I do miss smaller cars and if they were electric too? Count me in! The 80’s economy cars were the best.
$7.25 minimum wage
Walmart is paying about $14
not sure cheaper, smaller EVs will help spur adoption better wages will
I don’t see what minimum wage has to do with this when as you said, major low skill employers are paying almost double minimum wage.
better wages will
Well yeah all spending would go up if you paid people more. But the US is very good compared to other countries in pay, including countries with similar living expenses.
Imo, the issue with EVs is price, but new ICE cars aren’t cheap either. But a ton(most?) people don’t buy new cars. My parent’s cars(ICE) are from 2005 and 2007, without having done major maintenance. Not only is there a lack of cheap used EVs on the market because they’re still new, but also people are reasonably worried about the longevity of the batteries- so would be hesitant to buy one.
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. Big battery, two seats, and with crank windows for all I care. Or a motorcycle…
Zero Motorcycles. Not super cheap, as far as motorcycles go, but cheaper than a car for sure.
Yes, but predatory pay-to-unlock and subscription model bullshit, just like Tesla. I am well aware of them, and they are on my do not buy list for that reason.
See, this is why we can’t have nice things.
Mini Cooper se. ~3000lb, technically a 4 seater hatchback, 180hp, 100 mile range. Usually around $20k for a couple of years old. Actually considered it, but unfortunately I probably won’t have access to a place to charge over night for the foreseeable future.
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.
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!
Auto Dealers : (adds “Market Adjustment” $$$ to offset the cheaper EV prices…) “Hey, why no one buy EV? We need a bail out!”
/s
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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.
Hydrogen cars pleeeeeease. Hydrogen power is so cool! Internal combustion that outputs water! It’s literally magic! And it’s powered by the most common element in the universe!
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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.
The used EV market is what’s really preventing lower-income adoption. The insanity of the secondhand prices over the pandemic is only now beginning to break. I’m seeing polestar 2 models with reasonable miles in the high 20’s. That’s an enormous discount off the sticker. Tesla has also seen serious price drops.
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You say that targetting only the top 5% restricts the adoption rate. Consider me shocked…
It’s almost as if consumers influence markets.
If we start with an expensive sports car we will make enough money that it will eventually trickle down to affordable vehicles.
Porsche does have an EV, and there’s an EV mustang now (only $45k, which shocked me)
Don’t call that thing a Mustang 😡
Imo the mustang name should have been retired 20 years ago.
No way, the REAL modern Mustangs are rad.
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.
That’s great. Half of America needs a 15k car. That’s the magic number for Mass adoption.
And where are you going to find any new car in the US for $15k? The average cost of a new car in the US this year was over $40k, and there are several EV options available for practically anyone in the market for a new car.
Kia Forte
Hyundai Venue
Nissan Versa
Mitsubishi Mirage
Kia Rio
Kia Soul
Cars aren’t supposed to cost more than half your annual income. Half the country makes less than 36k a year. The domestic auto makers are trying to hide behind inflation for their price increases, but their record profits tell us they aren’t just raising prices with cost.
2024 Kia Forte $19,790 Starting MSRP - https://www.kia.com/us/en/forte
2024 Hyundai Venue $19,800 Starting MSRP - https://www.hyundaiusa.com/us/en/vehicles/venue
2024 Nissan Versa $16,130 Starting MSRP - https://www.nissanusa.com/vehicles/cars/versa-sedan.html
2024 Mitsubishi Mirage $16,695 Starting MSRP - https://www.mitsubishicars.com/cars-and-suvs/mirage
2023 Kia Rio $16,750 Starting MSRP - https://www.kia.com/us/en/rio (There isn’t a 2024 version as this model has been dropped)
2024 Kia Soul $19,990 Starting MSRP - https://www.kia.com/us/en/soul
Which of these cars that you listed are $15k? The Chevy Bolt EV is less than half the cars you listed when you look at the base price ($26,500) minus the Federal Tax Credit ($7,500).
The original comment I replied to said that “there is not a single affordable EV” in the US and I listed 3 that are under the average cost for any new cars in the US. Then you claimed that EVs need to be $15k in order to reach mass adoption, even though there are no new cars available in the US at that price. You can argue that cars are priced too high, or the car companies are making too much money, but the fact is that for anyone in the market for a new car, there are EVs available in every new car price range.
