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Retreating from EVs could be hazardous for Western carmakers
- condensedcrab 10mo agoRather disappointing as an environmentalist. But the established freedoms of the car culture and price sensitivity in NA (probably parts of Europe, idk) hard to overcome — “what if I want to road trip though!” That being said, I think Ford’s shift to a range extended EV makes sense for the truck space. I’m sure someone has crunched the numbers on emissions but getting more market share on hybrid/plugin/range extended EVs are definitely better then ICE only. Plenty of manufacturers are offering hybrids- however, the government has historically been too heavily lobbied to push for hybrids by default and reduce ICE only uptake with some kind of sin tax.
- ggm 10mo agoBattery swap. Great for industry growth, but the manufacturers selling into US and Europe decided not to go there and disputable claims "it can't work" and false applications of Gresham's law are used to explain why. The Gresham's law thing: money is just a transfer token. Batteries have a use value. The agents who could profit from hoarding good batteries, don't get to achieve the income of renting them. It's working fine for scooters, and in China for cars and trucks. Everyone is now betting on solid state getting both range and rapid charge.
- _yb2s 10mo agoBattery swap would just about eliminate planned obsolescence in cars- EVs should last just about forever if the batteries aren’t impossible to replace. The only real wear items in an EV drivetrain are a few cheap bearings that already will probably last a million miles. This would devastate the auto industry.
- norir 10mo agoThat sounds great. We can focus on planning the obsolescence of the auto industry rather than having the industry continue to extract rents on society. Of course this will be a political nightmare, but it does seem like truly the sooner the better.
- jmward01 10mo agoMy two biggest concerns buying a used EV: - privacy (my #1 concern for any vehicle right now) - how long the used battery will last I can only hope we solve batteries making EVs throw-away vehicles either with quick battery swaps or with batteries that truly last a lifetime.
- dboreham 10mo agoBattery life isn't a concern with current EVs.
- _yb2s 10mo agoI’m not sure that is true. I’m a fan of classic European cars and a 70s or 80s Volvo or Mercedes is still a reliable and practical car. It does not seem likely that current battery tech is such that current EVs will have full range on the same batteries in 50 years- in my experience modern lithium batteries often loose 20 percent capacity in just 3-5 years even if you carefully manage them and limit full charge and discharge. And it does not seem like battery replacements are practical or affordable. I just don’t see current EVs lasting like good quality ICE vehicles do when properly maintaining, because of battery aging.
- rootusrootus 10mo agoMost EVs can have the battery swapped in less time than it takes to drop in a new engine. The real issue IMO is reliable availability of refurb batteries at a reasonable price, and reliability at least on par with an engine.
- ehnto 10mo agoI'm not sure that tracks with my experience, plenty of 20-30 year old cars still running around. The people upgrading every few years do it for financial or image reasons rather than because the car stopped working. Warranty anxiety is probably a big factor too, which could be legislated. Imagine how reliable cars would be if a 30 year warranty on drivetrain components was mandatory.
- _yb2s 10mo agoA quality car will last just about forever if you take care of it, Irv Gordon put 3.2 million miles on his 1966 Volvo and it was still in good shape at the end. But most people don’t maintain a car like that, however an EV has the potential to last like that with almost no maintenance.
- mattmaroon 10mo agoI don’t think it’s planned (car companies have been competing heavily on lifespan for decades with results) but battery lifetimes seem to already be such that it can last basically forever. But most people replace their ICE looong before the battery dies. I’d assume the same would happen for EVs too.
- PlunderBunny 10mo agoWhat about the interior? There’s no one thing you can point to in a car interior and say “that’s no good after X years” but we’ve all seen the interior of old cars. The batteries in modern EVs will last the lifetime of the vehicle [0] but what factor(s) determine that lifetime are unknown I think. 0. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/07/heres-one-way-we-know-that-an-evs-battery-will-last-the-cars-lifetime/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/07/heres-one-way-we-know-t...
