8 ms·

The US Refuses to Fall in Love with Electric Cars

17 points by lots2learn 5y ago

asow92 5y ago
I will love an EV when it is affordable and convenient for me.
aurizon 5y ago
Just view the price of gas/diesel in Europe versus Europe - a direct result of the ~~ 100 year petro-lobby, coupled with less space in Europe on roads and the lack of lobbying. Prices in Euros/liter 1 US Gallon = 3.79 Liters. https://autotraveler.ru/spravka/benzine-in-europe-previous.html#.Ye7jNf7MJaQ https://autotraveler.ru/spravka/benzine-in-europe-previous.h... That says it all. In the USA gas/diesel cars are favored greatly over electric. I even expect the petro lobby to get battery car taxes legislated soon..
- aerostable_slug 5y ago
  Mileage-based taxes are already being formulated because modern, efficient vehicles have meant lower gas tax revenues. EVs just add to that "pain". It's less a product of the petroleum lobby than the desire to keep tax revenues high.
  - rdtwo 5y ago
    In my progressive state EVs get taxed more than gas vehicles and plug in hybrids get hit with both.
    - aurizon 5y ago
      That is a very regressive state. I know they have the desire to pay for roads, but I suspect they just blow a good part on 'general revenue' = no longer accountable.
  - aurizon 5y ago
    Yes, not a good way to reduce carbon use - going forward = taxes on bicycles/ebikes?
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
The charging infrastructure, or lack thereof, is a huge obstacle. The US is a big place and an EV is still a risky bet if you ever have to drive long distances. Available charging networks are still kind of unpredictable. Getting advertised charging rates is rare. Most people I know want an EV, but they’re keenly aware that the next generation or two of EVs and charging networks will be substantially better. Waiting a few iterations is not a bad strategy.
- dont__panic 5y ago
  Personally a hard blocker for me is the charging networks -- I really, really, really do not want to invest in a car whose charging network languishes while I'm still relying on that car day-to-day. Tesla's network should be forced open to all EVs and a common charger standard should be mandated going forward. Until that happens I'm not touching EVs with a ten foot pole.
  - rnk 5y ago
    Why should tesla be forced to open their network? They had the foresight to build it out ahead of time. I think it would be better to incentivize other networks to do better and compete with tesla.
    - dont__panic 5y ago
      Why should gas stations be forced to open their networks? Why should AT&T home internet let you sign up for Comcast or Google Fiber? Why should Verizon let you take a device you bought through them to T-Mobile? Why should Edge let you download Firefox? I'll give you a few options: consumer choice, freedom, interoperability, less physical waste?
    - bdcravens 5y ago
      Doesn't matter; Tesla has already said they would, and started the pilot program a couple of months ago. (not in the US yet however) https://www.tesla.com/support/non-tesla-supercharging https://www.tesla.com/support/non-tesla-supercharging But to answer your bigger point: others networks aren't incentivized yet to push harder to compete. The demand just isn't there yet. For EVs to be successful in the US, there needs to be more than one successful company. This is a goal that is bigger than capitalism, and sometimes you have to work at odds with capitalism to accomplish those kind of goals.
thecrumb 5y ago
Make one that looks like a 4x4 (doesn't have to be, it'll never go offroad) and is about 2-3x as big as it really needs to be and I'm sure it'll sell...
- aerostable_slug 5y ago
  The company you're looking for is Rivian. FWIW, their vehicles' feature set looks extremely cool for people who do in fact go offroad, but I'm sure many will never leave the pavement.
  - rdtwo 5y ago
    Features are there for folks that don’t need to go far to off-road. But few can really afford to off-road a 80k car
allears 5y ago
I'm totally in love with EVs, but I'll never be able to afford a new one. Until there's attractive options for reasonable prices in the used market, I'll just have to watch folks wealthier than me enjoy their EVs.
- mythrwy 5y ago
  These may be vaporware ultimately but it's still interesting. They aren't supposed to cost much more then a ICE does currently. https://aptera.us/ https://aptera.us/ (of course it's much less of a car for the money)
- soylentcola 5y ago
  Yep. I can figure out a way around charging hurdles on the rare occasions I drive outside the same ~80km range (and usually more like 10km range) I travel in a normal month. But I got my used, low-mileage Fit for under $10k cash. While I understand even that sort of thing is harder to find these days, it'll still be a while before I can find a solid, cheap EV with roughly similar capabilities. On top of that, people like me (live in an urban area, drive short distances) have it tough because we park on the street, not in a garage. Makes it a lot harder to justify If I can't just plug in every night. It's really a shame, because I'd be on board for just about every other aspect of an EV. Hopefully down the line I'll see a decent used market emerge and/or we'll sort out some sort of way for city folks to charge easily. But I can't currently consider an EV as a mostly-drop-in replacement for a used, economy ICE car.
digisign 5y ago
Having every move I make, including every fill-up catalogued for corps and govts then sold to a string of highest bidders is a non-starter for me. Luckily don't drive much, will be sticking with classic cars (circa 2000 :) for the foreseeable future.
- BluePen8 5y ago
