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Women are less likely to buy electric vehicles than men
- meindnoch 4y ago[flagged]
- LoganDark 4y agoI don't see why this is downvoted. Of course there are no nonbinary people in data sets for male and female. They're nonbinary. It's weird that the article calls this out explicitly.
- bertil 4y agoWhat could be possible solutions to test? Have photos of the charging station appear in the road planning interface? Live video stream? Have bright lights at the charging station? Resurrect that charging robotic arm that would plug without having people leave their car?
- DoreenMichele 4y agoJane Jacobs said "eyes on the street" was the key to safety in an urban environment. Bright lights won't protect anyone in the middle of nowhere where there will be no one around to see it go down no matter the lighting conditions.
- tnel77 4y agoI’d have to imagine a combination of more chargers, faster chargers, denser batteries (aka less charging), and very well lit areas will be needed to make female drivers feel safer. I’m not sure though. Perhaps we will see the gas station attendant make a comeback?
- go13 4y ago[flagged]
- ineedasername 4y agoPlenty of people who are very good at math and science decide they don’t want careers in those areas.
- go13 4y agoand they go to work as a software developer or a quant or something like that. People who are less gifted in realm of logic and reasoning go to humanities and become talkers - manager, gender reporters and do other jobs that require using trendy keywords without understanding the difference between correlation and causation. Downvotes indicate there are a lot of these people on HN. I hit the nerve.
- ineedasername 4y agoYou think HN is filled with people from the humanities fields? That would be odd. At minimum I think it’s fair to say that HN has a majority that don’t. In which case, if that dictated their views, your post should be net positive on votes. Instead I think it’s more likely that plenty of HN folks that work in STEM fields have also known people who are very smart that don’t work in such fields. Being good at something doesn’t automatically make a person go into that for their career.
- go13 4y ago>You think HN is filled with people from the humanities fields? You are right. >known people who are very smart that don’t work in such fields. True. But the whole framing of the article is nonsense including a job title of "Gender, climate and sustainability reporter". Which makes me doubt intellectual and/or ethical capacity of people who downvoted/supported this nonsense and whole gender war agenda.
- jmull 4y agoI don't see why a STEM afficionado would rebut with a logical fallacy.
- superkuh 4y agoThere are only two types of entities that buy cars: human persons and corporate persons. Currently the US government is subsidizing EV purchases for both groups a little bit. There's a $7500 tax credit for human persons (with restrictions) but corporate persons get a $40000 tax credit without restrictions. Some persons are more equal than others.
- alephnerd 4y agoBusiness Owners have been able to expense business vehicles since time immemorial because a vehicle is treated as a depreciating asset
- vxNsr 4y agoCan you expand on this $40000 tax credit?
- klodolph 4y agoI’m guessing it’s just the section 179 deduction, filtered through the internet. I’ve seen a lot of misinformation about section 179 deductions online. People mix up deductions with credits, get the numbers wrong, and they aren’t aware of depreciation recapture. These are errors I’ve seen in TikTok videos with “advice” for saving money on taxes—advice which usually either won’t work or will actually land you in jail.
- kube-system 4y agohttps://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/commercial-clean-vehicle-credit https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/commercial-clean-vehi... It's for EV commercial trucks, basically.
- karagenit 4y agoHuh? The tax credit for small vehicles is the same for both at $7500. The $40k credit is only for large trucks, capped at 30% of the vehicle’s value, and with all of the same restrictions. https://afdc.energy.gov/laws/13039 https://afdc.energy.gov/laws/13039
- 4y ago
- Overtonwindow 4y agoTl;dr. Range anxiety.
- Tempest1981 4y agoI read it as safety while charging. And poor charger upkeep. Seems to be a recurring theme for some providers.
- achow 4y agoNot really. It is much more nuanced. It is about charging infrastructure and how undependable they could be, which adds to the anxiety manifold.
- hammock 4y agoRange anxiety is one of those terms like vaccine hesitancy that is designed to blame the victim, rather than be forced to address a root cause and be more persuasive. Using the word anxiety specifically to target women seems especially sinister
- favaq 4y agoLiterally any difference between men and women can be explained by BPD.
- 1970-01-01 4y agowith a sprinkle of "I'm scared to be out at night" EV chargers are always running, 24/7, however women won't be happy charging past sundown. Seems like the solution is a panic button and security patrol for EV stations.
