The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

I wish it would have adjusted for inflation. One quote: "The average transaction price for a new vehicle sold in the U.S. last month was $48,623, according to Kelley Blue Book, roughly $10,000 higher than in 2019, before the pandemic." However, about 9200 euros of that is due to inflation according to this calculator: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

That's a nitpick though. All in all, an interesting article, which can be summarized as: the EV car market is lacking demand, and car makers definitely don't want to make cheap EVs since it's already so hard.

There is scant evidence for this. Every time prices improve, sales surge. Sounds like the demand is there, but price matters. As it always has.

“As automakers were profit maximizing during the supply chain crisis era, you are going to prioritize the bigger vehicles, the more expensive vehicles with their higher margins,” Tyson Jominy, vice president of data and analytics at J.D. Power, told me. “Now we just don’t have” these cheaper models.

Between these two, quite a considerable market is being left unaddressed. The first to fill these niches with affordable models that don’t have weird quirks or make strange tradeoffs will likely do well.

I’ve never spent more than 20k for a car. With prices like this, I’m just going to keep my old one as long as I can.

People that buy used, can get a cheap electric car like a 2023 Tesla M3 with approx. 50k miles going for 20-24k on Hertz Rental Car sales site.

If you want a better price, just wait until 2026, when the 250k leases come due. There will be a flood of used electric cars on the market.

I've done over 20,000 km in road trips in an EV. You charge while you're eating or toileting or sleeping, it doesn't affect my trips.

And most people don't do long trips every week. Personally, I try to optimize my life to avoid spending a considerable part of it in a car.

With charging at home EVs are just easy. For long trips charging every 2-3 hours isn't too bad (most humans benefit from a break anyways).

Of course that's without without the $1,155 "destination" fee, so even the Forte really starts at $21,145.

But considering inflation, $21k isn't a bad price.

Yes.

But it does rue out every single modern car on the market.

Very frustrating

ROTFLMAO!

Says the richest person in existence. What an entitled nasty person.

You can't have it because of existing tarrifs.

The British made the same mistake back in the day with motorcycles. "Who cares about the market for 125 cc machines?" they said.

The Japanese did, and now they have the market, the British used to have, for luxury and high powered motor cycles. As well as most of the 125cc market

Most people don’t own multiple cars and wouldn’t rent a car for those rare use-cases when they already own a perfectly fine car. It may be overall cheaper to do that, but people don’t think that way.

One or two annual holiday roadtrips to go see the family and oops that EV starts looking like an annoying option. Every friend I have who doesn’t own a house and bought an EV ended up returning it because of how annoying the charging was to deal with.

It’s not that charging was _hard_, it’s that they had to think about it.

edit: this may be an urbanite take. Even folks with cars don’t really use them to commute regularly. Semi-rare trips only.

I watching this video which lays out some fundamental diffs between US companies, like GM and Chinese companies, like BYD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXvcwM977D0 * Short term vs long term focus * .gov subsidies stronger in key markets in CN * CN companies extremely rapid in development (as low as 1.5 yr vs 6 yr in the US) * Lower wages and input costs

Things will probably have to get worse before they get worse. Corporate people know the machine (public traded US auto makers) keeps lumbering forward without change until it can't, and all handouts, bailouts, and other tricks have been played.

Taking Chevy for example, they have physical HVAC controls, but they're counting on the average consumer being too clueless to realize they only have Google Maps in their car because it came with a free OnStar trial. Eventually people are going to notice that they spent $1000+ to buy the larger screen upgrade, and now Chevy wants them to shell out $300/year forever to be able to use it for maps.

The other big unknown is lifespan of car software platforms, if these end up being like phones where they get laggier and laggier with continued software updates, until eventually it's unusable, people aren't going to be happy about it. But we won't know for 15 years exactly how bad that problem is.

Not if our governments start putting tariffs on everything.

I am Canadian, but it also applies to other governments (including the US). The politicians know that it's not going to be easy to do the actual right thing and build up a competitive industry. Instead, it's much easier to just slap some tariffs and make lagging productivity the next generation's problem.

Its just clickbait paid by Lucid to make their $90,000 cars seem reasonable because, well geeze, no one is making cheap EVs anyone. Wrong: Everyone is trying to, and its very obvious that this is direction the market needs to go in (just look at the depreciation on modern Teslas, new cars cannot compete with what is happening in the used market).

But with so few options, like the parent, I'm planning to keep my current car (a 2008 Prius) indefinitely, just paying for repairs as needed until parts are unavailable or nobody is willing to do the work.

My worry is that US automakers have all but abandoned the compact and midsize economy car segments, and I don't know what tariffs will mean for the Japanese and Korean automakers that do cover these segments. But see my other comment about the pendulum swinging back and forth.

Tesla's charging network is excellent, and I'm glad it's opening to all EVs on the market. I used a third party charger once and the horrible user experience made sure I never will again.

I don't think its reasonable to read Musk's statement as "the Model 2 isn't happening". Its more accurate to read it as "it might cost more than $25,000".

[1] https://fortune.com/2024/10/24/tesla-model-2-affordable-car-...

Not only is there a high risk of notoriously underpowered head units becoming increasingly laggy over time with updates, there’s also the risk of the automaker deciding that shipping new updates for your only slightly old EV is too much of a cost to bear and dropping support, making the head unit slowly become more and more useless over time as apps stop running.

CarPlay/Android Auto is an excellent hedge against both of those scenarios, even if one prefers the onboard experience. It never hurts to have an escape hatch.

