No dealers in my area have any cars on the lot to purchase. They all want you to buy them sight unseen and will deliver in months. I’d happily buy a EV today if I could just test drive it before placing the money down, but the interest is so high that they don’t need to cater to my request.
A friend bought the new Ford Mustang Mach-E (100% electric) a few weeks ago. They went car shopping intending to buy an ICE but ended up test driving the Mach-E which was in stock and on the lot. Test drove and brought it home the same day, impulse purchase.
They were going to pay all cash expecting the interest rate to be high, but they had a 0% interest promo so ended up financing it. This was a few weeks ago, honestly not sure how they’re still offering 0%.
Edit: this happened in a rural dealership 2 hours away from the nearest large city and 1 hour from the nearest Tesla dealership.
This is suspected to be the reason why GM shitcanned their EV project back in the 90s. EVs have less routine maintenance.
I also harbor a further conspiracy theory that Tesla specifically adopted serialized everything so that they could substitute lower service revenue with "just go buy a new one". Every other automaker getting into EVs has similarly locked down their cars.
They don’t go wrong. It’s an electric motor instead of a reciprocating machine that explodes 100 times per second, combines water cooling and oil lubrication.
That said, car and driver reports that the yearly costs were about the same for a Tesla because of the price of fixing things like a broken windshield.
In the past 2years I’ve spent about 7k in tire related items on the MYP.
I’ve spent ~ 250 in maintenance on my truck in that time frame.
Note: I had to replace a bent wheel on the Tesla in July due to Portland roads. Then last month a different wheel cracked (also Portland roads). Rather than putting on another pos Tesla OE wheel for $900 I opted to get a nice set of forged wheels (19” vs 21”) for 2k. Gives me more sidewall to hopefully absorb the impacts and not bend the wheels.
Im swapping it to softer rubber when she’s running. The tires will wear out due to heat cycles before it runs out to tread depth with as much driving as it’s going to see.
There is a bit in "Who killed the electric car?" about how GM EV1 was different from gas cars in that way. It made the "grease-covered mechanic" basically history. They are very clean vehicles to work on.
An EV drive train may have 20 parts, an ICE drive train will have over a thousand.
Here’s some parts an ICE car has that an EV doesn’t I can think of off the top of my head:
- Spark Plugs
- Starter
- Catalytic Converter
- Muffler
- Piston Rings
- Complicated transmission vs reduction gear
The list goes on. All of these parts will eventually need to be serviced or replaced. Also with no tailpipe emissions, all of those smog check places eventually go out of business as we transition to EVs.
Not sure why you’re so upset but I only said there were 1000+ parts. Why would I want to manufacture a drive train with 1000s of parts (even in assemblies they still have to be made) vs 20?
the dealers in my area had evs I could test drive, but they were test drive vehicles only. you couldn't buy them, you had to order if you liked and wait for your specific one to come
I was in the market for an Audi RS3. I was ready to buy it off of the lot with cash. I called every Audi dealer in Maryland and VA. They make cars with seats you never sat in before, don't know what they feel like, and don't have any to test and want you to spend 60K on a car that you will drive for years. No thank you, I'll keep driving my shitty VW and fix it when it breaks.
I was looking at RS3 vs Tesla. Under 100mph, a performance model 3 destroys an RS3 in every metric (except how long it takes to refuel). Just FYI. I rented one for a week and I’m now just waiting until the new highland model comes out.
FWIW almost every dealership will allow you to buy a car with a deposit and will refund the deposit if you test drive and don't like it. That's how I bought my Bolt EUV sight unseen.
Come now, an Audi RS3 is a pretty specialized car. I'll go months between seeing any of the RS models, I remember distinctly the last one I saw: an RS5 at Whole Foods 2-3 months ago. Autotrader lists 138 of them for sale (new and used) in the entire USA. So, yes, that is going to be something that the average car-buying experience isn't going to apply to.
That said, I do see 7 of them used within 50 miles of Maryland zip 21278, I'm sure one of them would at least let you sit in one and probably drive it.
Note: Those ones I saw were all used, no new ones listed in your area.
