No, electric vehicle sales aren’t dropping. Here’s what’s really going on::Tesla has been slashing prices. Ford just cut the price of its Mustang Mach-E, too, plus it cut back production of its electric pickup. And General Motors is thinking about bringing back plug-in hybrids, arguably a step back from EVs.
Btw, in Norway 92% of new car sales in January were electric cars, and apparently predictions for February are even higher.
When the infrastructure is there, people appear to have little to no qualms buying electric cars.
Norway has a range of subsidies worth up to half the price of the vehicle and home upgrades plus tax exemptions worth another 25% on top of that.
Which can mean a brand new EV is the same price as an old secondhand ICE.
Incentives like that are a lot easier your entire national population is smaller than some cities.
I only meant to say that many of the things that might put people off buying electric cars, like range concerns etc. can be alleviated.
Even with subsidies and incentives it was slow going in the beginning, before people gained trust in the infrastructure and realized electric could be a real and practical alternative.
I didn’t mean to be an asshole, sorry.
How does a smaller population make it easier to pay those incentives? Less people also means less tax income and vice versa
Tax rates in general are higher there, and not all taxation scales with population (corporate tax, for instance). It also depends on how the government allocates the money it spends—Norway doesn’t have the US’s ridiculously inflated military budget.
Country size has a huge impact on the ability to make sweeping changes to infrastructure and public opinion. A country the size of one US state can do whatever they want and it’s not going to take 50 years to implement.
South Korea has broadband everywhere? Sure, they are a rich country the size of Indiana and lacing all of that fiber is trivial compared to the entire land mass of the US, or worse, Russia or China. Governmental demands scale much differently the larger the country, and tax doesn’t scale in a 1:1 manner to its land mass.
Incentives like that are a lot easier …
I don’t buy this logic at all. A larger population also means a much larger taxpayer base, so it evens out. US can offer incentives like this but chooses not to. Half the population seems to feel threatened by any incentives. Then going down to state levels: some states do offer additional incentives and some don’t. The population size isn’t an economical difference, it’s a political difference
Norway is 1/30th the size of the US and everyone lives in the bottom half, so traveling your country is like traveling a state in the US, and not one of the big states. That makes it really easy to have smaller range EV’S a viable option and requires orders of magnitudes less public charging stations. Everything is easy when your entire country only consists of a bit over five million people.
How they got rich doesn’t change their sales figures. Other countries that got rich in different ways could apply the same techniques.
No, you are right. But I do think most countries do use the same techniques, the problem is they can’t give subsidies for up to 50% of the new car price. It is simply not sustainable. There are also not enough cars to go around even if they did and even if most people had enough money burning in their pocket for a new car, which they don’t.
I just find the how they got rich ironic…
I’m in the market for a BEV. Have been for 3 years. The reason I don’t have one is:
A. The cars that are large enough for my use case (weekend getaways with kids and or friends) are all super expensive luxury vehicles with poor ratings.
B. Availability. Other than the Mustang Mach-E, nothing is available here (Canada) without a minimum 6 month wait list. (Ioniq 5 is 1 year).
C. Poor reliability and/or features. (See the disaster that is the Chevy Blazer EV).
At this point I’m waiting for the Ioniq 7. Hopefully it will be as well reviewed as it’s sister the EV9.
The reason GM and Ford are not selling well is because nobody wants what they’re selling. But they’re framing it as an general EV issue and not a crap product issue.
The media and those apposed to EVs are buying it of course.
Is it so much to ask that I be able to get a vehicle that’s just…normal but also an EV? Not a monster truck, not some space ship looking thing, just like a Honda Accord but an EV…I don’t think that’s asking so much but apparently automakers disagree.
It goes hand in hand with the prices. If you’re going to spend that much more on a BEV, you want it to be different. And making it look different doesn’t cost significantly more.
Also, car shape and style has so much to do with ICE vehicle design necessity.
I mean, I don’t want it to look different. I want a regular sedan or small vehicle like a Honda Fit (which is what I have now and it’s a good size). I just want it to be an EV. So maybe there’s a market for the weird looking cars and have massive SUVs but that’s not what I want. I wouldn’t be caught dead in a cyber truck or this 80s TV show sentient vehicle looking thing.
