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In China, a lot of EVs are being sold, something like 50% of all cars. The vast majority of them are very small, similar to the Japanese kei cars. They are use
by tuatoru 3y ago
In China, a lot of EVs are being sold, something like 50% of all cars. The vast majority of them are very small, similar to the Japanese kei cars.
They are used in "3rd tier" cities, not the cities you might have heard of such as Beijing and Wuhan.
Crucially, these cars are affordable. Well under USD 10k. Not street legal in Western countries, of course.
Back in the West, it appears that the pool of wealthy people who wish to virtue-signal by buying a car for $70K or more is finite.
I haven't yet seen any stories about the experiences of rental car companies with electric cars, and why they are not snapping them up. Those stories would be very interesting. So would the stories of companies that operate their own fleets.
- TheAlchemist 3y agoWell, you're just in time for the rental car companies. Hertz was releasing their quarterly results yesterday, and they sounded pretty negative on Tesla (they signed up for 100k Teslas last year - was a pretty huge deal): "The rental car company cited Tesla’s price cuts negatively impacting the resale value of its EVs, and higher than expected repair costs for EVs as a reason to slow its pace of electrification." "Hertz now has 35,000 Tesla vehicles and around 50,000 electric vehicles in its fleet -- far shy of the 100,000 Teslas that Hertz originally said it was ordering and expected by the end of 2022."