- kube-system 4y agoThis is a strange framing of the situation. It's not one specific demographic that isn't buying electric cars. Most people of any demographic aren't buying electric cars. Men disproportionally buy electric cars because they disproportionately buy cars for reasons other than pure practicality. But this isn't some "problem for women". Men who DGAF about electric cars and just want basic transportation also have the same problem: they are not yet competitive as basic transportation.
- PaulHoule 4y ago... it's like asking why women don't buy muscle cars; funny though, I have a model that, given a headline, predicts the ratio of comments/upvotes. The more cerebral things I post sometimes get a lot of votes but few comments, but one of the themes my model thinks will get a lot of comments is anything about "the battle of the sexes". The average post has a ratio of about 0.5, this one is already above 1.0 and will probably keep going up.
- vuln 4y ago> Men disproportionally buy electric cars because they disproportionately buy cars for reasons other than pure practicality. Yeah and they're also leaving out that the men typically buy electric because they are insanely fast, have low 0-60 times and is something new to modify and tweak on. The aftermarket parts and tuning options are currently exploding in popularity with the same consumer base even with the manufacturers locked down ecosystem.
- achow 4y agoMKBHD very beautifully conveyed the problem This is Ruining Electric Cars https://youtu.be/BA2qJKU8t2k https://youtu.be/BA2qJKU8t2k
- kickbutt22 4y agoWow, I don't have a Tesla but this sounds like a nightmare if my parents had one.
- Spivak 4y agoAnd I think we have a tendency to dismiss absolutely atrocious experiences with generic errors and opaque UIs where the troubleshooting path is entirely tribal knowledge as "people who aren't technologically adept" when it's really just a complete and total failure on the part of the technology provider. * If the pump at a gas station is broken they put up a sign and cover the nozzle. * It works with every car without an adapter. These things should have a fallback to a wall-plug since every electric car has one. Yeah, it will take forever but it will work. * The default experience assumes no account required and if there's an account it's a barcode scannable rewards card or phone number entry. * If you don't have NFC payments you can use any credit card in existence and if that doesn't work you can walk into the shop to a human who can charge your card inside, take cash, or run a manual entry credit card by typing in the numbers and if all else fails just manually override the pump. * The entire process of selecting your the kind of gas you want is standard physical buttons with a screen that displays the price and lights up to indicate that that's the next action. * The transaction doesn't finish until you put the nozzle back so it's impossible to mess up. It's truly amazing how the people who designed these horrible plastic atrocities learned absolutely nothing from the current state-of-the-art. Vending machines have better UX.
- Jensson 4y ago> The results? “Men like toys, and women were more likely to talk about electric vehicles in terms of their practical use within the day-to-day of getting stuff done,” he said. So right now electric isn't worth the price difference for what it delivers. Men buy it because it is trendy, women don't care about tech trends so they wait until the technology is more mature.
- b112 4y agoMen buy it because it is trendy Which is another way of saying, men buy it to impress women. A comedian once said, all men would live in cardboard boxes, if not for the eyes of women.
- decafninja 4y agoDoes a Bolt or Model 3 really impress a woman (or anyone for that matter)? The Model 3 is supposedly called the California Camry after all. Maybe if you’re talking about the Model S or Taycan or other expensive EVs, but then you could say the same about ICE cars in the same price range.
- danans 4y ago> Does a Bolt or Model 3 really impress a woman (or anyone for that matter)? The Model 3 is supposedly called the California Camry after all. It's pretty impossible to generalize about what impresses women, but the "drive a luxury car" method sort of lost its charm sometime around the turn of the 21st century.
- Spivak 4y agoI can tell you in no uncertain terms that among women "guy who owns a Tesla" is not a phrase that springs to mind the kind of man you want to date. Owning one you have to overcome the stereotypes of it being for insufferable tech bros and midlife crisis dad cars.
- DFHippie 4y ago> So right now electric isn't worth the price difference for what it delivers. This depends on what you value. As you illustrate with your explanation of why men buy it, which is one explanation among many. If you prefer avoiding the mechanic, or want to pay less over the lifetime of your car, or you anticipate, while contemplating a long-term purchase, that the ICE infrastructure becoming more expensive and less reliable, or you want to reduce your personal carbon footprint, or most of your trips are local and you can charge at home, etc., electric cars are already worth the price difference.