  Unless you go through the bother of paying cash every time, it's probably pretty safe to assume VISA is selling the same data. Most gas stations are owned by large chains, I assume they're doing it too. Some stores I visit literally pull up my email for e-receipt from my credit card alone. There's also tracking systems (often used in malls) that use our phone's Bluetooth and Wifi signature to track us as we go store to store. Some use facial recognition as well. There was a lawsuit here in Canada because police cars are equipped with license plate scanners which run 24/7, and retain all the data. Wouldn't even be a lawsuit if it was a private entity. Our cell phone carriers also sell this data. Anonymized sure, but there's enough data points to figure out who is who, especially if paired with another data source. There's also companies that sell a constant feed of satellite imaging. Hedge funds buy it so they can track cars in an out of oil refiners, to better estimate production figures, or setbacks if they see a bunch of emergency response vehicles. I also have an appreciation for my older non-connected vehicles, but let's be real, the ship has sailed on being tracked everywhere we go. I may not like it, but I accept I'm always being tracked a dozen different ways no matter what I do. I'm just glad I'm not anyone important or a political dissident, this would not be a good era for that.
  - digisign 5y ago
    True, everyone is trying. I do use cash and other mitigations. My point is that whenever possible, I choose when to share data, when it benefits me. Not the other way around.
- teachrdan 5y ago
  I sympathize with your comment. But doesn't this apply to ALL new vehicles? Can you help me understand how it's specific to electric vehicles?
mikewarot 5y ago
Not only are there Charging Network issues, but Tesla has what appears to be a huge problem with supplying repair parts and service. Here are two of the biggest Tesla fan boys around, calling them out on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZG7iAMxTUA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZG7iAMxTUA
- rnk 5y ago
  I'm stunned that a car company in today's world has a problem with supplying needed parts for their cars. It looks like only tesla has this problem. /s. More seriously, tesla does need to do better, their service network is behind their growth in sales, even though they've been steadily increasing their service centers.
  - mattbrewsbytes 5y ago
    I see the "/s" but seriously you can go to nearly any auto parts store and buy parts for an ICE vehicle. There are people that change their own oil, brakes, water pumps, etc. to save on labor. Most auto repair shops can do the majority of maintenance and since there are multiple third-party part vendors you have options on price, performance, etc. This combined with 5 figure battery replacement costs and the inconveniences of charging networks will keep US car buyers from "falling in love" with EV's for a long time.
legerdemain 5y ago
US is vast and sparsely populated. It takes many hours to reach the next closest city to Denver or SLC. China is small (compared to the US) and extremely dense. China has tons of cheap, subsidized electricity due to its love for coal. The present US administration hates coal, coal power plants, and coal mining. No cheap electricity == no incentive to buy an EV.
- dont__panic 5y ago
  I am not sure if it's fair to say that China is small compared to the USA: https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/country-size-comparison/china/united-states https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/country-size-comparison/chin... Though that is using the Mercator projection, you can at least tell that the contiguous USA is damn similar to China in scale. Perhaps China is even more biased towards the one coastline, with sparse settlements to the West, but the USA essentially has a massive deserve/mountain range in the middle, too.
  - legerdemain 5y ago
    China's area is about 92,000 square miles less than the area of the US. The difference becomes more dramatic if you don't include Alaska.
    - dont__panic 5y ago
      Of course. But if you compare contiguous US (where 99% of people live and where 99% of people drive) to mainland China, you get very similar numbers. We don't include Puerto Rico or Hawaii or US military bases abroad in that square mileage of generally drivable US for the same reason.
rdtwo 5y ago
The problem for me is price. I think the segment of the population that buys most of the new cars is pretty small and they dictate the cars that later show up on the market for the rest of us. Electric cars are not really hot with that demographic so they never really penetrate the rest of the segment. Electric trucks are cool though so I expect once volume of mfg picks up we will see good adoption
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  With the different maintenance schedules of EVs the used market is forever going to shift with EVs and I think there's a lot of missing education of what that means, especially with respect to market prices, and it may take some time for the used market to adapt. EVs seem to be causing a permanent shift of "Time Under First Owner". Fewer required maintenance milestones early in ownership seem to create incentives to own the car for longer. Some of the people regularly buying/leasing new cars create a lot of their turnover simply to avoid maintenance costs and with less overall maintenance, especially early in the life of vehicle, there's less incentive for turnover. The other thing that influences prices in the used market is that turnover point and if it's maintenance-forced the first owners are more willing to sell for less if they pass on the maintenance burden to the next owner (or more likely the middleman in between the two; the used car market equivalent of a "house flipper", buy the car cheap because it needs a bunch of maintenance that you can do at reasonable cost and flip