6 ms·

We're most probably at the combustion -> "only upper-middle-class people and richer will be able to afford private transportation" tipping point.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
That is typically how the manufacturing curve and the innovation curve works. Upper-middle-class people and richer have disposable income and purchasing power which funds expensive goods until manufacturing of those goods scales up to be cheap for people without significant amounts of disposable income and purchasing power. EVs will continue to get cheaper, faster, as global auto manufacturers scale up their production. If you can take a bus, a train, or an ebike, definitely do that. But consumers will not stop buying cars (global light vehicle market is ~83M units/annually), so sell them EVs, making them as inexpensive and quickly as possible. China EV sales are already at 9M units/year, more than half total US light vehicle sales in 2022 (~14M units). TLDR Volume is misleading, pay attention to velocity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-rise-for-first-time-to-an-average-of-151-kwh/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-... https://www.reuters.com/technology/ev-energy-storage-battery-prices-set-fall-more-report-2023-09-07/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/ev-energy-storage-battery... https://finance.yahoo.com/news/used-ev-prices-are-collapsing--and-tesla-is-the-reason-why-144449893.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/used-ev-prices-are-collapsing...
- baz00 3y ago
  Has anyone looked at the fact most people are too poor to buy new vehicles? Here in the UK the average vehicle age is 11 years old, most vehicles are second hand and the EV battery warranties top at 8 years. The financial risk of an out of warranty EV vs ICE vehicle is much much higher and the second hand price is higher. There is also zero bangernomics model for EVs either, which is really what a hell of a lot of people who drive vehicles are running. The problem is not solved and may not be which is what I think the original poster is considering. The bottom rung of society is going to lose their transport. Edit: I know everyone is blinded by EV hype at the moment but the entire financial model is drastically different and that will impact people heavily. Even the infrastructure and housing here doesn't necessarily mean it's viable.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    How long do ICE warranties last in the UK?
  - bluescrn 3y ago
    > The bottom rung of society is going to lose their transport. And in many cases, they're also going to lose their jobs. Politicians are incapable of thinking beyond the M25, so are probably expecting everyone to just hop on the Tube or frequent London bus services instead. People can't move closer to workplaces (or better public transport links), as the #1 goal of every UK government seems to be pumping up property prices to ever more ridiculous levels. (You can't allow the supply of housing to increase when rich people are getting richer from the rising prices!) We're incapable of building transport infrastructure in the UK. Look at the state of HS2. Something like £500 million per mile of railway (largely down to those property prices), and it might not even reach London at the current rate, let alone be extended north of Birmingham. Even for those that can afford an EV, huge numbers of people are unable to charge them at home (living in flats, relying on on-street parking, etc). There's hardly any visible growth of public charging infrastructure, and you just know that public chargers will be a huge bait+switch, eventually charging extortionate amounts compared to home charging (if only to minimize the queues...)
    - verisimi 3y ago
      All that. And also, the environmental cost of producing batteries is terrible. That cost is hidden (in the mining and making of batteries, and probs the disposal) as opposed to during the lifetime in the fuel that is burnt. This is to say, it's that the environment justification doesn't hold either. So why are governments committing to these non-sensical goals?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - panick21_ 3y ago
      Crossrail has just been an incredibly success in terms of public infrastructure. But outside of London its true. There are cities that are huge from a European perspective without even a basic S-Bahn tunnel. The UK is the perfect place for High Speed rail, and part of the problem with it is the idiotic bending over backwords for NIMBYs and the generally terrible rail planning practices. Not having built this in like the 80s is insanely dumb. If we are talking about poor people then bus reduction in bus service is actually by far the biggest deal.
jandrese 3y ago
