The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

I can't believe that the average price of a car in the U.S. is almost $50k. For rapidly depreciating assets.

Here I am working out TCO costs for a range of mid-sized cars for my next purchase, and trying to decide if the extra $2k for a Prius Prime over a Prius will beat the differential in fuel costs for my driving situation. I feel like a chump, but I know it's the smarter thing to do with my money.

I coworker of mine just spent $100k on a regular old pickup truck that is planned to spend less than 5% of the time doing anything other than commuting him back and forth to work. It doesn't fit in any of the parking garages around here, or in his garage -- he has to park it at the other side of a surface lot because it doesn't fit in the normal spots. It gets like 11 mpg and uses the 92 octane fuel.

Americans won't buy cheap cars, they won't buy upmarket small cars, but they'll burn their children's college fund into the ground for a 2 second gain on 0-60 and bad ergonomics.

I can afford the fancy car, but I'd rather turn $100k into $200k in my index funds and buy an entire apartment in Spain overlooking the Mediterranean with the gains.

We can have nice things, but this is why we can't have affordable things.

Some Americans. The average car in the US is 12 years old. I just checked my local craigslist, most cars of that age are under 10k, and almost none are more than 20k. Since that is average we can assume cars of that age will run (with maintenance) for another decade and so shouldn't be very expensive. Of course at that age almost nothing is electric.

> coworker of mine just spent $100k on a regular old pickup truck

> It gets like 11 mpg and uses the 92 octane fuel.

I understand hating on pickup trucks is an easy way to farm upvotes on HN, but there is no 'regular pickup truck' in existence that gets 11 mpg. The closest that comes to that is the F-150 Raptor with turbocharged V8 which is a preposterous performance vehicle with a racing engine. It is a luxury item. Yet for some reason we don't criticize people with the same disdain who buy and drive sports cars which get as bad or even worse mpg. I guess the Lambo drivers never need to haul lumber.

The F-150 is also offered in hybrid (which gets > double that mpg) and all electric drivetrains.

I will make the equally presumptuous assumption that since you've narrowed your choices to "Prius or Prius" you harbor some grudges against pickup owners.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecnS1Ygf0o0 I've been waiting for the chance to use this

The grudges are valid.

The default in America is to make everything out to be individualistic, but the rest of us have to bear the very real costs of the externality of pickups, not just limited to pollution but also safety, land use, etc.

> Americans won't buy cheap cars

Sure they will, they'll even buy cheap EVs.

The highest lifetime EV sales in the US is the Leaf, Model 3/Y, and Bolt. They aren't at the top of the list because they're the best cars on the market, but because they are the cheapest.

Lamborghini drivers obeying the traffic rules aren't creating a hazard.

Aftermarket headlights blazing directly into the eyes of oncoming drivers are creating a hazard. As is the fact that it takes up a lot of road space and has poor visibility for small objects in front of the hood.

The external effects of large pickup trucks are drastically more than that of a small sports car, in ways that are more immediate than climate change.

Large pickup trucks take up a lot more space on the road and parking lots, are harder to see around, and when they get into accidents they cause a lot more damage and injuries to people both in and out of cars. There is a very different visceral response to a large pickup truck tailgating you with its driver perched above you, than a Lambo or 911 doing the same.

Agreed. It's really amazing what they've done in recent years.

I ended up in a fullsize primarily because I got it cheaper than the midsizes I was looking at. The midsize market is priced really oddly.

Anywho, I was blown away that it's getting me 23MPG. That's what my previous midsize was giving me. That's nearly double what fullsizes got in the 90s.

> there is no 'regular pickup truck' in existence that gets 11 mpg

Point but e.g. the 2024 Silverado gets 12mpg in city driving. Go to any office parking lot here and you’ll see a lot of that size truck which have clearly never been used harder than going to Costco - and even the better ones are barely approaching ⅔ of the mpg of the pickup my grandparents bought in the 1980s.

I do agree that from a pollution standpoint we should treat all inefficient vehicles as the problem but large trucks and SUVs have significant immediate downsides for everyone around them. They’re far more lethal when they hit pedestrians or smaller vehicles, they produce higher tire and brake particulates which are known to cause health issues, they take more space to park, and at least where I live there are streets which could previously handle bidirectional traffic but now require someone to pull over to let oncoming traffic pass because there isn’t enough room for two large vehicles. In contrast, sports car drivers pose less risk because they’re low to the ground and the drivers are far more likely to see you and avoid an accident.

