EVs are fine and dandy, but it is a luxury class of cars for now and it shows really. Most other countries are far far away from mass deployment of EVs or restricting ICE cars. EVs can win if either a) the car is cheaper than the same class ICE, or b) operational expenses of using EV car would be cheaper. Neither of which is happening yet. And the car do need to have some advantage, since EVs already come with inherent disadvantage of long and inconvenient charging, small batteries, limited locations for charging with buggy and broken stations, not working apps or cards etc.
What's silly is that the reality you describe is a choice that's been made, not something fundamental to EVs. Cars like the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Bolt are supremely inexpensive. China's BYD cars are extremely cheap for what they are.
American/European car makers realized there is a large class of people who are wealthy and will buy a high end EV for status reasons, and started chasing that market instead.
Which Leaf? Leaf 1st gen with 150km range in summer and 100km in winter and which are already decade old? Those yeah, cheap, but also useless. Leaf 2 are nothing like that. Even base model with small-ish 40kWh battery is 30k euro, and 60kWh model is starting close to 40k euro. And for that price it's a small c-class hatchback, competing with way better cars, like large and packed d-class sedans or SUVs. And charging EV on a commercial station is currently more expensive than filling up a tank of a similar ICE with 95 petrol, per km of range. The only way to charge EV on a cheap, which is possible, is to own a house and charge it on a home line at domestic rates. And owning a house in EU is an expensive luxury.
Unfortunately, infrastructure need to improve a lot before the switch may happen.
The 1st gen Leafs are absolutely not useless. They have a specific use case, which they excel at. That use case is simply different from most cars, which are general use and can drive many hundreds of km. If your use case for a vehicle matches the 1st gen Leaf, it blows away anything else except a bicycle in terms of cost per distance.
In the US, DC fast charging costs ~$0.50/kWh. A typical EV gets around 3.5mi/kWh, which is $0.14/mile. An ICE car that gets 30 mi/gal sees breakeven at $4.30/gallon for gas. Which, while currently higher than the average gas price for most of the US, is less than the average for some states and certainly within the range of possibility countrywide.
Theoretically there is a use case for 100km range car, I won't object that. But in practice such a use case is extremely unrealistic, if alternatives exist at all. 100km range car is city-only car cheap car, basically locked forever to a single location. But cheap car is not a cheap thing in general, it is still 10-20 thousand dollars and requires all the car things - insurance, changing, parking spot, yearly maintenance etc. So with a very few exceptions no one would buy it as an only car. And buying a second car in a city is even higher luxury than a house. And even then, an intra-city car is competing with public transit in many cases.
What this means is there is no real market for 100-150km range cars, with a few exceptions where rich people can buy a stylish, expensive and impractical EV like a Mini EV. They won't consider Leaf 1. And non-rich people wouldn't buy such a limited and impractical car which still costs a lot.
In actual reality, Leaf 1 were popular in the period 10+ years ago, when there was almost no options in that segment. And during that time exactly two categories of people bought them in my country - taxists and people with private EV changing spots or private houses. My colleague bought Leaf 1 as a ICE Clio replacement, but only because he had a garage where he could charge it on a very cheap rate. Taxists the same, they were optimizing like hell. But Gradually, both categories replaced their Leaf 1, and now taxists are on hybrids mostly, and private citizens upgraded to more rational and expensive EVs. There is no market for very short range EVs today. Except as toys for rich.
> But cheap car is not a cheap thing in general, it is still 10-20 thousand dollars and requires all the car things - insurance, charging, parking spot, yearly maintenance etc
A used Gen 1 Leaf will cost you well under $10k for a car with 50k miles on it. The battery is so small, charging empty to full is $5 or less in most of the US and can be done overnight off a normal 120V outlet. There is essentially no maintenance except wiper fluid and blades. Minimal liability insurance on these vehicles is about $150 a year.
You make a great argument that they aren't a general purpose car for everyone. And you're right! I completely agree. They are not a general purpose car for everyone. But they absolutely have their place, and are far less expensive than you make them out to be.
Even the Ford Lightning (by far the best work truck on the market) was modestly priced compared to other Fords.
Ford claims there’s no market for “expensive” $60-70K trucks in the US, but go to any Ford dealership in the bay area, and they’ll have used ICE Ford trucks that cost that much.
(And I don’t mean the giant specialty super duty trucks — these are tricked out suburban kid transporters that look like they’ve never seen a camp ground, let alone a Home Depot).
