America's Used EV Price Crash Keeps Getting Deeper (cnbc.com) 603
Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares CNBC's report on the U.S. car market:
Back in February, used electric vehicle prices dipped below used gasoline-powered vehicle prices for the first time ever, and the pricing cliff keeps getting steeper as car buyers reject any "premium" tag formerly associated with EVs.
The decline has been dramatic over the past year. In June 2023, average used EV prices were over 25% higher than used gas car prices, but by May, used EVs were on average 8% lower than the average price for a used gasoline-powered car in U.S. In dollar terms, the gap widened from $265 in February to $2,657 in May, according to an analysis of 2.2 million one to five year-old used cars conducted by iSeeCars. Over the past year, gasoline-powered used vehicle prices have declined between 3-7%, while electric vehicle prices have decreased 30-39%.
"It's clear used car shoppers will no longer pay a premium for electric vehicles," iSeeCars executive analyst Karl Brauer stated in an iSeeCars report published last week. Electric power is now a detractor in the consumer's mind, with EVs "less desirable" and therefore less valuable than traditional cars, he said.
The article notes there's been a price war among EV manufacturers — and that newer EV models might be more attractive due to "longer ranges and improved battery life with temperature control for charging."
But CNBC also notes a silver lining. "As more EVs enter the used market at lower prices, the EV market does become available to a wider market of potential first-time EV owners."
The decline has been dramatic over the past year. In June 2023, average used EV prices were over 25% higher than used gas car prices, but by May, used EVs were on average 8% lower than the average price for a used gasoline-powered car in U.S. In dollar terms, the gap widened from $265 in February to $2,657 in May, according to an analysis of 2.2 million one to five year-old used cars conducted by iSeeCars. Over the past year, gasoline-powered used vehicle prices have declined between 3-7%, while electric vehicle prices have decreased 30-39%.
"It's clear used car shoppers will no longer pay a premium for electric vehicles," iSeeCars executive analyst Karl Brauer stated in an iSeeCars report published last week. Electric power is now a detractor in the consumer's mind, with EVs "less desirable" and therefore less valuable than traditional cars, he said.
The article notes there's been a price war among EV manufacturers — and that newer EV models might be more attractive due to "longer ranges and improved battery life with temperature control for charging."
But CNBC also notes a silver lining. "As more EVs enter the used market at lower prices, the EV market does become available to a wider market of potential first-time EV owners."
the freshest clickbait (Score:5, Insightful)
This years tech clickbait: EV Bad, EV bad!
Re:the freshest clickbait (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:the freshest clickbait (Score:5, Informative)
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Depends whether the prices are dropping because they're trash like the 2012 Leaf's battery or if they're dropping because there's a ton of good, cheap EVs entering the market.
My guess would be that it's because Hertz is dumping the majority of their EV rental fleet.
Re: the freshest clickbait (Score:4, Informative)
>> you'll spend thousands putting in a charger in most US homes
No you won't. Level 2 chargers are available on Amazon for under $300. Another few hundred to have one hooked up to your panel.
Re: the freshest clickbait (Score:3)
The labor can be much more expensive than that, especially if you need a long conduit, and your main panel is full. Both of which were true for us. Back when we installed them, our 2 Juiceboxes were $500, also, not $300.
We installed NEMA 14-50 outlets, which was smart since our chargers have all failed with bad relays.
Altogether it did cost about $2500 to install 2 chargers. That was in 2012 for the first one, and 2017 for the second one.
My 2015 Volt will be run into the ground, as will my husband's 2017 Bo
Re: the freshest clickbait (Score:4, Informative)
PUT IN A SMALLER CHARGER. It is that simple, and something people who haven't owned an EV for a few months just don't get.
A 60A circuit is what is needed for a 48A (11.2 kW) charger. I know because I have one. And it will charge my Ioniq 6 from 10% to 80% in about 3.5-4 hours. I bought that one (Leviton) because at the time it was on sale and CHEAPER than their 32A charger. Go figure.
