced nearly every change in automotive technology in 100+ years. Lights, seatbelts, OBD, ABS, emissions controls, and cars are better now for nearly all of them despite the complaints and prophecies of gloom and doom.
Government did not give me 7500 dollar in tax credits to buy a car with seatbelts, ABS, OBD, or any other emissions control you mention.
I’m still convinced GM is slowing its EV plans because Ultium is a disaster of a program.
EVs aren’t dead but they’re running into highly predictable issues that most people saw coming. I think the biggest mistake that’s been made along the way was making them into a political dog and pony show/red meat for culture warriors. This applies to both sides too. A lot of liberals made them out to be the only hope for humanity (dumb) and a lot of conservatives made them out to be THE DEVIL COMING TO TAKE YOUR FREEDOM (also dumb).
As a result they became a hot button issue when they shouldn’t have been, which led to governments trying to force mass adoption before the technology was figured out. At the end of the personal vehicles are only a portion of the climate change conundrum. They definitely matter, but the way people have insisted that EVs are THE solution to climate change has been absurd. They’re a band aid on a bullet wound at best.
We also have to worry about corporate greed, the ridiculous amount of carbon emissions the military industrial complex produces, how we are creating electricity, the list is long. Forcing everyone into EVs isn’t going to make enough of a difference on its own…and governments know that. Shifting responsibility onto individuals is one of the oldest tricks in the books.
But anyway, no shit the technology isn’t ready yet. It’s simply too compromised right now. The cost to produce the vehicles is way too high (and the process is carbon intensive, I’m not sure why this isn’t discussed more), which leads to products that only the top 10% or so of earners can comfortably afford. On top of that sacrifices you have to worry about include range, infrastructure, weather conditions, etc. They’re also hilariously bad investments. All of those are more or less non issues with an ICE vehicle or hybrid.
There’s no market left for $60,000 EVs anymore. The technology needs more time to grow. In five years we will likely be having a very different conversation, but going all in on BEVs looked dumb a few years ago and it looks dumber now.
Let’s not miss the good in pursuit of the perfect. Right now battery resources would go to better use in hybrids and PHEVs. Standardizing them across the board will dramatically reduce emissions, it doesn’t require compromises from owners, and the technology is well sorted/doesn’t necessitate $50,000+ price tags. There are plenty of hybrids available in the $25-$35,000 range as we speak.
EVs are cool in many ways and the technology will improve. We need to keep developing them. If you’re someone who cares deeply about the environment, can manage all the compromises an EV requires, and has enough disposable income that the incredibly volatile prices and values won’t make or break you, then hell yeah! Go EV.
But for the rest of us? Hybrids (both traditional an PHEV) are a better solution and will be for a while.
This was a good take. Adding that anytime the government forces morality (on either side), the public loses freedom and the consumer often loses.
I’m not sure I understand your point about “the government forc[ing] morality.” Are you suggesting that passing laws to reduce GHGs is a “moral” stance?
What else would it be?
The government has a vested interest protecting in public and environmental health. If you want to claim that legislation to reduce GHGs is the government taking a moral stance, then all environmental legislation, from NEPA to CERCLA to RCRA, is the government taking a moral stance. In that case, Jacob’s blanket assertion about the government forcing morality is so absurd that I have no interest in discussing it.
The government has to weigh its interests in protecting health with its interests in promoting commerce, allowing freedom of its citizens, and so on.
The resolutions of those competing interests can only be sorted out by morality.
And yet here you are discussing it :D.
But seriously, these are very much moral positions but that doesn’t have to be such a politically charged debate.
I think the point being made is one about the government actually using the policing power to choose solution to the problem that absolutely has the effect of influencing private markets and businesses.
The government should be in the business of protecting citizens from environmental harm by setting standards and laws for safe emissions, pollution etc but allow the market to work out what the solution to these problems are and how we stay within the standards and limits set.
What is happening is that through banning some types of vehicles, providing cash incentives for other types the government is influencing the behavior of the market that has real–world consequences for very real citizens, both good and bad.
In other words, picking winners and losers. So, I would argue this isn’t exactly a morality issue but more of an economic issue with very real moral consequences for a lot of people.
From your comment, it sounds like we are close to being on the same page but have different views on exactly how the government v. market should work together. Which is great! Two smart, reasonable people (as we obviously are) can have differing views on how to achieve positive outcomes.
I stand by my position that I’m not going to argue about the “morality” of environmental laws with the OP, because I do not believe he has reasonable views that merit debate.
But what do I know? I’m high on cold meds.
Well, get better. That does suck.
Likely we aren’t really on the same page as I count myself among those who believe that the government that governs best is the one that governs least.
I just prefer to have calm, rational discussions where we all consider each other’s POV rather than shouting into the void of everyone that already agrees with us.
The DOD is doing studies & reports and drawing up plans on what to do about much of its infrastructure in light of current sea-level rise due to climate change. Norfolk is noticeably being affected already–and they have a lot of expensive and important stuff there. There’s your vested interest.
No: of course I don’t claim that’s proximate cause for the mandates. But I was impressed by how frank a spokesman was about about the reality of sea & temperature rise and how large the impact is.
Again, it would be easy to say “ban all CO2 tomorrow”, which is the objectively best solution for the narrow problem you present.
Of course, the government obviously has other interests besides sea level rise and warming, and those must be balanced. That’s a moral question which is all I’ve been trying to say.
Banning ICE new car sales or taxing ICE use in city centers (a la Europe) is forcing morality. Cancel culture is forcing morality. Banning books is forcing morality. Prohibition was forcing morality. Etc. Both sides are guilty.
