Full electric cars are all well and good for the daily commute to work but unfortunately current infrastructure is not ready to support electric cars on long trips
This video apparently shows a line of Teslas in Spain queuing for a supercharge point on the motorway
Elon has confused being reflexively contrary with being an innovative genius. He believe that new and different are always better. He got lucky a couple of times, but that is his only trick and he’ll keep on doing that over and over again,
The problem with plug-in hybrids is that you’re carting around an IC engine that you’re not using on a regular basis. What we need is a gen-set on a trailer for road trips.
40 miles of range may not work for everyone but the average American still drives less than 40 miles total per day, which means that for most people, on most days, a 40 mile range would be enough to go completely electric while only plugging in once per day.
And there’s no reason that a plug-in hybrid couldn’t have a bit more electric range than that. A BMW i3 with a range extender can go over 100 miles on batteries before the gasoline engine needs to kick in. And they came out years ago:
And the problem with all-electric cars is that you’re carting around a very heavy, expensive, and resouce-intensive battery that’s much larger than what’s needed on most days. That’s why a model 3 (or any other Tesla) is so much heavier and more expensive than a hybrid like the Prius.
Because Chinese manufacturers, who you probably haven’t heard of, can sell cars for massively less than traditional western manufacturers, even when faced with tariffs.
I don’t see much changing until they drop the Nazi sympathizer, fix the terrible design and engineering choices he forced the company to incorporate, and make vehicles people actually want to drive.
Is there? Or, is it that everyone thought they should follow the Tesla model and release the most expensive car first to use a larger profit margin to fund the manufacturing conversion before introducing lower priced cars with smaller margins?
They all chased the same market segment instead of pushing out to new segments.
I would believe that the market for high priced expensive EVs is saturated. That’s not the same as the EV market as a whole.
On the list of home expenses, even just surprise home expenses, the cost of installing an EV charger was practically nothing. Maintaining a home is expensive. The EV charger wasn’t any more or less than anything else. In fact, since there was support programs to help fund it, it was cheaper than most other things. When a storm forced us to remove some trees, that was way more expensive than the EV charger.
Charging my EV at home is significantly more convenient than getting gas for the other car. The EV starts with a full tank every day and I never have to think about it. Charging it takes all of 15 seconds, is always where I’ll be anyway and never out of the way.
The average buyer believes the way they use a car is totally different than how they actually use a car. It’s an education and perception problem. It takes sitting down and really looking at how someone uses a car. Especially the 37% of households that own 2 or more cars.
Everyone likes to think they road trip all the time, while stats tell us the average miles driven in a day is less than 50. Road tripping with an EV is definitely more friction than in a gas car. I’m firmly in that 37% with multiple cars. We also road trip at least once a month, to much friction to just rent a car as an option. But, when we look closer, we only road trip over 300 miles with 2 cars simultaneously about once a year. Turning 1 car into an EV was simple, cheaper, and the car we always go to first since it turns out that 50% of the time we only need 1 car at time for anything too.
Having said that, if it’s someone who really does road trip long distances frequently, or frequently to locations with poor EV road trip charging (looking at you WV), and are in the 60% with only one car. Then, sure an EV may not be the right choice. Just like a pickup truck, extra large SUV, smart car, or compact sedan are not all the right choice for everyone. Just like an EV is easier for the 66% of home owners vs 34% of renters. Everyone needs to really look at their actual usage and conditions.
I don’t know that there was any other option. The big manufacturers were waiting to see if there was any market at all and their development times are incredibly long (so as to avoid disasters like the Cybertruck).
No, but at this point, that is essentially the entire market segment.
I’m not saying there’s something inherently wrong with the EV market or that it is dead or fully plateaued, but there is clearly a lull right now and those issues I name are repeatedly cited as the primary drivers of adoption. I love EVs and think that the issues the industry are dealing with are mostly temporary, but there are still a lot of barriers for the average buyer.
To you, maybe, but to the average consumer, even the lowest-tier charger is still a big expense and that’s assuming that a) you’re a home owner and b) the house has the electric infrastructure to handle it. Even then, most homes would still not be capable of handling fast charging.
Totally. Which is why I was able to eventually disabuse myself of the notion that an EV was the right move for us. Once I started thinking of how we would actually use one and the associated expenses, it became a local-commute fantasy. It’s also why I don’t own a truck even though I really would use it for its purpose; just not enough to justify it over a family-hauler Subaru.
Here’s the way I look at refuelling versus charging times.
When I had a petrol car I did 250-300 miles a week and filled up weekly, usually on the way home on a Friday night because there was a convenient petrol station and it had the cheapest prices. It would take 5-10 minutes each time to get off the main road, wait for a pump, fill the tank, pay, and get back on my way home. Let’s say an average of 6 minutes per stop.
That’s 3 hours a year spent just refuelling my car.
My time spent charging my EV is usually 0 because I put it on at cheap rate in the middle of the night. On the one or two long distance trips I take a year, I stop for coffee or lunch, and the car charges while I’m doing that.
Isn’t that 5+ hours? At 6 minutes times 52 weeks, 312 minutes is 5+ hours.
Technically, you spent time plugging the car in and removing the plug and hanging it up. Say 7 seconds each for 15 seconds a day. A quarter of a minute a day, 91 minutes a year. Still, 1.5 hours vs 5+. Not to mention a much more convenient time and place.
IMDB says you could watch Ben Hur or Lawrence of Arabia in the saved time each year, but not both. Maybe alternate every year?
Good spot!
Maybe I will watch Abel Gance’s Napoleon (6 hours.)
