EVs Are Not Close To Being As Cheap As Gas Cars, Mercedes Says
The electric vehicle industry has seen a massive transformation over the last decade, in no small part thanks to massive reductions in the cost of large lithium-ion battery packs.
EVs may not get much cheaper at all over the next few years.
Reaching so-called "Price parity," Schäfer said, just isn't possible with any current commercially available battery technology.
The kind of affordable, high-density batteries required to make it possible either don't exist or only exist in tightly-controlled lab settings.
While we wait for a breakthrough, Schäfer says they can't promise that EVs will get any cheaper in the near term.
While increasing demand for large battery packs has helped through manufacturing advancements and economies of scale, it's this scale that is now posing a large challenge.
Thanks to both the increasing popularity of EVs and continued growth in consumer electronics, the demand for lithium batteries is on pace to far outstrip the capacity of current rare-earth metal mines.
Why not just use LFP or iron based battery chemistry? Prismatic cells can be used. The car has to be designed to accommodate a physically large pack for good range.
Combustion engine efficiency improved and emissions dropped a lot over the years, even with no fundamental breakthroughs either. A lot of money was spent.
China has a complete monopoly on LFP battery manufacturing. No incentives to lower price. Once other manufacturers come online, we should see price improvements. Biden’s DPA announcement last week gets the ball rolling
Besides, not like the dealerships are making gas cars cheap - finding a car with a 'local market adjustment' is pretty common. Its been as high as 10k here.
A humble new Honda is $19,000. Incidentally that's also about the average for used cars. People are holding on to their cars longer and longer nowadays, and most don't buy new.
The "avg new car price new huge number" is a meme news story. Markets are wrapped due to supply chain issues from covid, Ukraine war, and inflation.
Importantly, EVs are half the cost per mile to operate versus a combustion vehicle, so their total cost of ownership is lower the longer you own it (with higher upfront capital costs). EVs mustn't be the same price as a combustion vehicle; they need to be able to be financed by the consumer at a low capital cost (funded by issuing green bonds by whomever is originating the auto loan, enabling a below market interest rate to be provided to the borrower) so they can get the lower cost per mile benefit over their ownership period (versus a less expensive upfront combustion vehicle with more expensive petroleum fuel ongoing costs). Tangentially, as the price of power declines as the grid gets cleaner due to renewables, electric vehicles become even cheaper to drive per mile. Your primary costs end up being the tires.
Well to do consumers will keep buying Teslas (currently at a ~1.25M/year unit run rate, ramping to 2M units/year by EOY), and those cars will filter down to the used car market for price sensitive consumers over time (and due to powertrain longevity, they’ll be in much better shape versus a combustion counterpart at similar mileage).
This is quite similar to how rooftop solar is a large cost upfront (if not financed), but once paid off, it generates power “for free” over its 25-service 30 year life (versus ongoing utility expenses forever).
The same can be said about $200 boots lasting ten years, while the $50 boots only last one year. The more expensive option is a better deal over the long term, yet most people will still buy the cheap boots.
Except the fact that governments aren't subsidizing 5.9 trillion dollars of taxpayer money to boot manufacturers in order to keep the 50$ boots at that price. [0]
Maybe tax the companies which could provide work from home but decide for dubious, unproven reasons, not to. A majority of petrol costs come from commutes - sure brick and mortar might require some commuting, but the vast majority of white collar work requires nobody to go anywhere.
Energy cost per mile for similar kind of cars can make it 5-7x cheaper to operate an EV. Electric is 9c/kWh and I get 3.5mi/kWh so 2.6c/mi. Gas is nearly $4/gal and loads of crossovers get like 25mpg so that's 16c/mi. That's a hair over 6x the energy cost per mile. Even if it's 30mpg that's still 5x the energy cost. That translates to ~$10,000 increased energy costs over 100,000mi
EVs are expensive right now and the prospective buyers are hardly concerned with saving a few cents per mile. What they are concerned with is slow recharging, battery degradation and the mandatory survelliance module in the car.
I agree, better to not take your eyes off the road, and better yet not take your hands off the wheel. Using auto climate controls makes it safer to drive instead of changing focus to adjust climate settings by hand. Its a good thing all those knobs and buttons were taken away to reduce the temptation to fiddle with them when driving instead of focusing on the wheel and the road.
Buttons and knobs can be navigated by humans using muscle memory alone. This is a feature of humans that has minimal downside compared to forcing the focus of human visual systems to a use touch interface.
It is a false dichotomy to assert “auto” anything requires a touch screen interface. We have the technology for both analog interfaces and “auto” climate control.
I'll admit I'm being a bit obtuse, but overall if you're wanting to argue its a safety thing to have knobs then in reality its even more of a safety thing to encourage the auto controls over having a bunch of buttons and knobs to fiddle with and get distracted by. What's more distracting, taking your hands off the wheel and turning a knob or just having the auto climate control take care of it?
To me, I'd rather not waste large swaths of the dashboard with buttons and knobs I'd never press compared to having it be actually useful like navigation information. Its easier to quickly glance at a map and get useful information from it when the information is bigger than when its smaller.
Literally half of the buttons on the dashboard of one of my car never get pressed. Its wasted space. Meanwhile almost all of the screen on my big screen car gets used every time I drive.
> Meanwhile almost all of the screen on my big screen car gets used every time I drive.
Which means your eyes were not on the road every single time you used this interface. Even if you had “wasted space” in your previous analog UI, none of that wasted space took your eyes off the road. The same cannot be said for the vast majority of touch screen user interface interaction.
Analog controls are superior for car user interfaces. Touch screens have a use case, but rarely in moving vehicles.
I’m not being obtuse. There is no argument that favors touch screen interfaces where human attention is the difference between life and death. Smart cars can have analog inputs. There is no need to choose between one or the other.
Please tell me how I'd use a map as an analog control navigated by my hands. I'm supposed to feel the dashboard for the directions, feel around for the layout of the exit bridges I'm approaching? Read the names of the road in braille?
As a driver, my hands practically never leave the steering wheel. Media controls happen by the buttons on the steering wheel or voice commands. Climate is automatic. Heated seats are automatic. Heated steering wheel is automatic. The large screen makes it easier to see the directions and layout of the roads I'm approaching.
Meanwhile, when I'm not driving my car, the larger screen makes it easier to update the navigation. It makes it easier to plan out the route. It makes it easier for making any fine tuning to the literally hundreds of different settings on my car, settings I really don't need a dedicated button taking up space the 99.9% of the time I'm not pressing the button.
Note I'm not a Tesla fanboy, I do think some physical controls are good. Having useful stalks is nice, being able to control things like wipers is still useful as they're not quite 100% yet. However, a thermostat is a solved problem.
As a driver, never having to take my hands off the wheel is preferred to physical knobs. And if I never have to take my hands off the wheel, what does it matter if the other controls are physical or not?
Sure, maybe in a stationary room, and I can think of plenty of times when I have used my heating or cooling system as not a thermostat. Not a sovled problem in cars...
I can also think of several scenarios where touch controls are absolutely inadequate, i.e. they simply don't work, the knobs in my car are simple to manipulate, and I do so regularly.
Now, do I need 6 buttons to operate all the nonsense in my dash, no - ironically the only "wasted" buttons in my car are the ones related to all the digital touchscreen software I never use...
Regarding the GPS - if my phone or dash unit isn't going to read me the right directions, the map unit is useless anyways. The complex stuff I might like the screen for, I need to be paying attention to the road for anyways. That's precisely the wrong time to be learning what the virtual road looks like and ignoring the semi barelling past me on my left as I have three lane changes to make.
I guess an argument could be madr for prepping me visually a couple minutes ahead, but auditory feedback is enough. And I don't even need the car for that - I'm usually wearing a headset anyways, just makes for a more seamless auditory experience, I can answer calls, etc. There is really just no reason I want a large visual map display distracting me while I'm driving.
As a driver, never having to take my hands off the wheel is preferred to physical knobs. And if I never have to take my hands off the wheel, what does it matter if the other controls are physical or not?
It is normal to often only have one hand on the wheel. Much of Europe loves manual transmissions, and I do too, and it is perfectly, and completely safe.
What isn't safe is to be looking away from the road ahead of you. At 80mph, common freeways speeds, it's insane to do so.
No current automated controls fix the heat/AC needing to be adjusted, specifically defrosting the windows. Automated wipers suck, and often get it wrong. Mud splashes, must be washed away. Back window fogs, must be addressed. Temps need to be changed, drive modes modified, fog lights turned on, hazard lights engaged to alert traffic around you, on and on and on.
All these things can be manipulated with the same hand I use to switch gears, and one hand driving is perfectly safe...
I don't care if you never do these things. Most people I speak to, do, and when switching to some cars with screens, end up with constant eyes off road.
Throwing automation around is silly. Anyone trying any type of automation experiences edge cases, and often, are simply fighting it.
Lastly, based upon the horrid state of current UI design, the last place I want that is in a car.
> It is normal to often only have one hand on the wheel. Much of Europe loves manual transmissions, and I do too, and it is perfectly, and completely safe.
We're talking about maximizing safety, not just reinforcing something that is already done. What is safer: one hand on the wheel or two?
> What isn't safe is to be looking away from the road ahead of you. At 80mph, common freeways speeds, it's insane to do so.
At some point in time, I will consult my navigation. Being able to quickly glance and understand the map is important, and a display that's easier to read translates to it being safer. Which is easier to read, a smaller screen with small graphics and small text, or a large one with larger text and graphics?
> No current automated controls fix the heat/AC needing to be adjusted, specifically defrosting the windows.
I forgot that the physics of when a window fogs up is completely unknowable. I guess its impossible for us to figure out the conditions for when a window fogs and make a system to automatically defog them. Oh wait, never mind, this isn't the stone ages, cars can easily know when their windows have the possibility of fogging. There's really zero reason why all cars can't have extremely reliable defoggers; you should really complain to your car maker that you don't have it as I'd say having your car automatically defog improves safety. I have it on my most recent car, once again I never have to press the defog button. My car is already defogged by the time I get to it, and the auto climate makes sure the conditions for a foggy windshield never happens. I don't get why you'd choose to have a car which requires you to manually intervene with the defogger, once again that just seems like yet another distraction making your car less safe.