Broke AF people are still buying ridiculously expensive new trucks, I don't think this will be as much of a problem as you are thinking. Also, some EVs can be downright cheap if you qualify for incentives. It was theoretically possible to get a Bolt for like $3000 after government incentives in certain states before Chevy stopped making them. https://youtu.be/uxoRrdE9efk?t=355 https://youtu.be/uxoRrdE9efk?t=355 Plus, China's middle class has been gobbling up the BYD Qin and Song EVs.
- RoyalHenOil 3y ago
  How can someone who is broke buy a vehicle? If they can afford a large purchase, they are by definition not broke.
  - jandrese 3y ago
    Oh you sweet summer child.
    - RoyalHenOil 3y ago
      Do you care to formulate an explanation, rather than repeat a trite saying of no substance?
  - Krutonium 3y ago
    The answer, as always, is debt.
    - RoyalHenOil 3y ago
      How can you afford to take on that kind of debt if you are broke? Your car will be taken back from you when you fail to pay the bills.
- Gibbon1 3y ago
  You can buy a used bolt with maybe 20,000 miles on it for about $18k. If you're in certain counties in California you can get a couple of grand worth of incentives towards that.
pixl97 3y ago
Thank goodness, maybe we'll start making infrastructure around not having to get into our car to do absolutely everything.
- bluescrn 3y ago
  That relies on actually being able and willing to construct infrastructure rather than just letting it decay. (And maybe, just maybe, we should create viable alternatives before pricing vast swathes of populations off the roads and out of work...)
  - vel0city 3y ago
    If more people decide cars are getting too pricey maybe they'll vote for more transit and use the transit that's already there.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - RoyalHenOil 3y ago
      Unfortunately, people with reduced access to transportation are less likely to vote. It is too expensive and time-consuming to get to the polls.
      - pixl97 3y ago
        That's because some states love enacting laws that say things like "You can only have one voting place per county". Which is fine if you have 100,000 people in a county and untenable if you have 1,000,000. Oddly enough that affects one of the parties more than the other.
  - asdff 3y ago
    We do plenty of that stuff. Even the poorest states in the country have regular highway work. If most people shifted to other forms of transit instead of putting such demand on the roads investment will shift accordingly to deal with the wear and tear increasing in this one sector while decreasing in another.
mumblemumble 3y ago
I'm OK with that. Big picture, EVs are just sweeping the fossil fuel problem under the rug, and I've yet to see a response to this problem that doesn't rely on counting chickens before they've hatched. And the cost of (often obligatory, in places like the USA) private transportation is almost like a crony capitalist regressive tax. It disproportionately harms the purchasing power of working-class individuals. Before I broke into the middle class, it was absolutely infuriating how much of my hard-earned money I had to spend on owning, maintaining, and operating my car. But there was no way around it, because the city I lived in was structured such that not owning a car was tantamount to not even having a chance at improving my economic opportunity. The sooner governments are forced to stop making infrastructure decisions that further siphon money out of the pockets of individuals and into the pockets of big automakers and oil companies, the better.
- verisimi 3y ago
  > The sooner governments are forced to stop making infrastructure decisions that further siphon money out of the pockets of individuals and into the pockets of big automakers and oil companies, the better. I'm afraid it's not going to be anytime soon. What you are doing is government acting in service harder for the benefit of big corporations.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  > that doesn't rely on counting chickens before they've hatched. Its simple really. There are 2 problems, both need to be solved. We can't wait on 1 to be solved until we start addressing the other. And EV now are way cleaner then ICE cars even in West Virgina. If you are in France, Switzerland or a country lie that, they are incredibly low carbon. > spend on owning, maintaining, and operating my car. Yes, society would do much better to invest in walking, biking and trains (of various kinds) then EV and to discourage car usage, EV or not. This is pretty clear to anybody who has studied the issue. Housing and transportation cost combined are a huge part of avg peoples lives, well over 50% in many cases. Better land use and zoning policies, combined with proper transport policy can make this much, much better. The US ironically has so many access road lanes that establishing a bike network is actually easy. In Switzerland most cities roads are very narrow so its much harder to add an extra mode in.
Moldoteck 3y ago
Oh I hope for this in combo with better public transport system, like switzerland and Netherlands
- sieabahlpark 3y ago
  [dead]