Also there's enough demand for high-margin cars to max out available production capacity, and would you want to be making major investments in ICE car production right now?

Manufacturers make more money off selling luxury cars. The poors can just buy used luxury cars for all they care. We see the same problem with housing and luxury vs spartan options. The spartan option exists, but only begrudgingly so.

I cannot get the car without registration. I cannot get the car without 'destination' fee.

Bake it into the price.

Some EVs have full charge range that's not much less than a full tank of gas on an ICE at this point - the range is really a non issue for a lot of people.

I drive an EV with a comparably low range (~130 miles) and I can still count on one hand the number of times I've needed to drive further than that in one trip - on those occasions other than my lunch/dinner stop being limited to places with a charging station nothing really changed compared to when I drove an ICE. The rest of the time I get to plug it in in my garage overnight instead of having to stop at petrol stations, which is a nice albeit minor convenience increase.

1) amortizing the assembly line and upfront platform design costs

2) the raw materials of the basic car components, e.g. power train, chassis, and body

3) getting the car into consumer hands (distribution fees, taxes, advertising, dealership margin, etc).

Everything else like labor and upgraded trims works out to a relatively small percentage of the overall price, often under 20%.

Since you can't make enough impact by cutting amenities, you have to cut one of the listed things. You mostly can't build things more efficiently than major manufacturers do (though Tesla is quite good here), so that's out. You can't shave 50% off the basic materials costs because you run into basic FMVSS issues. Kia's strategy is to get as close to this line as they can though. That means you need to cut from the third category. No company wants don't want to cut their own margin, so that's out. Manufacturers can't work around the dealers by law, so they need to keep some dealer margin. Manufacturers can't stop advertising because the advertising department has significant political power and can get anyone proposing that fired. Manufacturers can't avoid taxes for consumers either.

The only real paths to cheaper cars involve opening the market to competitors that aren't limited like this, for instance foreign companies that don't need dealers and are okay accepting lower margins and not advertising.

Wages have been stagnant in the United States for nearly 50 years.

Every economic stat right now points to this as the core issue. Consumers are squeezed more on every last good and service, tons of services are now only available via subscriptions which inherently cost more, and despite the economy supposedly (and, actually) booming in a lot of ways, that doesn't hardly at all make it's way down to the workers either via higher wages, or via cheaper products.

This is a complicated situation that doesn't lend itself well to comments but a number of the bigger datapoints include an employment market that favored employers for the majority of the time since the 70's, the ongoing slandering not to mention outright interference on the part of employers against labor organizing, "inflation" that when you scratch the surface is just companies charging more because they can, the ongoing consolidation of enterprise resulting in monolithic companies that own dozens of brands of the same product, none of which truly compete on price, on and on and on.

There are a ton of good reasons for Americans to be broke, and a number of prominent economists have been ringing alarm bells for decades now that all of these things coming together is going to stall the economy cold and send us into the... by my count, fourth once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis I've experienced.

Dodge has the 2025 ramcharger which has amazing specs! 690 mile range, 14,000lb towing capacity, 663 hp, etc. etc.

I've got reservations about dodge, and reservations about the first year of the model from any manufactuerer. Otherwise, I'd gladly shell out 70k+ and my left nut to get one.

I really wish more manufacturers would go this direction. I've got no interest in 100% EV, because I do things with my truck that simply are not feasible with any EV model, mostly due to range. The problem is, I do just enough truck stuff with really tough requirements that I don't want a non-truck without serious range. Yet, I still go to work in an office a few days a week and would love to use plug-in charge to do so.

Not only does this (and the things you pointed out) reduce the cost of maintenance, it saves on trips to get them done, and the headaches of the pressure most put on you to get things done you don’t need, just so they can make even more money off of you.

Also, EVs on the highway (when hybrids are using the ICE) are much quieter, and have more torque.

The only downsides I have noticed are:

- Higher up front cost (though I don’t think hybrids are much cheaper)

- Heavier = more frequent tire changes (again, not sure hybrids are much better)

- Range for long road trips, resulting in having to pause for long charges, and having to plan your route in advance (definitely not a problem for hybrids)

I've yet to see good evidence that the Chinese cars are actually built in a way that they're more reliable or a better value than counterparts from other countries, they're just cheaper.

with the American consumer buying 15M cars a year at those average $50K there isn't an opportunity for the low end. And if such market really appears - i.e. if the American consumer would hit hard economic patch and would really need cheap car - it will be at any moment filled by cheap Chinese EVs.

In 1998 a Chevrolet Metro could be optioned without a radio or rear defogger, even. New purchase price was about $9k (equivalent to $14.5k today). Somebody was buying those, enough for it to be worth the manufacturer’s effort to produce it.

I suspect a whole segment of people would be willing to consider a no-frills EV at a comparable price point. Hell, if somebody made something new like a base model 90s Civic into a $15k EV without extra luxury nonsense I don’t actually need, I’d be in the dealership tomorrow.

Short-term vs long-term focus means nothing. Government subsidies run out. Rapid development is easy when its a first generation product with no customers. Lower wages means fewer of your own people can afford it (though it does help with export pricing to richer first world countries... what's that word I'm looking for... it starts with a T, I heard an orange man say it recently. eh probably nothing)

The 2008-2023 US economy was basically the strongest national economy in the history of humanity; but, obviously, that's changing. And no, I'm not doomering about a mother-of-all-crashes. The world is just getting more realistic, as it should.

