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This is very good news. Now I would like to see western car manufacturers lower prices of EVs in unison. Remember how in the 90s the intel pc completely overwh

This is very good news. Now I would like to see western car manufacturers lower prices of EVs in unison. Remember how in the 90s the intel pc completely overwhelmed and completely destroyed several layers of computing competitors. Intel and their PC manufacturing bretheren did that by providing a decent quality product at the lowest price. Then they used the benefits of manufacturing scale to improve the price quality ratio to the point where the intel PCs were higher performance than even the fancy work stations that cost 10 times as much. Well the chinese are about to do that with EVs. EVs are very similar to PCs in this respect, because they have a lot of potential for manufacturing efficiencies. Western manufacturers (other than Tesla) should drop their prices and try to get to scale as soon as possible. Tesla is at scale but it has a bunch of other problems. Elon should stop his public stage embarrassments (latest having to do with antisemitism and neo nazis) and should concentrate on making cars people like.

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
I believe your analogy with computers is incorrect. Prices are dropping not because of rabid competition that tries and succeeds in one-upping each other with better cheaper tech. No, instead demand is rapidly drying up, because suddenly people realize most EVs are vastly, vastly inferior to what they were supposed to replace. The only EVs that make sense are small ones, small battery, for urban transport without the emissions, so you can keep the city air clean. From that point on, the bigger you get, the worse it gets. Notice that although Tesla has sold several million sedan/compacts and... uhmm "SUVs" (really: just slightly bigger Model 3s), they keep postponing the CyberTruck and Semi. They've only made 90 Semis and avoiding mass production. CyberTruck also won't be in mass production for at least a year more as they test the market (expect several thousand sold). That's because no amount of hype can hide the facts for too long. These cars are expensive to buy, but way more expensive to own. Insurance is shooting up to the sky as they have to write off entire cars over minor damage because they dented the battery and this sh*t can't be fixed. EVs will also be increasingly a liability when parked tightly below residential buildings, malls, ferries and so on. If it catches fire, the whole parking lot is done. The EV bubble is popping before your eyes. The future is not electric. The future is hybrid and I mean this in multiple ways. Diesel trucks, gas pickup trucks, hybrid family cars, and small electric urban cars and electric scooters.
- cperciva 3y ago
  Insurance is shooting up to the sky as they have to write off entire cars over minor damage because they dented the battery and this shit can't be fixed. I'm hoping we'll see improvements to the designs here, e.g. modular replaceable batteries, so that if the battery is damaged in a collision there's a $1000 cost to replace one of 4 battery modules, rather than a $40000 cost to replace the entire vehicle.
  - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
    If modular batteries would work, we'd have them. If you recall Elon promised several years back that Tesla cars will have replaceable batteries. Go to a charging station, swap your battery and go. He didn't do it. Why? Because batteries are HEAVY. A modular design means the batteries can't be structural, so you need more structure to support the car around the battery, and a solid structure holding the replaceable battery itself. Boxes in boxes in boxes in boxes. This makes the car heavier. Weight means less range. To increase the range you need more batteries. Which adds more weight. Which means less range. Do you see what I mean? It's just physics. We can't fix this. Only some amazing battery breakthrough would fix this, but so far we have only sensationalist articles about something working in a lab supposedly and nothing out there in production.
    - aydyn 3y ago
      > If you recall Elon promised several years back that Tesla cars will have replaceable batteries. Go to a charging station, swap your battery and go. He didn't do it. Why? Because Elon spouts a lot of bullshit that you shouldn't take seriously? Why do people still feign surprise. That's not an indictment of EVs as a whole, and in fact none of your arguments are. Cybertrucks being a failure? Well yeah, but not because it's an EV. Expensive to buy? When M3s are going for $30K on sale after federal credits? Expensive to own? I haven't needed a single maintenance other than windshield wipers after 50K miles.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
