I also feel like the fancy software features ate up a lot of resources for not much return, which makes me wonder how much cheaper EVs could get with a more basic/classic set of features (and hardware supporting them). Only need a backup camera, all the sensors can go except for backup, no need for a GPU/PC/AI ASICs on board, etc. Basically a 2014 Ford with an EV drivetrain.
Yep. We need the electric equivalent of a starter car with good range and basic hardware. I'd take a car with roll-up windows, physical buttons, single A/C controls, 4 doors, 300 mile range, and a backup cam.
Would the masses take it? Who knows. But I'd be all in on that one.
The majority of the cost of any EV is in the batteries. They make them faux-luxury to justify the price that they cost. A stripper EV is going to cost only a couple thousand less than anything out right now.
Maybe relax on the 300mi range and get a Nissan Leaf.
It reminds me of housing which is in a very similar situation. Developers will often throw in something nice like a granite countertop and use that as justification for jacking up the price way beyond the cost of those additions because a majority of the cost lies elsewhere.
These luxury features aren't why these products are so expensive. They are thrown in to segment the market and make people feel better about spending this huge amount of money. There is no incentive for the people producing these products to remove these luxuries.
Soon the only option for people who can't afford or simply don't want to buy the new luxury product is to buy an old and rundown version of what was once a luxury product. New affordable alternatives just aren't as profitable so they aren't produced anymore in the quantities that we actually need.
Given that the govt already has a gazillion auto subsidies, perhaps they should do something to encourage an affordable no-frills EV with good range. I for one would pay more for a vehicle like that.
I would too. The problem is, like the mini phones, there aren't enough of us, and the profit margin small enough (manufactures make more money on luxury vehicles), that automakers don't see a point. Add in a great number of safety regulations (eg mandatory backup cameras in the US since 2013, automated emergency braking (AEB) in the EU since 2022) which all bring up the price of cars, means that we're relegated to the pre-2017 used car market.
The battery still drives costs to some extent, but the bigger issue is manufacturing capacity; you can only make so many EVs on the existing production lines (including battery factory capacity), and there's plenty of high-end demand to consume the supply, so you're not going to leave money on the table selling a cheap car.
People who want a cheap EV just have to do what every cost-conscious consumer does when a new technology comes along: wait. At some point there will be plenty of EVs for the PMC and it will make sense to build one for the rest of us.
It is really hard to recommend getting a Leaf in 2023, at least in the US, unless you _only_ plan to charge at home. The Leaf still uses the Chademo plug, (I believe it's the last car sold in the US that does so) where as CCS is becoming the standard here. The Chevy Bolt is otherwise a similar car for a similar price.
My rav4 prime has a combined range well north of 500 miles and I need every bit of it-because I live in the sticks and we’re not to the point of being able to charge comparably. Something’s got to give.
It should be very possible in a decade or so to extend charging capacity to the boondocks. Just look at where we were ten years ago, versus today. In the meantime, if you can install even a slow 220V/12A charger in your garage, a PHEV should be quite effective.
Quite, it’s about a 90/10 split right now. 80/20 would really be something.
Edit Just to expand on this, the current 90/10 split (500 miles gas/40ish electric) has cut my long distance drive gas usage down by something like 50-75%. If it were more like 500 miles gas/100 miles electric that’d probably cut it down to 2-4 gallons of gas per month or less. Around my house is already fully electric with the 10%.
The numbers I have not done are would simply going inline series with the gas be better than having the traditional power train and electric. In line meaning a generator to fire up the amps needed when the batter gets low-how modern trains work. I’m guessing it’s not so obvious since BMW cancelled their range extender.
That census definition of urban/rural is different from the colloquial definition. The census link allows an "urban" classification as low as 2,500 people.
Colloquially-defined rural areas have been decimated by globalization in the last 40 years. The "rural" area I grew up in had thousands of manufacturing jobs; now it may have 200. The drop in GDP goes far beyond urban sprawl enabled by ICE vehicles.
2000 is far far too low to declare things urban. That line should be drawn at least above 10k-20k, I think.
Also critical infrastructure is out “in the sticks” like dams, power infrastructure (lines/plants/storage), and the support of the container trucks. Then there’s agriculture. It all needs to be electrified and reachable by electrics.
