EV’s currently make the most sense for people who own a single family home or otherwise live in a community with readily available near-home chargers, where EV’s are on average more convenient than gas cars. People who rely on street parking and apartment dwellers would likely find EV’s more inconvenient than a gas car.
We may be close to saturating the market for the former group.
Another factor that could be at play is that all the non-Tesla EV makers have recently announced they will switch their chargers to NACS, but this will take a couple of years to roll out, so it’s not a great time to buy a non-Tesla since it already has legacy charging hardware.
I'm in that first group and I don't see how it makes the most sense. They are not more convenient. I can "charge" my gas car in 2 minutes basically anywhere in the country.
I'm going on vacation next week, driving with 2 young children. It'll be about a 11 hour drive which is not crazy for a US vacation. I don't want to plan where I stop and stop for 45 minutes to fuel up with 2 toddlers in the car.
And they're all much more expensive than a nice 5 year old gas car.
I feel the same way and after speaking with many EV people i've realised the main benefit is how cheap they are to run. This comes down to the increase in efficiency compared to an ICE - ~80% of the battery energy finds its way to the wheels on EV's, vs ~30% on an ICE. If you live somewhere where electric costs are very low then a 0 to full charge your EV costs about $10. (Someone please correct me if i'm off on this one)
Depending on your mileage, by saving $3k-$4k a year on gas theres certainly a case to be made for an EV being a more sensible financial decision in the long term especially given government tax incentives
One of the biggest reason for the massive disparity in efficiency on EV's is due to regenerative braking (16-25%). So what's interesting is when you compare an EV to a Hybrid ICE vehicle then the efficiency disparity becomes a lot less and you still have the benefit of being able to take long trips and not needing a home charger.
Anyone thats driven a Hybrid Toyota will tell you that fuel consumption is dramatically less, in my real world scenarios I use about 2.5x less gas in something like a Toyota Corolla Cross compared to my not overly thirsty ICE BMW.
Another benefit to Hybrids is they only require a ~1kWh battery instead of needing a huge 60-70kWh battery like an EV. So you could create 60 or 70 hybrid vehicles for the same amount of lithium mining as one EV.
One has to wonder why the governments aren't just pushing everyone into Hybrids instead of EV's? If a young person was asking me to recommend a car and they didn't have a home charger I wouldn't hesitate to recommend something like a new Toyota HEV / Honda e:hev - they are basically an EV with an on-board Atkinson engine as a powerplant.
I rented a Tesla Model 3 recently. From 40% to 98% cost me $7 CAD and I was able to drive from Vancouver to Tacoma, WA on a single charge and arrived with 20% battery. In the Seattle suburbs it cost a bit more, $13 USD, to go from 20% to 90% due to a supercharger station having issues so demand was higher at the next closest one.
$7 to go 175mi(283km) sold me on an EV as my next car. I never felt like I would be stranded and when the battery is conditioned for fast charging by time you pop in somewhere to use the bathroom and grab a coffee or snacks you're pretty much good to go.
I really think these comments are just EV driver rationalization. You really spend 30-45 minutes at a rest stop on road trips? When we take road trips we spend almost no time stopped. Even if we're eating, it's in the car. I can't even imagine stopping multiple times for 30-45 minutes to recharge, that is not the same as "going to the bathroom and grabbing a snack". That takes like 5 mins tops, the rest is just wasting time you could be on the road.
I think the point is that one group of people is imagining a change and saying, “That change will be intolerable!” And then another group is actually experiencing the change and saying, “Hey, it’s actually pretty good.” You won’t know how you really feel about it until you try it yourself, and speculating about the second group won’t net you any benefit.
It’s quite simple really, there’s a wrong group who disagrees with me, and a right one who agrees. Not sure what all the debate is about to be honest.
20 minutes every 6 hours is absolutely minimum for me, if not more often. That’s to stretch, relax, walk around. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t do that. But this is in Europe where distances are smaller.
Seriously? If I take a shit, it's more than 5 minutes itself. Waiting in line to buy coffee or a donut, let alone eat (I guess if you are in a real hurry eat in your car, but don't you want a break???). Just doing a lap of the parking lot to stretch my legs. Even if that's just 25 minutes, that's still quite a bit of charge. That said I'll still choose a bus or train over a car trip any day I can, but yeah..
45 minutes is only if you are trying to charge over 80% which you don’t actually want to do. Unlike gas tanks that have a consistent fill rate, batteries are like a sponge where near empty the charge/fill rate is much much faster than when it’s nearly full. 20% to 80% is about 10 /15 minutes depending on how new the super charger station is. This gives you about another 3 hours of normal highway driving or so depending on conditions like temperature, 70mph+ and how hilly/windy the drive is. However, if you time the stop around meal times then you can take 45 minutes to charge to fill while you are eating at a restaurant.
Sadly, it is true most non Tesla chargers are terrible and require you make an account/give up personal information first and are not maintained well. Tesla does as well but the stations are maintained and the account signup happens when you buy the car so you just plug it in and charge.
There needs to be a just a pay and fill chargers like gas pumps but that doesn’t fly with todays VC vultures.
Electrify America was built by Volkswagen as punishment for the diesel scandal. They have zero interest in maintaining them.
I also usually rent a car for the same trip, but am quite happy to continue renting every single time. $150 for the couple of days I usually leave for, maybe at most 3 times a year, and maybe $80 in gas. Saves me like $2000/year minimum. Buying a car hasn't seemed sensible since moving to Vancouver, because the transit is so good, and I'm not rich and don't want the liability of owning one when the job market disappears (now).
Not that there aren't reasons to own one here mind you, surely a long and unwieldy commute might do it, but then you're probably in Delta or a suburb, which was my situation when I last had one; after it was crashed, I just didn't buy another and realized that I used it more because I had it rather than having it to help me go distances I'd need to anyway.
Depends what you value. For me, that's a nice to have. Greater benefits are: never go to a gas station, no oil changes, no fumes, more fun to drive.
I’d argue the opposite, but it’s certainly subjective. Driving my sister’s Model 3 was leagues below my cheap little BRZ, and it’s still slower than my motorcycles if I want to accelerate fast. The suspension is crap. Body roll was astoundingly bad and the front end doesn’t want to push you through corners when trail braking. I was excited to drive it, but after 500 miles of backroads and open freeway I firmly believe a cheap sports car is a much better driving experience.
I've never driven a cheap sports car, so I might agree with you. However, my subjective take is, between otherwise similar non-sports cars, the EV is more fun to drive. For a few reasons, I can't realistically have a purely fun car at the moment.
BRZ/GR86 are ridiculously fun to drive. There is just no comparison in that price range, other than Miata.
