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People overestimate because underestimating means you just wasted 50k+ on something that doesn’t meet your needs. That’s why normal people don’t buy EVs, cars a

People overestimate because underestimating means you just wasted 50k+ on something that doesn’t meet your needs. That’s why normal people don’t buy EVs, cars are usually the most expensive thing someone owns outside of real estate and you’re going to have a hard time convincing someone to buy something that is a worse value. It’s why so many people own pickup trucks and large SUVs. People don’t buy vehicles for what they need 95% of the time, they buy vehicles that will do whatever they want it to do 100% of the time.

adolph 2y ago
Which is an interesting parallel to Taleb's "The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority." Essentially one's own fringe preferences dictate the design requirements of something that doesn't utilize that preference a significant amount of time. https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15#.z5ry4bucq https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
- robcohen 2y ago
  Which makes sense, imagine only have shoes that worked on 95% of the floors you walk on. Imagine a fridge that only cools 95% of your food, and it’s a fun surprise when it doesn’t. This is entirely rational, and reminds me of people who can’t understand why everyone doesn’t bike everywhere. It just reeks of solipsism. I own a Tesla, and I have to tell you it’s a massive pain to own an EV and live in an apartment complex. It’s honestly frustrating to the point that I regret getting it. The performance is great, but the interior, significant price drop in the year I’ve owned it, and the constant anxiety about the battery has not made for a pleasant experience. If I could go back I’d get a Mercedes S class that’s 5-7 years old.
  - yurishimo 2y ago
    Gotta admit, after moving to the Netherlands, it’s kinda legit insane how much stuff people will carry on a bike. A new 55” tv is not uncommon! Today I saw a lady with two toddlers and a grocery bag swinging from the handlebars. I take your point though. There are still plenty of delivery trucks and personal autos, even in this biking paradise.
  - jpetso 2y ago
    Imagine you have a portable laptop that works for 95% of all your use cases except those days when you need a cluster of GPUs training a ML model or doing some large-scale scientific calculation. Imagine having a fridge that isn't cold enough for storing ice cream and frozen veggies. And yes, none of my shoes are even remotely close to covering 95% of floors. Some are good for hiking, some are good for running, some are warm in the winter. The issue is not the lack of 100% coverage. The issue is that there is no sufficiently appealing option for a large number of people to get access to the 5% of cases when you do need it. Apparently rentals and other sharing options aren't quite up to snuff, so everybody overprovisions like crazy.
    - somerandomqaguy 2y ago
      It's not exactly irrational though. Swinging back to car rental companies, they will overbook their vehicle fleets in order to maximize the amount of time that they're out generating revenue. Even if you prepay a reservation, it's no guarantee you will get a car. It gets awful stressful awful quick when you have to deal with availability uncertainty and other things depend on it.
    - coderenegade 2y ago
      Those items are all vastly cheaper than a car. When shoes were expensive relative to what the average family could afford, families bought for quality and longevity, because they would need to last for years at a time, and most people only had a single pair. A car is just a fundamentally different product to a set of shoes. If cars ever get to the point where the cost of one is trivial for the average person, we'll probably see the kind of specialization you see in other cheaper products. Also note, we can see pressure in the opposite direction for phones. Phones have become more expensive as they become more general purpose.
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  I've read all of Taleb's major works, twice. "The Most Intolerant Wins" is not in any way an explanation of the market failure of EVs. His canonical example was "kosher food is acceptable to nearly everyone, and required by a small minority." Thus kosher takes over. "EVs vs. ICEs" is nothing like that. EVs have been rejected by vast numbers of consumers because they find them impractical. That's all.
  - pdonis 2y ago
    > His canonical example was "kosher food is acceptable to nearly everyone, and required by a small minority." Thus kosher takes over. Which is a great example of how Taleb's "examples" are BS. Really, when Taleb goes into a grocery store, is all of the food kosher? Or even a majority? Kosher has not "taken over". It's a niche product.
    - AlbertCory 2y ago
      so why did you quote him in the first place? Secondly, his examples were from the Middle East, where kosher food is indeed ubiquitous even for non-Jewish consumers. Because almost no one really objects to it. Whereas US consumers really do object to EVs.
      - pdonis 2y ago
        > why did you quote him in the first place? I didn't bring Taleb into the thread, adolph did. > his examples were from the Middle East Not the one in the article adolph referenced: "The Kosher population represents less than three tenth of a percent of the residents of the United States. Yet, it appears that almost all drinks are Kosher."
        dghlsakjg 2y ago