Of course. You start by designing a car to be cheap, not slimming down an expensive one.

Mercedes sold their cars by having better engineering (perceived by customers). Does Lucid have better batteries? Almost certainly not.

GM made that play with the Bolt. It was routinely available for just over $20K. Still sat on lots, not getting a lot of love. People shopping for new cars want nicer toys, people who cannot afford new shop used and enjoy getting those nice toys at a discount. I bet the subset of buyers looking for a bare bones no frills brand-new car is quite small.

I think you're correct; we're probably talking about a portion of the weirdly minimalist and frugal crowd pursuing FIRE. Also, most folks in that small subset wouldn't even consider buying a GM product; it's going to be either a Toyota or Honda for them.

Source: I'm one of them, still driving my base-level trim 2008 Prius.

As an aside, I'm reading that the new Bolt sold nearly as well as the Tesla Model S in 2017. Before that, I think the similarly basic Nissan Leaf was the best selling EV. Since then, however, my sense is that EV purchases became more about "fun" (which Tesla has emphasized and provided) than anything else.

I still have the original brake pads on my 2008 Prius with 150k miles. (And yes, I have them measured periodically to see if they're still good.) This is typical.

It is worth recognizing the role that ZIRP played in all of this. Artificially low interest rates allowed payments on more expensive premium vehicles to be much more manageable for a much larger portion of the population.

It was a totally functional vehicle. The radio sounded good enough. The seats were comfy enough. It was a bit of a slug, but it had enough power so that you weren't scared for your life when merging onto a highway.

If those sound like low standards... well, this was not always the case for bargain basement cars...

With torque blending, regen braking is blended with friction braking at low speeds (when regen braking is ineffective). Friction braking is always needed to make a full stop.

Not new, but does that matter so much?

Manufacturing, generally? Solar? Batteries? Semiconductors? Cyber espionage/warfare? I think those are more than nothing that China has had a demonstrable long term strategy in which benefits them at our expense.

Also, great point about financialization in the US. Do you think if that dam breaks, US auto makers come back to planet Earth instead of chasing what seems to be exclusively high-margin cars only affordable by credit?

Sedans are nothing. Just barely, finally, after all those years, we have electric kombis - VW ID.7 Tourer and Audi A6 Avant e-tron.

Unfortunately, while BYD would be the most readily-available option for cheap cars, it would need: homologation, distributors, parts suppliers, repeal of the protectionist tariffs protecting Tesla, and the removal of Musk from an unfair position of power, influence, and regulatory capture, and whatever the heck DOGE will be.

The larger issue is that, in order to afford housing, a car, and a life, regular American workers need to be paid livable wages to keep up with the inflation "pay cut" and reverse decades of sliding standards of living through lower and suppressed real wages.

https://lucidmotors.com/media-room/atieva-powers-season-6-fo...

Vehicles at that price are usually crap, esp. the Versa with the CVT engine. And, at least last year, there was a shortage so that you'd be paying a few grand above that price just to get it. I'd bet it's still the same where you're paying closer to 20k for this car.

Now, if you could get a Versa with the simpler engine (I think it was a manual shift), it's apparently a decent car. But finding that model is like a full-time job for a week, then either flying out to whatever dealership has it or getting it shipped which is another grand.

The complexities of this are outside my wheelhouse, but it's easy to see how keeping cheaper EVs out of the market would carve out a major source of cheaper vehicles period, leaving other manufacturers able to push higher priced cars. My guess is the tariffs are directly contributing to the process described in the article. Even if manufacturers were to "leave that market to China", eventually it would come to bite them as a certain proportion of people would start buying those cars instead.

Monopolies, monopsonies, and tariffs are playing a huge role throughout the US economy and it gets such little attention. Or at least it seems that way to me.

This is also why 3-row SUVs and half ton crew cab trucks have proliferated as much as they have.

The solutions for this in general don't line up nicely with any of the major party platforms, at least in the US — major deregulation of certain areas in certain ways, aggressive antitrust enforcement, and dismantling of tariffs, possibly combined with government incentivizing of competition in certain areas, at least for awhile. It feels like candidates and parties demonize one or more of these things and overemphasize other things, or implement some of these things in the wrong ways, like they're all mutually exclusive.

CAFE regulations (in a nutshell) require automakers' vehicles to meet a particular fuel economy per size of footprint, averaged across the vehicles they sell. So, they can meet the standards either by increasing the footprint of the vehicle, or by increasing the fuel economy of their vehicles, or both.

One specific example: mandatory back up cameras (and a monitor to watch them on).

1) a SV/Texas "tech" company, which, by its very identity, must yield insane returns to shareholders 2) Legacy auto companies who must yield insane returns to both shareholders and, to a lesser extent, retired employees. In their defense, the second group actually did work

Compare this to Chinese EV makers who are dumpi - I mean, willing to take less return on their sale in order to establish market dominance globally.

Yeah, no wonder American EVs are expensive.

We have a winner.

There's a bunch of free riders in the form of shareholders artificially driving up the price of goods.

Obviously it might be pointless for a company like Tesla, as it might not favour their financial numbers.

It is actually a phenomenon going on specially with European brands. They have abandoned low margin cars, it is, cheapest segments, to improve their financial performance numbers (ROIC...)

* That was mentioned during Tesla's earnings call in October this year, in the context of the shift of strategy towards FSD and the Robotaxi.