- pdpi 4y ago> The couple had another big consideration in planning their travels: Personal safety. (...) Waiting to charge a car can take much longer than filling one up with gas. That was my regularly scheduled reminder that, no matter how hard I try to keep other people's perspectives in mind, I still have blind spots. In retrospect it's obvious — there's plenty of service stations I can't imagine feeling safe at if I was a woman, alone and just waiting for my car to charge up.
- PaulHoule 4y agoSee https://www.statista.com/statistics/423245/us-violent-crime-victims-by-gender/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/423245/us-violent-crime-... And also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homicide_statistics_by_gender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homicide_statistics_by_gender "A 2000 global study on homicide by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that men accounted for ... 79% of the victims"
- loeg 4y agoI think this effect is almost entirely gang members assassinating other gang members, which is not something the background population actually experiences (for the most part).
- snozolli 4y agoI'm sure that when a woman rolls up to a gas or charging station with a meandering crackhead or weird lurker, she can comfort herself by repeating the mantra "79% of homicide victims are male".
- Symbiote 4y agoThose statistics are completely irrelevant. You would need to find statistics on sexual and non-sexual assault, theft, robbery and so on in quiet areas on above-average-income people, and compare the rates for men and women.
- ineedasername 4y agoPeople are murdered for different reasons than those that contribute to women often feeling unsafe in some situations. There’s a whole spectrum of situations ranging from unpleasant to violent that don’t rise to the level of actual murder.
- gorpomon 4y agoDownvotes shall come and that's ok-- but it's really interesting how radically different the experience of filling gas is for men and women. I've had multiple conversations with female friends where they discuss factoring in personal safety and the chance of being bothered while filling gas. It's a captive situation and hard to leave quickly. Aside from the odd request for money, I don't get bothered while filling gas, but that's not true for many many people.
- GiorgioG 4y agoAs a man, I’ve had plenty of people come up to me asking for money. I don’t feel any safer being a man in that situation.
- fullstop 4y agoIt seems impossible to come to this conclusion if you've never been a woman.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ineedasername 4y agoMaybe you don’t feel particularly safe, but how do you know that many women don’t feel even less safe than your feelings of being unsafe?
- jeffwask 4y agoDo you also fear being sexually assaulted every time you walk to your car in a dark parking garage? Are you often sexually harassed in public spaces? An un-housed person asking you for cash at a gas station doesn't put your experience on par with what women experience every day. I knew the answer in the article was safety before I read it. We live in a society where women feel unsafe in normal situations us men never even consider. Be better.
- 4y ago
- solidsnack9000 4y agoThis is a pretty sad article. Here they talk about the location of charging stations, noting that they are in out of the way places: Early charging stations in the United States have been placed in inconvenient places, too. Andrea Colomina, the sustainable communities program director at Green Latinos, said one of the first locations to get a charger in New York City was the parking lot of a zoo. “The first generation [of charging stations] was really not holistically thought out. As usual, because men were making most of the decisions, they were not walking through the scenarios,” she said. “You have to think through what is the experience of every potential user.” What is obviously missing from this discussion, is that economic factors and available space drive decisions like this. It's not simply that men are not thinking about women. Colomina is quoted as some kind of expert, but she is just offering bromides and commonplaces, nothing specifically related to factors that drove the early placement of charging stations.
- HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago> economic factors and available space drive decisions like this And that's the problem! You can't just focus on economics and space, you also need to consider the users. Placing the stations in "inconvenient places" will definitely hamper use. People, especially women, don't like going into potentially unsafe locations either. I have known people who avoid certain gas stations at night because they're dark and look dangerous.
- jjoonathan 4y agoEconomics is a constraint. No amount of wishful thinking makes it go away. Destination charging has been part of the EV vision since forever. It's perfectly reasonable for anyone who values safety or convenience to hold off until the infrastructure is mature enough to suit their needs. It's a bit silly to blame men for not building everything yesterday, though. It's doubly silly to frame this as a failure of imagination. Contractors and landlords don't take payment in imagination. Likewise, lower price brackets have been the goal of the EV vision since forever (Tesla Master Plan, 2006). However, as with any technology, the users who are willing to tolerate more bugs and higher prices have to come first before the money/experience gleaned from them can be used to address the broader market. It's perfectly reasonable to hold off an EV purchase until EV manufacturers put out a competitive offering in your price bracket, but again, it's a bit silly to blame men for not building everything yesterday. These things take time.
