Even in cities that are pretty hostile to bikes, electric bikes/scooters are an amazing middle point between walking and all the expense of a car (purchase, loans, fuel, maintenance, insurance, registration, tickets, etc.).
I got a cargo e-bike (Aventon Abound) and I have a cafe lock and a chain lock. Luckily the bike doesn't look "cool" so I am less worried about thieves. It's also quite heavy so the cafe lock is almost always enough. If I am leaving it downtown for hours then I also use the heavy duty chain.
I get around on an acoustic bike, but have a lot of friends with e-bikes. I believe this is extremely locale-dependent. For instance there's relatively little bike theft in my locale, except around the university where it's just really easy pickings.
I think you can learn a lot by looking at how bikes -- acoustic and electric -- are already being parked and locked in your district. For instance my daughter is attending grad school in a big city, and while we were walking around, I noticed that the most decrepit old bikes were secured with giant U-locks plus chains. Hmmm. So my daughter rides a bike of similar ilk, and secures it in a similar fashion.
And I noticed the most beastly of chains and locks in New York City.
Plus, people generally seem to prefer e-bikes where they can take the battery pack with them.
I don't. Theft risk and storage is definitely a challenge. A lot of commuters find somewhere to stash them at work. The problem might get better as ebikes become more common and lower in price.
Nope. Is as horrible as it gets. They silently swing by the pedestrians with over 20mph, many drive drunk or don't know/avoid traffic rules and there is 0 enforcement. And if you get hit by them good luck getting compensated for your hospital bills.
Exactly. They are a scourge. My best friend’s son had facial reconstructive surgery due to a scooter crash and a coworker’s son broke his arm, quite a bad break.
If this graph is the evidence for "Global sales of combustion engine cars have peaked" isn't it also the evidence proving "global car sales have peaked"?
It does not get into the "why", but I realize that is hard to determine.
My question is, are these sales for brand new cars or does it include used cars also ?
I know my days of buying brand new ended years ago due to how expensive new cars are. My current car (bought used) is from 2007 and if I have to buy another, it will be used.
So I have to wonder, are people avoiding buying new due to the expense. That could point to a reason. Would be interesting to see charts based upon Country or group of countries.
Looks good for belting about a city on, where I am (rural Australian town) I'm happy with walking or a scooter for local travel .. an 80 mile range just gets me to the nearest town and back with little reserve.
A 150 mile range would be better .. that'll come I guess.
FWiW I rode the BMW R650 (light road bike) for a decade and had a GS 1250 with long range tanks for road|off road trips.
Can I just ask - forgive the potential ignorance - if EVs have been proven to be less net carbon emitting with their manufacturing and expected disposal emissions factored in?
EVs have an initial higher carbon footprint after production than ICE vehicles due to their battery.
However, the initial CO2 footprint is dwarfed when compared to the operational footprint of ICE vehicles. Takes a few years for the scale to tip in EVs favour, to which then there's a substantial difference.
> BNEF studied the US, Chinese, Germany, UK and Japanese markets. It determined the lifecycle CO2 emissions of a medium-size BEV manufactured in 2023 and driven for 250,000km would be 27-71 per cent lower than those of equivalent ICE vehicles.
> BEV manufactured in 2023 and driven for 250,000km would be 27-71 per cent lower than those of equivalent ICE vehicles.
(Disclaimer: I know little about cars ...)
My country, New Zealand, is awash with new BEV brands, some also offering ICE, from China and South East Asia. Compared with traditional SEA manufacturers (Japan, Korea) that supply most of our new cars, the prices are apparently ridiculously competitive and packed full of premium features.
It feels like I see a new brand advertised every couple of months. Four new brands were introduced late last year [1] One of whose SSL cert expired a couple of weeks ago and still has not been renewed.
The question is will these low cost EVs last 250,000km? I don't think the batteries will.
> The question is will these low cost EVs last 250,000km? I don't think the batteries will.
> Why do you think the batteries won’t?
I was commenting on low-cost EV. I don't know but I think its likely that given the following (maybe incorrect) assumption:
1. Cheap EVs use cheaper lower-quality cells to keep costs down.
2. Cheap EVs use battery tech that maximises range and performance at the expense of longevity, which would be cheaper than both maximising range and performance AND longevity.
3. Cheap EVs save money with worse cooling of the batteries.
I could be wrong on both points.
There are plenty of stories of EV batteries having low deterioration despite high KMs. But I am not sure these are usually old EVs, just EVs driven a lot.
