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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 b

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]
  - outworlder 3y ago
    > If modular batteries would work, we'd have them. We have them. Nissan is one of the ones I know that can replace individual battery modules if any of them have faulty cells. That's completely different than a battery swap for charging purposes. Batteries are heavy but they aren't ridiculously so in the grand scheme of things. Normal, not oversized trucks, with decent range are possible without structural batteries, and that describes a lot of (non Tesla) EVs.
  - jodrellblank 3y ago
    > "If modular batteries would work, we'd have them" China has them; automated EV battery swap stations by NIO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kZgG58zz8U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kZgG58zz8U
  - kalleboo 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? California had a subsidy for cars that had swappable batteries. Tesla opened a single station that was open by invite-only in order to qualify for that subsidy. Once it ended, so did the project.
- bluGill 3y ago
  We don't need modular batteries, we need accessible cells. Train mechanics to find and replace the bad cell. Spot welding a new cell in is a skill, but one mechanics can learn. There are safety concerns with this, but high voltage spark plugs are not safe either and mechanics work with them all the time. However if the cells are not reasonably, or they can't find the bad one the whole car becomes scrap. Some of this will come as mechanics decide they need to learn how to service EVs. However some of it depends on a good design for repair.
- tirant 3y ago
  That already exists. BMW sells you the modules for any of their EV batteries.
sergiosgc 3y ago
A quick Google search, and you'd have learned that US BEV sales grew 68% in the last year. You'd have saved the embarrassment of writing a huge argument on faulty grounds.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  I'm talking about last quarter. The growth is done. Everyone is halting EV production and has full lots of brand new EVs collecting dust. They can't sell them. Tesla is best seller outside China, but they're hitting a ceiling of demand as well, and they can drop prices only so much before they're underwater. And in China, guess what? Most EVs sold are small urban vehicles. Which I covered in my embarrassing huge argument on faulty grounds. Watch what happens next. Or if you catch up slowly, the final outcomes will be in 2024.
  - MostlyStable 3y ago
    Have a source? This [0] Disagrees with you [0] https://twitter.com/JesseJenkins/status/1724395067224236182 https://twitter.com/JesseJenkins/status/1724395067224236182
    - jjoonathan 3y ago
      "EV Demand (Growth) is Slowing" is like "Boat goes slower with 100mph headwind." It's true but not because of the boat, it's because interest rates are up and the auto sector is notoriously interest rate sensitive. Not to mention it has a subprime crisis courtesy of the supply chain woes of 2021-2022.
  - Zanni 3y ago
    Beginning January 1, 2024, the $7,500 EV tax credit can be taken at the point of sale, meaning you can use it as a downpayment or to lower your monthly payments. That's a huge incentive to delay purchasing until January, and, I think, one of the unacknowledged drivers of the 4th quarter "slow down." https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/ev-tax-credit-electric-vehicle-tax-credit#2024-ev-tax-credit-flexibility https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/ev-tax-credit-elect...
wwtrv 3y ago
> they keep postponing the CyberTruck > CyberTruck also won't be in mass production I'm not sure being an EV is the biggest hurdle for manufacturing that abomination. Tesla had troubles putting plastic panels together, so steel ones might be an issue. If they actually end up trying to manufacturing it at scale they'll end up having redesign it which will lead to significant delays.
- stcredzero 3y ago
  If they actually end up trying to manufacturing it at scale they'll end up having redesign it which will lead to significant delays. You just revealed yourself as someone uninformed about what's actually happening with Cybertruck. If they actually end up trying to manufacturing it at scale they'll end up having redesign it You're about a year or so late with this "prediction."
  - wwtrv 3y ago
    > You're about a year or so late with this "prediction." Of course other much better informed people have said it before. Show what? What happens if they try manufacturing it at scale and every third car needs to be sent back due to defects? Then again considering how tasteless a person needs to be to buy that thing might they won't mind a rough edge or two.
    - stcredzero 3y ago
      The nice thing, is we won't have to wait that long to see how this comment ages. My prediction, over the next 2 years: There are going to be some rough patches to iron out, just like Model X. Then things are going to improve going forward. Eventually, production will be in excess of 100k/year. Every Cybertruck built will be sold. We'll see who gets it right.
      - wwtrv 3y ago
        > Model X Is an actually relatively well designed and practical car.
blacksmith_tb 3y ago
Color me skeptical - even if EVs were worse in every way (which clearly isn't true, cheaper to operate and maintain, for example, even if they're not the easiest for long road trips), we might still just have to suck it up and accept that we have to change? Most driving is short trips anyhow, so I tend to think it's just an illusion that everyone needs to be ready for an epic journey at any time - instead of yet another trip to the office or to get groceries. Just rent a diesel for the road trip?
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Renting a car might be a viable option if the reality didn't completely suck. I.e. having a reservation doesn't mean you'll actually get a car when you go to pick it up. Or having to wait an hour while the overworked rental agent handles the queue of people waiting to get their cars. Or the agency just being closed because nobody showed up to work that day.
  - brewdad 3y ago
    If you have a neighborhood or off-site car rental location near you the experience is usually far better than airport locations. You also usually save a bunch of taxes and fees that only apply to airport locations.
  - nicoburns 3y ago
    I belong to a “car club”, where there are specific cars that live in specific locations (mostly residential streets - there are several within east access of my house). I can book a car using an app, and when it’s time, I can open the car and start my booking using it too.
  - bruce511 3y ago
    If your experience renting cars is after flying into an airport, then you may be pleasantly surprised when renting "at home". I recently had cause to rent a people-mover, and did so from two separate, off-airport local companies (not chains). The 3 rentals all went off either a hitch, service was smooth, no wait, returns was trivial, cost was very reasonable. It definitely showed me that if i need a specific vehicle for an edge case this is a very viable approach.
hristov 3y ago
My tesla model s is about 10 years old now and it's cost of ownership is far lower than any gasoline car I have had. These cars were expensive to buy (but getting cheaper) but are far far far cheaper to own. You can look at the article you are commenting on and see that economists are predicting that total cost of ownership of EVs will be lower than gasoline cars by 2025.
- fsckboy 3y ago