it back into the used market for a much higher price). That "opportunity cost" also seems to be disappearing with EVs. EVs don't as often have thousands of dollars of (deferred) maintenances costs at the 5 year/10 year horizon and there's much less to "flip". A lot of EVs go directly from the first owner to the second without even needing to show up on the used markets, and certainly without needing to go through major maintenance. That, naturally, drives up prices. So far trends seem to imply that the used market isn't seeing many EVs not because new car buyers aren't buying them ("hot" or not), but that first owners are holding them longer and when they do sell them it often isn't through the "traditional" used market and when it is its usually still at a premium because there just isn't (deferred) maintenance generally driving costs down as in the traditional new ICE to used ICE market pipeline. I don't know what your budget is specifically, but the economics shifts here indicate that it may be time to start budgeting for a new car if you truly want an EV any time soon. The math is very different from the old math of buying/leasing an ICE vehicle, because of the different realities of maintenance costs alone, and it can be worth reevaluating that math in your personal case, because those assumptions changed. Which isn't to say that EV costs can't be driven down. Both EU and Asia are at a point where economies of scale are starting to kick in and average new EV costs have met or fallen below new ICE vehicle costs (in the EU mostly just for "diesel" vehicles still, but other categories may not be far behind; in the Chinese market it seems like EVs are winning in price in almost every car segment now). It will likely be a while before the US hits anything remotely similar in economies of scale precisely because of this chicken-and-egg that American consumers aren't buying enough EVs yet and many won't until prices drop. [1] It certainly doesn't help that the US is still fixated on heavier, more resource needy, segments like Trucks and SUVs, which drive prices back up in their own ways even with economies of scale behind them. [1] This chicken-and-egg is also why eyes need to be on the imports horizon if you are looking for cheaper prices. It's exactly the sort of situation that made Japanese imports the cars to beat in the US in the 1980s and with Chinese manufacturers in seemingly a cat-bird seat now in terms of economies of scale for EVs there's a lot of interesting questions if Chinese manufacturers are about close enough to do cross over to the US EV market today similar to the market conditions that gave Japanese manufacturers such 1980s market power. So far Tesla is the US company incumbent to beat in EV sales, and the other US companies are greatly lagging behind. Imports may be hugely disruptive here in the US.
thatguy0900 5y ago
I live in an apartment complex that has cars parked along all of the roads because there's not enough parking spots. That's pretty common for apartments. Maybe, on paper, there's at least one spot per building, but not next to your building in particular and most apartments will have multiple car owners. And none of those spots have outlets. Even with a law making every spot have outlets, I frequently get off work and arrive to no open spots and parking on the streets. I cannot afford to gamble around on whether I'll be able to charge my car tonight or not. I really don't see how electric cars could work in that scenario.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  While that is a major concern, and similar to why I didn't get an electric car... you might be able to charge it at work. I work remote still, so I can't do this, but if you're going to work, this might be a way to ensure you're charged.
  - WorldMaker 5y ago
    Plus: you may have enough battery range that you don't need to charge every day anyway (making it much less of a "gamble" and more an intentional risk assessment) and some EV owners already live/work on once a week or two trips to a fast charger rather than daily charging. In some cases daily charging is a huge "bonus".
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  Street parking can have outlets, too. It's going to take some municipal power to get there and right now maybe not a lot of cities are thinking that far ahead, but it is something that eventually cities will have to ask themselves if they want to help fix and how. Many cities already have electrically wired parking meters today and adding a plug on the side of that isn't a major technical hurdle, it's much more a sociopolitical hurdle.
uejfiweun 5y ago
EVs right now are not a good value proposition for a first car. The range is too low, the chargers are too hard to find, charging takes too long, the cars are too expensive, repairs are way more expensive, and they don't really help the environment all that much. It would be far more useful to me to get an ICE car which will be far cheaper and more reliable as my only vehicle. Now this being said, I do think EVs make sense as a "daily driver", i.e. you only take your EV to work and the grocery store, and plug it in at night. Unfortunately this kind of requires a permanent residence, which nobody can afford right now. Very excited for when EVs have 1000+ miles of range, charge quickly, and have more supporting infrastructure. But my guess is that this is at least 10 years off.
fetus8 5y ago
I would happily buy an EV once the designs start to resemble more of ICE cars. I really don't like the aesthetics of most of the EVs on the road today. If say Volvo made their current V60 wagon with an electric motor option, I would jump on it. I know Audi has the etron, Ford has electrified some of their vehicles, and GM/Chevy is starting to do this as well. I imagine I'm driving my last ICE car as of now...

