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Battery prices have dropped so much over the past ten years. So I don’t understand why they can’t make a cheaper vehicle. At some point EVs should be way cheap

Battery prices have dropped so much over the past ten years. So I don’t understand why they can’t make a cheaper vehicle. At some point EVs should be way cheaper than ICE vehicles.

loloquwowndueo 1y ago
People are tripping over each other to pay $60k for suvs and trucks. There’s no incentive for smaller or cheaper cars as long as people are happy paying current premium prices.
- FireBeyond 1y ago
  These days often on ridiculous 108 month notes. Oof. Paying $95,000 for a $70,000 truck that depreciates to $50,000 the moment you drive it off the lot and worth maybe $10K at loan maturity?
- tayo42 1y ago
  Ford maverick has waitlists. Small and around 30k
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - kube-system 1y ago
    Which is 50% more expensive than what Ford initially promised it to be in 2022, but they stopped taking orders because they couldn't (or didn't want to) actually deliver on their promises
petee 1y ago
Musk has said he didn't see a market or need for an affordable car, so any reduction in battery cost is just profit for them
- ncr100 1y ago
  Politics aside, Musk is lying there -- or at least telling some people what they want to hear while behaving differently elsewhere .. politics aside. Tesla's received favorable attention for it's "claim" they are (were?) working on a $30k car. And that techno-ideological claim that "all you need for self-driving is a camera" is a cost-savings solution. [ A robotics prof, ( I think at a university in Philadelphia ? ) cites a statistic that camera based navigation will succeed 97% of the time, max. So, 3% failures over all scenarios. ]
  - bdangubic 1y ago
    Politics aside, Musk is lying there Musk hasn’t said anything that isn’t a lie since when I could dunk the basket (a loooong while ago)
- panick21_ 1y ago
  What he actually thinks is that autonomous vehicles would collapse the car market. That's why he things that. So literally he killed the affordable 'Model 2' because self driving would destroy 80% of the market and if that was true there wasn't demand. So he decided to only focus on 'RoboTaxi'.
  - bilsbie 1y ago
    I feel like this is an error in his thinking. People really want to own cars. That won’t change even if taxis are ubiquitous and cheap.
    - panick21_ 1y ago
      I disagree at least in the longer term, I don't think people want to own cars. Generally people are not car people, bike people or train people, most people just react to what makes the most sense. In the 70s people in the Netherlands they were not 'bike people' but now that's what they look like. Same in the US, most people are not car obsessed, they have simply been 'brainwashed' into a society where you 'need' a car. And therefore everybody says they want to own a car, because the idea of not having a car or not wanting a car is like hating Apple Pie and the American Way. If you watch urbanist youtube, you will see the topic discussed, people who live their whole live in the subburbs don't even understand how people without a car get groceries. This is a common question that gets asked. Yes, some people are 'car' people, just there are people on bikes, even when it is not very save. But that's going to be a small group of people, just as there is now for bikes in dangerous places. In a world where you don't need a car, and its cheaper to not have one, the waste majority of people will not adopt 'car' as a hobby. That said, even optimistically if 'full self driving' happened, that would take decades. And the 'car' hobby in the US would survive a very long time, 100000000s of millions of garages and parking spot have already been built, millions of people have been educated on car repair and so on and so on. So I think even if full self driving was solved, the culture shit would take a generation.
