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Dumbass "journalists" with the usual clickbait. Explicitly MORE people are buying EVs: > Sure, sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the

Dumbass "journalists" with the usual clickbait. Explicitly MORE people are buying EVs: > Sure, sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric The only thing they're seeing is "but the pace of adoption has markedly slowed" -- no shit, have you seen the interest rates and price diffs? And which manufacturer grew the most? Oh that's right the only all-EV one. Just so happens Tesla dropped prices to keep monthly payments roughly the same.

JamisonM 3y ago
Running the headline "Fewer people are buying electric cars" and then conceding that EV sales are rising at the start of the 3rd paragraph is embarrassing for the author Paris Marx and I hope he feels ashamed.
- kridsdale1 3y ago
  He’s probably just looking at his royalty cheque.
paxys 3y ago
Business Insider is blogspam. Pretty much anyone can sign up to write, and their primary goal is to get clicks not win Pulitzers. And they are immensely successful at it considering how consistently they show up on places like HN despite having no content of value. Forbes is in the same bucket.
- nicbou 3y ago
  Business Insider and Forbes are in my Google search results blocklist for that reason. There is no quality content on those websites.
dcsommer 3y ago
The point of the article is that rising EV sales, even at 87% in Norway (which yields only 20% EVs on the road), is not enough to fix the environmental problems of car driving. TFA talks about the need to end the car-size arms-race and the need for viable alternatives to car transportation as necessary for actually addressing the issues EV tax incentives are meant to tackle. Agreed the title is useless, but I found the analysis insightful.
- martindbp 3y ago
  That observation is completely pointless. Yes, even at 100% adoption it will take a long time to replace the whole fleet of cars, does that mean we shouldn't be doing it? Just the fact they bring this up shows they have an agenda. Tesla is also recognizing this fact and it's one reason they're pushing for robotaxis, because robotaxis can increase utilization by 5x, the same as selling 5x as many cars.
  - dcsommer 3y ago
    It is not a useless observation. Of course there is an "agenda" (strange word choice for "thesis" or "point"). Like I said, the point in the article is that there needs to be alternatives to car ownership and car-centric development to achieve environmental goals, and subsidizing purchases of EVs is not going to do that. Taxis might help a bit, but I would want to see data or modeling on impacts for that. It's strange you start out with "this observation is pointless" and then follow up with an example of a company making big investments and strategic changes based on "this fact". Perhaps it's not pointless after all?
jillesvangurp 3y ago
Correct. Tesla just closed another record quarter. And BYD just surpassed them as the largest EV producer in the world. Both of those things are true because the overall market keeps on growing very rapidly. Which means Tesla can break it's own records and yet not be the largest anymore because another company is growing even faster. We're in a major economic down turn because of things like global pandemics and other macro economic events like the conflict in the Ukraine. Yet, this has barely impacted the growth of the EV market. The article is rehashing the myth spread by traditional car manufacturers that the reason they are selling so few EVs is that nobody wants EVs. Which is patently false. More people bought EVs last year than any year before. Just not from them. The actual reason they are producing so few EVs is that they are struggling to produce them cost effectively. There is no demand problem if they price them right. But if they do that, they actually loose money on the few EVs that they do produce. The reasons for all this are complicated and relate to their outdated manufacturing and supply lines that are optimized for their now obsolete ICE vehicles. They can build EVs but they just aren't very good at it yet. Too many parts. Too many suppliers. Too slow to assemble them. Lots of supply chain issues to source batteries, chips. Lots of issues with software. Etc. They are basically about 5-8 years behind technically. Tesla, BYD, and others don't have these issues because they built their EV manufacturing from scratch and have been optimizing how that works for the last ten years. Tesla became profitable about six years ago (and ridiculously so). BYD has been growing in China and started expanding internationally only recently. Both are profitable and rapidly growing market share. And they are now able to produce vehicles much more cheaply and are waging a price war that pushes prices down for everyone else too. And its about to get worse as they are getting ready to mass produce cheap (<~25K$) EVs by the millions. All the signs are that 1) this is actually happening in the next 2-3 years 2) there are exactly zero signs of demand challenges whatsoever for any of those vehicles 3) this will start decimating the market for traditional ICE vehicles and 4) This will continue relentlessly beyond 2026 until there's nothing left of that market; probably by the mid to late 2030s or so. So, yes the article, and the site it's on are not great. To put it mildly.
- deleted 3y ago
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- electrondood 3y ago
danjc 3y ago
Am I reading too much into the article criticizing large EV's right after a certain large EV becomes available?
reducesuffering 3y ago
This article is uniquely terrible. "When automakers pivoted to EVs, they focused on the kinds of cars that were already popular — which meant a flood of big electrified SUVs and trucks. But massive-bodied EVs don't make much sense. Larger EVs require bigger batteries, which require more raw materials to manufacture, which requires producers to beef up their environmentally destructive mining operations. While bigger batteries allow drivers to travel farther between charges, they also make the cars heavier, more dangerous, more expensive, and worse for the planet." WTF does the author think the ICE alternative is going to do better instead? Just as dangerous, even worse for the planet. You want to put in a paragraph in your EV article about how people are arms-race and status-seeking into bigger cars, fine, blame people for that. Don't blame EV's when this is what people want from autos anyway and of course it's easier for a new market entrant to get its foot in the door with the higher margin products. Every Model Y that isn't sold is a RAV4 guzzling 10,000 gallons of gasoline over its life.
Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
Dumb or bought by corporate interests? In the EU we are constantly being fed this kind of drivel by journalists that echo the Volkswagen group's usual arguments almost verbatim, I don't think it's just chance.
shiftpgdn 3y ago
Niedermeyer is a pathetic member/leader of “TSLAQ”, a group of people that think all of Tesla sales are fake, that Tesla is a large scale financial fraud like Madoff, and other completely insane theories. He has made it his full time job (literally) to disparage Tesla and other EV manufacturers.
_ea1k 3y ago
lol, I was just about to read the article to see if they were lying. Thanks for saving me the time. Growth in 2022 was wildly high. Model launches this year have been slow. Growth shockingly fit with product launches. But instead we get weird headlines.
deleted 3y ago
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JamisonM 3y ago