That feels short sighted. Tesla had to do it that way, otherwise they would have needed to raise all the start up capital. Doing it this way allowed them to fund the R&D and build out of the cheaper cars with the more expensive ones. Since Tesla started as nothing not some existing company.
Ford and GM didn’t have this problem. They already sold all kinds of products. Already had R&D and development reinvestment plans as part of the cost of doing business. They already had market research, back office, assembly knowledge, and all the other things that are part of manufacturing and selling cars.
They made specific decisions to not develop EVs as just another product line. Ford even spun off it’s EV group to make it look like a completely separate company. They put themselves in a box instead of leveraging what they already knew. They could have used profit from the existing business to reinvest and create the new one instead of trying to pretend the new one had to stand up on it’s own and because of that could only sell high margin luxury cars. Most of the EV market problems appear to be business decision problems now more than EV problems.
They’ll get there, but it’s going to take them a decade longer than it should have. Assuming someone else doesn’t get there first.
That article and “most” is very misleading. Most homes can support an EV charger just fine. You can buy a perfectly reasonable EV charger capable of plenty of speed for $399, or half the price of an iPhone 15. The cheapest base model. Apple sells plenty of those plus tons that are more expensive and the EV charger will likely last longer before it is obsolete or broken.
While there are older homes with 60 AMP service. The vast majority of homes have 100 AMP or 200 AMP service. Either of which can easily support an EV charger. Making a more typical install less than $1,000 to add a brand new circuit to a garage charger.
Still under $1,500 which compared to many many home expenses is right in line. And still less than a top of the line iPhone 15 Pro. It’s more expensive than a fancy dinner, but that’s the wrong comparison.
If you only have 60 AMP service, you’re probably due for an upgrade anyway. Not just for an EV, but the world has changed and we use a lot more electricity now than we used to. That type of change certainly is more expensive and can get into the many thousands. Kind of like putting in a new driveway or remodeling a bathroom.
There’s perfectly valid reasons to not want an EV, but there’s a ton of them that are just plain wrong and incorrect information.
If I was in the 34% of renters, I would have serious reservations depending on what rentals in the area provided. Anything where it’s not possible to charge at home, and I would have those concerns. Charging at home is where all the cost savings and convenience come from.
If I only owned one car. I would have much less acceptance of any road trip limitations.
If I looked at my driving and I really did do one or more road trips every month that would be forced to use this car, same concerns.
If the only EVs available all cost $50,000+, all those concerns too. For that matter, I would hesitate to buy most cars at that price. I’m certainly not the $95K+ Hummer market.
I mean, that’s a big expense for most Americans. Just coming up with the down payment for a car of any kind is a stretch. Add in the cost of a charger for it to be feasible for most and it’s a pretty easy decision to go with an ICE or hybrid (which was my whole point originally). We have never owned truly “new”, but bought our first dealer-financed car a few years ago and despite having a two-income household we still had to borrow from family and have a co-signer and even then it was a 7 year old, 60k mile car. Which we used to build up our credit enough to scrape together the down payment on our house, which we again had to borrow from family for.
I’m not sure what you think I’m disagreeing with you about (other than $1500 being a minor expense). I am all about EV adoption for those who can swing it because it is driving the market for more affordable options, bringing the big producers to the table and giving our planet a little bit of breathing room. All I was saying is that there are a number of (probably temporary) factors that are leveling off the market for now beyond just import tariffs and that hybrids are still a robust market for those very reasons. That will probably change very soon, but it for now dealer EV inventory is just not moving as fast as expected.
In absolute without any context, and certainly unexpected, I’ll agree it’s a large expense. But, context matters here. Maintaining a house is expensive. Just about everything needed to keep a house from falling apart and being reclaimed by nature is expensive. In that context, compared to other expenses required to maintain a house, $1,500 isn’t a huge expense.
Likewise, in the context of maintaining a car, that’s certainly not cheap but it’s not expensive either. That might be about the same as oil changes for the life of gas car, an expense EVs don’t have. Obviously all at once instead of spread out over many years is different. Perhaps compared to timing belts, transmission services, break pads and rotors, or spark plug changes is better. Repairs that are each hundreds of dollars.
Nobody says “better just ride a bike, it’s too expensive to drive a gas car when you have to replace the spark plugs”.
It’s the reasons. If we’re going to say there’s problems in EV sales, they should be those real problem with the types of EVs being marketed. Not problems that are incorrect.
For instance, I 100% agree that there is a problem with the Ford F-150 Lightning market and that Ford is sitting on a ton of them. I disagree that it’s the cost of home charging infrastructure or road trip charging infrastructure that has anything to do with this problem.
Likewise, I assume there are problems with GM Blazer EV sales though probably not as bad as F-150.
The problem is Ford and GM. Likewise, the Tesla sales slump isn’t because consumers found problems with EVs, the problem is Tesla.
I think that Tesla has made a big strategic error not going after the fleet market before Rivian. Rivian will get better at scaling up its manufacturing before Tesla will be able to pursue any lower cost segments.
Also, the idea that customers want to sit behind the wheel of a transportation robot with overly complex electronics and an unacceptable amount of surveillance and connectivity is not aligned with most people’s economic reality. The Saturn EV-1 drivetrain used computers, but it wasn’t nearly as complicated. The big issue with the EV-1 was that battery tech was still primitive – Lead Acid batteries, then NiMH towards the end. If Toyota succeeds in developing solid state battery tech, they could introduce basically a BEV Corolla and really dominate the affordable segment of the market with practical cars.
I charge my car from a (UK standard) 13 Amp socket. A 5 hour charge at super cheap night rate fills 25% of the battery, good for 50 miles range.
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