IMO the lack of fumes/exhaust is my favorite part of owning an EV. Sure there are some downsides with EVs (more expensive to buy, less range, lack of public charging infrastructure) but those don’t impact me and I’d gladly take the negatives for a car that doesn’t smell every time I park it in my garage.
well that depends on the ICE car and your driving behaviour. E.g. VW group turbo 4 cylinders from ~5y ago are very efficient. I drive a 5yo Seat Leon ST (basically like a slightly smaller Golf Variant, e.g. a typical European hatchback), and mostly at highway speeds with some mountain driving also. With this I get ~45-47mpg or ~5.0-5.2l/100km. A hybrid would maybe get me up to 50mpg but not much more, as highway speeds are not really where they gain you much. They're great for the occasional shopping run, but where I live those are max. 20min driving both ways, so not that much of an impact either.
Absolutely! But most ICE vehicles people drive don’t get anywhere near that type of mileage because we tend to be buying much larger heavier cars. Hybrids help a lot of people get god level mpg and the reduced running costs without needing to go all in on electric
As "someone with a Toyota hybrid": I consistently use about 1l/100km than that. (The dash keeps a "best milage" number, which is 3.8l/100km for me right now.
At some point it becomes bike shedding, but a 20% reduction (from 5l to 4l) is still impressive to me.
It's not that simple because "full" means something very different in a Cybertruck (123kWh battery) vs a base Ioniq 6 (53kWh battery).
Likewise the fuel economy is dramatically different with the Cybertruck at 2 miles/kWh Vs the Ioniq 6 at 4.6 miles/kWh.
Assuming a cheap electricity rate of $.15/kWh, the Cybertruck will cost $.07/mile to drive.
The Ioniq will cost $.03/mile.
The regular hybrid Prius gets 56 mpg. At the cheapest current (i.e. Texas) gas price of $3/gallon, it would cost $.05/mile to operate.
It will be far less performant than either the Cybertruck or the Ioniq 6, though.
The disparity is still around 28%, which when talking about efficiency is pretty big.
We aren't lithium constrained, we are battery manufacturing capacity constrained. One goal of the IRA (and its EV incentives) is stimulating the build-out of a domestic battery manufacturing supply chain. That battery production capacity is a strategic asset, not just for cars, but also for stationary storage. It's a win-win for energy security and decarbonization.
There are also plugin hybrids that use smaller batteries, but let you use either/both electricity and gasoline (albeit with an efficiency penalty on both drivetrains).
Also, 67% of Americans live in single family homes (mostly suburbia), many with an electrical outlet near their parking spot that they can use to charge their cars. These are also the people who drive the most on a per capita basis.
Depends on the young person. For one thing, I wouldn't recommend that any young person buy a new car unless they are very financially comfortable. But if you don't have a home charger (or nearby DC fast charging) it's not a matter of a recommendation, but rather a physical requirement to get an ICE car, so it might as well be a hybrid.
The Cybertruck is a bad example, being a car that doesn't really exist (they've sold what, a hundred cars?) and that has at best a tiny niche market (man children living their boyhood dreams of driving a Transformer).
Then sub the F150 Lightning or the Rivian and you'll get basically the same numbers.
I agree with the customer characterization (although I suspect that number of such people out there is higher) and from an efficiency perspective it's just as bad as it's more conventional looking EV truck competitors.
EVs are still solidly in the "luxury" category; they're specifically being sold to folks who are not paying attention to the price at the pump in the first place. So I don't understand why "they save you money" is even a selling point at all right now.
Once you see folks replacing their beat-up 1992 Honda Civic with EVs then you'll know that "they save you money" is actually a thing.
I have a 2021 Chevy Bolt, it is not a luxury car, it was hella cheap. My sister-in-law drives for Uber/Lyft and bought a Tesla model 3 because the total cost of ownership is lower than any gas car
A lot of people have weird budgets. So they will think nothing of $1000/month for a car payment, but complain about gas prices that work out to $100/month. They rarely consider that they could get better mileage luxury car for similar monthly payments but using a lot less gas.
Which is to say I do know people who complain about gas prices on their luxury cars.
This is a pretty weak main benefit as ICE cars are already cheap to run. At 12k miles/year, 30 MPG, and $3.20/gallon you are only talking $1300/year in fuel.
According to AAA, taking fuel, maintenance, repair, and tires into account someone driving 15k miles a year would only save $330. Given the cost premium on an EV over a comparable ICE car, I’m not sure you would ever come out ahead, although the cost gap is admittedly shrinking.
There's a section on XKCD 980's chart for that - https://xkcd.com/980/huge/#x=-2004&y=-6294&z=6
While it's a bit dated, you can see the parts with the cost difference and the "if gas was this much".
You can see some things like the Honda Insight (hybrid) has a slightly lower 5 year cost of ownership than the Honda Fit (ICE).
It would be curious to do an update of that part of the chart for current models.
I tend to keep my Vehicles longer than most people, currently I drive a 2015 model.
All that savings goes out the window if I am hit with with $40,000 to $60,000 repair bill to change the battery, even if my entire drive chain goes out in my ICE I am looking at probably $5,000 and that rarely happens.
batteries 100% will need replaced, and ICE can go decades with no major issues
Except global warming.
I think the savings argument often misses the context of discount rate: the NPV of the savings is a lot less than the total savings, especially with high interest rates.
Our utility offers very cheap prices at night, so our Tesla 3 costs $2.25 to fully charge vs. $55-70 for our Forester.
Also, maintenance is cheaper on EVs.
As "somebody who just bought a 2013 Toyota Yaris Hybrid":
Full EVs are for some selected few... Here in Germany it's just homeowners with PV already installed. I did the math before deciding on the hybrid and literally everybody else is paying more for electricity (at 0.4€/kWh) and is producing more CO2 (at avg. 400g/kWh).
I really pity the guys in their Dacia Spring SUVs in the supermarket parking lots (at 0.6€/kWh) who bought a EV to "do the right thing" here.
(That said, that's a problem very unique to Germany ... Most countries around us have cheaper electricity and a smaller CO2 footprint per kWh.)
With fast charging you typically only stop for 15-25 minutes, the infotainment or app does the planning for you, and the frequency you'll have to stop at matches the natural frequency people typically need to stop anyways by design.
"It only takes 5x longer to charge at some specific charging stations that may or may not be conveniently located for your trip, I don't know what's the big deal"
I can see how EV cars are good options for people who live in the city and only go grocery shopping, but for people who have family scattered around the country / continent with young children or babies, it sounds extremely inconvenient.
I have personally found Supercharging to be too fast at times. Multiple times I've had to unplug and move the car because it finished charging before I was ready to leave the restaurant/store. I think people underestimate how long they spend stopped on road trips.
And you bring this up as an advantage of EVs, it's mind blowing.
Not so much an advantage, but a counterpoint to the misinformation that says EVs take 45+ minutes to charge on a Level 3 charger. And also to counter the false belief (present only in EV debates, strangely enough) that the average stop on a road trip is ~2 minutes.
