What is needed is $30k quality EVs.
Only the Chevy Bolt & Nissan meet or nearly meet the $30k pricing. But they do not have 5 minute charging.
I once suggested ~15 years ago that the US should require all new vehicles be hybrid in the hopes that reduced oil consumption would end the desire of our government meddling in the Middle East.
Today the improvement of drone warfare has made the battlefield a VERY DANGEROUS place for infantry infantry & armor. Still the US meddles in the Middle East. Iran demonstrates that air power alone cannot win a war.
After kicking off deliveries of the Rivian R2 in early June, the California startup is already gearing up to add a second shift for the newly introduced model at its factory in Normal, Illinois.
That’s a big deal for the still-small electric car manufacturer, as it brings it closer to what all startups want from the get-go: profitability.
The Rivian R2 is the automaker’s smallest and most affordable model to date, which has opened up a completely different and much more vast customer base for the California-based brand.
Deliveries kicked off on June 9, with the top-spec Performance trim, priced from $59,485
BMW is also seeing very strong demand for their new 3-series EV, the one with up to 434 miles of range and 800V architecture. I believe Volvo is seeing strong demand for the revamped EX60 as well.
I think there is a bit of Osbourne effect going on in the domestic EV market. One where the older 400V systems with 300 miles or range or less are starting to stall out, because everyone knows new ones with 350 to 430 miles of range and twice the charging speed are coming in just a few more months. I know if I had to replace my ZDX today I would do everything possible to delay a purchase until those new models hit dealer lots.
I would dispute the division. Pickups are not SUVs, and there are lots of EV SUVs available right now. My brother is waiting for delivery of an Ioniq5 (and they keep telling him they can’t get his delivered; they’ve had 6 come and go, all sold before they even hit the lot);; Kia has a model, heck Tesla had a model until they decided to end it in favor of humanity killing robots.
It doesn’t just have to be “sedans”.
I’d agree that EV pickup trucks are a long way from ready, but passenger cars, vans, and mommy SUV’s? That’s been in prime time for a few years now.
(I understand your complaint about apartment and condo dwellers; those are hurdles which will fall slowly in the US thanks to government inaction, somehow other countries - with even more dense populations, apartment buildings and the like are making it work. Then again, they have an incentive to. We don’t - at least until the oil runs out (again.))
I think there’s a bit of confusion, because what you’re responding to is somewhat tangential to EV’s. The thread’s been going on for a bit. Two different assertions about Detroit’s stupidity have been made:
Detroit was stupid and short-sighted in moving away from sedans; and
Detroit was stupid and short-sighted in giving up (for now) developing EVs.
I think both of those assertions are wrong. The quote you responded to was me arguing that the first point was wrong, not the second.
Demand for sedans has plummeted across the globe. The numbers in that chart were global, not just U.S. In 2005, about 68% percent of all light vehicles were passenger cars (mostly sedans, some hatchbacks and wagons). Only 11% were SUV’s and crossovers. By 2025, only 32% of global light vehicle sales were sedans, and 55% were SUV’s and crossovers. Again, that’s global numbers - SUV sales have risen from a small niche to being the majority of all light vehicle sales.
So Detroit wasn’t stupid or engaged in short-term thinking in moving away from sedans as a vehicle category. It was a very defensible decision, and arguably a little prescient. Consumers like SUVs. Not just in the US, but globally. We old pharts remember the days When Sedans Ruled the Earth, so we think that Detroit has made an idiotic mistake in no longer servicing that segment. But the truth is that segment has been withering and shrinking for the last two decades (or longer). There’s only modest consumer demand for sedans in the U.S., and Detroit is probably smart to have moved past that category.
I’m not in any way saying that there can’t be EV SUV’s, and I think there absolutely will be. The reason that EV’s aren’t likely to meet consumer needs in the US isn’t because they have to be sedans. That’s a different point.
the Hyundai Ioniq 5 is selling over five times as many units as the Kia EV6, despite being in the same segment. It’s a rare case of a model from one brand completely dominating the other
My 14 year old daughter wants a 1965 Mustang. I may buy one just to be prepared for the apocalypse. My first car was a 1962 VW beetle…learned how to repair cars on that one.
The truck will start at $28,350 with a standard-range battery, excluding a $1,595 destination and delivery charge, making it one of the cheapest EVs on the US market…
The Fathom is the first vehicle built using Ford’s new “assembly tree” manufacturing process at its Louisville Assembly Plant, and the first produced on the UEV platform — an approach Ford said is designed to unlock new levels of affordability and efficiency.
Ford said the UEV platform reduces the total number of parts by 20% compared with a typical Ford vehicle program. On the factory floor, Ford eliminated 40% of process workstations compared to current production.
Not necessarily. There are multiple things that lead to consumer buy-in. And among all those things, one powerful thing is “price” and “cost”. And, even now, it costs way less to run an EV than to run an equivalent ICE vehicle. Meanwhile, ICE vehicles have advanced about as far as they are going to advance, while EVs are still slowly advancing.
Not yet at least. But I’ve been to countries where many multi-unit housing buildings have chargers in the parking lot. Some new buildings in the USA have chargers as well. And a bunch of companies have chargers in their parking lots (even in the USA).
