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The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

(www.wsj.com)
152 points voisin | 1 comments | 17 Nov 24 23:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | 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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jmward01 ◴[18 Nov 24 00:23 UTC] No.42168580[source]▶
Privacy is in my top two concerns for EVs (and any vehicle purchase I make). I am increasingly avoiding every privacy destroying option out there, be it cars or services in general. It is, unfortunately, becoming nearly impossible to be privacy aware but the more resistance people put up the better chance we have of maintaining some privacy.
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worik ◴[18 Nov 24 00:35 UTC] No.42168636[source]▶
> Privacy is in my top two concerns for EVs

Yes.

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

Very frustrating

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jmward01 ◴[18 Nov 24 01:10 UTC] No.42168804[source]▶
I always buy used so I have some time left, but not much. When I bought my last vehicle the person had one of those insurance GPS devices in it. I can't even begin to understand why anyone would do that. It is so obviously going to be used against the driver and it is also obvious that it will eventually become 'required' and that just depresses me.
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bluGill ◴[18 Nov 24 19:49 UTC] No.42176178[source]▶
If you drive the speed limit and otherwise follow all those things they teach you in drivers ed but almost nobody does once they pass their drivers test those will save you money. The average driver is really bad.
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dingaling ◴[18 Nov 24 20:10 UTC] No.42176370[source]▶
Not at all - telematics schemes also penalise subjective measures such as "over-revving" and "cornering with too much lateral g".

Royal Mail drivers in the UK found themselves being disciplined for exceeding telematics thresholds when the company transitioned back to petrol-engined vans, from diesel, because they are driven in a very different manner.

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1. bluGill ◴[18 Nov 24 20:59 UTC] No.42176955[source]▶
Those are things I was taught not to do in drivers ed. I don't know how the UK compared. For that matter, I took drivers ed 30+ years ago, and I don't know what all has changed.