toomuchtodo 3y ago

That is typically how the manufacturing curve and the innovation curve works. Upper-middle-class people and richer have disposable income and purchasing power which funds expensive goods until manufacturing of those goods scales up to be cheap for people without significant amounts of disposable income and purchasing power. EVs will continue to get cheaper, faster, as global auto manufacturers scale up their production. If you can take a bus, a train, or an ebike, definitely do that. But consumers will not stop buying cars (global light vehicle market is ~83M units/annually), so sell them EVs, making them as inexpensive and quickly as possible. China EV sales are already at 9M units/year, more than half total US light vehicle sales in 2022 (~14M units). TLDR Volume is misleading, pay attention to velocity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-rise-for-first-time-to-an-average-of-151-kwh/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-... https://www.reuters.com/technology/ev-energy-storage-battery-prices-set-fall-more-report-2023-09-07/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/ev-energy-storage-battery... https://finance.yahoo.com/news/used-ev-prices-are-collapsing--and-tesla-is-the-reason-why-144449893.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/used-ev-prices-are-collapsing...

baz00 3y ago
Has anyone looked at the fact most people are too poor to buy new vehicles? Here in the UK the average vehicle age is 11 years old, most vehicles are second hand and the EV battery warranties top at 8 years. The financial risk of an out of warranty EV vs ICE vehicle is much much higher and the second hand price is higher. There is also zero bangernomics model for EVs either, which is really what a hell of a lot of people who drive vehicles are running. The problem is not solved and may not be which is what I think the original poster is considering. The bottom rung of society is going to lose their transport. Edit: I know everyone is blinded by EV hype at the moment but the entire financial model is drastically different and that will impact people heavily. Even the infrastructure and housing here doesn't necessarily mean it's viable.
- vel0city 3y ago
  How long do ICE warranties last in the UK?
- bluescrn 3y ago
  > The bottom rung of society is going to lose their transport. And in many cases, they're also going to lose their jobs. Politicians are incapable of thinking beyond the M25, so are probably expecting everyone to just hop on the Tube or frequent London bus services instead. People can't move closer to workplaces (or better public transport links), as the #1 goal of every UK government seems to be pumping up property prices to ever more ridiculous levels. (You can't allow the supply of housing to increase when rich people are getting richer from the rising prices!) We're incapable of building transport infrastructure in the UK. Look at the state of HS2. Something like £500 million per mile of railway (largely down to those property prices), and it might not even reach London at the current rate, let alone be extended north of Birmingham. Even for those that can afford an EV, huge numbers of people are unable to charge them at home (living in flats, relying on on-street parking, etc). There's hardly any visible growth of public charging infrastructure, and you just know that public chargers will be a huge bait+switch, eventually charging extortionate amounts compared to home charging (if only to minimize the queues...)
  - verisimi 3y ago
    All that. And also, the environmental cost of producing batteries is terrible. That cost is hidden (in the mining and making of batteries, and probs the disposal) as opposed to during the lifetime in the fuel that is burnt. This is to say, it's that the environment justification doesn't hold either. So why are governments committing to these non-sensical goals?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    Crossrail has just been an incredibly success in terms of public infrastructure. But outside of London its true. There are cities that are huge from a European perspective without even a basic S-Bahn tunnel. The UK is the perfect place for High Speed rail, and part of the problem with it is the idiotic bending over backwords for NIMBYs and the generally terrible rail planning practices. Not having built this in like the 80s is insanely dumb. If we are talking about poor people then bus reduction in bus service is actually by far the biggest deal.

jandrese 3y ago

Broke AF people are still buying ridiculously expensive new trucks, I don't think this will be as much of a problem as you are thinking. Also, some EVs can be downright cheap if you qualify for incentives. It was theoretically possible to get a Bolt for like $3000 after government incentives in certain states before Chevy stopped making them. https://youtu.be/uxoRrdE9efk?t=355 https://youtu.be/uxoRrdE9efk?t=355 Plus, China's middle class has been gobbling up the BYD Qin and Song EVs.