Agree, the average stop is not 2 minutes even with a car, it's not what I was saying. I'm saying that quite often, though, it is really only 2 minutes, and in my opinion, in those scenarios having to deal with a 20 min forced wait time is annoying, and people insisting that "having a nice meal next to the Supercharger" is a valid counterargument is annoying.
Sure, if EVs work out for you, that's awesome, but let's not pretend that the 20 minutes wait time cannot be a disadvantage for some people.
As opposed to taking so long that you can go shopping and have a sit down restaurant meal?
That’s disingenuous because while pumping gas you remain with the vehicle (because it’s quick). With charging an EV, you charge while going inside to use the bathroom and get food. Provided there are available chargers and it is as convenient of an experience as a Tesla charging in a Supercharger, it’s very quick to set up. I drive a lot by myself and can see the convenience of popping it on a charger while running in. I am in and out very quickly, but even that short time can add reasonable distance. With small children it takes longer and you get more of a charge.
It's not disingenuous at all, in fact I think your argument (that I hear over and over again) is misleading or missing the point completely.
Sure, if you need to charge exactly when your family gets hungry or tired and you happen to be exactly at a Supercharger, and the restaurant is exactly the kind of restaurant you like, it's not worse (but not better either) than traditional cars. If any of those conditions are not met, it's now an inconvenience charging your car.
In my experience (Europe), you can't really drive longer than 10 minutes without passing by a petrol station, and you can put gas in your car, pay, and leave easily under five minutes. Then, if everyone in the car feels like it, you can drive again for hours. If someone wants to eat, you can look up which restaurant you want to go to, and stop there. Eat your sandwiches at the top of the mountain while the sun is shining! Or pick anything else you want, Thai, local, Burger King, or get some snacks at a supermarket. ! I can decide which restaurant I go to or where I take my 30 min break, and it is not decided for me by the charger network.
Doesn’t sound like an EV is going to fit in the exact experience you want. That’s ok.
I don’t have an EV, but do drive long distances a lot. I regularly drive for six hours without stopping. I have been scoping out the feasibility of getting an EV and it seems that the Long Range style vehicles would just almost fit into my traveling without any disruption.
To each their own.
Sigh. As someone who just made two different 27 hour drives across the country in the last 6 months, I can tell you this is completely fine. Driving on major US highways you will always be able to plan it out and find one. Plus, I took longer breaks of that size anyway because every 2-3 hours I needed to get out of the car and stretch. Having forced time to get out of the car for a longer trip would have been beneficial for me.
Interesting that you and I evaluated who EVs are good options for completely differently. I've considered getting one for many years but only felt doing so made sense now that I'm moving out of the city to the country in a few weeks.
It never made sense before because I didn't have anywhere to plug an EV in nor did I want the hassle of street parking two vehicles. I have a 4x4 for offroading, mountain biking, and other weekend trips but getting around town on bike/foot/transit was faster day to day.
Now that I have a house and land getting an EV as a daily driver for the 20 to 100 mile round trips I take into town/the city actually makes sense since I have plenty of space to keep multiple cars, can install the necessary charging (and solar) equipment, and don't want to die riding my bicycle on unlit country roads.
I drove Chicago->SF recently. I had to stop for bathroom breaks before gas ran out. And then you might as well fill up the gas and get something to eat. And you should stretch your legs for 5-10 min. Oh what do you know, by now my EV has enough miles to do the same all over again in about 300 miles. And I made the trip in 2 LONG days (36 hours of driving). And EV would not have slowed me down on this breakneck pace. I have no idea where all these families are road tripping off to who have to beat some world record time.
Can one drive continuously without rest stops for more than a couple of hours with children in the car? Even when I'm driving alone, 2 hours is absolutely the limit before my knees force me to stop and stretch my legs for a bit. As long as the charging locations are numerous enough and have all the facilities that people with many children need, isn't it easier to just do both at once? If there are not enough reliable charging points with restaurants, bathrooms, etc., I understand your objection.
this isn't quite accurate. fast charging isn't available everywhere. did a road trip within california a few years ago and our model 3 ruined our trip on the drive from yosemite to sequoia national park. fast chargers became non existant to the point where we had to stop for 2 hours to wait for some low charge place to get us to 40% so we could make it to the next fast charging place.
i'm sure happy path traveling is great, but it becomes stressful as hell very quickly
Right. It's the situation where if everything goes well it's wonderful, but if not it's hell. Until level-3 chargers are available every 25 miles EV's aren't viable for long-distance travel.
"I did a long trip no problem", you say.
Would that have been as pleasant if 10x the number of electric cars were on the road? If you had to wait 45 minutes for a charger to become available due to demand? I doubt it. I have an EV (not a Tesla, one on the CHAdeMO standard) and I love, love, love it for driving around the city, but I don't dare take it on longer trips. Even doing a lot of driving in a single day is dicey in the winter.
Until the charging network is as ubiquitous and reliable as gasoline pumps, EV's will remain a niche.
"Next gas {100+} miles" is a reminder for some cars to fill up their tank... and a significant obstacle for many EVs.
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=5335.0
(I once paid close to $10 USD / gallon (after converting from cpl) diving from Banff to Jasper at a station that had 4 pumps and on that day, a 10 minute wait to get to one of the pumps)
Random off-topic comment, but I like this quote in that thread:
Maybe you did this many years ago, but looking at that route there are superchargers dotted all along that route.
My wife and I own a single family home, a gas-powered car (Toyota Rav4), and an electric car (a standard range Tesla model 3). The electric car is much more convenient for us for city driving and the gas-powered car is much more convenient for road trips.
Refuelling the Rav4 is an errand that takes time, planning, and mental energy. For my wife it's also a low-level danger: women find gas stations spooky, apparently.
Refuelling the Tesla is automatic and effortless. After you park at home, if the charge is <40% then plug it in. The next time you need to drive somewhere it will be full. It took me an afternoon hanging out with my electrician cousin and about $400 in parts from Amazon to build our own at-home electric refuelling station.
Road trips with the Tesla, however, are currently impractical: we end up adding another ~30% to the drive time. With only a ~220 mile range the Tesla needs to stop about every 150 miles for 40 minutes which is brutal. Range anxiety also becomes a much bigger factor driving through more rural areas and your route choices weigh supercharger locations above everything else.
We've got used to the self driving convenience of the Tesla but the Comma[1] on our Rav4 is just about as good for highway driving.
1. https://comma.ai/
This is a big reason I haven't even considered an EV. How I'd find someone to do this work on my garage, and how much it would cost is a huge unknown, and that's just enough friction to simply not consider getting an EV.
My vehicles are first and foremost utilitarian; I use them to get from A to B. EVs make that simple equation "complicated", and I have other issues maintaining a household that demand my attention.