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.
As if American cars had any reputation for reliability XD
I think it is at least as much about maturity of the technology, and competition in the market. Obviously we all want better cheaper cleaner cars. That hasn’t suddenly changed.
There are several EVs out now for under $50k, and a few under $40k, so things are improving.
alternatively we could get rid of car dependency
Think of the shareholders!
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.
If electric bikes were the only thing allowed on back roads, it would work great.
Edit: yeah, it would involve extreme changes to bike design so that they could carry more things, and there is always a need for a tractor, a semi hauling things, and moving vans.
I suppose for rural cycling to work safely, it would need a network of separate paths, plus some bike lanes attached to the roads in strategic places.
If electric bikes were the only thing allowed on back roads, you’d never be able to make enough grocery/dump/Tractor Supply runs to have time for anything else in your life.
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.
I stopped riding my motorcycle because of idiots in cars. No way in hell am I taking an electric bicycle to get groceries
I want to ride a bike really bad, but cars have killed more cyclists in my city year over year my entire life.
It’s just simply terrifying out there when a douche in an Escalade is in a hurry.
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You could just get a small EV like a Citroën Ami but having more than two wheels on a vehicle does make you an eco-terrorist according to Lemmy.
We hardly have any small EVs in the US. I’m keen on the mini that’s coming out next year, but 40k is a big ask for a short commute.
I guess it’s busloads of tweakers for me for a while.
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.
Personally I have the grace of Jar Jar Binks. My last few forays on a bike, when I was younger and less frail, were disastrous. Proponents of E-bikes must be very young and fit, I guess? Because all of us older, disabled, or just plain clutzy people need four wheels and walls of metal between us and the world.
Having said that, I wouldn’t mind having a glorified golf cart to run around town. Seal me in from the weather and give me AC and Bluetooth, that’s all I ask.
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”.
I wish I could upvote you more than once.
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.
They may have accessible nature, though not all of them even enjoy that in my experience, but they often do not have easily accessible cultural experiences at all. Not everyone appreciates the things they live by, and that’s just humanity. We can be miserable anywhere.
But it’s been my experience living in the states that it’s extremely commonplace for people to shit on the very idea of cities, and especially raising children in them, and overwhelmingly encourage people to set up shop miles away from their jobs in the suburbs and rural areas despite the downsides.
The main thing I see is our cities still often require you to have a car, yet rent is 3x or more what it is out in the burbs. It’s hard to make that work. I don’t think anyone likes commuting a long way. Though I think we need both more housing in cities to try and drive the prices down and more WFH so less commuting in general.
As the gp poster I didn’t mean to sound like I’m dumping on rural life. I grew up in a rural area, riding four-wheelers and roaming the woods till the sun went down. One of my best friends started a family around the same time I did and opted to buy some acreage a decent commute away from town. They ride dirt bikes with their kids on literal mountains in the backyard, have a chicken coop and machine shop, deer wander up and eat their vegetable garden. It’s super rad and I wouldn’t mind having gone that route either.
I really didn’t dig the suburbs and having to drive literally everywhere though. On the balance I liked the diversity in the city and having easy access to metropolitan amenities. I’d never shit on the rural route and it may well be where I end up, I just thought it was wild how much blowback I got from wanting to raise a kid in the city.
Honestly the only problems I see with cities is the cost if they’re not able to set you up car free. If you’re paying 3x in rent, if you can’t offset that by not paying the car costs you have to be making a lot more money. And most US cities don’t make it easy to go carless.
That is rural life though, not exactly suburban. Suburbs have the worst attributes of the city and countryside, while having little benefits of both)
My local huge park, pool, and sports complex is .7 miles. I have multiple stores and restaurants .5 miles away. Our library is also about .7 miles away. My burb is relatively walkable and perfectly bike-able.
