"Automakers have been ditching small, affordable, low-profit vehicles for larger, pricier and higher-profit ones (gas-powered and electric) for years, but the process has greatly accelerated since 2018. In March of that year, cars costing less than $25,000 made up 24% of the car market, but they make up just 4% today, according to data from Edmunds.com."
We've got a Bolt EUV and it's a fantastic car. Bought it because it had some of the best legroom for our rather tall children.
Is this still a knock on effect from pandemic supply chain issues? If you only had a limited supply of integrated circuits, it probably made more sense to build the more expensive cars?
That’s what I read in a comment here: they tried to jerk their suppliers around and lost. If you can only get so many chips it makes a lot of sense to put them in the SUVs and trucks with 40% profit margins rather than cars with half the margin on a lower base price.
Even if the high-end vehicles have lower margin, it could still be smarter to focus on the higher cost vehicles to the maximize revenue / profit if you are production constrained. (i.e. 30% of $40,000 = $12,000 vs, 50% of $20,000 = $10,000)
Oh, sure. It’s just in this case the ratios are reversed so I find it completely unsurprising that the makers and dealers are acting in their own financial interest. The average pickup is $60k so they’re probably making well over twice as much on each sale as well as locking in higher maintenance revenue.
Probably doesn't help, but they started killing small cheap cars in North America even before COVID. Examples are the Toyota Yaris (which was a rebadged Mazda 2) and the Honda Fit.
Inflation, unions, a lot of things are pushing prices up for auto companies and so they feel probably that they need to sell more expensive vehicles to keep the profit levels up.
There will eventually be a "new" Bolt to replace it, but it will be built on a completely different platform, and there's no word on whether it will hit the same price point.
My local dealer still has at least one 2023 Bolt on the lot. And I see there are a few used car lots in my area with low-milage Bolts available as well for under the $20k price tag.
Doesn't a tax credit just mean you don't have to pay tax on that amount? If you're at, say, a ~20% tax bracket, then it discounts the price by $7,500 * .20, or $1,500 total, bringing the price for a Chevy Bolt to $25,000. Of course there's then taxes and nonsense fees added on top, and the figure you quoted is the base model with no options, so realistically, even after the tax credit, you're looking at above $30,000 for it.
No, that's how tax deductions work. With a credit you just get the amount (there's still some nuances based off tax liability, but the updated law for those is going into effect soon)
No, it is a straight tax rebate. If you paid over $7,500 in US Federal taxes, then you get to deduct $7,500 off the taxes owed (not your income). But you don't get to carry forward any if say you only paid $6,000 in taxes (but your tax bill for that year would be $0). Also, my state currently has a much reduced sales tax rate for electric vehicles. Source: I did this when I bought an EV.
I know there's tons of naysayers, probably because it's provocative, but I really truly believe hydrogen is the successful way forward. It's clean. It can be made with electricity. The model of storing lots of fuel in the vehicle is the part that doesn't seem right to me since it's highly flammable. There will eventually be a way to make solar panels more efficient or make electricity from braking which might make it more economical.
Storing hydrogen isn't hard because its explosive, it's less volatile than gasoline.
Storing hydrogen is hard because it's low density until it approaches absolute zero and is smaller than and embrittles the best materials we have to store it.
If batteries are a worry for replacement, imagine leaking embrittled pressure tanks that have to be checked every year and replaced sooner than every 5.
How do you figure it's less volatile than gasoline?!
Hydrogen has a far lower boiling point (=volatility). Or did you mean how explosive it is? Hydrogen has a far wider range of explosive concentration than gasoline.
Autoignition point is lower for gasoline than hydrogen if you meant that, but the wide range of explosive concentrations for hydrogen seems like it would pretty much negate that safety benefit.
I think range anxiety is already mostly a nothingburger and as battery capacity improves and people realize being limited to X miles is hardly a limitation for their use case at all, it will become a non-issue.
Using electricity directly is just easier and more efficient than transporting hydrogen that was made from electricity, unless for some reason hydrogen truly is more economic than battery for your use case.