That said, I will agree things related to critical safety should still have a physical button. On my car with a giant screen, there's still a button over by the headlight control for max defog, in the rare case it somehow gets this wrong. Which has never happened, but OK, I'll agree automation isn't always perfect and this is a safety critical feature.
That draws me to something that is still almost always manual when it really should never be. Headlights! My car does have a manual headlight control with an automatic setting that it never leaves. Sure, you'd say, we need to make sure headlights remain a manual control, its a safety feature! I'd argue the other way. There's practically zero reason for any passenger car to need to turn off their headlights while driving, giving people that control makes us less safe. I see tons of people driving around at night without headlights all because they get a manual say in whether their lights are on or not. Letting people turn their headlights off while driving makes us less safe.
I will agree additional lighting like fog lights should still be a manual control. Once again, critical safety components should still have a physical control.
> temps need to be changed
They really don't though, not while you're driving. The climate conditions in your car probably didn't radically change since you put your car into gear, you're not really going to be noticeably different at 71F vs 72F. Its an additional distraction. I maybe kick the temp up a few degrees in the winter and bring it back down in the spring/summer time, and this happens before the car gets put into gear. Probably four adjustments to the temperature a year, and I say that leaving my house at ~50F right now and it'll be >90F when I leave the office. All the rest of the time, its wasted space on my dashboard. I'm not constantly adjusting the thermostat in my house, I programmed it how I like my house and it dutifully carries it out. Why would I want to constantly be fiddling with the AC when it could be aut...
It is hard to express how much I disagree with you, but I'll take a stab:
> What is safer: one hand on the wheel or two?
Unless you are riding in a derby, in high wind conditions, or on ice, this is a bad argument. In those conditions, incidentally you want as little distraction as possible, the fact I can't turn what tiny center console I have off is a source of endless frustration...
One hand is fine in most situations, and you need to be able to operate the car, not have your hands glued to the steering wheel.
> They really don't though, not while you're driving.
They really do, though. THERE ARE MORE USES FOR HEATING AND COOLING THAN JUST CLIMATE CONTROL, DEAR BRAINDEAF ELON MUSK.
And I don't mean just fogging windows, although like you admit at least that's almost impossible to automate well in all conditions.
> That draws me to something that is still almost always manual when it really should never be. Headlights!
Completely disagree - most sane implementations are keep them on automatically, with the option to force them on. I'll keep mine on a slightly overcast day just because its more safe, while the automatic setting completely fails to turn them on.
And, flip side, there are numerous situations where you want to keep your lights off not on - I can agree there should be maybe be some alert to the driver if the system detects, say, driving over 5 mph and no lights on, but that's about all the automation I want.
> We've identified what, maybe a handful of them? Wipers, defogger, hazard lights, parking brake, door locks, door levers/handles, window controls, gear selector, maybe mirror adjustment, maybe fog lights if equipped on your car?
Lol that's more than a handful. I'll add some - seat control (for crashes, sun in the eyes), heat/cooling override controls, brakes, pedal, disabling/enabling cruise and lane keep (it breaks, gets obstructed, driver gets tired or bored, or just wants to change their driving style to be safer, or more aggressive as traffic may require), audio/call controls on the steering wheel (or dash, whichever you prefer), so you can take or make emergency calls, or turn off the loud music you were using to stay awake to focus on traffic. Throw one in I haven't seen - a bluetooth pair button would be nice.
> Meanwhile the thing I actually do use on the center console, navigation, suffers from having all these physical buttons that never get pressed.
I can agree center consoles are poorly designed, the ones that have just enough for operation and nothing else (analog radio control or scroll equiv) are better than the touchscreens which always are awkward to operate, smudge, break, and/or eventually just die.
> That "TUNE" knob though? Its probably only been turned a few times the entire time I've owned the car. I set the presets for the radio stations I listen to and can change those with the steering controls.
I guess you have never crossed a state boundary and gone channel hunting. Seek is useful, but you can't configure the amplitude filtering - I can contiue to listen to a station half coming in or I can lose that completely with seek, get whatever nonsense local popular music channel.
Then there's your whole attitude that only a machine can make you more safe. Humans have lapses in judgement, sure, but when machines do, nobody can tell it to "snap out of it". Automatic things are nice, but I should always be able to EASILY override them, otherwise its like I stuck my hand in a blender with no way to stop the proverbial blade, except managing to smash through the glass and rip out the plug with my now mangled hand.
Either you just don't have much realworld experience, or you spent too much money on e.g. a Tesla and can't admit that despite the conveniences, they are horrible designs.
Sure, but purely asking, which is safer? One hand or two? If a key point of having a ton of physical controls is safety while driving, clearly we're trying to optimize for driving safety. So we should ask ourselves, which is safer? One hand on the wheel, or two? If having a lot of physical controls encourages you to only have one hand on the wheel more versus automating things away, is having the physical control actually making you safer, or less safe as it encourages you to take your hand off the wheel and engage with some activity other than driving the car down the road? Shouldn't we then do what we can to encourage drivers to have both hands on the wheel and their attention straight ahead, instead of facilitating workflows which encourage them to take their attention off the wheel and on the center console, regardless of if the center console is a bunch of buttons and knobs or a screen?
> THERE ARE MORE USES FOR HEATING AND COOLING THAN JUST CLIMATE CONTROL
Like...what exactly? If you're relying on your heater core for additional cooling of your ICE, you've got some serious problems and I wouldn't say that's any kind of normal operation of your car.
> almost impossible to automate well in all conditions
Its entirely possible to automate it well in practically all conditions. In my cars with auto defrost I've never had to manually intervene. Its incredibly basic logic on the conditions of a window fogging up. I'm just saying, its entirely possible a sensor would fail and windows can terribly fog up in minutes so it makes sense for a control like this to have a manual override.
> most sane implementations are keep them on automatically, with the option to force them on
Most implementations let you keep them off as much as you want without any complaints. Letting people even have the option to turn off their lights on average makes us less safe.
> And, flip side, there are numerous situations where you want to keep your lights off not on
These are incredibly rare circumstances and practically never when the vehicle is in motion. Maybe if you're operating your car in a warzone or smuggling drugs across a border, but most of us aren't. Please do share incredibly common reasons why you'd want the vehicle in motion and the headlights off and tell me why that's more safe. My motorcycle always has its headlight on when the key is turned to ON, and its never been an issue for me. Likewise, my car's headlights never leave the AUTO mode. I'd leave them to ON, but then they stay on longer when the car turns off and that's just a bit more strain on the ICE's battery than I'd care for.
> heat/cooling override controls
How is this a safety critical control? If you're on auto climate control, its not like the car is going to rapidly become uncomfortable. That's the whole point of auto climate! You're less safe having to manually intervene to change the climate controls versus letting the system keep the car comfortable.
> a bluetooth pair button would be nice
A bluetooth pairing button is a safety critical control to use while driving your car? You're going to be pairing your phone while you drive your car?
You're arguing people should be able to work on pairing their phones with their headlights off while driving their cars, and that car makers should work on making the car's interface facilitate such activity. I'm arguing all of that stuff should be stripped away, we shouldn't facilitate people turning off their headlights or work on bluetooth pairing their phones while driving. And yet you think its me who doesn't have much realworld experience...
I do not and have never owned a Tesla. I've regularly driven about a dozen different cars over the years trending more towards touchscreens. These changes really haven't negatively affected me much at all, and ha...
> Please tell me how I'd use a map as an analog control navigated by my hands.
Perhaps you should not be using a map while driving. My argument was not analog controls can do anything touch screens can do. Adding distraction via touch screen interface by definition decreases safety. You should pull over to a safe place and use maps in whatever way you choose.
I accept you can prove a touch screen is useful for map navigation. But map navigation is not something a driver should be doing while driving.
Why fixate on touch screen controls? Your argument is stronger if voice controlled software makes adjustments. As with cell phones, society has decide to allow hands free phone use despite the fact that this is definitely less safe than no phone use. No maps usage while driving is always safer than the alternative.
I don’t understand the false dichotomy analogies you are using when better analogies like voice control can justify a lack of analog controls. Probably because this kind of voice control does not yet exist?
> what does it matter if the other controls are physical or not?
Because the touch screen controls are not demonstrably safer than physical. Saving space on a dashboard or convenient navigation do not improve safety.
You declare a thermostat a solved problem. I agree. Luckily the existence of thermostat technology is irrelevant to the UX for setting the thermostat. Can’t I have a physical switch just as easily that enables automatic “AI” powered digitally masterful climate control? Why is the touch screen necessary at all for this scenario?
Your argument was "Analog controls are superior for car user interfaces." Navigation these days is getting to be a pretty standard part of car user interfaces. Therefore, according to your argument, an analog navigation system is the superior user interface.
Even then I'd still argue a purely analog interface on your car isn't solely the best car user interface. There's literally over a thousand settings to be changed on my car; are you really suggesting that having a thousand switches, buttons, toggles, and sliders is the preferred way of configuring my car? I imagine not, in which case it makes sense to put those behind a screen. If I'm only going to then be making changes to those while parked, why would it matter to me if I'm then changing those settings on a physical control or a touch screen? Why don't you use your phone with a rotary dial to interface with it?
> Because the touch screen controls are not demonstrably safer than physical.
You're misquoting me, the first part of that sentence is extremely critical for that argument of safety. "And if I never have to take my hands off the wheel..." completely negates your argument of safety.
The touch controls aren't supposed to be interacted much when driving the vehicle. That's what the steering wheel and voice controls are for. Its safer to use the steering wheel controls than it is to take your hand off the wheel and mess with a control on the center console, so if your argument is about maximizing safety having no controls outside of the steering wheel is the best choice. The touchscreen isn't there to be used by the driver while the car is in motion.
> I don’t understand the false dichotomy analogies you are using when better analogies like voice control can justify a lack of analog controls.