Plug it into any AC outlet. I gain around 50 miles overnight, which is plenty for my commute/errands.
it depends on how much charging you want. all EV's can charge off of a slower 115vac 15amp circuit. At my last place I had a dedicated 40amp 230vac socket much like you'd have installed for a big electric heater in a garage or a pool heater or a dryer. Good recharge times which I actually have only needed once in my life.
At my current place I'm just using an extension cord to my outdoor outlet and I give it the 1500 watt option. You can even cut that in half if you don't want the "my this cord is warm.." effect.
In the end, the slower charge is the better charge, so my laziness has been winning. I don't see installing a 230vac socket any time soon given how well it's been working.
I've got an older phev that originally only got 14 miles of pure electric @ up to 79 mph, it's battery is down to about 9 miles expected. And that isn't a lot, but it is enough for 90% of my trips around town. Where you REALLY see this working well is if you have to go out every day to pick something or someone up locally. The amount of fuel burned on warmup cycles and local trips is not insubstantial.
The gas tank needle just LOVES to move with every small trip otherwise.
I sometimes go months without buying gas using that tiny miniscule range.
Car dealerships will sell the hookups and have connections with local companies who will install for you. No effort required on your part .
I suppose it depends on the length of your commute and what vehicle, but I’ve found that a standard Level 1 charger plugged into a regular outlet, if plugged in all of the time, was more than enough for daily EV commuting. Slow charging is also better for the battery. A lot of people likely don’t need a high powered charger install.
Charging at home is difficult compared to driving to a gas station?
This is all moot. Sodium ion and lfp and newer battery techs will increase range and drop the initial purchase price of EVs under what an ICE can compete with
Some snap in time clickbait article won't change the technological tsunami. Even if the US drags it's feet, the rest of the world will eagerly adopt them. EVs promise energy independent and cheap transport combined with wind / solar.
Every automaker knows this to differing levels of organizational denial, but they all feel it coming.
I have a SR+ and have done about a dozen trips from Lake Tahoe to San Diego and back about 10 hours in a ICE car and 11.25 in my SR+
You really should never be charging past 70% (the exception being before climbing in sub freezing temps in the sierras) on road trips and instead plan to make much shorter charging stops more often. I’m normally out of a supercharger in 15-20 min if I precondition the battery before charging and it’s about the time my wife needs to stop for a pee break anyways so it’s kinda great to stop. Use the restroom and be ready to go again. If you are charging 45 min you are doing it so wrong.
This entire idea just underscores the inane mental burden for the average person just to drive their car long distance.
Maybe it would be, if the Tesla nav system didn't do most of that work for me.
If you ask my Eastern Europe wife, that's pretty much the way she needs to road trip lol. I think if we get it to 3hrs / 15 minutes break it would be perfect. 240km/40 minutes is a bit of a reach.
this is how i road trip generally. i almost never drive more than 3 hours without stopping for coffee/lunch/dinner. And if its more than 300 miles 90% of the time i'm going to fly.
Any time i'm road tripping more than 3 hours i'm trying to find some cute little town along the way to stop in at. Usually these cute little towns have chargers.
Your doctor will tell you stop more often than that. I haven't been able to find anything official though, but nobody says more than 2 hours between breaks for health reasons.
I hope you're really good to that cousin. It's damn hard to get time with skilled contractors.
I don’t think I’ve ever done a 45 minute charge stop in many trips between California and faraway places including Colorado, Montana, and Texas. These are not day trips. People read stuff and just believe it without questioning. Most of my charge stops are much quicker than what you think. 10 minutes usually. Sometimes 20 or more ahead of a long desert stretch where gas stations are also few and far between, but usually 10.
The most priceless thing though is safety for your family. I read about accidents people had in their nice 5 year old gas cars, and it’s just sad to me that they didn’t see the options for what they were, and could have easily afforded a much safer car, but instead based their choices on bad information about supposed long charging times and supposed long lines at chargers.
I'm sorry I was with you until you started talking about safety? Gas cars are not inherently unsafe. Yes, a lot of EVs have very high crash safety ratings but I'd be willing to bet a volvo is safer overall even if tesla has managed to game some scores. I will admit that evs typically have a much lower rollover risk, but frankly stability control will not let you drive a car beyond it's limits. Even a hulking SUV is pretty hard to rollover these days.
I'm sure Volvos are safe (definitely far behind Tesla though, I've owned multiple of both) but now knowing that Volvo is a China owned company, I would never buy one for that reason, nothing to do with safety.
Safety is great in EVs until a battery pops and it takes a 3 alarm fire crew and 36,000 gallons of water to put it out.
https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2024/01/02/unusual...
"I read about accidents people had in their nice 5 year old gas cars" So the question becomes why is "I've read about" a valid response and how does it stand up against "I read about how dangerous EVs are in a random article somewhere online sometime"?
Now post a link abut how often fires happen in gas vehicles versus EVs.
"I read about" is only part of my response, and the rest of my response speaks for itself. One does have to poke beyond what one reads.
Poke beyond the dramatic headlines and you see that if EV batteries ever burn, which they usually don't even in accidents, they always make the news, but they burn slowly, giving occupants ample time to get away assuming they avail themselves of the easily grasped and intuitively placed manual door releases.
Agreed :) I've driven a Wrangler since I got my drivers license (nearly a decade ago) and I am just waiting for the day I am side swiped or my car rolls over due to some unforseen accident. Whether it's my fault or not. I love my car but the safety ratings are abysmal and I for one look forward to the day I have a savings high enough to afford a safe EV.
I've charged my EV at a public charging station less than 5 times in the past year. Instead of a 5 minute stop once a week at a gas station it's 5 seconds every time I get home to plug it in.
Any trip within a 3 hour drive is possible round trip on a single charge. Any trip within a 5 hour drive is possible with no stops and destination charging, actually saving a stop.
Any trip over a 5 hour drive generally takes less time and costs less to fly (I'm sure with many edge cases around rural destinations). Even on long road trips, charging from 20-80% takes 15-20 minutes and most drivers will at least need a bathroom break every 3-4 hours.
New Tesla Model 3 prices are comparable to entry level sedans like the Civic and Camry. Used Chevy Bolt's are abundant at <$20k with much less ongoing maintenance costs versus used gas cars. There aren't yet affordable large SUVs and trucks if those are your only vehicles in consideration.
I was with you until this. This is provably false just by going to the tesla and toyota websites.
Well…
2024 Camry XLE with Nav and Cold Weather - $36,965
Tesla Model 3 - $38,990 - without any credits or subsidies.
But worth noting two things - first, there may be significant State tax credits for buying a Model 3, and the base Model 3 currently doesn’t qualify for the $7,500 Federal subsidy, only as of 12/31/23.
In other words, last week the base Model 3 was at least $7,500 cheaper than $38,990.
Why are you not comparing base prices? This is extremely misleading as you're misrepresenting the Camry and including the rebate (even though you say you're not).