jes5199 3y ago
Tesla has margins on their EVs so they could afford to cut the price. The other Western manufacturers aren't there yet, so there's not sufficient competition. Maybe Chinese manufacturers will get into western markets and we'll get a real price war
- dilyevsky 3y ago
  > Maybe Chinese manufacturers will get into western markets They already have - volvo makes nice evs but pretty pricey
  - shiftpgdn 3y ago
    Western market Volvos are made by the "original" Volvo with minimal Geely influence. For now anyway.
    - ddalex 3y ago
      the design language and the consumer software in the Geely era are of atrocious quality Hopefully the safety, mechanics and embedded software are still Volvo-engineered, but I wouldn't bet on it
      - moogly 3y ago
        I've heard much better things about the Zeekr infotainment software. I wonder if they'll consolidate. Then again, Lotus (Geely) also have their own. Not sure about the other car Smart #1.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      All EVs by Volvo and polestar are made at one factory in shandong, so they are made at least with Geely manufacturing influence.
      - moogly 3y ago
        Nah. The EX90 is being built in South Carolina for the US market. Polestar 3 and 4 will also be built there. XC40 and C40 Recharge are built in Ghent, Belgium. The EX30 will also be manufactured there starting in 2025. Somewhat complete list here[0], but it's not including the US-built Polestar 3 and 4 which were announced in 2021. Maybe those plans have changed, not sure. Also if the US EV incentives were to go away, see planned US production to diminish across the board. The battery production plant joint venture (with Northvolt) is being constructed outside of Gothenburg, Sweden. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Volvo_Car_production_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Volvo_Car_production_p...
1970-01-01 3y ago
That's a very fast and loose description of the 90s PC boom you've posted. I do not think it compares to EV manufacturing very much, if at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible#"IBM_PC_compatible"_becomes_"Wintel" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible#"IBM_PC_comp...
bluedino 3y ago
90's PC industry, so outsource everything little by little until it's funny overseas in the means of cost savings and efficiency, and then there's nothing but scraps left here?
- HPsquared 3y ago
  That's the way of the world.
  - Geezus_42 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - golergka 3y ago
      Rising people in third world countries out of poverty? That's awesome.
      - throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
        Lol yeah, at the expense of their ecosystem, personal health and safety, and livelihood once the next cheapest nation gets factories online. The third world only benefits as long as the capitalist masters deem them worthy, them they're abandoned with no other economic driver
        golergka 3y ago
        Yes, you can only benefit when other people enjoy your services. The only way to enrich yourself without providing something useful to others is using violence.
        anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        With a lot of hard work you can enrich yourself through building your own needs. https://www.yahoo.com/news/woman-lives-floating-island-canada-104301692.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/woman-lives-floating-island-canad...
roland35 3y ago
Cars have an element of safety and reliability concerns where I just do not trust some of the newer automakers, compared to a computer! Also it is different purchasing a car for tens of thousands of dollars vs a computer.
- lordnacho 3y ago
  Aren't there safety conformance tests that every car is put through before being allowed to be sold? I seem to remember looking through these last time I bought a car.
  - askiiart 3y ago
    Yes, but in the US at least (I don't know about anywhere else, sorry), it's way too easy. If I remember correctly, the test was made for cars back in the 60s and basically every single car gets a 4 or 5 out of 5. If you've got two 4/5 cars, then one of them will surely be safer than the other, but unless the car is able to get a 5/5, there's no difference in the score.
    - rootusrootus 3y ago
      The tests have evolved a huge amount since the 60s. And even if a car just barely met the minimum legal requirement to be DOT legal, if it performs poorly on the IIHS tests then people are going to run the other way. And once your brand has -that- reputation, good luck coming back from it anytime soon.
      - askiiart 3y ago