- drewg123 4y agoIts an interesting trade off. I'd argue that if you don't plan to road trip your car, and have home charging, an EV is actually far safer in terms of crime, since you never need to go to a gas station. However, on road trips, I've charged at lots of Tesla Superchargers where even I, as a CIS male, feel a bit uncomfortable. Eg, random mall / grocery store parking lots at 3am, where nothing is open, the lighting is poor, etc. EDIT: The other consideration is that while you're charging, you have to get out of the vehicle to unook from the charger. Eg, the car will not go into drive while the cable is attached. So that does not leave you any options if an attacker approaches your car while charging.
- prmoustache 4y ago> Its an interesting trade off. I'd argue that if you don't plan to road trip your car, and have home charging, an EV is actually far safer in terms of crime, since you never need to go to a gas station. Only for people living in Suburbia. Not sure about the percentage of people owning a car and a garage / or at least private parking space close to a private outlet in the USA, but here in europe this is still a huge limiter for EV. If I need to charge my vehicule in only a handful of the available parking spaces with charging station available in my neighborhood, the EV proposal becomes substancially less attractive, both in term of practicability and financially.
- DeathArrow 4y agoWhy is this a problem?
- PaulHoule 4y agoWomen have a hand in the purchase decision of more than half the cars (ever see those stupid ads TV for luxury sedans where a couple goes down the list of "standard" features and pick a car on the basis of that?) If you want to sell a handful of exotic cars then it is OK to target men. If you are going to make a mass-market vehicle that changes the world it has to have a broader appeal.
- endisneigh 4y agoimho BEVs are not the solution. give me a tiny battery (PHEV) that can go 50 miles on a charge during the winter and gas. From the Volt, many users on reddit reported that over 90% of their miles were entirely electric. at the same time, they don't have to have range anxiety. I hear over and over again about the supposed complexity introduced, but Volt users who switched to the Bolt on reddit mention that they haven't seen big differences in maintenance costs. The FUD about hybrids is insane. I've yet to read anything convincing enough to lead me that BEV is better than PHEV.
- b112 4y agoThe FUD about hybrids is insane. I've yet to read anything convincing enough to lead me that BEV is better than PHEV. I have noticed that the more intense the issue, the more radicalize, high polarized, even lies, emerge. People should be overwhelmed with joy, happiness, that people want hybrids, it gets those who literally cannot use pure electric, to use electric ... as you say, 90% of the time. A win-win! People even relentlessly shoot down h2, with all sorts of made up claims and anger. Yet h2 is better than these massive, heavy, hard to recycle battery packs. There should be happiness at anything that is a line towards less pollution. But no. There are angry camps of "my choice is perfect, and I must deny you your choice!" camps. Ah well. Humans.
- sp0ck 4y agoToyota has statistics for PHEV's. Majority of users in USA and EU (>70%) don't charge(at least once per week) them at all. Most of the time they just use gasoline and treat them like hybrid car and charge them when there is a benefit (e-car parking spot, etc) Sorry - trying to find source.
- endisneigh 4y agowell that makes sense, most people do not have level-2 charging capabilities in their home, nor do they care enough to run an extension cord. the right stat to get would be people who can and want to charge and look at the miles electric vs gas.
- quadrifoliate 4y ago> More importantly, those who buy electric cars tend to own their homes, meaning they can install chargers and plug in their cars overnight, negating the need to use a public charger for day-to-day commutes. For women and people of color, who are less likely to own homes and are more likely to live in multifamily dwellings where charging stations are often not part of the parking infrastructure, charging their cars becomes an additional task. This seems like the biggest practical reason to me. With homeownership getting difficult due to skyrocketing prices and interest rates, having a gas car is just much more reliable compared to the hit-and-miss experience with electric. As a concrete example, there is a ~40 mile gap between charging stations in the relatively well-populated area near me, and the same area contains about ten gas stations. I would not advise any friends of mine in the area to rely on electric charge being widely or safely available -- this just tends to get magnified for anyone who has more of a reason to worry about their safety.
- jaclaz 4y agoI had never thought of the (perceived or real) increased risk connected with (longer) stays at the gas station (or charging station) in remote areas at night. But now that the article mentioned it, it does make sense that people don't want to find themselves in this situation and plan trips so that charging happens during the day.