- _yb2s 10mo agoYou can build a car interior that pretty much lasts forever, but it’s not cheap. There’s plenty of 60s and 70s Mercedes around with MBtex and zebra wood interiors that still look pretty much new after 6 decades of regular use. It’s eerie how good those old Mercedes interiors are, I’ve seen cars in the junkyard that were almost completely crumbled to rust powder, but the interior still was flawless. A good upholstery shop can also rebuild a car interior.
- tengbretson 10mo agoThe incentives for such a swapping system are completely busted. Think of existing swap infrastructure out there, like propane tank swaps. People already use these systems to rinse defective or expired tanks all the time, and that overhead simply gets built into the price. Now imagine if you could refill a propane tank at home by just plugging it in to your wall. The only reasons to use such a service are now exceptional cases like travel, or to move defective items. For every new tank introduced to the supply, on average, how many good-for-good swaps will occur before the supplier gets a defective one? Take the cost of a new one and divide it by that average and that is the minimum overhead for a swap. For batteries, that number is likely in the hundreds of dollars.
- wrycoder 10mo agoAn EV with a degraded battery and miles per charge is still very useful for retired people who are tired of traveling long distance and can plug in at home. There should be a good market for them. I tend to keep my cars over 200,000 miles. Today's cars last a long time. Still, looking back over the past three year's expenses between 150,000 and 200,000 miles, almost all of them relate to engine peripherals - like a new exhaust system, work on emission controls, and a new gas tank, which an EV doesn't have - or brakes, which on an EV last much longer.
- terribleperson 10mo agoPlug-in hybrids also have tax advantages in some jurisdictions. E.g. in Georgia (US), EV owners have to pay a $234 annual alternative fuel vehicle fee. Plug in hybrid owners may choose to have a alternative fuel license plate or standard license plate. If you opt for the standard plate, you don't have to pay the alternative fuel vehicle fee.
- 3eb7988a1663 10mo agoIs there any advantage for a hybrid car using the alternative fuel license plate?
- fencepost 10mo agoIn some cities with HOV lanes on expressways having an EV (with plates) lets you use those lanes with only one person in the car. How important that is to any given buyer obviously depends on where and when they're driving.
- terribleperson 10mo agoIt used to entitle you to use the HOV lane in Georgia, but it no longer does. You also have to pay an additional fee for it as it's a non-standard plate.
- Aachen 10mo agoWait, you pay extra for driving a cleaner vehicle when you live in that region? I'm not sure if I understand it correctly or if that's the full picture. Do EVs pay less for road taxes, emission fees, or get some different rebate that this fee is meant to balance?
- rootusrootus 10mo agoIt’s an attempt to get revenue that would otherwise be collected as gas tax. In practice it’s usually about twice as much as a gas car would generate in tax proceeds. Even in EV friendly states like the PNW.
- lisbbb 10mo agoYou are not allowed to decide how everyone else should live. But just for the sake of argument, take a trip to Montana and get back to me on how well universal EVs would work in much of the US. They're fine for urban and suburban areas. They aren't so great for agricultural work, and certainly not great for people who live in places you probably haven't visited. I don't even think EVs are a solution for people in Nebraska, let alone places where the weather gets really extreme.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- TesterVetter 10mo ago[dead]
- condensedcrab 10mo agoI think that’s where a range extended EV makes plenty of sense, and why I don’t think it needs to be a blanket ban on ICE for pure EV only.
- api 10mo agoOur family has EVs and rents a gas car for the occasional road trip. We did the math and it’s cheaper than buying and owning and doing the maintenance on a gas car. If we did long road trips a lot we’d probably get rid of one EV and get an older gas car for that. It wouldn’t be the daily driver.
- pornel 10mo agoI've already been roadtripping across Europe multiple times in an EV that needs 20 minutes to recharge per ~3 hours of driving (e-GMP). To me this is great, and wouldn't be faster in an ICE, since I need the breaks anyway. EV charging is unattended, so it takes less of my time than refuelling. The chargers are already everywhere, even in rural areas and in the freakin' Alps. I know some people want a pee-in-a-bottle cannonball run, but that doesn't make sense to me. At distances where charging time starts to add up, flying is already much quicker.
