Sorry, best we can do is massive, expensive pseudo-luxury SUVs
The large profit margin SUVs are necessary for a company to achieve scale to then be able to produce the smaller cheaper stuff. Fixed costs like the factory, tooling, training, designing, that all takes a lot of money up front before even selling a single vehicle, and the smaller and cheaper the vehicle coming out of that production pipeline is, the longer the payback period will be. And when we’re talking about billions of dollars in cost, it’s hard to remain solvent when interest payments on the debt grow exponentially over time.
It’s why before tesla there had not been an American auto company startup for like 70 years, Tesla almost went bankrupt, and Rivian is just starting to head in the right direction. Lucid is probably fucked and they’re mostly Saudi owned these days anyways, and the rest of the US EV startup space ranges from a joke to a scam.
What legacy automakers already have in staff and part of the production line established is actually kind of useless when they have to wait to establish their electric motor, battery, and chassis production, which probably just means a new factory anyways. Give it a few years and the cheaper smaller stuff will come, because right now AFAIK only tesla actually has the free cash flow to fund an EV economy car at scale. Everyone else is still sinking billions establishing any EV production at all, and interest rates aren’t helping the speed of their progress either.
Aaand just like thst the actual thoughtful response is downvoted in the comment section. This places becomes more reddit each day.
“Car companies needs SUVs to survive financially!” is not a thoughtful response. It can easily be disproven by looking at the first 60 or so years of the automobile industry before SUVs were even a thing. The SUV takeover is a pretty recent phenomenon which has taken shape over the last twenty years.
I wouldn’t even call Tesla expensive (to make) or luxury. Every Tesla I’ve been in has seem empty, plain, and feels cheap. The only expensive part about it is the batteries and the labor to make it. I’m sure the price is just inflated due to all of the attention and hype that company has received over the years.
Small cars, small profits.
You say that targetting only the top 5% restricts the adoption rate. Consider me shocked…
It’s almost as if consumers influence markets.
unfortunately we have to have a competing option to vote for with our wallets. There is not a single affordable EV available in the US.
The Chevy Bolt and Nissan Leaf are both under $30k, and there’s a Mini Cooper that’s just barely over $30k. There’s only 1 other car from Chevy that’s cheaper than the Bolt, and only 2 models from Mini cheaper than their EV. Nissan seems to be a leader with cheap cars, with 6 cheaper models than the Leaf. When you add in the tax rebates for buying electric that reduces the price an additional $7500.
Just 20k more to go to compete with what chinese drivers have access to.
Well yeah. We have safety laws. You cant build a car out of chinesium and have it pass US Safety tests.
You know whats safe? A smaller, cheaper engine with a lower top speed. I dont need hundreds of miles of range and 100mph top speed
Well you need a strong engine to get up to speed in a decent amount of time, and to go up hills full loaded. You also need tall gears for fuel efficiency. Combined, it means almost every production car can go 100+ mph.
Also range? Thats just a gas tank. A 10 gallon gas tank will take most small cars 300 miles, its not a lot. Why focus on range? Seems weird to me.
If we start with an expensive sports car we will make enough money that it will eventually trickle down to affordable vehicles.
alternatively we could get rid of car dependency
Maybe, but I feel like that ship has sailed in the US. Both for practical/economical reasons and because will resist. If half the people fought against wearing masks to protect vulnerable people from covid, good luck getting them to give up their "single family home with a yard + 2 cars” lifestyle. For those fortunate enough to have a single family home, that is.
I’m not saying it SHOULD be this way, and I’m not arguing against reducing cars with public transit and walkable/bikeable towns. However, from my perspective inside suburbia that borders rural areas, electrification of vehicles and supplying the grid with renewables is 1000x more likely as the path to fix this stuff environmentally.
And to get rid of cars for non-environmental reasons, I think that will be even more difficult. I mean, I visited Sweden earlier this year and for all the progressive stuff they’re way ahead of us on, there are still cars everywhere. They are smaller, more sensible cars with a much larger proportion being electric, but cars just the same.
Start small, support deregulating zoning so people can build more dense housing, and small corner shops in residential areas, that way it’s not so far to go places. Support bike lanes so people can ride safely if they want to ride. Support work from home to prevent people from having to go anywhere in the first place.
You make a good point bringing up WFH. The speed of the internet these days should allow us to reduce demand for transit rather then looking for the best way to meet that demand.
We are screwed in the US because one side is actively and honestly against transit. The other side plays transit lip service but their actions prove they only want transit as a way to funnel money to some supporter (and so projects cost far too much and what we have runs bad schedules)
Yeah… essentially, one side is bad faith crazy trying to burn it all down, and the other side is full of politicians.
They are not tHe SaMe, but neither is pushing hard for it. But at least some slow progress may be possible if the typical politicians stay in power.