seanmcdirmid 1y ago
Thats already happened in China. And when you think about it, it was inevitable after battery production was figured out and scaled up, and new battery chemistries will keep either allowing for more utility or for pushing price points down. ICEs simply won’t be seen as economical by 2035.
dzhiurgis 1y ago
I live in NZ. Plenty of cheap EVs. Cheapest BYD is about 24k USD. Yet Tesla is still leading by far even when it's about 30% more expensive. https://evdb.nz/sales https://evdb.nz/sales
ponector 1y ago
There are many cheap EV globally. In Germany new Dacia Spring starts from €16k. The thing is almost no one wants to buy small cheap car in US. Expensive SUV - yes, but not small car. Especially not electric.
- kube-system 1y ago
  The US has had high tariffs on Chinese cars for a long time though. After tariffs, that car would be more expensive in the US than a Tesla Model 3. Also, it likely doesn't meet US crash standards without modifications. And it really would not keep up with traffic on the highways here.
  - ponector 1y ago
    Funny Dacia Spring EV could meet strict EU standards and keep up with traffic on the German Autobahn but you think it's not good for USA. Btw, it's actually Tesla cannot meet strict rules: cybertrack is not street legal in EU.
    - kube-system 1y ago
      There's no need for a pissing contest here. Neither the US nor the EU has a "stricter" set of vehicle safety standards than the other. They simply have different standards. Sometimes the differences are very minor. Sometimes it's a matter of requiring different standard equipment. Different markets around the world take different regulatory approaches in requiring active safety features versus passive safety features. Some markets focus on the safety of the occupants within the vehicle, other markets balance that safety with other road users or people outside of the vehicle. The EU tests what happens when a vehicle hits a pedestrian but the US doesn't. The US tests what happens when somebody's not wearing their seatbelt, but the EU doesn't. The EU and US crash test vehicles into different objects at different speeds and in different directions. Saying that one system is "more strict" than the other is really a gross oversimplification of the global vehicle regulatory landscape. Heck, sometimes European manufacturers have to remove safety features from an equivalent EU-market vehicle to meet US safety standards. (e.g. Audi matrix headlights) So, just because something doesn't meet US standards doesn't mean I'm calling it bad. Although I'm not so sure in this case... the Dacia Spring EV has a one-star Euro NCAP rating. So even the EU thinks it kind of sucks. And if you look at where it struggled, you'll see it lacked in occupant protection specifically. Which is probably not good for it being imported into the US, because US standards for occupant protection are generally more difficult to meet. And does it really keep up with Autobahn traffic? I'm guessing it probably does fine in urban areas. But even the higher trim takes 14 seconds to get to 62mph. This is about 40% slower than the slowest car currently sold in the US. This would not be received well in the US market -- the average vehicle sold here is twice this quick. Also the top speed is 78 mph. This is slower than maximum posted highway speeds in 20% of US states. And prevailing speeds on many non-urban highways in the US are 80+. That's not to say these are dealbreakers in usability. But nobody's gonna pay 100% tariff to import one, when you could get way better vehicle for sub ~$37,000.