> they produce higher tire and brake particulates which are known to cause health issues

Interesting you mention tire particulates, because there is nothing worse for this than - brace yourself - electric vehicles.

https://grist.org/transportation/electric-vehicles-are-a-cli...

> Americans won't buy cheap cars

Not from a new car dealership, no. They'll buy cheap cars, but the mere act of driving a new car off the lot is a huge deprecation event in the life of the car. Why would price sensitive buyers go to the dealership?

I think it's a strange argument: that buying a truck is "worse" than buying a sports car. I think the term "apples and oranges" is applicable here. The former are both vehicles and the latter are both fruit, but otherwise have fairly different cost/benefit.

We're getting the worst of both worlds with these atrocious EV trucks - Big, heavy, and relying on electric torque to be bigger and heavier.

It is also the smugness that gets me. Huge trucks are a signal saying "Fuck you, got mine". Their first strike, I'm merely retaliating

I’m aware but that article is overstating the problem: the issue is weight so the problem comes back to the form factor. Every office worker LARPing as a rancher is making the world worse buying an unnecessary truck regardless of the power train. EV trucks and SUVs are bad, but so are the ICE versions.

I do think part of it is how darned long cars last now.

I have an 18 year old car that I purchased used long ago and currently has no mechanical issues. I've had a few repairs but nothing terribly expensive. I have no interest in replacing it.

When you think about it, people who are frugal will buy practical and cost effective cars and drive them for a decade or more (that is, if they buy a car at all!). That means they either never buy new at all, or when they do they do so only seldom.

People who are chasing the new shiny will continue to churn through new shiny. And of course they want to pay a lot to get only the shiniest.

So I can see why the average new car cost would creep up, because buying a new car at all is a luxury in most cases.

> but there is no 'regular pickup truck' in existence

I grew up in deep country. I've owned my share of pickups. When you need them, they're invaluable. When you don't, they're basically the most inconvenient daily drivers you can have short of a box truck, an RV, or a main battle tank. Outside of a fairly narrow range of medium-sized hauling activities, they aren't really even terribly good at carrying things.

I hate talking about things as "it's more than anybody could need" because you end up with needs-based conceptualization of lifestyles with people eating diets of only sweet potatoes, commuting on onewheels, and living in Hong-Kong style coffin apartments. But these things are not only obnoxious main character syndrome demonstrators, they're actively dangerous to everybody in and around them even when they're following the rules of the road.

If I was king for a day, I'd make driving one require a special class of license and tax them extra if they aren't being used for active work purposes like they're intended. They should be in the same class of vehicle as commercial box trucks, because that's what they're supposed to be for.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if some type of vehicle fad takes over the U.S. at some point where people just start driving converted box trucks or RVs around as daily drivers, then complain that all the parking garages and train overpasses are too low for their 13 and a half foot tall lifestyle decisions.

I think you just made the case for some flavor or another of socialism.

Your index fund grows on the activity of people who spend 100k on a consumable item. Good for them, they can work their whole life if they like. You can relax and let compounding do the rest.

If you're an American wondering why you're forced to buy shitty overpriced Teslas instead of those $15k BYD Dolphins, here's Janet Yellen screeching about how unfair it is that China uses its labor force to manufacture consumer goods instead of creating millions of bullshit make-work financialization jobs like good liberal democracies https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/yellen-intends-warn-...

The average car in the US? Or the average daily driver car?

Cars just don't disappear, so all vehicles would "polute" the statistics right?

I have a feeling that if BYD was a Taiwanese company it’d be fine, could there be a concern with the Xi government’s bellicosity?

From what I have gathered, I assume average age of registered vehicles. I would also assume that collector cars would "pollute" the statistics, unless they are filtered out -- the details of the research are not stated.

https://www.spglobal.com/mobility/en/research-analysis/avera...

I'd bet the Tundras get similar in practice. They're rated higher but the turbo is practically always-on in stop and go traffic.

City dwellers will spend $2500 a month for 400 sq feet of rented living space and laugh at people paying $50k for a car.

My guess would be the difference in perception comes from the fact sport cars tend to be smaller and sit lower, which makes pedestrians and motorist feel safer and less intimidated around them. In addition their general rarity means most people still view them as novelties rather than something to actually take a side on. That being said though it is 100% true performance engines are the absolute worst in terms of economy/emissions/noise; most truck engines are really just oversized economy engines and have the efficiency to match.