Running the headline "Fewer people are buying electric cars" and then conceding that EV sales are rising at the start of the 3rd paragraph is embarrassing for the author Paris Marx and I hope he feels ashamed.

kridsdale1 3y ago
He’s probably just looking at his royalty cheque.

paxys 3y ago

Business Insider is blogspam. Pretty much anyone can sign up to write, and their primary goal is to get clicks not win Pulitzers. And they are immensely successful at it considering how consistently they show up on places like HN despite having no content of value. Forbes is in the same bucket.

nicbou 3y ago
Business Insider and Forbes are in my Google search results blocklist for that reason. There is no quality content on those websites.

dcsommer 3y ago

The point of the article is that rising EV sales, even at 87% in Norway (which yields only 20% EVs on the road), is not enough to fix the environmental problems of car driving. TFA talks about the need to end the car-size arms-race and the need for viable alternatives to car transportation as necessary for actually addressing the issues EV tax incentives are meant to tackle. Agreed the title is useless, but I found the analysis insightful.

martindbp 3y ago
That observation is completely pointless. Yes, even at 100% adoption it will take a long time to replace the whole fleet of cars, does that mean we shouldn't be doing it? Just the fact they bring this up shows they have an agenda. Tesla is also recognizing this fact and it's one reason they're pushing for robotaxis, because robotaxis can increase utilization by 5x, the same as selling 5x as many cars.
- dcsommer 3y ago
  It is not a useless observation. Of course there is an "agenda" (strange word choice for "thesis" or "point"). Like I said, the point in the article is that there needs to be alternatives to car ownership and car-centric development to achieve environmental goals, and subsidizing purchases of EVs is not going to do that. Taxis might help a bit, but I would want to see data or modeling on impacts for that. It's strange you start out with "this observation is pointless" and then follow up with an example of a company making big investments and strategic changes based on "this fact". Perhaps it's not pointless after all?