The city center thing is often actually an infrastructure issue, not a “moral” issue. The congestion charge in London, for example, exists to reduce the number of cars which access the city center because there was just not enough space for them. While it did have a low-emissions exemption, now that low-emissions cars are more common they are removing that in 2025.
The charge existed to encourage public transit or taxis because London is an old city that’s not designed for heavy traffic. The result is you have to remove more cars from the area, and doing things like congestion charges is a way to do that.
In many cases limits to access for ICE vehicles are also related to noise or how the added emissions affect the infrastructure involved – there are health effects caused by prolonged exposure to ICE emissions, especially when they are in a concentrated area.
It’s not morality, its public health. Pollution is bad and quite a bit different than banning books. Pollution and the global climate crisis is not a moral issue, its a scientific fact that we need to do something, or we will continue to have more unpredictable weather patterns and more climate related catastrophes. Your claims are ignorant of verifiable scientific issues.
I can’t quite wrap my head around “forces morality (on either side)” in this context.
Sometimes we have stuff – especially in environmental rules – that make things harder to do, but you can’t argue that people lost from taking lead out of the gas supply, or mercury out of batteries, or having stricter regulations on hazardous material storage. You can argue that you have “less freedom” but the health benefits of these regulations cause dividends for quality of life. The consumer wins because, for example, they don’t have lead or mercury poisoning.
Environmental regulations are very rarely “moral,” they’re health and safety related. Laws against GHGs, for example, are also driven by a safety mindset – climate change is connected to last year’s many forest fires, and for the safety of people in the world you want to prevent the climate changing further because you would rather not have another forest fire season at the same level.
Other contexts of “forcing morality” are possibly a bit out of the reach of this website.
I have a hard time getting on board with the “I have to save the planet” mindset of it. I agree that action has to be taken, but as I’m out walking around town, seeing 2 or 3 moored cruise ships belching visible exhaust plumes, while overhead, private jets whisk people off to the Hamptons, I find the thought of having to make the personal change and sacrifice a hard pill to swallow.
The moneyed class can carry on with their indulgences, but all us poors need to do our part.
Yes there is a lot of misdirection onto individuals. I own a compact ICE car. The thing is I don’t drive it much. I need it for meetings out in the burbs or nearby towns maybe once or twice a week at most. The majority of my mobility is a mix of public transit and walking. I have a friend who is a data scientist and works for a team that audits carbon footprints of various modes of road based travel. She did a ‘back of napkin’ calculation on my use case and determined that I probably have the lowest possible carbon footprint for someone who does also use a car.
Here were some of her insights. To switch to an EV that covered my personal vehicle use, I would be looking at something with at least 300 miles (~400KM) of range. I tend to go do 3-4 meetings in an outlying area on one trip so time spent charging would be an issue. There’s a lot of inherent waste in building an EV with those specifications as opposed to hanging on to my lightly used four year old ICE. The electricity source for my part of the grid is nuclear and renewables, so fuelling would get a pass. We looked at hybrid and plug in hybrid options. Those fared much better, but still involved the wasteful part of building yet a another new vehicle.
So what does work? We both agreed that urban delivery vehicles, heavy short haul trucks like garbage trucks and school buses and even construction vehicles like backhoes, all would provide huge benefits by being electrified. These all work in cycles that are easy to arrange charging for and don’t even need that much range. Also, the torque of electric motors would be perfect. Also, the reduction in local emissions (especially particulates) would have enormous health benefits. And noise. Don’t forget less noise!
What I’m getting at here is to your point. Government can make significant dent in the problem without even touching a culture war lightning rod. Either invest in EV city fleet vehicles, or make the use of those vehicles part of the contracting out criteria. Nobody has to talk about prying a V8 out of someone’s cold dead hands.
Teslas are not $60k, neither are many of the Korean made cars. You can get them much cheaper, that narrative is tired. The resources are not better spent on PHEV. Drivers are on highways at speed and a PHEV does not help that. Tesla has proven that BEV is ready for primetime. BEV is ready for most. The trope that a BEV is a compromise is tired and false.
Buying a Tesla is a moral compromise a lot of us aren’t willing to make, and for good reason, Elon’s a fascist prick. And PHEVs do help over a traditional ICE vehicle in highway applications, the narrative that they don’t is tired. While the pure electric range can only get you so far they can revert to operating like traditional hybrids do in other applications. Unless your PHEV technology is junk (*cough* JEEP *cough*) you will still see significant MPG gains in the hybrid mode.
Most of the people I’ve talked to who have PHEVs have seen lifetime gas mileage between 50 and 100 MPG once everything is factored in, which is excellent. If you literally only drive in the city then sure, an EV really isn’t a huge compromise. If you need to take it on long trips in areas where charging is sparse it absolutely is and even if the infrastructure was up to par charging speeds will still add a significant amount of time to your trip.
In his defense he did say that there are Korean models that aren’t $60k, and personally if I were buying a car tomorrow it would probably be a Niro. Whether it would be a PHEV or BEV I can’t say for certain.
They are actually both compromises – all cars are – just depends on the compromise you want to make.
True, and if I needed a car tomorrow I’d probably lease a luxury EV because the deals are so good. I could have a BMW i4 with AWD, 300+ horsepower, and around 300 miles of range for roughly the same price as my Kona N. But my wife has an ICE car, so I wouldn’t have to deal with long trips with it.
LMAO, tell me you’re out of touch.
I am 100% with you on this one. I work for an automotive company that manufactures BEV propulsion systems. I LOVE BEVs. But I am not going to buy one anytime soon because (1) cost too high, (2) range too low, (3) charging infrastructure underdeveloped, and (4) there’s no such thing as a manual transmission BEV :).
the cheapest Model 3 is supposedly 38,990. Now many of you will say you have to calculate savings and Tax rebates into that, but the truth is if you paid cash that is the cost pretaxes out the door.