I generally hate that rural areas are so over-represented in US politics but jesus, some of the comments in this thread are making me question that. There is some serious big city myopia going on here. Not everyone can and wants to live their entire lives in a dense city and that's perfectly fine.
To me, rolling your windows looks as funny as cranking the engine. It's a simple motor that doesn't consume a lot of power as far as I can tell. It probably costs manufacturers $30/door for a huge UX improvement (at least for me), with no maintenance. It cannot possibly be the first thing in a list of conveniences to give up.
We have villages in Eastern Europe that don't have plumbing or gas, yet they have fiber optic cable and free and fast public Wi-Fi, so you see horse-pulled carts carrying villagers with laptops.
That's what I'd feel like in 2023 rolling my own window in an EV.
Window motors require wiring looms through the hinge void, which can wear out, plus the motors, switches and a logic board to handle "one touch" operation. All cross-wired through the car so that the driver can command all windows.
I think the big issue is that this hypothetical car would still cost $30k-$40k before tax benefits.
While I think plenty of buyers yearn for a "traditional" car, it's hard to justify one with the added base cost of electric. The Nissan Leaf got pretty close to this (albeit with less range) and while it sold OK, it was far from a barn-busting success.
The marginal cost of adding gizmos and gadgets to an electric car is not very high due to the large base cost sunk into the platform, so we get gizmos and gadgets.
>The marginal cost of adding gizmos and gadgets to an electric car is not very high due to the large base cost sunk into the platform
This may be plausible, but is there data to support it? Because, anecdotally, all the add-ons of "gizmos and gadgets" options can blow up the price. For example, a base F-150 is $43,325. The Platinum options package adds over $23k in just options.
I suspect the more likely culprit is manufacturing cost and efficiency. It just makes more sense to make electric windows the default when the majority of people are going to pay for them anyways.
I have the opposite complaint. I don't need 300 miles of range, 100 would be more than enough. I can rent a traditional car if I need to take a road trip. But I do want a nice interior, and other "premium" features, such as a heads-up display, lane keeping assist, 360-degree camera, etc.
For the car you're describing, check out the Chevy Bolt EV/EUV. It's the closest car to what you're asking for, although it doesn't have a 300 mile range. It may be hard though, Chevy is moving all they can make.
A used EV with a fairly depleted battery could work well for your use case. Only problem is that lane keep assist was pretty lousy in many cars until recently.
Unfortunately the ID.4 is a bit too techified for my taste. The smart system to control windows and mirrors crashed while driving on the highway once, closing the mirrors inwards so I couldn't use them and stopping me from rolling down the windows.
I love my ID.4 very much but it is not the entry level EV described at 40K and up. The Leaf and the Chevy Bolt clock in at under 30K which is much closer.
Neither is the Model 3, either, which is the point of comparison. The Model 3 will still set you back a minimum of $47K (plus taxes, title, yada yada).
Almost anything but the leaf. Doesn't charge much. Terrible battery lifetime because they don't have a battery management system (heat/cool the battery). Only charges with chademo, not ccs, 50kw. They are cheaper. Buy the chevy bolt, that's the best starter/low end basic car.
Citroen seems to be the closest to making these a reality. The Ami and Oli are wild, weird, but absurdly practical starter cars marketed to a slightly-more-sophisticated-than-starter-car demographics.
The Oli is especially impressive in that they've learned that you can sacrifice battery capacity, and if you just keep the car lightweight and aerodynamic enough, you can still get decent range. They're claiming a (pretty phenomenal) 6.2 miles per kWh, and for a car targeting a price point starting at $20k that offers the utility of a small city car, SUV, and pickup truck in a single vehicle, I find it compelling, even as the sort of person for whom this is the least viable car.
And if $20k sounds like too much, the Ami is less impressive, but I think starts at closer to $10k.
Surprised the Chinese automakers haven't been mentioned. BYD is currently the world's largest EV seller. The Dolphin for example is exactly what you mention -- as basic an EV can get, and probably as cheap as it can get as well.
Yeah I don't think it's cheap in absolute terms, just that it's probably as cheap as you can get it right now. I don't think they have left any corners uncut with that car.
Real 300 winter miles range means paper 400+ miles WLTP. And this is where expensive cars start. Real 300 kilometers look better, but still doable with rather expensive cars.
Yeah, I considered a Model Y last year, but the range in winter for EVs is a non-starter for me. People don't realize how significant a drop in range occurs in cold weather.