  >My tesla model s is about 10 years old now and it's cost of ownership is far lower than any gasoline car I have had... total cost of ownership of EVs will be lower than gasoline cars by 2025 are you saying your tesla's total cost of ownership is higher than gasoline cars you've had? Or that your car is somehow unusually cheap, given that you bought an expensive one and we are before 2025?
  - meindnoch 3y ago
    Or he paid through the nose for the upkeep of his ICEs, as it is often the case with certain German premium brands for instance.
    - stcredzero 3y ago
      The reduction in time, inconvenience, and headache going from ICE to EV is pretty amazing. I'll basically never have to go to another gas station, ever again! No more oil changes. My last ICE car? Toyota Corolla. No contest in convenience and reliability.
hristov 3y ago
My tesla model s is about 10 years old now and it's cost of ownership is far lower than any gasoline car I have had. These cars were expensive to buy (but getting cheaper) but are far far far cheaper to own. You can look at the article you are commenting on and see that economists are predicting that total cost of ownership of EVs will be lower than gasoline cars by 2025. As far as the cybertruck ... this is just the stupidity elon musk has been affected by lately. The cybertruck body is supposed to be made by a fancy new method which Tesla has a lot of problems bringing to mass manufacturing. Rivian is making ev trucks and suvs that are quite popular.
- hristov 3y ago
  Sorry for the double post. HN seems to be having issues ....
- plagiarist 3y ago
  I'd be very interested in Rivian if it wasn't such a luxury price. I've wanted an EV truck ever since that news article about the guy in Texas powering his home from an F150 Lightning. But the price, coupled with the mass spying in every new vehicle... Looking like it will be used ICE cars for me pretty much indefinitely.
  - marssaxman 3y ago
    I wish the Bollinger trucks had worked out; that utilitarian design ethos really nailed it. My family is sticking with our old Toyota pickup for the same reasons you mention. It would be nice to completely stop burning fuel, but in practice we've already electrified our everyday travel by switching to bikes and scooters.
hdaz0017 3y ago
"If it catches fire, the whole parking lot is done" haha well Luton Airport fire was not caused by an EV !! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-67077996 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-67077... The risks are going in the opposite direction with lifepo4 batteries this reduces by a large margin (( far better than petrol and diesel )), then the next step is semi-solid state batteries and then solid state. Just no contest... "can't be fixed" well insureance companies will need to be forced to make sure they are fixed !!! it's poor regulations that are causing this not the tech!! standard and modular replaceable batteries problem solved and this also reduces prices.
- stephen_g 3y ago
  In the same vein - I know just one person whose car has spontaneously caught fire, it was a Toyota RAV4 and this was just before any mainstream EV was available to purchase! They were driving on a motorway, saw smoke, pulled over and got out, and hadn’t been able to retrieve any luggage or anything before it was completely in flames. Yes, there’s a risk with EVs, but there is plenty of risk with ICE cars too!
pjc50 3y ago
The market is fine, people are seeding "EVs are over" stories in the press for _some reason_. You know what's still an issue? Lead times. For absolutely everything with chips in it. A worse problem for EVs. The West can only hold back value Chinese EVs for so long.
outworlder 3y ago
> 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. Vastly inferior? I have one of the cheapest EVs that you can buy in the US. The quick charging standard is obsolete. And yet I'd rather drive it than most gas cars. Instant torque (even with a wimpy motor that's the size of a baseball), silent operation, zero time spent at gas stations. Free charging at work means I don't pay for fuel to commute (and it's more than 50 miles each way). But even if I did pay, it would be far cheaper than gas. > These cars are expensive to buy, but way more expensive to own. It's the cheapest car I've ever owned. I leased, then purchased after the lease. It cost about the same as an entry level Honda Civic. 4th year, $0 maintenance, other than a cabin air filter. No oil changes, no emissions testing. > the bigger you get, the worse it gets. That's true for all vehicles, although you do have a point with power density requirements. SUVs and 'trucks' are only viable because US gasoline is still cheap even in CA peak prices and parking is usually plentiful. Notice how they are rare worldwide. > 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. Insurance is fine for me. Again, non Tesla. Not all cars have the same design or have batteries that are structural - or batteries that aren't too different from laptop ones. > EVs will also be increasingly a liability when parked tightly below residential buildings, malls, ferries and so on. Statistics are hard to come by, but you'll find some manufacturers that have a higher incidence of fires. In particular, LFP chemistries are very, very tame. Heck, Toyota still uses NIMH for their hybrids. By the way, you contradict yourself when you say the future is hybrid, but then go on to talk about battery fires. Even small hybrid batteries store a lot of energy, enough for a pretty serious fire if they do catch on fire. So which is it? Many of your criticisms seem to be about Tesla. Tesla does a lot of things that are questionable. Repairs tend to be very expensive, for one. The Cybertruck makes no sense and the Semi is probably not viable. That's not about "EVs" though, that's a Tesla specific thing.
- monkeywork 3y ago
  Which car did you purchase?
jewayne 3y ago
> people realize most EVs are vastly, vastly inferior to what they were supposed to replace I don't know how anyone with any knowledge of EVs whatsoever can make this argument in 2023. Maybe this was forgivable 10 years ago, but now? This feels like bad faith. > The future is hybrid The future of personal transport vehicles is battery-electric, full stop. Why? Because you no longer need any of the trappings of an internal combustion engine. People forget why cars were awesome in the first place -- because you didn't need a horse anymore. In the same way, the big gain in the BEV is NOT adding the battery and the electric motor, it's getting rid of the ICE.
- bluGill 3y ago
  People don't care about getting rid of the ICE. They care about power, enough range to get where they want (including recharge time, and the recharging network), and total cost. Getting rid of the ICE is only an indirect benefit. It makes the car lighter and cheaper. If you don't need gas for anything, then getting rid of it is worth it. However if you need the gas for something (long trips?) then you need it.
  - crooked-v 3y ago
    > People don't care about getting rid of the ICE. People didn't care about getting rid of the horse at first, either.
    - bluGill 3y ago
      Mostly because the horse was a rich person's toy that most people could not afford. Horses as farm animals was only really a thing for maybe 70 years, for most the ox was much better: it ate less and was more mild mannered. The American prairie need the faster speed of the horse to make the plow needed work, otherwise they wouldn't use them. Coyboys also used the horse for roundup, both niches that started in the mid 1800s. My grandpa remembered the horses and didn't miss them at all. They had an ugly temper and you had to feed them daily even if you didn't leave the farm. They were purely a cost sink worse than a car or tractor.
Geezus_42 3y ago
If the liability is the battery exploding, then how are hybrids any different? They still have the same type of battery, just smaller.

