If they make better cars then shouldn't the free market just accept this?
The thing about ICE cars is that they are really good. Many EV advocates seem to overlook this. The EVs replacing them have to be better in all metrics. We just aren't there. As an anecdote, I've been renting EVs for a day to try out a handful of ones I can afford.
1. Mache: buggy software, painful seating for tall people(center console hard plastics poke your leg and its painful), mediocre sound, somewhat ugly
2. Bolt EUV: cramped back window, slow charging, poor headroom for tall passengers, poor luggage space, ugly
3. ID4: terrible software, poor value for the price, strange reliability issues.
4. Tesla: high insurance costs, high repair costs, cheap interior, poor seats.
My comparison car is a 2006 Mazda 3. A car I really love. At the end of each day I ask myself, is there something i'd miss that my old car had? So far the answer has been yes.
Ioniq 5 is great. The software is imperfect and could use a bit more customization but generally decent. It needs a Tesla charger and ability to set default settings for temp heat etc.
Its on the list to test soon its just that it is harder to find them to rent vs Bolt/Tesla/Mache. I am concerned about reliability issues I have heard about but if the car is really good I might overlook this. I have had terrible experiences with Hyundai in the past as well but the car does look good inside and out.
Single point of experience but we have had no issues except for crashing it to the tune of 20k in body work with no airbags deployed. Parts availability is a problem too many months to restore
Agree with this. When I can take an EV from Colorado across Nebraska into Iowa on one charge they’ll be ready in my eyes. The range right now just isn’t useful. There are also barely any charging stations along this route, if at all.
The base model 3 has an epa range of 270 miles. Say you cut that in half, that's 135 miles a day. If you personally drive more than 135 miles in one day and don't want to stop to charge, and have serious range anxiety, then EVs aren't ready for you. But your experience and requirements are far outside the norm.
> There are also barely any charging stations along this route, if at all.
One problem I experienced when test driving the mache is that the range estimates are on the lower end when you accelerate too much on the highway. I typically drive in line with other drivers here on the east coast which is 75-80 mph and I was just not getting the range that I was expecting. That contributes to range anxiety.
You're looking at the statistics wrong. I can't be bothered to dig in to your link to figure out why, but it's plainly obvious that there's not some huge 93% of people who never drive out of their town.
It's probably more like - on 7% of days people drive more than 30 miles, that is to say, basically everyone does it, just not every day.
Sure, perhaps I could have been more clear with wording (as could the government's website). But the point stands; for the overwhelming majority of the population range anxiety is just that, and anxiety about range rather than a fact-based analysis of the car's ability to meet their needs.
Yeah I agree. If the choice is between a gas stove with 5 burners plus over and an induction hot plate, then you'd be justified. But that's a poor analogy because the electric car isn't missing the oven.
No analogy though, how often have you in the past five years driven more than 240 miles in one go without the posibility to stop and recharge? If you do it often, then yeah electric cars are not for you yet. But again that's not most people's usage of their car.
Yeah there's people who go out in the wilderness with their SUV or jeep and a bunch of jerry cans, but they're a rounding error compared to the people who drive 20 miles for their daily commute.
I actually have had severe issues with an EV and I had a Tesla with a 300 mile rated range. I had to park up somewhere overnight and charge from a wall outlet (more than once). I had to charge it to full every time before I went home (no on street charging, on the road often I'd be parked too far from the house to plug it in) because otherwise on my next journey I might need to take 30+ min out or a detour to charge.
Overall the acceleration was great but charging was just a huge faff compared to a car or van that I can "charge to full" basically anywhere in sub 5 mins.
The range of an EV is not the same as the range of an ICE because of that difference, you actually need a longer range for a comparable experience.
No, lol. If 5 days out the year I need to make a 400 mile trip, and tons of people do this for Thanksgiving and Christmas, so don't act like this is some strange thing, I am not getting a new car for this. The range anxiety is derived from facts, so stop pretending otherwise.
I am not pretending that it's a strange thing to do, or that people don't do it. My point is that people don't do it every day. That's a fact.
People sometimes drive a 400 mile trip for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Fact.
EV being a bad choice because the 2 trips a year that someone makes are longer than it's range: opinion and not fact.
First, that's trading the convenience and cost saving associated with the thing you do 98% of the time, with a minor inconvenience for the 2% case.
Second, a 400 mile trip will easily take 6 hours of straight driving. At some point you're going to make a pit stop, even if it's to refill on gas since 400 miles is pushing it for a gas car. So the real question is how much longer is that one stop you make (and I highly doubt it will be just one)?