- fuckyah 10mo ago[dead]
- favflam 10mo agoI want to see if Kei-trucks can break into the market. The last time a new product form broke into the US market, it was during a big recession (japanese auto-makers got compact cars in). People will value functionality over form if we get into a prolonged recession.
- jmward01 10mo agoI think big vehicles are ugly and stupid so I like the form as well as the function.
- ehnto 10mo agoI love that the world is loving kei trucks and kei cars right now. I see them pretty often in Australia which also has an anti yank-tank movement (tongue in cheek name for a big american "truck") That said our most popular cars are still all three tonne utes or SUVs so it's a small movement. You are right to note the economic situation being a big part of vehicle decisions. Fuel prices has been a driving force, and image plays a big part too.
- ashleyn 10mo agoThe chicken tax pretty much makes this impossible. The only domestic manufacturer interested in cheap light-duty trucks is Slate, which is still in the development phase and faces a lot of risks, notably high cost for the segment.
- YesBox 10mo agoEvery time I think about EVs, I become filled with dread thinking about what will happen if an area loses power for an extended period of time. I used to live in an area that had transformers blow from rain showers. At least you could hook up a generator to pump gas at a gas station. :/ Life's about trade offs. Edit: Whoops.. Im not against EVs to be clear. But from a safety POV, having two different energy sources is safer than having one. Im not sure if you'll understand this if you haven't lived in a very snowy state.
- eldaisfish 10mo agoMore batteries. I cannot believe this is a serious question. A small battery pack can easily run most essential domestic services.
- edent 10mo agoThat's why Vehicle to the Grid / Home is so exciting. Your multi-kWh car battery can power your home for several days. https://carnewschina.com/2024/12/05/byd-struck-deal-with-japanese-government-to-power-critical-infrastructure-with-evs/ https://carnewschina.com/2024/12/05/byd-struck-deal-with-jap...
- Aachen 10mo agoThat sounds like the extreme version of "but I need a fuel car because I want to drive it to France once a year for holiday". Driving something around all year for a once-a-year event is silly, but this is just insane. In a good life, you don't need this fallback from grid power even once in your lifetime! At least, not beyond the inconvenience that is having to stay at home like 1 unplanned day per several decades. That's still three and three quarters of a nine of uptime even if you'd get the recent Iberian peninsula event every 10 years, and assumes you emptied the battery coincidentally the day before the outage. If you're not an EMT or power plant technician, you're doing more harm than good by being the person who can drive to work during a power outage and find that you're the only one there and nothing works anyway
- 3eb7988a1663 10mo agoConsidering how expensive cars are, I do find the trip-to-grandma reasoning useful. Most people want a single vehicle that can do everything. Dismissing that with, "Well just drive differently" or "You can do the hassle that is renting a car" is not a compelling sell. What if I want to do my vacation trips during the holidays where rentals are already booked? I think full EVs are great if the lifestyle allows it, but plug-in hybrids seem a better fit for most people without requiring undue compromise.
- myko 10mo agoIt would be nice if the cars from China could be purchased in the US
- api 10mo agoIt would be the end of the US auto industry. Of course they kind of deserve it. The Japanese also beat them to a pulp for much the same reason: refusal to offer practical affordable efficient vehicles to the silent majority who just want a fucking car.
- anonym29 10mo agoUnpopular idea: the personal automobile segment will shrink so rapidly when autonomous, ubiquitous, low-cost EV robotaxis reach widespread proliferation, that many of the existing automotive manufacturers today will become increasingly commercially non-viable and wind down operations anyway, only further accelerating a trend that has already begun due to the rampant, multifaceted rise in total vehicle ownership costs far above CPI inflation. Environmentalists should be happy about this either way. A fleet of high utilization autonomous vehicles will increase utilization rates of each automobile that is still on the road substantially, serving more people with fewer raw materials. Not to mention that as of right now, all of the leading contenders for commercially viable robotaxi fleets are on EV platforms anyway. It's not that, by and large, over a longer time horizon, new gasoline cars are going to replace these EVs disappearing from the consumer-owned automobile segment so much as EV robotaxis will be gradually replacing almost all consumer-owned vehicles. Enthusiasts will still have their track toys, but as an economic mode of transportation, the personally owned automobile is going the way of the horse and buggy.
