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We need cheaper EVs. Nissan Leafs have a 5-month waiting list right now. We should temporarily abandon car safety requirements, to reduce weight and complexity

We need cheaper EVs. Nissan Leafs have a 5-month waiting list right now. We should temporarily abandon car safety requirements, to reduce weight and complexity and get EVs to people earlier. EVs due to their expense are being purchased mainly by the laptop-class, who work from home now. The production capacity would be better dedicated to the working-class who use their vehicles for transport daily.

antisthenes 4y ago
If you make them cheaper (government subsidy), the wait list grows even longer. You can't magically create more cars out of thin air. Every EV manufacturer is currently running at capacity.
- LeifCarrotson 4y ago
  Capacity is a laggy function of demand and finance, if demand goes up then a smart manufacturer will increase capacity.
  - vinyl7 4y ago
    And eventually when capacity meets demand, and demand falls (there isn't an infinite demand for cars like there is for something like food)...you have a bunch of useless factories that probably haven't earned back their investment yet.
    - actually_a_dog 4y ago
      Imagine that: we can’t solve a problem created by capitalism by doing more capitalism. Who’da thunk it?
  - _ea1k 4y ago
    As true as that is, it takes ~2 years to get a battery plant from shovels in the ground to decent volumes. It won't take long, but 2025 is probably the first year to see anywhere close to demand satiation for EVs, and even then it may only be in some segments.
usr1106 4y ago
You need decent public transport and bikable settlement structures. EVs are only gradually more sustainable than traditinal cars and still lead to uninhabitable cities.
- DerArzt 4y ago
  Public transport isn't the panacea that everyone always makes it out to be. It makes sense when you have heavily trafficked metro areas, but when you get outside of those (like most of the USA is) it's more efficient to use cars rather than empty buses and trains. As for bikability, I can agree with that, but again when you have the vast suburban sprawl that the USA has it's not safe to bike and even if it was everything is so spread out in places that biking isn't a good option.
  - usr1106 4y ago
    It doesn't work with >80% owning a car and using it. There is just too much traffic, biking gets difficult and public transport runs half-empty (if even existing) It would very well work in most places with <20% own a car and using it. And in some rare case renting one. Gyms would go bankrupt because nobody needed to go there anymore because they bike every day. But that would be an acceptable downside IMHO. (I know what I am talking off. I work from home, but I bike to some shop, not even the closest one, every day to get my motion.) How to get there I don't know. Europeans are not willing to do it. And Americans are decades behind with the development going into the completely wrong direction.
  - ryukafalz 4y ago
    > when you have the vast suburban sprawl that the USA has it's not safe to bike Sprawl does not make it unsafe to bike; it's a lack of safe cycling infrastructure that does that. It would take a small fraction of the space given to cars to make it perfectly safe to bike. Now as you also mention, sprawl may make it impractical to bike. That said... the distances between things in suburbia are often artificially inflated as well. This 21-minute walk to a grocery store near where I used to live could be cut down to maybe two minutes if you were to take down the fence blocking it off: https://goo.gl/maps/iujAxMRRMCRs4YzW9 https://goo.gl/maps/iujAxMRRMCRs4YzW9
InitialLastName 4y ago
> We should temporarily abandon car safety requirements, to reduce weight and complexity and get EVs to people earlier. Nothing says short-sighted like "we have a problem now, so let's create a 10-year scourge of death-traps."
- mrfusion 4y ago
  Indeed, I’d think a lot of our long term problems are first created as panicked solutions to short term crisis’s.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  We'd need to abandon a hell of a lot before you start making a difference in safety that's big enough you don't need to torture it out of the the data. Stuff like backup cameras weren't even brought into existence for many of the types of vehicles they find themselves in. How many people are really sitting in the back seats of these subcompact cars and how many people is the back half of the side curtain airbag really gonna save?
mrfusion 4y ago
Rather than cutting safety what if we sold cars with an 80 mile range with a placeholder for additional batteries in two years?
- sebazzz 4y ago
  I think the most pressing issue is chip shortages.
bryanlarsen 4y ago
Given current gas prices, EV's are already cheap. At $7.25 a gallon over the lifetime of the vehicle, you're going to pay more than the sticker price of the car in fuel for a good majority of vehicles. Unless you have incredibly expensive electricity in your city, you're probably looking at over $30,000 in savings over the life of the vehicle. Subtract $30K from the price of an EV and those prices look pretty good...
wds 4y ago
I worry about the idea of abandoning safety requirements for these smaller cars when in the US purchases/usage of overweight,tank-y SUVs and huge trucks on the rise. Or am I mistaking the kind of safety requirements you mean?
nikau 4y ago
> We should temporarily abandon car safety requirements, to reduce weight and complexity and get EVs to people earlier. Yep that's a sure fire way to solve the battery supply constraints...

antisthenes 4y ago

If you make them cheaper (government subsidy), the wait list grows even longer. You can't magically create more cars out of thin air. Every EV manufacturer is currently running at capacity.