According to their US websites, the 2024 Camry starts at $26,420. The Model 3 starts at $46500 (not including the $7500 rebate).
Base Model 3 in inventory right now near me is $36,440, fyi. LR version is $43,190. Both not including $7500 rebate.
With the rebate a Model 3 is within a couple grand of Camry similarly equipped.
I'd think a bit of inconvenience would be worth it for a better future for your children as well as all the world's children, but I've been around long enough to come to the understanding that that's just wishful thinking on my part; truly you are just one incredibly minuscule drop in the ocean of carbon emissions that will doom us. I don't envy young children the future world they're going to inherit.
Don't worry, at some point those children will grow up. They'll cease to be innocent victims, and will be forced into the same moral compromises that all adults are forced into. My only hope is that some of them will realize how silly their youthful generational blame had been.
I assume all of us heard something to the effect of "you'll understand it when you grow up". Fair enough, but I guess I never really grew up because the older I get, the less I understand any of this really. As far as I can tell, everyone is just trying to "get their kicks in before the whole shithouse goes up in flames" to quote Jim Morrison. I wish I could do that, but it seems to be beyond me not to worry about the future.
Contrary to stereotype, I don't think most adults are _intentionally_ passing the buck to the next generation so much as they are _incidentally_ passing the buck to the next generation. They don't know how to live without producing carbon & other waste, and there are practical expenses they need to answer for. (bills, family members, putting food on the table) Most adults don't have many skills beyond using the infrastructure which is laid out for them. (roads, cars, supermarkets, public schools, available careers, etc.)
And crucially, my point is that today's kids will simply not be in a better situation. They'll have the tools of society at their hands, and in general, not much more. I don't love child labor, but I genuinely have no practical way to know if my clothing was produced via child labor. (I buy 99% of my clothing used, so hopefully that's helping) I don't have any practical way to know if my plastic recycling isn't getting dumped in the ocean in Turkey. I'd like to use less carbon, but my wife isn't willing to live with the heat set any lower than 62 F. Etc. The impacts which I can make are pretty small. Populations are rising, and technology is not the panacea some people think. Technology can improve carbon output, but everyone needs to eat and live. This will always be deleterious to the environment, and the "victim" generation will eventually grow up to be the victimizers as they have to run governments and companies.
They'll be faced with compromises they can't avoid, no matter their politics.
I fully understand all this which is why I've become very sad for the future of humanity; I try to look for reasons for hope, but watching trees die in my hometown while wells failed was very hard. All I can say is that I'm increasingly happy I opted out of the idea of children long ago, because while I used to be jealous of the young for the future they would live to see, I feel exactly the opposite these days.
yes, I had understood that this is time to type GG, we have no chance haha.
I would guess most single family home owners have two or more cars. This is a total guess based on my own situation and those of people I know who own EV’s but most EV owners with a single family home will also own a gas car.
So an EV is more convenient than a gas car for daily commutes because you never have to go to a gas station. For the rare times you go on a long trip, you just take the gas car or you put up with having a longer trip in the EV.
I was curious so looked this up. Not sure how good these stats are, but here's what I found at https://www.thezebra.com/resources/research/car-ownership-st...
The average US household owns 2.28 vehicles. 35% of US households own three or more cars. I found that interesting because almost no household that I personally know owns more than one vehicle (regardless of income level), so there may be large geographical variances here.
Also interesting is that the total number of registered vehicles in the US declined by over 25 million between 2012 and 2019. There is hope!
Really? Awesome! The future is bright indeed. EVs are objectively better than ICE-cars, they don't nearly trash up the city as much as ICE-cars (less noisy, less stinky, no gas stations, nothing trashes up a neighborhood than a gas station), but a lot feel like they have made strides in being safer for pedestrians, cyclists, ...
Hard to square with the overall increased aggressive vibe in overall traffic, more antisocial driving, larger cars, meaner looking cars, ...
I think a household will tend to average on how many adult drivers there are in the home. You don’t want to be stuck at home while someone else is at the gym, store, etc
Out here in the suburbs of Massachusetts, it is very common to see 3 (or more) cars in the driveways of single family homes. In my experience, it's usually because some of the cars belong to one or more of the kids who live there. And each parent usually has their own car.
Growing up, getting a car was a watershed moment for me personally. It marked a transition into a new type of independence from my parents, and also the primary motivation for getting my first job. It was liberating. Out here, it's not feasible to get anywhere, really, without a car. Before getting my own car, if I needed to get somewhere, I had to convince some adult (usually my parents or a friend's parents) to take us there.
Tangent: As someone driving a gas car, I would like to know how your car takes only 2 minutes to refuel. 5 minutes? Certainly, if the station is not getting heavy traffic (which seems to slow the pumps), and on a long trip it's quite likely it will a busy interstate-side station that might get to ten minutes due to slow-flowing gas.
Even so, as we both know, it's unlikely to reach 15 minutes as discussed else-thread, and while I do need breaks on a trip, 15 minutes is about the maximum I want to take unless I'm eating.
Maybe it depends on what you drive? My car takes about 6-7 gallons when empty, but I see tons of other cars taking huge amounts.
Maybe it's a North America thing, but I can't think of a (purely ICE) car here that has anything smaller than a ~13 gallon tank... Maybe there are a few with 10-12 gallon ones, but they'd be outliers for sure.
For a typical family-hauler that's be used on road trips like a Honda Odyssey, 16-20 gallons is totally common.
Huh, I'm in the SF bay area with a prius (advertised as a 11.9 gallon tank, but due to one thing or another, it's never more than 7 even when beeping at me to refill. But I do agree that pretty much every time I fill up and look at what the previous car used, it's some crazy high number in comparison.
I’m in that first group too and I bought a new car in 2023. I went ICE ultimately because I didn’t see many electric options I would want. Cars are part fashion so I wanted to “like it”. But I also mostly car about reliability and longevity as I usually buy new but keep for 10-12 years and don’t want the inconvenience of maintenance beyond the routine stuff. In the past, this put me in a Honda/Toyota but this time I was open and even wanted something more luxurious/expensive.
Most EVs are just unproven in my opinion. Just because it says Mercedes, nice test drive I don’t want to be their EV Guinea pig in terms of long term ownership. Companies like Rivian, cool but way too new for me to even blink an eye at. This basically left me with Tesla as an only option. If you do any research at all you’ll hear/see how hit and miss their build quality is. Seems worse on certain models, but ultimately I also know too much about Musk’s management style and it does the opposite of instilling confidence in the product. I also happen to just not “like” the interior/dash setup. So, I just felt like I was sacrificing /risking too much with EV. The other issue in some cases, the EV has been announced with a release date and accepting deposits but I couldn’t actually purchase one like I needed/wanted too; Too much friction in 2023.
I ended up in a Lexus. Basically the luxury Toyota. So i essentially kept my purchasing behavior unchanged due to not finding any compelling EV, but i kicked some EV tires.