That’s my 2 cents but I don’t think I’m the only one.
I got a Peugeot 208. It’s small, and ok in all aspects except the software. Typical bad car UI. It works with cabled Android Auto, so for long drives that’s more than fine. But touch screen is still old, and the app/site hasn’t let me log in for a few weeks now… So I can’t remote start heating.
But it’s a great car that I bought used, for driving to and from work. Looks good, yellow color, parking sensors and rear camera for my blind ass. But is also probably not available in America for all I know, I live in Europe.
There are a few companies that do this. Tesla, Kia, and Nissan come to mind. I’m not sure what’s available in your location though.
I’m considering to get a Polestar 2 for many reasons but also because… No waiting time 😉
Picked up a used 2022 Polestar 2 about 6 months ago for nearly half off. No regrets, because it’s an awesome car, and I strongly recommend it
I still find it super weird. A (remote) coworker bought an ioniq 5 after 9 months on a wait list… 3 months later, I went to a dealership. they had one on the lot (3 actually). Was able to get one with 0 wait.
Looking at their website, they have 4 2024 ioniq 5s available right now, an SEL, SE, and 2x Limited.
So apparently my local dealership is the sweet spot. Or is this purely a Canada vs US thing?
Yes, availability in the US is much better. You can find a base ioniq 5 here easily now, but nobody wants those. Everyone wants the long range AWD.
Yeah, I want a Mach-E (at least in theory) … but I want it to have a good 500-600 mile range (or for the charging network to be much bigger than it is)… It’s unfortunate really
Is the charging network that bad in the US that you need to get that far without charging?
So for me I make a trek to my parents house ~150 miles away a few times a year.
In good weather (and good battery condition), I could maybe skip hitting the chargers all together, or get a little bit of charging at my parents house from a wall outlet.
Unless my parents (or my grandfather that I also visit fairly regularly who lives the same distance in a different direction) installed a better charger at their place… In colder weather (e.g. Christmas), I’d almost definitely need to use a charger while going at least one direction.
The problem is, in both cases, there are like 5-10 charges total (not charging stations, chargers) where as there are like 5-10 gas stations all right next to the interstate each with at least 4 pumps, many with 8+ pumps.
I’m concerned that during peak travel in cold weather (e.g. Christmas time travel), I could easily find myself in a bad situation where I can’t get a charger because they’re all too far away, broken, or in use. There’s just not enough redundancy.
I’m in the market, and the answer is kinda, for non Teslas. I do a road trip up the east coast a few times a year and the Tesla will reliably add about 4 30 minute stops on each half of the trip. A non Tesla also requires four stops, but they could be anywhere from 20 minutes best case to 1 hr plus, depending on the availability and status of the unreliable chargers.
A lucid with 400 miles of true range would probably cut it down to two stops, but I don’t have $140k
No, there are very few places like that, and most of the populated places are not at all like that.
I took that to mean “I want to complete my common road trip without charging”
A few weeks ago I did my first road trip requiring charging away from home and it really was painless
The charging network actually is about to get much bigger, as Ford will be able to use tesla superchargers starting sometime within next few months. (and is providing a free adapter to owners). I’ve had my Mach e for 6 months and couldn’t be happier with it.
The charging network expansion is something I’ll be watching. I decided the very soonest I’ll buy is after they’ve switched things to the Tesla connector (which seems to be the one that’s going to win).
The adapter is definitely nice but I’d rather not have yet another unnecessary connection adapter in my life lol.
I test drove the mach-e and really liked it. And it has a surprisingly large amount of storage due to the well designed frunk. The California edition has more than enough range for me. However, the abysmal charging speed has me worried about battery condition. If it’s that slow to charge it means the battery isn’t good under load.
The reason GM and Ford are not selling well is because nobody wants what they’re selling. But they’re framing it as an general EV issue and not a crap product issue.
Its GM, Ford, Rivian, Lucid.
Tesla only managed to get close to their targets by dropping prices dramatically.
Rivian and Lucid are exclusively luxury brands. Not shocked that they’re having a hard time pushing cars over 100k CAD. I don’t think they’re atracting the same media attention either.