I do like voice controls, they work well for me. In fact I do reference them in the above comment with the statement "Media controls happen by the buttons on the steering wheel or voice commands." When I want to change the playlist or switch to the podcast app or whatever, I use voice controls when the vehicle is in motion. I use voice commands for other things like placing a phone call as well.
I do understand some people's frustrations with them as they often have a harder time with hard accents or less common dialects. I'm mostly talking about touchscreens here because the topic at hand is complaining about how cars are getting bigger and bigger screens, which to me is a positive and not a negative. If anything, the increasing usefulness and reliability of voice controls further points to the reason why cars adopting touchscreens and shedding a few more buttons is less and less of a concern.
> Can’t I have a physical switch just as easily that enables automatic “AI” powered digitally masterful climate control?
But, why would you want that? It would be a button I'd press once when I first got the car, and that'd be it. Toggling it off is essentially choosing an uncomfortable car; why would you choose to make your car uncomfortable? And then, if you'd never press that button other than the first time to turn it on, why bother having the button at all? What benefit does a button never pressed actually give?
Why don't we have every single lightbulb in the car have its own toggle button and dimmer knob on the center console? Have several buttons for changing the colors of the accent lighting. Have a dedicated d-pad for controlling the headlight position. Have a set of dial clocks (so you can feel the hands), knobs, and various buttons to set the charging profiles on my EV. A physical button to toggle between HD radio and not. A number pad for phone calls and speed dial, along with a SEND and HANGUP button. A big TUNE knob in addition to SEEK up and down. Fade and balance knobs. Buttons to navigate folders for the MP3 files on a flash drive. Buttons to program the various settings of the MyKey ...
I agree that car consumers are in general very irrational (in the economic sense), and car purchases are often far more about projecting an image than they are about practicality.
But that also means that consumers don't give a damn about slow recharging or battery degradation. It's mostly what will other people think about me for driving this vehicle. Thus the big pickups whose truck beds never see any duty.
That's $2k/year, which works out to $10,230 on a five year loan. Plus the $2k/year savings every year after that when the car is still in service.
It's a classic stock versus flow problem in economics. People irrationally over-weight the pain of a big lump sum, and under rate the pain of ongoing monthly payments. They misevaluate even as they convert a stock into a flow with an auto loan.
Similarly, people underestimate the cost of driving everywhere, when they have already sunk so much into the units investment.
I swear that there's something about cars that turns people's brains off. They are so deeply ingrained into our way of life that we basically refuse to consider costs and alternatives.
A few cents per mile add up when you hope to get 100,000 miles+ out of your vehicle. $0.10 * 100,000 = $10,000. And that's just fuel costs.
The expected maintenance cost of my ICE is then another thousand or so more than the expected maintenance of my EV. Oil changes alone for synthetic oil at a 7,500mi interval for 100,000 is over $900. Add coolant flushes to that, timing chain tune up, probably a water pump replacement in there, and you're well over another $1,000 more than the EV which doesn't have a planned oil change or coolant flush until 150,000mi.
9c seems a bit cheap? For me in NC it's... 12-13c (IIRC). I think US average is closer to 13c. At 40% more, that 2.6c/mi is... ~3.6c/mi?
I get close to 40mpg, and pay a bit under $4/gal right now. Call my cost around... 9c/mi. Closing in on 3x difference. It's still not equal, but much better than a 5-7x difference.
That said, I've not switched to EV, and have no immediate plans to do so, but suspect an EV option may be on the cards as my next car in the next... 3 years or so. Will be interesting to see if there's much change in the price/performance numbers by then.
Right but the point of the comparison is that you can get gas at any time for the same price. So you need to account for either the median price or the highest price when comparing to an EV.
It will be dictated a lot on how you use your vehicle. If you have a very consistent drive to work/home schedule then EVs are great. If you start doing other things mixed in - it gets more nebulous unless you have a very high range one.
The peak rates on there make me cringe. 60c/kwh. Insane.
"Over the years, the Model S has shown a battery degradation of less than 20% over 300,000 miles from Tesla owner reports on Plug-In America (manufacturing years 2012-2019)."
Here's one example: Tesloop operates a Tesla only taxi service in southern California. 6% battery degradation over the first 194,000 miles. Battery was replaced at this point, and the subsequent one had 22% degradation over an additional 130,000 miles, but this is thought to be related to frequent supercharging, and frequent supercharging to 95-100% state of charge (not recommended).
> Well to do consumers will keep buying Teslas (currently at a ~1.25M/year unit run rate, ramping to 2M units/year by EOY), and those cars will filter down to the used car market for price sensitive consumers over time
Not likely. For starters, Tesla considers a bunch of options "bought" by the original owner to be tied to the owner, not the car: supercharging and full self driving, I believe? When Tesla finds out the car has been sold, they deactivate those options. No other car company does this (yet. They're all licking their chops and insanely jealous at what he's is getting away with.)
Check out the out-of-warranty repair bills for cars like the Model X posted on youtube, twitter, reddit, etc. They are breathtakingly expensive. That's one thing when you're talking about an exotic sports car that only gets driven on nice days to car shows. It's another for a family SUV.
Tesla's parts and body panel availability is terrible and hideously expensive Price sensitive consumers aren't going to put up with a 6 month wait for a quarter panel replacement that ends up costing thousands of dollars.
Their gearbox reliability is terrible (or at least it was - on the Model S, it wasn't uncommon to bring your car in for routine service and find they had swapped out the entire motor drivetrain unit.) If that fails outside of warranty, you're likely looking at that totaling the car. The drivetrain units also have poor sealing around the speed sensor and that causes them to draw in water in anything from "big puddles" to "heavy rain", eventually destroying the motor drive electronics.
They don't have a dealer network to distribute parts to independent repair shops and owners.
They don't make parts available to wholesalers like Worldpac.
Unlike (I believe) every other car manufacturer in the world, they require a VIN number before their parts department will even start talking to you. Ferrari might pull this, too.
To the keyboard warriors mashing out angry responses: yes, I am aware that many dealer parts counters will ask you for a VIN number. That is done ONLY to assure you get the correct part. If you ask for a specific part number, you'll get it; the parts guy won't fight you beyond double-checking you're sure you know what you want, or looking into whether the part has been superseded.
Tesla does it to get you the correct part but also to check their database to see if the car has been deemed (by them, not an insurance company or government) to be no longer safe to drive on the road. That is something no other car company will do.
Again: Tesla parts department won't even talk to you if you have a VIN number they don't "like."
Every day car companies sell car parts for cars people own that have been totalled or modded such they can't be street legal. Ford even sells production non-street-legal race cars.
If you walk into an Chevy dealer they will happily sell you an entire engine and ECU, not caring whether it's going into a boat, a giant blender, a hovercraft (long as there are no eels), or a Yugo. They just care that your credit card goes through.
And eventually battery replacement. “every Tesla vehicle’s battery is covered by an eight-year warranty”, and “For all variants the Model S and Model X, [the warranty covers] 150,000 miles, while the Model 3 Standard Range has it covered for 100,000. In the case of the Long Range and Performance versions of the Model 3, [the warranty is] 120,000 miles”.
I guess we don’t know yet how long the median battery will last but probably longer than the warranty, depending on how it is charged and other context. Battery replacement costs are currently very expensive, but perhaps will drop. Certainly battery replacement cost can’t be ignored, unless the vehicle is just scrapped because the battery replacement costs too much.
Hard to say. Warranty covers "normal usage", maybe defined by mild californian weather.
Severe heat or cold wrecks havoc on battery life. Even in southern Canada I am certain you won't get anywhere near the 8 full years, now imaging you live anywhere that gets down to -30C frequently during the winter.
That's my biggest concern right now, heating an electric car uses the battery as heat is NOT a byproduct of an electric engine. Very impractical in the winter.
Once the battery and car is up to temp the range loss isn't very bad. I had the opportunity to spend a few weeks driving EVs in western Canada over the past winter, and even a crummy Fiat still has about 100km range when its -11c (aka -12f) out despite its nearly decade old battery with 120,000km (75,000 miles) on the odometer.
I have just noticed that the warranties are probably only workmanship warranties, to protect consumers against defects (in the manufacture, assembly, delivery and servicing of their EV). They probably don’t protect consumers against deterioration of their EV battery health/performance?
A 2016 NZ estimate of a second hand Nissan Leaf (compared against a second hand Nissan Pulsar), the battery replacement costs about as much as the savings in electricity costs i.e. the Leaf is quite possibly no better for the environment overall? Scroll to bottom of https://genless.govt.nz/assets/Everyone-Resources/ev-battery... - although it strongly depends on whether replacement battery prices dropped or how electricity prices moved.
There's no need for issuing green bonds or other special financial instruments. New cars are already routinely financed for up to 96 months. If an EV can't achieve payback within that period then what's the point?
most of my friends solar around here (New Zealand) are a waste of money, the inverter is almost a consumable, thus pushing breakeven further out with every replacement (and it ain't cheap)
> Importantly, EVs are half the cost per mile to operate versus a combustion vehicle, so their total cost of ownership is lower the longer you own it (with higher upfront capital costs).
For now, but by the time the average working person has the ability to purchase an EV they will have become more expensive to run. Bare in mind that currently green energy is subsidized with fossil fuel money and governments around the world will be forced to tax electric vehicles by distance in order to make up for missed tax income.
And we are still missing massive pieces of infrastructure in order to power EVs, I'm not aware of a single place in the world that could handle all residents driving around in EVs without significant infrastructure changes.
The point is that we are not even close and that working class people will not nearly see the benefits that are claimed.
> And we are still missing massive pieces of infrastructure in order to power EVs, I'm not aware of a single place in the world that could handle all residents driving around in EVs without significant infrastructure changes.
Thats a non-issue. The transition is slow and infrastructure is there to support this slow change, at least in europe city is EV friendly and it will keep improving.
> tax electric vehicles by distance in order to make up for missed tax income.
Maybe, maybe not. Less pollution means less sick people, less healthcare spending.
Plus you still have to have trucks going around. EV trucks are completely unfeasible in foreseeable future.
> Tangentially, as the price of power declines as the grid gets cleaner due to renewables, electric vehicles become even cheaper to drive per mile.
