Rather disappointing as an environmentalist. But the established freedoms of the car culture and price sensitivity in NA (probably parts of Europe, idk) hard to overcome — “what if I want to road trip though!”
That being said, I think Ford’s shift to a range extended EV makes sense for the truck space. I’m sure someone has crunched the numbers on emissions but getting more market share on hybrid/plugin/range extended EVs are definitely better then ICE only. Plenty of manufacturers are offering hybrids- however, the government has historically been too heavily lobbied to push for hybrids by default and reduce ICE only uptake with some kind of sin tax.
I want to see if Kei-trucks can break into the market. The last time a new product form broke into the US market, it was during a big recession (japanese auto-makers got compact cars in). People will value functionality over form if we get into a prolonged recession.
Every time I think about EVs, I become filled with dread thinking about what will happen if an area loses power for an extended period of time. I used to live in an area that had transformers blow from rain showers.
At least you could hook up a generator to pump gas at a gas station.
:/ Life's about trade offs.
Edit: Whoops.. Im not against EVs to be clear. But from a safety POV, having two different energy sources is safer than having one. Im not sure if you'll understand this if you haven't lived in a very snowy state.
> Every time I think about EVs, I become filled with dread thinking about what will happen if an area loses power for an extended period of time
A mid-size EV battery can easily store 60kWh of energy. That's enough to power a domestic refrigerator for ~12 days (assuming 200w average power usage, which is on the higher end).
I lost power for about a day last year and was very happy to be able to keep my fridge and some emergency lighting powered from an EV battery.
Unpopular idea: the personal automobile segment will shrink so rapidly when autonomous, ubiquitous, low-cost EV robotaxis reach widespread proliferation, that many of the existing automotive manufacturers today will become increasingly commercially non-viable and wind down operations anyway, only further accelerating a trend that has already begun due to the rampant, multifaceted rise in total vehicle ownership costs far above CPI inflation.
Environmentalists should be happy about this either way. A fleet of high utilization autonomous vehicles will increase utilization rates of each automobile that is still on the road substantially, serving more people with fewer raw materials. Not to mention that as of right now, all of the leading contenders for commercially viable robotaxi fleets are on EV platforms anyway.
It's not that, by and large, over a longer time horizon, new gasoline cars are going to replace these EVs disappearing from the consumer-owned automobile segment so much as EV robotaxis will be gradually replacing almost all consumer-owned vehicles. Enthusiasts will still have their track toys, but as an economic mode of transportation, the personally owned automobile is going the way of the horse and buggy.
> A fleet of high utilization autonomous vehicles will increase utilization rates of each automobile that is still on the road substantially, serving more people with fewer raw materials. Not to mention that as of right now, all of the leading contenders for commercially viable robotaxi fleets are on EV platforms anyway.
I think people overestimate the difference due to the amount of dead-heading needed.
One of the big risks for manufacturers seem to be that EVs are fundamentally more compatible with automated production and allows simplifications to the car stack. It would seem that the costs and risks of the keeping the ICE stack alive will keep increasing over time as it loses relevance to EVs.
Unsurprising. GM/Ford will fail once again, along with the BMW/MB/VW and then the government will bail them out again... for the 4th time in 30 years. There is no incentive to be better.
Making sub-$100k EV's and then crying that consumer demand is low doesn't make any sense. Meanwhile, the Chinese and Korean EVs are absolutely eating this market by making sub 35k and 50k EV's respectively. In California, 1/4 new vehicles registered was an EV in 2024. By the end of 2025, it was 1/3.
The rest of the world will continue to embrace EV's, and the western (and Japanese) propaganda machine will do what it always does when the rest of the world does better: xenophobia, racism followed by screaming that EVs are a failure.
It's too late anyway- China and the other Eastern players have already won. Western Autos are basically walking dead, artificially kept alive by export controls and tariffs.