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]
- outworlder 3y ago
  > If modular batteries would work, we'd have them. We have them. Nissan is one of the ones I know that can replace individual battery modules if any of them have faulty cells. That's completely different than a battery swap for charging purposes. Batteries are heavy but they aren't ridiculously so in the grand scheme of things. Normal, not oversized trucks, with decent range are possible without structural batteries, and that describes a lot of (non Tesla) EVs.
- jodrellblank 3y ago
  > "If modular batteries would work, we'd have them" China has them; automated EV battery swap stations by NIO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kZgG58zz8U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kZgG58zz8U
- kalleboo 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? California had a subsidy for cars that had swappable batteries. Tesla opened a single station that was open by invite-only in order to qualify for that subsidy. Once it ended, so did the project.
bluGill 3y ago
We don't need modular batteries, we need accessible cells. Train mechanics to find and replace the bad cell. Spot welding a new cell in is a skill, but one mechanics can learn. There are safety concerns with this, but high voltage spark plugs are not safe either and mechanics work with them all the time. However if the cells are not reasonably, or they can't find the bad one the whole car becomes scrap. Some of this will come as mechanics decide they need to learn how to service EVs. However some of it depends on a good design for repair.
tirant 3y ago
That already exists. BMW sells you the modules for any of their EV batteries.