Lithium batteries experience cyclic degradation (degradation when charged) and degradation over time (calendar degradation). We have yet to see how multiple decades effects them.
This NZ govt. report is an excellent resource [1]. It cites this paper [2] where they charted Nissan Leaf battery deterioration over time under various conditions.
Here in NZ, I looked at our post popular used-car website and 9 year old Leafs (2015 model) which had done 90-100,000km had lost 25-32% of battery capacity. There is not much data for earlier leafs.
Another important factor is that emissions are highly dependent on what you're burning to power the grid. As electrification intensifies those effects become even more pronounced. In 15 years or so I imagine most countries with sane leadership will be mostly running on renewables & nuclear.
I will never buy an EV, not because of its powertrain but because there is no way to avoid their spyware. Granted, the same goes for modern gas cars, which is also why I stick to secondhand but premium pre-infotainment cars
Downhill = good, momentum is unstoppable, nothing stops the electrification transition, we’re simply arguing time horizon now; China will be the clean energy and mobility manufacturer to the world.
(50% of car sales in China in 2024 were battery electric or plug in hybrid)
I feel most people still don't realize that China is facing a demographic crisis. If their demographics matched the United States sure, but its unlikely china will be leading many of these future technological situations. Don't take me the wrong way, they have a great opportunity in front of them but just the resources required to take care of their elderly is going to suck up a pretty hefty amount of resources.
More industrial robots are built and sold in China than anywhere else in the world. This is an intentional choice, the government knows their working age population is shrinking. They will race to automation before their demographic dividend is finished paying out.
To note, the US has no robotics foundries, and already is experiencing labor shortages today.
Unfortunately, the US would rather subject its consumers to legacy auto and Tesla prices and lack of competition vs enabling imports to drive down domestic prices to improve affordability. Poor policy is unfortunate.
And with the rest of the world covering to electric, we can expect negative economies of scale alongside the financial problems of economic contraction for combustion car makers.
The coal companies started going bankrupt long before the end of coal. (hell it's still not over...) Simply because investors could see that it's a shrinking industry, making it impossible to get financing for new plants, mines, etc.
I terminated my in process application to import the vehicle from my property outside of the US for two reasons: I no longer intend to maintain majority residency in the US for the foreseeable future (obvious reasons), and the US government is effectively banning Chinese EVs in the US [1].
Was fun to make the attempt, but sometimes city hall wins. It turns out it is easier to expat than to import a Chinese car.
As of tomorrow morning the US has declared war on its legacy domestic auto industry, too. Take a look at GM's stock. Trump was warned there would be plant closures if tariffs were enacted but he went ahead anyways. Doesn't show much of a preference or concern for those industries at all.
But sure, maybe Tesla. Though I suspect they use parts from Magna etc on this side of the border, too.
This is great news. Of course new car purchases are a leading indicator of the overall makeup of cars. And people might be buying fewer cars if their old ones last longer.
Hertz forced me to take a Kia Niro EV as my rental. "We have no other vehicles left, it is a higher class vehicle than the compact you reserved". Like hell it was! Never again!
I had plans that involved driving 8 hours each way. Electrify America chargers were all broken. Luckily, CircleK chargers "worked", slowly. An hour and 30 min to go from 10% to 90%. Had to charge twice each way. Time I will never get back.
After this experience, I talked to Hertz. There is evidently no way to note "no EV ever" on a reservation. I am avoiding hertz from now on (and dollar/thrifty that they own). Enterprise allows you to note "NO EV" on a rental reservation, and honors it.
Until EVs can charge at every corner and in 3 minutes, no thanks! I have places to be, and those places are not "90 minutes on a deserted CircleK parking lot"
Yeap, EVs are great when you can charge at home and your journeys are all short enough to return home each night to recharge.
This is what I do. Love it. Never ever going back to ICE.
Those very few times I have to make longer journeys and need to charge? Have found a few fast chargers on routes I take that I try and use, but its majorly inconvenient and stressful compared to ICE. A big downside.
So great for being our personal car for local journeys. Bad for long journeys.
I deliberately rented a Kia Niro EV on my last work trip for the novelty of driving an electric car since probably 2016. I even insisted when they tried to switch me to another vehicle.
Boy, it sucked. Even with a Type 2 charger at work, and maybe 2 miles between the office and my hotel, charging was a huge hassle. And with an ICE vehicle I can refuel before dropping it back off at the airport in about 5 minutes. It's just not practical to recharge my EV after driving 1.5 hours to catch my flight.