17 points by lots2learn 5y ago

I will love an EV when it is affordable and convenient for me.

Just view the price of gas/diesel in Europe versus Europe - a direct result of the ~~ 100 year petro-lobby, coupled with less space in Europe on roads and the lack of lobbying. Prices in Euros/liter 1 US Gallon = 3.79 Liters. https://autotraveler.ru/spravka/benzine-in-europe-previous.html#.Ye7jNf7MJaQ https://autotraveler.ru/spravka/benzine-in-europe-previous.h... That says it all. In the USA gas/diesel cars are favored greatly over electric. I even expect the petro lobby to get battery car taxes legislated soon..

aerostable_slug 5y ago
Mileage-based taxes are already being formulated because modern, efficient vehicles have meant lower gas tax revenues. EVs just add to that "pain". It's less a product of the petroleum lobby than the desire to keep tax revenues high.
- rdtwo 5y ago
  In my progressive state EVs get taxed more than gas vehicles and plug in hybrids get hit with both.
  - aurizon 5y ago
    That is a very regressive state. I know they have the desire to pay for roads, but I suspect they just blow a good part on 'general revenue' = no longer accountable.
- aurizon 5y ago
  Yes, not a good way to reduce carbon use - going forward = taxes on bicycles/ebikes?

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

The charging infrastructure, or lack thereof, is a huge obstacle. The US is a big place and an EV is still a risky bet if you ever have to drive long distances. Available charging networks are still kind of unpredictable. Getting advertised charging rates is rare. Most people I know want an EV, but they’re keenly aware that the next generation or two of EVs and charging networks will be substantially better. Waiting a few iterations is not a bad strategy.