I have my car scheduled to start charging at 1:00 a.m. and because I am almost NEVER down to 10% charge it usually takes just an hour or two to top off (80% is where I have it set). A 32A charger would still keep it charged up overnight, while I slept, and only need a 40A breaker. The math is a 32A charger (7.6 kW) would take my Ioniq 6 (77.4 kWh battery) 10 hours to go from 0-100%. If I plug in totally flat at 8:00 p.m. at night, I'm fully charged at 6:00 a.m. on the small charger. That's absolute worst case, coast into my driveway on inertia, everything just shut off. For the record, this NEVER happens.
And many chargers have GFCI built in, so you don't use a GFCI breaker. And wires for a 32A charger are thinner (8 AWG), cheaper, and easier to work with than the beasts that are for a 60A circuit (4 AWG).
charging [Re: the freshest clickbait] (Score:3)
There's also the "hidden" cost of home charging. The market of early adopters is saturated, the next wave of customers is one doing brutal calculus. And if you've never had an EV, the math is you'll spend thousands putting in a charger in most US homes unless youre ok trickel charging.
I charge at home on standard 120V; there was no cost to "putting a charger in". That gives me about sixty miles of range in an overnight charge, but that's plenty to replace the charge used in my usual day to day driving. If I'm going on a trip, I'll charge it up to 100% over a couple of days, but usually I keep the battery at 60% or so.
Do remember that the average driver in the U.S. drives 39.7 miles per day (Department of Transportation statistics). Most people really don't need a fast charger.
Re: the freshest clickbait (Score:3)
The US has a federal tax credit for home charger installation that made mine essentially free.
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Re:the freshest clickbait (Score:5, Interesting)
It used to be bad when cars had a chronic low resale value.
What? Bad for who? It was great for me, because I got good cars for little money. But now there's a lot more demand for used cars, because people have less money than ever (the "economy" is doing great if you measure by GDP, but not by how the average person's finances are doing) so they are less likely to be able to afford a new one. The age of the US fleet continues to grow, but cars are still made like shit in that they are designed to wear out, so this points strictly to people having less money to spend on cars.
What do I mean by designed to wear out? Besides the usual building to a price point thing, there's lots of parts which could be made to last dramatically longer which aren't specifically because replacing them is expensive. Very notably, subframe bushings. Even though these are alignment parts (in that they are wear items, and when they wear out, they affect alignment, and when they are replaced, you need to do the alignment) most alignment shops won't replace them. They could be made out of polyurethane and last the lifetime of the vehicle, but making them out of rubber means they will dry out and crack. All of the other suspension bushes could also be polyurethane as well, and also last much longer. They don't cost much more if at all (even aftermarket poly bushes can be no more expensive than the OE rubber parts) so this is being done strictly to drive service revenue and also to get more vehicles removed from the road sooner. Another trend which has done this, and in the same area of the vehicle too, is ball joints. Many of these are now non-replaceable, so you have to replace an entire A-arm or what have you, instead of just putting in a cheap new joint.
Modern consumer culture is based on unnecessary waste, and nothing exemplifies that more strongly than an automobile, due to its mass and energy cost.
Re:the freshest clickbait (Score:4, Insightful)
(the "economy" is doing great if you measure by GDP, but not by how the average person's finances are doing)
I'd really like to know why people keep saying this.
For the last 12 months, average wage growth has outpaced inflation [epi.org]. Target and Walmart have announced price cuts on thousands of items. Inflation for the month of may was actually 0.0%.
Can we stop with the "vibes" economy and go back to the "data" economy metrics?
Re:the freshest clickbait (Score:5, Informative)
Low resale value is bad if you're trying to sell a car. It's good if you're trying to buy a car.
If your goal is to transition the market over to EVs sooner rather than later, that's easier to achieve if EVs are cheap, than if EVs are expensive.
Good for buyers, bad for sellers [Re:the fresh...] (Score:4, Informative)
It used to be bad when cars had a chronic low resale value. Now that it is EVs it is ok?
Huh? Low resale price is good if you want to buy a cheap car. That's always been true, hasn't changed with EVs. Low prices are bad if you want to sell a car. That's also always been true, hasn't changed with EVs.
EV proponents are suddenly waving their hands and yelling 'nothing to see here' ?
What's changed is that, in the past, there just weren't very many used EVs out there being sold, so the supply was low, and hence prices high. But enough EVs have been cumulatively sold that now used EVs are coming onto the market, so the price is dropping.