Hydrogen storage and transport is hugely impractical. Photovoltaic efficiency is improving (slowly) but ultimately limited by the laws of physics. Hard to make the math work for what you predict.
At a guess, I’d say the wider macro economic environment is impacting EV Sales, and all auto sales in general.
The Chinese auto makers, like BYD and MG, are also giving the US and Europeans are hard time.
A leading indicator is surely the wealthier suburbs where EVs seem to be every where. Anyone that doesn’t have an EV is just holding onto their ICE car until the lease expires or it dies and they churn to an EV.
I can only speak for myself and my immediate circle, electric cars seem like a hassle because you have to plan more to charge them. I can't just go on a spontaneous trip and know that almost any point if I need to fill up I can do so, quickly.
Actually, that's mostly false. If you can charge at home, you'll have a fully charged car in your driveway every morning. With the Tesla charging network, you really can charge no matter where you want to go. Typically after 4 hours or so of driving, I'm ready to take a bathroom break, stretch my legs and get a coffee. By the time I'm back the car is charged to 80% or so, good to go for another 250 miles or so.
That's a very big IF. Over here in EU many (most?) people live in the apartment buildings of different types, and there are no charging spots on the parkings. Having to rely only on the EV stations is deal breaker when comparing with the similarly priced ICE. I can't see myself buying EV while renting an apartment.
PS: I do want to buy an EV. I'm not one of those ICE-only people.
There's a difference between it being doable and it not being a hassle. In even slightly rural areas you have to plan to stop at a small number of locations rather than just stopping whenever gas/food/break makes sense.
I was worried about that too, but the day-to-day benefits ended up outweighing that concern considering 90% of my driving is within 150 miles of my home.
The few times a year I do drive more than 150 miles in a trip, I've already found my favorite DC fast charging stations in each direction along the interstate. The car's navigation system takes into account the car's battery life, expected range, and available charging stations, so it does most of my route planning for me.
If I'm really in a crunch for time or going on an extra long haul, the cost of the occasional rental car is still cheaper than what I was spending on gas each year. I know my experience isn't the same as other parts of the world, but the range anxiety of owning an EV quickly fades after it becomes part of your routine and you get a feel for the actual limits of your car.
You are absolutely correct. BEV charging is a peak of inconvenience. I have Skoda Enyaq and I need to charge it all over the place (not everyone lives in US suburbia), wasting my time on a charger while fighting with stupid applications, which you can't charge without, and paying about as much as I would with regular ICE vehicle (which has 50% of fuel cost made by a tax!) because in Europe we have decided to electrify everything without building the powerplants and the infrastructure first.
No you can't. Ferraris are impractical, expensive to fuel, expensive to repair, expensive to maintain, unreliable, can't be used on poor roads, hard to get into, have no luggage space, only hold two people, et cetera. Their main appeal is that they signal status. And if they were cheap, they don't do that.
I've never heard of subsidies exceeding 100% of the total cost of a thing. Except for one never-repeated example involving bananas simultaneously on discount and with rewards as if they were on full-price, but that got onto a topical news quiz for being both unusual and insane.
If you throw more than 100% of the value of the vehicle at owners, it's no longer just a "subsidy" and is elevated to "a free money scheme". (Which is also exactly what happened with the bananas, why it was insane, and how it ended up in the news).
1: impractical free car = still impractical
2-4: expensive to fuel, expensive to repair, expensive to maintain: the three things I was agreeing with you about
5: unreliable free car = lots of waiting on a highway for the repair people when it breaks down.
Also, "so you need more than one" is an absurd reaction when you yourself have also written "50% of people in EU live in an apartment" and "Like those massive commie blocks in Berlin with parking lots planned for 1 car per 3 apartments? Yeah sure, please step out of your bubble, you have no clue what are you talking about" and still would be even if you have (silently) updated your world view based on what I said in that instance.