        > "The Kosher population represents less than three tenth of a percent of the residents of the United States. Yet, it appears that almost all drinks are Kosher." This implies that some sort of considered effort has been made to produce these drinks as kosher. This is just paying some money to get the private certification and the license to put it on the can. In the context of a drink, the drink ingredients is almost certainly already kosher, so the certification is just saying: "there was no cross-contamination in the making of this product". Which isn't a special consideration made for kosherness. If I told you that you could increase your TAM by a million people, and open new wholesale marketing opportunities for a onetime payment of ~$1000, you take the deal.
viraptor 2y ago
> That’s why normal people don’t buy EVs Are you sure that the reason isn't the cost of them? I mean, sure charging is one aspect, but is there actually a study that compares the two? There's plenty of "normal" people buying cheap BYDs. > It’s why so many people own pickup trucks and large SUVs. That's a very region/culture-specific thing.
- rblatz 2y ago
  This is a thread about US charging infrastructure, BYD does not sell vehicles here and large trucks and SUVs are extremely popular here.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    The thread is about incentives and future possibilities in the US. The current state of the charging network is not set in stone. Neither is regulation, EV availability, etc. Even then, the question "what are the actual preferences when adjusted for price" is valid even in today's US.
- markus_zhang 2y ago
  I'm definitely not an expert but I think BYDs are popular in China and EU because of governmental policies (in China) and geographical reasons (both China and EU are more urban than North America, owning a detached house in China that is closer to good schools, hospitals and infras are unthinkable for most Chinese). I live in Canada and I really can't see myself driving an EV right now. It doesn't guarantee my not-so-rare but crucial requests: - Going to some random places for vacationing without worrying about whether there are enough charging stations; - Going through early spring without adding anxiety about a power outage that sweeps for 2-7 days; The infra is just not ready. And TBH, I don't think it's going to be ready forever. Infra construction is so corrupted and so expensive in NA that I absolutely have zero faith in it. Actually, the push to more EVs in China is already a bit problematic due to lack of Infras. Just imagine you are in the middle of Spring festival traffic jam...it's already bad for gasoline cars but it's a nightmare for EVs.
  - 2y ago
redserk 2y ago
You will never, ever be able to spend any amount of money on any vehicle that will perpetually guarantee a 100.000% success rate for all situations you will end up in. Suddenly inherit a boat? Perhaps your towing capacity is inadequate. A ravine appears due to an unexpected earthquake? Four tires probably won’t traverse it. You’re out at a dinner party. Your friend’s car breaks down and you now need to carry 9 people? Anything but a small bus will be inadequate. How to solve this? Look at your last X years of driving and solve for that. For everything else, vehicle rental exists for the exactly-once occasion. I’m impressed by how many 9’s people try to solve for. It’s completely unreasonable. I solved for my 99.9% of days driving and am extremely happy. Plus, how many of us would be currently unemployed if our respective industries demanded a 100.0% solution before adoption?
- Terr_ 2y ago
  > You will never, ever be able to spend any amount of money on any vehicle that will perpetually guarantee a 100.000% success rate for all situations you will end up in. True, except all they said was that consumers "overestimating" their needs, which is pretty reasonable, not that they contracted pathological monomania leading to psychiatric and financial disaster.
- sokoloff 2y ago
  > I solved for my 99.9% of days driving and am extremely happy. That’s mostly what people are trying to do. In that 1000 days of driving, they are going to have ~three of every annual event. Thanksgiving travel to family three times. Christmas travel three times. Three years of summer vacations or ski trips, etc. We have an EV and love it. We also have a hybrid for road trips.
  - nebula8804 2y ago
    Why not just have the hybrid? You already blew your carbon budget by having two cars so this is definitely not about saving the environment.
    - sokoloff 2y ago
bongodongobob 2y ago
My strategy is never buy new cars, period. Spending $50k+ on a car seems absolutely insane to me. In the past 26 years I've been driving, I've spent a total of $19k on cars, $11k of which is on my most recent as I got a great deal from a family member. So previous to last year, I was averaging a $26/mo "car payment". No major repairs outside of alternators, starters, batteries, and tires. I probably won't own an EV for another 20 years.
- Flameancer 2y ago
  Is t one of the main problems with used EVs the battery cap? Unless battery tech gets better can it be assumed that most EVs on the used market would also require a battery replacement so they have the original range?
  - sokoloff 2y ago
    Liquid cooled batteries (so, not the LEAF) have pretty modest degradation. Yes, it would require a new battery if you needed 100.0% of original range, but if you need 92% of range, you just buy a much cheaper used EV.
  - datavirtue 2y ago
    You would just deal with the reduced range. With a hybrid it's not really an issue.
  - recursive 2y ago
    The battery replacement meme seems like mostly propaganda. Lots* of 10 year old EVs have 20% or less degradation. That's very usable. Excluding cars without active thermal management, which mostly means the Nissan Leaf.
    - nebula8804 2y ago
      Yes sounds like propaganda but I worry about the long term repair costs of the rest of a car like Tesla. They weren't built well in the first place and age can only make that worse. This is where right to repair would have really helped Tesla but no they have to act like every other crap SV company.