Audi and Subaru are also doing poorly with their EVs.
And even Tesla had to drop prices dramatically to move inventory, the sales continue even today.
Its honestly looking like an EV-industry wide problem. The car companies doing the best right now are like, Toyota and Honda, because of their ICE lineup.
Auto makers “slashing prices.” With perhaps one or 2 small exceptions, can you actually go out and buy an EV for under 40K in the US? Didn’t think so. Seems to be a whole lotta confusion about “demand” and the manufacturers actually making an electric car that normal people can afford.
My next car purchase if at all, will be some plugin electric (full or hybrid). The only reason I haven’t purchased it yet is because the form factor I am looking for in a car hasn’t been made in a plug in variety yet.
Also the stories about constant surveillance and tracking, and the push for shit-tier infotainment when I already have one in my pocket (phone) are not helping either.
Just make a dumb battery on wheels, already.
This is a concern for me also. Tesla is the Apple of car companies: hipster-centric, proprietary everything, overpriced, and really bad from a privacy perspective.
I was looking at Toyotas as I hear they are reliable and have PHEV and other options, but supposedly their data privacy is also extremely poor.
I don’t need a lot of the “smart” features of modern cars. I don’t need my car phoning the mother ship with it’s precise location and other metadata every 3/5 of a second.
I only want a rock solid drive train, basic usable control interface, a radio and maybe a USB port to play my own MP3s. Don’t need apps or even navigation. I feel like most EVs are very centered on bell and whistle features and their cost is greatly inflated because of it.
Personally, I’m keen to see if the proverbial doors get blown off the first few gens of electric cars, and the FOSS community makes headway.
I would happily buy an old Leaf if I knew we could handle all the software ourselves, and just do battery swaps when the range wasn’t enough any more.
I see people on TikTok a lot saying that ‘the EV bubble is gonna pop and all these suckers are gonna come crawling back to traditional combustion cars’
Like no. Batteries right now are the worse they will ever be again. This is the worst battery tech is gonna be for the rest of our lives. Theres already EVs with batteries that last a week, of just day to day commuter type travel. And have warranties up to 1,000,000 miles.
What’s happening right now is a big shakeup because lots of people can only afford to buy these cars second hand, but people have anxiety about trusting a second hand car with this new tech. So used car sales people are bitching that it’s hard to sell them. That doesn’t mean they aren’t selling though. On top of that, the transition of combustion engines to batteries is causing an industry shakeup. Like there was when we went from horses to cars. When cars first became a thing, people complained about where they will get fuel for it and how long the engine lasts.
Now 100 years on, we are complaining about where we will charge these things, and how long the batteries last.
The transition to EVs is inevitable. You can say it’s not happening but you are wrong.
I own an EV. Whats to ‘crawl back to’? The constant maintenance costs? The expensive fuel? The shittier driving experience? The worse noise and vibration?
Nah, bruh. Im good. I will never go back to ICE.
I have a terrible EV. Claims it has 80 miles of range but is really around 50 miles. A drive to work brings it down to 20%. The fast charge port is CHAdeMO, which at least around here is barely used, and even the electrify America places usually only have 1.
I still don’t want to switch back, I just want a better one with a more common port. I work from home except for the occasional mandatory in office stuff (one coming this Thurs and probably another next month). Most of the stuff I want to drive to is within a battery’s distance to go to and from. About the only thing that really sucks is vacations to visit family.
I just bought my first EV. I’m never going back to ICE. Effortless acceleration, a super quiet drive, being able to plug in at home and always leave the house with 100% capacity… People try to argue that they’re bad because of something they remember seeing once a couple of decades ago or whatever. It’s nice correcting them based on personal experience. Also if they go for a test drive they change their minds REALLY quickly. That EV power off the line is a pretty compelling argument all on its own.
Reminds me a lot of the battery versus petrol RC car debate back in the day. Anyone who remembered NiCad batteries and brush motors had a justifiable hate for electric RC cars and opted for the petrol option… But if they refused to try LiPo and brushless they ended up stuck with noisy, finicky, and ultimately slower cars.
You gotta be willing to accept that as technology improves the balance can (and rapidly does) swing in favour of something that you remember sucking.