Anyway, the Lightning was a fantastic model line. I hope someone else builds quarter ton EV trucks moving forward. I’m rooting for Rivian and Slate.
I would argue the EV Silverado goes toe to toe with the F150 lightning and wins. Similar price, better range, better features.
Yeah, visiting my ex-Gf family in Norway, I realized how much richer Norwegians are that it's not even funny. It's not really a market representative of the average buyer. Same how neither Switzerland, Luxembourg or Monaco are.
I am living in a working class neighborhood of apartment buildings in West-central Europe with average to below average earners, and there's zero EVs parked here on the streets, basically 90% of people have old diesel cars. Only when you go towards the suburbs with rich(inherited wealth) people living in single family homes you see everyone has an EV.
The distinction is quite clear, do you live in a house or have your own parking space and possibility to install your own charger? Then EV 100% no brainer. Otherwise people stick to ICE.
I do live in a house, could easily afford an EV and have plenty of solar to keep it charged. And I still don't have one because all of these EVs feel like the worst of the computer world applied to automotive. The last thing I need is a computer on wheels and I'm old enough that I know my current car is likely my last. For my kids it is different, and I'm sure that they'll go electric at some point but I hope that they'll be able to do so without buying a mobile privacy violation instrument.
The Dacia Spring proves that it doesn't have to be the case. The base version doesn't even have a touchscreen, let alone internet connectivity. It is a cheap car, in every sense of the word, but is shows that not every EV has to be like Tesla.
The issue is the small actual range on the Dacia Spring. Great for grocery shopping and going to work in a city setting, bad for long journeys in the winter time. Basically what people want is exactly that type of barebones EV, but with more battery.
That’s genuinely nice that it doesn’t have the multimedia crap. They do also have an “extreme” model with touchscreen and connected services. At ~220km range it probably has about 100km in winter though. :-/
Good for them, and thank you for the tip!
>they'll be able to do so without buying a mobile privacy violation instrument.
Tell me you don't bring any mobile device when you ride/drive a car.
There is a slight difference between my mobile phone/carrier and the manufacturer of my vehicle, especially when the latter includes cameras, all kinds of telemetry and of course the near certainty over the longer term of compromise of all the data they hoover up.
Did you mean the former?
No, I meant the latter. Onboard cameras and telemetry are fairly commonplace on newer vehicles.
Phones have those also, and you are comparing cars to phones, so I thought you meant that phones had all those things...but I guess they both do?
There are more kinds of phones.
Not just commonplace, required by law.
Ironically society would benefit tremendously from “computer on wheels” because when you inevitably have a heart attack on the road your car won’t swerve onto oncoming traffic or crash into people.
Why is me having a heart attack inevitable?
> the car is cheaper than the same class ICE,
To give you some perspective, the most popular EV in China costs $6000 (Wuling Mini). New. The second most popular costs $10000 (Geely Xingyuan). I tried both, and they are far less crappy than they have the right to be. They are cheap cars for sure, but they're perfectly adequate for regular use.
And Geely Xingyuan has a 40kWh battery in the basic configuration! This is utterly ridiculous for a car that is _that_ cheap.
So China basically murdered the global ICE market. It's gone. There's no going back. Once China figures out the logistics and sales, ICE vehicles will be dead in all of the less affluent countries. Especially because EVs combine almost too perfectly with solar generation.
Out of curiosity, do they support one pedal driving correctly (i.e., let you set it and forget it, and never unexpectedly accelerate from a stop unless you turn it off explicitly).
BMW used to, but broke it on the i4, and presumably all the newer ones. Kia’s implementation is completely broken.
I ask, because that’s the number one thing I’ll check for with future EV purchases, and it’s purely software.
I have not driven the Wuling myself, only traveled as a passenger. On Xingguan it's "normal", just like on Tesla or anywhere else.
The Geely did not come to a complete stop on regen braking, I had to use the brake pedal for the final ~5 km/h. Perhaps there was a setting to override this, but I did not check.
Tesla seems OK. I’m really spoiled by the “complete stop” feature.
The worst (which is what most brands are moving to in the US) is when it’s completely unpredictable. Basically, half the time, the car unexpectedly accelerates from a stop, or fails to engage regen.
On some cars, they even tie regen to a camera, so regen works well unless you are on a curve or cresting a hill. In those situations, the car accelerates or fails to slow down.
[dead]
yes, there a lot of outdated perspectives in these threads. The world has changed, EVs are the cheaper option now, its just going to take awhile for some places to catch up.
In NZ cheapest EV right now (I think it is clearance) is 15.8K USD.