Don't get a Mercedes if you want reliable. Spoken from second hand experience at least.
Toyota and Lexus are hard to beat.
Yeah I have that long standing impression too. Heard a lot of bad stories over the years on all the German manufacturers except maybe VW. It was something I considered sacrificing on as it seems the be a luxury tax of sorts. They do make more luxurious vehicles than Lexus, but it’s pretty marginal IMO after consideration even on their ICE vehicles. I’d probably have gone with a loaded GM/Ford over a German vehicle. Domestic manufactures also have a dealership problem though. They are the sleeziest of them all and I just really get turned off by it. Also, I didn’t need a tank in the Yukon but also didn’t like their smaller SUVs as much.
Curious if you looked at any PHEV options?
It's always the "vacation that I take once a year" that people use as an excuse, meanwhile families are filling two vehicles twice a week.
Get real and get new material.
I recently changed job; I used to fill my car every week now every other week. (60 miles roundtrip to 30 miles roundtrip)
I also have some times where I have to drive 10.2 hours(730 miles one way) almost non-stop. When I have to do something like that, I want to drive. Not stop and wait.
The Tesla trip planner with the Model 3 Long Range edition for that drive show it will take 13h for the same drive so about 28% longer with 4 stops @ 30min each.
Realize that people have different use cases.
It would be cool, if climate change were a convenient truth, rather than slightly inconvenient.
Uhhhh, that's crazy to me. I don't know anyone who drives that far for a holiday, especially with kids.
I do that, can be fun, there is so much to see on the way. Drove last Christmas from Riverside county to Bisbee, AZ and back via San Diego.
During COVID, I drove 24 hours to Florida. Longest stint of driving was 16 hours.
I drove from Reno to LA recently in a Model Y and my charging stops all lined up with bathroom breaks and food. I never actually waited for the charging process itself. It doesn't take 45min and it's not like I have any interest in sitting for more than 3h-4h straight without stopping at all. I've done plenty of long distance trips with my kids and the Tesla and, really, charging is a non-issue.
The only actual negative I have is that chargers aren't as present in remote locations and if it's not a Tesla charger, it's not real. Also when towing a camper uphill to Yosemite, it was stressful but we made it on top.
As more and more people buy EVs, it's not uncommon that the charging infrastructure is not expanding at the same rate. Many EV owners I know, have all experienced to wait in a line for 15 min charge on a trip. Those that have had a Tesla for 7-8 years all agree that it is a relatively new thing.
The infrastructure will improve and will expand to keep up, but it is one of the teething issues that is slowing mass adoption.
Different strokes, different folks.
I prefer stopping every four hours, and making the stop take less than 10 minutes. Having my EV is very much worth it overall, but it _is_ annoying to add more than an hour for every eight hours of driving.
EV stops have a big advantage in that they force you to get out and move around a bit. Sitting in a car all day is bad for you. Taking a break every few hours is good. Walking around during that break is ideal.
You don't want to give yourself a blood clot on a family vacation.
Is there a name for when someone bends over backwards to paint a disadvantage as an advantage? I guess it's the same as the old "It's not a bug, it's a feature!" trope.
Realistically having done road trips, it's stopping every 3 hours and it's not 45 minutes, it's basically the amount of time it takes to get 2 kids out of the car, in to use the restrooms, and back into the car.
That depends; When I had toddlers, like the parent, I would often drive at night while they were asleep.
Now they are older and we travel more in the day but it is around 4 hours and have to schedule a meal.
It all depends on how much importance you put on those few road trips per year. With an EV those few road trips definitely take slightly more time, but the rest of the year (assuming you can charge at home or work) you never go to a gas station or charging station and almost certainly save vastly more time over the entire year.
How often do you do this? Once, maybe twice a year? With my current commute i have to go out of my way to get gas every week. It takes at least 15 minutes extra on my way home (but thats only because the gas station on the route is about $1 a gallon more). i'd be prepared to add an hour twice a year in return for getting 15 minutes back 48 times a year. And the annoyance of having to make an unexpected trip when i was planning to get gas the next day (whereas i could keep an EV charged abouve 50% at all times).
Based upon the amount of comments here this must be a controversial comment but I can’t imagine how you do this. With one toddler, she can barely make a 1 hour trip let alone 11 hours. I could use an electric vehicle with a 90 mile range for that trip because that’s about how often I would need to stop. Props to you for keeping 2 toddlers in the car for 11 hours
I just did a road trip with my family (four kids aged 6-13). If we had an EV, I would have simply topped off the battery any time we stopped for a bathroom break (I get excited whenever we're able to pass a service plaza without someone needing to go).
We're in the first group and it definitely makes sense for us. 90% of our driving is in town, and we can recharge at night in our garage for a small fraction of the cost of gas. We also have 2 young kids. For vacations, camping trips, etc., we would take our Forester (which we already had before we bought an EV), but otherwise we don't need to use it. If we only had one car (and we did for years), we'd keep the EV and would rent an ICE SUV for long-range vacations (which, this being the U.S., we get precious little of), and still save tons of money.
I’m in the first group with a 30 minute commute every morning. With the solar panels on my roof, transportation is essentially free for me.
It's more convenient when you can charge at home overnight when you aren't using the car
Yes, EVs are most convenient for well over half the country. I'd say that we are nowhere near saturation.
But reading the room leads me to believe that there are a lot of people in your target demographic who think that EVs are for city dwellers.
The biggest issues for getting from 10% to ~50% are communication, price, and availability.
An EV just doesn't do anything that my 2007 Pontiac Vibe doesn't do better. My car is worth about $3,000. It:
- Has a 400 mile range
- Can stop anywhere and refuel in just a few minutes, including very isolated areas
- Plays all the music I want
- Hauls anything I want (ie. I don't care if I trash the interior with a pile of mulch on a plastic tarp)
- I can sleep in the back
- Fits in nicely in my lower middle class neighborhood
- Has plenty of spare parts at the junkyard if I need to repair it
On top of that, it doesn't require a #$@# subscription, doesn't force me into some plutocrat's idea of an infotainment system, isn't tracked remotely, with that data being sold to randos, and doesn't cost as much as a Master's degree. Last thing is that while EVs are probably more environmentally friendly than a new ICE car, they still don't compete with a used one from the aughts over their lifetime.
Until you get in an accident. If you can afford a newer car, I hope your understandable affection for your Pontiac isn’t causing you to unknowingly significantly compromise your safety.
The tragedy of the commons perfectly encapsulated. Until this government has the courage for top down intervention, either people choose to be part of the problem or choose to be part of the solution.
I'm not sure which side I'm on in your comment ;) Right now I'm focusing on the first 2 R's of the 3 R's (reduce, reuse, and recycle). I'm reducing my footprint by reusing an existing car and fixing it with used parts when I can. This vs saving a little carbon over long, long run by buying an EV? I still don't think an EV has a smaller footprint than a used ICE car but I could be wrong.