The difference is that new cars are safe cars. Old cars are death traps.

If you value your life you will be buying the new shiny every 5 years or less.

Is there evidence for the rationale for five years or less for the age of a car?

I hate all the entertainment systems and believe anything beyond Bluetooth and no complex entertainment system to be a lethal distraction that makes cars just as unsafe as older or weaker safety controls.

You said it yourself — their dwelling is the entire city. Those 400sqft are where they sleep and relax but most of their living probably happens outside. Different strokes and all that.

>The highest lifetime EV sales in the US is the Leaf, Model 3/Y, and Bolt.

The cheapest Model 3 is $42,500. The cheapest Model Y is $45,000.

Is that cheap?

The Leaf ($30,000) and Bolt ($27,500) are cheap_er_ (by a lot), but they are still not what I (and presumably parent) would consider cheap.

Socialism is good, actually.

Both parties are in the wrong on this. Americans (and others) would be wealthier and the world would decarbonize faster if the tariffs on China were lifted but it is what the people want

It isn't just aftermarket headlights anymore, some are blinding from the factory.

The Leaf was famously available for $10-$12k at one point.

Same with a hotel. The hotel is where I spend most of my time unconscious. Other than a few select destinations, why would I spend a fortune at a place where I’ll mostly be asleep?

Or maybe we could just not make literally everything a tragedy of the commons or a race to the bottom?

It was 30k new, but you could lease it for nearly nothing (a friend got $120/month) or buy it off-lease for about 10k. I bought one for 10k in 2016, drove it as a daily commuter until 2022 and sold it for 6k.

While it’s certainly true that old cars are death traps I’d live to see a source showing that car safety is increasing at notable levels every five years. Federal safety standards haven’t.

I don’t think that’s a good comparison. If you’re buying a car primarily for commuting a $10k car is going to achieve that purpose just as well as a $50k car. But $2500 on a small apartment in a city gives a very different lifestyle than one in a big house in the suburbs. I’m not going to make a value judgement either way there but there is a clear difference in functional result.

Madness. And people poke fun at annual phone upgraders. The big fancy car habit is far worse.

I think of the last generation of pro-level film cameras.

They were expensive, but well designed and durable, yet ... who wants to pay in time and money to develop film every 36 pictures?

I think some really good gas cars only make sense if you use them infrequently to haul heavy things or lots of passengers.

Otherwise it is getting cheaper to run an EV - you might even charge it with electricity you capture yourself.

Also I tend to think that they are often rather expensive and not as robust. So people who drive them do not want to damage. As repairs tend to be expensive too. So in general they avoid accidents, unless they are going to speed off the road...

You mean like the police in America? Or elementary and high school? Or fire brigades, interstate highways, border security or the thousands of other things you rely on every single day that are 100% socialism.

Develop film takes time, same as why somebody wait for hours and hours just to get an EV charged? The “last generation” can “recharge” to 450miles in 3 minutes at a gas station then move on.

It is one of those 'was it really that long ago? I am getting old' moments to actually look this up, but the last major safety features which moved the needle on keeping you alive in a car were the mandates for side-impact protection and anti-lock braking systems. Both are more than ten years old.

I think you would be hard-pressed to name a single innovation from the past five years which has increased your lifespan in a car as either a driver or a passenger. Given the fact that things like adaptive braking, lane-following assist, and blind-spot sensors are old enough to be showing up in low-end cars these days I cannot name a single new or shiny safety feature which would not be available in a mid-tier car from 2014. Can you?

> uses the 92 octane fuel

There's no evidence that higher octane fuel is required or leads to performance gains in excess of the cost bump.

I would never, EVER, buy any BYD or any car manufactured in China. Support local brands who manufacture locally.

High compression engines require high octane to avoid knock. It's not about performance. An engine with a turbo or super charger will always need higher octane fuel.

I have yet to see a study showing efficiency gains, or losses, are greater than the price difference in fuel types.

As I said. It's not about efficiency.

Knock (pre-ignition) will destroy an engine. I have a naturally aspirated infinity, but with compression ratio around 13:1 it calls for premium.

Believe me I wouldn't pay for it if it wasn't necessary. It's still cheaper than a new engine.

My experience with trying really low-ball hotels is not great. I rarely stay in really luxe places but I do usually go for some midrange business hotel in a city.