        Ah, well then it seems I was very mistaken! I'm so sorry about that, I should really do a bit of research next time before posting.
- stcredzero 3y ago
  Cars have an element of safety and reliability concerns Teslas are claimed to be the safest cars ever made. In fact, Tesla uses instrumentation to track accelerations many times a second during actual crashes, and gather statistics on what gets hit, and what goes where during a crash. This is data of a quality head and shoulders above the competitors, and it shows. On top of that, they are using similar techniques to have the car avoid the crash altogether. These comprise active safety measures which are included with FSD, but which are also standalone and included generally in Tesla cars.
throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
PC manufacturing is wildly different than car manufacturing. Building a car requires like 20 different disciplines all working in unison, perfectly. Regardless of how cheap the battery gets, it's still complicated, difficult and expensive to make a car [that doesn't suck]. So it's unlikely prices will drop significantly just because one big component gets cheaper, and "scaling" production is still very hard. Just screwing up one assembly step can cause huge costs.
- dimal 3y ago
  > PC manufacturing is wildly different than car manufacturing. I would grant that PC manufacturing is wildly different than manufacturing an internal combustion engine car, but is it wildly different making an EV car? A lot of complexity disappears once you don't have to orchestrate thousands of tiny explosions, then transmit the thrust from those explosions to multiple wheels in different areas of the car. My understanding of EVs (which is limited) is that they are much simpler.
  - throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
    Yes, any kind of car is wildly more difficult to build at scale than a PC. The motor and transmission are only two of about two dozen systems in a car which need to operate flawlessly. Just the paint alone is hard to get right. Wrong alloy with wrong paint, it chips and flakes. Wrong application, it fades or scratches. Introduce new colors and they might react differently. So now you need to be a paint expert, and be a expert at applying paint, in multiple phases, for multiple parts, many times a day, and never make a mistake. Now do that for 23 other systems in the car and try not to make a mistake. Suspension, steering, brakes, air con, heat, ECU, brake controller, headlight controller, trim fitting, interior fitting, seats, signal and tail lights, seat belts, front/side impact air bags, bumpers, crush zones, windows, speakers, stereo, main electrical / battery, alternator/inverter, wheels, tires, etc, etc. If you screw up the torque on a bolt, break a clip, forget a fitting or connection, etc, the car now has a defect and needs to be repaired or your brand suffers from consumer complaints (in the best case) or down right safety violations or injuries (worst case). Compare that to a small metal box which has about six breadboarded electrical components, a screen and a keyboard. The car has that too, plus everything else!
balderdash 3y ago
I wouldn’t hold my breath - there is still plenty of excess demand for new cars to be worked off before auto manufacturers will need to lower prices - evidence of this is the decline in used car prices, but now where bear back to “trend” levels… https://site.manheim.com/en/services/consulting/used-vehicle-value-index.html https://site.manheim.com/en/services/consulting/used-vehicle...
kristopolous 3y ago
People responding really don't know the state of Chinese electric right now. For 2023, China's BYD has globally outsold Telsa by over 50% and 8 out of the top 10 brands for global electric car sales for Oct 2023 are from China. The BYD qin plus, for instance, is about $20k, the Wuling Mini-ev is about ~$10k, Aion Y is $20k. They're eating everyone's lunch and expanding into Central America, Africa and Europe. Cars like the Cherry QQ, which are $5,000 aren't meant to be compete with new cars but instead, to the vast majority of price-sensitive buyers who normally purchase used cars. Introduce a used-price new car, however ... They're poised to do to the American auto market what Japan did 40 years ago and just like then, American auto seems to be asleep at the wheel. This is a classic Clayton Christensen innovators dilemma formula. Edit: Apparently factual statements are unpopular once again. The internet is so cool.
- tnel77 3y ago
  Assuming quality is good and the cars are actually safe (excellent crash test ratings, for example), I’m excited to buy one of these cars soon! I’d love an electric SUV/truck, but there’s no reality where I pay $80k. I’m interested in a $20-30k product though!