jillesvangurp 3y ago

Correct. Tesla just closed another record quarter. And BYD just surpassed them as the largest EV producer in the world. Both of those things are true because the overall market keeps on growing very rapidly. Which means Tesla can break it's own records and yet not be the largest anymore because another company is growing even faster. We're in a major economic down turn because of things like global pandemics and other macro economic events like the conflict in the Ukraine. Yet, this has barely impacted the growth of the EV market. The article is rehashing the myth spread by traditional car manufacturers that the reason they are selling so few EVs is that nobody wants EVs. Which is patently false. More people bought EVs last year than any year before. Just not from them. The actual reason they are producing so few EVs is that they are struggling to produce them cost effectively. There is no demand problem if they price them right. But if they do that, they actually loose money on the few EVs that they do produce. The reasons for all this are complicated and relate to their outdated manufacturing and supply lines that are optimized for their now obsolete ICE vehicles. They can build EVs but they just aren't very good at it yet. Too many parts. Too many suppliers. Too slow to assemble them. Lots of supply chain issues to source batteries, chips. Lots of issues with software. Etc. They are basically about 5-8 years behind technically. Tesla, BYD, and others don't have these issues because they built their EV manufacturing from scratch and have been optimizing how that works for the last ten years. Tesla became profitable about six years ago (and ridiculously so). BYD has been growing in China and started expanding internationally only recently. Both are profitable and rapidly growing market share. And they are now able to produce vehicles much more cheaply and are waging a price war that pushes prices down for everyone else too. And its about to get worse as they are getting ready to mass produce cheap (<~25K$) EVs by the millions. All the signs are that 1) this is actually happening in the next 2-3 years 2) there are exactly zero signs of demand challenges whatsoever for any of those vehicles 3) this will start decimating the market for traditional ICE vehicles and 4) This will continue relentlessly beyond 2026 until there's nothing left of that market; probably by the mid to late 2030s or so. So, yes the article, and the site it's on are not great. To put it mildly.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
electrondood 3y ago

danjc 3y ago

Am I reading too much into the article criticizing large EV's right after a certain large EV becomes available?

reducesuffering 3y ago

This article is uniquely terrible. "When automakers pivoted to EVs, they focused on the kinds of cars that were already popular — which meant a flood of big electrified SUVs and trucks. But massive-bodied EVs don't make much sense. Larger EVs require bigger batteries, which require more raw materials to manufacture, which requires producers to beef up their environmentally destructive mining operations. While bigger batteries allow drivers to travel farther between charges, they also make the cars heavier, more dangerous, more expensive, and worse for the planet." WTF does the author think the ICE alternative is going to do better instead? Just as dangerous, even worse for the planet. You want to put in a paragraph in your EV article about how people are arms-race and status-seeking into bigger cars, fine, blame people for that. Don't blame EV's when this is what people want from autos anyway and of course it's easier for a new market entrant to get its foot in the door with the higher margin products. Every Model Y that isn't sold is a RAV4 guzzling 10,000 gallons of gasoline over its life.

Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago

Dumb or bought by corporate interests? In the EU we are constantly being fed this kind of drivel by journalists that echo the Volkswagen group's usual arguments almost verbatim, I don't think it's just chance.

shiftpgdn 3y ago

Niedermeyer is a pathetic member/leader of “TSLAQ”, a group of people that think all of Tesla sales are fake, that Tesla is a large scale financial fraud like Madoff, and other completely insane theories. He has made it his full time job (literally) to disparage Tesla and other EV manufacturers.

_ea1k 3y ago

lol, I was just about to read the article to see if they were lying. Thanks for saving me the time. Growth in 2022 was wildly high. Model launches this year have been slow. Growth shockingly fit with product launches. But instead we get weird headlines.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]