I was referring more to the large vehicle arms race.
I'd agree that's probably the most environmentally conscious approach. I'm somewhat similar, holding on to an old car, but more almost out of spite than any sort of rational consideration haha.
EVs that catch fire are impossible to extinguish. EVs that are involved in accidents are recommended to be stored 50 feet apart and monitored by thermal cameras due to the tremendous risk of battery fires. It is not economical to fix EVs at this time. Someone was just quoted $60k to fix a Hyundai Ioniq because of dents on the bottom panel. Insurance companies, parking garages, and ferries are beginning to wise up and want nothing to do with EVs.
Nevermind that half of the EVs out there don't have conventional mechanical door latches to let people out of the car should the power fail. EVs are far heavier than standard cars. I heard that they don't crumple as much either, to protect the battery from causing a bigger disaster. Rigid vehicles cause much more harsh deceleration in a crash, which is likely much worse for the people in the car. Look up the Youtube channels MGUY Australia or Geoff Buys Cars if you want some real dirt on EVs.
Passenger EVs are barely practical, risky, and not nearly as environmentally sustainable as the marketing says. EV trucks (consumer and commercial) are a sick joke.
There are little kernels of truth sprinkled throughout your comment, but much of it is FUD. EVs aren't chinese scooters primed to burst into flame at a moment's notice. They're as safe as gas cars (though i would like to see data on injuries per 100,000 mi instead of safety ratings as those can be gamed)
In the event of an accident, what happens to the 2007 Pontiac that doesn’t happen to a newer EV?
There are some significant engineering advantages to not having an engine. The crumple zones are overall more effective.
The Vibe isn't bad at all, though. I wouldn't switch just for safety ratings.
There was a huge leap in auto safety from 2000 to 2010 due to the increased use of high strength steel. I don't doubt that a modern car today is after than a 2007 model, but by how much? 5%? 10%? It's very hard to quantify.
Also a lot of what makes modern cars 'safer' is the inclusion of nannyTech such as stability control, automatic braking, etc. All of this is great, but if you were already a safe driver, there's little additional safety for you personally.
To be fair to your last paragraph, you're less annoyed at EVs than at new cars in general. All new cars are trending towards this, with a few stragglers for the models that haven't been refreshed in a while.
This is so true. Even an ICE car has those problems.
Most of your issues have nothing to do with EVs, tbh. :lol
Your Vibe fills up in your garage while you are sleeping? Cool.
I don't need it to, and I don't need a separate room in my freakin' house for a car. I spend 5 minutes while I'm washing the windows and then it's done.
This is where I am too. When I finally sold my ‘90-era beater, I upgraded to a 2009. It does everything I need it to, and importantly, doesnt have those anti-features of new cars (EV or otherwise). I don’t know what I’m going to do in 15 years when it’s time to sell this one. Car companies are not really making products for guys like us today.
I would simplify this down to just price. Price is a signaling mechanism in the market, which takes care of both communication and availability.
Nobody would need to communicate the virtues of an EV if it's priced like a Toyota Corolla with sufficient range.
EVs aren't cheap either, in 2 years one will get better battery tech and a new connector, plus whatever deprecation the battery will go through if you buy one today. 2023-4 and earlier EVs will lose a huge chunk of their worth once NACS cars with better than 200 mile range become available
The value of my leased Volvo C40 has already fallen off a cliff and is less than my residual value. Once my lease is over there will be an NACS EX-30 that will be cheaper brand new, than what Volvo are charging for me to keep my old connector used battery car
Bolt starts at ~$26k. Civic starts at just under $24k. The Bolt is a mediocre road tripper, but lots of cars in that segment are just commuters that only very occasionally road trip. It'd be a great choice for a lot of people.
Bolt can't fast charge, at some point we need to look beyond the single family home consumer
My Bolt supports DC charging at 55 kW. What is considered “fast?”
The OG Tesla chargers charged at 125kW but the standard ones now charge at 250kW and a select few newer cars charge at 350kW.
55kW sounds like it uses Chademo?
it uses CCS
Bolt can absolutely fast charge, I've done it myself — the feature has to be added when purchasing, and it's limited to 55kW (~80% in an hour depending on conditions). The slower rate is partially how they kept the price down AFAIK.
Thankfully, DCFC is now standard! The rate isn't phenomenal, just as you pointed out, but this car competes with Civics. Many of those are purely commuter cars that might only very rarely do 300-400 miles.
It is a great vehicle.
Sure, but we don't have to look past them to get to 50% market share. The market can grow by 5x without moving past them.
The problem in the US is that you have to have really large market share to start convincing property owners that they should install chargers. Thankfully, we are seeing this, with widespread installations at hotels this year. I'm guessing apartments won't be too far behind that in metropolitan areas.
Looks like it starts at 28.5. Low-end IC cars (with more range and convenience) start at ~15-16k new in the US. (Kia, Nissan, etc).
That's a huge difference when that's the price range you're shopping, with added benefits of higher issue rates and less convenience when it comes to charging.
For a lot of commuters, the EV will be more convenient. Getting out of the car during the commute home (or worse, the commute to work) was never fun.
I don't want a $26k car. Back in 2014, I bought a base model Ford Fiesta for $14k. Modern cars are badly overpriced, which is part of why people are holding onto used cars so strongly.
What do you think current ranges are? There are very few EVs available with less than 200 miles of range. The Leaf and that Mazda thing are the only ones I know of.
I think the market for the current lineup of EVs is tapping out.
My wife and I own one that was very comparably equipped to a similar luxury crossover / SUV, and the type of driving we do in that car is perfectly within the capabilities of our range & charging habits. Never going to gas stations or getting the annual oil change is a nice convenient perk for us. But we fit right in this targeted demographic:
1) Can afford an expensive, new car 2) Own a home and can install an EV charger 3) Have a second ICE vehicle for long trips
However, I can't imagine many people wanting EVs who fit this criteria don't have one by now. If the manufacturers want to keep selling EVs, they'll need to figure out how to replace the 2015 Accords and Tahoes without access to charging at home.
Hi! I'm one of these people. All three of those conditions are true for me, and yet I don't own an EV. Why? Because it seems like the technology is going to be much much better and cheaper in 5 years or less, and I'd hate to drop a big ball of cash on a new EV today when I can probably get either a better new one or a cheaper used one in just a couple of years.
It's obviously a matter of personal priorities. Someone might opt for 5 years of convenience vs potentially saving 10K and other person might opt to wait 5 years and save 10K.
I've been thinking about this same thing lately since I will soon fit those conditions as well and I think at least for me personally this year may be the best time to buy one.