adolph 2y ago

Which is an interesting parallel to Taleb's "The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority." Essentially one's own fringe preferences dictate the design requirements of something that doesn't utilize that preference a significant amount of time. https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15#.z5ry4bucq https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

robcohen 2y ago
Which makes sense, imagine only have shoes that worked on 95% of the floors you walk on. Imagine a fridge that only cools 95% of your food, and it’s a fun surprise when it doesn’t. This is entirely rational, and reminds me of people who can’t understand why everyone doesn’t bike everywhere. It just reeks of solipsism. I own a Tesla, and I have to tell you it’s a massive pain to own an EV and live in an apartment complex. It’s honestly frustrating to the point that I regret getting it. The performance is great, but the interior, significant price drop in the year I’ve owned it, and the constant anxiety about the battery has not made for a pleasant experience. If I could go back I’d get a Mercedes S class that’s 5-7 years old.
- yurishimo 2y ago
  Gotta admit, after moving to the Netherlands, it’s kinda legit insane how much stuff people will carry on a bike. A new 55” tv is not uncommon! Today I saw a lady with two toddlers and a grocery bag swinging from the handlebars. I take your point though. There are still plenty of delivery trucks and personal autos, even in this biking paradise.
- jpetso 2y ago
  Imagine you have a portable laptop that works for 95% of all your use cases except those days when you need a cluster of GPUs training a ML model or doing some large-scale scientific calculation. Imagine having a fridge that isn't cold enough for storing ice cream and frozen veggies. And yes, none of my shoes are even remotely close to covering 95% of floors. Some are good for hiking, some are good for running, some are warm in the winter. The issue is not the lack of 100% coverage. The issue is that there is no sufficiently appealing option for a large number of people to get access to the 5% of cases when you do need it. Apparently rentals and other sharing options aren't quite up to snuff, so everybody overprovisions like crazy.
  - somerandomqaguy 2y ago
    It's not exactly irrational though. Swinging back to car rental companies, they will overbook their vehicle fleets in order to maximize the amount of time that they're out generating revenue. Even if you prepay a reservation, it's no guarantee you will get a car. It gets awful stressful awful quick when you have to deal with availability uncertainty and other things depend on it.
  - coderenegade 2y ago
    Those items are all vastly cheaper than a car. When shoes were expensive relative to what the average family could afford, families bought for quality and longevity, because they would need to last for years at a time, and most people only had a single pair. A car is just a fundamentally different product to a set of shoes. If cars ever get to the point where the cost of one is trivial for the average person, we'll probably see the kind of specialization you see in other cheaper products. Also note, we can see pressure in the opposite direction for phones. Phones have become more expensive as they become more general purpose.
AlbertCory 2y ago
I've read all of Taleb's major works, twice. "The Most Intolerant Wins" is not in any way an explanation of the market failure of EVs. His canonical example was "kosher food is acceptable to nearly everyone, and required by a small minority." Thus kosher takes over. "EVs vs. ICEs" is nothing like that. EVs have been rejected by vast numbers of consumers because they find them impractical. That's all.
- pdonis 2y ago
  > His canonical example was "kosher food is acceptable to nearly everyone, and required by a small minority." Thus kosher takes over. Which is a great example of how Taleb's "examples" are BS. Really, when Taleb goes into a grocery store, is all of the food kosher? Or even a majority? Kosher has not "taken over". It's a niche product.
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    so why did you quote him in the first place? Secondly, his examples were from the Middle East, where kosher food is indeed ubiquitous even for non-Jewish consumers. Because almost no one really objects to it. Whereas US consumers really do object to EVs.
    - pdonis 2y ago
      > why did you quote him in the first place? I didn't bring Taleb into the thread, adolph did. > his examples were from the Middle East Not the one in the article adolph referenced: "The Kosher population represents less than three tenth of a percent of the residents of the United States. Yet, it appears that almost all drinks are Kosher."
      - dghlsakjg 2y ago
        > "The Kosher population represents less than three tenth of a percent of the residents of the United States. Yet, it appears that almost all drinks are Kosher." This implies that some sort of considered effort has been made to produce these drinks as kosher. This is just paying some money to get the private certification and the license to put it on the can. In the context of a drink, the drink ingredients is almost certainly already kosher, so the certification is just saying: "there was no cross-contamination in the making of this product". Which isn't a special consideration made for kosherness. If I told you that you could increase your TAM by a million people, and open new wholesale marketing opportunities for a onetime payment of ~$1000, you take the deal.

