If only there was an alternative for travel, other than buying a giant four-wheeled multi-ton money pit death machine, that could also run on electric instead of fossil fuels.
If only.
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.
They really need to unban kei trucks here at least because of how often they're imported to this country.
Smaller electric vehicles to suit 99% of our needs. Bikes, trikes, small 4 seaters.
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€
Yeah it is still expensive "for a bike" but you save on gas, insurance, maintenance, and health!
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.
Considering how skewed the sector of hybrids is right now (dominated by Toyota), they may actually be right about that.
Your belief that EVs aren't ready yet is the entire point of Toyota's constant news articles about solid state batteries. Toyota also says EVs are toys and hydrogen is the future, but I'm sure they're totally serious about EVs.
They've been saying solid state batteries are coming in a year or two for years already and still don't have a prototype to show off.
They haven't been saying a release window for years.
They aren't currently the only company saying around 2028 because it has multiple companies involved.
Hydrogen would be the better option, but delivery is much more complicated than electricity.
Lithium batteries still suck and are a poor choice for all electric vehicles no matter if solid state batts come out or not. They don't last long enough, can't be replaced easily enough, weigh too much, and cost too much to replace.
It's also not a nail in the coffin to end needing oil or pollution. It will help a lot, but passenger vehicles use about 1/4 of all oil used and are far, far less than that for pollution created. So even if every single passenger car, suv, mini van, and pick up truck was all electric with batteries that never sent bad, you're looking at like 5% less pollution and 25% less oil consumption, and that's before you add some pollution back into the mix for what it will take to create all the extra electricity that would be needed, since we haven't gotten all of that switched over yet to solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear.
I'd love not needing to rely on gas for my vehicles, but at this time today it only minorly helps pollution and will make overpriced paperweights 15 or so years after purchase.
Hydrogen means throwing away 2/3 of the energy we generate. Driving on hydrogen can never be less than three times the cost of driving a battery EV, even if someone waves a magic wand and gives you a trillion dollars worth of hydrogen infrastructure for free. It's not the better option.
We've got batteries now that will outlast the vehicles they're in. You don't care that the engine in a gas vehicle will only last 30 years or that it's really heavy and expensive.
EVs also don't cure cancer. Nobody's really expecting them to solve problems that aren't related to vehicles in the first place.
Batteries now absolutely do not last longer than the vehicles. The batteries are generally 15 years before they need replaced and no more than 20, or as few as 10. They're also large and very heavy and cost over $10,000 or in some cases $20,000 to replace.
Hydrogen wastes a lot of electricity to make, but we're currently on the fast track to wind and solar, so wasting some electricity can become an acceptable loss in a future of renewable energy. Aside from that there's getting enough lithium in the first place in order to have everything go all electric.
That said, hydrogen will likely get skipped over. It is a waste of electricity right now, since we don't have an abundance of green electricity today, and we'll have better batteries that will last longer and be cheaper before we do have that much electricity possible.
The Chevy Bolt is 19k after the federal credit.
Oh yeah it's that easy. You should be CEO. What a great idea
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"?
I can't. Afford. Anything!
Make them cheaper.
The Chevy Bolt is 19k after the 7.5k federal credit.
The bolt is discontinued because it was taking sales away from more expensive vehicles. People don’t massive SUV’s but automakers can make more money on them so they limit options otherwise.
…Fuck. Thanks for letting me know, but damn that sucks.
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.
Unless this is an indictment of the charging infrastructure build out (in which case — fair), this doesn't make sense. You don't scale back after early adoption — you scale up to mass market.
The US makers scaling back could seriously hamper EV growth now that EV tax credits require assembly in the US. Sounds to me like they need more regulatory incentive to make the production switch.
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
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 . . .
or yknow… just get rid of car dependency
We need to mandate PT adoption, not rely on carsumer congestion.
Which can't be done until PT actually can get people places. Only a few cities have that level of service.
That would be preferable.
