I’ll probably be on the market for a new car in the next few months… and clearly EVs are on my radar as I live in an area with an high penetration of this sort of vehicles.
However, other than prioritizing low-maintenance, environment impact and fun, I do really care a lot about serviceability.
While it’s true my current car require oil/filter changes, random maintenance and all, I can do pretty much all those things by myself (unless complex stuff comes along, ofc). In the 12 years I owned my car I only had to rely on an expert mechanic once to replace the pinion (some dumbass hit me while backing up); that was relatively cheap as the mechanic had access to parts and the vehicle is very repairable.
I get that more EVs => more ecosystem => more expertise and so on and so forth. But until you have the freedom to take your Tesla/Hyunday/WV/etc to a random mechanic that can use after market parts and service the car the same way the manufacturer does , I think I’ll have a bit of a hard time. As of now this sort of “mechanics” are a niche and in case of need your only choice is the manufacturer network.
TL;DR love EVs, clearly the future; but self-reparability/maintenance are still not there.
They completely whiffed on the most important and obvious part. That whole article could be replaced by the words “THEY’RE TOO DAMN EXPENSIVE”.
The article doesn’t whiff on this, it lays out why it’s too expensive.
- The strategy was to replace gas cars with EV 1-to-1 to solve the climate crisis and save the car industry.
- Gas cars have gotten bigger over the years because of marketing, bravado, “safety”, and regulation-skirting.
- EV-makers have largely bought into that and made all these huge EVs.
- Huge EVs require bigger batteries which are more expensive in raw materials and manufacturing.
- Huge batteries are heavy and dangerous.
- Range anxiety has encouraged even more oversized batteries on already oversized cars.
- Huge batteries are the main source of cost, meaning EVs end up being a luxury.
So, yes–they are too damn expensive, however a vehicle that meets our actual needs wouldn’t be, if it existed in North America.
The crazy thing is, outside of the US, small and cheap vehicles are the norm. Both ICE and EV.
I’m still convinced that if a major automaker brought a line like they have in the likes of China or France to the US market, they’d be hugely popular. That people WANT cheap vehicles and are willing to compromise on size to get them – that the reason vehicles are getting pushed bigger is because that compromise is not an option. I think there’s massive untapped demand for things like mini city cars and kei trucks. But the profit margins would be lower for the manufacturer, so even if it was still a profitable business model the US automakers don’t do it and exert their influence in various ugly ways to prevent it from happening (e.g., all the states that have used administrative levers to ban registration of imported keis based on total nonsense safety arguments).
I think there’s massive untapped demand for things like mini city cars and kei trucks.
Not just that, but even the more middle ground small cars. I’d love to have an EV truck sized the way they were in the 80’s/90’s (which was more or less comparable to a midsize sedan, just taller). The push to bigger and bigger wheelbases to take advantage of loopholes in the efficiency standards really doesn’t need to be reflected in EVs, but it’s what all the major automakers are doing.
I ride a bike 95% of the time for my trips, but I have to own and maintain a car because the city I live in, which is FAR better than most in the US, still doesn’t make it possible to let me function without needing an occasional car trip. And the box hardware store near me almost never has its light truck rentals available for those occasional errands. To get to the nearest proper vehicle rental place… you guessed it, I’d have to get in a car.
I was very seriously investigating a Kei import for my needs. They’re cheap, small, easy to maintain, and insanely versatile. I arrived at doing this after researching what kinds of small, reliable trucks I might be able to find for my rare uses and ultimately gave up – all of them are roadboats these days.
Then some state bureaucrat arbitrarily declared that imported keis were somehow less safe for their drivers than motorcycles, bikes, and scooters and so cannot be registered any longer. There’s basically no vehicles for sale that I would want and find useful at this point.
I’ve honestly been looking into setting up a trailer for my bike for hauling a sheet or two of plywood. It might be my best overall option, since I can’t fit them in my ancient Honda.
All that to say: yeah, there’s no middleground anymore. There’s ONLY road yachts for people who view them as status symbols and transit vans for people who actually have work to get done, but either way too expensive for me to justify.
While I agree with most of the articles points, even if they and the title are nearly all phrased in very hyperbolic language and the extent of the “slowdown” has been rather overstated given that sales are still increasing, I take issue with it citing Norway’s 89% EV sales as insufficient becuse only 20% of vehicles on the road are EVs yet.
Namely, the average lifespan of a ICE car is 12 years. While it’s definitely better for the environment to replace a functional ICE with an EV after two to four years, buying a new car when you don’t need to is a big financial cost and so it shouldn’t be surprising that many people are waiting until their cars get old to replace them.
While I also agree that simply replacing every ICE with an EV isn’t enough on its own and that trollybuses and other electric mass transit need to be part of the solution, it’s not a question of one or the other. If we are to have any hope of staying below 2C, we need to be doing both and a whole lot more beside, especially when it comes to cleaning up industry.
We simply don’t have the time left anymore for any one solution to be expanded to the point it can solve the problem on its own, if that was ever possible to begin with. We need solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear to generate clean power in the first place. We need heat pumps and geothermal to turn that into the heating and cooling necessary to keep people safe in a world with increasing dangerous temperatures.
We need trollybuses, metros, and high speed intercity rail to electrify the transport of people. We need denser housing in our cities and EVs in our rural areas and service and delivery vehicles. We need overhead cantanarys to electrify our railroads. We need green hydrogen to decarbonize farming, steel marking and a thousand other processes. We need net zero bio and synthetic fuels for ships and aircraft. We even need carbon capture and sequestration to deal with the industrial processes that can’t otherwise be decarbonated.
Any framing that expects a single one of these to solve the problem on its own ignores the things it can’t cover. Our current actions are insufficient to tackle the scale of the problem, that is not a sign we should roll back one in favor of another, it is a sign that we need to be pushing increasing the scale of all of the above.
Namely, the average lifespan of a ICE car is 12 years. While it’s definitely better for the environment to replace a functional ICE with an EV after two to four years, buying a new car when you don’t need to is a big financial cost and so it shouldn’t be surprising that many people are waiting until their cars get old to replace them.
Precisely! And while the ongoing environmental cost of burning gasoline is a concern, there’s also the environmental impact of the chassis, the internal electronics. That’s a sunk cost right now. And that’s not counting making sure you have access to charging infrastructure. When I was renting, I simply didn’t have street access to a regular home plug. And my workplace also didn’t have any electrical infrastructure in its parking lots (despite years of begging from employees.) There are still a lot of reasons an EV might not make sense for individuals.
All that said, my next vehicle will definitely be an EV since I can charge at home now. But only when our car gives up the ghost from a cost to repair perspective.
I’m trying hard to hold out buying a new vehicle until I can move into somewhere I can charge an EV. Sold my last ICE when I moved overseas, and current apartment has no charging places.
Honestly, i don’t get why more folks aren’t enthusiastic about EVs. I got a used Bolt, and i love it. Much easier and cheaper maintenance, fewer moving parts to wear out, no gas prices drama… never buying an ICE vehicle again.
For a slightly different take: I want a car that runs on free software, that doesn’t spy on me.
Until then, I can bike, or continue driving my now fifteen year old sedan that I bought with 5% of my annual salary, used.
