Disney maintenance crashed our car at Epcot

I may not agree with many of the reasons some of you are not anxious to go electric, but I think those sentiments are at least based on your own assessments. Unfortunately, a lot of opposition is mindlessly political, because Biden wants to see the transition or something. It's not rooted in any kind of reality.

It feels like the US can't get in front of any industry, because of stupid things like this, or protectionism of incumbent tech or whatever. As the economics evolve, this is going to happen. For now, the biggest US seller is a US company, but for how long? Fossil fuel production will be primary, but for how long? You'd think that these asshats would be like, "Look at all of the economic opportunity and jobs if we can dominate these industries!"

Looks like our solar panels and cars are also gonna say "made in China," and these flag-waving nimrods will be happy to buy it.

In order for EV purchases to qualify for the $7500 fed credit they need to be assembled in the US with a certain percentage of components sourced and assembled in the US as well. That threshold increases over the next few years. Non-US companies are shifting production to the states to meet those targets, including VW and Hyundai. Additionally if battery components are sourced from China the EV is ineligible for the credit. That makes me very skeptical that China will become a leader in the EV market in the U.S. anytime soon. Unless, of course, they massively exploit the lease loophole.

Yeah, and cars made by Asian manufacturers would never outsell Detroit either. This is a sequel of that movie. We've already lost the renewable energy market. The foreign companies building plants here aren't doing it for the tax credits, which can disappear depending on who's elected, they're building here because it's a more efficient supply chain.

For the record, I would be very interested in getting a hybrid or plug in hybrid version of the traverse I currently drive, the problem was it seemed like until recently the industry was not going to give us that option, now with the new regulations made this month, it seems like we’ll have that option in 3-5 years. It’ll probably be too late for my next car purchase (2-3 years away) but should be good by my next one.

I think I may have mentioned this already but my wife and I were ready to buy a Rav4 Prime (plug-in hybrid) sight unseen but Toyota might as well have said no.

If Toyota had gone full-EV on the Prius, all of those Prius owners would have bought one and I don't know if Tesla would have caught on.

Still holding out for hydrogen. Not really, but I think it's more interesting and beneficial than electric, plus there's some recent talk that it could be more prominent in the future.

I don't think the economics will work out. The cost to produce hydrogen is too high, and it makes the EV infrastructure problem look easy by comparison. The cars are also expensive, because they're essentially EV's plus a hydrogen burning plant.

Base price for a Toyota Mirai is $50k. That doesn't seem unreasonably high even for now when there's no infrastructure.

eightdotthree:

I think I may have mentioned this already but my wife and I were ready to buy a Rav4 Prime (plug-in hybrid) sight unseen but Toyota might as well have said no.

Same here. We were even willing to drive to Maryland or New York to get it since they don't distribute them in PA. Just wasn't going to work out, so we got the RAV hybrid.

The plug in would've been as good as a full EV for us in most cases. My wife mainly drives the kids to school and goes in to town for work every now and then. With a 40 mile range, we'd literally only need to use gas for trips.

There's a distribution network already for electricity that goes literally everywhere. There is no network for hydrogen, and I don't imagine anyone is anxious to provide one for one car. It sounded like a good idea, but I think Toyota got really stuck on the idea around a physically portable form of energy that's easy to transfer quickly, with no regard to the cost or distribution of it. That kind of leans into the thing I've been saying, that electric is not a lift-and-shift, the way hydrogen would be if it was economically feasible. It's like "gas" (well, it's literally gas!) that you go to a place to transfer into your vehicle once or twice a week. But to satisfy the 99% driving use case, charging at home overnight and taking a few extra minutes on long-distance trips at public charging is a different way of thinking about it. And once you do it, you'll never want to go back.

Now if the gas station with one of the few car washes near me would just keep their car wash actually working...