- dalyons 3y ago
  Do people just find these facts inconvenient? Unbelievable.
  - kristopolous 3y ago
    It went deep into the negatives for a bit. Often, at least with me, people mistake my efforts at sincere analysis as some kind of advocacy. I'm an American. I've never been to China or seen one of these Chinese electric cars in person but everything suggests they're on their way to a formidable auto industry in the electric and city-car/light use space - the demographic that Honda and Toyota captured in the 70s and 80s. Of course if you've done any traveling you'd find many countries have a national auto-manufacturer that's deeply popular in country without much penetration outside (take Vinfast or Saipa for instance) and the Chinese auto companies have yet to prove they can stake a foothold outside of their home country at the Kia or Mercedes level but they just started. BYD just entered Japan under 2 months ago and XPeng entered Europe only about 6 months ago. Time will tell, but we could be seeing the very early stage of Chinese auto brands becoming household names.
rr808 3y ago
Yeah the prices are dropping already https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/are-americans-falling-out-of-love-with-evs-2c7e6a1a https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/are-americans-falling-out... https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ev-makers-turn-to-discounts-to-combat-waning-demand-3aa77535 https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ev-makers-turn-to-discoun...
nopinsight 3y ago
The last chart suggests a linear growth in EV adoption even after 3-year-usage cost parity with ICE in 2025-2027 (2nd chart). This seems overly conservative. People care a lot about ongoing costs for gas and maintenance and will flip to EV as the default choice very soon after that. (This is particularly true in markets where long-distance car trips are less common.) I predict more of an S-curve growth in EV sales. Probably >65% of new car sales by 2030, far more than the 47% in the ‘hyper adoption’ scenario in the article.
seltzered_ 3y ago
"Introduce a used-price new car, however ..." This isn't necessarily true. A good case study is the Tata Nano which carried a lot of press around being the world's cheapest new car and ultimately flopped: https://www.autoweek.com/news/a1702021/tata-nano-failed-because-nobody-aspires-own-cheap-car/ https://www.autoweek.com/news/a1702021/tata-nano-failed-beca... . Arguably cars can be cost optimized to a point where people would rather buy a nicer used car.
- tuatoru 3y ago
  It'll be interesting to see how the BYD Seagull and (even smaller) Chery QQ do in the next few years, then. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Seagull https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Seagull 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chery_QQ_Ice_Cream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chery_QQ_Ice_Cream
  - seltzered_ 3y ago
    Curious how much those cost and how the quality is - at first glance those look quite nice. The issue isn't necessarily how small it is, but if things get cost-engineered so much that people feel that the quality isn't there compared to a used vehicle.
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> Now I would like to see western car manufacturers lower prices of EVs in unison. This is not even the interesting thing about lower battery prices. It may happen, but the interesting thing is that it enables different kinds of electric vehicles. If the cost of the battery in itself rivals the entire price of a subcompact economy car, you obviously can't put one in a subcompact economy car and offer a competitive price in that market. So right now the electric vehicles with significant range are premium products. With cheaper batteries you could have a traditional subcompact economy car with mechanical controls etc. and an electric powertrain. Likewise, trucks need large batteries to have adequate range while hauling loads. So this gets you to an electric version of the Ford Maverick, for example. It doesn't just lower the price of the existing models, it allows the low-end models to exist.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
  Right!!! I would love some more competition in the electric riding lawnmower arena, or just a choice of electric lawn/garden tractors and UTV's in general.
mdgrech23 3y ago
you have no idea how well protected the domestic auto industry is from foreign vehicles. people will cite Honda and Toyota but the rules were altered in a such a way to bring Toyota/Honda in and put downward pressure on the domestic industry but not kill them. Let's not forget GM went out of the business and our government bailed them out.

