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.
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.
Gen 2 chevy volt owner here, PHEVs are absolutely not a step back. If I didn’t buy the volt, the one car our family could afford would have been an ICE car. IMO, these things help bridge idealism with current reality - for most of my day-to-day, I drive a fully electric car. I just also get the option to toss some gas into it when on a long road trip.
Yeah, this. For people with short commutes and in the market for a compact I strongly recommend the Prius Prime. Having a vehicle that can get to work and back without using gas at all, but also can go on long road trips without range anxiety? Perfect. And as an entry-level into the plug-in world, it’s nice that I can charge it on regular 110 instead of having to think about an upgrade to an oven-port.
There is no way in hell I’m paying 30k for a Prius.
It’s well worth it.
General Motors is thinking about bringing back plug-in hybrids
GREAT! Ditching PHEV’s was a stupid idea, we don’t have the charging infrastructure for most people to buy EV’s moving forward. We need an interim solution, and PHEV’s work great. They use a LOT less gas for most people (depending on driving habits) but you have the fuel tank in case you’re on a long road trip, or in a charging desert.
Have y’all seen the new Prius Prime? It starts at $33k, it actually looks kinda cool (subjectively), and it’s FAST (objectively). We need more cars like that.
PHEV in my opinion is a really dumb idea. It got popular, because it was an easy way for car manufacturers to continue making large SUVs and adhere to even stricter fuel efficiency restrictions, while also benefitting from generous state subsidies. Now that those subsidies are either scaled down or completely removed the PHEV sector is shrinking fast.
The benefit of EV is not only that you can charge at your own garage but that you also have lower maintenance cost and even if the upfront cost is higher, your cost over time lowers the more you drive it and depending on electricity prices, etc. you can break even with ICE.
With PHEV, the maintenance cost is higher than ICE, because at the end you need to service and maintain two engines.
No. It all depends on how you drive it. If you just drive a PHEV around town and do the occasional road trip (which is how most people drive) then the ICE engine sees very little wear and requires very little service.
If you’re doing constant road trips and burning up the road, a PHEV is not for you. And neither is an EV, honestly.
An EV would work if the infrastructure was there. Modern EV batteries can charge full in like 15 minutes but it’s not even gonna take that long cause you’ll obviously not be plugging it in at 0%. The charger needs to support that amount of power throughput tho tbf.
An EV would work if the infrastructure was there.
Right, but it’s not yet. So a PHEV is a better option for most people (for now).
True but the issue is that your government isn’t doing anything about it. They could e.g. require every gas station to have an electric charger (Will be the case soon in Germany)
Okay. And until the government does something about it, a PHEV is an excellent choice.
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.
The reason why Europe can pull off progressive reforms has nothing to do with population or geography, Europe is bigger than the US on both fronts. It has to do with political will.
Incentives like that are a lot easier your entire national population is smaller than some cities.
Maybe you should split your country up into smaller, independent regions that can govern more effectively.
You could call them “States”
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.