While I agree the technology will be better and cheaper 5 years from now that will always be the case and it seems like we are past the point of exponential improvements in short periods of time. Current EVs meet or exceed my needs regarding range, reliability, and performance so I don't have a quantitative goalpost that needs to be reached anymore.
What is really pushing me over the line though is changes to the relevant financial incentives. The new income caps mean I still qualify for the $7,500 tax rebate because I took a bunch of time off work in 2023 but will no longer be eligible after this year. I can't see the technology improving so much in the next few years it outweighs that discount combined with not having to wait.
Eh, I don't see it. Not a lot has changed in the last few years. They're all using lithium ion battery packs built around similar tech, and around 60kWh seems to be the standard sweet-spot. L2 charging is the most common (at home especially), and that hasn't changed in over a decade. They mostly have similar propulsion systems and similar efficiency. The good ones all have battery heating/cooling to extend battery life, and have for some time.
The only major thing that has really altered has been the speed of DC fast charging. Which, TBH, is something that is only used on road trips, and takes a toll on battery life if you use it frequently anyways. So while I'd love an EV with really high kW DC fast charge, it's not something I'd make as my primary concern.
FWIW, I'm in a 2017 Chevy Volt and drive it 95% electric only and have felt no real urge to upgrade. I'd love a bigger battery, and DC fast charge, I guess. But the actual electric driving experience isn't appreciably different on newer BEVs. I'll drive it into the ground for another 5 years, and then get an EV with a bigger battery.
Toyota and others have spread a bit of FUD with promises of solid state batteries and the like, but I actually think EV technology right now is pretty mature and good. What's needed is infrastructure for apartment buildings, and city streets etc. for charging and that will only happen once consumers push for it.
And, yeah, vehicle makers need to make economy-class EVs. That just hasn't happened yet in North America even though it absolutely could with battery prices being what they are now.
You definitely don't need a second ICE car for long trips. We don't have one. Long trips in our EV work perfectly.
To say “definitely” don’t need one with near zero information on what a long trip constitutes is wild.
Do you tow anything on your long trips? Go into extremely cold environments? Go into areas with no or minimal charging infrastructure? Does the endpoint of your journey lack power outlets?
Uh, that market is far far from tapped out. Just drive around any neighborhood that likely fits those characteristics and the vast majority of cars you'll see are still ICE (maybe hybrid).
This is a big factor and one I note to anyone I know who is thinking of buying an EV. You don't want to be stuck with a dead end tech. Buying a non-Tesla that hasn't already adopted the north american charger is a foolish move at this point. I'm sure there will be conversion kits for many models at some point but that's another cost and one you likely want to have a professional do. Best to either buy a Tesla or just wait a year or two.
Somebody check my facts here, but isn't the NACS/Tesla charging standard just CCS with a different plug? Shouldn't the CCS-to-NACS adapters available today work seamlessly both now and in the future? Am I missing something here?
They are, but Tesla makes it difficult for non tesla owners to use their chargers as they have no built in 'pay here' infrastructure (at least from what I've seen)
I'd take that even further. EVs make the most sense when all the conditions you noted are satisfied, _and_ the family can afford at least two cars, and it's not important that both cars have long range, and the family can afford the extra up-front cost of the EV. I've got a Nissan Frontier and a Nissan Leaf. The Leaf is older (2017) and has a degraded battery. (about 80% of its original life, and approximately 100 miles of range) The Leaf is very convenient for my wife, but primarily because she doesn't have a commute, and we have a more practical family car in situations where the EV won't cut it. Her mother lives with us, and also has a gas car as an additional backup.
We got the Leaf for $11k used, and if the EV were our only car we'd have had to spend significantly more on a car with much more range (at least 230 miles or more) and we'd have required the installation of a fast charger to handle the longer range. (120v charging is really pretty suitable for a car with only 100 miles of range.) All of these would have introduced significant costs and constraints, which were only offset by the very low price of a used Leaf, and the fact that we always have a backup option.
So you're saying EVs make the most sense for "people who buy cars?"
Can't fault manufacturers for targeting that audience.
Anyway you are pulling on the thread of unique selling points (USPs) which are among the many prevailing traditions in autos sales. I don't know how much they really matter in a secular sense.
I meet all the requirements you listed, but I _also_ need to make a 310 mile trip (1 way) fairly regularly. In a Prius, I can do that on one tank. In an EV, you've added at least 30-60 minutes to each leg of the trip, unless you spring for higher end models.
From what I’m reading EVs are around 1% of total cars and around 10% of new car sales in the U.S., while at least 60% of housing units are single family homes.
Not all single family homes have driveways or garages- so not all are equipped for electric vehicle charging.
there will be adapters that will make current models compatible with Tesla's network once the switch is made(at least for Polestar, not sure about other brands)
Adapters are incredibly annoying.
The problems for me are a few.
EVs cost more.
EVs take more than a couple of mins to "gas up".
EV range is still lacking, compared to available charging stations, imo.
When the market gets it right, I'll jump in with both feet, but I'm not spending twice the money on a car, then deal with horse shit like Tesla and others when it comes to service visits, scheduling, etc.
If they are full EVs and not PHEVs they also make the most sense for households that have multiple cars where one of the other cars is a gas car. While the vast majority of trips are short, and charger networks are improving, a lot of people in the US drive longer distances at least occasionally, so it is much easier to replace one out of two cars in a household an electric car than switch to only using electric cars.
I think that once enough people have EVs and the charger networks are better this will be less of an issue, but a lot of people seem to downplay this issue, which I think is not a good idea, because I think there's a genuine risk that there could be a chicken and egg problem to mass adoption of EVs where the market of people who are able to use an EV in 2024 could be saturated before enough people are using EVs to build out the charger network sufficiently.
This is why I bought a PHEV. Only one car, 90% of the time we're on electric, and I still have the gas engine for when I want to go far.
I'm on the single family home case and would really like to buy the ID Buzz to replace our Atlas (always wanted to own a Konbi) but it would be the second car in the home, we'd still keep our combustion SUV for the long trips and I think this is a lot of the current market for EVs.
Trouble is that pricing is awful, availability is also awful (there's still no date for when the Buzz will be around in the US) and I'm pretty happy with the gas price at the moment, so other than hype to buy a Tesla there's not much reason to buy electric at the moment.
2/3 of Americans live in a home they or their immediate family own. They’re like 2% of car sales. The market is far from saturated.
The reality is that range just isn’t there for most people, and the extra cost of an EV is far more than fuel savings.
It’s going to take a better battery chemistry. That’s it.
All people in my network have moved on from EVs being the “solution” to transport
The real solution we seem to roughly agree upon is getting cars as a whole off the road where possible
Permanent investment in mass transit and any tech which plugs the gaps is the way forward in our view
The often subpar urban planning in North America (think Phoenix not Montreal) is simply incompatible with a sustainable and decarbonised future
Insisting on EVs over hybrids in the 2020s is a laughable total solution to the current situation we find ourselves in