Maybe you're thinking of the strict emission laws regarding NOx and SOx that prevent diesel cars.

They are. CAFE target formulas have the footprint of the vehicle(s) in the denominator. Larger footprint = easier fuel economy targets

https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/cafe-ghg_my_2012...

If I was in the market for a second hand car I would go electric for sure.

Of course, that is not allowed, because it would benefit the American people and hurt the American car cartel.

> would you want to be making major investments in ICE car production right now?

I would if I were a car manufacturer, at least in addition to other projects that I may have investing in alternative fuels. I haven't dug deeply into all the issues VW is dealing with today, but it does seem at least in part due to an over investment in electric vehicles.

If I were really in that situation, though, I'd personally be investing heavily in designs more similar to the Chevy Volt with an electric drivetrain and onboard gas generator. Range anxiety goes away without having to pack a massive battery pack in the car, and the gas engine is much less stressed meaning easier maintenance and a longer life.

That's true, but US fuel economy standards don't actually require vehicles to be more fuel efficient in a direct way. They require vehicles to be a certain fuel efficiency for their footprint.

Unintuitively, while making a car larger doesn't make it more fuel efficient, it might make it better meet US fuel economy standards.

That's also what fuels some of the demand for high-margin cars, because of the perverse incentive that over-sized delivers higher margins. People will be too easily convinced to pay extra (generally at linear relationship) for size and there's not a linear relationship in size versus margins.

Sure, but they've been saying full self driving is "next year" for a decade in a row. I take that with a large grain of salt. https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-promises-full-self-driving-ne...

The other unrelated point I try to impress on people: You can assert that China's lead in manufacturing solar panels, batteries, etc is indicative that they're "ahead" of us, or whatever. You sure? I don't know what job you have right now, but the US was a destination for high tech manufacturing many decades ago. We largely moved past that. We make poorer countries do that for us now. How is it desirable that America become better at, I don't know, mining lithium? Are those jobs that we want our population to have? Versus what are clearly higher-margin email jobs? China manufacturing solar panels to sell us is our benefit, their expense; their economy is built on attaching a 2% margin on physical goods, ours is attaching a 200% margin on services, software, and financialization we build on top of those physical goods. Every economist on the planet would agree, you want to live in the second one. Lithium mines suck. Assembly lines suck.

But even looking beyond that: The US has an unemployment rate of like 3% right now. You can open the world's biggest solar factory out in Iowa; good luck finding workers to staff it. The US is not "behind" on manufacturing; we LEFT it behind, for good reason.

> Do you think if that dam breaks, US auto makers come back to planet Earth instead of chasing what seems to be exclusively high-margin cars only affordable by credit?

It doesn't seem to me like the problems that the automotive world are going to face over the next five years will be isolated to US manufacturers; its going to be global. Its going to get harder to financially-engineer your way to higher margins and revenue. That means prices need to come down. But, prices are higher because consumers want these nicer cars, nicer materials, there's a lot of cost in mandated safety features and safety engineering as well, not to mention all the export controls and tariffs Trump is threatening. So, how do they get cost down? That's the challenge.

In the US and probably Canada, there's an expectation that spending 8 hours in one day going somewhere is easily doable. (as in 800 km in 8 hours with a few 10-30 minute breaks for gasoline or food). It doesn't seem like that's a particularly normal thing for a European to do.

And I mean, this is exactly 100% my experience currently. Our sedan could use replacement, it's about to hit the 200k miles mark, and given it's primarily used by my wife for inter-town transit, I would happily buy her an electric car, but a new electric car is hopelessly out of our reach financially. And I make six figures!

    Hell, if somebody made something new like a base 
    model 90s Civic into a $15k EV without extra 
    luxury nonsense I don’t actually need

The cost of much of the "luxury nonsense" like power windows and heated seats is heavily amortized since the tooling etc. is shared with the more expensive vehicles, and the actual material costs are low.

Think about it; heated seats are just some simple heating coils. You can get something functionally equivalent that plugs into your cigarette lighter adapter for like $10 from Amazon. It ain't adding that much to the cost of your car.

It might sound silly, but not everyone looks at things through a utilitarian view.

The US is afraid of competition in the automotive industry and the current import tariffs and taxes on cars are a bit of an elephant in the room here, too.

Longer trips are actually easier in an EV because you have no expectation of being able to power through without stopping for breaks. And it adds the option of charging overnight at a hotel.

It's the medium distance trips that are harder in an EV. A 500-800km trip is something people without kids expect to be able to do without any breaks.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES0500000003

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0252881500A

There simply isn't data to back this up.

What you are referring to is capital gains (CEO pay) compared to hourly pay (employee pay), which is a misleading apples to oranges comparison.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.10440

EVs also have a battery which can be $20k, and electric motors which are $10k. This really makes them awful on the used market when the warranty runs out. If a used Model 3 needs a battery it is basically scrap.

There are a bunch more in this price range due to launch next year.

Cheap-ish electric cars exist, they're just not, generally, suited to US consumer preferences.

I assumed it was the infamous wage vs productivity chart.

https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

This certainly aligns a lot better with what they're saying than talking about executive pay (though I'm sure that's also part of the problem).

But yeah, don't buy a Prius Prime for the track. But it'll work great for going to the grocery store for a very wide variety of lifestyles and living situations.

Protectionism based tax and economic policy causes the exact same outcomes but far enough in the future and far enough away that the people who implemented it will be retired and/or dead and the people who voted for those people to do it will have had time to spin some counter narrative about it being an honest mistake, everyone thinking it was a good idea at the time, etc, etc.