The only other noteworthy experience was making an adjustment in a parking space and having 2 or 3 alarms going off concurrently without any indication of what they meant. (Excluding the proximity sensor, if memory serves.)
I think you don't want to see it, but if you were willing to do so, here's the point: each usage is different! Each way a person uses a car has different consequences and implications.
My charging takes less than 1 minute, really. I arrive at home at 4:30, it takes 20 seconds to plug the car and then 20 more seconds to unplug it the next morning.
And what about all the 12 hours between that? Well, I am living my life, I am not charging a car! The car is doing the whole work of charging itself, alone.
That's several orders of magnitude better than going to a gas station.
Also, with time, we can make effort to decarbonize the production chain of EVs. With ICE vehicles, they reject carbon and there are only so many micro-adjustments we can do.
"Mandate" how? Unless they're doing expensive mandatory periodic inspections nothing is stopping me from plugging my EVSE into an outlet meant for a welder, dryer, pool pump, etc.
And can always charge L1 120v, even if it's unbearably slow.
Most people will have an electrician install a charging station. Sure, some people will dodge it, as they already dodge other building code requirements.
Or, they can just tax the car based on some average mileage statistics. That's what my state does. Registering an EV is substantially more expensive than an ICE vehicle.
We bought a used EV, and I ran the numbers vs. a 20mpg car.
The EV will pay for itself in saved gasoline after about 53K miles.
That’s not breakeven time; that’s “the car is free” time.
Breakeven was less than half that long because the old ICE car would have had non-zero depreciation.
Apples-to-apples break even would have been 10-20K miles (ignoring free charging at work), but it ended up being closer to 300 miles. Thanks to a fuel crisis, the price of the EV increased by $5K shortly after I bought it. (It’s back down now.)
Probably looking at total vehicles on the road would be more useful. Maybe cars got a lot more reliable 20 years ago, and so there are a lot more cars still kicking from the early 2000s which would have been scrapped in the past.
that's another problem - inequality in the global value chain,
China is the most important growth market for passenger vehicles for last 20+ years, this is because of China's continuous industrial upgrading, which has gradually shifted from manufacturing low value-added products (such as jeans) to producing high value-added products (such as passenger vehicles).
this brings '10s of millions of newly middle class consumers', same thing happened in Japan/Korea/Taiwan too
but now, china produced 30 million cars (12m evs) in 2024, which means China's passenger vehicle market will quickly approach saturation, even if all Chinese families purchase or replace new vehicles
btw, '10s of millions newly consumers' is a relatively small number
and there will be no other markets with '10s of millions of newly middle class consumers' unless other countries can accompolish industrial upgrading like China's did
and if these countries(India/indonesia/Vietnam) manage to do so, their industrial upgrading will intensify this competition just like what happened in China now
Maybe that's true, but maybe the average cost of a new car in Asia is quite a bit lower, so the overall effect is still declining total overall sales (measured in USD)?
Here's a fascinating video about a city in China that's full of cute electric cars that cost less than $5000 USD each:
Seems unlikely that we'll ever totally move away from combustion engines, simply due to sunk costs plus the advantages of energy density and quick refilling. I expect we'll see net-zero carbon emission gasoline and other hydrocarbons sold at the pump within the next few decades, produced with either solar or nuclear energy:
Compressed natural gas (methane) is even easier to synthesize from the raw ingredients than gasoline or diesel fuels. It's used today in many city buses, fleet vehicles, and private cars in certain parts of the world:
Such fuels could become less attractive if we invent lighter, cheaper, and much faster-charging batteries than the current state of the art, but I'm not holding my breath.
Even in cities that are pretty hostile to bikes, electric bikes/scooters are an amazing middle point between walking and all the expense of a car (purchase, loans, fuel, maintenance, insurance, registration, tickets, etc.).
Yup, order of magnitude more electric micromobility vehicles than electric cars:
https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-280-million-electric-...
I want an electric bike but I want to go places with it and I’m worried about it getting stolen when I lock it up outside a shop. Do you have one?
I got a cargo e-bike (Aventon Abound) and I have a cafe lock and a chain lock. Luckily the bike doesn't look "cool" so I am less worried about thieves. It's also quite heavy so the cafe lock is almost always enough. If I am leaving it downtown for hours then I also use the heavy duty chain.
I have the same model, it’s so much fun to ride. Love the abound.