Model 3s will charge to full in 25-30 minutes at a supercharger. So the inconvenience is 30 minutes minus however long your break would have anyway. Infrastructure on highways exists, here's just tesla's superchargers [0], and here's all the level 3 chargers [1].
The inconveniences are still very real. The trip distances follow a power law, e.g. 1000 mile trip every 3 years, 400 mile trip twice a year, 100 mile trip 10 times a year, etc. Another example of inconvenience, the Teslas trapped in the road with no batteries this winter has convinced me never to go near a pure EV for at least 10 years. The infrastructure and technology is certainly not here now and the infrastructure won't be widely used for 10 years at least. I will let you all be the beta testers.
I'm sure they do. We disagree about whether the long tail should be handled by 1) buying a car which can handle it at the cost of the other 99% of the time, or 2) plane, train, renting a car, or extending your existing driving breaks to recahrge.
> the Teslas trapped in the road with no batteries this winter
As the stories themselves pointed out back then, many of the new owners did not know that preconditioning was something they had to do before being able to charge. That alone greatly exacerbated the problem.
That's... a weird metric. Why do you need to drive 1000 miles on one charge? Are there any gas cars that do that? Seems even a Toyota Camry is unable (700 miles). That's like a 15 hour trip, too... why do you need to do it without any stops? Are you planning on wearing a diaper?
Not weird, have family in Iowa. My car gets about 500 miles per tank on I80 East. When I stop to get gas, it takes me about 5 minutes, maybe 10 if I stop inside and grab a drink or a snack. Can an EV in 2024 with even the best most advanced charging station charge my battery in 3 minutes from say, 10 miles left on the battery to 500? Is there an EV with a range of 500 miles?
This is subjective. I have a car that does all my journeys, is preheated and fully charged every morning - and I don’t have to visit fuel stations to fill up so it’s actually better.
Ok well explain why the mass market is not adopting them enmass already then.
We are either there and there are compelling products that people want or we are not and they are struggling to sell/values are going down...oh wait we are currently experiencing the latter.
The "mass market" in almost every country outside of NA is already adopting EVs, and a large part of that has been Chinese cars which aren't sold in the US due to protectionism and regulations. Take a look at EV adoption across EU or Asia or anywhere else really (BYD in Brazil for example), and you'll see the same story everywhere. It is pretty much a NA centric perspective that "EVs aren't there yet" cause the definition of "there" is bulky pickup trucks with 1000 mi range.
I am a US consumer so I am looking at the US market. If you read my original post I am spending time and money to thoroughly evaluate the EVs in my price range. I can't go and buy a Chinese car in Europe so why should I be concerned about whats going on there? You are doing what I alluded to in my original comment: You are overlooking at how actual consumers are satisfied with ICE and are not seeing enough benefits to switching to EVs yet.
> Ok well explain why the mass market is not adopting them enmass already then.
Why do I need to do that? That’s what the whole “subjective” thing is. It meets my needs. It might not meet someone else’s.
> We are either there and there are compelling products that people want or we are not and they are struggling to sell/values are going down...oh wait we are currently experiencing the latter.
Be very careful about consuming headlines here. In a lot of places sales are still going up but this has still been headlined as “sales slowing” when they just aren’t growing as quickly, but still growing. Sure, we’re on an s-curve and certain manufacturers are changing strategies but reading the headlines would have you believe that sales are plummeting.
I agree with not consuming headlines so thats why I went out and started spending ~100$ a day renting one EV model at a time and driving it an entire day to see the reality with living with EVs. In my experience, I haven't found a compelling model that fully replaces the ICE car I have no trouble with. That ICE car(06 Mazda 3) is my personal benchmark to beat.
Yes and the US Government would never just hand billion$ to automakers... Oh wait[1].
Now we can debate whether the bailout was good or not, but, to rephrase your post: "The U.S. financially supports U.S. companies. You aren't competing in a free market when that happens."
I am about 190 cm and the ceiling in the passenger rear touches my head/hair slightly. The front had adjustable seats so its not an issue. (Im referring to Bolt EUV)
Being 6 ft 3in in the US should but in reality does not help make up for my other downsides. :)
More seriously this isn't a problem I encounter with my current ICE car (nor other EVs like the Mustang Mach-e). Seems like a specific Bolt design flaw.
It's really hard to switch from a car that has been mazda-reliable. Only reason for me would be new safety tech. You should look into that too.
New gen Mazdas are good! I can afford many, but my heart is in another Mazda.
Actually doing a sort of interesting experiment right now. I really want to get into an EV but I just love my Mazda too much. I have had too many memories with this car and I'd just pay to keep the car going another 5-10 years but the premature rust has put it on its last legs. Naturally the car I should get is a new Mazda 3 but its not an EV :/
So what I am doing is renting various EVs I can afford for a day each with the intention of striking them off on my list. While driving 100+ miles in the day, I come up with reasons why I definitely don't want this car or that car.