Good for buyers, bad for sellers. Not sure if I see anybody "waving their hands and yelling 'nothing to see here'," but this is the market in action.
Re:Good for buyers, bad for sellers [Re:the fresh. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you buy a used EV you are automatically getting screwed.
No more so than any other used car. Depends on the car, on the seller, and on what you want to use it for.
I've had good and bad luck with buying used gasoline cars. One car I bought did not even go five miles before it threw a rod and essentially became junk. Another one I drove for years, no real problems except the one time a wheel fell off (lug nuts were stripped!)
Electric vehicles are mechanically much simpler. In a used EV, what you worry about is the battery having reduced capacity. If you're not planning long trips, that's probably not a big deal.
EVs are getting much cheaper (Score:5, Informative)
So it turns out that the actual story here is that EVs are getting much much cheaper:
- New EVs are seeing prices fall while range etc improves, due to increased competition
- Used EVs are seeing prices fall as a second-order effect, and as supply volumes increase dramatically
The result of this is going to drive us to purchase cost parity much faster than would otherwise have happened, and that will drive faster adoption.
The thing that's most likely to weaken all this is tariffs reducing the price signals.
Re:EVs are getting much cheaper (Score:5, Insightful)
So it turns out that the actual story here is that EVs are getting much much cheaper:
- New EVs are seeing prices fall while range etc improves, due to increased competition
- Used EVs are seeing prices fall as a second-order effect, and as supply volumes increase dramatically
The result of this is going to drive us to purchase cost parity much faster than would otherwise have happened, and that will drive faster adoption.
The thing that's most likely to weaken all this is tariffs reducing the price signals.
It's not just about supply volumes. The value of EVs falls rapidly because each new generation has far better range than the previous one which makes the previous generation far less interesting. I'd expect this to be less of a factor in countries with denser, more advanced and developed charging infrastructures than the USA but it is and will remain a factor. Another factor is anxiety over the expense of replacing the battery. Nobody is thrilled at the idea of buying a used EV whose battery is about to go out of warranty and then possibly being stuck with replacing the thing at a price tag well north of $10k because the battery pack is just worn out, because it is not rated for driving through puddles deeper than 20 cm (Tesla), because a rock dented the battery pack (Hyundai), the manufacturer did not fit the battery pack with a thermal management system and you can't get a replacement battery pack at non-extortional prices except salvaged from a crashed vehicle (Nissan) etc, etc, ad nauseam. These are not such an issue on ICE cars who have benefitted from 100 years of development rooted in operational experience but none of these issues with EVs are an unsolvable problem either.
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That's the really positive take. Reality is way worse.
Rich still buy their luxury cars. But there's less rich people now because of demographic decline and all the small economic shakeups that are happening across the economy.
Middle class finances their cars in part by selling the old car and in part by a loan. If they bought an EV, they're fucked, so they're keeping it longer, or going for a cheaper ICE/PHEV/HEV car instead. And inflation is high, so they can no longer afford an EV.
Lower class buys used ca
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But there's less rich people now because of demographic decline and all the small economic shakeups that are happening across the economy.
This is the biggest load of bullshit I've read this morning. https://ips-dc.org/total-u-s-b... [ips-dc.org]
The rich are making out like bandits.
Re: EVs are getting much cheaper (Score:4, Informative)
New EVs are cheaper globally, mainly due to PRC flooding their massive overproduction outside their massively oversaturated markets. They figured out that rather than making EVs, taking a loan against that car's value from a local bank and putting it into more production while parking said EV in massive EV graveyard away from most prying eyes as they have been doing for about half a decade now... They could just slightly upscale those cars by doing things like applying galvanic rust protection to them, and then dump them abroad for some actual revenue stream instead.
Re:EVs are getting much cheaper (Score:4, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I work in sustainability at a very large public university. It's my job to help people live/work with less impact on the environment. These aren't ravings of a madman.
There are negative influences as well.
1. Used EV prices are falling because people tend to turn them in after their battery packs (fuel tanks) have reduced capacity. The Tesla Model S, for example, loses around 10% of its maximum range every 100,000 miles. If it started with a 300-mile range, it will be able to travel a maximum of 270 miles on a full charge after 100,000 miles. They're actually worth less not just because of general wear and tear, but because the "fuel tank" has shrunk and regaining range requires a $12,000+ investment.