6: free car that can't be used on poor roads / 7: free car that's hard to get into: your link to a sales pitch does not actually answer anything about #6, though that picture looks like it might solve #7
8: free car that has no luggage space: overnight… to the vet? Overnight… from the supermarket? Overnight… on a ferry or to the airport? Overnight… to the beach or hike, with your sports gear? Overnight… to the campsite? If you're ever taking stuff in a car rather than a delivery/movals van, you probably want to use or hand over the luggage immediately, not pay sometime to attempt to deliver it the next day.
9: free car that only hold two people, et cetera: I see you have no idea why people might want to hold more than two people. Hint: one category takes 9 months, and not only do they really not like being alone, the police take a dim view to it too — and when they need attention, they really need it, even if you can't take your hands of the wheel because you're driving and there's only the two of you in the car. A further category dies of old age before being old enough to get a licence, though they'd never pass the test anyway, and also hates being alone or even just away from their people.
And finally, the bit that subsidies make worse:
10. "Their main appeal is that they signal status. And if they were cheap, they don't do that."
Non-Tesla EVs aren’t working due to a lack of compelling options, IMO. I think there should be decent demand for:
A reasonably priced EV sedan.
An EV family car — 7 seats, not too large. A minivan or a wagon would work.
A small utility vehicle. Telo is on to something IMO.
Finally, there’s a huge elephant in the room: NACS. J1772 lost. It’s the living dead. Selling a new EV right now with only a J1772 (or J1772+CCS) jack is like selling a very expensive phone with only a 3G radio a couple years ago. No one who is paying attention would want to own it and be stuck with it. If I were running the show at any of these companies, I would switch production to NACS ASAP. I don’t care if it would take a loss, or if a major change is awkward in the middle of a model year. Throw in an adapter so the cars can charge from J1772 as well (Tesla makes these). Heck, have both jacks. But I think that essentially every single J1772 car that rolls off the production line right now is a mistake, and every would-be customer who reads some FAQ about how there will probably be an adapter available to charge today’s brand-new car from NACS in “Spring 2024” would quite reasonably say no.
Yeah, I totally agree. I’ve been looking at electric cars and a bunch look kinda good but none are “tesla without the tesla bullshit”. The NACS plug announcement means I’m very happy to wait since it’ll make future cars one iota more Tesla by default. Plus it’s just so much better than the old standard.
Accelerating the switch to NACS on the car side won't work. The unspoken part of "automakers standardize on NACS" is the update to the Superchargers themselves. The signaling is basically CCS, not the legacy Tesla protocol.
Great. Then ship cars with CCS and a (not quite ready for supercharging) NACS port. A programmable PHY that’s adequate to speak the protocol should not be especially complicated, especially if it’s essentially the same thing as the CCS part. We’re talking about maybe $50 for the jack, a few dollars for muxes, and some relays.
Sure, this would add maybe $100-$200 in BOM cost during the transition period. But I think that’s better than failing to produce credible cars at all. And then the cars could be sold as “already compatible with Tesla level 2 chargers and ready for Tesla-compatible supercharging with an OTA upgrade”, which is a lot better than “not compatible, and we’ll probably have an adapter available next year for an unknown price.”
(The adapter will surely cost more than the added parts for an extra jack. An external adapter would need to make all the protocols work and may also need a relay to switch between AC and DC modes.)
Every time my salary packaging provider calls to ‘let me know’ about how they can package an EV I tell them the only EV i’m interested in packaging is a fancy expensive cargo bike.
Guess the margins for them aren’t enough when you have to try really hard to spend more than $12k
Depending on your sector you can also package restaurant meals, rent/mortgage, laptops - all sorts of stuff.
This means you pay for them from your pre-tax income. There are a bunch of limits and a fringe benefits tax year that ends in March that you have to deal with as part of it though.
Uh. Wasn't the Tesla Model Y the best selling car in America last year? What part of that isn't working? I can't walk down the street without spotting six of 'em.
> Wasn't the Tesla Model Y the best selling car in America last year?