- skee8383 4y agoEV's are still new tech. they haven't been through the cruicble of time yet. people are waiting to see how long those batteries last. it's common knowledge everytime you recharge a battery you destroy it bit by bit until it finally no longer holds a charge.
- DoreenMichele 4y agoTLDR: Women tend to be more risk averse than men, both logistically and financially.
- rcktmrtn 4y agoA family member who is somewhat of a fanatical cycling commuter was telling me recently that in the area he lives they deliberately ignore data from males in their 20s/30s (his demographic) when making decisions about bike infrastructure usage because they are more likely to commit to biking even if the conditions are terrible. To be clear, I think he was saying this more as an endorsement of this attitude (and as a personal brag) than a complaint.
- sp0ck 4y agoI'm shocked that area where they were traveling is so dangerous you have to choose places from security perspective. From European perspective it's crazy that you have to think about your security when taking car stop..
- havblue 4y agoCar trips can feel very sketchy when you're in the middle of nowhere, late at night, potentially with small children. Imagine a dimly lit rest stop late at night with two cars at it. Can you trust the people in these cars or is there potential criminal activity? While I disagree with the framing of the article, I do agree with the author on security concerns.
- sp0ck 4y agoI have a feeling your opinion is biased by place you live. In my country (Poland) beeing in a remote parking with other cars gives me security comfort, that I'm not alone :) On the other hand you have 54x bigger chances to get raped and 30x beeing murdered in USA than in Poland .. https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Poland/United-States/Crime https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Poland/Uni...
- HeyLaughingBoy 4y agoI didn't read the article, but it's not necessarily that places are dangerous. The US has many gas stations that are in remote areas, completely unattended at night, and very poorly lit. For someone who's concerned about safety, especially if they've been on the receiving end of harassment or attacks before, they will naturally try to avoid such locations.
- twawaaay 4y agoI think perceived personal safety is also why women prefer large cars. Women, in my observation, tend to think larger car equates safer car (and they also feel more powerful operating larger machine). Whereas men tend to buy larger cars as a status symbol. And will by smaller cars, too, if they still convey status. And while it actually seems true that larger cars are safer to drive, it is pretty ironic that more larger cars on roads actually decrease safety among all drivers.
- havblue 4y agoIt's also ironic that women vote to prioritize environmental issues consistently more than men. This apparently doesn't matter as much when it comes to their personal decisions to buy an EV!
- twawaaay 4y agoWe do not know if it is the same women who buy EVs and vote to prioritise environmental issues. And because we do not know that, your conclusion seems to be invalid.
- havblue 4y agoI don't think Bayes theorem is necessary to demonstrate irony, dude.
- twawaaay 4y agoI don't know where you come from or what your beliefs are. But if you determined to disregard all logic and still try to win some argument then you are just an internet troll. To have a discussion at all of any kind we need basic assumptions on communication protocol and logic is one of key ingredients.
- havblue 4y agoMy original comment was about irony and it should have been obvious that it was subjective: no assertion to prove or disprove. I genuinely have no idea what you're attempting to argue with me about.
- fwlr 4y agoBeing able to charge at home for daily driving should drastically cut down on the number of trips one has to make to gas stations / charging stations.
- karaterobot 4y agoStatistically speaking, has there been a meaningful danger to women charging electric vehicles?
- fullstop 4y agoThe point is that it takes minutes to refuel an ICE vehicle but much longer to charge an EV, and that you are more vulnerable during this time.
- karaterobot 4y agoNot sure how that affects my question. I'm asking whether there are statistics about the outcome of this situation, regardless of its parameters.
- readthenotes1 4y agoI'm disappointed that the suffering of women with at most 1 X chromosomes weren't included in the article
- xiphias2 4y agoI never understood why people care so much about buying electric cars vs number of kms / miles put into it. They are more expensive to manufacture, but cheaper to use, therefore I believe at this point all taxis / Ubers should be electric. Maybe if Elon didn't push ,,self driving'' so hard and just thought about all the needs of taxi companies (maintainance guarantees), we wouldn't have as many car sales, but the charge points and maintainance (which can have higher margins than traditional cars as it is cheaper) would make up for it, and air in cities would be much cleaner already.
- kiviuq 4y agowe would still be cave dwellers if it wasn't for the the thrill of tinkering / modifying / hacking / playing around
- prinzmaus 4y agoThis feels like a tipping point problem where, once we hit a tipping point of available charging locations, there could be a snowball of currently-disenfranchised people buying EVs.