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The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

(www.wsj.com)
152 points voisin | 3 comments | 17 Nov 24 23:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.569s | source
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bartvk ◴[18 Nov 24 00:05 UTC] No.42168473[source]▶
https://archive.ph/9oIT4

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.

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rootusrootus ◴[18 Nov 24 00:10 UTC] No.42168514[source]▶
> the EV car market is lacking demand

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.

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cosmic_cheese ◴[18 Nov 24 00:18 UTC] No.42168553[source]▶
Yep. Midrange-to-expensive EVs have been around for long enough that pretty much everybody in those market segments who are currently interested have already bought one. Additionally, the segment has been flooded with midsize SUVs, with the odd midsize sedan — variety is sorely lacking.

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.

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matthewdgreen ◴[18 Nov 24 15:11 UTC] No.42173000[source]▶
A big part of that market is being addressed by used EVs, which are getting much cheaper right now as they age out of new-car-buyers' households. https://www.kbb.com/cars-for-sale/used/tesla
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JohnFen ◴[18 Nov 24 15:18 UTC] No.42173113[source]▶
I wouldn't buy a used EV because the battery pack is that much closer to needing to be replaced, which effectively totals the vehicle.
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IneffablePigeon ◴[18 Nov 24 15:25 UTC] No.42173197[source]▶
One could say the same about a combustion engine, really. Battery packs last way, way longer than most people think because they analogise it to phone batteries which are quite different. The resale value of a degraded pack is also going to be higher than most people assume, I think. Unfortunately we have not had plentiful EVs with good battery packs for long enough to show this to the average consumer.
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1. _huayra_ ◴[18 Nov 24 15:39 UTC] No.42173378[source]▶
I guess the question comes down to how does one know if the battery pack is good? When I buy a regular used gas car, I can get all sorts of diagnostics about it out of the OBD2 port, pull a spark plug and stick a scope into the combustion chamber to see if there's any issues (e.g. on the walls).

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.

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2. lutorm ◴[18 Nov 24 15:56 UTC] No.42173580[source]▶
At least on our PHEV, when you read out the battery module state with an OBDII reader, you get to know not only the current estimated capacity but also how much time it's spent at various states of charge, how much time it's spent being charged and discharged at different currents, how much time it's spent at different temperatures, and a completely absurd amount of other diagnostics.

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.

3. vel0city ◴[19 Nov 24 16:46 UTC] No.42185446[source]▶
With my electric car, I can plug into the ODB port and get highly detailed information on the health of the battery. Far deeper insights than what I get plugging into an ODB port on an ICE.

Getting into the technician menus on Teslas is well documented, they also report a ton of data and can do a lot of diagnostics on the battery.