At any rate the S is till starting at over 70 K, and the stupid truck is now going to be well north of the promised 40K price tag. if you can buy one delivered for much under 50K though I would be surprised.
The Model 3 costs $38.9k before tax credits, its down to ~$31.5k after. You have to pay tax on any new car, so I don’t get your point. A Nissan Maxima costs $38,340, I know which car I’d rather own.
I’d rather walk than give Elon Musk a cent of my money or trust my life to a Jatco CVT.
Do you research every CEO before buying a product? Must be exhausting to align your virtues with every company you buy from.
Most of them don’t make it a business to crow about their opinions. Elon bought a business built around doing that very thing.
For the record, Elon sucks. The conversation was: EVs are too expensive. I showed that they weren’t in fact. The reply was: yeah, but Elon sucks and I dont like CVTs. He’s not wrong, but still, EVs are affordable.
I am with you on the price comparo although there’s probably a better vehicle to use than the Maxima since that’s on the chopping block. But yes any number of midsize sedans are certainly at that price point, and Hyundai is maybe illustrating that best as a brand with both, now they have the Ioniq 6. Model Y pricing is even more representative as it’s priced right alongside any number of similarly sized crossover type vehicles.
I get the complaints that every new EV seems to be a $60k crossover, but people buy $60k ICE crossovers too, so affordability complaints are really about the market as a whole.
And then also EV prices can change on a whim, which isn’t just a Tesla thing either (see: the Ioniq 6 price drop) but not going to inspire consumer confidence regardless of brand.
That was my entire point: *Cars* are expensive. I do believe Tesla’s price drops sparked the rest, including Ford Mustang if I recall.. The difference of course, Tesla is making a profit (3x ICE profits).
Counterpoint: ICE are expensive. See: Chevy Bolt EV. It was $26k before incentives, the same as a Civic. Not only will repair costs, maintenance, gas be less, but the tax rebate will take off $7500. If you factor in the average cost of ownership (8 yrs), ave miles per yr*8 = 114k mi, 32mpg us ave, $3.60/gal, you save $13k over ownership. This doesn’t even take into account brakes, oil changes, filters, etc.. That $26k Bolt costs $5500 if you qualify for a tax rebate, have a place to charge, and have another car for road trips. Its the perfect commuter. Yes, its discontinued, but they’re bringing it back soon.
Ahhhhh, a refreshing breath of fresh perspective!
One thing I would add is that while the relatively limited supply of battery resources would be better put to use in hybrids and PHEVs, they would be even better put to use in stationary grid attached storage – where they DON’T make vehicles heavier, increasing energy requirements, brake/tire wear (and associated particulate pollution of air and water), and the kinetic energy of crashes, and where they DO solve the “duck curve” problem, displacing fossil fuel consumption for electricity generation in a use case where their cycling is perfectly predicable and their temperature perfectly controllable – leading to the longest and most energy-saving service life possible.
Exactly right about EVs being a bandaid. Wanna save the planet? Stop eating meat, which amounts for more greenhouse than passenger cars. There is A LOT more to controlling climate than the car you drive.
Toyoda (Akio) was right, Toyota was wrong (by getting rid of him).
That being said the bZ4X is bad. If Toyota had to make a BEV for compliance reasons or whatever they should have made an iQ BEV. BEVs are best suited for city vehicles, the iQ is small so less batteries per car, making it cheap, making it affordable, and it has no competition in the US market currently (the Fiat 500e will be coming in 2024).
If Ford didn’t blow so much money on a worse copy of a Tesla Model Y and instead made the “F-150” Lightning an actual F-150 by offering the same amount of seating, cab, and bed configurations as the ICE F-150 as well as developing a BEV drivetrain for the Maverick that is range and cost competitive with the Nissan Leaf they’d both sell like hotcakes and profit could be made.
The CCSB is the overwhelming favorite among truck buyers. Crew cabs are something like 80% of fullsize trucks sold. The idea that a regular cab would be saving the Lightning right now is frankly ludicrous.
Why should the F-150 Lightning not be available with a 6 seat interior and or a 6.5ft bed like the ICE CC F-150?
I assume because whatever increased sales came from that variant wouldn’t pay for the cost of reengineering the battery for a longer wheelbase.
I highly doubt it was simply to piss people off on the internet or to fail on purpose.
No mention of the 6 seat interior option…
I’m sure you can call Ford and ask them why.
Most Lightnings are high trim to hide the battery cost, and the 6 seater option isn’t available above some versions of a Lariat anyways.
So I suppose they could have offered it on those few XLTs they sell, but you can’t honestly believe that is the deciding factor in slumping sales?
The point still stands. BEVs make a ton of sense for fleet sales but “full size” (more like plus size nowadays) 5 seat crew cab short bed pickups make little sense for most fleets and most consumers cannot afford the extra up front expense of BEVs currently and the “F-150” Lightning is a prime example of this.
If Ford wanted a 5 seat crew cab short bed BEV pickup they should make an electric drivetrain for the Maverick, not make a F-150 sized Maverick BEV.
What’s the point of making a BOF vehicle that only comes in one seating, cab, and bed configuration? A unibody vehicle would almost certainly be cheaper.
I’m still not sure your point.
You seem to be saying Ford would have a better chance at success if they had targeted fleets for Lightning sales, but fleets are even more sensitive to up-front costs than consumers are!
It’s also not clear to me that fleets buy a lot of 6 seater trucks *on purpose*. Sure, they buy stripper models usually which come with the bench by default but I don’t think bucket seats are a negative for them. I’ve never in my life seen 6 people riding in a fleet truck at the same time.