2. People are learning about the very high cost of EV tires as compared to tires on an ICE vehicle. EVs are heavier and require more strict fuel efficiency strategies to squeeze every mile out of a kWh of electrical power, so they need to have atypically low rolling resistance while being able to stand up to more friction. Additionally, manufacturers found that since there's no engine noise, passengers perceived regular tires as being REALLY loud and thus EV tires had to be quieter. So they're more expensive AND they wear out quicker.
3. What used to be free/subsidized and abundant public/workplace/school charging for the very limited number of EV drivers is shifting in reliability. All of those distributed charging locations (ChargePoint, EVGo, Blink, etc.) are in financial distress because people are finding out that having EVERYONE be a "gas station" and giving away fuel as an amenity is an financially unsustainable liability. Public EV chargers range from unreliable to non-existent. I sucks to say it, but there needs to be some centralized EV charger management companies (not just EVSE sales companies) ensuring that clusters of EV chargers stay functional, well lit, and safe. There's even an argument that EV charging locations should be required to make restrooms available. You know... like gas stations.
4. Where people tend to buy EVs (California), the cost of electricity is skyrocketing (infrastructure and fair wages are expensive!) and the financial savings of electricity as fuel as almost zero today. When gas costs $5.00/gallon and electricity costs $0.36/kWh, you're better off with a Toyota Prius Prime (PHEV) than an pure battery EV. AND THAT'S IF YOU'RE CHARGING AT HOME. If you expect to charge in public in 5 years, you have to anticipate all of the costs of construction (trenching, transformer, panel, EVSE, maintenance, software, etc.) being encumbered on the cost and you should expect at LEAST $0.40/kWh.
This information is becoming more commonplace so when people who might actually be in the market for a used car look back at everyone saying, "EVs are more expensive up front, but you save money in the long run," it's not really penciling out in their own calculations.
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Those may not be the ravings of a madman, but they are nonetheless evidence-free parochial assertions.
1. Find me a single half-decent study showing average 10% degradation for 100k miles for a Tesla Model S. And it makes no sense to talk of a starting range of 300 miles. A Model S has between 350 and 400 miles of range when new, depending on configuration. And the average US car will be driven for nearly *seven years* before it reaches 100k miles. Noone expects a 7 year old used car to be as good as a brand
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- Most EV's are fundamentally 6-year vehicles. The market has caught on to the fact that the value depreciation of a used EV is much steeper than that of an ICE combustion engine vehicle.
- The Hertz fire sale not only initially failed to account for the above, but also made splashy headlines with people who purchased some of these cars winding up with large unexpected repair bills bringing attention to risks that used EVs have that ICE cars do not have.
- After Hertz anot
Same as with digital cameras in the 2000s (Score:5, Insightful)
The same is happening to the EV market. It's gonna be a rough decade.
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That's a hell of a freudian slip of analogy.
Digital cameras became a thing because they offered the following benefits:
Immediately show the image taken, rather than have to go and develop the entire film.
Ease of storage, and other similar conveniences when it comes to media taken.
Whereas film had the advantage of quality of pictures taken until very recently.
Analogy maps quite well to digital being ICEV/HEV, as it's fast and easy to fuel up and just keep going, and not have to worry about the range with EVs
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Battery storage and motor do not improve in same way as image-sensors, LCDs, semiconductor devices.
CPUs are now improving only slightly, for example AMD's new architecture is only 15% faster. We are long past the days when every new CPU was twice as fast as the old one. LCDs are not improving all that fast any more, quantum dots were a decently big upgrade but it was a spike in improvement. Image sensors were going like gangbusters there for a while but now they seem to have mostly stalled out, we are stuck at around 10-20 MP for 35mm equivalents, only larger formats are still gaining resolution. You jus
Lower-priced EVs are good, you sick fucks. (Score:2, Insightful)
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Rational people don't own a bought-new car for 4 years. They own it till the wheels fall off -- or at least until reliability/maintenance becomes an actual problem (as opposed to an excuse). And they for sure don't lease it.