I'm a big Audi fan here, who for a variety of reasons moved over to Tesla. Among others, I used to have a B6 variety S4, and it was a thing of beauty. 40v engine was like a German clock. Nose heavy, but still fun on the track. Ran into an RS4 with the aftermarket supercharger at the track, quite lust worthy. They are very fun cars, for sure see if you can get in the seat of one.
(Mostly I moved away from Audis because I was spending so much in maintenance. My A8 had $10K worth of toys that needed repairing (phone bluetooth, a couple door handle buttons, steering wheel motor, slow leak in the air suspension, etc. Nothing that kept it from getting me around. And that 40v engine I knew if there was ever a problem it was going to cost more than the car was worth at that point. I had a throttle position sensor that left me stranded a couple times and put the fear of the German road gods in me :-)
The charging situation is dismal, except for the Tesla network.
Automakers seem to want to just sell a car and let the private sector figure out charging... Meanwhile in the charging sector, oil companies are buying up charging networks and established ICE vendors are neglecting the networks they were forced to build.
I have a Tesla... you're saying that other EV's charging situation is _even worse_? If I can't charge the thing at home, I just plain can't charge it. If I'm lucky enough to be able to find a charging station, and I'm lucky enough that there are any available charging stations, and I'm lucky enough that the available charging station isn't broken, I have to install some random charging company app on my phone, pre-pay with a credit card, plug my car in for a couple of hours and then come back and hope it worked.
Just wait until the EU forces manufacturers to enable side loading, and you have to side load an app to charge your car, and that app monitors your activity and sells it to advertisers...
Nobody wants charging malls. Everyone wants to charge at home.
But that’s still not going to be enough to topple the issue that battery cars are $20,000 more expensive than their ICE counterparts, which is more than the whole budget most people have for a car as it is.
> battery cars are $20,000 more expensive than their ICE counterparts
I’m not sure where you are, but this is certainly not true in the US broadly speaking.
$10k might be believable… sort of… but that typically doesn’t factor in total cost of ownership. Current EVs have quite a bit lower total cost of ownership for most use cases.
Regarding prices, I got a model y in 2021. It was comparable in purchase price and specs to a Toyota Highlander hybrid, but cost of ownership is lower and resell value may be higher.
For the same class of car Y is in, it's comparable in price to an ICE. But there just aren't any 15–30k$ EVs for purchase. OTOH, my TCO for my Y is way better than Tesla represented. It's so good that it comes close to letting me amortize solar panels on my roof.
The base model 3 is $38k with a $7500 tax credit, so $31k. An equivalent sized ICE will set you back at least $20k, if you can find a base model, and that won’t have the performance or capacity of the Tesla.
>Some car companies, such as Ford Motor [US:F] and Toyota Motor, are tempering their expectations for EVs and shifting more resources into hybrids, which have been drawing consumers at a faster clip.
>The first wave of buyers willing to pay a premium for a battery-powered car has already made the purchase, dealers and executives say, and automakers arenow dealing with a more hesitant group, just as a barrage of new EV models are expected to hit dealerships in the coming years
I believe this is what the CEO of Toyota was promoting - emphasizing hybrids as most realistic route for most consumers. He was slammed for it.
The issue with both companies is that they just don't have the production capacity to produce at the scale they'd need to. Additionally, what little they do produce has cost challenges. Ford is a bit further ahead than Toyota of course and they are ramping up production volumes now. Particularly the mustang and f150 are very successful for them. But most of what they sell is still ice vehicles and it will be quite a few years before they are going to be able to change that. Toyota is a basket case at this point. Basically a no show in the market; by their own choosing. It's going to take them many years to fix that. They are betting heavily on the market for hybrids not collapsing in the mean time. And that might very well turn out to be a risky bet.
There's a reason mr. Toyoda was sent into early retirement a few months ago: their shareholders are starting to get a bit anxious. Hybrids were their past strategy. They'll be milking them for as long as they can get away with but judging from their recent announcements, they no longer believe that to be good enough. They are talking up their battery capabilities a lot lately and they have announced a few EVs to be launched in the next few years. Of course there is still the minor issue of having to build the factories and supply lines to build those.
What's the market for a Prius Prime? If it was cheaper than an EV it would make sense, but a Prius Prime is more expensive than a model 3, and after rebate it's more expensive than a model 3 LR.
If you can plug in at home an EV is likely viable. If you can't, why would you buy a PHEV rather than a cheaper non-plugin HEV?
