5 ms·
>90% of F-150s are daily driver grocery-getters it's my impression that electric vehicles are 90% grocery getters, unless the drivers are young in which case i
by fsckboy 10mo ago
>90% of F-150s are daily driver grocery-getters
it's my impression that electric vehicles are 90% grocery getters, unless the drivers are young in which case it's takeout. what else would you use an electric for, commuting? when you commute, on the way home, you shop.
- craftkiller 10mo agoThey are suggesting that most F-150s are not purchased for real truck work like hauling stuff. Instead, they are purchased by people who use them exclusively to drive on paved roads, in towns/cities, mostly carrying passengers instead of large cargo. Therefore the concern about going off-road to remote locations isn't a real concern for this market.
- dpark 10mo agoIt’s a real concern in the sense that a lot of them care about the capability. Objectively a Ford F-150 is the wrong vehicle for what 90% of its buyers need. But it’s an aspirational purchase. It can go off-road. It can haul a boat. It can haul a bed full of gravel. It doesn’t matter for these purchasers that they rarely if ever actually do any of this.
- mattmaroon 10mo agoYeah but you buy a truck and all of a sudden you have a lot of friends. I might not move furniture regularly, but it’s reeeeal nice to be able to do so when I need to. My dishwasher broke on Christmas Eve when I was hosting so I went to the store and got another and installed it within an hour. Not doing that with my Subaru.
- tfourb 10mo agoI’ve literally transported dishwashers in a Renault Twingo. And the „small car + trailer“ combo will always carry more than a pickup. Pickups are pure lifestyle.
- stackghost 10mo agoSomething tells me that dishwashers are smaller in areas where the Twingo is sold. There's no way my piece of shit Samsung dishwasher would fit in your car. It's huge.
- ascorbic 10mo agoAn minivan will transport almost anything a normal person would want to move, while being more practical the other 99% of the time, but of course they have the wrong image.
- ghaff 10mo agoA number of my whitewater paddling friends really like their minivans. There are still at least a couple of models available but they have largely gone out of fashion. Personally I have a mid-size SUV but if you regularly need to transport around a lot of people, minivans seem more practical in general than a lot of the big SUVs.
- mattmaroon 10mo agoAt that point that’s just a truck with a slightly different shape. I don’t see any anti-truck argument that doesn’t apply to mid sized and larger SUVs
- lokar 10mo agoFor many it’s also a visible badge showing membership in a culture.
- Amezarak 10mo agoThis logic is only ever applied to trucks. The majority of HNers did not make an economically rational decision when they bought their Macbook or iPhone. Consumers buy what they like and feel like they need and can afford. They place an almost absurdly high value on convenience and not having to think about things like "oh I need to move this thing I need to go rent a truck because I only ever need to do this once every two years, making it irrational to buy one."
- dpark 10mo agoSo you agree, then?
- mrguyorama 10mo agoI have a long history of sneering at people who ceaselessly buy Apple products despite their lack of economic "efficiency" but I "have a finely calibrated sense of value" ie I'm a tightwad. Being "economically efficient" with laptop purchases saves you a few hundred to a thousand dollars. Being just reasonable with a car purchase saves you $25k. These are not at all comparable to the average american. The average new car price is $50k. Almost zero people need that. The Toyota Corolla, which is overpriced, still starts at under $25k. Considering inflation it's about 30% more expensive than the base model from the 90s, but the modern Corolla is more comparable IMO to the old Camry, who's price point it exactly matches. For that money you get a safer car than the 90s, dramatically so. You get modern infotainment, like CarPlay and AndroidAuto. You get a backup camera and bluetooth connectivity. Aircon, power windows, central locking. You get 170HP from a 2.0L 4cyl that is rather silly for a commuter car. Only 32 mpg City. This is a small family car. But Americans do not want that. Americans want to put down $50k for 80 months for a MANLY man truck for MANLY MAN things. Or the same money for a stupid box on the same frame as an """SUV""" This is not "avocado toast" or "Just get a roommate". Americans are spending absurd money on absurd vehicles for absurd reasons. Advances in the reliability of modern cars made the car market weird. If you have any financial sense at all, new cars almost never make sense, because the 5 year old model is still excellent. That means the only people left in that market are not making decisions on financial merits. But that also means the entire market is controlled by the whims of the easily persuadeable and financially illiterate.
- fsckboy 10mo ago>They are suggesting that most F-150s are not purchased for real truck work like hauling stuff correct, but it's in the context of the their misimpression that "truck stuff" would be the reason to buy electrics. and I'm pushing back on that saying that the people who buy groceries are the people who are buying electrics. people who "have a commercial job to do" are less likely to experiment with a new technology: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it, especially if your income depends on it"