sergiosgc 3y ago

A quick Google search, and you'd have learned that US BEV sales grew 68% in the last year. You'd have saved the embarrassment of writing a huge argument on faulty grounds.

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
I'm talking about last quarter. The growth is done. Everyone is halting EV production and has full lots of brand new EVs collecting dust. They can't sell them. Tesla is best seller outside China, but they're hitting a ceiling of demand as well, and they can drop prices only so much before they're underwater. And in China, guess what? Most EVs sold are small urban vehicles. Which I covered in my embarrassing huge argument on faulty grounds. Watch what happens next. Or if you catch up slowly, the final outcomes will be in 2024.
- MostlyStable 3y ago
  Have a source? This [0] Disagrees with you [0] https://twitter.com/JesseJenkins/status/1724395067224236182 https://twitter.com/JesseJenkins/status/1724395067224236182
  - jjoonathan 3y ago
    "EV Demand (Growth) is Slowing" is like "Boat goes slower with 100mph headwind." It's true but not because of the boat, it's because interest rates are up and the auto sector is notoriously interest rate sensitive. Not to mention it has a subprime crisis courtesy of the supply chain woes of 2021-2022.
- Zanni 3y ago
  Beginning January 1, 2024, the $7,500 EV tax credit can be taken at the point of sale, meaning you can use it as a downpayment or to lower your monthly payments. That's a huge incentive to delay purchasing until January, and, I think, one of the unacknowledged drivers of the 4th quarter "slow down." https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/ev-tax-credit-electric-vehicle-tax-credit#2024-ev-tax-credit-flexibility https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/ev-tax-credit-elect...

wwtrv 3y ago

> they keep postponing the CyberTruck > CyberTruck also won't be in mass production I'm not sure being an EV is the biggest hurdle for manufacturing that abomination. Tesla had troubles putting plastic panels together, so steel ones might be an issue. If they actually end up trying to manufacturing it at scale they'll end up having redesign it which will lead to significant delays.

stcredzero 3y ago
If they actually end up trying to manufacturing it at scale they'll end up having redesign it which will lead to significant delays. You just revealed yourself as someone uninformed about what's actually happening with Cybertruck. If they actually end up trying to manufacturing it at scale they'll end up having redesign it You're about a year or so late with this "prediction."
- wwtrv 3y ago
  > You're about a year or so late with this "prediction." Of course other much better informed people have said it before. Show what? What happens if they try manufacturing it at scale and every third car needs to be sent back due to defects? Then again considering how tasteless a person needs to be to buy that thing might they won't mind a rough edge or two.
  - stcredzero 3y ago
    The nice thing, is we won't have to wait that long to see how this comment ages. My prediction, over the next 2 years: There are going to be some rough patches to iron out, just like Model X. Then things are going to improve going forward. Eventually, production will be in excess of 100k/year. Every Cybertruck built will be sold. We'll see who gets it right.
    - wwtrv 3y ago
      > Model X Is an actually relatively well designed and practical car.