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago

I believe your analogy with computers is incorrect. Prices are dropping not because of rabid competition that tries and succeeds in one-upping each other with better cheaper tech. No, instead demand is rapidly drying up, because suddenly people realize most EVs are vastly, vastly inferior to what they were supposed to replace. The only EVs that make sense are small ones, small battery, for urban transport without the emissions, so you can keep the city air clean. From that point on, the bigger you get, the worse it gets. Notice that although Tesla has sold several million sedan/compacts and... uhmm "SUVs" (really: just slightly bigger Model 3s), they keep postponing the CyberTruck and Semi. They've only made 90 Semis and avoiding mass production. CyberTruck also won't be in mass production for at least a year more as they test the market (expect several thousand sold). That's because no amount of hype can hide the facts for too long. These cars are expensive to buy, but way more expensive to own. Insurance is shooting up to the sky as they have to write off entire cars over minor damage because they dented the battery and this sh*t can't be fixed. EVs will also be increasingly a liability when parked tightly below residential buildings, malls, ferries and so on. If it catches fire, the whole parking lot is done. The EV bubble is popping before your eyes. The future is not electric. The future is hybrid and I mean this in multiple ways. Diesel trucks, gas pickup trucks, hybrid family cars, and small electric urban cars and electric scooters.

cperciva 3y ago
Insurance is shooting up to the sky as they have to write off entire cars over minor damage because they dented the battery and this shit can't be fixed. I'm hoping we'll see improvements to the designs here, e.g. modular replaceable batteries, so that if the battery is damaged in a collision there's a $1000 cost to replace one of 4 battery modules, rather than a $40000 cost to replace the entire vehicle.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  If modular batteries would work, we'd have them. If you recall Elon promised several years back that Tesla cars will have replaceable batteries. Go to a charging station, swap your battery and go. He didn't do it. Why? Because batteries are HEAVY. A modular design means the batteries can't be structural, so you need more structure to support the car around the battery, and a solid structure holding the replaceable battery itself. Boxes in boxes in boxes in boxes. This makes the car heavier. Weight means less range. To increase the range you need more batteries. Which adds more weight. Which means less range. Do you see what I mean? It's just physics. We can't fix this. Only some amazing battery breakthrough would fix this, but so far we have only sensationalist articles about something working in a lab supposedly and nothing out there in production.
  - aydyn 3y ago
    > If you recall Elon promised several years back that Tesla cars will have replaceable batteries. Go to a charging station, swap your battery and go. He didn't do it. Why? Because Elon spouts a lot of bullshit that you shouldn't take seriously? Why do people still feign surprise. That's not an indictment of EVs as a whole, and in fact none of your arguments are. Cybertrucks being a failure? Well yeah, but not because it's an EV. Expensive to buy? When M3s are going for $30K on sale after federal credits? Expensive to own? I haven't needed a single maintenance other than windshield wipers after 50K miles.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]

jes5199 3y ago

Tesla has margins on their EVs so they could afford to cut the price. The other Western manufacturers aren't there yet, so there's not sufficient competition. Maybe Chinese manufacturers will get into western markets and we'll get a real price war

dilyevsky 3y ago
> Maybe Chinese manufacturers will get into western markets They already have - volvo makes nice evs but pretty pricey
- shiftpgdn 3y ago
  Western market Volvos are made by the "original" Volvo with minimal Geely influence. For now anyway.
  - ddalex 3y ago
    the design language and the consumer software in the Geely era are of atrocious quality Hopefully the safety, mechanics and embedded software are still Volvo-engineered, but I wouldn't bet on it
    - moogly 3y ago
      I've heard much better things about the Zeekr infotainment software. I wonder if they'll consolidate. Then again, Lotus (Geely) also have their own. Not sure about the other car Smart #1.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    All EVs by Volvo and polestar are made at one factory in shandong, so they are made at least with Geely manufacturing influence.
    - moogly 3y ago
      Nah. The EX90 is being built in South Carolina for the US market. Polestar 3 and 4 will also be built there. XC40 and C40 Recharge are built in Ghent, Belgium. The EX30 will also be manufactured there starting in 2025. Somewhat complete list here[0], but it's not including the US-built Polestar 3 and 4 which were announced in 2021. Maybe those plans have changed, not sure. Also if the US EV incentives were to go away, see planned US production to diminish across the board. The battery production plant joint venture (with Northvolt) is being constructed outside of Gothenburg, Sweden. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Volvo_Car_production_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Volvo_Car_production_p...

1970-01-01 3y ago

That's a very fast and loose description of the 90s PC boom you've posted. I do not think it compares to EV manufacturing very much, if at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible#"IBM_PC_compatible"_becomes_"Wintel" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible#"IBM_PC_comp...

bluedino 3y ago

90's PC industry, so outsource everything little by little until it's funny overseas in the means of cost savings and efficiency, and then there's nothing but scraps left here?

HPsquared 3y ago
That's the way of the world.
- Geezus_42 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - golergka 3y ago
    Rising people in third world countries out of poverty? That's awesome.
    - throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
      Lol yeah, at the expense of their ecosystem, personal health and safety, and livelihood once the next cheapest nation gets factories online. The third world only benefits as long as the capitalist masters deem them worthy, them they're abandoned with no other economic driver
      - golergka 3y ago
        Yes, you can only benefit when other people enjoy your services. The only way to enrich yourself without providing something useful to others is using violence.
        anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        With a lot of hard work you can enrich yourself through building your own needs. https://www.yahoo.com/news/woman-lives-floating-island-canada-104301692.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/woman-lives-floating-island-canad...

roland35 3y ago

Cars have an element of safety and reliability concerns where I just do not trust some of the newer automakers, compared to a computer! Also it is different purchasing a car for tens of thousands of dollars vs a computer.

