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At least for me the reasons are
- Lack of interest
- They’re ridiculously Ugly
- Range (I’ve driven 1500 miles in the last 3 weeks)
- Driving Experience is worse (opinion, but still something I stand by)
- Charging
- Price
When I was looking at new cars an EV wasn’t even an option. I wanted a 2 door performance coupe and there isn’t anything even close to that in EVs, let alone on the used market. A 2014 Audi was a better choice in almost every metric beyond gas prices.
I would like to note that if you wanted to drive as far as possible, my car could probably go more than 5000mi in three weeks, though I typically only drive a few hundred a week.
And contrary to a gas car I never have to stop to fuel, I just get home and it charges over night.
Also, what’s wrong with the “driving experience”? It’s not loud enough or something?
I regularly do 400+ mile trips in a day or two ( I’m a photographer ) and need to be able to quickly have range available in non major metro areas.
Since I live in an apartment overnight charging isn’t an option. So I’d still have to go places to charge, which takes significantly longer than stopping for gas.
Driving experince is subjective, but instant power with no real hp/torque curves makes driving really boring. There’s no response from the car, it’s just an On/Off toggle. There’s no real fun to driving it.
Yes the sound is a major part. I’ve got a very nice, valved exhaust system on my new car that adds a ton to how much fun the car is. Hearing the engine, how it responds and how the power is applied is a major part of the fun of driving.
If all you want is a car to get from point A to point B, an EV is completely fine, but as someone who genuinely enjoys cars and driving, EVs are boring and will 100% get you laughed out of most car shows.
Too expensive. Not owner repairable. Too much unnecessary tech baked in.
There’s a path forward for EV’s, but I don’t think the current philosophy is it.
Dacia spring has no unnecessary tech 😍 and is cheap
But, it is small 😂🤷🏻♀️ big enough for my family, at least.
Just hope you’re never involved in an accident, Dacias (both EV and ICE) have abysmal safety ratings.
Coming to the US never
😂 I don’t plan to go to US anytime soon
Me neither, but this is an article about Americans.
True that…
I’ll tell you why I won’t buy one.
I’m not going to go into debt as much as a house would’ve cost me 20 years ago so I can drive a 10,000 pound explosive that I spend several hours a day charging, be asked to pull over to turn on Bluetooth, have a tracking device in my car, which the government can turn off if they like, have to fumble with a touch screen to turn up the air conditioner, have to pay rent for features built into the car and then have any features I purchased be non transferrable on the secondary market. These are all fuck you’s to me, so I say fuck you to them. Take your vendor lock in SAAS product and shove it up your ass. You want me to give a shit about emissions, fix all that, until then I’m driving a 20 year old beater.
If you’re looking for a 10,000 pound vehicle, and are not one of a very small percentage that needs it, you have other problems. Yes, EVs are too heavy, but think like 20% heavier that on comparable, it’s not that bad. It’s only excessively huge inefficient trucks that are that heavy. My mid-sized SUV EV is a 4,000 pound explosive, thank you very much.
One of the benefits, if you’re able to install a home charger, is to never really have to think about refueling. Think of it like charging a phone and just get into the habit of charging over night. I need to recharge a couple hours per week, but I never have to go anywhere. When I get home, if the car is below 50%, I plug in. Then It’s always just ready to go without me ever waiting or going anywhere. So much more convenient than gas stations. Granted road trips aren’t as convenient but they’re also not as bad as people fear
You’re literally describing every new car now, whether EV or ICE.
Meh, some/much of this is in every new car.
But EV’s take it to a new level with shit you just can’t disable.
I have a car with some of this shit. Just had to disconnect the cell antenna and attach a dummy to block it. Try that with an EV and it’ll probably have a heart attack.
Yup, and I won’t buy a new gas car either.
Of course there aren’t many people buying EVs when the only ones available in the US are high end luxury models.
Import a bunch of those cheap Chinese EVs and lots of people will buy them. It won’t hurt the US manufacturers because they don’t produce any budget models.
It will hurt US manufacturers, because their budget gasoline cars won’t sell.
There’s the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Bolt/Spark, Mini Cooper EV, Hyundai Kona/Ioniq 6, Fiat 500e and more. These qualify for subsidies if purchased new plus all the gas savings make them decently affordable or you can always buy them used as most people do.
Most people are going for the midrange models like the Model Y, Model 3, Ioniq 5, etc though since it’s not really ideal to buy the ‘worst’ version of something when making a large purchase. People want more range, space, and features. Even with ICE cars, the subcompacts sell/sold pretty poorly.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Washington has set out an industrial policy that hits Chinese manufacturers of cars, batteries and other components with punitive tariffs and restricts federal tax incentives for consumers buying their products.