blacksmith_tb 3y ago

Color me skeptical - even if EVs were worse in every way (which clearly isn't true, cheaper to operate and maintain, for example, even if they're not the easiest for long road trips), we might still just have to suck it up and accept that we have to change? Most driving is short trips anyhow, so I tend to think it's just an illusion that everyone needs to be ready for an epic journey at any time - instead of yet another trip to the office or to get groceries. Just rent a diesel for the road trip?

SoftTalker 3y ago
Renting a car might be a viable option if the reality didn't completely suck. I.e. having a reservation doesn't mean you'll actually get a car when you go to pick it up. Or having to wait an hour while the overworked rental agent handles the queue of people waiting to get their cars. Or the agency just being closed because nobody showed up to work that day.
- brewdad 3y ago
  If you have a neighborhood or off-site car rental location near you the experience is usually far better than airport locations. You also usually save a bunch of taxes and fees that only apply to airport locations.
- nicoburns 3y ago
  I belong to a “car club”, where there are specific cars that live in specific locations (mostly residential streets - there are several within east access of my house). I can book a car using an app, and when it’s time, I can open the car and start my booking using it too.
- bruce511 3y ago
  If your experience renting cars is after flying into an airport, then you may be pleasantly surprised when renting "at home". I recently had cause to rent a people-mover, and did so from two separate, off-airport local companies (not chains). The 3 rentals all went off either a hitch, service was smooth, no wait, returns was trivial, cost was very reasonable. It definitely showed me that if i need a specific vehicle for an edge case this is a very viable approach.

hristov 3y ago

fsckboy 3y ago
>My tesla model s is about 10 years old now and it's cost of ownership is far lower than any gasoline car I have had... total cost of ownership of EVs will be lower than gasoline cars by 2025 are you saying your tesla's total cost of ownership is higher than gasoline cars you've had? Or that your car is somehow unusually cheap, given that you bought an expensive one and we are before 2025?
- meindnoch 3y ago
  Or he paid through the nose for the upkeep of his ICEs, as it is often the case with certain German premium brands for instance.
  - stcredzero 3y ago
    The reduction in time, inconvenience, and headache going from ICE to EV is pretty amazing. I'll basically never have to go to another gas station, ever again! No more oil changes. My last ICE car? Toyota Corolla. No contest in convenience and reliability.

hristov 3y ago

My tesla model s is about 10 years old now and it's cost of ownership is far lower than any gasoline car I have had. These cars were expensive to buy (but getting cheaper) but are far far far cheaper to own. You can look at the article you are commenting on and see that economists are predicting that total cost of ownership of EVs will be lower than gasoline cars by 2025. As far as the cybertruck ... this is just the stupidity elon musk has been affected by lately. The cybertruck body is supposed to be made by a fancy new method which Tesla has a lot of problems bringing to mass manufacturing. Rivian is making ev trucks and suvs that are quite popular.

hristov 3y ago
Sorry for the double post. HN seems to be having issues ....
plagiarist 3y ago
I'd be very interested in Rivian if it wasn't such a luxury price. I've wanted an EV truck ever since that news article about the guy in Texas powering his home from an F150 Lightning. But the price, coupled with the mass spying in every new vehicle... Looking like it will be used ICE cars for me pretty much indefinitely.
- marssaxman 3y ago
  I wish the Bollinger trucks had worked out; that utilitarian design ethos really nailed it. My family is sticking with our old Toyota pickup for the same reasons you mention. It would be nice to completely stop burning fuel, but in practice we've already electrified our everyday travel by switching to bikes and scooters.

hdaz0017 3y ago

"If it catches fire, the whole parking lot is done" haha well Luton Airport fire was not caused by an EV !! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-67077996 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-67077... The risks are going in the opposite direction with lifepo4 batteries this reduces by a large margin (( far better than petrol and diesel )), then the next step is semi-solid state batteries and then solid state. Just no contest... "can't be fixed" well insureance companies will need to be forced to make sure they are fixed !!! it's poor regulations that are causing this not the tech!! standard and modular replaceable batteries problem solved and this also reduces prices.