A Maverick EV would have an even smaller range and bed than the F150 you already claim is useless, and wouldn’t cost much less (the entire point of building an EV F150 is economy of scale in body parts and interiors, etc). The batteries are the expensive part, not the frame or the “F-150ness” of it.
Fleets are also sensitive to maintenance costs so I think it balances out
The point about the 6 seat interior is that it’s better than the 5 seat interior.
the real issue though is that many work trucks are 6.5 foot beds with maybe an extended cab, many more are actually 2 door with 8 foot beds. citing commodity of scale savings and then not using those for fleet models of EV’s is just strange to be quite honest.
It would have been a Very Bad Idea to add a bunch of complication to the Lightning program instead of focusing firmly on the most popular configuration. Each configuration of a product adds cost and complication. When you have a new product that is already using a completely different powertrain from everything else you sell, adding complication and cost to a program instead of just focusing on what you know is most likely to sell is a foolish move.
Plus, while Ford does have the fleet-spec model they are going to focus on the model consumers buy first and foremost. And that isn’t the short cabs.
Would a regular cab or supercab make sense eventually? Maybe? But not in the first generation.
I am very pro-EV but I would feel like a massive chump if I owned one right now and found out that my charging plug was becoming obsolete. If we had a functioning government some organization like NHTSA could set a charging standard and I could feel reasonably assured that my $40,000+ investment would continue to function for years and years without any adapters or dongles, but we don’t so I can’t.
I wouldn’t buy a Ford Edge or any new, exclusively gasoline powered vehicle right now. I feel like we can clearly see the future and it doesn’t involve pumping more liquid dinos from the ground. I also don’t want to buy an EV right now, because while less reliance on fossil fuels might be clear, there is still some haziness around very important EV architecture and I’d like that to get figured out first.
I flew to Houston a few weeks ago for a conference. I knew full well that EV charging infrastructure was limited, so I intentionally avoided renting an EV. A coworker assumed charging would be easy, and found himself struggling to find a functioning charger for his rental Bolt. The only functioning chargers in the immediate area of the conference either were Tesla or had CHAdeMO – no working CCS. Standardization now is great, but would have been better up-front.
CHAdeMO and no CCS1 or even J1772? That’s just bizarre.
Nope. The two hotels the conference had rooms blocked out for had a grand total of zero chargers even installed at them. The coworker actually ended up driving about 15 miles away before he found a functioning CCS1 charger, at which point he only had about 25% left and was getting nervous. Range anxiety in an unknown car in an unknown city made him an anxious mess.
Yeah, it’s kind of amazing how few hotels have even a few shared-capacity L2/J1772 chargers.
The charging plug won’t be that huge of an issue in a little bit, you’ll just have to carry a NACS to CCS1 adapter in your car if you’ve got a CCS on your car. CHAdeMO is still boned. I wouldn’t be surprised if dealers handed them out with the last of their CCS vehicles when the new models come out.
It doesn’t inspire confidence in the consumer *right now.* I don’t need a special funnel or a weird spigot adapter to fill my car up when I visit a Chevron, but tomorrow Ford could say “hey actually we actually aren’t going with NACS, we’re switching to the Type I plug because Bill watched Return of the King last weekend and that’s what they use in NZ” and I wouldn’t be that surprised.
I believe the demand for EVs exists, but consumers are wary to invest in a technology that is still not standardized.
I mean, I have a special funnel for my car, and diesel has been a fuel for more than a century. They just never standardized the nozzles.
People learn to work around things if the upside is sufficient.
99% of automakers have decided to go with Tesla’s plug, the market has spoken. I think everyone but VW has adopted NACS, and they’re working on it. Did movie studios go back to Betamax after VHS took over? I dont think anyone wants gov’t mandated standards unless they absolutely need it. Fear of the unknown is the greatest hurdle right now, and much of it is misplaced for the bulk of the population.
What I’m reading is the major automakers cant figure out how make a profit, not that its not possible. Tesla makes 3x the profits on their EVs **compared to legacy automaker’s ICE vehicles**. Let that sink in. There is a way, they just don’t know how to streamline their production like Tesla. They’ll figure it out eventually.
And Tesla was not profitable for a long time which makes me think 2 things:
To me, this seems like another blow for the oft-repeated talking point that “If only we get rid of the middleman, direct sales will be a huge benefit to the consumer”.
It doesn’t matter much to me who is making their profit off me, only how much.
“It doesn’t matter much to me who is making their profit off me, only how much.”
Doesn’t it?
Using a donation as an extreme case would you prefer to give your money to the American Humane Society, the American Cancer Society, Trump’s reelection fund, Al-Qaeda or NAMBLA? You get nothing for your money except the warm fuzzies you helped one of these organizations.
I went over this last week in the other article.
Blatant exceptions aside, I can’t and won’t devote the energy to knowing who is currently good, bad, cancelled, reinstated, or otherwise, at least as concerns corporations. Certainly a dealer and an automaker are equivalent, morals-wise in my world.
Certainly there is a case to be made for diminishing returns. Not every company can be perfect all of the time. Still just for funsies which of these would bother you most about buying a Kia:
A) Knowing it had been made with illegal child labor
B) Knowing one of those illegal child laborers could easily steal it with a USB cable
C) Knowing the engine could grenade itself at any moment.
D) Having to buy it at a Kia dealer.
I’m still not quite sure where you’re going with this, but the answer is obviously B or C, because those affect me personally.
A is bad, but again, I don’t have the bandwidth to keep track of every bad thing every company has done.
D is so insignificant compared to the others it hardly belongs on the list. Why would I base a buying decision for a $20-60,000 product I might keep for a decade on an hour spent buying it?