Who wants a used EV...to start with (Score:2)
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Who wants to buy a used EV anyway ?? Puts you closer to paying for a battery replacement and your mileage is now lower than a new one ! You can try to justify buying one, BUT common sense should tell you no !
At some point the juice becomes worth the squeeze. EV batteries, early Nissan Leafs and Renault Zoes aside, will do a good couple of hundred thousand miles just fine even if supercharged most of their life. They will drop in price to a point where for the types of journey you mostly do they'll make sense. Take the Vauxhall Corsa-E here in the UK. A friend has one and typically gets around 170-180 miles range when commuting from the same town I live in to the same place to work, using just over 1.5 times the
Cost of replacement battery is the reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Unsolds keep piling up (Score:2, Interesting)
Tesla has so many unsold vehicles, you can see them from space [yahoo.com]. Thousands of vehicles sitting around with nowhere to go. Considering the build quality of Teslas, this can't be a good thing.
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Good for potential buyers. (Score:5, Interesting)
Most vehicle sales are used not new and the market requires discounted high end/new vehicles to percolate downwards so normals can afford them. The more high end vehicles sell at discounts the closer they are to the common driver who may never buy a new car (paying off my homes was for example far more rewarding and a new vehicle is almost always a financially unwise purchase absent a wealthy buyer who already has land paid off and retirement funds maxed out to provide their desired net income.
Not everyone is rich but nearly everyone needs a POV especially if they own a home and much more if they DIY to slash costs.
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If you only do short in-city journeys then an EV is probably fine.
I find PHEV is a reasonable choice for a city. I do most of my driving on electricity, and I have a real car when I need it.
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Re:Not many people (Score:5, Informative)
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These people who make these complaints feel a strong imperative to think of themselves as typical, but they're obviously not at all. People living in apartments and driving 500km three times a week or whatever, are a tiny fraction of any population. US cars are driven an average 65km a day, ie less than 500km in a week. But these people are the centre of their own universe and like toddlers, insist that they must be the centre of everyone else's too. The idea that huge swathes of the population -- millions
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Many apartments come with underground parking; residents can have a plug and meter installed.
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Many apartments come with underground parking; residents can have a plug and meter installed.
I can't think of one in my entire county that does.
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>"Many apartments come with underground parking; residents can have a plug and meter installed."
And most cannot. And it can be very expensive.
And that does nothing for those stuck with on-street parking. You can push fantasy and hopefulness, or you can deal with CURRENT reality when deciding if you want an EV. And CURRENTLY, if you are not able to "charge at home", an EV is at a very great disadvantage to ICE.
This is likely to improve over time, of course.
Re: Not many people (Score:2)
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No. YOU link to some studies showing that those occasional horror stories make up any significant fraction of EV ownership. In 2023 alone, 1.2 million EVs were sold in the USA. If just 1% of those owners had a horror story, we'd have be averaging 32 horror stories every day.
The media loves a horror story that grabs your eyes, so that's what they report on. Constantly. They aren't printing stories about how millions upon millions of EV owners had a normal day with no car troubles.
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Literally any car might "require a significant and expensive portion of its drivetrain to be replaced 10 years down the line". What matters is the likelihood that this happens, and for EVs, the chances are extremely low. I'll paste the maths here once again:
"Let's use my shiny new EQA as an example. It has a range of a little over 300 miles. Let's call it 300 for simplicity. Conservative estimates are that the battery will have reduced to 80% state of health (SoH, ie what it can achieve of its original rang
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Except that 240 miles in winter suddenly becomes 150 miles. Pretty useless even medium distance round trips. Meanwhile my diesel car could still do 500 miles on a tank.
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I can tell you never rode a horse. Horses need rest on long trips. That would be longer than EV charging breaks. And no, they don't graze while being ridden somewhere, and grazing is highly inefficient. That's why inns used to have troughs.
That before the difference in speed and load being hauled.
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"Do us a favour and keep your exhaust output inside the cabin of your car, we don't want it in our lungs."
Why not go tell that to the owners of the coal or gas plant that probably provides a lot of the electricity that charges your EV.
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Why not go tell that to the owners of the coal or gas plant that probably provides a lot of the electricity that charges your EV.
First, as you note, you would have to go Tell them because that coal or gas plant isn't in town.