The administration is attempting to reconcile its industrial and climate policies by offering tax incentives to consumers to buy EVs and by encouraging manufacturers to develop US-dominated supply chains.
According to data analyzed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think-tank, US-based carmakers have been importing a growing share of their batteries from China.
Ilaria Mazzocco, chair in Chinese business and economics at CSIS, says the reduced competition and rising cost of imported battery components could delay price decreases for US consumers.
Bozzella says that even with the tariff protection measures and US subsidies in place, he was unsure how long it would take for the US auto industry to produce EVs that could compete with heavily subsidized Chinese vehicles on pricing.
Van Jackson, previously an official in the Obama administration and now a senior lecturer in international relations at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, says electric cars still need to fall in price if the market is to grow substantially.
The original article contains 2,252 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 91%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I mean, just they’re too expensive. You can buy a normal gas car for around 147 Monero while an EV will set you back 238 Monero.
My car cost 10k€, the equivalent EV is 20k€. Why don’t I buy more EVs? That’s a mystery, let’s call McKinsey to understand why.
Also let’s double the price of more affordable foreign cars to increase the amount of mystery. Sometimes I wonder if governments do this to make fun of us because it’s so stupid.
Those “more affordable foreign cars” are only priced that low because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so much, which is only temporary and lasts just as long as it takes to put their competitors out of business.
This is a race to the bottom just like states giving trillion dollar corporations billions in tax breaks as an incentive to move to their state. At the end of the day, it just harms everyone and should be avoided, which is why the US and EU are putting tariffs on Chinese EVs. They’re still free to sell them at the real cost and actually compete with everyone else.
Money. That’s the answer
Buy an EV? In this economy?
Buy an
EVything? In this economy?
Because if you live in an apartment your only option for charging is to go to a charging location. You can’t just plug it in overnight.
Which I can see as a big hurdle for a lot of people.
I’ve had an EV for four years now and I’ve relied exclusively on public charging. I won’t say it’s never been without any annoyances but overall it was pretty unproblematic. It can absolutely be done if you want it. Recently they installed chargers at my workplace so now I’m fine and dandy.
My son’s apartment had chargers.
I live in a suburb with a lot of one- and two-car garages, but mine is one of the few houses without cars parked in the driveway or on the street. My neighbors on one side converted their garage into a living space during COVID, and the ones on the other use it for storage of things other than cars.
So even with garages you need space in that garage to store your car, which is yet another hurdle.
This was my biggest issue. I live in a townhouse with a carport-ish thingy, but the same issue applies.
Even Level 1 charging is pretty notable, means the vast majority of your daily miles still come from charging at home. This should be achievable if you have an outside plug and an outdoor extension cable.
Though, I suspect from your statement even that isn’t possible due to ownership issues.
I live in an apartment and just charge it once a week for 30 min while I do my grocery shopping. Ezpz. I’ve been doing this for 3 years and have never had a problem.
I charged my EV overnight from an overhead garage door power socket in my apartment for years before I moved out. Never even needed public charging. Many people just don’t realize you can charge from a normal household outlet
Near all apartments around me have exclusively open-air parking, so this isn’t a viable solution for many. It’s not that the available power is inadequate, it’s non-existent.
My non EV is still perfectly serviceable and I don’t like all the superfluous electronic touchscreen bullshit they’re putting in modern vehicles so I’m going to keep driving it until the wheels fall off.
Same. With my driving needs I get fuel about every 2 weeks so it’s not a big burden. And I go on several long road trips each year and charging stations are not something I need to deal with.
Cant charge it myself, doesn’t last long enough, dies when it’s too cold
Not to mention, 5 years in after you’ve invested in the power improvements to your house to allow charging, if your battery fails I guess fuck you? $20k to keep rolling lol. Think that’s part of why the used market is showing huge depreciation for EVs. No one wants to spend 20k for a used vehicle with a ticking time bomb 20k repair guaranteed some time in the future.
5 years in
Batteries last far longer than that, to the point where every warranty I’ve seen is 10 years minimum
No one’s mentioned the privacy nightmare that new vehicles are. Why anyone would pay $45k for a vehicle that spies on you for the sole benefit of car manufacturers and insurance companies is beyond me. Do away with all the unnecessary privacy violations, or pay ME a monthly subscription for MY data.