Its a real world example of a car company with a full spectrum of problems. The question is simply which of those problems will actually influence your decision to purchase their product.
FWIW I agree “D” is the least of those problems but to some folks it would be “A”, maybe even “C” if they were gambling it would grenade towards the end of the warranty.
Bizarre comparison. He’s talking about purchasing a consumer product and wants to get more for his dollar—there’s no charity involved, just sleezeball corporations of one kind or another. The more profit others make off the transaction, the less value there is in it for him. At a base level, if I buy a $50k car that only makes the OEM 5% margins, I’m getting good value for my money vs a $50k car that makes 15% margins. Of course there are different ways to measure this that come down to the consumer’s individual priorities. If we’re talking daily beater where cost is a primary consideration, this applies much better than something that appeals more at an emotional level.
Bizzare? I don’t think so. Using a donation as a model simply makes the transaction all about the values of the receiving organization
I mean if you want to add a tangible product fine throw in a pancake breakfast. Would you rather spend $50 on pancakes to help animals in need or $10 for those very same pancakes to help terrorist assholes blow stuff up?
At a base level, if I buy a $50k car that only makes the OEM 5% margins, I’m getting good value for my money vs a $50k car that makes 15% margins.
That doesn’t matter. What does matter is the value of that product to the buyer. If that 5% car is a high NHV POS that is in the shop all the time and uses a lot of power to boot vs the 15% car that’s better built, more reliable and energy efficient I doubt you’ll buy that 5% car just to stick it to the profiteer.
OK, I reread your OP (read instead of scanned, I guess) and now I get what you’re saying, but I would just say that all corporations are about equally scummy with overpaid C-suites, so unless there’s something especially egregious, I choose what I want to buy that gets the best value for dollar. Either way, I want more of my money going into the product rather than a corporation’s profit, whoever that might be.
As I said the donation is just an example that puts ALL the emphasis of the transaction on the values of the organization. We already know how the value of a tangible consumer product works. The question is do the values and policies of the seller factor in whatsoever? If not then why do companies even bother to put on a show of being a good guy at all?
If you are comfortable buying products you 100% know are made with child and actual slave labor using equipment powered by filthy coal and made with ecological disaster strip mined materials all in the name of getting the absolute best bang for the buck that’s your choice. You’ve got plenty of company.
Other customers might actually give a damn. Or not. Plenty of folks profess to care yet their purchasing says otherwise. There are plenty of hypocrites out there too.
OK, I guess you really wanted to make that point and I largely agree even if most companies are about the same with a few exceptions that are worse, but going by context, I’m pretty sure V10omous was referring to whether the dealer or the OEM makes the money doesn’t matter to him as eliminating the dealer model isn’t saving anyone any money as anti-dealer people claim, the OEM will only charge more and the customer pays the same.
As for the self-serving PR of corporations, call me cynical, but while other people might buy into their public shows as truly caring about something other than money for shareholders, I believe in their true good intentions about as much as a politician’s promise.
Well if that was his point I’d rather eliminate as many unnecessary middlemen as possible. If a direct sales model generates more profit to the manufacturer AND lowers my purchase price without detriment to my purchasing experience I’m all for it.
Tesla just took 20% off the MSRP across their entire lineup, which is absolutely unheard of. The fact that they *could* do that and still eat everyone’s lunch at 3x profit margins seems like a testament that their model works. When was the last time a legacy automaker with a dealership did that? The answer is never.
How many times did they raise MSRP from 2020-2022?
Yeah, in 2022 the Model Y performance was $72k. The build costs were much higher as well. The costs drop and it gives them much more room to move. The Model X Plaid was $140k and is now like $104k.
There simply isn’t enough money that the consumer or the government (read taxpayers) can spend to fix this dilemma. There was this big whip-up to get consumers to go EV. The ones who had a bit of screw-you money lying around paid top dollar for Teslas and then found out that there wasn’t enough charging infrastructure to let them drive to the in-laws with the kids for Christmas. The Department of Transportation and Energy should have developed a Federal plan that covered the charging infrastructure and the types of vehicles we could engineer. Too many of these progressive ideas are prodded to take place way too quickly. If car manufacturers balk at EVs for any reason, they get castigated for being climate deniers who can’t move fast “enough.” Well, I think Toyota is taking a more reasoned approach. Are Ford and GM going to get bailed out again by the Feds because they were trying to score political points by leading what has turned into a charge to Nowhere? I own a hybrid and am saving a lot of money on not buying petroleum, but I am retired so I have no need to drive someplace every day to swing a pick. I buy gasoline every other month or so. And because it’s a hybrid, I have zero range anxiety.
Tops dollar for Teslas? they cost the same as a well-equipped Camry.
Not when they first hit the EV market! Since then, Tesla has cut its prices. So, closer to a Camry today.
We are talking about today and not the past so that is completely irrelevant here. I read on here many times about how once Toyota makes an EV that Tesla is dead. The BEV Toyota put out is offensively terrible. They should have taken BMW’s lead, who is doing well in BEV sales, and done a BEV version of the Prius instead of that monstrosity. A Hybrid, PHEV, and BEV in that same line would have made for a great entry. Toyota was just being Japanese; we are talking about a country that clings to fax machines.
The past history of EVs is not irrelevant. We have to remember history in order to avoid repeating it. One of my co-workers broke his stock market piggy bank to pay big bucks for a Tesla a couple of years ago. He was an early Tesla adopter and immensely proud of his purchase. But, at the same time he was committing his dough to the available technology, there was no comprehensive plan for the U.S. to convert from ICE to EV. There still isn’t. My friend had a car he couldn’t take on trips because there was no charging. We will get to some kind of vehicle that doesn’t burn fossil fuel. Not sure when that will be or what it will be.