At least with many EVs you can charge at public chargers at a decent speed. If you are trying to get around town on a 3.6kW public charger your ass better start biking.
Every time somebody has told me "I can't buy an EV because I need to go from X to Y" I punch it into abetterrouteplanner.com and show them the trip is viable in an EV.
Yeah. Toyota’s PHEV are interesting now, but they literally could’ve built a good, full-speed-electric, PHEV 20 years ago if they had wanted but they refused. The Volt was way better than Toyota’s PHEVs.
Toyota can’t get out of their own way with this tech in spite of being easily 10 years ahead of everyone else at one point.
I don't blame you. I think there's a couple of deeper issues at stake.
- Distances that people need to travel are farther in North America. Just like how the smaller cars that sell in Europe and Asia wouldn't sell here, the smaller EVs made for Europe and Asia wouldn't sell here either.
- A more reliable and comprehensive charging network needs to be in place. This is exacerbated by the previous point. In addition to that, my anecdotal experience is that many EV chargers are damaged either by misuse or intentional sabotage.
- Liquid electrolytes are heavy, and the current technology uses too much expensive battery for the distance offered, which matters because in NA, distances are long.
I think that this is unfortunately why Asia is in a virtuous loop with regards to EV adoption, and are slated to enjoy the lower TCO, whereas in North America, we're looking at higher costs for an indefinite period of time. Europe, they were ahead for too long and I guess the present-day conservatism towards technology is having consequences now.
Americans want smaller cars, they just can't buy them for a host of very stupid and self-defeating reasons. CAFE fuel economy rules are extremely strict, but trucks are exempted from it because who would buy a more expensive work vehicle just to drive around and pollute more? So of course the automakers figured out how to market more expensive work vehicles as a means to drive and pollute more.
As a result, a significant portion of American road traffic is people driving "sport utility vehicles", Ford F-150s, and Escalades to haul their 2.5 children around town. These very large vehicles create problems for everyone else; they are not "crash compatible" and will cause way more damage to smaller cars than smaller cars would do to each other. This means that small cars have to be overbuilt to survive high-speed crashes with cars that shouldn't even be on the road. This can't always be done, especially not without compromising fuel efficiency[0], so entire categories of small cars (e.g. subcompacts, kei trucks, etc) are just plain illegal to sell here.
Of course, the way automakers sold people on more expensive cars that burn more fuel is through culture war shenanigans, and that has trickled down into American car culture. Hence why you get chuds vandalizing Electrify America chargers. Tesla chargers have their own brand of vandalism, where people would park their gas cars in front of Tesla chargers deliberately just to inconvenience people who bought EVs. The reason why a Tesla charger is more likely to be functional is primarily a function of investment on the part of Tesla versus legacy automakers, the latter of whom are investing in EVs very reluctantly because Elon's Musk embarrassed them so much.
Battery weight is a problem for long road trips, which Americans are far more likely to take. However, Americans are also far more likely to buy multiple cars. Most EVs are actually really good second / "city" cars even in America, because you can charge them at home.
[0] The primary way you improve fuel efficiency is by cutting weight. Improving crash survivability increases weight.
EVs should be understood in the context of home charging. Just how many people are commuting more than 150 miles (Leaf), 250 miles (Bolt), or 330 miles (Model 3) every day? They’d be putting 35-70k miles on their vehicle each year. That’s an entire lease, sometimes an entire vehicle lifetime. That’s not typical.
I think there’s a good argument that you still want one ICE car in the household for the annual national park trip or drive 15 hours to grandma’s house or whatever, but for the others electric is very compelling.
> Still, many consumers are reluctant to make the switch, deterred by high sticker prices and the inconvenience of driving a vehicle that has a limited range and needs regular recharging.
I don't see this as consumers being 'uncooperative', it is an incorrect headline fragment. The offerings are not attractive enough to a broader audience.
I'm seeing 2018 Bolt EV models with about 30,000 miles for about $16,900 in my area. That's a very comparable car to a 2018 Elantra.
The major difference between the EV and gasoline used car market is that viable used models for a wide variety of segments aren't plentiful on the EV market yet.