It will get cleaner, but will it be cheaper? Renewables need to be ramped up, and older power plants are getting retired (nuclear for instance). Massive amounts of storage - for which there is no existing solution at the scale required - will have to be designed and built, which will probably take years, if not a decade, and by then some first gen solar and wind will need replacing due to old age/inefficiecy.
It's a decent bet that energy will be cheaper than the prices now due to the war, but compared to the "normal" a few months ago? We'll have to see but IMHO it's far from a given.
The cost of fossil fuel energy isn't being paid for at the pump or even in your electric bill - there's no cost recovery for the sickness caused by air pollution and there's no cost recovery for the impact on the environment due to increased CO2 emissions. I believe once you factor in the total costs you'll find that renewables are far cheaper. It just sucks that we're going to continue to pay the hidden costs for fossil fuels for decades to come.
Honestly, I do not know in witch country you live in, but here (France) the cost per km of an EV is essentially on par on a common gas ones (diesel are still a bit cheap). Perhaps large and not much tuned USA gas engines and USA prices are different but half the cost per unit distance is very bold.
Not only: personally I live in a home with a domestic p.v. so I can almost charge "for free", since WFH makes less usage of cars, witch are typically used during the day, so exactly when the p.v. can charge them for free, but using them less makes possible recharge one day for another etc. but most people do not WFH, and potentially only around 30% of total work population can and probably only 10-12% of us can do so from a home with domestic p.v. speaking at latitudes where p.v. make sense, otherwise the sole option is micro-hydro witch is potentially available only for veeeeery few. Not even only that: an ICE car can potentially last more than a decade, so people who cant afford frequent changes a car is a significant investment once in 10+ years, or a far little investments (used cars) once in 5+ years. EV have essentially ZERO resale value, so the little capex for those who can't afford more is not an option, and even facing that expensive capex if used frequently mean EV can last 5 years, after the battery became too fable for most usage, 8 years if less intensive usage, but 10 years at 80% IME is more theoretical than something else. Not even counting tech shift that can make a car un-rechargeble perhaps because inverters after 5 years have switched from AC to DC from X volt to Y from one phase to three etc.
For me, with the little daily car usage, with domestic p.v. in a place good enough for it, an E.V. will be cheaper when diesel will cost around 4 euros per liter (16-17 USD per US gallon), witch is the double of the actual price, and actually due to diesel hi prices there are protests everyday around the country. I know that it will happen, but so far IMVHO the sole interesting EV are just bicycle for people living in a flat, bike-friendly city and climate with all service/work/school near enough to do almost anything with the bicycle...
Rooftop solar on cars is ridiculous, at maximum on the surface of a Tesla model 3 it can produce 400Wp few hours a day, not even enough for air-con, it can just be an option if you live the car for months in a sunny place just to have it charged when you came back.
Combustion engines fail. Transmissions fail. All light autos fail eventually. Based on available evidence, EVs will last longer due to less than 20 moving parts in the powertrain.
Hopefully the cost of refurbishing failed battery packs comes down to a few thousand dollars over time, as the aftermarket community grows for that service.
They could also say they are not even close to being competitive and that would be accurate as well.
The auto industry is a failure as a whole. I wish we had a Linux Foundation for automakers to have them collaborate and make exchangeable parts and open source computer systems. Their greed prevents any serious progress and regulations also make this difficult, but I don't see why there isn't some collective.
Each automaker wants everything they do to be proprietary. They want mechanics and dealers exclusive to them. The whole auto industry is very wasteful and corrupt.
I don't think full EVs make a lot of sense yet. They are just not that practical and most people I know that have full EVs also have another gas powered or hybrid vehicle for longer trips where they won't have to stop and recharge.
> I wish we had a Linux Foundation for automakers to have them collaborate and make exchangeable parts and open source computer systems. Their greed prevents any serious progress and regulations also make this difficult, but I don't see why there isn't some collective.
Except it isn't. I guess it's not fashionable to talk about old cars anymore, back in the day cars were "simpler" i.e. fewer specialized components, less computer more mechanical component.
Whether the cars were better or worse, it meant a lot of independent and home grown car mechanics. We still have autoshops, but fewer, and its also much more difficult to source parts, except by relying on cheap knockoff parts from China. We barely have a manufacturing base at all anymore.
Right now, IBM computers are pretty much king. It wasn't always that way and if Apple took over you'd have much the same issue. It's the same set of market forces, I'd argue this isn't an analogy at all.
How so? The Linux Foundation took competing vendor solutions and somehow found a way to get them to work together. Now the CNCF solutions are considered pretty standard across the board and interoperability is almost crucial for survival.
> The auto industry is a failure as a whole. I wish we had a Linux Foundation for automakers to have them collaborate and make exchangeable parts and open source computer systems. Their greed prevents any serious progress and regulations also make this difficult, but I don't see why there isn't some collective.
I am having trouble distinguishing. Is this article more "industry insider gives insight on why cheap electric cars are unlikely soon" or "industry dinosaur fails to understand how mammals could take over"?
Yeah. It's a bit strange because Mercedes is known for making expensive cars, and they're nowhere near being a leader in the EV field, the amount of EVs that they make is tiny.
The writing is on the wall but Daimler-Benz sunk a lot of R&D money on diesel technology. They will likely lobby with German government and EU to see that investment recouped (there is already push back to extend sales of ICEs beyond 2030).
They are ahead of the competition on ADAS and autonomous driving, but their direct competitors VW group have done quite a lot of quick EV market transitions while Daimler-Benz is snoozing.
Hopeful Mercedez bites the bullet and just buys OEM EV solutions from Bosch or some other supplier to make way faster into the EV market.
This is a very odd argument for Mercedes in particular to make. First, Mercedes is not positioned as a company that prices its offerings at parity. So strategically, what do they care when cost parity with internal-combustion arrives? Certainly they have as much ability as Tesla to recoup the incremental cost?
Second, their top seller globally is the ~$43k+ GLC, which is more costly than the Kia Niro. Which: perhaps they have different trim levels, but the Kia also carries a 10-year/100k mile warranty vs 4 year/50k miles with Mercedes. If Kia can make the economics work, surely Mercedes can make it work?
Similarly, VW's ID.4 starts at $41k. Feels like if Mercedes can't mass-produce an EV, that's a problem specific to Mercedes.
My prior was that Tesla would have a lot of trouble once the German luxury marques and Japanese got serious about EVs. But BMW's strategy is haphazard at best and Mercedes apparently isn't getting in the game. So bizarre to watch these august firms cede marketshare without a fight over so many years.
Hey, I have a Niro. I paid less than $20k for a year old model. The Niro is a hybrid, not an electric (unless the new models are). I’m loving mine and I average 48 MPG unless I’m on a long freeway road trip, where it drops to around 30. Finally, I got a crazy 70 MPG in Yellowstone where you do tons of miles at 40 MPH (seems to be a sweet spot).
I love that you were able to get such a deal on a year-old EV!
What's super-confusing (but possible good for EV adoption long-term) is that Kia has Niro models in both (plug-in?) hybrid and pure EV. It appears the Niro is Kia's platform for playing with electrification before putting more serious brand equity at stake by e.g. releasing a Sportage EV.
His chief complaint is rare earth mining and he specifically mentions Lithium. Just the other day we had a post here about geothermal energy exposing big amounts of Lithium in the sludge. I'm sure there are other factors e.g. cobalt, political issues etc. but if mining is the problem this might create the incentives.
I don't know anything about these things and I'm sure he isn't just "spitballing" like I am. But I'd love to hear from people who do know.
Also with $100+ oil the TCO difference in favor of electric is probably far more pronounced than it used to be, so the extra cost might be mute for larger customers (e.g. taxi drivers etc.).
Mercedes says, well we should all just move along, nothing to say here says the diesel king. Do you know electric cars get 230 miles per gallon in 2022? Is that really "not even close"?
I'm sure my perspective is skewed as a longtime carless city-dweller, but why would anyone by a ICE commuter car these days? I understand the options aren't expansive, but do most drivers really need anything beyond a Nissan Leaf?
I’ve daily driven a LEAF for 7.25 years. I love it, so this isn’t some anti-EV whine. With that context, there’s no way I’d be happy with the LEAF if we didn’t have a second (ICE) car. Around once a month, I have a day where the LEAF doesn’t have the range to fully reliably do my day of driving so I switch cars with my spouse. I’m not going to rent a car on random short-notice 12x per year.
Yeah, your perspective is skewed. To be fair, mine is as well just in the opposite direction. I live in a town of ~15k people in the South.
For context - I’m taking my daughters to their homeschool coop tomorrow morning. It’s an 82-mile round trip if we go straight there and back; more typically I’ll run some errands and grab lunch to make a total of ~120 miles travelled. Wednesday one of them has a dentist’s appointment. That’s 140 miles round trip.
My family of four has two vehicles: my wife’s 2015 Kia Sorento and my 2000 Jeep Wrangler. They average 24 and 14 MPG respectively. We average around 35k miles per year between them.
We live “in town”, and the nearest grocery store is still ~5 miles away. The nearest convenience store is ~1 mile away. I suppose it would be feasible to walk or bike there… if I wanted to do so on a 55 MPH highway with no sidewalk or shoulder. There is no public transit.
The majority of people in the US live in “urban areas” - but it looks like the US Census Bureau considers a population density of 1k people per square mile to be “urban”. My town qualifies at 1,165.
Today I noticed the line at the Costco Gasoline Station was at least eight deep. What will this look like when it takes a fast charger at least an hour to charge an EV?
Everybody will be charging at home/work. Other places you'll likely charge are conveniently located places between long distance destinations. Rest areas for example.
Costco might implement chargers at parking spaces as a convenience thing, but if they do it for free they'd have to do it for all parking spaces to prevent people fighting over spaces. I have no idea how such a large-scale charging system could be retrofitted into an existing car park. Seems more likely that if supermarkets etc did want to implement charging in their carparks, they'd install a few and charge a nominal amount.
