Maybe lower the prices to make it a everyman buy instead of a select few buy?
Nissan Sakura and Mitsubishi eK X EV are $14-16k, but are only for sale in Japan. Nissan closed orders for the Sakura because they already had more orders than capacity to make them. We need vehicles like that everywhere! That would drive EV adoption far, far more than another “affordable” $45k SUV.
I’m always curious about what I understand to be the kei cars. We don’t have many in the US bc they supposedly do not meet safety rules. But we had some - what is the hold up, just sales expectations? A used one of these would possibly be in my price range.
I believe they are kei cars. I looked up the safety ratings on them when I heard about them, and the D.O.T. equivalent board that rated them gave them 5 stars. But it could be that was a kei car specific rating. It did show diagrams with front and side air bags, and all the electronic crash avoidance systems. It’s bigger and seems like it would be safer than a smart car. I honestly think the hold up is that if we had options like that in the US fewer bigger, more expensive, cars would be sold. Maybe not a lot fewer, but enough fewer that it is overall more profitable not to offer them.
Smaller electric vehicles to suit 99% of our needs. Bikes, trikes, small 4 seaters.
What about the winter? A bike isn’t going to get me to the ski hill, or even across town when it’s snowing or the roads are icy.
Even in the summer, I can’t put my mountain bike on a bike (yes I know). I can’t put my kayak on a bike.
Sure, I’m eyeing a nice cargo bike for a year now. But that also is still tool expensive: I bought my second hand car 5 years for 6k€ and a cargo bike now is around 4k€
I wouldn’t purchase one myself that was more than a hybrid until Honda and Toyota (they’re currently closest) square out making solid state batteries that can last a long time. They should be smaller, lighter, cheaper to make, and charge much, much, faster if need be.
Right now if an all electrics battery goes bad it’s costs a massive amount of money to replace and for many vehicles it’s really hard to take out of a vehicle. Toyota is claiming a production vehicle should be 2027-2028 and that company doesn’t generally blow smoke up people’s ass about something only 4 years out. They should be able to get a car with a 300 mile range that can charge in a few minutes in a battery compact enough to easily be removed if it goes bad. That’s what electric vehicles really need. Something that won’t cost $60,000 and end up in a scrap yard after 15 years.
Dude are you in Toyota’s paybook?
Lol. No. I’m just a mechanic and a tech nerd and toyota and Honda look like they’ll be the first companies to release vehicles with solid state batteries. Right now when an all electric battery goes tits up it will cost too much to be worth replacing. For instance, a chevy bolt replacement with install goes for over $15,000. Teslas are over $15,000, and most others range out between $4500 and $22,000 dollars. Lithium batteries are guaranteed to fail at some point earlier than a vehicles lifetime it could have spent on the road. Having to spend $10,000+ dollars on a car that’s over 12 years old is basically a recipe for sending it to the scrap yard. Total waste.
The Chevy Bolt is 19k after the federal credit.
Yeah and sell at a loss
Learn to make them efficient so you don’t need a giant heavy expensive battery…
What exactly are you referencing when you say “make them efficient”?
Hmm, you sound like you’re describing electric cargo bike 😉 But seriously, much lower dead weight to actually carried ratio, lower speeds… The only missing part of the puzzle is safe infrastructure (separate lanes, prioritized traffic etc.)
Eh I usually go around with my non-cargo and non-ev bike and it solves around 90% of my mobility problems. The rest is unfortunately up to the car since going to office means 2 hours of train + tram + walking but by car it’s around 35-40 minutes including finding a parking spot. And then there’s the occasional very large and big item (like furniture and tools) that I need to bring around and my car is sometimes not big enough for that, forget about a cargo bike.
I’d rather rent a car when I need it, but it’s around 120€ per day, max 100km, plus gasoline and it is unpractical because you don’t know of there are cars available. Once I needed to bring a big table and it was cheaper to hire a moving company for a couple of hours than renting the big SUV and do by myself
Your 90% bike usage already lessens the environmental impact of your driving, while also adding personal health benefits, so please keep doing that 🙏
Oh yeah it’s that easy. You should be CEO. What a great idea
There’s only so many people who can afford to spend $60,000+ on a car
I was surprised to learn the Chevy Bolt is 26k for the base model, and would only cost 19k after the federal credit.
Didn’t Chevy discontinue the Bolt?
I have been informed from another comment here that they did discontinue it. :(
The issue is that gor some reason nobody speaks in total cost of buying a car, not the car dealers not the banking institutions. They all talk about monthly payments and for some reason people can’t do basic math that $1000 for 60 months is a huge fucking amount.
I went to the Ford site to look into their EVs earlier this week. Their site on EV info is so disorganized and unhelpful. Trying to figure out how much charging would cost and the logistics of long-distance travel is way too confusing. They’re even messing it up with a subscription plan to their in-network chargers.
I suspect this is part of the reason people aren’t buying Ford EVs. Buying a car from a dealership is already too antagonized because we all know they’re trying to rip us off. To try to balance it out, shoppers try to gain as much knowledge on the car so they know what they’re agreeing to. However, when the car comes with all this new technology that changes the way we maintain them, and available info is scattered, indirect, unclear, and potentially costs even more, that will push away people that don’t want to deal with it.
Yes we’ve adopted, now build cars that are fucking better for an affordable price.
We need to mandate EV adoption, not rely on consumer demand, the amount of misinformation directed at EVs has been extremely effective. They aren’t perfect, but they are a hell of alot bettet than Internal Combustion Engines which spew poison into the environment . . .
That will do a lot to get rid of car dependency because most people can’t afford an EV and will be forced to walk
Why a pay walled link? Feels like this is an ad.
It’s very annoying when people do this. Here’s a link to the archived version: https://archive.ph/w1XBt
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