Second, even if charged 100% from coal, an EV reaches emissions parity at 70,000 miles. And there is nowhere that this is actually happening; on average, it's more like 50,000.
You're going to have to find a new argument, son. That one has already been debunked and all the people with a clue know it.
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ICE also loses range in the cold by between 15-24% according to EPA
It takes a lot colder weather to drop ICEV mileage by that much than it does for an EV, where it happens in just mildly cold weather. A coworker had a Mach E and he couldn't get around the county in just typically cold weather like in the 50s. You don't get a big drop in MPG with an ICEV until you get into freezing weather.
I still don't understand why this happens to EVs, whose battery packs generate heat while being used. It seems like they could insulate the packs, and make the cooling systems larger to t
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Lithium battery operational temperatures are very limited. What ends up happening is that you need to actually heat the battery to get it to reasonable operational parameters, and the only meaningful method to do so in a really cold weather is resistive heating, because you can't heat pump it without heating the cold part. And that's before the de-icing needs of the heat exchanger which become quite extreme as it has to be exposed to the outside air. As those are even more limited in terms of operational ra
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>"I still don't understand why this happens to EVs, whose battery packs generate heat while being used"
I think it is mainly a cold start thing. The battery pack is cold and takes a while to warm up enough to be used- used at all, used efficiently, and then used at full power. That requires time and power to achieve. When it is finally up to nominal temp, the losses are probably minimal at that point- except for cabin heating.... ICE has tons of waste heat for the cabin and EV requires supplementation
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Yawn, the usual over exaggeration.. ICE also loses range in the cold by between 15-24% according to EPA
My car drops by 10% here in the UK when it goes onto winter diesel mix. The same as the last car it replaced did and the one before that. And it's not because it's winter, it's because around November the UK changes from regular diesel over to a winter fuel mix with (more) kerosine in to prevent waxing.
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"Not many people...are going to pay a premium for a vehicle that has a shorter ranger, takes longer to "refill" and may require a significant and expensive part of its drivetrain to be replaced 10 years down the line."
EVERY vehicle "may require a significant and expensive part of its drivetrain to be replaced 10 years down the line" and many people will "pay a premium" for a premium experience. You've just selected your definition of premium to ignore EV benefits and highlight EV weaknesses.
"If you only do
Well lucky you (Score:5, Interesting)
"Australia like America is mostly detached houses so we park on-site or immediately in front"
Guess what, I live in europe and a significant minority , possibly even a majority in some countries , live in flats/apartments or houses with no drive, only street parking, where there is no possibility of home charging.
Why do EV shills always assume everyone lives in some huge house where home charging is no problem?
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It's called having a job and a family. It's not an edge case but a norm, though it may feel like an edge case for hedonistic nepobabies who are used to working an hour a week at their "daddy pays" PR firm and then just going drinking with their friends from the same circles and get driven in a taxi everywhere since thinking about money is for the plebs.
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Literally living inside one city and driving to another to work is not an edge case, it is normality.
Why not move house to somewhere nearer your job? Because that costs thousands that you don't have and there is no reason to believe that you will not be made redundant tomorrow or that your job will not move to another city tomorrow.
Why not get a job closer to home? You try to do that all the time, but you can't get a job if it doesn't exist.
Why not use public transport? Because public transport is even more
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Except the common case you describe fits within the capability of commuting with an EV. For EVs not to work, a commute would need to be 100+ miles one way, at least. That is an "edge case".
Living in one city and working in another, in this example, refers to a city "far away", not next door.
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I won't feel safe in an EV unless i can go everywhere i need to go on the top half of battery. In my experience the bottom half of batteries can deplete very quickly.
What the heck kind of junk EV are you driving? In my experience (Tesla Model X), assuming you're driving only on level roads, power consumption is pretty much linear, and it is the *first* part of your drive when power drains fastest, because it is heating or cooling the cabin to a comfortable temperature, not the last.
On long cross-country trips, I'm not comfortable letting the arrival range at a supercharger be less than 10%, even though Tesla's trip planner tends to go a bit lower at times, but 50%? Th
Cold weather [Re:Well lucky you] (Score:3)
If you do get stuck, gas cars need to run the engine for you to stay warm, while EVs only power the heat pumps. So EVs will actually keep you warm longer while waiting for help.