dont__panic 5y ago
Personally a hard blocker for me is the charging networks -- I really, really, really do not want to invest in a car whose charging network languishes while I'm still relying on that car day-to-day. Tesla's network should be forced open to all EVs and a common charger standard should be mandated going forward. Until that happens I'm not touching EVs with a ten foot pole.
- rnk 5y ago
  Why should tesla be forced to open their network? They had the foresight to build it out ahead of time. I think it would be better to incentivize other networks to do better and compete with tesla.
  - dont__panic 5y ago
    Why should gas stations be forced to open their networks? Why should AT&T home internet let you sign up for Comcast or Google Fiber? Why should Verizon let you take a device you bought through them to T-Mobile? Why should Edge let you download Firefox? I'll give you a few options: consumer choice, freedom, interoperability, less physical waste?
  - bdcravens 5y ago
    Doesn't matter; Tesla has already said they would, and started the pilot program a couple of months ago. (not in the US yet however) https://www.tesla.com/support/non-tesla-supercharging https://www.tesla.com/support/non-tesla-supercharging But to answer your bigger point: others networks aren't incentivized yet to push harder to compete. The demand just isn't there yet. For EVs to be successful in the US, there needs to be more than one successful company. This is a goal that is bigger than capitalism, and sometimes you have to work at odds with capitalism to accomplish those kind of goals.

thecrumb 5y ago

Make one that looks like a 4x4 (doesn't have to be, it'll never go offroad) and is about 2-3x as big as it really needs to be and I'm sure it'll sell...

aerostable_slug 5y ago
The company you're looking for is Rivian. FWIW, their vehicles' feature set looks extremely cool for people who do in fact go offroad, but I'm sure many will never leave the pavement.
- rdtwo 5y ago
  Features are there for folks that don’t need to go far to off-road. But few can really afford to off-road a 80k car

allears 5y ago

I'm totally in love with EVs, but I'll never be able to afford a new one. Until there's attractive options for reasonable prices in the used market, I'll just have to watch folks wealthier than me enjoy their EVs.

mythrwy 5y ago
These may be vaporware ultimately but it's still interesting. They aren't supposed to cost much more then a ICE does currently. https://aptera.us/ https://aptera.us/ (of course it's much less of a car for the money)
soylentcola 5y ago
Yep. I can figure out a way around charging hurdles on the rare occasions I drive outside the same ~80km range (and usually more like 10km range) I travel in a normal month. But I got my used, low-mileage Fit for under $10k cash. While I understand even that sort of thing is harder to find these days, it'll still be a while before I can find a solid, cheap EV with roughly similar capabilities. On top of that, people like me (live in an urban area, drive short distances) have it tough because we park on the street, not in a garage. Makes it a lot harder to justify If I can't just plug in every night. It's really a shame, because I'd be on board for just about every other aspect of an EV. Hopefully down the line I'll see a decent used market emerge and/or we'll sort out some sort of way for city folks to charge easily. But I can't currently consider an EV as a mostly-drop-in replacement for a used, economy ICE car.

digisign 5y ago

Having every move I make, including every fill-up catalogued for corps and govts then sold to a string of highest bidders is a non-starter for me. Luckily don't drive much, will be sticking with classic cars (circa 2000 :) for the foreseeable future.

BluePen8 5y ago
Unless you go through the bother of paying cash every time, it's probably pretty safe to assume VISA is selling the same data. Most gas stations are owned by large chains, I assume they're doing it too. Some stores I visit literally pull up my email for e-receipt from my credit card alone. There's also tracking systems (often used in malls) that use our phone's Bluetooth and Wifi signature to track us as we go store to store. Some use facial recognition as well. There was a lawsuit here in Canada because police cars are equipped with license plate scanners which run 24/7, and retain all the data. Wouldn't even be a lawsuit if it was a private entity. Our cell phone carriers also sell this data. Anonymized sure, but there's enough data points to figure out who is who, especially if paired with another data source. There's also companies that sell a constant feed of satellite imaging. Hedge funds buy it so they can track cars in an out of oil refiners, to better estimate production figures, or setbacks if they see a bunch of emergency response vehicles. I also have an appreciation for my older non-connected vehicles, but let's be real, the ship has sailed on being tracked everywhere we go. I may not like it, but I accept I'm always being tracked a dozen different ways no matter what I do. I'm just glad I'm not anyone important or a political dissident, this would not be a good era for that.
- digisign 5y ago
  True, everyone is trying. I do use cash and other mitigations. My point is that whenever possible, I choose when to share data, when it benefits me. Not the other way around.
teachrdan 5y ago
I sympathize with your comment. But doesn't this apply to ALL new vehicles? Can you help me understand how it's specific to electric vehicles?