Depends on how cold, and if you set your car to charge and warm up the battery before you leave. I have 10 years of driving to ski areas around the PNW. It's never mattered that much. But it doesn't get that cold here either. Parking it at a hotel where the high was 25 degrees did seem to reduce range a little, but not enough to matter.
But there are stories of people driving them in below 0 F where if you don't warm it up in the morning (via setting the leave time when charging) they have real loss. This is another area tesla is way ahead, with the battery mgmt system working better in the cold, plus the heat pump. People in cold Quebec also suffer this cold weather.
I live in the central Plains. It's normal for many days between Dec 1 and Feb 1 to be below 32ºF, and not unusual at all to be subzero in the day time. Even prewiring the battery won't help as much as you imply. Sure Tesla may be better than competitors at battery management, but that doesn't mean the battery life is any good in this type of weather. If your "normal" range is 300m, but drops to 180 in cold weather, then it dramatically affects your route planning since you'll need to recharge far more often. And while there are Superchargers in the Midwest, there aren't that many.
I don't think that quite exists, but the Chevy Bolt has good range, is the same price as like a Honda Accord, and everything critical has physical buttons.
What’s even better is an infotainment system old enough that it has the standard double DIN interface, so you can trivially swap in a brand new CarPlay unit.
Yes. I've never used a car infotainment system that was better than CarPlay. Plus Android Auto/CarPlay allow me to leverage stuff I'm already paying for (Spotify, 3G connectivity, etc) to enhance the car.
I feel Tesla and Netflix are really similar. They spent a huge amount of money on software but they failed to understand, they are not a software company. I have moved on from Tesla to the Taycan and the Ionic and they are both better products today.
The real question is whether Tesla's software is better than CarPlay/Android Auto. I don't want my car manufacturer competing with Apple/Google and their 3rd party app ecosystems because they're going to lose every time. Give me the controls I need to drive the car as physical buttons/levers, let my phone take over the infotainment system.
But not everyone cares about the software that much in their cars.
I don't care about playing Doom or The Witcher on the giant touchscreen infotainment system in my car, nor do I want any so called "smart" featured that don't work right half the time.
Give me Android/Apple connect and physical knobs and switches and I'm good.
The software? I haven't even thought about it as much till you asked this question. But the Taycan and the Ionic are both a better car at this stage than a Tesla.
how long are you sitting in your car that you need a 15 inch screen for entertainment. are you a taxi driver? on the rare occasions when you have to wait that long, just get your ipad with you.
I often need to wait for a family member to do some shopping, or wait somewhere to pick a family member up. So yea if I couldn't use the large screen already built into the car, I would have to use an iPad I guess. Watching YouTube in the Tesla automatically turns off the headlights and dims the canopy lights which is nice. Total integration.
I have a VW e-Up and it's basically that. 160 miles of electric range, analog gauges, real buttons for everything, it has a reverse camera and parking sensors but that's about it. I love it. It's amazingly simple - you turn the key and drive, nothing to worry about. And new these were/are about £20k.
I read a while ago that these cars are pretty much unobtainable. Can someone shed some light as to why this is? The premise of the car seems like it would sell very well.
The same reason why most other EVs are unobtainable - the production line is maxed out and orders are closed through 2023. There's loads of second hand ones for sale that I can see online, and personally I got mine through a lease deal - signed paperwork, got the car delivered 3 days later. If I wanted to order one I'd probably wait a year.
I believe most of those are so-called compliance cars, cars designed to mainly satisfy imposed legal requirements, such as weighted average of CO2 emissions for a brand.
Sure, but they only fulfil that purpose if they sell loads. Just it existing does nothing for manufacturer's averages. They need to sell one of these for every 200g CO2/km car to average 100g CO2/km overall.
It's the opposite. All of these fancy features cost almost nothing extra for the manufacturer but are used to bump up the price by $10-20K over an equivalent no-frills car.
Actually.... when I worked there seven years ago, I wrote a point-by-point memo explaining why 48V was such a win (trying to move to 48V for falcon wing doors), even having the TI guys build for us some custom PCBs w/+12 to +48V converters that we could try for the powerful motors required.
However....the decision was made to stick with +12V because, mainly, the Industry pumped out accessories (door locks, fans, you name it) that run on +12, and hence +48 would be 'custom' (read: 'expensive'). Was also true of the actuators. The moby FETs needed to switch the current existed and heatsinking wasn't too much of a problem, and so.... +12V it was. Big-ass thick wires... ok....