No, if you exclude pickups but include SUVs (have to do the latter for the Model Y to even qualify), the Toyota RAV4 was; other cars ahead of the model Y included the Toyota Camry and Honda CR-V.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 147 ms ] threadhttps://www.forbes.com/wheels/news/chevrolet-bolt-discontinu...
"Automakers have been ditching small, affordable, low-profit vehicles for larger, pricier and higher-profit ones (gas-powered and electric) for years, but the process has greatly accelerated since 2018. In March of that year, cars costing less than $25,000 made up 24% of the car market, but they make up just 4% today, according to data from Edmunds.com."
We've got a Bolt EUV and it's a fantastic car. Bought it because it had some of the best legroom for our rather tall children.
We don't need or want some monster SUV.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26931498
which is huge.
and exactly what i don't want or need. le sigh.
BRING BACK SMALLER CARS!!!
https://www.chevrolet.com/electric/bolt-ev
There will eventually be a "new" Bolt to replace it, but it will be built on a completely different platform, and there's no word on whether it will hit the same price point.
https://www.media.stellantis.com/em-en/citroen/press/citroen...
Highly unlikely to come to the US, of course.
The most immediate need (utility) for green hydrogen is replacing fossil fuels in the production of methane and ammonia. This must be done asap.
Once that hydrogen production and transport infra is in place, it'll be relatively easier to pivot to using H2 as a fuel.
In other words, electric batteries are a bridge (stop gap) tech on the road to our glorious hydrogen economy.
Storing hydrogen is hard because it's low density until it approaches absolute zero and is smaller than and embrittles the best materials we have to store it.
If batteries are a worry for replacement, imagine leaking embrittled pressure tanks that have to be checked every year and replaced sooner than every 5.
Hydrogen has a far lower boiling point (=volatility). Or did you mean how explosive it is? Hydrogen has a far wider range of explosive concentration than gasoline.
Autoignition point is lower for gasoline than hydrogen if you meant that, but the wide range of explosive concentrations for hydrogen seems like it would pretty much negate that safety benefit.
40kph cars slam into each other. gas leaks out, maybe eventually starts a fire.
meanwhile the hydrogen batteries, some already fragile, just explode. on the plus side the blasts and fire make the pile up a lot more visible.
I think range anxiety is already mostly a nothingburger and as battery capacity improves and people realize being limited to X miles is hardly a limitation for their use case at all, it will become a non-issue.
Using electricity directly is just easier and more efficient than transporting hydrogen that was made from electricity, unless for some reason hydrogen truly is more economic than battery for your use case.
The Chinese auto makers, like BYD and MG, are also giving the US and Europeans are hard time.
A leading indicator is surely the wealthier suburbs where EVs seem to be every where. Anyone that doesn’t have an EV is just holding onto their ICE car until the lease expires or it dies and they churn to an EV.
PS: I do want to buy an EV. I'm not one of those ICE-only people.
The few times a year I do drive more than 150 miles in a trip, I've already found my favorite DC fast charging stations in each direction along the interstate. The car's navigation system takes into account the car's battery life, expected range, and available charging stations, so it does most of my route planning for me.
If I'm really in a crunch for time or going on an extra long haul, the cost of the occasional rental car is still cheaper than what I was spending on gas each year. I know my experience isn't the same as other parts of the world, but the range anxiety of owning an EV quickly fades after it becomes part of your routine and you get a feel for the actual limits of your car.
EVs sell like hotcakes in China and Hong Kong.
Those three were indeed odd choices for a response to your claim, but still, the other seven stand.
expensive to fuel - Money problem -> Subsidies,
expensive to repair - Money problem -> Subsidies,
expensive to maintain - Money problem -> Subsidies
unreliable - So you need more than one. Money problem -> Subsidies
can't be used on poor roads. https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/auto/ferrari-purosangue
hard to get into - See link above. Not at all.
have no luggage space. You can overnight your stuff. Money problem -> Subsidies
only hold two people - So you need more than one Money problem -> Subsidies
If you throw more than 100% of the value of the vehicle at owners, it's no longer just a "subsidy" and is elevated to "a free money scheme". (Which is also exactly what happened with the bananas, why it was insane, and how it ended up in the news).