stephen_g 3y ago
In the same vein - I know just one person whose car has spontaneously caught fire, it was a Toyota RAV4 and this was just before any mainstream EV was available to purchase! They were driving on a motorway, saw smoke, pulled over and got out, and hadn’t been able to retrieve any luggage or anything before it was completely in flames. Yes, there’s a risk with EVs, but there is plenty of risk with ICE cars too!

pjc50 3y ago

The market is fine, people are seeding "EVs are over" stories in the press for _some reason_. You know what's still an issue? Lead times. For absolutely everything with chips in it. A worse problem for EVs. The West can only hold back value Chinese EVs for so long.

outworlder 3y ago

> 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. Vastly inferior? I have one of the cheapest EVs that you can buy in the US. The quick charging standard is obsolete. And yet I'd rather drive it than most gas cars. Instant torque (even with a wimpy motor that's the size of a baseball), silent operation, zero time spent at gas stations. Free charging at work means I don't pay for fuel to commute (and it's more than 50 miles each way). But even if I did pay, it would be far cheaper than gas. > These cars are expensive to buy, but way more expensive to own. It's the cheapest car I've ever owned. I leased, then purchased after the lease. It cost about the same as an entry level Honda Civic. 4th year, $0 maintenance, other than a cabin air filter. No oil changes, no emissions testing. > the bigger you get, the worse it gets. That's true for all vehicles, although you do have a point with power density requirements. SUVs and 'trucks' are only viable because US gasoline is still cheap even in CA peak prices and parking is usually plentiful. Notice how they are rare worldwide. > 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. Insurance is fine for me. Again, non Tesla. Not all cars have the same design or have batteries that are structural - or batteries that aren't too different from laptop ones. > EVs will also be increasingly a liability when parked tightly below residential buildings, malls, ferries and so on. Statistics are hard to come by, but you'll find some manufacturers that have a higher incidence of fires. In particular, LFP chemistries are very, very tame. Heck, Toyota still uses NIMH for their hybrids. By the way, you contradict yourself when you say the future is hybrid, but then go on to talk about battery fires. Even small hybrid batteries store a lot of energy, enough for a pretty serious fire if they do catch on fire. So which is it? Many of your criticisms seem to be about Tesla. Tesla does a lot of things that are questionable. Repairs tend to be very expensive, for one. The Cybertruck makes no sense and the Semi is probably not viable. That's not about "EVs" though, that's a Tesla specific thing.

monkeywork 3y ago
Which car did you purchase?

jewayne 3y ago

> people realize most EVs are vastly, vastly inferior to what they were supposed to replace I don't know how anyone with any knowledge of EVs whatsoever can make this argument in 2023. Maybe this was forgivable 10 years ago, but now? This feels like bad faith. > The future is hybrid The future of personal transport vehicles is battery-electric, full stop. Why? Because you no longer need any of the trappings of an internal combustion engine. People forget why cars were awesome in the first place -- because you didn't need a horse anymore. In the same way, the big gain in the BEV is NOT adding the battery and the electric motor, it's getting rid of the ICE.

bluGill 3y ago
People don't care about getting rid of the ICE. They care about power, enough range to get where they want (including recharge time, and the recharging network), and total cost. Getting rid of the ICE is only an indirect benefit. It makes the car lighter and cheaper. If you don't need gas for anything, then getting rid of it is worth it. However if you need the gas for something (long trips?) then you need it.
- crooked-v 3y ago
  > People don't care about getting rid of the ICE. People didn't care about getting rid of the horse at first, either.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    Mostly because the horse was a rich person's toy that most people could not afford. Horses as farm animals was only really a thing for maybe 70 years, for most the ox was much better: it ate less and was more mild mannered. The American prairie need the faster speed of the horse to make the plow needed work, otherwise they wouldn't use them. Coyboys also used the horse for roundup, both niches that started in the mid 1800s. My grandpa remembered the horses and didn't miss them at all. They had an ugly temper and you had to feed them daily even if you didn't leave the farm. They were purely a cost sink worse than a car or tractor.

Geezus_42 3y ago

If the liability is the battery exploding, then how are hybrids any different? They still have the same type of battery, just smaller.