> Everybody will be charging at home/work. Other places you'll likely charge are conveniently located places between long distance destinations. Rest areas for example.
It seems like there's a lot of work to be done to scale this up for when electric vehicles get more popular. Many apartment complexes I see have no facilities for this, for example. But electric vehicles are also quite rare in this area.
Most people in the US live in single family homes. A ton of those homes have plenty of power capacity to add an EV to charge at home overnight. Sure, things might be complicated for apartment dwellers at the moment, but a massive percentage of the commuter miles driven in the US could be easily handled with EVs without massive infrastructure change.
It just means there need to be more chargers. North American charging infrastructure is fractured between the open CCS standard and the propriety Telsa plug. It would be much better if North America standardized on CCS so all EVs can charge at all chargers. At this point it just means Tesla needs to switch to CCS.
Europe has more sensibly standardized on CCS Type 2 Combo. All brands of EV can charge at all chargers on all charging networks. And even Tesla is slowly opening their chargers to other brands.
I spent more time refueling my ICE than I do my EV. I've spent 0 minutes waiting to charge meanwhile I spent a few hours last year going out of my way to gas stations and pumping gas. Over the course of several years, it won't even come close to the amount of time wasted pumping gas versus all the time saved charging at home.
If more people had EVs and charged at home/work/the mall/the grocery store, there wouldn't be a line waiting just to pump gas. They wouldn't be waiting to pump gas, their cars would have already been fully charged at home or their cars would be charging in the parking lot and they'd be in the store shopping instead of sitting in their car burning fuel running their A/C or heat idling in line.
If EVs were the mainstream instead of ICE, Costco would slap a charger on each of the spaces in its giant parking lots instead. Charging would either be free with membership to incentivize you hanging out inside the store, or cost near market rate for electricity.
I'm not sure why we should believe or publicize anything Mercedes says. They will pay zero in consequence for bad public proclamations, but stand to benefit greatly if they can delay switching, since they have been planning poorly.
We should assume that they are lying and dishonest until they can actually prove otherwise.
We just went all electric with 2 Teslas. The first one is definitely on the more expensive side so we were looking for a cheaper second family car. Something like a Toyota Camry or Honda Accord.
We ended up getting a long range Model 3 as our second car (lease). When we factored in zero maintenance, zero brake changes, gas savings and time saved not having to deal with any of the above, the cost of a M3 was right around the cost of a Camry. Needless to say, the M3 is much more fun to drive.
What initially seemed excessive was pretty reasonable all things considered.
Zero maintenance is not a realistic calculation. Maintenace on an EV might well be lower than on an ICE car, but it's not zero. And the battery pack will eventually need to be replaced (I guess if you're leasing though, that's not your problem).
There is no maintenance. Owned a Model S for almost 6 years. I literally did zero maintenance. When I tried to bring it to Tesla for a maintenance appointment, they cancelled my appointment and told me that it is useless, and that they don’t do it anymore.
ICE is constant brake and oil changes just to start with.
> The real cost of oil and gas needs to be internalized by these companies.
Well, it's not going to be internalized by the companies, no matter what happens. It's going to be borne by consumers, either in taxes or in direct charges.
The difference is, if it's direct charges, then people feel more pressure to limit how much they use.
And it's a valid point. Your phrasing just sounded like the "companies should be a free source of money for our grand, expensive plans" school of economic insanity, and I reacted to that, rather than to what you were really saying.
To your actual point, I have an honest question: Is electricity subsidized? Do you have a figure for total subsidies, worldwide?
Note that much of the investment in renewables has been subsidized, though that's probably a one-off at installation rather than an annual amount. It would have to be pro-rated over the expected lifetime of the installation.
The reality is that there is not a lot of data on this. People always talk about fuel/energy cost but that is just one of many components. Also there is no conversation about full TCO cost especially on heavy duty side. I get it, emotionally we are exited about EVs but there is still a lot of work to make this sustainable. Source: my company provided data and support for NREL TCO analysis for LD ice vs ev vehicles.
If you add an arbitrarily large tax (e.g north of $20k as in Norway) on ICE vehicles, then one can make them as cheap as one wants in comparison. Subsidies work the same obviously but they cost money.
Same with gas prices. I pay $10/gal for diesel and that’s fine.
The point where EVs are economical compared to ICEs without sales taxes, vehicle taxes, fuel taxes, subsidies etc might be many years away. But that doesn’t seem very interesting if the point where consumers actually find them cheaper is long before that.
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[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 184 ms ] threadI use four browsers regularly. Brave is exceptionally good at bypassing {...walls} at the New York Times, the Economist and so on.
But then there is Safari with a rather painless and fast VPN, for free. And of course Chrome for work. And Firefox for whatever.
So "switch" seems like a heavy-handed and perfunctory approach that limits choice, when really one simply needs the right tool for the job.
https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
EVs Are Not Close To Being As Cheap As Gas Cars, Mercedes Says The electric vehicle industry has seen a massive transformation over the last decade, in no small part thanks to massive reductions in the cost of large lithium-ion battery packs.
EVs may not get much cheaper at all over the next few years.
Reaching so-called "Price parity," Schäfer said, just isn't possible with any current commercially available battery technology.
The kind of affordable, high-density batteries required to make it possible either don't exist or only exist in tightly-controlled lab settings.
While we wait for a breakthrough, Schäfer says they can't promise that EVs will get any cheaper in the near term.
While increasing demand for large battery packs has helped through manufacturing advancements and economies of scale, it's this scale that is now posing a large challenge.
Thanks to both the increasing popularity of EVs and continued growth in consumer electronics, the demand for lithium batteries is on pace to far outstrip the capacity of current rare-earth metal mines.
Combustion engine efficiency improved and emissions dropped a lot over the years, even with no fundamental breakthroughs either. A lot of money was spent.
https://www.vw.com/en/models/id-4.html
Average car price is higher than that
https://www.kbb.com/car-news/average-new-car-price-tops-4700...
So we're kinda already there.
Besides, not like the dealerships are making gas cars cheap - finding a car with a 'local market adjustment' is pretty common. Its been as high as 10k here.
A humble new Honda is $19,000. Incidentally that's also about the average for used cars. People are holding on to their cars longer and longer nowadays, and most don't buy new.
The "avg new car price new huge number" is a meme news story. Markets are wrapped due to supply chain issues from covid, Ukraine war, and inflation.
You should compare apples to apples.
Still almost 40k in 2019.
Well to do consumers will keep buying Teslas (currently at a ~1.25M/year unit run rate, ramping to 2M units/year by EOY), and those cars will filter down to the used car market for price sensitive consumers over time (and due to powertrain longevity, they’ll be in much better shape versus a combustion counterpart at similar mileage).
This is quite similar to how rooftop solar is a large cost upfront (if not financed), but once paid off, it generates power “for free” over its 25-service 30 year life (versus ongoing utility expenses forever).
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_subsidies
This, and absurd touchscren interfaces. I like to adjust controls, without taking eyes off road, but hey, that's crazy talk I guess.
It is a false dichotomy to assert “auto” anything requires a touch screen interface. We have the technology for both analog interfaces and “auto” climate control.
To me, I'd rather not waste large swaths of the dashboard with buttons and knobs I'd never press compared to having it be actually useful like navigation information. Its easier to quickly glance at a map and get useful information from it when the information is bigger than when its smaller.
Literally half of the buttons on the dashboard of one of my car never get pressed. Its wasted space. Meanwhile almost all of the screen on my big screen car gets used every time I drive.
Which means your eyes were not on the road every single time you used this interface. Even if you had “wasted space” in your previous analog UI, none of that wasted space took your eyes off the road. The same cannot be said for the vast majority of touch screen user interface interaction.
Analog controls are superior for car user interfaces. Touch screens have a use case, but rarely in moving vehicles.
I’m not being obtuse. There is no argument that favors touch screen interfaces where human attention is the difference between life and death. Smart cars can have analog inputs. There is no need to choose between one or the other.
As a driver, my hands practically never leave the steering wheel. Media controls happen by the buttons on the steering wheel or voice commands. Climate is automatic. Heated seats are automatic. Heated steering wheel is automatic. The large screen makes it easier to see the directions and layout of the roads I'm approaching.
Meanwhile, when I'm not driving my car, the larger screen makes it easier to update the navigation. It makes it easier to plan out the route. It makes it easier for making any fine tuning to the literally hundreds of different settings on my car, settings I really don't need a dedicated button taking up space the 99.9% of the time I'm not pressing the button.
Note I'm not a Tesla fanboy, I do think some physical controls are good. Having useful stalks is nice, being able to control things like wipers is still useful as they're not quite 100% yet. However, a thermostat is a solved problem.
As a driver, never having to take my hands off the wheel is preferred to physical knobs. And if I never have to take my hands off the wheel, what does it matter if the other controls are physical or not?
Sure, maybe in a stationary room, and I can think of plenty of times when I have used my heating or cooling system as not a thermostat. Not a sovled problem in cars...
I can also think of several scenarios where touch controls are absolutely inadequate, i.e. they simply don't work, the knobs in my car are simple to manipulate, and I do so regularly.
Now, do I need 6 buttons to operate all the nonsense in my dash, no - ironically the only "wasted" buttons in my car are the ones related to all the digital touchscreen software I never use...
Regarding the GPS - if my phone or dash unit isn't going to read me the right directions, the map unit is useless anyways. The complex stuff I might like the screen for, I need to be paying attention to the road for anyways. That's precisely the wrong time to be learning what the virtual road looks like and ignoring the semi barelling past me on my left as I have three lane changes to make.
I guess an argument could be madr for prepping me visually a couple minutes ahead, but auditory feedback is enough. And I don't even need the car for that - I'm usually wearing a headset anyways, just makes for a more seamless auditory experience, I can answer calls, etc. There is really just no reason I want a large visual map display distracting me while I'm driving.
It is normal to often only have one hand on the wheel. Much of Europe loves manual transmissions, and I do too, and it is perfectly, and completely safe.
What isn't safe is to be looking away from the road ahead of you. At 80mph, common freeways speeds, it's insane to do so.