- ksynwa 10mo agoIt will shrink even further when everyone has their own cheap personal teleportation device
- 8note 10mo agoone step further - the overall market for vehicle transport will go down as cities smarten up and build in ways they can afford, rather than scaling on bigger roads that go further away and require tons of infrastructure to service. the bigger replacement will still be walking and scooter-like EVs that are cheaper for everyone
- ViewTrick1002 10mo ago> A fleet of high utilization autonomous vehicles will increase utilization rates of each automobile that is still on the road substantially, serving more people with fewer raw materials. Not to mention that as of right now, all of the leading contenders for commercially viable robotaxi fleets are on EV platforms anyway. I think people overestimate the difference due to the amount of dead-heading needed.
- pveierland 10mo agoOne of the big risks for manufacturers seem to be that EVs are fundamentally more compatible with automated production and allows simplifications to the car stack. It would seem that the costs and risks of the keeping the ICE stack alive will keep increasing over time as it loses relevance to EVs.
- aggregator-ios 10mo agoUnsurprising. GM/Ford will fail once again, along with the BMW/MB/VW and then the government will bail them out again... for the 4th time in 30 years. There is no incentive to be better. Making sub-$100k EV's and then crying that consumer demand is low doesn't make any sense. Meanwhile, the Chinese and Korean EVs are absolutely eating this market by making sub 35k and 50k EV's respectively. In California, 1/4 new vehicles registered was an EV in 2024. By the end of 2025, it was 1/3. The rest of the world will continue to embrace EV's, and the western (and Japanese) propaganda machine will do what it always does when the rest of the world does better: xenophobia, racism followed by screaming that EVs are a failure.
- dash2 10mo agoCould you give some examples of the Western propaganda machine producing xenophobia and racism?
- array_key_first 10mo agoClaiming keeping China out of our markets is a matter of national security because they are IP thieves and anti-democracy. Which, while might be true to an extent, is not the motivation - the motivation is domestic economic protectionism. You might also just say they make cheap junk unlike Americans.
- usui 10mo agoIt's good you also mentioned "(and Japanese)" regarding the propaganda machine. I don't think it will crash any time soon, but considering how much the economy is driven by the automotive industry, it's scary to see how much the incumbent companies are doing all they can to stifle electric vehicle advances. They aren't just ignoring them, they're doing all they can to spread FUD. To think there was a good start with hybrids too. There's also the ongoing hydrogen fuel attempt which starts to look like a sunk cost fallacy. If nothing changes, the decline is going to be a gradual irreversible ugly one layered on top of the demographic problem.
- siliconc0w 10mo agoIt's too late anyway- China and the other Eastern players have already won. Western Autos are basically walking dead, artificially kept alive by export controls and tariffs.
- bataowt 10mo agoUntil HN can have an honest discussion on how far behind West is in so many aspects - without blaming Trump for it glibly - each day that passes is a day it falls further behind. The moment you face the truth is the moment you can start doing something about it.
- epistasis 10mo agoFacing the truth also requires acknowledging the roadblocks. Largely due to Trump but Al Republican and conservative culture, and structural, and some permitting etc. Saying that Trump is not allowed to be blamed is symptomatic of just how damaged the public discourse is. Too many snowflakes who are terrified of facing basic accountability for the consequences of their beliefs and actions.
- RickJWagner 10mo ago[flagged]
- array_key_first 10mo agoRight, and materially - what do you think damages EVs more? A few fires, or structural policy choice deliberately intended to destroy the industry? Yes, we can truly both sides everything. But we can't just claim things are the same when they're obviously not. It's clear, and indisputable, that most EV adoption is coming from green policy, particularly around the economy. And who is most responsible for that? The explicitly pro-oil republicans, or not-them?