I can buy a brand-new electric work truck but can't buy a used one from 2018. You bought an Elantra, which is coincidentally comparable to an EV model produced in 2018. But if you had wanted a non-luxury 3-row SUV, a minivan, or a non-luxury large sedan, there would have been nothing used to choose from.
As far as longevity, EVs do much better than most people realize. There is precedent and history, as the Tesla Model S has been on the market for over a decade. Here are some anecdotes from people who have driven the Tesla Model S for over 10 years with 6-digit odometers:
I've had a rental Tesla for two weeks and I much prefer my gas car besides for the acceleration... Charging gets old quick if you don't have a charger at home... I have to charge daily even if I don't drive much... The estimated miles per charge is complete bullshit also... I get less than 100 miles per full charge even though it says I should be getting 300... And charging to 100 percent takes forever even on the fast Tesla chargers... Most of the time they don't deliver 250kwh like they are supposed to
Renting an EV sounds about the worst experience. If you can’t charge at home then EVs lose a large part of their value. Supercharging is also terrible for charging to 100%, go to 80 or 90. If you’re doing it daily you want to charge at the lowest battery level. Chargers don’t deliver the max charge for the entire time, it slows down as the battery level goes up. Charging daily from 5-80% is much quicker than 25-100%.
I was happy with finally being able to drive a Tesla... I like how it drives except for the very wide turn that it makes... But I would never buy one... Gas is so much more convenient. Also, it cost me more than $300 in charging fees for just 3 weeks of regular driving... Gas would have been cheaper... And the gas car itself is a lot cheaper too... Tesla is still a luxury
They have bigger problems than that: they are prohibited by an ever increasing set of laws from making and selling the vehicles consumers would like to buy.
Being a government protected cartel was great for a while; but now they're all ossified into a mass that's going to sink. Jeepneys and tuktuks are gonna be the thing. I'd love to be in the small engine business about now, there's gonna be a big market for a 40HP to 150HP generic drop in "power unit" things.
IDK what op is annoyed by in particular, everyone with any interest in cars has their own bone to pick with the way the regs are structured.
Personally, I'm frustrated you can't produce something like a 1990 NA Miata anymore or the tiny pickups that also existed around then like the Ranger or even a Hilux. Oddly enough the EPA is largely responsible for pickups growing into the size of dump trucks lately. They mandate anything vaguely car sized to have very stringent efficiency performance but if you just make the vehicle into a "light truck" those laws don't apply. As a result everything needs to be built like an absolute tank to survive a crash with these behemoths.
Of course it's completely stupid and counterproductive for governments to set fuel economy mandates in the first place. If they want people to burn less fuel then just increase the tax on fuel and let the free market sort out solutions.
That was never the choice. The Federal government started imposing a fuel excise tax in 1932 and has increased it several times. Obviously that was politically possible because it actually happened. States also impose their own excise taxes.
Higher interest rates broadly hurt automotive sales. Taking a quick look online, I see 6.5% loans for Tesla Model Y. That's like increasing the sticker price by almost $9,000 compared to 0% financing. People shop for cars on monthly payment, and high interest rates incentivize shortening loan term length.
Second, the article contrasts Toyota's shortage of hybrids with its inability to move EVs. That's because Toyota's EVs aren't competitive. Nobody should buy the bz4x.
As for why Toyota can't stock enough Hybrids, I have no idea why that is. I also think that anyone buying a Toyota probably should buy a Hybrid. It's kind of a no-brainer for that brand.
I don't think that any of the data shown in the article has a great story around customers being cool on EVs in general.
Friend bought a Toyota Sienna hybrid base model which gets 37mpg, he loves it. I think hybrids are a better way to go in the USA given the greater distances to travel.
You have all the hassles of a combustion engine (wear and tear due to all the moving parts, oil changes, filters, etc etc) and a fraction of the fuel economy of a battery electric vehicle. I don’t get Hybrids for anyone that doesn’t have a massively long commute.
Wouldn’t hybrids be more efficient if the gas/diesel was just generating electricity for an electric drivetrain? They do this for logging and mining trucks.
> You have all the hassles of a combustion engine (wear and tear due to all the moving parts, oil changes, filters, etc etc) and a fraction of the fuel economy of a battery electric vehicle.