My father for instance wouldn't get one because he will drive to the beach a couple times each summer, and does not want to have to deal with waiting while charging. However, he is also the type who stops for rests while driving. But he, being old and stubborn, didn't want to hear it.

See the CARB Regulation section here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_extender

Why not instead set a carbon price and otherwise let the market and owners decide what mix of gasoline and grid electricity to use?

Also, for the duration that most new car buyers own any car, any difference of maintenance liability of even a traditional ICE vehicle is close to negligible. Most new car buyers pay for a couple of years of fluid changes, tires, and brakes... then they trade in the car. They're going to pay similar costs no matter the architecture.

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/find-me-the-cpi-inflation-d...

New cars actually match the total average inflation the closest of any categories (22.3% for new cars vs 22.1% all items). Also interesting to note that food is up 30.7%, transport is up 39.5 % and shelter is up 27.6% in the past 5 years!

This is exactly the kind of problem regulations are meant to solve. Preventing false advertising and bringing information to all market participants make the market more efficient.

Though, I don't think it's possible to talk about this without also talking about the ludicrous salaries now drawn by the executives either.

One way of looking at it, validating the point that others have already made in their comments, it is that there are no bargain basement cars anymore; everything now comes with an automatic transmission, air conditioning, power locks and windows, cameras and sensors, etc. As recently as 2008 when I was buying my Prius, these things were optional on many models. Today's compact cars are, I think, the size of midsize cars from 20 years ago too.

It's kind of like housing in America where the cost per square foot didn't actually rise much in some places, but the average home is now twice the size, so the average home price doubled.

And is not tariffed to the point they are not competitive.

I'm on the fence as to whether tariffs are good or bad, but I do wonder if an external player might not be able to come in and shake up the US auto industry.

I feel like the working class in the U.S. are paying way too much for what amounts to a necessity for their livelihood: the automobile. We'd all benefit (the planet that is) if the options included inexpensive electrics rather than merely gas and diesel.

I think they're referring to the practice of making cars larger to pass as trucks so they are faced with more lax fuel-efficiency standards.

Do you really want a plugin car that loses its charge in 30 minutes?

Until the engine that powers a PHEV is nearly drop-in ready for a replacement (for example, going to your local auto parts store and buying a replacement like a battery) then companies need to have service technicians and production lines to support these "engines" (they're fancy generators at this point).

However, that would also require automakers to standardize to some degree or potentially cannibalize their own business.

We've already seen this with batteries/panels in the consumer space in regards to solar. I can buy whatever packs of cells I want, and as long as the voltages match up, I can mix and match to my hearts content. If I can only get service for my Jeep PHEV from Jeep because the drivetrain is a bespoke black box and parts are impossible to get, then we'll keep seeing customers continuing to opt for traditional gas vehicles or full EVs. PHEV is just too complicated to support long term (imo).

If 90% of your trips can be covered by a normal EV, then I would make the argument that you should buy one of those (secondhand even!) and then rent a vehicle for the instances where you need AWD. The fuel and tax savings should likely make up for it in the long run. For that one year that you don't go skiing in the mountains, then you're coming out on top financially!

The problem is that cars are not treated like most other commodities. E.g. You don't have to buy a license to use a microwave or register it with the government. The closest analog is if you live somewhere with sales tax.

With an electric car, how can one tell if the pack has been charged all the way up to 100% all the time (vs. the much better 40-70% range)?

This is the "term premium" of batteries it seems, and I honestly don't know if there's a reliable answer.

With the move to trucks and ethanol credits, those hacks are no longer cost-effective.

Curious if anyone knows — do people actually drive off the lot with a Tesla for $35,500?

There are also choices you can make during the registration process that will change the costs a bit. Quoting a fixed price for that would require yet more small print disclosing that certain choices were made.

I just don't see how it works out. Registration costs money. Not just when you buy the car, but over and over and over throughout the time you own it. You should know this as a driver. Further, the registration cost does not vary by dealer, so you don't need to know it in order to negotiate the best price.

I see a Model 3 Long Range rear wheel drive listed for $42,490 in their new vehicle configurator: https://www.tesla.com/model3/design#overview

30' are enough to go to work, where I can recharge during the day for the return leg. 30' are enough for any daily errand, too, so that would not be a problem.

Finally, for long trips, I'd use it as a "real" car with its internal combustion engine.

A lot of people do a lot of bad thinking when they say "oh, well, inflation is umptybumpkins percent, so the fact that cars are that much more expensive is 'just' inflation, and thus isn't anything".

But inflation is prices going up. When the various sources release "how large inflation is", they are telling you "this is how much prices went up". Ignoring prices going up because "oh, the prices went up because of inflation" is basically using the thing's own existence to argue that it doesn't exist, which, while abstractly sort of impressive, is not strong thinking.

There are some arguments about what causes prices to go up, but that's a separate question.

My observations, which certainly don't reflect the current state of the tech (although if I'm buying a used EV, I'm not buying the current tech). But that's my bias nonetheless. I do think I overemphasized this, though, because while this is what makes me shy away from the idea of used EVs, it's not the reason why I avoid buying cars that are too new (which includes pretty much all EVs).

GP's argument can be countered with basically every hybrid getting better mileage than its ICE sibling in city traffic.