No current automated controls fix the heat/AC needing to be adjusted, specifically defrosting the windows. Automated wipers suck, and often get it wrong. Mud splashes, must be washed away. Back window fogs, must be addressed. Temps need to be changed, drive modes modified, fog lights turned on, hazard lights engaged to alert traffic around you, on and on and on.
All these things can be manipulated with the same hand I use to switch gears, and one hand driving is perfectly safe...
I don't care if you never do these things. Most people I speak to, do, and when switching to some cars with screens, end up with constant eyes off road.
Throwing automation around is silly. Anyone trying any type of automation experiences edge cases, and often, are simply fighting it.
Lastly, based upon the horrid state of current UI design, the last place I want that is in a car.
We're talking about maximizing safety, not just reinforcing something that is already done. What is safer: one hand on the wheel or two?
> What isn't safe is to be looking away from the road ahead of you. At 80mph, common freeways speeds, it's insane to do so.
At some point in time, I will consult my navigation. Being able to quickly glance and understand the map is important, and a display that's easier to read translates to it being safer. Which is easier to read, a smaller screen with small graphics and small text, or a large one with larger text and graphics?
> No current automated controls fix the heat/AC needing to be adjusted, specifically defrosting the windows.
I forgot that the physics of when a window fogs up is completely unknowable. I guess its impossible for us to figure out the conditions for when a window fogs and make a system to automatically defog them. Oh wait, never mind, this isn't the stone ages, cars can easily know when their windows have the possibility of fogging. There's really zero reason why all cars can't have extremely reliable defoggers; you should really complain to your car maker that you don't have it as I'd say having your car automatically defog improves safety. I have it on my most recent car, once again I never have to press the defog button. My car is already defogged by the time I get to it, and the auto climate makes sure the conditions for a foggy windshield never happens. I don't get why you'd choose to have a car which requires you to manually intervene with the defogger, once again that just seems like yet another distraction making your car less safe.
That said, I will agree things related to critical safety should still have a physical button. On my car with a giant screen, there's still a button over by the headlight control for max defog, in the rare case it somehow gets this wrong. Which has never happened, but OK, I'll agree automation isn't always perfect and this is a safety critical feature.
That draws me to something that is still almost always manual when it really should never be. Headlights! My car does have a manual headlight control with an automatic setting that it never leaves. Sure, you'd say, we need to make sure headlights remain a manual control, its a safety feature! I'd argue the other way. There's practically zero reason for any passenger car to need to turn off their headlights while driving, giving people that control makes us less safe. I see tons of people driving around at night without headlights all because they get a manual say in whether their lights are on or not. Letting people turn their headlights off while driving makes us less safe.
I will agree additional lighting like fog lights should still be a manual control. Once again, critical safety components should still have a physical control.
> temps need to be changed
They really don't though, not while you're driving. The climate conditions in your car probably didn't radically change since you put your car into gear, you're not really going to be noticeably different at 71F vs 72F. Its an additional distraction. I maybe kick the temp up a few degrees in the winter and bring it back down in the spring/summer time, and this happens before the car gets put into gear. Probably four adjustments to the temperature a year, and I say that leaving my house at ~50F right now and it'll be >90F when I leave the office. All the rest of the time, its wasted space on my dashboard. I'm not constantly adjusting the thermostat in my house, I programmed it how I like my house and it dutifully carries it out. Why would I want to constantly be fiddling with the AC when it could be aut...
> What is safer: one hand on the wheel or two?
Unless you are riding in a derby, in high wind conditions, or on ice, this is a bad argument. In those conditions, incidentally you want as little distraction as possible, the fact I can't turn what tiny center console I have off is a source of endless frustration...
One hand is fine in most situations, and you need to be able to operate the car, not have your hands glued to the steering wheel.
> They really don't though, not while you're driving.
They really do, though. THERE ARE MORE USES FOR HEATING AND COOLING THAN JUST CLIMATE CONTROL, DEAR BRAINDEAF ELON MUSK.
And I don't mean just fogging windows, although like you admit at least that's almost impossible to automate well in all conditions.
> That draws me to something that is still almost always manual when it really should never be. Headlights!
Completely disagree - most sane implementations are keep them on automatically, with the option to force them on. I'll keep mine on a slightly overcast day just because its more safe, while the automatic setting completely fails to turn them on.
And, flip side, there are numerous situations where you want to keep your lights off not on - I can agree there should be maybe be some alert to the driver if the system detects, say, driving over 5 mph and no lights on, but that's about all the automation I want.
> We've identified what, maybe a handful of them? Wipers, defogger, hazard lights, parking brake, door locks, door levers/handles, window controls, gear selector, maybe mirror adjustment, maybe fog lights if equipped on your car?
Lol that's more than a handful. I'll add some - seat control (for crashes, sun in the eyes), heat/cooling override controls, brakes, pedal, disabling/enabling cruise and lane keep (it breaks, gets obstructed, driver gets tired or bored, or just wants to change their driving style to be safer, or more aggressive as traffic may require), audio/call controls on the steering wheel (or dash, whichever you prefer), so you can take or make emergency calls, or turn off the loud music you were using to stay awake to focus on traffic. Throw one in I haven't seen - a bluetooth pair button would be nice.
> Meanwhile the thing I actually do use on the center console, navigation, suffers from having all these physical buttons that never get pressed.
I can agree center consoles are poorly designed, the ones that have just enough for operation and nothing else (analog radio control or scroll equiv) are better than the touchscreens which always are awkward to operate, smudge, break, and/or eventually just die.
> That "TUNE" knob though? Its probably only been turned a few times the entire time I've owned the car. I set the presets for the radio stations I listen to and can change those with the steering controls.
I guess you have never crossed a state boundary and gone channel hunting. Seek is useful, but you can't configure the amplitude filtering - I can contiue to listen to a station half coming in or I can lose that completely with seek, get whatever nonsense local popular music channel.
Then there's your whole attitude that only a machine can make you more safe. Humans have lapses in judgement, sure, but when machines do, nobody can tell it to "snap out of it". Automatic things are nice, but I should always be able to EASILY override them, otherwise its like I stuck my hand in a blender with no way to stop the proverbial blade, except managing to smash through the glass and rip out the plug with my now mangled hand.
Either you just don't have much realworld experience, or you spent too much money on e.g. a Tesla and can't admit that despite the conveniences, they are horrible designs.
Sure, but purely asking, which is safer? One hand or two? If a key point of having a ton of physical controls is safety while driving, clearly we're trying to optimize for driving safety. So we should ask ourselves, which is safer? One hand on the wheel, or two? If having a lot of physical controls encourages you to only have one hand on the wheel more versus automating things away, is having the physical control actually making you safer, or less safe as it encourages you to take your hand off the wheel and engage with some activity other than driving the car down the road? Shouldn't we then do what we can to encourage drivers to have both hands on the wheel and their attention straight ahead, instead of facilitating workflows which encourage them to take their attention off the wheel and on the center console, regardless of if the center console is a bunch of buttons and knobs or a screen?
> THERE ARE MORE USES FOR HEATING AND COOLING THAN JUST CLIMATE CONTROL
Like...what exactly? If you're relying on your heater core for additional cooling of your ICE, you've got some serious problems and I wouldn't say that's any kind of normal operation of your car.
> almost impossible to automate well in all conditions
Its entirely possible to automate it well in practically all conditions. In my cars with auto defrost I've never had to manually intervene. Its incredibly basic logic on the conditions of a window fogging up. I'm just saying, its entirely possible a sensor would fail and windows can terribly fog up in minutes so it makes sense for a control like this to have a manual override.
> most sane implementations are keep them on automatically, with the option to force them on
Most implementations let you keep them off as much as you want without any complaints. Letting people even have the option to turn off their lights on average makes us less safe.
> And, flip side, there are numerous situations where you want to keep your lights off not on
These are incredibly rare circumstances and practically never when the vehicle is in motion. Maybe if you're operating your car in a warzone or smuggling drugs across a border, but most of us aren't. Please do share incredibly common reasons why you'd want the vehicle in motion and the headlights off and tell me why that's more safe. My motorcycle always has its headlight on when the key is turned to ON, and its never been an issue for me. Likewise, my car's headlights never leave the AUTO mode. I'd leave them to ON, but then they stay on longer when the car turns off and that's just a bit more strain on the ICE's battery than I'd care for.
> heat/cooling override controls
How is this a safety critical control? If you're on auto climate control, its not like the car is going to rapidly become uncomfortable. That's the whole point of auto climate! You're less safe having to manually intervene to change the climate controls versus letting the system keep the car comfortable.
> a bluetooth pair button would be nice
A bluetooth pairing button is a safety critical control to use while driving your car? You're going to be pairing your phone while you drive your car?
You're arguing people should be able to work on pairing their phones with their headlights off while driving their cars, and that car makers should work on making the car's interface facilitate such activity. I'm arguing all of that stuff should be stripped away, we shouldn't facilitate people turning off their headlights or work on bluetooth pairing their phones while driving. And yet you think its me who doesn't have much realworld experience...
I do not and have never owned a Tesla. I've regularly driven about a dozen different cars over the years trending more towards touchscreens. These changes really haven't negatively affected me much at all, and ha...
Perhaps you should not be using a map while driving. My argument was not analog controls can do anything touch screens can do. Adding distraction via touch screen interface by definition decreases safety. You should pull over to a safe place and use maps in whatever way you choose.
I accept you can prove a touch screen is useful for map navigation. But map navigation is not something a driver should be doing while driving.
Why fixate on touch screen controls? Your argument is stronger if voice controlled software makes adjustments. As with cell phones, society has decide to allow hands free phone use despite the fact that this is definitely less safe than no phone use. No maps usage while driving is always safer than the alternative.
I don’t understand the false dichotomy analogies you are using when better analogies like voice control can justify a lack of analog controls. Probably because this kind of voice control does not yet exist?
> what does it matter if the other controls are physical or not?
Because the touch screen controls are not demonstrably safer than physical. Saving space on a dashboard or convenient navigation do not improve safety.