If it is a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) then for people who have a way to charge overnight it will for many of them have almost the same fuel economy as a battery electric vehicle (BEV), because PHEV electric range nowadays is more than the amount the average driver drives per day.
For example for me a PHEV would almost always be operating entirely in EV mode. For those few times when I actually do take a long trip it would be more convenient than a BEV because a gas pump adds mileage faster than even the fastest EV charges.
Consider a trip from the Puget Sound area to Madras, OR, and back. Using the EV trip planner that someone else recommended in another comment, abetterrouteplanner.com, I find that in a standard range Tesla Model 3 it would be 10 hours on the road, and 1 hour at chargers. With a Chevy bolt it become 2.5 hours at charges.
With my 2006 Honda CR-V I'd need 3 gas stops. With pay at the pump that would be less than 15 minutes spent at gas stops.
A new Honda Civic could do it in one gas stop, so under 5 minutes.
A Prius Prime PHEV could do it with no gas stops, although it would be getting low when it got back to Puget Sound so I'd probably do one gas stop on the way to have a bigger safety margin.
I'll probably get a BEV for my next car, but keep the 2006 CR-V instead of trading it in. That way I've got a BEV for my day to day driving but have the option of taking the CR-V for those rare longer trips where either EV charging might not be readily available or I just don't want long refueling stops.
If the CR-V was not such a reliable car that likely has many more years in it without more than routine maintenance and so I would trade it in and only have one car, I'd seriously consider a PHEV.
> Wouldn’t hybrids be more efficient if the gas/diesel was just generating electricity for an electric drivetrain? They do this for logging and mining trucks.
They might be more “efficient” from a maintenance point of view, but they will have worse gas mileage then gas/electric. Anytime you have to transform the energy to another form you loose some of power. So ICE > drivetrain will be more efficient then ICE > generator > drivetrain.
Still belches out nasty pollutants. When COVID hit and I saw how clean air in LA could be if we stopped driving gas cars I was sold and bought my first EV (our only car) when our previous vehicle was involved in a crash. With all the solar and wind resources CA has, there’s no reason not to go electric w/the incentives available, especially now.
The numbers don’t pencil out given the changes to the tax code and current gas prices. That leaves the whims of fashionability. Not something I’d bet billions on.
Everyone seems to assume gas is going to stay cheap, then it goes up and people driving F350s w/15 MPG to/from their office jobs get upset. Drive what you want but don’t complain when OPEC decides to go to war with Israel and oil doubles in price. We’ve seen this play out so many times since 2000.
It's not just the price. The thing that many people forget about is that with double digit percentages in demand changes for petrol and diesel happening over the next few years is that a lot of struggling petrol stations are not going to survive the EV transition. You take away 20-30% of their business and inevitably that's going to wipe out a few of them. You can expect to have to take increasingly longer detours to get to a fuel station. Expect that to happen in the most remote/rural areas first; places with the least amount of business. And it's not going to stop at 20-30% of course. The resulting range anxiety is possibly going to be a major driver for EV adoption in such areas.
North America is largely self sufficient in crude oil. If there was another supply shock due to a war in the Middle East or whatever then the US federal government would reimpose the export ban to hold down domestic prices. Retail prices would rise a little but doubling isn't realistic.
The regulatory changes due to the need to stave off global warming trumps everything.
Truth is lot of people buying new cars and especially trucks aren't exactly prudent. The sales guy on the lot cares only about next months rent. The dealer is an ass who care only about staying in business the a year from now.
But auto manufacturers have to pay attention to ten year time lines and what they see is they won't be able to sell gas and diesel vehicles in 10-15 years. Big picture 'consumer choice' does not matter at all, they have to buy whats offered and gas/diesel cars and trucks won't be.
My back channel is electronic component suppliers that sell to the automotive industry. They and the auto makers are gearing up to produce only EV's in ten to fifteen years.
If you believe the cartoon version of economics peddled by economists you could believe that consumer choice means gas cars and trucks will still be around in 30 years. Truth is policy makers and the auto manufacturing have negotiated the 2025 as the end of fossil fueled vehicle production. It's a done deal and what the WSJ thinks, auto dealers and consumers want doesn't figure into it.
You can't be serious. It is simply impossible to transform the industry by 2025. Auto factories are already doing preliminary work for 2025 model year ICE production.