If we started now, we’d be ready in a couple decades in all but the most compact metro areas. And that’s after we build the requisite political will. The US fucked itself hard leaning into cars as transport.
But that’s reality for most of us living in the burbs where the schools are better and the neighborhoods are better for kid stuff.
neighborhoods are better for kid stuff
Maybe it’s just me growing up in the city, but I would not want to raise my kid in an American-style suburb. Imagine being a tween but never being able to go anywhere without your parents, because everything is too far away to walk or bike and public transport is not available. Yikes.
My kid is younger but we moved from the suburbs to a dense urban area shortly after he was born. I have to agree even though he’s not yet that independent. Some of my friends back in the burbs were like “what are you going to do with a kid in the city?” But we ride bikes to parks and gardens, go to different museums and the zoo, visit festivals for different cultures. It’s pretty awesome and almost every weekend is an eventful thing for us.
But we ride bikes to parks and gardens, go to different museums and the zoo, visit festivals for different cultures. It’s pretty awesome and almost every weekend is an eventful thing for us.
A thing often misunderstood by suburb and rural denizens is that when beautiful and interesting things are more easily available to you you can actually make meaningful use of them. Sure, they’ll brave the city once every six months and maybe go to the zoo or a cultural event once or twice a year, but nothing beats being able to do these things on a random weekend (or sometimes even weeknight) without much hassle, additional cost, or preparation.
Yea, Cities are great and all, but I’d argue nothing beats having 103 acres of forest and field and a house or two to play around in. I don’t need to go to a park, I step outside. I can have different hobbies with space for a wood shop, a sawmill, a backhoe etc… I can ride 4wheelers and offroad my crossover on a private road / path we built. I don’t have to hear sirens daily/nightly, or worry about lights shining in my bedroom window. I can go for a walk or hike on my property and not see any strangers. I can go swimming or fishing in my pond, I can play badminton and boccie ball and croquet in my lawn.
I’m not saying that cities are bad, but to claim rural people don’t have beautiful and interesting things easily available to them is just misunderstanding what some people find beautiful and interesting. I’m just back from London, and while Christmas at Kew was amazing, and better than anything I’ve ever seen in the US, it’s not like I don’t have access to theaters, stores, and events like Christmas Markets, though we do them as summer festivals and the like. They’re also ~ 30 minutes away, similar to how long I’d spend on getting to the tube, on it, and getting to the event location from my hotel. It’s just far more convenient to walk a much shorter distance to the car, drive to the local small city, and walk a shorter distance from parking to the festival or show, or whatever. We have local museums, but I think you overestimate how much people who aren’t tourists go to the museums. I haven’t been to any of my local ones in quite a while, and I remember my NYC family never went to the museums - it’s always the “huh, yea, I never had a reason to go outside of a tourist family member showing up”.
Yes. One alternative is communal traffic. People are just to lazy so they can’t wait for it. If every car was indeed banned, gues how good the communal traffic would then be. Since the need increase, a lot. They would be going a lot often and suddenly there are no more cars blocking the roads. Also note that you would not have to be driving so you could do other stuff than looking at the road. And you dont have to save up money for the cars. No need to fix the car when it breaks. No need to find a gas station in time. Just less things to think about. Just look at how the flying business work today, no average people own their own plane. But still people make use of communal planes.
That’s fine for people who live in cities (which I acknowledge is a lot of people), but for people who live in smaller more remote and more rural places, it will never be possible to fullly be free of personal vehicles.
Electric bike solves a lot of those issues, but you are correct.
I don’t think you understand what rural means. There were people who had to travel 1 hr+ by car to get to the local grocery store where I came from. An ebike isn’t appropriate for places where you may need to travel 60+ miles, and/or in snow or bad conditions that might persist for weeks, and/or in ungodly hot / humid conditions that also persist for weeks. All three of those are true for decent swaths of the year in my area.
If electric bikes were the only thing allowed on back roads, it would work great.
I stopped riding my motorcycle because of idiots in cars. No way in hell am I taking an electric bicycle to get groceries
I’m not sure why you’re being downvoted. Electric bikes are a great solution for those that don’t need to haul much or go far. Weather permitting of course. I sold my ICE sedan about a year ago and don’t miss it.
Honestly, cheaper and smaller cars across the board would be nice. Everything is a fucking tank now.
Yep, because of a loophole in pollution regulation
A bit of a cobra bite.
Auto Dealers : (adds “Market Adjustment” $$$ to offset the cheaper EV prices…) “Hey, why no one buy EV? We need a bail out!”