1: impractical free car = still impractical
2-4: expensive to fuel, expensive to repair, expensive to maintain: the three things I was agreeing with you about
5: unreliable free car = lots of waiting on a highway for the repair people when it breaks down.
Also, "so you need more than one" is an absurd reaction when you yourself have also written "50% of people in EU live in an apartment" and "Like those massive commie blocks in Berlin with parking lots planned for 1 car per 3 apartments? Yeah sure, please step out of your bubble, you have no clue what are you talking about" and still would be even if you have (silently) updated your world view based on what I said in that instance.
6: free car that can't be used on poor roads / 7: free car that's hard to get into: your link to a sales pitch does not actually answer anything about #6, though that picture looks like it might solve #7
8: free car that has no luggage space: overnight… to the vet? Overnight… from the supermarket? Overnight… on a ferry or to the airport? Overnight… to the beach or hike, with your sports gear? Overnight… to the campsite? If you're ever taking stuff in a car rather than a delivery/movals van, you probably want to use or hand over the luggage immediately, not pay sometime to attempt to deliver it the next day.
9: free car that only hold two people, et cetera: I see you have no idea why people might want to hold more than two people. Hint: one category takes 9 months, and not only do they really not like being alone, the police take a dim view to it too — and when they need attention, they really need it, even if you can't take your hands of the wheel because you're driving and there's only the two of you in the car. A further category dies of old age before being old enough to get a licence, though they'd never pass the test anyway, and also hates being alone or even just away from their people.
And finally, the bit that subsidies make worse:
10. "Their main appeal is that they signal status. And if they were cheap, they don't do that."
Make it free, even more so.
Maybe the market for cars with limited charging networks is the real problem?
A reasonably priced EV sedan.
An EV family car — 7 seats, not too large. A minivan or a wagon would work.
A small utility vehicle. Telo is on to something IMO.
Finally, there’s a huge elephant in the room: NACS. J1772 lost. It’s the living dead. Selling a new EV right now with only a J1772 (or J1772+CCS) jack is like selling a very expensive phone with only a 3G radio a couple years ago. No one who is paying attention would want to own it and be stuck with it. If I were running the show at any of these companies, I would switch production to NACS ASAP. I don’t care if it would take a loss, or if a major change is awkward in the middle of a model year. Throw in an adapter so the cars can charge from J1772 as well (Tesla makes these). Heck, have both jacks. But I think that essentially every single J1772 car that rolls off the production line right now is a mistake, and every would-be customer who reads some FAQ about how there will probably be an adapter available to charge today’s brand-new car from NACS in “Spring 2024” would quite reasonably say no.
Sure, this would add maybe $100-$200 in BOM cost during the transition period. But I think that’s better than failing to produce credible cars at all. And then the cars could be sold as “already compatible with Tesla level 2 chargers and ready for Tesla-compatible supercharging with an OTA upgrade”, which is a lot better than “not compatible, and we’ll probably have an adapter available next year for an unknown price.”
(The adapter will surely cost more than the added parts for an extra jack. An external adapter would need to make all the protocols work and may also need a relay to switch between AC and DC modes.)
Guess the margins for them aren’t enough when you have to try really hard to spend more than $12k
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salary_packaging
Depending on your sector you can also package restaurant meals, rent/mortgage, laptops - all sorts of stuff.
This means you pay for them from your pre-tax income. There are a bunch of limits and a fringe benefits tax year that ends in March that you have to deal with as part of it though.
No, if you exclude pickups but include SUVs (have to do the latter for the Model Y to even qualify), the Toyota RAV4 was; other cars ahead of the model Y included the Toyota Camry and Honda CR-V.
True, last year it wasn’t but this year it was the best selling vehicle of any type, EV or not, including trucks.
This year isn't over. The story is about Q1, not the year.
https://electrek.co/2023/10/26/volvo-expects-ev-momentum-con...
People just don't appreciate how much money the wealthy need!