But it’s not even close to being a big issue yet. It’ll take 2 or 3 decades at best to switch over the US fleet from ICE to EV. Even if EVERY SINGLE new car sold is EV, it’ll take 15+ years (200M vehicles / 14-15M/year). If we go from 10% EV sales to 50% in 10 years, and then to close to 100% in 20 years, it’ll take well over 3 decades to reach that point. Over more than 3 decades, solutions to charging will be found and will be implemented. Only some very old housing stock will have issues, but anything new-ish and anything new will have no big issues accommodating EV charging.
Dad detested USA/Detroit car “culture” since the death from total exhaustion of his ancient Studebaker.
Siblings and I learned maintenance and design engineering by helping do all the maintenance work on the Bug. We kept it running until in 1969 we traded it in when buying the first BMW sedan in the USA, the 1600. Its demur boxiness made people mistake it for a Toyota Corolla or similar Datsun, and so I won a lot of impromptu drag races for a year or so. We also owned a horrible Ford station wagon so as to be able to include our dog on family ,ountaineering trips. I learned a lot about junkification by comparing the BMW and the Ford.
Dad’s was a ‘38 sedan, and even in advanced decripitude had a wonderful quality. Finally parts became impossible and the rear sest bench needed advanced help we could not provide.
Sure. The issue isn’t that no one has home charging if they live in an apartment or townhouse. It’s just that a lot of people who live in an apartment or townhouse don’t (yet) have access to home charging. Which limits the overall potential customer pool, which affects the economics of offering an EV product. The same is true in other countries, BTW - perhaps moreso. But it just means we’re at a point where EV’s don’t satisfy 90+% of people’s transportation needs, which is a headwind against companies trying to make an EV investment for sale into the US market pencil out.
Saying that today’s EV does not match the transportation needs of 90% of the people is just laughable. Sorry. Certainly nowhere near 100%. Likely not over 50%. IT DOESN’T NEED TO BE 100% TODAY. And it will improve. All this fear mongering and out-right misinformation is what keeps the transition stalled.
What if the tax credit was not a means to “force” people to buy EVs, but rather was a way to protect the domestic industry by juicing demand while the Big Three built out their lineup and got wind under their wings… And we just removed that support for them.
I agree it doesn’t need to be 100% - or 90%. My initial post was just responding upthread to someone who claimed that it was already at 90+%.
The question is whether it’s high enough for it to make sense for a car company that has most of their car sales in the U.S. to concentrate on EV’s. Most global automakers sell fewer than 20% of their cars in the U.S. For Detroit, it’s closer to 50%. EV’s are not as good a fit for U.S. consumer preferences as they are for consumers outside the U.S., because we have really low gas prices and really long trip lengths (comparatively).
That’s why I don’t think Detroit is making the wrong decision, or a dumb decision, or a short-sighted decision, in choosing not to be a leader on developing EV’s. Too many of their customers are in a country where the product doesn’t match their needs. Probably why Honda is out of the pack too (of all the non-U.S. makers, they have the biggest exposure to the U.S. market).
Oh sure it is. “Charging” is one of the most important components of owning a vehicle. While there are some pioneers, most people aren’t going to buy an EV if they don’t have “at home” charging, simply because it takes 4-8x as long to “fill up” an EV as it does an ICE. That’s a serious inconvenience for people who need to fill up once or twice a week.
(Please don’t show me the few who do that, I know they exist, it’s just not a significant number.) Around 35% of the country lives in apartments, where EV charging is minuscule (4% by Google AI), and even then it’s as likely to be across the parking lot and down by the next building as near your front door. Another 15%-20% live in “owned” housing, but that includes condos, most of which don’t yet have EV charging, or townhomes, many of which have “shared parking” across the way. And there’s still another cohort that lives in retirement homes, 6 of which we have now visited, and none of which offer it (yet.)
This is not hopeless. I have an EV and I love it. I would not go back to an ICE vehicle under any conditions, I am just cognizant of the hurdles remaining absent government intevention (such as we have seen in Norway or even parts of the EU or China or even - a couple years ago with the $7500 credit - in the US.) I don’t see those coming back here anytime soon (although I can hope.)
Then there is a contingent who do own a single family home but for whom an EV still isn’t the best choice: contractors with actual working pick-ups, for instance.
It’s not hard to get to 50%, heck, it’s not hard to get to 80% now . I have hope that number will diminish over time, indeed I’m sure of it. But pretending these kinds of consumer hurdles don’t exist is just silly. They do, and they make adoption slower and more difficult.
The maintenance savings is a huge plus. The reality is that fuel vs charging cost is not that great (for anything other than at home charging) and certainly not at a point to move the needle with most consumers. Price is still a huge factor as EV’s (other than the very low end of the range) are still at a premium to what most buyers want to pay for an average new or used car. Range is still a substantial problem. Admittedly, it is a multitude of factors. Whatever the order of the reasons, the bulk of Americans are not considering them in their current form.
The largest of which may simply be that buyers don’t purchase a primary vehicle for its mostly like use but its expected use, even if those include rare and infrequent long distance trips.