A couple years ago a Tesla could go on road trips, and they were not an early adopter at that point.
“But we are not going to launch something imperfect just because there’s a deadline. We will ensure they are developed to perfection.”
This quote made me laugh. Japanese companies are not right or wrong here, they’re just … very Japanese.
Anyway. I don’t know why so many people have such extreme views about BEVs. If your use case doesn’t support buying one yet, don’t buy one. As time passes and the infrastructure and technology improves, the use case will make sense for more and more people. Until it does, just keep driving your ICE car and chill the fuck out. Even the EU has 12 years before a ban on new ICE sales kicks in. It’s fine. Everything is fine.
Once EVs were made political, both sides became very polarized.
Funny how it wasn’t so very long ago hybrids were on the cultural battle lines. Now they’re just kind of out there, quietly saving their drivers’ gas money and not spewing nearly as much crap into the air.
As has been discussed here for months/years, Toyota was and is right.
The tech has plateaued. Tesla sold a 260 mile EV in 2012, and that is still about what you get from most mainstream vehicles. Sure, you can buy a long range special for $100K+, but that is just cramming in more batteries, not meaningfully addressing density, and is obviously not attainable for most people.
The dream of no pure ICE sales and a 20% cap on PHEVs by 2035, which was always foolish, gets more so by the day. It’s only a matter of how stubborn state governments are before admitting defeat (or how many consumers they’re willing to hurt with their idiotic stance).
I guess if you ignore $/kWh, then yeah, you can say tech has plateaued.
I’d wager this as more to do with price; despite battery prices coming down drastically, it still seems like EV’s are just as unaffordable as they were nearly 10 years ago. Maybe not that far, but 5-10 years ago, back when we were waiting on the $30,000 Model 3, I’d wager a lot of us would have guessed there’d be more viable $30,000 “normal” EVs on the market. And yet it seems like the only ones in that price range are still jelly bean shaped econoboxes and the rare Model 3.
The tech is no better, if it’s cheaper that would be nice, but as you say, that hasn’t really happened either in practice.
And unless the ultimate goal is to have 200 kWh packs weighing over a ton in every vehicle, cost alone isn’t going to get us there.
Yeah, I feel vindicated (once again) for being one of the few defending Toyota’s position (and I’m not fanboy). I also noted that they have so much money, they could always buy in at the last minute by picking up or partnering with an established company who already worked out the problems.
It’s been interesting watching our uniquely American character at play here too, in that we want the shiniest, newest possible thing as soon as we can get it, and that mindset affects how our elected leaders look at things from the government point of view.
As a non-expert, it’s always seemed to me that in part, more hybrids are the actual real world, if non-sexy, way to get us to a reliable EV future, if down the road. Glamorous as a solution it may not be, but it does seem to offer the benefit of working with things are they are.
I agree with you, and I’ll go a step further.
I can hardly think of a policy that more clearly drives home the difference between the people who make our laws and mores, and the people affected by them than ICE bans.
To someone who lives in or near a big coastal city, travels by air, doesn’t tow, and can own a second vehicle and/or a home with charging, there really isn’t a great deal of downside to an EV. When you live in a bubble of people just like you, it’s easy to think that banning ICEs won’t cost anything. After all, you and your neighbors manage with EVs just fine.
I could be the world’s most bleeding heart environmentalist, and yet as long as I live in the freezing Midwest with cities far apart, and don’t fly everywhere I go, an EV is almost impossible to reconcile with my life.
And it’s not even that, it’s just that EV’s are for the most part EXPENSIVE I’m very concerned for the person making 15 bucks an hour, trying to not be homeless, that is eventually going to have to get rid of their ICE beater in order to buy a new EV. I make nearly 2X that, and I can’t afford to spend 30K+ on a vehicle and not have to live in it.
Funny thing is a lot of folks who live in those “big coastal cities” live in apartments or condos. A whole lot of them don’t have second cars because parking is such a problem. Big coastal city dwellers limited to street parking also don’t have easy access to charging. If anything I’d say a lot of big coastal city dwellers are even more inconvenienced by EVs than you Midwesterners are. And no, our public transit isn’t any better than yours.
Does the average “big coastal city dweller” travel by air more than a typical midwesterner? The fact Chicago O’Hare is one of the busiest airports in the world, beating both LAX and SFO in passenger volume indicates not.
And about those “freezing Midwest cities, far apart”, how far apart are they? Further apart than the barren 384 miles from Sacramento to LA? Or the rural and forested 635 miles from SF to Portland? There’s not much on I5 between those destinations. You think the midwest is desolate and boring? Try Buttonwillow. Or Hollister. Stockton isn’t exactly a hotspot of culture either.
Sure we big city coastal dwellers have our out of touch elites, however most of us are just as miserable as you, maybe even more so. At least you have room you can keep shit to tow. For most of us we can only dream of having enough space for shit that “needs” towing. Talk about your first world problems!
“As has been discussed here for months/years, Toyota was and is right”
They’re still wrong about hydrogen though.
No they’re not, you’re just looking at things more shortsightedly.
Feel free to convince me otherwise. No really, please do. I’d love to be a convert.
Bring it!
It’s still the only viable green option for untetherable heavy equipment and shipping. A combination of renewables and nuclear (hopefully fusion in a couple decades) at scale is needed for both BEV or H2 to ascend, but only one of those also acts as an energy storage device for the renewables.
Farming and marine equipment simply can’t work with BEV. The weight of batteries to supply 4-500hp for 12 straight hours (a single combine at harvest) is untenable, as is the charging infrastructure. It sounds insane to consider swappable hydrogen cylinders in a farm setting, but the infrastructure is largely in place in a way electrical isn’t. The fuel truck hits the farm every 3 days in harvest already. Switching 8000lbs of diesel to 8 1000lb cylinders is R&D and 1 trip to the upfitter.