And, in places where it gets deeply cold-- Alaska, say-- people plug in their gasoline vehicles when they park, to run heaters. If you're going t
Suburbs [Re:Well lucky you] (Score:4, Interesting)
Literally living inside one city and driving to another to work is not an edge case, it is normality.
Living in a suburb and driving to work in a city is not an edge case. Living in one city and driving to another to work is unusual.
Commuting is a very close to ideal use for an electric vehicle. EVs have a couple of hundred miles range these days, and if your commute is more than that every day, you really should rethink where you live.
(when EVs just started being talked about, in the 90s, it was suggested that commuters would charge their cars at work during the day, but that didn't turn out to be the way it got implemented. Except maybe in parts of California, where EV infrastructure was built up early.)
...
Why not use public transport? Because public transport is even more expensive than car ownership.
No, it's considerably cheaper than owning a car, but insanely time consuming unless you both live and work in a big city. (Depending somewhat on which big city.) If you do live in that big city with good public transport, it's pretty convenient, you can read a book or work on your laptop while commuting, so it's a gift of extra free time. But most people don't. It really constrains where you want to live.
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Exactly. I live in the city. I don't own a car. It takes me 7 minutes to ride to work on my bicycle. When it rains, I walk holding an umbrella.
The train station and several supermarkets are also in walking distance and there is a bus stop down the street.
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Exactly. People live in cities to avoid commutes and live a local lifestyle, often without a car at all. People live in suburbs for more space with commuting a central part of their work. No one lives in a city to make their commutes worse.
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Anyway, it doesn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to see a demand for chargers in parking spaces, car parks, & underground
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"The problem seems to be that charger availability isn't keeping up with demand."
Thats the problem and because these are commercial decisions in most cases not governmental , it may never get done.
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>"Thats the problem and because these are commercial decisions in most cases not governmental , it may never get done."
That isn't how a free market works.
If there is a demand, it will be met. It might take time, and prices will be reflective of the value of those services to consumers. But you can bet that if government doesn't get too much in the way, there will be plenty of businesses that would be happy to supply such services. And you can bet, there will lots of governmental barriers- private prop
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It's likely directly correlated with demographic crash. If you have a family, you will need a car, and there's really no way around that. Kids will have hobbies, and will often need to be driven there for schedules to actually fit a day.
But if you're single, you can probably make it on public transit only in a big city.
Thing is, the biggest societal problem Western nations are facing by far is the demographic crash. So this will have to be mitigated, and one of the main things about it is that we will have
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I do love it when ideologues just hallucinate things when their ideology encounters reality.
I'm Finnish. I live in second largest metro in the country. I actively participate in local football and floorball scenes. If you have kids, you'll overwhelmingly have to drive them to guest games, and practice to make schedules. It's so bad, that we legalized making mopeds into cars so kids can drive themselves at the age of 15 in winter.
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Re: Not many people (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you're conflating two things:
- Charging at home
- Charging for "free" off solar
You don't *need* solar to charge at home. I've been charging at home for 10 years, always overnight, never had solar. Works extremely well for me. I've done the maths on adding solar, with or without a home battery, and it just doesn't add up, sadly -- the panel price is much lower than it was, but install costs are high as we'd need a lot of scaffolding.
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Did you account for the transfer tariffs? In my country those are $0.04 / kWh, while the cost of the typical solar installation is $0.03 / kWh.
That is, even *if* I would get my electricity for free in wholesale price, I'd still pay cheaper on the solar power. Large up-front investment though.
Re: Not many people (Score:5, Informative)
I have solar but never use it to charge my EV.
I sell surplus power to the grid during the day for more than I can buy power from the grid at 3 AM when I charge my EV.
Re: Not many people (Score:4, Informative)
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Going from zero to epsilon is "increasing", so technically you are correct but there is no solution to this problem currently.
Charging in older apartments is non-existent and not common in new ones. Of those that offer it, the cost is often high. My apartments have a few chargers, but they are 3KW and cost the same to use as Tesla Superchargers (which in my area cost the same as gasoline). It's a solution for a few existing EV owners but it discourages renters from buying EV. To add insult to injury, my
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"You live in an apartment and drive long distances? "
Yeah. amazing isn't it that us peasents in europe actually drive places! Who knew?