lordnacho 3y ago
Aren't there safety conformance tests that every car is put through before being allowed to be sold? I seem to remember looking through these last time I bought a car.
- askiiart 3y ago
  Yes, but in the US at least (I don't know about anywhere else, sorry), it's way too easy. If I remember correctly, the test was made for cars back in the 60s and basically every single car gets a 4 or 5 out of 5. If you've got two 4/5 cars, then one of them will surely be safer than the other, but unless the car is able to get a 5/5, there's no difference in the score.
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    The tests have evolved a huge amount since the 60s. And even if a car just barely met the minimum legal requirement to be DOT legal, if it performs poorly on the IIHS tests then people are going to run the other way. And once your brand has -that- reputation, good luck coming back from it anytime soon.
    - askiiart 3y ago
      Ah, well then it seems I was very mistaken! I'm so sorry about that, I should really do a bit of research next time before posting.
stcredzero 3y ago
Cars have an element of safety and reliability concerns Teslas are claimed to be the safest cars ever made. In fact, Tesla uses instrumentation to track accelerations many times a second during actual crashes, and gather statistics on what gets hit, and what goes where during a crash. This is data of a quality head and shoulders above the competitors, and it shows. On top of that, they are using similar techniques to have the car avoid the crash altogether. These comprise active safety measures which are included with FSD, but which are also standalone and included generally in Tesla cars.

throwawaaarrgh 3y ago

PC manufacturing is wildly different than car manufacturing. Building a car requires like 20 different disciplines all working in unison, perfectly. Regardless of how cheap the battery gets, it's still complicated, difficult and expensive to make a car [that doesn't suck]. So it's unlikely prices will drop significantly just because one big component gets cheaper, and "scaling" production is still very hard. Just screwing up one assembly step can cause huge costs.

dimal 3y ago
> PC manufacturing is wildly different than car manufacturing. I would grant that PC manufacturing is wildly different than manufacturing an internal combustion engine car, but is it wildly different making an EV car? A lot of complexity disappears once you don't have to orchestrate thousands of tiny explosions, then transmit the thrust from those explosions to multiple wheels in different areas of the car. My understanding of EVs (which is limited) is that they are much simpler.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
  Yes, any kind of car is wildly more difficult to build at scale than a PC. The motor and transmission are only two of about two dozen systems in a car which need to operate flawlessly. Just the paint alone is hard to get right. Wrong alloy with wrong paint, it chips and flakes. Wrong application, it fades or scratches. Introduce new colors and they might react differently. So now you need to be a paint expert, and be a expert at applying paint, in multiple phases, for multiple parts, many times a day, and never make a mistake. Now do that for 23 other systems in the car and try not to make a mistake. Suspension, steering, brakes, air con, heat, ECU, brake controller, headlight controller, trim fitting, interior fitting, seats, signal and tail lights, seat belts, front/side impact air bags, bumpers, crush zones, windows, speakers, stereo, main electrical / battery, alternator/inverter, wheels, tires, etc, etc. If you screw up the torque on a bolt, break a clip, forget a fitting or connection, etc, the car now has a defect and needs to be repaired or your brand suffers from consumer complaints (in the best case) or down right safety violations or injuries (worst case). Compare that to a small metal box which has about six breadboarded electrical components, a screen and a keyboard. The car has that too, plus everything else!

balderdash 3y ago

I wouldn’t hold my breath - there is still plenty of excess demand for new cars to be worked off before auto manufacturers will need to lower prices - evidence of this is the decline in used car prices, but now where bear back to “trend” levels… https://site.manheim.com/en/services/consulting/used-vehicle-value-index.html https://site.manheim.com/en/services/consulting/used-vehicle...

kristopolous 3y ago

People responding really don't know the state of Chinese electric right now. For 2023, China's BYD has globally outsold Telsa by over 50% and 8 out of the top 10 brands for global electric car sales for Oct 2023 are from China. The BYD qin plus, for instance, is about $20k, the Wuling Mini-ev is about ~$10k, Aion Y is $20k. They're eating everyone's lunch and expanding into Central America, Africa and Europe. Cars like the Cherry QQ, which are $5,000 aren't meant to be compete with new cars but instead, to the vast majority of price-sensitive buyers who normally purchase used cars. Introduce a used-price new car, however ... They're poised to do to the American auto market what Japan did 40 years ago and just like then, American auto seems to be asleep at the wheel. This is a classic Clayton Christensen innovators dilemma formula. Edit: Apparently factual statements are unpopular once again. The internet is so cool.