It seems some others inside found my memo recently -- or re-discovered what I had found -- and, finally, +48V seems to be moving into vehicles. With a +48V LiFePo battery, it should work really well. And to the original comment here: yes, your copper wiring is smaller because E x I is same but I*2*R is less because I is less for given power. Note the squared term; that is why +48V is a win.
Somehow, it seems like some folks (I am by no means the first!) 'see the future' but for reasons I don't fully understand, The Future seems to take longer to get here than necessary.
> Somehow, it seems like some folks (I am by no means the first!) 'see the future' but for reasons I don't fully understand, The Future seems to take longer to get here than necessary.
Microsoft tried to sell the world on Smart TVs back when most Americans had dial up.
Smart car infotainment back in I think it was 2008 or 2009, complete with voice control.
Sometimes being early can be worse than being late.
Do you actually think the removal of a few bundles of wires will make any sort of difference in either price or weight when the battery pack weighs around 1000lbs and costs $10-20k to replace?
Teslas have fewer chips than legacy OEMs due to better integration. They are already the most cost efficient EVs to build, and they’re making further progress as described on investor day.
1. Their "self driving" adaptive cruise is very bad compared to other brands. Because they dropped radar and don't use proven modules like others.
2. Same for their idiotic attempt to replace well working sensors for automatic wipers with not working cameras.
3. And now this next thing on parking sensors that just don't work.
Still hordes of people are stupid enough to believe Musk claiming it's all great innovation and good for the customer. While in reality things just don't work and Tesla is cutting corners.
Elon Musk is a prime example of an "alternative facts" kind of liar. Keep shouting loud enough and some people start te believe you. He got very far with all his lies, but so did Bernie Madoff...
Not sure which reality you are in, adaptive cruise and automatic wipers works great in my car. What data are you basing "adaptive cruise is very bad compared to others" and "automatic wipers with not working cameras" on?
23 MY owner here - I have been very unimpressed with the automatic wipers in my car, especially in intermittent rain/water thrown up from the car in front, or snowy conditions/lots of salt on the road - they seem to either want to wipe like crazy and smear the windshield, or they never trigger when most of the windshield is covered. This wouldn't be quite as annoying except that the wiper interface isn't physical, and having to reach over to the touch screen to change wiper speed when you're already in a reduced visibility situation is not a great UI! I basically end up just pressing the one physical button to trigger a one-off windshield wipe a lot.
This was a pretty big disappointment for me coming from a 2005 (!) Audi A4 which has auto wipers that work _almost_ flawlessly (and has a physical adjustment on the stalk when I need to override).
I'm very much not a Tesla hater - overall I _love_ the car. I just wish a few details were different (speedometer & nav more directly in line of site, physical controls for windshield wipers, CarPlay integration). I've just been kinda shocked how bad the auto wipers are for a brand new car.
Adaptive Cruise works well for me though, although I enjoy the act of driving so I don't use it all that often other than long straight highways.
Lmao in your own personal world perhaps. Out of spec has a basic freeway test on youtube - most cars ping pong within lanes, shut off when the road curves too much and/or only work on select mapped sections of freeways.
You can diss the wipers or parking sensors but pretending that the competition is anywhere near autopilot, especially the newest one based on FSD code, is hilarious.
> out of spec has a basic freeway test on youtube - most cars ping pong within lanes
Maybe several years ago. My car stays happily in the center of the lane -and- doesn't veer to the right with offramps, or lane count changes.
One of the problems with some Tesla owners is they buy too fully into the "dinosaur" thinking, and assume that other manufacturers have not adjusted their thinking since the 90s.
My car actively maps the road ahead and will, while staying in lanes, avoid potholes, for one very simple example.
What do curves have to do with adaptive cruise control? That's just keeping a speed and a distance, without randomly hitting the brakes. Other brands do it much better than Tesla at the moment.
The distance is detected by radar or sonar and comes from the front of the car. A curve means you’re no longer dead on to the car in front of you — and in extreme cases, are dead on to a car from another lane. This proved difficult for the radar packages of the 00s
The early mobileeye autopilot was actually pretty good, it did traffic aware cruise control and autosteer, making driving easier. Everything after that seems only marginally better.