You declare a thermostat a solved problem. I agree. Luckily the existence of thermostat technology is irrelevant to the UX for setting the thermostat. Can’t I have a physical switch just as easily that enables automatic “AI” powered digitally masterful climate control? Why is the touch screen necessary at all for this scenario?
Even then I'd still argue a purely analog interface on your car isn't solely the best car user interface. There's literally over a thousand settings to be changed on my car; are you really suggesting that having a thousand switches, buttons, toggles, and sliders is the preferred way of configuring my car? I imagine not, in which case it makes sense to put those behind a screen. If I'm only going to then be making changes to those while parked, why would it matter to me if I'm then changing those settings on a physical control or a touch screen? Why don't you use your phone with a rotary dial to interface with it?
> Because the touch screen controls are not demonstrably safer than physical.
You're misquoting me, the first part of that sentence is extremely critical for that argument of safety. "And if I never have to take my hands off the wheel..." completely negates your argument of safety.
The touch controls aren't supposed to be interacted much when driving the vehicle. That's what the steering wheel and voice controls are for. Its safer to use the steering wheel controls than it is to take your hand off the wheel and mess with a control on the center console, so if your argument is about maximizing safety having no controls outside of the steering wheel is the best choice. The touchscreen isn't there to be used by the driver while the car is in motion.
> I don’t understand the false dichotomy analogies you are using when better analogies like voice control can justify a lack of analog controls.
I do like voice controls, they work well for me. In fact I do reference them in the above comment with the statement "Media controls happen by the buttons on the steering wheel or voice commands." When I want to change the playlist or switch to the podcast app or whatever, I use voice controls when the vehicle is in motion. I use voice commands for other things like placing a phone call as well.
I do understand some people's frustrations with them as they often have a harder time with hard accents or less common dialects. I'm mostly talking about touchscreens here because the topic at hand is complaining about how cars are getting bigger and bigger screens, which to me is a positive and not a negative. If anything, the increasing usefulness and reliability of voice controls further points to the reason why cars adopting touchscreens and shedding a few more buttons is less and less of a concern.
> Can’t I have a physical switch just as easily that enables automatic “AI” powered digitally masterful climate control?
But, why would you want that? It would be a button I'd press once when I first got the car, and that'd be it. Toggling it off is essentially choosing an uncomfortable car; why would you choose to make your car uncomfortable? And then, if you'd never press that button other than the first time to turn it on, why bother having the button at all? What benefit does a button never pressed actually give?
Why don't we have every single lightbulb in the car have its own toggle button and dimmer knob on the center console? Have several buttons for changing the colors of the accent lighting. Have a dedicated d-pad for controlling the headlight position. Have a set of dial clocks (so you can feel the hands), knobs, and various buttons to set the charging profiles on my EV. A physical button to toggle between HD radio and not. A number pad for phone calls and speed dial, along with a SEND and HANGUP button. A big TUNE knob in addition to SEEK up and down. Fade and balance knobs. Buttons to navigate folders for the MP3 files on a flash drive. Buttons to program the various settings of the MyKey ...
I agree that car consumers are in general very irrational (in the economic sense), and car purchases are often far more about projecting an image than they are about practicality.
But that also means that consumers don't give a damn about slow recharging or battery degradation. It's mostly what will other people think about me for driving this vehicle. Thus the big pickups whose truck beds never see any duty.
It's a classic stock versus flow problem in economics. People irrationally over-weight the pain of a big lump sum, and under rate the pain of ongoing monthly payments. They misevaluate even as they convert a stock into a flow with an auto loan.
Similarly, people underestimate the cost of driving everywhere, when they have already sunk so much into the units investment.
I swear that there's something about cars that turns people's brains off. They are so deeply ingrained into our way of life that we basically refuse to consider costs and alternatives.
I'd buy that the mean new car price is $47k, but that's not the right average if you are trying to estimate typical vehicle acquisition costs.
The expected maintenance cost of my ICE is then another thousand or so more than the expected maintenance of my EV. Oil changes alone for synthetic oil at a 7,500mi interval for 100,000 is over $900. Add coolant flushes to that, timing chain tune up, probably a water pump replacement in there, and you're well over another $1,000 more than the EV which doesn't have a planned oil change or coolant flush until 150,000mi.
Which is still less than the EV premium right now. A model 3 at ~$45,000 (low end for 2022 model) vs. a civic at ~$30,000 (high end 2022 model).
Even the Nissan leaf is ~$27,000 on the low end, for a vehicle which is incomparable to a Civic.
Base model Mach E is ~$44k. Minus the $7,500 federal tax credit, $36,500. Minus the $11,900 potential lifetime savings brings us to $24,600.
Kia EV6 base is $40,900. Minus federal tax credit, $33,400. Minus the $11,900, $21,500.
VW ID.4 base is $41,230. Minus federal tax credit, $33,730. Minus the $11,900, $21,830.
21,500 < 21,830 < 24,600 < 30,000.
I get close to 40mpg, and pay a bit under $4/gal right now. Call my cost around... 9c/mi. Closing in on 3x difference. It's still not equal, but much better than a 5-7x difference.
That said, I've not switched to EV, and have no immediate plans to do so, but suspect an EV option may be on the cards as my next car in the next... 3 years or so. Will be interesting to see if there's much change in the price/performance numbers by then.
https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-o...
It will be dictated a lot on how you use your vehicle. If you have a very consistent drive to work/home schedule then EVs are great. If you start doing other things mixed in - it gets more nebulous unless you have a very high range one.
The peak rates on there make me cringe. 60c/kwh. Insane.
I keep hearing people say this and have never seen any proof. How do you know batteries wear out slower than engines?
https://www.findmyelectric.com/blog/how-long-does-a-tesla-ba...
"Over the years, the Model S has shown a battery degradation of less than 20% over 300,000 miles from Tesla owner reports on Plug-In America (manufacturing years 2012-2019)."
https://www.teslarati.com/tesloop-tesla-model-s-400k-miles-b...
(Our gas car is a 225K mile 2005 CR-V.)
Not likely. For starters, Tesla considers a bunch of options "bought" by the original owner to be tied to the owner, not the car: supercharging and full self driving, I believe? When Tesla finds out the car has been sold, they deactivate those options. No other car company does this (yet. They're all licking their chops and insanely jealous at what he's is getting away with.)
Check out the out-of-warranty repair bills for cars like the Model X posted on youtube, twitter, reddit, etc. They are breathtakingly expensive. That's one thing when you're talking about an exotic sports car that only gets driven on nice days to car shows. It's another for a family SUV.
Tesla's parts and body panel availability is terrible and hideously expensive Price sensitive consumers aren't going to put up with a 6 month wait for a quarter panel replacement that ends up costing thousands of dollars.
Their gearbox reliability is terrible (or at least it was - on the Model S, it wasn't uncommon to bring your car in for routine service and find they had swapped out the entire motor drivetrain unit.) If that fails outside of warranty, you're likely looking at that totaling the car. The drivetrain units also have poor sealing around the speed sensor and that causes them to draw in water in anything from "big puddles" to "heavy rain", eventually destroying the motor drive electronics.
They don't have a dealer network to distribute parts to independent repair shops and owners.
They don't make parts available to wholesalers like Worldpac.
Unlike (I believe) every other car manufacturer in the world, they require a VIN number before their parts department will even start talking to you. Ferrari might pull this, too.
To the keyboard warriors mashing out angry responses: yes, I am aware that many dealer parts counters will ask you for a VIN number. That is done ONLY to assure you get the correct part. If you ask for a specific part number, you'll get it; the parts guy won't fight you beyond double-checking you're sure you know what you want, or looking into whether the part has been superseded.
Tesla does it to get you the correct part but also to check their database to see if the car has been deemed (by them, not an insurance company or government) to be no longer safe to drive on the road. That is something no other car company will do.
Again: Tesla parts department won't even talk to you if you have a VIN number they don't "like."
Every day car companies sell car parts for cars people own that have been totalled or modded such they can't be street legal. Ford even sells production non-street-legal race cars.
If you walk into an Chevy dealer they will happily sell you an entire engine and ECU, not caring whether it's going into a boat, a giant blender, a hovercraft (long as there are no eels), or a Yugo. They just care that your credit card goes through.
And eventually battery replacement. “every Tesla vehicle’s battery is covered by an eight-year warranty”, and “For all variants the Model S and Model X, [the warranty covers] 150,000 miles, while the Model 3 Standard Range has it covered for 100,000. In the case of the Long Range and Performance versions of the Model 3, [the warranty is] 120,000 miles”.
I guess we don’t know yet how long the median battery will last but probably longer than the warranty, depending on how it is charged and other context. Battery replacement costs are currently very expensive, but perhaps will drop. Certainly battery replacement cost can’t be ignored, unless the vehicle is just scrapped because the battery replacement costs too much.
Severe heat or cold wrecks havoc on battery life. Even in southern Canada I am certain you won't get anywhere near the 8 full years, now imaging you live anywhere that gets down to -30C frequently during the winter.
That's my biggest concern right now, heating an electric car uses the battery as heat is NOT a byproduct of an electric engine. Very impractical in the winter.
A 2016 NZ estimate of a second hand Nissan Leaf (compared against a second hand Nissan Pulsar), the battery replacement costs about as much as the savings in electricity costs i.e. the Leaf is quite possibly no better for the environment overall? Scroll to bottom of https://genless.govt.nz/assets/Everyone-Resources/ev-battery... - although it strongly depends on whether replacement battery prices dropped or how electricity prices moved.
For now, but by the time the average working person has the ability to purchase an EV they will have become more expensive to run. Bare in mind that currently green energy is subsidized with fossil fuel money and governments around the world will be forced to tax electric vehicles by distance in order to make up for missed tax income.
And we are still missing massive pieces of infrastructure in order to power EVs, I'm not aware of a single place in the world that could handle all residents driving around in EVs without significant infrastructure changes.
The point is that we are not even close and that working class people will not nearly see the benefits that are claimed.
Thats a non-issue. The transition is slow and infrastructure is there to support this slow change, at least in europe city is EV friendly and it will keep improving.
> tax electric vehicles by distance in order to make up for missed tax income.