Correct. Instead of a vague "registration fees may apply" disclaimer now there's a "registration fees assuming <city>, <state>" disclaimer. It's definitely not worse for anyone, and is arguably better for the customers who will register in <city>, <state>. That's a green light for a utilitarian.

Yes? Probably half of all my drives are 30 minutes or less, round trip. Some get closer to 40ish minutes of driving on battery, which would cover more like 90% of my drives.

AFAIK it's not (usually?) two drive trains, it's one electric drive train and a generator that's way smaller than a normal gasoline engine.

Some of the brands you listed aren't even really available in the US, or if they are that are 100% marked up with tariffs.

Big cars are definitely a thing in the US, but I'd kill for a ~$20k smaller EV hatch commuter to swap out my Model 3.

I don’t know how many people actually opt for the lowest end version of Teslas but I believe you can get them with essentially no more difficulty than any other version.

Dealerships generally get your name and phone number if you call them to ask about the price including fees and taxes. If you make them post defaults online, they get nothing from you. Clearly better.

> There are also choices you can make during the registration process that will change the costs a bit.

I'm curious about this. Do you have some examples?

Besides GP is also talking about things like the shipping fee, which are decidedly not variable or unknown. The dealership knows how much it costs them to ship the car from the factory and how much they want to charge you. They just choose not to disclose it.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

Your nominal charts are extremely misleading. Real wages have gone up about 10% since the GFC. Is it up? Yeah, but that is quite a tiny amount annually, not even an additional pack of gum.

So if you're looking for a car with the least amount of battery degradation between purchase and EOL, buying a used EV rather than new is actually the better decision.

Getting all of that capability in one car is very convenient. We replaced an 11 year old gas vehicle, and I don't expect that this PHEV one will last us as long. But it was the right car for us in our current situation.

At the same time, politicians will talk about the dangers of climate change and how we should all try hard to mitigate it. I guess some solutions just don't have the right story to it.

I do agree that the situation we are in now is due to lack of investment in EV/associated tech starting 1.5-2 decades ago. China has invested over 200 billion in EV+Solar and are reaping the rewards.

I don't think we can keep killing off entire industries and expect it to work out in the long run. At some point, what's left? WalMart?

I'd feel a lot better about the state of the battery if I bought one used, rather than the state of the ICE. It's possible to borescope it, but you have no way of telling how long the previous owner went between oil changes, if they flogged it out to redline regularly, etc.

I'll believe in the cheap Tesla when it arrives.

Ultimately, you CAN "win" by doing really well with a low-end model, but the chance of losing big is there, too.

PHEV isn't that much more complex than an ICE. The transaxle is typically mechanically simpler, and you have two electric motor/generators instead of an electric motor (starter) and an electric generator (alternator). There's a big battery you need to find room for, and the power wiring. And the engine control is significantly different, but if it doesn't work, swap the ECU works as well for an ICE and PHEV.

The other 10% are beyond any practical battery range, so a BEV isn't an option.

Yeah, we could go back to suction cup phone mounts on the windshield if we had to, but that feels pretty stupid when the car has a 12" screen in the dashboard.

You can get an EV, and then have to deal with half a dozen barely competent charging networks each with their own donkey, slow and insecure app, their own quirks and pricing schemes, etc. For some, the tradeoff is worth it, for others it isn't.

You can also get a PHEV, which could allow you to use one car for commuting purely on electric power - even if you are lugging around an entire ICE power train - and then also take the family out to the countryside over the weekend. Without the having to deal with a bunch of annoyed passangers when you are stuck midway through your journey and the charging station you are trying to use is giving you the massively helpeful error message of "Charging failed, please try again later".

[0] https://www.autoinsurance.com/research/car-ownership-statist...

I have a hard time imagining switching to a full EV or going back to traditional ICE.

They have the mechanical complexity of both, in a package of roughly the same size. And usually far smaller batteries and thus far less battery-only range than a pure EV. There are plenty of downsides.

Isn't this a natural consequence of capitalism in entrenched industries?

I'm not sure in which "best of both worlds" a standard hybrid is better than a PHEV - a PHEV allows for cheaper fuel (grid electricity) when it's available. That being said, the extra cost is associated with larger batteries than standard hybrids. As batteries come down in price / size, I'm not sure why people would want a standard hybrid over a PHEV.

I email, not call, and I lie. About my name, phone number, all of it. Best they will ever get is zip code. They could post defaults, but then I still don't know the actual OTD price -- it's already a hassle today because I have to be aware that dealers will advertise discounts that are only available in-state, and only mention that detail in the small print. I live in a metro that spans two states so this is common.

> I'm curious about this. Do you have some examples?

My state has a plethora of plate designs, and how much you pay depends on which you pick (it's really just a scheme for getting more revenue, of course). I can also choose (dependent on the vehicle, not all qualify) to pay for an extended registration period.

> They just choose not to disclose it.

I agree that they should disclose it. And they are required to by law. It's on the Monroney sticker, and it is included under "Total MSRP".

All they do is slightly improve fuel efficiency; but they cost more to buy, and cost more to maintain. I had to dump my first hybrid because I couldn't find anyone to fix it.

The way to think of it is that a hybrid (both traditional and PHEV,) has more parts than an ICE car, which has more parts than an EV. It's more things that can fail as the car gets old, and more things to pay for when the car is new.

Edit: I should add that hybrids were good for automakers to dip their toe in the water for electrification: IE, get the supply chain working and get institutional knowledge. But, that ship sailed 10 years ago.