mikewarot 5y ago

Not only are there Charging Network issues, but Tesla has what appears to be a huge problem with supplying repair parts and service. Here are two of the biggest Tesla fan boys around, calling them out on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZG7iAMxTUA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZG7iAMxTUA

rnk 5y ago
I'm stunned that a car company in today's world has a problem with supplying needed parts for their cars. It looks like only tesla has this problem. /s. More seriously, tesla does need to do better, their service network is behind their growth in sales, even though they've been steadily increasing their service centers.
- mattbrewsbytes 5y ago
  I see the "/s" but seriously you can go to nearly any auto parts store and buy parts for an ICE vehicle. There are people that change their own oil, brakes, water pumps, etc. to save on labor. Most auto repair shops can do the majority of maintenance and since there are multiple third-party part vendors you have options on price, performance, etc. This combined with 5 figure battery replacement costs and the inconveniences of charging networks will keep US car buyers from "falling in love" with EV's for a long time.

legerdemain 5y ago

US is vast and sparsely populated. It takes many hours to reach the next closest city to Denver or SLC. China is small (compared to the US) and extremely dense. China has tons of cheap, subsidized electricity due to its love for coal. The present US administration hates coal, coal power plants, and coal mining. No cheap electricity == no incentive to buy an EV.

dont__panic 5y ago
I am not sure if it's fair to say that China is small compared to the USA: https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/country-size-comparison/china/united-states https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/country-size-comparison/chin... Though that is using the Mercator projection, you can at least tell that the contiguous USA is damn similar to China in scale. Perhaps China is even more biased towards the one coastline, with sparse settlements to the West, but the USA essentially has a massive deserve/mountain range in the middle, too.
- legerdemain 5y ago
  China's area is about 92,000 square miles less than the area of the US. The difference becomes more dramatic if you don't include Alaska.
  - dont__panic 5y ago
    Of course. But if you compare contiguous US (where 99% of people live and where 99% of people drive) to mainland China, you get very similar numbers. We don't include Puerto Rico or Hawaii or US military bases abroad in that square mileage of generally drivable US for the same reason.

rdtwo 5y ago

The problem for me is price. I think the segment of the population that buys most of the new cars is pretty small and they dictate the cars that later show up on the market for the rest of us. Electric cars are not really hot with that demographic so they never really penetrate the rest of the segment. Electric trucks are cool though so I expect once volume of mfg picks up we will see good adoption

