Technology

Yeah, a surprising number of people don't want these hyper complex cars with thousands of microchips and millions of lines of code operating them. Give me an electric 2012 Honda fit/Toyota matrix equivalent that just fucking works and costs $20k or less new.

I currently lease a 2 years old Renault Zoe (very compact car) for 200€ a month (0€ upfront). It was a special deal in Germany for a few months. I charge at home with solar panels and rarely drive more than the 300-350km range.

It honestly feels like the holy grail of electro mobility.

There’s no margins there. Just like in real estate, the best margins are at the high end. They won’t make affordable cars while they can make more money on expensive ones.

Because people are buying all the mid- and high-end EVs. If it's more profitable, there's some sense to it until that saturates (although it sounds like that's finally happening maybe)

GM tried real hard for the lower-end. And cars like the Bolt EUV ended up actually really good especially for the price. Then they cancelled it because they just weren't making enough money or volume or scaling like they wanted.

And at the moment ALL the carmakers have gone kinda nuts with pricing. And sales are still super strong overall. Just...softening. Apparently especially for EVs.

Also, people are paying way, way too much for cars. It's insane how many people making $60,000 a year or less are buying cars worth almost that much, and taking out these ridiculous loans. I guess the interest rate hikes are putting a little damper on it, but it's been just stupid.

Why does every new ev for the US have to be mega deluxe luxury SUV?

Because car manufacturers don't give two shits what people need, nor what's best for the environment, they're in the profit making business, and that's all that matters.

We're at the point now where this shouldn't need to be pointed out, the fact it does goes to show just how successful (from their viewpoint of course) their propaganda is..

This. It's even worse in Australia. The only affordable ev is a Tesla 3 @ 55k AUD. Which even then is out of reach of most.

Why not make a 30k EV? Penetrate the majority of consumers.

I'm on a great wage and even I shake my head at 80-120k range of most EVs here. Then you get bwm releasing 180k+ EVs.. who exactly is buying them?

When you price a technology out of the reach of people, the tech isn't the failure.

Seriously, the electric f150 had a 100% markup at some dealerships. The build quality was absolute crap on those too.

Carmakers: (High) increase of the selling prices of all cars, gas/EV.

Consummers: 20k for the simplest car, without options? No thanks, we can't afford that

In the usa the poor don't really have anywhere to charge these cars even if they were cheap enough to afford.

It is impossible to compete with a less than five minute fill up for 300+ miles range.

Not to mention that reports place charging on public charges to be more costly than gas.

Sadly, they are. The median new car price in the US last year was $46k.

It's already hard to convince people to use EVs, convincing them to use public transportation is even harder. It's completely understandable why they don't want to use public transportation tho: it kinda sucks in most countries. Here in germany it's simply unreliable. If you use it to get to work, you can expect to get there late quite frequently and the same goes for the way home. Fixing the issues public transportation has and making cities less car dependent takes time and we don't really have that much anymore. EVs aren't perfect but it's a compromise.

If you want to talk about real solutions to climate change I wouldn't aim as consumer facing things like cars or household recycling. That's all BS to make people focus on what their role in it is to distract from the fact that the vast majority of emissions come from things like:

Industrial and manufacturing processes Electricity and heat generation Transportation (with vast majority being bunker fueled chips, and agriculture.

Me getting 25mpg versus 30 ain't moving the needle on the emissions numbers the same way moving to renewables for electricity generation and eliminating shipping emissions would. Or mitigating agricultural emissions which produces tons of the worst kinds of greenhouse gasses (methan and nitrous oxide).

And then we have fugative emissions from unintentional leaks or more accurately irresponsible processes and maintenance from things like fracking, oil/gas extraction and transport. Quite literally just drilling into gas and releasing it into the air.

But yea, my Honda is the problem.

I'm not saying everyone has a part to play, but don't let the arguments and focus be on anything other than the big culprits of greenhouse gas emissions. We could pass meaningful regulations and provide meaningful incentives and actually move the needle on green house gasses.

And taxing companies that produce a significant amount of carbon emissions?

Yes and no.

The EV refueling infrastructure while on the road is kinda shit.

The home refueling infrastructure for gasoline cars is really, really shit.