The final car to be rented will be a modern Mazda 3 and having tried out all the EVs I will have to think deeply about whether I can really give up Mazda.
This is an expensive and time consuming experiment but it has already helped me dodge a bullet. Test driving a Mach-E would have been a decent experience but it was only after several hours of driving the car did I realize the hard plastics of the center console would be pressing hard into my leg causing pain. Also the "premium B&O" system is good but not that much better than my 17 year old crusty system in my Mazda. Especially not for the price. You only really internalize this when listening to a variety of soundtracks over many hours.
I've joked with friends that maybe I should just buy a plane ticket to Hiroshima, get on my knees and beg Mazda to make an EV. :P
Cx90 has phev, which is kind of an EV if you squint hard! The first year of this model was problematic so please do some research on reddit. mhev seems ok.
What problems has the cx90 had? That model is currently out of my price range but I had considered maybe buying an ICE Mazda 3 and then handing it down to my family that uses a 2014 Hyundai Accent in 2-3 years once that kicks the can and picking up a used CX90 PHEV. The alternative maybe picking up a bolt now and bearing through the terrible charging speeds for 2-3 years and then handing that down(they dont ever travel long distances so they are good with overnight charging)
Maybe Mazda will finish hybridizing the rest of their lineup by then. Their plan seems to be to lower the fleet average emissions by first dropping the pickup truck (done), sticking to few fairly efficient engines across the lineup, then convert each model to hybrid (and PHEV) and then finally move to electric once the Toyota alliance bears fruit.
The vehicle had 6 recalls, many things I don't remember. Check reddit for a better source. This made me curious about longer term problems once the car is out of warranty. Otherwise recalls so far seem to fix most issues permanently.
It’s not “dragging our feet”; it’s momentum. Most Americans have had cars for generations now. Most Chinese still don’t have cars. We have a whole world built around the particulars of ICE vehicles, including where we live. (In China, most people don’t live a couple hours drive from grandma’s house.) In China the biggest competitor to EVs is bicycles. In America, it’s the whole spectrum of ICE vehicles that everyone already owns, including the hand-me-down cars many people have who couldn’t afford a new car.
Some regulation would help - like forbidding charging station to requiring apps or any form of payment that's not available without internet connection or external equipment.
I can totally understand the "not required to install an app" but just so I'm clear, are you advocating for requiring charging stations to accept cash? Or just purchase without an app?
Do we know if this is even a legitimate issue facing a lot of people?
Meaning, is this an accessibility issue or a privacy issue? Because from my understanding, smartphone access is nearly ubiquitous nowadays across all income groups. But I could be wrong.
I'm advocating for the same standards that gas stations have. Cash prepayment is not necessarily most important, but just accepting CCs is minimum required thing.
>Meaning, is this an accessibility issue or a privacy issue? Because from my understanding, smartphone access is nearly ubiquitous nowadays across all income groups. But I could be wrong.
Access is not the biggest problem, fragmentation and giant shittyness of the apps is. And the fragmentation is an unsolvable problems.
Hard to do when so much of the economy and people's careers is now based on "engagement" and spyware.
The reason you need apps to pay at charging stations is because just like a lot of tech companies nowadays, they're not after money (or at least, not just money), they're after "engagement" and personal data.
I wonder what the official justification here could be. It's not very "free market" to pressure a country to not use policies to incentivise behaviour in its own market just to harm a third country.
Can one just draw a line between foreign and domestic? If the US goverment give billions of dollars todday to Lockheed Martian or Boeing to help complete against foreign airplane makers it is going to effect that ability of Americans to start new airplane companies in US to no?
> If the US goverment give billions of dollars todday to Lockheed Martian or Boeing to help complete against foreign airplane makers it is going to effect that ability of Americans to start new airplane companies in US to no
As per the WTO, they do this already. And then both the US government and Boeing have the absolute gall to complain that Airbus also gets subsidies from European governments, or that Quebec invested into Bombardier and gave them loans.
Interesting when Russia complains for decades not to have NATO encroach on their borders to the point where they invade Ukraine, but here the possibility a Chinese automaker is offered incentives from Mexico, the way they did for Tesla, is too much to handle for the US.
Either we can compete, or we can't. China can't subsidize for eternity without eventually failing, so why not take the short-term loss and pivot and win in the long-term? Also, Mexico would like to grow their economy as a sovereign nation too.
We dragged our feet and said “no EVs, infrastructure isn’t ready, too expensive,…”
Now we need protectionism to save our auto industry because in the end, we’ll take the cheaper solution
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