/s
They are giving americans what they want. The real problem is continuing to feed the deep rooted car addiction brought on by lobbying and corporate greed. There has not been a better time to instead invest heavily on public transportation, build extension inter-state, inter-city train systems, subway or rail systems for cities. Overtime phasing out freeways and replacing them walkable districts. I understand this won’t happen over night and cities like Houston and LA are sprawling cities of 100s of miles but it needs to start somewhere and it starts with heavy investment from the federal government. Time to finally invest the tax money back to the taxpayers not defense, wars (direct, proxy or funded) and foreign affairs in the name of “national security”. How about domestic security from corporate greed, price gouging, poor education, horrible Healthcare are system, costly drug prices to say the least. I understand for all these there’s need to be a massive social change booth in the country and in the world’s largest retirement home, US Congress.
Because those will sell great in a market filled with massive SUVs and pickup trucks.
I’d buy one.
I’m priced out of most EV’s at the moment and the majority of the ones being made aren’t anything I’d want anyway. Sign me up for an electric Miata, I’m there. Or a motorcycle…
Honestly, I’d love a smart car sized EV. If I’m just running errands I don’t need my truck (it’s a Santa Cruz, not a gas guzzler).
And my wife has to commute 40 miles a day, which makes her jeep kinda impractical.
99% of the time that is all I need. However the cost of two vehicles is so high I end up with a large truck for that 1% of the time (every try to rent a truck to use as a truck? it isn’t possible as there are so many restrictions)
There is an electric Smart, they just don’t sell it in the USA
Ya there’s literally no way for poor people to buy EVs even if they wanted to. Another huge issue is poor people live in apartments and can’t charge EVs at home either.
If you’re being fiscally responsible there’s no way to buy most new cars. People are too used to living well above their means. How these Army recruits straight out of boot camp are dropping 80k on a truck that’ll never even see a sheet of plywood or drywall assuming the bed is even big enough is beyond me.
I haven’t paid more than 18k on a car and even that felt like too much. And I’m well above the median household income for my region.
Frankly I wish I didn’t need a car at all, but it’ll be decades before our infrastructure can support that lifestyle if ever. Unless you’re willing to give up an additional 2 to 3 hours per day on travel … and I’m not.
Ya the most I’ve ever spent on a car is 20k, that was 8 years ago and I’m still driving it. I have a coworker with an EV and it’s really annoying to hear him suggesting switching cars to save money.
Which is why car makers need to pursue ideas like e-fuels and hydrogen cars. The obsession with BEVs is tunnel vision, and is doing more harm than good.
Or people need to give up the idea of taking three tons of metal to work with them every day.
Happy too just as soon as work locate themselves somewhere that’s actually accessible via public transport. And not in some out of town business park with only road access and no cycling facilities.
Also they need to change the weather so it never rains or snows and is always warm but not too warm.
If they start doing those things then we can talk.
Also they need to change the weather so it never rains or snows and is always warm but not too warm.
I love when people say stuff like this. It’s the “I’m not even going to try” comment. If children in Finland can bike to school in the winter, I think your adult self can deal with a little bit of not-ideal weather sometimes. You just have to dress for it, and not expect to always be isolated from the environment like some people want to be for some reason.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Earlier this week, we learned of an effort by some auto dealers to pump the brakes on the US government’s electric vehicle adoption goals.
EVs are sitting too long on dealership lots, they say, and the public just isn’t ready to switch.
But the industry has some work to do if it wants to smoothly transition from those early adopters to the “early majority” phase, and JD Power’s advice sounds a lot like what we constantly hear in the comments: build smaller, cheaper EVs.
And mainstream customers have to pay a lot more for the privilege of going electric; an EV powertrain only adds about $4,000 to the price of a comparable premium SUV, but the gap between a mass market compact crossover and one with an internal combustion engine is around $18,000.
Like it or not, EV buyers have some legitimate concerns not shared by people buying conventionally powered vehicles.
“The sooner EV stakeholders focus on consumer education and significant investment in EV charging infrastructure, the sooner mass market consumers will follow,” JD Power said.
The original article contains 378 words, the summary contains 176 words. Saved 53%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
nah, they’ve made their evil choice, just let me import a small cheap EV from some country that cares. Just liquidate US automakers churning out larger and larger ICE trucks and SUV’s.
Citroen e-c3 is trying.
I think a lot of people will avoid it just because of what’s going on in the Congo unless that company can prove that they aren’t getting their cobalt from the Congo.
Best thing for consumers and environmental would be conversion. We already have the cars. I like my 2003 Golf. I won’t be getting rid of it until I need to.
Why replace 8 billion cars when we can convert them. Yeah they won’t be nearly as efficient but it’s a stop gap between scrapping that many cars. Also I can’t afford a new ev. I need a small run around with 259 miles.
I have had a handful of that generation golf over the years that I have modified. It would be absurdly simple to drop an electric motor into that thing if the right kit existed.