Why?

edit: presumably you don't (or can't) hold this position for electronics or a myriad of other devices you already own. Why are cars different?

Adaptive cruise was still higher end at that time. Certainly not ubiquitous at the mid tier. Heck, it's barely ubiquitous now. Both adaptive cruise and automatic emergency braking are game changer features for safety on the highway.

Knocking and engine efficiency are inter-related.

That being said, unless you are constantly flooring the accelerator and / or doing a lot of track driving, it seems challenging to make a modern (and properly functioning) engine knock on a persistent basis (irrespective of octane).

If your engine does not require the higher octane, then no efficiency will be noticed and you're just burning money. If your engine is specified to take the higher octane, then you can notice an efficiency bump over running a lower octane fuel in most modern engines. The engine computer will adjust the valve timing to prevent predetonation with the lower octane fuel at the cost of efficiency.

Adding octane to fuel isn't adding a booster. It's adding stability to the fuel so it can be run in a higher compression engine. If your engine doesn't reach that pressure then you'll notice no effect except your wallet getting lighter.

Seems like the kind of advice that was true up until about 10 years ago

AEB is pretty recent, though I'm not sure of the exact timeline, and it has already saved lives.

What do consider affordable? There are cheaper cars out there, a Kia Forte will run you $21k, but a new entry-level Honda Civic is $25k, with options it'll get above $30k.

It's not though. Going from a bare bones $10k car to a more expensive car that drives itself on the freeway is a huge difference. It's less effort to get from A to B in a car that has L2.5 self-driving like Ford's blue cruise. How tired you are after three hours of driving a shitty car with a bad wheel alignment so you have to jerk the wheel every once in a while to keep it on track, vs a new luxury car that keeps itself in the lane so you don't have to steer, makes a huge difference if you want to be useful when you get there.

Everyone says this but the number of accidents (of which injurious, let alone fatal ones are a small minority) the typical person gets into in a lifetime are low enough to make the tradeoff worthwhile.

>approaching ⅔ of the mpg of the pickup my grandparents bought in the 1980s.

It's for your own good, peasant. That 1989 S10 (or whatever else got mid 20s around that time) had basically no crash protection let alone ABS and ESC and.... and... and.......

> same as why somebody wait for hours and hours just to get an EV charged?

I spend hours a year more waiting for gas pumps for my ICE than I spend waiting on my EV to charge. And I put way more miles on my EV than my ICE.

I'd totally buy a phone that was mostly US produced if it was the same (or better) quality within ~30% of the same price.

I do tend to apply this same idea to a lot of things I buy. If there's an American version available with at least similar quality and some % of similar price, I'll pick the US one nearly every time. Goes even further when its something I know is made in my state, even further when it comes to the city I live in. The vast majority of the beer I drink is made in the city I live in, for example.

I didn't realize ICE vehicles don't have tires. News to me.

There is a slight increase in tire particulates, sure. A small increase. There's also a lot less brake particulates. And get this: there's no tailpipe emissions either.

So you are blaming your good liberal democratic goverment for not protecting your market enough which forces you to make a living on some bs job while at the same time you complain that the market is overly protected so you cant get a cheap dolphin.

The EV charges while you sleep. You always start your journey with a full tank.

If you can't do that then, yes, an EV is less convenient than a gas car that is true.

That’s comparing cars to cars. Trucks are worse.

Yeah, my point was mostly against luxe hotels as opposed to somewhere I know will be clean and comfortable to get a good night’s sleep, and close to the places I want to visit.

This is a weird hill to die on man. Modern ECUs are smart enough to tune the timings in to prevent knock when the wrong fuel is used, at the cost of both efficiency and fuel economy. "Runs" is not the same thing as "runs well"

Honestly I tried cheaper hotels and motels and often times I simply didn't sleep well there - usually due to some noise as some college or high school kids were running up and down the hallway outside or were partying in the room next door.

YMMV.

In fact, most don't. 3/4 of car sales in the US are used cars. The vast majority of Americans are driving used cars. Only relatively well-to-do people buy new cars. It might seem counterintuitive, but the stock of cars on the road is rotated around a lot, and new cars are only a small fraction of them.

> Support local brands who manufacture locally.

There are none. The Model Y is the closest with 70% of it made in either the US or Canada (the law does not require them to break it down to US only...) Every other car available for sale in the US has more than 30% manufactured outside of the US or Canada. And the big 3 are some of the worst offenders for offshoring their manufacturing out of the US.