Our grid has its own problems and is completely unsafe for cyclists a lot of the time. I know; I work there. My city has removed lanes from streets to create space for bikes and people still get killed by idiots in cars. Still inadequate public transit. Only more walkable than my own burb in certain, hyper expensive neighborhoods. Cheaper areas have homeless problems (warmer climate) resulting in tons of property crimes (mostly stolen bikes and break-ins). Many encounters with bonk-shit crazy guys yelling at stop signs (and people). Some of them have large, aggressive dogs. Oh, and then there’s the fires they start by attempting to cook or warm themselves and then getting high or drunk.
Frankly I would be stoked to live in a townhouse or condo or something on the grid. All my favorite restaurants are down there, lots to do, etc. But it’s shit for kids and the schools are rough as fuck.
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.
We can’t, though. It would cost trillions of dollars and massive population relocation for it to happen.
Cars are here to stay. The only reduction I can see happening is if fully autonomous cars are a thing. I’m betting they won’t be sold to the public and will be used like Uber.
Not really. It would cost trillions of dollars - but it would be cheaper than car infrastructure. The key is to start building and running using transit now where it makes the most sense and expand that.
The dirty little secret is we’ve basically done that already - building train lines or subways in the US is so astronomically expensive that no one is doing it “for profit” anymore, and it looks likely that it’ll never become financially viable unless something changes massively. I mean, from what I can tell NYC can’t profitably retrofit the subways, forget about building a new line. Amtrack is constantly in bankruptcy or being bailed out. No one is going to build a modern train line from Rochester NY to NYC again - there just isn’t going to be the passengers.
You’re delusional if you think there’s even a remote possibility of that ever happening in the US without inventing a time machine to stop the auto industry from killing the rail industry in the early 1900s.
The cat has been out of the bag way too long to put it back in now.
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.
Nothing beats covinience. If it’s easy, people will pay up. That means you are right, that if the communal traffic improves as you say, it would get alot more people using it.
But unfortunately, cars are just so, so convinient, it’s almost impossible to beat, if you don’t straight up outlaw them.
My city (Houston) had a bus system that goes everywhere, but the sheer size and the lack of logical routing makes it hard to use. My friend could drive 20 minutes to work (but cannot drive because of a mental disability) or take multiple buses for 3 hours each way. She now rides an e-bike, but it still takes nearly an hour and she is literally risking her life because there are no bike lanes. Plus the cost of the bike was $3000 and it regularly needs maintenance.
The last paragraph of this article is right on. Don’t just tell people to buy EVs and then call it a day. Improve the infrastructure. Make buying an EV feel like less of an unsupported risk.
Sorry, best we can do is massive, expensive pseudo-luxury SUVs
Small cars, small profits.
Lots of small cars sold, lots of small profit.
For a lot of producers, that’s not even true for ICE cars anymore. More safety features and emission regulations make them more expensive to produce relative to larger cars.
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.
I’m not sure you understand economies of scale and profit margin.
There’s more than one way to skin a cat. The Chinese EV companies that have come up in the last few years use a diversity of business strategies, not all involving high margin SUVs. BYD’s cars, for example, are spinoffs of its battery manufacturing business.
BYD was selling ICE vehicles up until March of 2022, and their current split is somewhere around 50/50 BEV/hybrid so they’re still not a full EV company. Their lineup is still being supported by their existing infrastructure, subsidized by the already established supply chains for ICE that they can incrementally cannibalize while building up the EV part of the company. It’s a good blueprint for legacy auto, but not for an EV startup. That is even before mentioning the very generous subsidies and incentives for electrification provided by the national, provincial, and city governments to producers and consumers. Not to say there is anything wrong with that, because I believe the US also needs that level of investment into electrification, but my point is that it’s not the same business model.
BYD also put lots of resources into electric buses. Anyway the point is that there’s multiple game plans EV makers can follow, not only Tesla’s.
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.
But it was based on light truck exemptions from CAFE standards, so they can be cheaper to build and sell at a higher margin. But now average buyers don’t want anything smaller for fear of being run down by all the trucks and suvs.
I wouldn’t call Kia nor Hyundai nor Toyota nor Honda anything close to pseudo luxury. Has the bar been lowered because of all the plasticated electronics and DUAL ZONE AC?
The fit and finish of interiors in general has really fallen… literally plastic everywhere. Uphostery, leather, wood/wood-effect etc are all mostly gone
There’s quite a wide range within those brands. Is it safe to say that you would consider Lexus or Acura to be at least pseudo luxury? What about their entry models that are just a rebranded version of the Honda/Toyota model?