WorldMaker 5y ago
With the different maintenance schedules of EVs the used market is forever going to shift with EVs and I think there's a lot of missing education of what that means, especially with respect to market prices, and it may take some time for the used market to adapt. EVs seem to be causing a permanent shift of "Time Under First Owner". Fewer required maintenance milestones early in ownership seem to create incentives to own the car for longer. Some of the people regularly buying/leasing new cars create a lot of their turnover simply to avoid maintenance costs and with less overall maintenance, especially early in the life of vehicle, there's less incentive for turnover. The other thing that influences prices in the used market is that turnover point and if it's maintenance-forced the first owners are more willing to sell for less if they pass on the maintenance burden to the next owner (or more likely the middleman in between the two; the used car market equivalent of a "house flipper", buy the car cheap because it needs a bunch of maintenance that you can do at reasonable cost and flip it back into the used market for a much higher price). That "opportunity cost" also seems to be disappearing with EVs. EVs don't as often have thousands of dollars of (deferred) maintenances costs at the 5 year/10 year horizon and there's much less to "flip". A lot of EVs go directly from the first owner to the second without even needing to show up on the used markets, and certainly without needing to go through major maintenance. That, naturally, drives up prices. So far trends seem to imply that the used market isn't seeing many EVs not because new car buyers aren't buying them ("hot" or not), but that first owners are holding them longer and when they do sell them it often isn't through the "traditional" used market and when it is its usually still at a premium because there just isn't (deferred) maintenance generally driving costs down as in the traditional new ICE to used ICE market pipeline. I don't know what your budget is specifically, but the economics shifts here indicate that it may be time to start budgeting for a new car if you truly want an EV any time soon. The math is very different from the old math of buying/leasing an ICE vehicle, because of the different realities of maintenance costs alone, and it can be worth reevaluating that math in your personal case, because those assumptions changed. Which isn't to say that EV costs can't be driven down. Both EU and Asia are at a point where economies of scale are starting to kick in and average new EV costs have met or fallen below new ICE vehicle costs (in the EU mostly just for "diesel" vehicles still, but other categories may not be far behind; in the Chinese market it seems like EVs are winning in price in almost every car segment now). It will likely be a while before the US hits anything remotely similar in economies of scale precisely because of this chicken-and-egg that American consumers aren't buying enough EVs yet and many won't until prices drop. [1] It certainly doesn't help that the US is still fixated on heavier, more resource needy, segments like Trucks and SUVs, which drive prices back up in their own ways even with economies of scale behind them. [1] This chicken-and-egg is also why eyes need to be on the imports horizon if you are looking for cheaper prices. It's exactly the sort of situation that made Japanese imports the cars to beat in the US in the 1980s and with Chinese manufacturers in seemingly a cat-bird seat now in terms of economies of scale for EVs there's a lot of interesting questions if Chinese manufacturers are about close enough to do cross over to the US EV market today similar to the market conditions that gave Japanese manufacturers such 1980s market power. So far Tesla is the US company incumbent to beat in EV sales, and the other US companies are greatly lagging behind. Imports may be hugely disruptive here in the US.

thatguy0900 5y ago

I live in an apartment complex that has cars parked along all of the roads because there's not enough parking spots. That's pretty common for apartments. Maybe, on paper, there's at least one spot per building, but not next to your building in particular and most apartments will have multiple car owners. And none of those spots have outlets. Even with a law making every spot have outlets, I frequently get off work and arrive to no open spots and parking on the streets. I cannot afford to gamble around on whether I'll be able to charge my car tonight or not. I really don't see how electric cars could work in that scenario.

vineyardmike 5y ago
While that is a major concern, and similar to why I didn't get an electric car... you might be able to charge it at work. I work remote still, so I can't do this, but if you're going to work, this might be a way to ensure you're charged.
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  Plus: you may have enough battery range that you don't need to charge every day anyway (making it much less of a "gamble" and more an intentional risk assessment) and some EV owners already live/work on once a week or two trips to a fast charger rather than daily charging. In some cases daily charging is a huge "bonus".
WorldMaker 5y ago
Street parking can have outlets, too. It's going to take some municipal power to get there and right now maybe not a lot of cities are thinking that far ahead, but it is something that eventually cities will have to ask themselves if they want to help fix and how. Many cities already have electrically wired parking meters today and adding a plug on the side of that isn't a major technical hurdle, it's much more a sociopolitical hurdle.

uejfiweun 5y ago

EVs right now are not a good value proposition for a first car. The range is too low, the chargers are too hard to find, charging takes too long, the cars are too expensive, repairs are way more expensive, and they don't really help the environment all that much. It would be far more useful to me to get an ICE car which will be far cheaper and more reliable as my only vehicle. Now this being said, I do think EVs make sense as a "daily driver", i.e. you only take your EV to work and the grocery store, and plug it in at night. Unfortunately this kind of requires a permanent residence, which nobody can afford right now. Very excited for when EVs have 1000+ miles of range, charge quickly, and have more supporting infrastructure. But my guess is that this is at least 10 years off.

fetus8 5y ago

I would happily buy an EV once the designs start to resemble more of ICE cars. I really don't like the aesthetics of most of the EVs on the road today. If say Volvo made their current V60 wagon with an electric motor option, I would jump on it. I know Audi has the etron, Ford has electrified some of their vehicles, and GM/Chevy is starting to do this as well. I imagine I'm driving my last ICE car as of now...