There are several vehicle models such as the Tesla Model 3 which have >70% North American parts content.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/part-583-american-automobile-labeling-...

Not all forced induction engines always need higher octane fuel. A lot of the newer turbo engines in cheaper vehicles such as Subarus are specifically rated for 87 octane gasoline. They don't knock.

Ah, I used a third party source which was missing the Model 3 Long Range specifically, which is 75%. Maybe it was not listed because it is limited to that one trim. Then there's the Model Y and the Model 3 Performance at 70%. All other American brand vehicles are < 70% and most are 20-40%

The top vehicle from the big 3 is the Ford F150 at a whopping 45% US/Canada.

My point is that if you buy any car in the US, you are buying a vehicle with significant foreign manufactured content.

I'm still confused on how/why cars are different for you? here you're making a cost/benefit calculation but your original comment said you would "never" buy a chinese car. Why are cars so special?

Yo, an alignment is like $150. You shouldn't have any car on the road that is so bad you're jerking the wheel to keep it going straight. That's straight up dangerous. And if you're that bad at maintaining your car, your robot car isn't going to be any safer.

Are you familiar with Boyle's Law? You compress a gas and it heats? Higher compression of air/fuel lowers the detonation point. If your air/fuel mixture detonates at the wrong time in an engine, you will get damage. Higher octane fuels take higher temperatures to detonate.

That's why higher compression engines REQUIRE higher octane fuel, as the manufacturer will specify. Run without it, damage your engine and try to make a warranty claim. Good luck with that!

I am not the same person who said they would never buy a Chinese car. I might, but they'd have to be significantly cheaper while being pretty much the same quality. Quality also meaning parts availability and places willing to work on it and what not for the continued support of keeping that vehicle working for a long time.

And in the end that "$10k" Chinese car doesn't fit my needs in the same way a $14k US or Japanese car doesn't fit my needs. When I actually look at a vehicle that does do what I'm looking for, they're not too differently priced.

Note that the "$10k" car in China costs ~$22k in Mexico. So chances are, even without tariffs that car coming to the US would probably be $20k+, not $10k. Probably more, because BYD knows Americans would probably pay more in the end. That's without any tariffs applied.

Chances are though, a similar car to what I'd buy would be more along the lines of the BYD Seal, but even then that's a little smaller than what I'd like. Honestly the Mach E is pretty much the perfect sized vehicle for my family for the majority of our drives, so something like a large hatchback/small crossover is what I'm looking for but a full-sized sedan would do. That went on sale in Mexico without tariffs for 888,800 Mexican Pesos, or about $44k USD. A The 2025 Mach E pricing starts around $37k.

Used versions are cheap. (right now there are 5 under $3k)

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/cta?auto_make_model=niss...

Yes but some people need regularly-scheduled reminding.

A $100k pickup isn't a regular pickup, anymore than an $80k sedan is a regular sedan. It's gotta be more expensive than 95% of the pickups on the road. If it gets 11 mpg it must have a really beefy engine and be geared for towing. If it uses premium fuel, it's one of the badged models likely.

One thing that's odd about the pickup market is it isn't segmented into low tier/mid tier/luxury tier the way other vehicles are. The luxury version of a Toyota is a Lexus. The luxury version of an F-150 is still an F-150, just a different badge level. Your friend's is a luxury pickup.

If what you do 5% of the time absolutely requires a truck, you don't have many options. You can't rent a truck to tow easily and affordably. There are commercial truck rental places that do have vehicles you can tow with but if you're doing that even 2 days a month you might as well just buy the damn pickup.

And I'd focus on median prices a lot more than mean, though I'm sure there's an increase in that too.

Also, we drive a lot more miles than almost anyone, our gasoline is cheaper, our incomes are higher, and our cars last very long times and are safer than ever now. The average car is over a decade old now. When I was a kid, you got lucky if your odometer hit six figures, in fact some didn't even have that many digits! And I'm not that old.

The American car market is perhaps the best example of an efficient, highly competitive, well-regulated marketplace. Whatever the average price is, it's what it should be.

If you are going to count where they live to be the whole city, you should increase the rent they pay to cover the cost of the third spaces they use in the cities as well.

A slight increase? Particulates increase with the 4th power of weight, and EVs way a significant amount more.