tnel77 3y ago
Assuming quality is good and the cars are actually safe (excellent crash test ratings, for example), I’m excited to buy one of these cars soon! I’d love an electric SUV/truck, but there’s no reality where I pay $80k. I’m interested in a $20-30k product though!
dalyons 3y ago
Do people just find these facts inconvenient? Unbelievable.
- kristopolous 3y ago
  It went deep into the negatives for a bit. Often, at least with me, people mistake my efforts at sincere analysis as some kind of advocacy. I'm an American. I've never been to China or seen one of these Chinese electric cars in person but everything suggests they're on their way to a formidable auto industry in the electric and city-car/light use space - the demographic that Honda and Toyota captured in the 70s and 80s. Of course if you've done any traveling you'd find many countries have a national auto-manufacturer that's deeply popular in country without much penetration outside (take Vinfast or Saipa for instance) and the Chinese auto companies have yet to prove they can stake a foothold outside of their home country at the Kia or Mercedes level but they just started. BYD just entered Japan under 2 months ago and XPeng entered Europe only about 6 months ago. Time will tell, but we could be seeing the very early stage of Chinese auto brands becoming household names.

rr808 3y ago

Yeah the prices are dropping already https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/are-americans-falling-out-of-love-with-evs-2c7e6a1a https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/are-americans-falling-out... https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ev-makers-turn-to-discounts-to-combat-waning-demand-3aa77535 https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ev-makers-turn-to-discoun...

nopinsight 3y ago

The last chart suggests a linear growth in EV adoption even after 3-year-usage cost parity with ICE in 2025-2027 (2nd chart). This seems overly conservative. People care a lot about ongoing costs for gas and maintenance and will flip to EV as the default choice very soon after that. (This is particularly true in markets where long-distance car trips are less common.) I predict more of an S-curve growth in EV sales. Probably >65% of new car sales by 2030, far more than the 47% in the ‘hyper adoption’ scenario in the article.

seltzered_ 3y ago

"Introduce a used-price new car, however ..." This isn't necessarily true. A good case study is the Tata Nano which carried a lot of press around being the world's cheapest new car and ultimately flopped: https://www.autoweek.com/news/a1702021/tata-nano-failed-because-nobody-aspires-own-cheap-car/ https://www.autoweek.com/news/a1702021/tata-nano-failed-beca... . Arguably cars can be cost optimized to a point where people would rather buy a nicer used car.

tuatoru 3y ago
It'll be interesting to see how the BYD Seagull and (even smaller) Chery QQ do in the next few years, then. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Seagull https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Seagull 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chery_QQ_Ice_Cream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chery_QQ_Ice_Cream
- seltzered_ 3y ago
  Curious how much those cost and how the quality is - at first glance those look quite nice. The issue isn't necessarily how small it is, but if things get cost-engineered so much that people feel that the quality isn't there compared to a used vehicle.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

> Now I would like to see western car manufacturers lower prices of EVs in unison. This is not even the interesting thing about lower battery prices. It may happen, but the interesting thing is that it enables different kinds of electric vehicles. If the cost of the battery in itself rivals the entire price of a subcompact economy car, you obviously can't put one in a subcompact economy car and offer a competitive price in that market. So right now the electric vehicles with significant range are premium products. With cheaper batteries you could have a traditional subcompact economy car with mechanical controls etc. and an electric powertrain. Likewise, trucks need large batteries to have adequate range while hauling loads. So this gets you to an electric version of the Ford Maverick, for example. It doesn't just lower the price of the existing models, it allows the low-end models to exist.

HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
Right!!! I would love some more competition in the electric riding lawnmower arena, or just a choice of electric lawn/garden tractors and UTV's in general.

mdgrech23 3y ago

you have no idea how well protected the domestic auto industry is from foreign vehicles. people will cite Honda and Toyota but the rules were altered in a such a way to bring Toyota/Honda in and put downward pressure on the domestic industry but not kill them. Let's not forget GM went out of the business and our government bailed them out.