RoyalHenOil 3y ago
How can someone who is broke buy a vehicle? If they can afford a large purchase, they are by definition not broke.
- jandrese 3y ago
  Oh you sweet summer child.
  - RoyalHenOil 3y ago
    Do you care to formulate an explanation, rather than repeat a trite saying of no substance?
- Krutonium 3y ago
  The answer, as always, is debt.
  - RoyalHenOil 3y ago
    How can you afford to take on that kind of debt if you are broke? Your car will be taken back from you when you fail to pay the bills.
Gibbon1 3y ago
You can buy a used bolt with maybe 20,000 miles on it for about $18k. If you're in certain counties in California you can get a couple of grand worth of incentives towards that.

pixl97 3y ago

Thank goodness, maybe we'll start making infrastructure around not having to get into our car to do absolutely everything.

bluescrn 3y ago
That relies on actually being able and willing to construct infrastructure rather than just letting it decay. (And maybe, just maybe, we should create viable alternatives before pricing vast swathes of populations off the roads and out of work...)
- vel0city 3y ago
  If more people decide cars are getting too pricey maybe they'll vote for more transit and use the transit that's already there.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - RoyalHenOil 3y ago
    Unfortunately, people with reduced access to transportation are less likely to vote. It is too expensive and time-consuming to get to the polls.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      That's because some states love enacting laws that say things like "You can only have one voting place per county". Which is fine if you have 100,000 people in a county and untenable if you have 1,000,000. Oddly enough that affects one of the parties more than the other.
- asdff 3y ago
  We do plenty of that stuff. Even the poorest states in the country have regular highway work. If most people shifted to other forms of transit instead of putting such demand on the roads investment will shift accordingly to deal with the wear and tear increasing in this one sector while decreasing in another.

mumblemumble 3y ago

I'm OK with that. Big picture, EVs are just sweeping the fossil fuel problem under the rug, and I've yet to see a response to this problem that doesn't rely on counting chickens before they've hatched. And the cost of (often obligatory, in places like the USA) private transportation is almost like a crony capitalist regressive tax. It disproportionately harms the purchasing power of working-class individuals. Before I broke into the middle class, it was absolutely infuriating how much of my hard-earned money I had to spend on owning, maintaining, and operating my car. But there was no way around it, because the city I lived in was structured such that not owning a car was tantamount to not even having a chance at improving my economic opportunity. The sooner governments are forced to stop making infrastructure decisions that further siphon money out of the pockets of individuals and into the pockets of big automakers and oil companies, the better.

verisimi 3y ago
> The sooner governments are forced to stop making infrastructure decisions that further siphon money out of the pockets of individuals and into the pockets of big automakers and oil companies, the better. I'm afraid it's not going to be anytime soon. What you are doing is government acting in service harder for the benefit of big corporations.
panick21_ 3y ago
> that doesn't rely on counting chickens before they've hatched. Its simple really. There are 2 problems, both need to be solved. We can't wait on 1 to be solved until we start addressing the other. And EV now are way cleaner then ICE cars even in West Virgina. If you are in France, Switzerland or a country lie that, they are incredibly low carbon. > spend on owning, maintaining, and operating my car. Yes, society would do much better to invest in walking, biking and trains (of various kinds) then EV and to discourage car usage, EV or not. This is pretty clear to anybody who has studied the issue. Housing and transportation cost combined are a huge part of avg peoples lives, well over 50% in many cases. Better land use and zoning policies, combined with proper transport policy can make this much, much better. The US ironically has so many access road lanes that establishing a bike network is actually easy. In Switzerland most cities roads are very narrow so its much harder to add an extra mode in.

Moldoteck 3y ago

Oh I hope for this in combo with better public transport system, like switzerland and Netherlands

sieabahlpark 3y ago
[dead]