That's been debunked. Tire particulates are mainly linked to weight, and electric cars tend to be heavier than comparable capacity gas cars. But:

- gas cars emit more brake pad particulates - EV have lower rolling resistance tires so at equal weight, they emit less tire particulates

So if comparing a pickup vs an EV, the pickup is heavier and will pollute more in terms of both tailpipe and tire particulates.

Go digging into the details of the comparison in the article above. They're comparing a Model Y to a Kia Niro FHEV.

https://www.emissionsanalytics.com/news/do-no-harm

The Model Y has +89% more volume. Its considerably bigger car with more torque. It's not a good comparison. And even though its 32% heavier and has a ton more torque, its tire wear was 26% greater. You're arguing it goes up by the fourth power, but it wasn't even a 1 for 1 increase on a car with considerably more torque. And besides, their testing shows the tire wear particulates for their comparison gas car as even higher than the Y.

Home ownership is a distant dream for most Americans, and the sort of rentals that have parking AND EV charging tend to be extremely pricy luxury new-builds.

Gas is unfortunately going to be around for a long, long time for normal working-class Americans.

I don't think it's malicious in most cases. As a counterpoint, most family members I know with absurdly large cars, either dimensionally or in terms of seat height aren't very confident drivers and the large vehicle makes them feel "safer" especially if they have kids in the car. I recognize it's not always the case but they didn't buy a large car to lord over other people on the road they did it for emotional piece of mind. I'm willing to bet a lot of people however wouldn't be willing to admit that that's why they prefer a large car out of some perceived weakness or the like.

Are you lucky enough to own your own house, do you put up with a corporate landlord/big condo, or are you in street parking?

That's incredibly wrong. 10-year old cars are quite safe.

Nah, it's the same game.

Now I think I know where you're pulling that fourth power from. You're probably thinking of road wear which does scale like that. But that's road wear, not tire wear, and doesn't result in the same airborne particulate issue here.

And even then, it's small potatoes compared to actual big trucks and busses rolling on the roads.

I live in a single family residence like the majority of households in the US.

My point still stands. Despite driving more miles on my EV my ICE wastes my time on pumping gas especially before all the time I waste with routine maintenance. I am far from alone.

Why would anyone waste their time going to gas stations all the time and wait for oil changes and have to deal with all that maintenance of things like timing belts and what not?

how is it efficient when there's regulation that prevents manufacturers from directly selling, and have to go through dealers?

Home ownership rate today is pretty similar to what it's been for decades.

An older "nice" car is also a lot nicer than a new economy car and in most cases even a newer luxury model car. There may be more bells and whistles which are nice on new cars but it's fairly evident they have skimped on elements of the suspension and body that reduce roughness and road noise. There's a very marked difference in quality of vehicles made before and after the "realignment" prompted by the great recession, even as those cars are approaching 14-16 years old.

Adaptive driving is a nuisance for me whenever I rent a new car (it seems most of the rentals have this feature). Those visual and audio cues going off when I am in the middle of changing lanes is very disconcerting - and makes me lose focus for a fraction of a second. I wish I could turn it off - but after one look at that hot mess on that center touch-screen I back off in repulsion.

(I also do not like the lights on the side mirrors that indicate a vehicle coming by. I constantly think - what about false positives - and then I double check my blind spot)

If only those 4 people that burned to death in a Tesla last week [1] would have a chance to revisit their vehicle choice...

[1] https://people.com/4-killed-after-tesla-crash-sparks-fire-in...

I do think CarPlay is very helpful for navigation, I mean, I can read map because I’m old but my kids and my wife when they’re driving need a onscreen display if they’re going somewhere new. And the CarPlay or similar provides a good navigation option that I think is safer than mounting a phone.

Anti-lock brakes, if I remember correctly, had essentially no safety effect in the real world. Stability control, on the other hand, dropped single car accidents by something like a third. Perhaps you were thinking of that?

Regardless of that, the threat environment has changed pretty dramatically in the last two decades. I gave up my 2006 VW sedan for a new SUV this year because the IIHS numbers had started to look bad for lighter vehicles.

https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-...

Back in 2006 the previous gen VW Passat was basically as safe as anything you could buy (according to their dataset). Now you need something a lot bigger to be upper tier.

The new vehicle is a plug-in so in the first 4 months of driving I've more than doubled my fuel efficiency. So there's that, anyway.