I get around on an acoustic bike, but have a lot of friends with e-bikes. I believe this is extremely locale-dependent. For instance there's relatively little bike theft in my locale, except around the university where it's just really easy pickings.
I think you can learn a lot by looking at how bikes -- acoustic and electric -- are already being parked and locked in your district. For instance my daughter is attending grad school in a big city, and while we were walking around, I noticed that the most decrepit old bikes were secured with giant U-locks plus chains. Hmmm. So my daughter rides a bike of similar ilk, and secures it in a similar fashion.
And I noticed the most beastly of chains and locks in New York City.
Plus, people generally seem to prefer e-bikes where they can take the battery pack with them.
TIL "acoustic bike" is a phrase
It's not. It's an unfunny insider joke.
If it’s a short stop a “cafe lock” for back wheel is super convenient
Lean to buying/doing a conversion vs "polished" ebike.
Buy the best lock you can afford - it should be a grinder resistant one such as hiplok or litelok.
Note that while the lock may be resistant, the thing it's locked to may be easier to cut if the thief gets frustrated and has time to steal it.
Nothing will stop someone who has the time and batteries/discs from stealing your bike.
I don't. Theft risk and storage is definitely a challenge. A lot of commuters find somewhere to stash them at work. The problem might get better as ebikes become more common and lower in price.
I'm lookimg at a folding e scooter
I wish they were half as heavy with 1/4 the range. Lightest ones are still like 10kg+?
Insurance
Nope. Is as horrible as it gets. They silently swing by the pedestrians with over 20mph, many drive drunk or don't know/avoid traffic rules and there is 0 enforcement. And if you get hit by them good luck getting compensated for your hospital bills.
Exactly. They are a scourge. My best friend’s son had facial reconstructive surgery due to a scooter crash and a coworker’s son broke his arm, quite a bad break.
If this graph is the evidence for "Global sales of combustion engine cars have peaked" isn't it also the evidence proving "global car sales have peaked"?
Maybe. Less clear evidence of that.
Total cars down by 5-6%, and lower than 6 of the previous 13 years.
Combustion cars down by 24%, and lower than 12 of the previous 13 years.
It does not get into the "why", but I realize that is hard to determine.
My question is, are these sales for brand new cars or does it include used cars also ?
I know my days of buying brand new ended years ago due to how expensive new cars are. My current car (bought used) is from 2007 and if I have to buy another, it will be used.
So I have to wonder, are people avoiding buying new due to the expense. That could point to a reason. Would be interesting to see charts based upon Country or group of countries.
I doubt total sales have peaked. Economic growth and population growth will likely keep that going up.
But EVs are eating enough market share that combustion cars are likely never climbing past their peak again.
not necessarily, people in dense urban areas rely on other transportations at least in EU
Maybe, but not as strong. Combustion is down or flat every year since '16. Aggregate numbers haven't regained their peak, but are up and down.
This graph shows 2023 only.
Even in 2024 there were still some production issues coming out of the covid years. 2023 had lots of issues.
So it's unclear what's actually going to happen, if normal markets resume.
(At least in North America, the car manufacturing market will go bananas soon with new tariffs)
Presumably 2024 will also be bad due to interest rates. But, of course, that doesn't say anything about "real" demand.
This things is amazing.
https://www.bmwmotorcycles.com/en/models/urban_mobility/ce04...
It looks huge! How the hell do you commute on that thing? Can't imagine lane filtering on it.
Edit: 855mm wide, 1675mm wheelbase, weighs like a 1000cc adventure bike (clearly bottom-heavy, though). That's one Goldwing of a scooter.
Shows promise, yes.
Looks good for belting about a city on, where I am (rural Australian town) I'm happy with walking or a scooter for local travel .. an 80 mile range just gets me to the nearest town and back with little reserve.
A 150 mile range would be better .. that'll come I guess.
FWiW I rode the BMW R650 (light road bike) for a decade and had a GS 1250 with long range tanks for road|off road trips.
$12K for a very limited use vehicle that has an 80 mile range. Good luck with that.
Its zero-sixty time is 2.6 seconds. That ties the fastest thing here:
https://www.zeroto60times.com/body-style/motorcycle/fast-slo...?
Which has an MSRP of $20K.
I suspect the BMW will sell extremely well.
The BMW links says zero to 30 mph in 2.6
Not bad but it's not zero to 60 mph in 2.6
Can I just ask - forgive the potential ignorance - if EVs have been proven to be less net carbon emitting with their manufacturing and expected disposal emissions factored in?