LeifCarrotson 4y ago
Capacity is a laggy function of demand and finance, if demand goes up then a smart manufacturer will increase capacity.
- vinyl7 4y ago
  And eventually when capacity meets demand, and demand falls (there isn't an infinite demand for cars like there is for something like food)...you have a bunch of useless factories that probably haven't earned back their investment yet.
  - actually_a_dog 4y ago
    Imagine that: we can’t solve a problem created by capitalism by doing more capitalism. Who’da thunk it?
- _ea1k 4y ago
  As true as that is, it takes ~2 years to get a battery plant from shovels in the ground to decent volumes. It won't take long, but 2025 is probably the first year to see anywhere close to demand satiation for EVs, and even then it may only be in some segments.

usr1106 4y ago

You need decent public transport and bikable settlement structures. EVs are only gradually more sustainable than traditinal cars and still lead to uninhabitable cities.

DerArzt 4y ago
Public transport isn't the panacea that everyone always makes it out to be. It makes sense when you have heavily trafficked metro areas, but when you get outside of those (like most of the USA is) it's more efficient to use cars rather than empty buses and trains. As for bikability, I can agree with that, but again when you have the vast suburban sprawl that the USA has it's not safe to bike and even if it was everything is so spread out in places that biking isn't a good option.
- usr1106 4y ago
  It doesn't work with >80% owning a car and using it. There is just too much traffic, biking gets difficult and public transport runs half-empty (if even existing) It would very well work in most places with <20% own a car and using it. And in some rare case renting one. Gyms would go bankrupt because nobody needed to go there anymore because they bike every day. But that would be an acceptable downside IMHO. (I know what I am talking off. I work from home, but I bike to some shop, not even the closest one, every day to get my motion.) How to get there I don't know. Europeans are not willing to do it. And Americans are decades behind with the development going into the completely wrong direction.
- ryukafalz 4y ago
  > when you have the vast suburban sprawl that the USA has it's not safe to bike Sprawl does not make it unsafe to bike; it's a lack of safe cycling infrastructure that does that. It would take a small fraction of the space given to cars to make it perfectly safe to bike. Now as you also mention, sprawl may make it impractical to bike. That said... the distances between things in suburbia are often artificially inflated as well. This 21-minute walk to a grocery store near where I used to live could be cut down to maybe two minutes if you were to take down the fence blocking it off: https://goo.gl/maps/iujAxMRRMCRs4YzW9 https://goo.gl/maps/iujAxMRRMCRs4YzW9

InitialLastName 4y ago

> We should temporarily abandon car safety requirements, to reduce weight and complexity and get EVs to people earlier. Nothing says short-sighted like "we have a problem now, so let's create a 10-year scourge of death-traps."

mrfusion 4y ago
Indeed, I’d think a lot of our long term problems are first created as panicked solutions to short term crisis’s.
throwaway0a5e 4y ago
We'd need to abandon a hell of a lot before you start making a difference in safety that's big enough you don't need to torture it out of the the data. Stuff like backup cameras weren't even brought into existence for many of the types of vehicles they find themselves in. How many people are really sitting in the back seats of these subcompact cars and how many people is the back half of the side curtain airbag really gonna save?

mrfusion 4y ago

Rather than cutting safety what if we sold cars with an 80 mile range with a placeholder for additional batteries in two years?

sebazzz 4y ago
I think the most pressing issue is chip shortages.

bryanlarsen 4y ago

Given current gas prices, EV's are already cheap. At $7.25 a gallon over the lifetime of the vehicle, you're going to pay more than the sticker price of the car in fuel for a good majority of vehicles. Unless you have incredibly expensive electricity in your city, you're probably looking at over $30,000 in savings over the life of the vehicle. Subtract $30K from the price of an EV and those prices look pretty good...

wds 4y ago

I worry about the idea of abandoning safety requirements for these smaller cars when in the US purchases/usage of overweight,tank-y SUVs and huge trucks on the rise. Or am I mistaking the kind of safety requirements you mean?

nikau 4y ago

> We should temporarily abandon car safety requirements, to reduce weight and complexity and get EVs to people earlier. Yep that's a sure fire way to solve the battery supply constraints...