With PG&E it really feels like the cost to run an EV keeps increasing.

Usually they don’t beep on lane changes when you use the indicators before switching.

The lights in the side mirrors are also not removing the obligation to check your blind spot.

Both help, but don’t take away your responsibility as driver.

> If only those 4 people that burned to death in a Tesla last week [1] would have a chance to revisit their vehicle choice... >

Kind of a weird story for People magazine to be covering, but I guess any story with Tesla gets clicks. Doesn't say if the fire or the high speed impact killed those passengers.

Anyhoo, I'd bet those 140+ people killed by GMs ignition switch wish they had a chance to revisit their car buying choice.

Tesla sells directly but the market is not perfect. An imperfect market can still be efficient. It’s a spectrum not a binary.

I was thinking about road wear. I had thought the same equation applied to both tires and the road. Why wouldn't the increases in wear on both increase in the same way? (You seem to know why, so honest question, not snark)

It says the Kia has 50% as many emissions even once you add the tailpipe emissions. Because the larger Model Y tires offgas more.

Let me reiterate it again. The Kia is a much smaller car with way less torque. It is a poor comparison from the get-go. Go find a similar sized vehicle with a similar amount of torque. But this study is pretty heavily biased, so they chose their cars accordingly.

But let's continue on and see what it is you're trying to point out.

> Kia has 50% as many emissions

You're now talking about the VOCs table at the bottom. This is a pretty bullshit test overall.

> Large samples from one tyre on each vehicle were also taken and placed in a ‘microchamber’ heated to 20 degrees Celsius, around the temperature of a vehicle certification test, and held at that level for the same duration of the on-road EQUA test – around three-and-a-half hours. The off-gassed VOCs were analysed and quantified, and then scaled up by the relative surface area of the sample to that of all four tyres on the vehicle. The results are shown in the table below.

So, this isn't actually testing the tires under load on the car at all, they're just baking a small piece in the oven and scaling the resulting VOCs to the size of the tires. This test isn't testing the car, its testing the tire. There are no controls over this test. It's just a tire of an unknown age from one car with a part cut out and a tire of an unknown age from another car with a part cut out. The brands and models are pretty different, which could lead to pretty radical results.

If I put brand new tires on that Kia and used some pretty old ones on the Tesla those numbers would look radically different. Even two different models of tires from the same manufacturer could yield vastly different numbers. If you used the exact same model from the exact same manufacturer made at the same time the car with bigger tires would have the worst emissions, which says absolutely nothing about whether that's a tire going on an EV or a sedan with a hybrid engine or a truck with a DEF delete getting 6 MPG. See how that's then a pretty poor test?

Seriously friendo, read the studies you're wanting to use to talk about these things. There's so many absolutely bullshit studies trying to get you to think one way or another. Don't just go "table says 57%, ev bad!"

I don't fully know but it is probably something to do with the fact tires are designed to be more malleable and flexible than roads. The tire is also flexing and pushing on an air cushion while the road itself is being pressed against and having to flex with the ground.

Also, almost all the particulate emissions are due to the abrasive nature of the road-tire interface tearing apart the tire. Tires are a cheaper and simpler wear items than roads, something is going to give, so we've decided we'll replace our tires more often than tearing up our roads. Just like if you ever got road rash, the road is going to tear you up far more than you're going to tear the road up. So, while the road forms cracks and what not from its repeated stresses it's not coming apart like dust nearly as much. Don't get me wrong, some small, tiny amount of it does but not nearly as much as the tire.

Homeownership Rate in the United States

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N

Sounds like you have a residence where you can charge overnight. That's a nicety right there. For everyone who can't, is it faster to get 400 miles by finding a place to charge and waiting on the charging or by filling a tank?

Sure it's a nicety, but it's also pretty common. Most households in the US would be able to do it.

You'll spend considerably more of your life standing next to a gas pump than they spend waiting for their cars to charge. And you'll spend more money per mile in the end for the energy cost. And yet somehow you'll continue to feel superior about it. Congrats on spending so much of your life pumping gas my dude. I'm glad I don't have to spend nearly as much time anymore.

Well regulated marketplace huh? You mean the marketplace that forces customers to purchase through a dealership because of dealership lobbies? You mean the marketplace which has those same dealers charge outrageous markups just because the law says they must exist? Ok.

You are correct, I was thinking of stability control. Both were mandated by NHTSA at the same time I think.

^ This is patently false.