EVs have an initial higher carbon footprint after production than ICE vehicles due to their battery.
However, the initial CO2 footprint is dwarfed when compared to the operational footprint of ICE vehicles. Takes a few years for the scale to tip in EVs favour, to which then there's a substantial difference.
> BNEF studied the US, Chinese, Germany, UK and Japanese markets. It determined the lifecycle CO2 emissions of a medium-size BEV manufactured in 2023 and driven for 250,000km would be 27-71 per cent lower than those of equivalent ICE vehicles.
> BEV manufactured in 2023 and driven for 250,000km would be 27-71 per cent lower than those of equivalent ICE vehicles.
(Disclaimer: I know little about cars ...)
My country, New Zealand, is awash with new BEV brands, some also offering ICE, from China and South East Asia. Compared with traditional SEA manufacturers (Japan, Korea) that supply most of our new cars, the prices are apparently ridiculously competitive and packed full of premium features.
It feels like I see a new brand advertised every couple of months. Four new brands were introduced late last year [1] One of whose SSL cert expired a couple of weeks ago and still has not been renewed.
The question is will these low cost EVs last 250,000km? I don't think the batteries will.
[1] https://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/350442392/four-new-chinese-...
[1] https://skyworth.co.nz/
Why do you think the batteries won’t?
> The question is will these low cost EVs last 250,000km? I don't think the batteries will.
> Why do you think the batteries won’t?
I was commenting on low-cost EV. I don't know but I think its likely that given the following (maybe incorrect) assumption:
1. Cheap EVs use cheaper lower-quality cells to keep costs down.
2. Cheap EVs use battery tech that maximises range and performance at the expense of longevity, which would be cheaper than both maximising range and performance AND longevity.
3. Cheap EVs save money with worse cooling of the batteries.
I could be wrong on both points.
There are plenty of stories of EV batteries having low deterioration despite high KMs. But I am not sure these are usually old EVs, just EVs driven a lot.
Lithium batteries experience cyclic degradation (degradation when charged) and degradation over time (calendar degradation). We have yet to see how multiple decades effects them.
This NZ govt. report is an excellent resource [1]. It cites this paper [2] where they charted Nissan Leaf battery deterioration over time under various conditions.
Here in NZ, I looked at our post popular used-car website and 9 year old Leafs (2015 model) which had done 90-100,000km had lost 25-32% of battery capacity. There is not much data for earlier leafs.
[1] https://www.genless.govt.nz/assets/Everyone-Resources/ev-bat...
https://www.genless.govt.nz/assets/Everyone-Resources/ev-bat...
Another important factor is that emissions are highly dependent on what you're burning to power the grid. As electrification intensifies those effects become even more pronounced. In 15 years or so I imagine most countries with sane leadership will be mostly running on renewables & nuclear.
[dead]
Yes. The break even is at around 15,000 to 20,000 miles driven for replacing an ICE. This obviously varies depending on electricity source.
https://youtu.be/6RhtiPefVzM?si=QBYX8y8ArPbZ_oii
I will never buy an EV, not because of its powertrain but because there is no way to avoid their spyware. Granted, the same goes for modern gas cars, which is also why I stick to secondhand but premium pre-infotainment cars
Historical event. It’s all downhill from here.
Related:
Tracking global data on electric vehicles - https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales
Great data, I wish it was updated for 2024. I think that article will come soon given that current data was from February of 2024 (for 2023 data).
Nonsense, China's future is looking brighter by the day!
But I repeat myself, apologies to Twain
Downhill = good, momentum is unstoppable, nothing stops the electrification transition, we’re simply arguing time horizon now; China will be the clean energy and mobility manufacturer to the world.
(50% of car sales in China in 2024 were battery electric or plug in hybrid)
I feel most people still don't realize that China is facing a demographic crisis. If their demographics matched the United States sure, but its unlikely china will be leading many of these future technological situations. Don't take me the wrong way, they have a great opportunity in front of them but just the resources required to take care of their elderly is going to suck up a pretty hefty amount of resources.
More industrial robots are built and sold in China than anywhere else in the world. This is an intentional choice, the government knows their working age population is shrinking. They will race to automation before their demographic dividend is finished paying out.
To note, the US has no robotics foundries, and already is experiencing labor shortages today.
https://itif.org/publications/2024/03/11/how-innovative-is-c...
If US allows these cheap electric cars for at least 2-3 years, I would say it would be great for everybody except car companies and Elon.