My impressions had been that it largely mirrors the EV market: A few early PHEV models (such as the BMW i3) had poor battery management leading to unreliable battery packs. This was fixed in subsequent generations and is not a problem unless you are scraping the bottom of the used market. That's much the same as how EV batteries are generally reliable unless you buy early versions of certain problematic models (particularly the Nissan Leaf).

There are 300 million Americans. Why should ~1% get to hold the remaining 99% hostage?

It might be thirty minutes on the highway, as new PHEV cars have ranges in the 30-40 miles range. But if you're driving in the city, 30 miles is enough to get you basically anywhere you want to go and back, even if traffic makes it a 2 hour trip.

Truth is not many want to risk buying a used electric car and the depreciation reflects that.

PHEVs are lovely to drive, and availability of gas stations means almost no planning is needed. Fuel low, stop in for 5 minutes and good to go for hundreds of miles (current one does 500-600/tank depending on conditions)

I'd love to live in that world though. Smaller, lighter, lower-speed vehicles. Bicycles. Walkable neighborhoods. It'd be great.

But we can't have those nice things, because most Americans have atrocious taste -- and the ones who do have good taste, you can't afford to live next to.

So, if "30 minutes" was actually how you measured range (and not in miles), the average worker in the longest group would burn fuel for 3 minutes, instead of 33 minutes. This is 90% less fuel than a traditional hybrid car would use in the same time.

I picked up a used 2023 for $14k last month. Hertz is unloading their fleet of EV's, so they're ridiculously cheap if you don't mind driving a former rental car.

I suspect what will happen is that cheap Chinese imports will come into the USA but only for select manufacturers who benefit the current administration. So no cheap byd’s but possibly cheap Tesla’s.

BMW i3 owner here. The i3 never had such issues and has been praised for its overall great engineering (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjPIuLz5VFI and https://evclinic.eu/2024/11/03/which-used-ev-to-buy-a-beginn...). It is also not a PHEV but an EV that had an option for a range extender.

I don't get it. We already have an EV. Why would I buy more EVs? The one that gets commuted in every day is already in our driveway. It already does the work. It doesn't need replacing, or adding to.

I'm a car person. There are so many cars I want to own in my life, so much to experience. I will admit I briefly considered buying a 10 year old BMW i3 BEV because it seemed like a fun runabout for not much money, but most of the _other_ EVs on the market serve the "practical" market, or are too expensive. I bought a Fiat 500 Abarth because it's an absolute insane hoot to drive. I bought a roadster. These are not exactly markets served by EVs. At the very least, we need another decade or two of sales to build up the inventory of interesting/unique/quirky models that get introduced by manufacturers over time.

But mostly, I want something fun to drive with character- a nice gearshift, an exhilarating powerband, ... not another competent appliance. We have a competent appliance at home.

The EV market isn't saturated, but just because an EV owner doesn't serially buy EVs doesn't mean the shine has come off. It just means the 100,000 mile, 6 year old Model 3 does exactly what it did the day we bought it, and there's no reason to replace it.

May be the lead in Chinese EV and battery industries is not purely technological, it is also the supply chain and scale developed over the years.

All this talk assumes that USA or Western countries have always had a level playing field whereas companies like Boeing or Airbus are prime counter examples

> PHEV isn't that much more complex than an ICE.

I've been an owner/operator of two Gen3 Prii for 14 years and agree in practice even though in theory I would agree with the complexity argument. The one maintenance hit for both was for the vacuum pump needed for brakes/etc because the car cannot assume the engine is always running.

Toyota has moved to hybrid only for the Camry and Sienna. This is an indicator to me that technology maturity and US manufacturing is where it needs to be for broad adoption.

As I said, every country does it. It is rational to protect your own manufacturing industry. China does it. We do it. European countries do it. Just because we protect our own industry does not mean we have to protect China's interests too. That's their problem.

Price is not the thing holding back EV adoption. The people who are in the $20k car market don't own their own homes and don't have anywhere to plug their theoretical EV into consistently.

EVs as they are now are only as successful as they are because of a set of diehard futurists with cash to burn and excessive government subsidy.

The US is one crisis away from our expensive to maintain road infrastructure being unsustainable. The American people are one crisis away from their $60k SUV being worth nothing and still owing a four figure note against it. They're also one fuel crisis away from being unable to pay to use it. And we don't really have any alternatives at a scale to handle those sorts of things.

We're really going to have egg on our face at some point. And the only option will be to import affordable EVs the rest of the world has been building and developing.

My credit union recently sent me an email telling me I can be approved for up to $70K for an auto loan, this is insane! When we allow competitiveness or temptation to decide how much money we spend, we lose every time. The only way to get Tesla to offer that $25K car is to stop buying the more expensive ones.

That setup is a dream for a lot of people, but it's not always easy to make happen depending on state regulations (and how powerful the utilities there are)...

So for example, if the goal is to stimulate domestic automakers to be more competitive without unnecessarily risking killing them off entirely, a moderate tariff that pushes the price of ultra cheap foreign cars up to a level that’s reasonably achievable by the domestic automakers but still well below the average price could be a good thing.

Where tariffs are just plain bad is when they’re so high that domestic manufacturers don’t even have to think about trying to compete and can continue to drive up prices unabated.

In Europe the numbers are even worse. I'm fairly convinced only rich people and businesses buy new cars

What it means that if you count what percentage of car parts are made in America, Tesla has higher percentage that other brands, even those you might consider "more" American, like GM or Ford. All Teslas sold in America are assembled in America (California or Texas). Ford Mustang, for example, is assembled in Mexico.