viraptor 2y ago

> That’s why normal people don’t buy EVs Are you sure that the reason isn't the cost of them? I mean, sure charging is one aspect, but is there actually a study that compares the two? There's plenty of "normal" people buying cheap BYDs. > It’s why so many people own pickup trucks and large SUVs. That's a very region/culture-specific thing.

rblatz 2y ago
This is a thread about US charging infrastructure, BYD does not sell vehicles here and large trucks and SUVs are extremely popular here.
- viraptor 2y ago
  The thread is about incentives and future possibilities in the US. The current state of the charging network is not set in stone. Neither is regulation, EV availability, etc. Even then, the question "what are the actual preferences when adjusted for price" is valid even in today's US.
markus_zhang 2y ago
I'm definitely not an expert but I think BYDs are popular in China and EU because of governmental policies (in China) and geographical reasons (both China and EU are more urban than North America, owning a detached house in China that is closer to good schools, hospitals and infras are unthinkable for most Chinese). I live in Canada and I really can't see myself driving an EV right now. It doesn't guarantee my not-so-rare but crucial requests: - Going to some random places for vacationing without worrying about whether there are enough charging stations; - Going through early spring without adding anxiety about a power outage that sweeps for 2-7 days; The infra is just not ready. And TBH, I don't think it's going to be ready forever. Infra construction is so corrupted and so expensive in NA that I absolutely have zero faith in it. Actually, the push to more EVs in China is already a bit problematic due to lack of Infras. Just imagine you are in the middle of Spring festival traffic jam...it's already bad for gasoline cars but it's a nightmare for EVs.
- 2y ago

redserk 2y ago

You will never, ever be able to spend any amount of money on any vehicle that will perpetually guarantee a 100.000% success rate for all situations you will end up in. Suddenly inherit a boat? Perhaps your towing capacity is inadequate. A ravine appears due to an unexpected earthquake? Four tires probably won’t traverse it. You’re out at a dinner party. Your friend’s car breaks down and you now need to carry 9 people? Anything but a small bus will be inadequate. How to solve this? Look at your last X years of driving and solve for that. For everything else, vehicle rental exists for the exactly-once occasion. I’m impressed by how many 9’s people try to solve for. It’s completely unreasonable. I solved for my 99.9% of days driving and am extremely happy. Plus, how many of us would be currently unemployed if our respective industries demanded a 100.0% solution before adoption?

Terr_ 2y ago
> You will never, ever be able to spend any amount of money on any vehicle that will perpetually guarantee a 100.000% success rate for all situations you will end up in. True, except all they said was that consumers "overestimating" their needs, which is pretty reasonable, not that they contracted pathological monomania leading to psychiatric and financial disaster.
sokoloff 2y ago
> I solved for my 99.9% of days driving and am extremely happy. That’s mostly what people are trying to do. In that 1000 days of driving, they are going to have ~three of every annual event. Thanksgiving travel to family three times. Christmas travel three times. Three years of summer vacations or ski trips, etc. We have an EV and love it. We also have a hybrid for road trips.
- nebula8804 2y ago
  Why not just have the hybrid? You already blew your carbon budget by having two cars so this is definitely not about saving the environment.
  - sokoloff 2y ago

bongodongobob 2y ago

My strategy is never buy new cars, period. Spending $50k+ on a car seems absolutely insane to me. In the past 26 years I've been driving, I've spent a total of $19k on cars, $11k of which is on my most recent as I got a great deal from a family member. So previous to last year, I was averaging a $26/mo "car payment". No major repairs outside of alternators, starters, batteries, and tires. I probably won't own an EV for another 20 years.

Flameancer 2y ago
Is t one of the main problems with used EVs the battery cap? Unless battery tech gets better can it be assumed that most EVs on the used market would also require a battery replacement so they have the original range?
- sokoloff 2y ago
  Liquid cooled batteries (so, not the LEAF) have pretty modest degradation. Yes, it would require a new battery if you needed 100.0% of original range, but if you need 92% of range, you just buy a much cheaper used EV.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  You would just deal with the reduced range. With a hybrid it's not really an issue.
- recursive 2y ago
  The battery replacement meme seems like mostly propaganda. Lots* of 10 year old EVs have 20% or less degradation. That's very usable. Excluding cars without active thermal management, which mostly means the Nissan Leaf.
  - nebula8804 2y ago
    Yes sounds like propaganda but I worry about the long term repair costs of the rest of a car like Tesla. They weren't built well in the first place and age can only make that worse. This is where right to repair would have really helped Tesla but no they have to act like every other crap SV company.