Yep, this is the reason I won’t get an EV or any modern car. Probably gonna be driving 2016 cars or older the rest of my life.
I am uncomfortable with this as a permanent solution because new cars of today are old cars of tomorrow. Apparently at lest in some vehicles, the telematics module is possible to remove with loss of some functionality - seen some videos and posts on that. I think we need an iFixit-like database comparing vehicles on that front - how easy is the unit to remove and what functions it affects. To be fair, the ones I’ve seen were on newer gas vehicles, so idk if EVs usually have that integrated tighter.
Yeah it’s not my ideal solution either, but I don’t see modern cars getting any better on privacy. If some manufacturer made a stripped down, privacy preserving car I’d be all about it.
I don’t see them getting better either - so at least I, maybe because I am not educated enough, think the solution is also in learning to rip out the privacy invasions rather than waiting for regulation or privacy-conscious models.
The problem is they integrate that shit with the functions you do want like the radio and AC and then make you operate it all through a god damn touchscreen so that if you get on the highway before you realize you forgot to turn the shitty lane assist off you now have to take your life in your hands to disable it or risk it ramming you into that ladder or pothole or something because it doesn’t want you to change lanes abruptly.
This is not specific to EVs, but is most cars from the last decade or two
Americans probably don’t want to buy those Chinese EVs that poorly made and dangerous
Price, range, infrastructure, in roughly that order of importance when averaged over the population. The article then goes into factors affecting price. (Of course, the article originated with the Financial Times and was only reprinted by Ars, so it makes sense that they would put money first.)
Where I live, there’s one charging station. And it’s like 8 miles or so from my house. I’ve yet to see more. It’s also a fairly rural area. I think we forget how much population lives outside cities.
You don’t have electricity in your house??
IDK about houses, but this would be the case for people in apartment buildings. What should you do? Not even joke about “lowering a cord from your window” because it’s not guaranteed that your street parking is near your windows!
My co-worker has an electric car and lives in an apartment without a charger. Luckily our office has a few chargers and he only needs to charge it once or twice a week. If he really needed it he could charge at a public fast charger somewhere else in town, but he tries to avoid that.
Yeah, my office has a couple free chargers. It’s really not worth the fuss for me since I can charge at home and it’s a short commute but I’m happy to see there’s always a queue
Yes, of course, but in remote areas you very rarely have apartment buildings, as I recall.
That is not accurate. There are plenty of apartment buildings far away from commercial areas. They can be surrounded by rural areas or suburban areas (SFH zoning).
😮 and there are no changes at such remote apartment places?
Of course he does. But a standard house power connection does not deliver the amount of power you need to charge a car.
So you need to build a charging pole at your house if you want to charge ar home. Which is another investment.
And if you are in a somewhat remote area and there are not many charging poles around you, you are also very limited in how far and how fast you can travel.
So there really is no point investing in a charging pole and an EV car if the car is not capable of doing to the same things that a gas car can do.
My car is plugged in to a normal power outlet in my garage. As long as it’s not sharing a circuit with a stove or ac compressor or something it’ll be fine, and even if it is you could work around that.
Well, it is enough for my car… You don’t need 50kW if you charge over Night (same Like you don’t need fast charge g, if you charge your phone over night)
Remember the yanks have pink fluffy girly 110v electricity. They’ve only just been told about kettles and they think a microwave is a cooking device
I just learned that you can steam broccoli in the microwave and it’s such a time saver!
Yea, but normally you can draw about 15 amps compared to the 10 amps typically allowed un EU. 110v x 15A = more then 1.5kW which should totally be enough to charge over night (maybe blug it in every night)
It’s nowhere near as bad as you think. A level 2 charger is essentially an electric stove circuit, and the chargers are only a few hundred dollars. I had to do both this year and there really wasn’t a significant cost difference. I charge once or twice a week for a couple hours. It’s quite reasonable to install a level 2 charger if you have a single family house with off street parking
Or for like $150, I got a full set of adapters to charge pretty much everywhere. In addition to a regular outlet, I can plug into a 240v dryer/powertool/heater/ac outlet, or an RV outlet for a faster charge.
While I do have many charging stations nearby (and I’ll bet that’s far more common in the population than people who don’t), with a home charger, I’ve never had the need to use a public charger less than 100 miles from here
Because they’re an unsustainable con for saving the auto/oil cartels instead of the planet/humanity?
Instead of going into poverty buying a luxury vehicle, people should be given safe and sustainable infrastructure for LEVs, bikes, pedestrians, and of course public transit.