Battery prices have dropped so much over the past ten years. So I don’t understand why they can’t make a cheaper vehicle. At some point EVs should be way cheaper than ICE vehicles.

loloquwowndueo 1y ago

People are tripping over each other to pay $60k for suvs and trucks. There’s no incentive for smaller or cheaper cars as long as people are happy paying current premium prices.

FireBeyond 1y ago
These days often on ridiculous 108 month notes. Oof. Paying $95,000 for a $70,000 truck that depreciates to $50,000 the moment you drive it off the lot and worth maybe $10K at loan maturity?
tayo42 1y ago
Ford maverick has waitlists. Small and around 30k
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- kube-system 1y ago
  Which is 50% more expensive than what Ford initially promised it to be in 2022, but they stopped taking orders because they couldn't (or didn't want to) actually deliver on their promises

petee 1y ago

Musk has said he didn't see a market or need for an affordable car, so any reduction in battery cost is just profit for them

ncr100 1y ago
Politics aside, Musk is lying there -- or at least telling some people what they want to hear while behaving differently elsewhere .. politics aside. Tesla's received favorable attention for it's "claim" they are (were?) working on a $30k car. And that techno-ideological claim that "all you need for self-driving is a camera" is a cost-savings solution. [ A robotics prof, ( I think at a university in Philadelphia ? ) cites a statistic that camera based navigation will succeed 97% of the time, max. So, 3% failures over all scenarios. ]
- bdangubic 1y ago
  Politics aside, Musk is lying there Musk hasn’t said anything that isn’t a lie since when I could dunk the basket (a loooong while ago)
panick21_ 1y ago
What he actually thinks is that autonomous vehicles would collapse the car market. That's why he things that. So literally he killed the affordable 'Model 2' because self driving would destroy 80% of the market and if that was true there wasn't demand. So he decided to only focus on 'RoboTaxi'.
- bilsbie 1y ago
  I feel like this is an error in his thinking. People really want to own cars. That won’t change even if taxis are ubiquitous and cheap.
  - panick21_ 1y ago
    I disagree at least in the longer term, I don't think people want to own cars. Generally people are not car people, bike people or train people, most people just react to what makes the most sense. In the 70s people in the Netherlands they were not 'bike people' but now that's what they look like. Same in the US, most people are not car obsessed, they have simply been 'brainwashed' into a society where you 'need' a car. And therefore everybody says they want to own a car, because the idea of not having a car or not wanting a car is like hating Apple Pie and the American Way. If you watch urbanist youtube, you will see the topic discussed, people who live their whole live in the subburbs don't even understand how people without a car get groceries. This is a common question that gets asked. Yes, some people are 'car' people, just there are people on bikes, even when it is not very save. But that's going to be a small group of people, just as there is now for bikes in dangerous places. In a world where you don't need a car, and its cheaper to not have one, the waste majority of people will not adopt 'car' as a hobby. That said, even optimistically if 'full self driving' happened, that would take decades. And the 'car' hobby in the US would survive a very long time, 100000000s of millions of garages and parking spot have already been built, millions of people have been educated on car repair and so on and so on. So I think even if full self driving was solved, the culture shit would take a generation.

seanmcdirmid 1y ago

Thats already happened in China. And when you think about it, it was inevitable after battery production was figured out and scaled up, and new battery chemistries will keep either allowing for more utility or for pushing price points down. ICEs simply won’t be seen as economical by 2035.

dzhiurgis 1y ago

I live in NZ. Plenty of cheap EVs. Cheapest BYD is about 24k USD. Yet Tesla is still leading by far even when it's about 30% more expensive. https://evdb.nz/sales https://evdb.nz/sales

ponector 1y ago

There are many cheap EV globally. In Germany new Dacia Spring starts from €16k. The thing is almost no one wants to buy small cheap car in US. Expensive SUV - yes, but not small car. Especially not electric.

kube-system 1y ago
The US has had high tariffs on Chinese cars for a long time though. After tariffs, that car would be more expensive in the US than a Tesla Model 3. Also, it likely doesn't meet US crash standards without modifications. And it really would not keep up with traffic on the highways here.
- ponector 1y ago
  Funny Dacia Spring EV could meet strict EU standards and keep up with traffic on the German Autobahn but you think it's not good for USA. Btw, it's actually Tesla cannot meet strict rules: cybertrack is not street legal in EU.
  - kube-system 1y ago
    There's no need for a pissing contest here. Neither the US nor the EU has a "stricter" set of vehicle safety standards than the other. They simply have different standards. Sometimes the differences are very minor. Sometimes it's a matter of requiring different standard equipment. Different markets around the world take different regulatory approaches in requiring active safety features versus passive safety features. Some markets focus on the safety of the occupants within the vehicle, other markets balance that safety with other road users or people outside of the vehicle. The EU tests what happens when a vehicle hits a pedestrian but the US doesn't. The US tests what happens when somebody's not wearing their seatbelt, but the EU doesn't. The EU and US crash test vehicles into different objects at different speeds and in different directions. Saying that one system is "more strict" than the other is really a gross oversimplification of the global vehicle regulatory landscape. Heck, sometimes European manufacturers have to remove safety features from an equivalent EU-market vehicle to meet US safety standards. (e.g. Audi matrix headlights) So, just because something doesn't meet US standards doesn't mean I'm calling it bad. Although I'm not so sure in this case... the Dacia Spring EV has a one-star Euro NCAP rating. So even the EU thinks it kind of sucks. And if you look at where it struggled, you'll see it lacked in occupant protection specifically. Which is probably not good for it being imported into the US, because US standards for occupant protection are generally more difficult to meet. And does it really keep up with Autobahn traffic? I'm guessing it probably does fine in urban areas. But even the higher trim takes 14 seconds to get to 62mph. This is about 40% slower than the slowest car currently sold in the US. This would not be received well in the US market -- the average vehicle sold here is twice this quick. Also the top speed is 78 mph. This is slower than maximum posted highway speeds in 20% of US states. And prevailing speeds on many non-urban highways in the US are 80+. That's not to say these are dealbreakers in usability. But nobody's gonna pay 100% tariff to import one, when you could get way better vehicle for sub ~$37,000.