Container and tanker ships will be refillable, but that’s also far less of an infrastructure issue with port setup.
Cars are not really the big target that will move the needle for long term solutions. They simply aren’t as important as politicians and journalists make them out to be.
Thank you for your reply. I disagree with many of your conclusions. My reason is there isn’t anywhere near enough surplus renewable energy to meet industrial demand for hydrogen much less transport.
IMO hydrogen must be created with renewable energy, otherwise it’s taking energy that’s needed elsewhere, energy that will be provided by a NG peaker plant thus nullifying any environmental benefit.
Oh but hydrogen can be created with FF and the carbon sequestered. Certainly there are PLANS to do that. Australia is shipping hydrogen to Japan as we speak, reforming it from their filthy brown coal. As of today however the emissions from that process are not sequestered. Permanent sequestering of all the emissions remains only a maybe someday pinkie promise. Such promises have been made for a very long time. May as well wait for fusion.
So how much hydrogen is needed? Lets look at the global demand for:
Industrial Hydrogen: In 2020 the world’s industries used 79B kg which works out to about 2.7TWh of energy. Please feel free to check my maths. IMO this is the very first customer in line for green hydrogen as they MUST use hydrogen. If they don’t get green hydrogen they will use blue or gray thus nullifying any gains of using hydrogen for transport. As it is 95% of all hydrogen made today is by steam reforming fossil fuels. To use renewable hydrogen for transport without saturation of this market first is pointless.
Distillate Fuel Oil: This includes the diesel used by trucks and trains. 270B gallons of distillate per year. That works out to 298B kg of hydrogen a year or 10.2 TWh of energy.
Today the world produces about 6.6 TWh of renewable energy including, but not limited, to solar, wind, wave, geothermal, hydro and nuclear per year. It would take over 40% of all the renewable energy output of the world to cover that used by industry. That leaves 3.9TWh for transport 40% of the energy needed. When inefficiencies and transport are added in the numbers get worse. So we see that the world’s energy demands for shipping and industry hydrogen greatly exceeds the supply of renewable energy.
To make matters worse that is ALL the renewable energy. Any renewable energy used to make hydrogen is energy not available elsewhere. Unless that renewable energy is surplus and would otherwise go to waste hydrogen will be taking energy that is needed elsewhere and that shortfall will be created from FF thus nullifying any benefit.
Thermal cracking of hydrogen with nuclear? Certainly that’s a possibility. Such nuclear plants will need to be specifically designed and built to do that. Thermal cracking has potential but IMO for the moment its a very long shot.
I agree batteries will not work for big ships. The weight alone is enough to sink them. Small ships like tugs perhaps.
IMO the only technically viable non FF option for big ships is nuclear with an honorable mention to renewable biogas. Its not hard to make a ship that can run on hydrogen, the problem is getting the renewable fuel for it. TBH I don’t think biogas is up to that challenge either so really that only leaves nuclear. Because there is so much public resistance to nuclear for *reasons* and for the limitations of hydrogen I listed above I expect what will actually happen is business as usual. Ships will continue to use HFO and fossil NG for the forseeable future. Its a lot more efficient to use that fossil NG to power the ship directly rather than go through hydrogen. NG takes up less room too.
Trucks? Biogas, biodiesel and ethanol depending on local supply. Fossil NG for renewable shortfalls. Batteries can work for box trucks and local deliveries.
Farms? Same as trucks Some lucky farms have their own supply of methane. If they can use that so much the better. I’d rather that gas be burned to produce energy than leaked into the air.
That’s not even touching on hydrogen for cars which was my main criticism of Toyota.
All of the scaling problems EVs have today also exist for hydrogen, except worse. If it’s shortsighted to say hydrogen is not viable then it’s also shortsighted to say EVs are not viable because they both have massive issues that are not going to be solved anytime soon. Both could be solved some day, but neither is a foregone conclusion.
I don’t recall saying they’re not viable. I said that long term Hydrogen is a workable solution, and frankly a better one.
Your other post is explaining why BEVs are not viable and you’re arguing that hydrogen is the right path forward, which at this point is only true if BEVs are not viable, given the head start they have.
I’m arguing that both have huge infrastructure problems in the short term and hydrogen has even huger infrastructure problems on any timescale. Hydrogen could some (very far off) day be the answer, but Toyota is still wrong about it for the foreseeable future.
Did you miss the discussion being about heavy and marine equipment? Hydrogen in small vehicles will be a trickle down of commercial vehicles, like diesel engines were. Well, Porsche and similar will probably run it in massaged ICEs, but that’s unlikely to be the norm.
The foreseeable future in automotive is a laughably short time frame. 2 decades is really pushing it, with 15ish years being a reasonable estimate. Lets check back on all the 2035 claims that were made in 2020 when we get a bit closer.
How do you compress hydrogen more? the energy density requires massive tanks for storage.
“How do you compress hydrogen more? the energy density requires massive tanks for storage.”
Zeolites. Eventually, maybe.
The tech has not plateaued. That 260 mile range Tesla in 2012 is now a 400 mile range Tesla. The cheapest Tesla does 272 miles of range for $38k. That 260 mile range Tesla in 2012 was $75k. A long-range Model 3 gets about 333 miles of range and is $48k. Its not just bigger batteries. The cars have similar battery sizes as energy density has improved, faster charging and more efficient motors. Quit speeding lies and being ignorant.
You’re arguing over peanuts. 260 miles and 333 mile EPA ratings (much less in real life of course) are equally insufficient for long road trips in less that perfect conditions.