- wakawaka28 10mo ago
- denimnerd42 10mo agoI bought an EV. it's fun to drive and it's affordable to recharge. However, I wouldn't buy another anytime soon. The depreciation is horrible. They are basically destined for a landfill once they no longer work. I can go to a junk yard and pull an engine for my Toyota tomorrow if I need to.
- sagarm 10mo agoMassive depreciation means cheap used EVs. I don't see the issue. Luxury ICE vehicles also depreciate rapidly, and yet they're quite popular. Plus EVs are likely to have longer usable lifetimes -- though with different issues -- than gas cars.
- denimnerd42 10mo agoLuxury vehicles I've never understood, especially the non Lexus variety. so don't expect me to explain that. Due to all the people in my fmaily I have 4 cars so I wouldn't go from 1 EV to 2. If the current EV gets destroyed I do think that used EVs are the right way to go and would buy a used one for sure. They do still feel like throwaway cars. I'm not sure how you can argue they will have a longer lifetime. If the battery dies surely no one is replacing that at cost? It's more than the car is worth. At least with an ICE each part can be replaced in your driveway with a few hundred in tools and the part probably exists locally used or new.
- bestouff 10mo agoI bought 1 used EV a few years ago. That thing seems like it won't age, everything works like day 1. My next car will be an EV, for sure.
- wakawaka28 10mo agoHave you ever heard, "You get what you pay for?" If used EVs were worth a damn, they would drive down the prices of petrol vehicles too. >Plus EVs are likely to have longer usable lifetimes -- though with different issues -- than gas cars. You need to do some basic research, friend. EV batteries are not designed to be replaced at any sane price. They are built even more crappy than late model petrol vehicles. EVs depreciate rapidly because their useful life is short and problems are many. A 10 year old Honda Civic with a gas engine likely has another 10 or 20 years of life left. An EV probably has a max life of about 15 years without a MAJOR overhaul which is likely not even doable for less than the price of a new EV, if you can even find someone willing to do it. Battery integrity is very hard to determine from sensors and external examination. If a cell has been damaged, it can start an inextinguishable fire which could take out a whole garage. These factors further hurt the resale value. EVs were popular before petrol engines were perfected. But those EVs had swappable and relatively stable batteries and the cars did not have to conform to modern standards for acceleration, crash safety, and range.
- general1465 10mo agoAs somebody who owns an EV, that thing won't catch on (Western or Chinese) unless infrastructure will start being operated by sane people. Currently the "app problem" instead of accepting a debit card on the charger is the biggest pain in the ass followed by unmaintained chargers, because government subsidized building them and not maintaining them. If these two pain points are not fixed, don't expect any kind of boom, more like slow withering out of EVs in western countries because it is constant PITA to use them.
- rcdemski 10mo agoI just finished a road trip from Colorado to SoCal by EV and this was the first trip where I didn’t once need an app to start charging. It was a nice change from my last one. Rivian’s network has been amazing now that non Rivian EVs can use it, and Ionna has appeared with delightfully retro futuristic looking equipment that doesn’t even have a backing app - just payment and go.
- kyriakos 10mo agoThis is a US or local problem primarily. At least where I live there is a law in place requiring public ev chargers to be available with credit card payments and are forbidden from needing users to subscribe.
- aggregator-ios 10mo agoA strange and anecdotal take. Infrastructure is already here. Millions of Americans are happily driving across the country charging their EVs just fine. You probably had a bad experience with a Chargepoint L2 charger in a garage that needed an app to operate and the FTUX on that is really painful. But, no one is using a L2 charger while roadtripping. L2 charging is primarily only for home or work use while parked for 8-12 hours. All the L3 chargers that people use during trips feature tap to pay. As for maintenance, seeing 1 charger be down out of 10 is not an infrastructure problem. EV drivers figured out waiting in line and queuing just fine. And with most stations charging at L4 speeds, the wait time is short.
- blell 10mo agoIt is only hazardous if we can’t get rid of the insane regulations that have been imposed. And I’m pretty sure we will in the next ten years or so.
- ericarogulski 10mo ago[dead]