Maybe, maybe not. Less pollution means less sick people, less healthcare spending.
Plus you still have to have trucks going around. EV trucks are completely unfeasible in foreseeable future.
https://calmatters.org/economy/2018/08/how-california-really...
Googling around shows most states are the same and I've no doubt it's similar else where in the world.
And they are very keen to replace it, and road usage charges are very possible in California and the UK
https://caroadcharge.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motoring_taxation_in_the_Unite...
Besides, when did any government drop an established revenue source?
Utilities have been slowly screwing solar over-generation reimbursement for years - being green doesn't protect you.
I'm not sure how to interpret your last comment, I doubt offsetting the loss of taxation by increasing the taxation of freight will prove popular.
It will get cleaner, but will it be cheaper? Renewables need to be ramped up, and older power plants are getting retired (nuclear for instance). Massive amounts of storage - for which there is no existing solution at the scale required - will have to be designed and built, which will probably take years, if not a decade, and by then some first gen solar and wind will need replacing due to old age/inefficiecy.
It's a decent bet that energy will be cheaper than the prices now due to the war, but compared to the "normal" a few months ago? We'll have to see but IMHO it's far from a given.
Not only: personally I live in a home with a domestic p.v. so I can almost charge "for free", since WFH makes less usage of cars, witch are typically used during the day, so exactly when the p.v. can charge them for free, but using them less makes possible recharge one day for another etc. but most people do not WFH, and potentially only around 30% of total work population can and probably only 10-12% of us can do so from a home with domestic p.v. speaking at latitudes where p.v. make sense, otherwise the sole option is micro-hydro witch is potentially available only for veeeeery few. Not even only that: an ICE car can potentially last more than a decade, so people who cant afford frequent changes a car is a significant investment once in 10+ years, or a far little investments (used cars) once in 5+ years. EV have essentially ZERO resale value, so the little capex for those who can't afford more is not an option, and even facing that expensive capex if used frequently mean EV can last 5 years, after the battery became too fable for most usage, 8 years if less intensive usage, but 10 years at 80% IME is more theoretical than something else. Not even counting tech shift that can make a car un-rechargeble perhaps because inverters after 5 years have switched from AC to DC from X volt to Y from one phase to three etc.
For me, with the little daily car usage, with domestic p.v. in a place good enough for it, an E.V. will be cheaper when diesel will cost around 4 euros per liter (16-17 USD per US gallon), witch is the double of the actual price, and actually due to diesel hi prices there are protests everyday around the country. I know that it will happen, but so far IMVHO the sole interesting EV are just bicycle for people living in a flat, bike-friendly city and climate with all service/work/school near enough to do almost anything with the bicycle...
Rooftop solar on cars is ridiculous, at maximum on the surface of a Tesla model 3 it can produce 400Wp few hours a day, not even enough for air-con, it can just be an option if you live the car for months in a sunny place just to have it charged when you came back.
He was disgusted because the battery went out of his 10 year old car and it cost as much as the car did to replace it.
Meanwhile, well-kept ICE cars go almost indefinitely.
My point: the lower cost of ownership changes again after a while, with ICE becoming cheaper.
Hopefully the cost of refurbishing failed battery packs comes down to a few thousand dollars over time, as the aftermarket community grows for that service.
https://057tech.com/
https://warranty.057tech.com/
The auto industry is a failure as a whole. I wish we had a Linux Foundation for automakers to have them collaborate and make exchangeable parts and open source computer systems. Their greed prevents any serious progress and regulations also make this difficult, but I don't see why there isn't some collective.
Each automaker wants everything they do to be proprietary. They want mechanics and dealers exclusive to them. The whole auto industry is very wasteful and corrupt.
I don't think full EVs make a lot of sense yet. They are just not that practical and most people I know that have full EVs also have another gas powered or hybrid vehicle for longer trips where they won't have to stop and recharge.
Oh boy is this an odd basis to an analogy.
Whether the cars were better or worse, it meant a lot of independent and home grown car mechanics. We still have autoshops, but fewer, and its also much more difficult to source parts, except by relying on cheap knockoff parts from China. We barely have a manufacturing base at all anymore.
Right now, IBM computers are pretty much king. It wasn't always that way and if Apple took over you'd have much the same issue. It's the same set of market forces, I'd argue this isn't an analogy at all.
https://www.automotivelinux.org/
They are ahead of the competition on ADAS and autonomous driving, but their direct competitors VW group have done quite a lot of quick EV market transitions while Daimler-Benz is snoozing.
Hopeful Mercedez bites the bullet and just buys OEM EV solutions from Bosch or some other supplier to make way faster into the EV market.
This is a very odd argument for Mercedes in particular to make. First, Mercedes is not positioned as a company that prices its offerings at parity. So strategically, what do they care when cost parity with internal-combustion arrives? Certainly they have as much ability as Tesla to recoup the incremental cost?
Second, their top seller globally is the ~$43k+ GLC, which is more costly than the Kia Niro. Which: perhaps they have different trim levels, but the Kia also carries a 10-year/100k mile warranty vs 4 year/50k miles with Mercedes. If Kia can make the economics work, surely Mercedes can make it work?
Similarly, VW's ID.4 starts at $41k. Feels like if Mercedes can't mass-produce an EV, that's a problem specific to Mercedes.
My prior was that Tesla would have a lot of trouble once the German luxury marques and Japanese got serious about EVs. But BMW's strategy is haphazard at best and Mercedes apparently isn't getting in the game. So bizarre to watch these august firms cede marketshare without a fight over so many years.
What's super-confusing (but possible good for EV adoption long-term) is that Kia has Niro models in both (plug-in?) hybrid and pure EV. It appears the Niro is Kia's platform for playing with electrification before putting more serious brand equity at stake by e.g. releasing a Sportage EV.
I don't know anything about these things and I'm sure he isn't just "spitballing" like I am. But I'd love to hear from people who do know.
Also with $100+ oil the TCO difference in favor of electric is probably far more pronounced than it used to be, so the extra cost might be mute for larger customers (e.g. taxi drivers etc.).
For context - I’m taking my daughters to their homeschool coop tomorrow morning. It’s an 82-mile round trip if we go straight there and back; more typically I’ll run some errands and grab lunch to make a total of ~120 miles travelled. Wednesday one of them has a dentist’s appointment. That’s 140 miles round trip.
My family of four has two vehicles: my wife’s 2015 Kia Sorento and my 2000 Jeep Wrangler. They average 24 and 14 MPG respectively. We average around 35k miles per year between them.
We live “in town”, and the nearest grocery store is still ~5 miles away. The nearest convenience store is ~1 mile away. I suppose it would be feasible to walk or bike there… if I wanted to do so on a 55 MPH highway with no sidewalk or shoulder. There is no public transit.
The majority of people in the US live in “urban areas” - but it looks like the US Census Bureau considers a population density of 1k people per square mile to be “urban”. My town qualifies at 1,165.
Costco might implement chargers at parking spaces as a convenience thing, but if they do it for free they'd have to do it for all parking spaces to prevent people fighting over spaces. I have no idea how such a large-scale charging system could be retrofitted into an existing car park. Seems more likely that if supermarkets etc did want to implement charging in their carparks, they'd install a few and charge a nominal amount.
It seems like there's a lot of work to be done to scale this up for when electric vehicles get more popular. Many apartment complexes I see have no facilities for this, for example. But electric vehicles are also quite rare in this area.
It looks like this:
https://www.thedrive.com/news/31274/more-teslas-on-the-road-...
https://thedriven.io/2021/06/30/tesla-owners-line-up-at-supe...
It just means there need to be more chargers. North American charging infrastructure is fractured between the open CCS standard and the propriety Telsa plug. It would be much better if North America standardized on CCS so all EVs can charge at all chargers. At this point it just means Tesla needs to switch to CCS.
Europe has more sensibly standardized on CCS Type 2 Combo. All brands of EV can charge at all chargers on all charging networks. And even Tesla is slowly opening their chargers to other brands.
If more people had EVs and charged at home/work/the mall/the grocery store, there wouldn't be a line waiting just to pump gas. They wouldn't be waiting to pump gas, their cars would have already been fully charged at home or their cars would be charging in the parking lot and they'd be in the store shopping instead of sitting in their car burning fuel running their A/C or heat idling in line.
There would be zero lines to charge, at all.
We should assume that they are lying and dishonest until they can actually prove otherwise.
If gas stays at $4 a gallon for any period of time, people will figure out how to make EVs work for them.
Disclosure: I work for GM, not on this.
We ended up getting a long range Model 3 as our second car (lease). When we factored in zero maintenance, zero brake changes, gas savings and time saved not having to deal with any of the above, the cost of a M3 was right around the cost of a Camry. Needless to say, the M3 is much more fun to drive.
What initially seemed excessive was pretty reasonable all things considered.
There will be maintenance costs:
https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a30209598/2019-tesla-mo...
ICE is constant brake and oil changes just to start with.
Sounds like a great argument for higher carbon taxes.
This means that every year the world's taxpayers are giving 7% of the world's GDP for free to Oil and Gas industry.
Before any comparison can be made, the real cost of oil and gas needs to be internalized by these companies .
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_subsidies
Well, it's not going to be internalized by the companies, no matter what happens. It's going to be borne by consumers, either in taxes or in direct charges.
The difference is, if it's direct charges, then people feel more pressure to limit how much they use.
Either remove subsidies from Oil and Gas or subsidize EV purchase and charging. The argument of total cost is flawed otherwise.
To your actual point, I have an honest question: Is electricity subsidized? Do you have a figure for total subsidies, worldwide?
Note that much of the investment in renewables has been subsidized, though that's probably a one-off at installation rather than an annual amount. It would have to be pro-rated over the expected lifetime of the installation.
There also countries where national grid and generation are state owned and there again a second tier of government financing exists.
Same with gas prices. I pay $10/gal for diesel and that’s fine.
The point where EVs are economical compared to ICEs without sales taxes, vehicle taxes, fuel taxes, subsidies etc might be many years away. But that doesn’t seem very interesting if the point where consumers actually find them cheaper is long before that.