If the tech hasn’t plateaued, why are companies still putting out 250-300 mile rated vehicles when that, again, was the standard in 2012?
You skipped that the Tesla that did 260 does 400 now. As for why other companies are putting out substandard products? I don’t know, because their engineering sucks? Tesla range loss is much less of a problem than other BEVS outside of their LFP equipped vehicles because LFP does not perform as well in cold. I have driven a Model 3 all over without any issue. I prefer taking it on road trips to my Charger Scat Pack.
They did that with a bigger battery. In a $100k car no less. It’s not as if density improved more than a bit.
Wake me up when a single of the multiple promised paradigm shifts actually occurs.
You literally have no idea what is even going on. There is no evidence that you will not dismiss.
Because you haven’t brought any evidence?
I’m sure it’s super relevant to the average consumer that you can buy a 400 mile car for $100,000.
The standard EV you can buy today, apart from range specials and six-figure cars, offers 250-330 miles of range in ideal conditions, and less in hot or cold weather. That is not appreciably different than what was offered over a decade ago. I’m sincerely glad the sacrifices required to live with those short ranges are not a big deal to you. They are a big deal to me and the other 93% of car buyers who didn’t pick an EV when they purchased.
If the tech has not plateaued, why are those limitations still the case? Where are the 500 mile cars? Where are the 800 mile cars? Where are the 5 minute recharge times?
You can insult me all you want, but you haven’t brought a single fact to this argument other than that Tesla installed a larger battery in the Model S and it now has more range. That isn’t proof of any tech advancement.
I think the GMs/Fords of the world jumped to full EV too fast, plug-in hybrids work great for like 90% of people, almost all EV all the time, but range when you need it, easier to integrate into ICE platforms.
My issue with Toyota’s pragmatism is they have some of the best plug-ins going, but they don’t make enough of them. The Rav4 Prime and new Prius Prime are exactly what’s needed but they’re so rare, I see a dozen Teslas for every Rav4 Prime, but probably a dozen Rav4s for every Tesla.
If I could walk into a Toyota dealership today and buy a Prius Prime in my desired color and mid-tier trim, I would buy one. But I am not willing to jump through hoops and pay the dealership mafia price adjustment to own one.
I just want a base white prius. No options. Can’t even find that without a monster markup in my area.
Maybe it’s because most EV’s are still too damn expensive?
Broadly, yes, but a Model 3 costs the same as a NIssan Maxima, and a Bolt EV was (and will be soon again) the same price as a Civic. Like all cars, yes, they’re expensive except for the cheap ones.
Except if you remove the drivetrain factor to make things even, the Bolt seems like a $15k car nobody makes anymore because nobody wanted that kind of thing at $15k while the Civic seems like what it is (though the hatches are a bit overpriced compared to the sedan, they’re still within range of what they look like). Yeah, electric performance and maybe the rebate, whatever, but even discounting the potential charging situation, what many average people see is: “this looks like a cheap shitbox and the people I know will roll their eyes at me if they learn what it cost.” Model 3, maybe, but muskrat has started to make Tesla a no-go with increasing numbers of people and nobody I know wants the shitty TV-tacked on interior. Actually, my TV is far better integrated into the interior space of my house than Teslas. And even with the Maxima being a Nissan, it still seems like more car for the money to anyone who doesn’t feel they specifically want an electric.
But even a Civic is a lot of money for a lot of people when you factor in the interest rate and how goddamn expensive just merely EXISTING is these days.
There’s a whole group of people that only buy <5k beater vehicles, and those folks are going to be F#CKED.
Then the argument is “cars are expensive”, which is different than “EVs are expensive”. There have been and will always be a subset of folks who buy and only buy beaters, thats nothing new.
Will the 5k beater even exist in ten or 15 years as EV is more prevalent and ICE cars are disappearing? At least people currently have the option to buy shitboxes, in the future that may not be there.
1) You can buy a $5k EV today
2) Inflation exists
EVs are dead to me. Hybrid is a sensable idea until we get the whole EV shitstorm figured out though.
And zero APR means nothing to me when it comes to buying crap cars.
Fight me.
Yeah, I don’t get why I’d settle for something bad to save a few bucks a month in financing. Just put a bit more down.
I can’t imagine any financial scenario where buying something I don’t want is the right answer.
I was running the math over on https://www.calculator.net/auto-loan-calculator.html. The monthly payments of a used car at $32K over 48 months at 7.44% comes out to $950/month… which is roughly the same amount as a $40k new car at 0.00% over 48 months. So if you really want a Mustang, there are instances where buying new makes more sense than used.
Holy shit! Thanks.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to understand that settling for something I didn’t want because it was cheaper and I could afford it right now was never a good financial decision. I just end up dissatisfied with it in a few months and start shopping for the replacement, so I end up buying things twice (or more).
You’re not thinking big brain enough.
What we need is not 0% financing, we need negative APR.
Huh, OK, gonna roll with this. You’d need to advertise it like it’s the greatest thing ever (Where we pay you to buy a car at KUUUUUNKELMAN CHEVROLET), but bury everything in fine print so people don’t understand how awful it is.
So every payment made gives you, I dunno, a $20 deposit to a debit card. Yet there’s like a $10/mo fee on the debit card, so eventually you can ding people for fees who don’t close the card after the loan is settled. Oh, you’re making bigger payments? That means fewer rebate deposits, so paying off early is bad. Obviously you don’t lower the price of the car as much (if at all) either, treating the negative APR as yet more cash on the hood but making it up on the front-end, or where “Terms and Conditions Apply” where you need to get that TruCoat, etc. in order to qualify.
I never think “big brain.” But you have a great thought there to consider. Thanks.