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The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

(www.wsj.com)
158 points voisin | 1 comments | 17 Nov 24 23:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.2s | 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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vundercind ◴[18 Nov 24 15:20 UTC] No.42173130[source]▶
I can't make great use of a full EV but would love more AWD PHEV options, of which there are currently few and they're mostly very expensive. A PHEV can be my everything-car that runs entirely on electricity for 90% of trips. I assume there's some reason they're not a more widely-supported option, but damn, I wish they were more common.
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1. idontwantthis ◴[18 Nov 24 17:05 UTC] No.42174402[source]▶
I haven’t seen one that is cost competitive with its model’s regular hybrid version. The EV adds thousands of dollars, but only saves you about $3 per day in gas. For example, The Kia niro is $9k more for phev and saves you 0.6 gallons of gas per day so it would take over 10 years for the cost to balance out. The funny thing is, the more efficient the gas engine is, the less gas the phev can save you.