Made me think of this thread.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03...index.html

EV maker Fisker going belly up. It’s got to be rough when you’re selling cars at +60k. Just way more than the average consumer is willing to pay.

https://finance.yahoo.com/n...58007.html

Make a basic no frills EV, give it 300-400 mile range, should be easy if you make it small and efficient. Give it the CarPlay or whatever everyone raves over, and a couple knobs for volume and aircon, call it a day. Price that thing under 30k and they should have a line out the door. Especially if they market heavily on TCO and cost per mile compared to gas, etc.

The_Orient_of_Express:

EV maker Fisker going belly up.

Again?

Your first problem is that a 400 mile battery pack still costs about $20k, so at $30k you're not going to get much car. It's probably going to take a change in battery chemistry to fix that, somehow using less expensive elements to store the power. It's coming, but like everything else it isn't there yet.

I just ran some calculations on my own car. In 2023 I spent about $3,100 on gasoline. That means since I bought the car for $10k (used) back in 2017, I've spent about $25k on gasoline. And it's the most expensive car I have ever bought. I forget what Jeff's numbers were for his car, but for mine the fuel alone is costing me about $0.16/mile. Remember also, I don't generate my own electricity, but the massive coal fired power plants not far from here keep the electricity cost to just under $0.12/kWh. I imagine that since the (in)efficiencies of gasoline engines are reasonably comparable, gasoline energy content is relatively constant, and so total energy required for pushing a vehicle down the road would also be fairly constant, I have a feeling there's probably a formula that could be applied to estimate the amount of power needed for any given vehicle to determine the difference between gasoline and electric. But even without that, it sure looks like from a TCO perspective, not even counting the intake manifold that I really need to replace ($200+labor) and the oil change my car needs ($40), from a TCO perspective, I already have a $40k car after driving it 153,000 miles.

But when I bought my car, I didn't have $40k to spend on it. I had $10k. Somehow it's easier to pay another $50-$100 each week at the gas pump than it is to make that payment up front. And you don't pay interest on gasoline. Intellectually, the brand new $40k EV that costs very little to drive is a financial no-brainer compared to the $10k used car that will cost another $25k over the next seven years just to drive it, so long as it will also go the distance (my last CV had 318,059 miles on it when the odometer broke). But that upfront cost, which is approaching what I paid for my house, and the payment that goes along with that, is kind of scary!

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

And Fisker just slashed their prices to try and save their company. Good deal If you’re willing to take a risk the company will stay afloat.

https://www.motortrend.com/...cuts-sale/

The_Orient_of_Express:

It’s got to be rough when you’re selling cars at +60k. Just way more than the average consumer is willing to pay.

That's not true at all. There are a ton of cars that cost over $60k that sell just fine. Tesla even started out that way with Model S. The problem is that Fisker didn't make a car that actually felt like it was worth that amount.

RideMan:
I forget what Jeff's numbers were for his car, but for mine the fuel alone is costing me about $0.16/mile.

Right now with my rates at around 14 cents (not accounting for solar), the cars say about 185 W/mi, so around 2.5 cents per mile. It'll go a little higher once the air conditioning starts having to work harder again, but even at 250 W/mi, that's 4 cents per mile. A long, long way from 16. Saving 12 cents per mile over a 12k mile year is $1,440, or $7,200 over five years.

RideMan:
But that upfront cost, which is approaching what I paid for my house, and the payment that goes along with that, is kind of scary!

And that's a respectable opinion because it's based on one's financial condition, not the viability of the technology. As long as I've been on this train, I've always acknowledged that cost was the only real barrier. And we've gone from one long-range option that was $80k, to dozens of models that start as low as $30k depending on deals and tax credits. When we get to ubiquitous starting prices of $25k, I think we're there. Obviously the ideal is to borrow as little as possible so you're not burdened with a huge payment, but I'm not sure many people have the discipline for that. It took me into my 40's before I could do that.

Study of costs of ICE versus EV. Looked at different types/sizes of vehicles and in different cities.

https://www.repairerdrivenn...e-by-case/

Saw this. Thought of you guys.

New Central Florida Highway Will Wirelessly Charge Cars on the Go