Hell, how do we even define luxury? You can get heated leather seats in just about anything these days, and a few decades ago those were both ultra premium options.
Luxury often gets confused with high-cost. Which is confusing for people and kind of boils down to your definition of luxury.
Personally a new top of the range 35k Kia with heated seats, HUD, electric tailgate and radar cruise control is luxury but others will only consider a Porsche or above luxury? Donno it’s just never going to be globally agreed
That kia is a piece of shit (quality wise) that will fall apart easily, has literal cardboard in the seats and panels, has no sound insulation for road noise, handles like garbage, and has poor performance. Heated seats and cheap electronics do not make it luxury.
It is all opinion, but I think every person that’s driven a wide array of cars would not consider kia luxury. Ever.
Interesting opinion.
I worked for Audi for two years which most would consider luxury but almost every part on an Audi was shared with SKODA and SEAT which others wouldn’t consider luxury. It’s all the same shit with a different badge.
I know plenty of luxury cars with recycled seats, poor handling, bad sound insulation and underpowered engine. Honestly if you feel so strongly that Kia and Hyundai are not luxury and Lexus is you’re way behind in modern vehicle standards
Lexus & Acura, yes, entry level luxury. I’ve never seen one that clearly competes with higher end brands. The similar lower models I think are faux luxury. The cheapness is not hard to find.
American BMW & Mercedes to me are clear moderate / mid level luxury. Most models anyway. I say American because I’ve seen some very low trim models in Europe. Also, those brands are just my example. I know there are others.
I define luxury as long lasting comfort, high level quality control, sound insulation, responsiveness, economics, durability, etc.
Luxury certainly has changed over time. Just my opinion.
I wouldn’t even call Tesla expensive (to make) or luxury. Every Tesla I’ve been in has seemed 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.
This is the truth
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.
There is an electric Smart, they just don’t sell it in the USA
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)
??? I rented a pickup no issue from Home Depot. What restrictions did you see?
They are for hauling your home depot purchases home. Use them for anything else and it isn’t allowed. Home depot won’t care normally, but if anything goes wrong (might not be your fault) and lawyers will be going after you.
There are a bunch of them, depending on country. In the US we have the Chevy Spark.
Which is 1.5 times bigger than a common Smart, and is discontinued. Instead, GM is actually focusing on making electric… trucks 🥲
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.
Funny is that the way things have been going the last few years, if there’s a kit for your car, it’s probably based on parts from a crashed Tesla. Which is a good thing, IMO
The kits do exist. But I think they are pretty awful. Like maybe less than 100 miles. Our car is incredibly heavy so it might get even less. Once we get stupid good range and the price comes down.
Then we are talking. But will the world actually allow us to wean ourselves of fossil fuels. Every car company and conglomerate doesn’t want the poor to get access to cheap transportation.
So it’s kinda scary
That’s actually what they did before the Tesla, and the result was the cars were so useless nobody wanted to buy them.
Most carmakers make small subcompact EVs, and they are way more useful now, but even Dacia Spring which is probably the cheapest European made EV, isn’t competitive against similar sized or prized ICE cars. And frankly it’s a very unattractive car in many ways IMO.
ICE cars have a century of iterations and optimizations on cost effective production and efficiency, it will take a while longer to get the EVs to the same level.
Batteries are getting both cheaper and better and safer, so there is no doubt EVs will ultimately surpass ICE in probably every segment.Attractiveness is an interesting point; it would be interesting to see a “boring” normal looking car that doesn’t lean into the somewhat polarizing EV aesthetic.
OK, I didn’t mean attractive as in how it looks, I mean more that it has a tiny battery, and it doesn’t have a fast charger either, the cheap model you can’t even get as an extra!. It’s not a “real” car IMO, but more something that can be used as a 2nd car, maybe for shopping. It’s simply so underwhelming in every way for its price IMO.
There was an awful lot of “most trips are under x miles, so we will plan for x miles of range”.
Yes probably, but I don’t see why I would buy a car that can only manage “most trips” unless it’s as a second car.