As far as I know Tesla never sold Chinese built cars in US. They used Chinese manufacturing (CATL) and Korean batteries in some model, but also manufactured batteries in US (Nevada, with Panasonic) and are expanding battery production in US with 4680 (used in Cybertruck).

Cheaper Teslas are coming to US but they'll be manufactured in US (Texas). Tesla told us that they'll start making a cheaper model sometime in 2025.

Typed this before I saw that you said expensive. I’ll leave my comment anyway.

Seems like the utilities aren't involved at all?

Cheap storage actually makes grid defection a possibility for a ton of people these days. Especially when you start considering the cost of upgrading 100 amp service to 200 amp or similar. Once you've added a bit of battery, might as well go a bit more, and use your vehicle for additional backup when necessary.

People having 70kWh or more of mobile battery in the garage is going to change the calculation for a lot of people. Many people who would never install solar unless it saves them money will also spend a tooooooon of money on a big truck for aesthetic reasons, and then find that it makes solar a cheaper propositon.

Musk himself has stated bluntly that USA made teslas are lower quality and more expensive so you can see the desire to shut down the US plants and bring in Chinese made Teslas and he clearly has some political sway now.

If we had a functioning housing market, you'd see something pretty similar there too. The wealthiest would be the ones paying for nearly all the new construction, instead of driving up the cost of housing for everyone else.

I'll be squarely in the have-not camp, eager to serve our rich robot-assisted overlords.

The median household income is ~$75k. There's ~131M households in the US. This means there are 65M households making more than $75k/yr.

But yes, generally speaking wealthier people are the ones buying new cars with a lot of people buying used models.

I'm not yet convinced that BYD cars ARE well made yet though. When Hyundai had a similar amount of mistrust from American consumers, they improved their standing by offering a very compelling warranty, 100k miles or 10 years. The problem is I don't know if I can trust BYD the COMPANY that much.

I’d really love to see an EV that’s in line with the virtues of the Honda Fit, Honda Element, and Toyota Matrix — not sexy or fancy, but cheap, insanely practical little “everything cars” that can take on anything you throw at them with tons of cargo space, fold flat seating, stock roof rack, etc — cars that are made for doing things instead of impressing the neighbor or acting as a status symbol.

There’s absolutely nothing like this in the EV space right now. The closest thing that’s upcoming is Rivian’s R3, which isn’t likely to be as cheap as the Fit/Element/Matrix were.

You can't eat the cake and have it. Either you follow the fair trade requirements or don't complain about others not doing the same. If you say standards, then follow by lead and respect them.

Also I do not think every country does that. There are too much pressure by the US, China and EU on these countries to prevent many from doing that.

Any bit of telemetry in a modern EV is also in a modern ICE. There's no reason to hate on EV's for telemetry, you have to hate on the entire modern auto industry.

This is a complex problem, and when the US is the importer from the world, the mere decision to stop importing would send shockwaves through trade everywhere.

Since the local power company here is only paying 10 cents per kw for solar power (which they resell at greater profit), I decided to run a small crypo miner and I still have excess power on a 22kw system.

I don't know of anywhere where its not legal to be solar powered but there were several thousand in costs associated with engineer plans and permits.

All Bolts were available for a recall maintenance where the entire battery was replaced under warranty.

I know Elon has his ear, but still…

[0]https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=25000&year1=20...

Their purpose is to "save the US automotive industry".

The idea that billionaires and car manufacturers would be motivated by anything else is laughable.

Support public transportation.

There are also inexpensive cars. A local dealer has new Mitsubishi Mirage Hatchbacks available for $17k all day, every day.

People don't want them.

They're not being tricked, cajoled, strong-armed, forced, pressured, misguided, or hoodwinked.

American consumers WANT and CAN AFFORD gigantic $65k SUVs with heated and cooled seats and wifi and huge screens that take up the entire dashboard.

"Oh but they're prioritizing higher-marg..." yeah no shit Sherlock literally all a consumer has to do is not buy one of those.

But Toyota can slap a limited edition retro paint job on an SUV, mark it up $5k and the dealer can mark it up $10k and people will walk past the cheap cars to sign up for a waiting list to get a chance to earn an opportunity to put down a non-refundable deposit to maybe, potentially, pay $75k for an middling SUV with a limited edition retro paint job.

Yes. It's a huge expense for a lot of Americans. Either the primary expense, or just behind housing.

> assuming people don't want to drive vehicles older than a decade

That's not a great assumption, especially if you're looking at people with less money. The normal lifespan of a car is 15-25yrs, and _somebody_ is driving those cars.

As you suspect though, the flow of new vehicles largely goes into wealthier people (average incomes in the $100k range), and after 6-10yrs the used cars trickle down to everyone else and live ~20yrs in total. There exist a number of exceptions (e.g., people getting a new car for reliability and not realizing that you could replace the engine and transmission three times over for the extra premium they're paying -- trying to do the right thing and make a fiscally responsible decision but accidentally doing something more expensive), but those aren't the norm.

I understand the desire to have a strategic reserve of manufacturing capacity. However, the US also subsidizes the US auto industry heavily by e.g. bailing out GM and Chrysler. It frustrates me that US car manufacturers continue to make exclusively heavy, low-efficiency vehicles. Give me something inexpensive, safe, efficient, reliable, and I'll buy it.