Some countries and US states have set a goal of 2035. That is somewhat more realistic but still not fully achievable. I guarantee that deadline will be pushed back in some places, especially for hybrid vehicles.
The industry already knows how to build electric cars at scale. You can buy one tomorrow if want. Automakers redesign their models every ten years or so already. Plus a lot of the assembles are exactly the same as gasoline cars. Thing structural changes to support the electric motor and battery, that all sheet metal. If there is anything those guys know it's stamping and spot welding sheet metal.
And as I said above the trade publications as opposed to the fish wrap press all show that the transition is something everyone in the industry is planning for. There are something like 17 large battery manufacturing plants planned or being build right now for instance. Just in the US alone.
Those battery plants aren't going to be enough, especially not by 2025. But the bigger obstacle is charging infrastructure. It just takes a lot of time to build that out, which is why those deadlines will inevitably be pushed back.
I'm sure this is very confusing to you because you aren't old enough to remember the last time governments mandated big changes in how cars are designed. In the 1960's and 70's governments required seat belts, air bags, unleaded gasoline and catalytic converters, crash testing, collapsible steering wheels, banned metal dashboards. Before that they mandated headlights, tail lights, brake lights, rear view and side mirrors. Four wheel split circuit hydraulic braking.
That was all 40 years ago and before. So you've never seen that happen. I have and I know whats coming. You'll see.
If you can charge at home what you need is a charging station 200 miles away from home in every direction. There are many places in Alaska that don't meet this criteria. Very few in the continental US.
The major car manufacturers don’t want to sell you a simple car with few dealer serviceable parts and little dealer maintenance. They’d much rather sell you a hybrid, which has all the expense of maintaining an ICE plus extra complication of being hybrid! Dealer service departments love that!
People who test drive an electric car buy one. That’s why you can’t test drive one, except a Tesla, because only Tesla wants to sell you one.
Hybrids don't have all the expense and complication of an ICE. They're a lot simpler. Look at the Toyota Prius Prime PHEV. The CVT makes it a lot simpler. The engine is a lot simpler. Toyota is known for reliability but the Prius is by far their most reliable vehicle.
The engine still works by reciprocating pistons moved by near explosive combustion of volatile fuels, lubricated by oil, cooled by water. Then add a CVT transmission and an electric motor and batteries. Sure, Toyota makes some of the most reliable cars, but they still need regular service at least.
Yes, it's a lot more complicated than an EV but it's also a lot less complicated than an ICEV. The CVT is a lot less complex than an automatic transmission.
I've had my 17 year old Prius for 12 years and outside of regular maintenance and parts that are expected to fail periodically, nothing has failed. I bought it used and it needed a muffler so I bought a Toyota one and it lasted 10 years. When the car was 15 years old, I had to replace the 12v battery. Outside of that I've only replaced oil, oil filters, tires, wipers, and light bulbs (not LED). It's been a very inexpensive vehicle to own. The 600v NiMH battery still works fine and still gives me as good fuel economy as when I first got it.
I think Toyota over-engineered the Prius, meaning that when they designed it, they weren't sure how reliable it would be so they ended up making it incredibly reliable. If they'd only put that much thought into EVs.
For most people EVs will work better for 95+% of car use. Dealers and other forces may want to stop the ride but I think EV proliferation is mostly self-reinforcing.
Once an acquaintance has one, many others in the social circle will follow.
That said, EVs are not for everyone. But also about 40% of US households have a second car and I bet 50% of households rarely drive long distances making EVs viable when people come around to them.
The ev problem for me is that I don't own my own place. Without ownership I have no way of consistently charging the car.
Had I had that, even for longer drives, slight re routes to ensure I can recharge won't be an issue for me. But the reality is that I need to charge this thing and you gotta know the hidden spots where you can in cities. The irony is that electric cars in cities make the most sense but yet make the least sense.
This is what EV promoters seem blind to. If you rent, like 50 million other americans, EV become one of the most inconvenient things you could possibly ever buy. And even if your place offers charging, when you move it probably wont be at the next place.
Yes!!! Exactly. And in New York, its not like old buildings are being refurbished to add parking and charging.
I am terrified of the implication of 2035 when no new ICE vehicles can be sold in new york. Now I hope we solve things, but until then I have no idea what good solutions exist.