I bought an EV. it's fun to drive and it's affordable to recharge. However, I wouldn't buy another anytime soon. The depreciation is horrible. They are basically destined for a landfill once they no longer work. I can go to a junk yard and pull an engine for my Toyota tomorrow if I need to.
As somebody who owns an EV, that thing won't catch on (Western or Chinese) unless infrastructure will start being operated by sane people. Currently the "app problem" instead of accepting a debit card on the charger is the biggest pain in the ass followed by unmaintained chargers, because government subsidized building them and not maintaining them. If these two pain points are not fixed, don't expect any kind of boom, more like slow withering out of EVs in western countries because it is constant PITA to use them.
I just finished a road trip from Colorado to SoCal by EV and this was the first trip where I didn’t once need an app to start charging. It was a nice change from my last one.
Rivian’s network has been amazing now that non Rivian EVs can use it, and Ionna has appeared with delightfully retro futuristic looking equipment that doesn’t even have a backing app - just payment and go.
This is a US or local problem primarily. At least where I live there is a law in place requiring public ev chargers to be available with credit card payments and are forbidden from needing users to subscribe.
A strange and anecdotal take. Infrastructure is already here. Millions of Americans are happily driving across the country charging their EVs just fine. You probably had a bad experience with a Chargepoint L2 charger in a garage that needed an app to operate and the FTUX on that is really painful. But, no one is using a L2 charger while roadtripping. L2 charging is primarily only for home or work use while parked for 8-12 hours. All the L3 chargers that people use during trips feature tap to pay.
As for maintenance, seeing 1 charger be down out of 10 is not an infrastructure problem. EV drivers figured out waiting in line and queuing just fine. And with most stations charging at L4 speeds, the wait time is short.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 40.7 ms ] threadThat being said, I think Ford’s shift to a range extended EV makes sense for the truck space. I’m sure someone has crunched the numbers on emissions but getting more market share on hybrid/plugin/range extended EVs are definitely better then ICE only. Plenty of manufacturers are offering hybrids- however, the government has historically been too heavily lobbied to push for hybrids by default and reduce ICE only uptake with some kind of sin tax.
At least you could hook up a generator to pump gas at a gas station.
:/ Life's about trade offs.
Edit: Whoops.. Im not against EVs to be clear. But from a safety POV, having two different energy sources is safer than having one. Im not sure if you'll understand this if you haven't lived in a very snowy state.
A mid-size EV battery can easily store 60kWh of energy. That's enough to power a domestic refrigerator for ~12 days (assuming 200w average power usage, which is on the higher end).
I lost power for about a day last year and was very happy to be able to keep my fridge and some emergency lighting powered from an EV battery.
Environmentalists should be happy about this either way. A fleet of high utilization autonomous vehicles will increase utilization rates of each automobile that is still on the road substantially, serving more people with fewer raw materials. Not to mention that as of right now, all of the leading contenders for commercially viable robotaxi fleets are on EV platforms anyway.
It's not that, by and large, over a longer time horizon, new gasoline cars are going to replace these EVs disappearing from the consumer-owned automobile segment so much as EV robotaxis will be gradually replacing almost all consumer-owned vehicles. Enthusiasts will still have their track toys, but as an economic mode of transportation, the personally owned automobile is going the way of the horse and buggy.
I think people overestimate the difference due to the amount of dead-heading needed.
Making sub-$100k EV's and then crying that consumer demand is low doesn't make any sense. Meanwhile, the Chinese and Korean EVs are absolutely eating this market by making sub 35k and 50k EV's respectively. In California, 1/4 new vehicles registered was an EV in 2024. By the end of 2025, it was 1/3.
The rest of the world will continue to embrace EV's, and the western (and Japanese) propaganda machine will do what it always does when the rest of the world does better: xenophobia, racism followed by screaming that EVs are a failure.
As for maintenance, seeing 1 charger be down out of 10 is not an infrastructure problem. EV drivers figured out waiting in line and queuing just fine. And with most stations charging at L4 speeds, the wait time is short.