"If you are going to drive long distances why not just stay in a house outside the city. Or if you are happy with the space of an apartment why not just rent near your workplace. "
What fucking planet are you on rich boy? Clearly you don't have children for a start.
"Go troll on some other topic."
Go get a clue when you get a chance.
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1. Why do you think living in a flat means centre of the city? I'm 2 miles from countryside.
2. Do you understand the upheaval of moving kids in school?
3. Feel free to send me money to buy a bigger or 2nd house kiddo
4. You're a moron who knows nothing of life and probably still lives with his parents
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He is right though - even though the tone here could be nicer.
Are you, really, seriously saying that you are in the habit of spending 6+ hours a day driving your kids over 300 miles / 500 km every day?
Most $30k-$40k EVs have a driving "range" of 5-6 hours. Even more if you spend most of that in a traffic jam, as an EV draws little to no battery while standing still, as opposed to an idling ICE.
Most EVs can drive in any direction for at least 4 hours before you need to stop and charge. They then charge to an
Re:Doesnt pass the smell test (Score:4, Interesting)
"Are you, really, seriously saying that you are in the habit of spending 6+ hours a day driving your kids over 300 miles / 500 km every day?"
Where did I say that? I often , maybe 4 or 5 times a month have to drive to clients for work, you think I want to drive around looking for a charger thats working then sit there for 40 fucking minutes when I'm on the clock and the client is waiting?
You work from home tribe really have no idea.
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Because houses are expensive to buy, expensive to own, and expensive to maintain.
The amount of rich people in this thread telling everyone else to just eat cake is frankly astounding.
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Yes. Why get your dad to buy you a 30k ICE vehicle and be sneered at by your peers when you can get him to buy you a 40k EV just as easily? Why get your parents to rent you a flat in one area when it is just as easy to have them rent you a flat somewhere else?
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Houses are expensive to buy up front because of the downpayment, but they aren't expensive to own or maintain.
I pay about $2,000 a year in property taxes. If you include the money my lazy ass pays someone else to mow the lawn, I pay about the same in various maintenance things every year. Basically it comes out to about $350 a month. With a decent credit score, a mortgage payment buying my house at the current, appraised price would add another $950 bringing it to $1,200 a month. The mortgage will also
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Doesnt pass the smell test. Go troll on some other topic.
Here's a clue: The rest of the world isn't the same as the USA, especially Europe. You should actually try leaving your country once in your life and then you'll realise this and stop making stupid remarks about people trolling.
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What is battery drm?
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I'm sorry, but DRM being Digital Rights Management has been a Slashdot focus for nearly 30 years.
I know - I've been here that long.
If you're on Slashdot and you don't know that DRM means "Digital Rights Management" then I don't know what to tell you.
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Plus, there is less demand for EV's than probably expected. Those who HAD to have one, already have one now. Those who don't aren't swayed yet, for whatever reason, new or used. Perhaps they want a car, not an SUV, or they want a traditional dashboard, or they want more physical controls, or they want something lighter than handles much better, or they have on-street parking so cannot charge at home and don't want to deal with the charging challenge, or they don't want range restrictions, or they live in
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ICE absolutely age out too but as you said it's less binary. Over time your ICE will cost a number of $500-$2k repairs but usually the car still technically functions you're just at risk for totally fuckery without the repair vs EV battery dead = huge repair all at once most people can't afford.
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As for the "bomb under the chassis" (which is applicable in more than one way), used ICE cars have this as well, just to a much smaller extent.
ICEVs are four times more likely to burn than EVs. Not that it proves the point (you can look up the statistics if you care to know) but my first vivid memory was of my dad's Toronado burning down in our driveway at night when it wasn't even being used. Because ICEVs have both a fuel system and an electrical system, they have more potential points of failure. The usual places for failure are the high current wiring to the starter, the flexible fuel lines, and also the fuel injectors since they started makin
Re:Will dump my model 3 at 7 year mark (Score:4, Interesting)
Autotrader on Youtube is currently doing a series about a Tesla Model S that has been used as a taxi [youtube.com]. It's on over 430,000 miles on its original battery and spends most of it's time being supercharged as it has free supercharging for life.