this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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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!
What about the winter? A bike isn’t going to get me to the ski hill, or even across town when it’s snowing or the roads are icy.
Even in the summer, I can’t put my mountain bike on a bike (yes I know). I can’t put my kayak on a bike.
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.
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.
Hydrogen is terrible. It is much more expensive than even gasoline, adds way more complexity compared to all electric, and extremely inefficient. It's a joke. It might make sense for semis in the future but will never make sense for passenger cars. The Mirai is a concept science experiment sold as a consumer car.
Batteries are expensive to replace right now but that's only because we don't have battery recycling infrastructure yet. Eventually they will be much cheaper to replace. Already, even factoring replacing the battery every 100k miles, electric cars are cheaper to own than gas and many batteries are known to last 200k+ miles. It really is only the Leaf that has the shitty battery that needs replacing.
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.
The Chevy Bolt is 19k after the federal credit.
Yeah and sell at a loss
Learn to make them efficient so you don't need a giant heavy expensive battery...
Or maybe a billion dollar research grant to get solid state batteries out, which seem to solve all of these problems
Hmm, you sound like you're describing electric cargo bike 😉 But seriously, much lower dead weight to actually carried ratio, lower speeds... The only missing part of the puzzle is safe infrastructure (separate lanes, prioritized traffic etc.)
Eh I usually go around with my non-cargo and non-ev bike and it solves around 90% of my mobility problems. The rest is unfortunately up to the car since going to office means 2 hours of train + tram + walking but by car it's around 35-40 minutes including finding a parking spot. And then there's the occasional very large and big item (like furniture and tools) that I need to bring around and my car is sometimes not big enough for that, forget about a cargo bike.
I'd rather rent a car when I need it, but it's around 120€ per day, max 100km, plus gasoline and it is unpractical because you don't know of there are cars available. Once I needed to bring a big table and it was cheaper to hire a moving company for a couple of hours than renting the big SUV and do by myself
Your 90% bike usage already lessens the environmental impact of your driving, while also adding personal health benefits, so please keep doing that 🙏
What exactly are you referencing when you say "make them efficient"?
Oh yeah it's that easy. You should be CEO. What a great idea