Unfortunately, the US would rather subject its consumers to legacy auto and Tesla prices and lack of competition vs enabling imports to drive down domestic prices to improve affordability. Poor policy is unfortunate.
And with the rest of the world covering to electric, we can expect negative economies of scale alongside the financial problems of economic contraction for combustion car makers.
The coal companies started going bankrupt long before the end of coal. (hell it's still not over...) Simply because investors could see that it's a shrinking industry, making it impossible to get financing for new plants, mines, etc.
[dead]
Did you figure out importing BYD vehicles?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39992428
I terminated my in process application to import the vehicle from my property outside of the US for two reasons: I no longer intend to maintain majority residency in the US for the foreseeable future (obvious reasons), and the US government is effectively banning Chinese EVs in the US [1].
Was fun to make the attempt, but sometimes city hall wins. It turns out it is easier to expat than to import a Chinese car.
[1] https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/biden-administration-effect...
As of tomorrow morning the US has declared war on its legacy domestic auto industry, too. Take a look at GM's stock. Trump was warned there would be plant closures if tariffs were enacted but he went ahead anyways. Doesn't show much of a preference or concern for those industries at all.
But sure, maybe Tesla. Though I suspect they use parts from Magna etc on this side of the border, too.
UAW and their >500k members might disagree
This is great news. Of course new car purchases are a leading indicator of the overall makeup of cars. And people might be buying fewer cars if their old ones last longer.
I have an EV (Kia Niro EV 2024). I don't want ever to go back to gas.
Reasons:
* the driving experience is just much, much better: punch & acceleration, stability, quietness, etc.
* if you charge at home it is a lot cheaper than gas
* it is so easy to "fuel": you plug it in when you arrive home and unplug the next morning
Edit: also, after I installed solar cells at home, I drive almost for free!
Hertz forced me to take a Kia Niro EV as my rental. "We have no other vehicles left, it is a higher class vehicle than the compact you reserved". Like hell it was! Never again!
I had plans that involved driving 8 hours each way. Electrify America chargers were all broken. Luckily, CircleK chargers "worked", slowly. An hour and 30 min to go from 10% to 90%. Had to charge twice each way. Time I will never get back.
After this experience, I talked to Hertz. There is evidently no way to note "no EV ever" on a reservation. I am avoiding hertz from now on (and dollar/thrifty that they own). Enterprise allows you to note "NO EV" on a rental reservation, and honors it.
Until EVs can charge at every corner and in 3 minutes, no thanks! I have places to be, and those places are not "90 minutes on a deserted CircleK parking lot"
Yeap, EVs are great when you can charge at home and your journeys are all short enough to return home each night to recharge.
This is what I do. Love it. Never ever going back to ICE.
Those very few times I have to make longer journeys and need to charge? Have found a few fast chargers on routes I take that I try and use, but its majorly inconvenient and stressful compared to ICE. A big downside.
So great for being our personal car for local journeys. Bad for long journeys.
I deliberately rented a Kia Niro EV on my last work trip for the novelty of driving an electric car since probably 2016. I even insisted when they tried to switch me to another vehicle.
Boy, it sucked. Even with a Type 2 charger at work, and maybe 2 miles between the office and my hotel, charging was a huge hassle. And with an ICE vehicle I can refuel before dropping it back off at the airport in about 5 minutes. It's just not practical to recharge my EV after driving 1.5 hours to catch my flight.
The only other noteworthy experience was making an adjustment in a parking space and having 2 or 3 alarms going off concurrently without any indication of what they meant. (Excluding the proximity sensor, if memory serves.)
I think you don't want to see it, but if you were willing to do so, here's the point: each usage is different! Each way a person uses a car has different consequences and implications.
My charging takes less than 1 minute, really. I arrive at home at 4:30, it takes 20 seconds to plug the car and then 20 more seconds to unplug it the next morning.
And what about all the 12 hours between that? Well, I am living my life, I am not charging a car! The car is doing the whole work of charging itself, alone.
That's several orders of magnitude better than going to a gas station.
Also, if you get into an EV now, before everyone else does, you can still enjoy a cheap fueling experience for a little while longer
Also, with time, we can make effort to decarbonize the production chain of EVs. With ICE vehicles, they reject carbon and there are only so many micro-adjustments we can do.
I can't see how they can make at home charging more expensive without making all other electricity uses expensive and that will have severe backlash.
On the go DC fast charging is already not cheap. It costs as much or more than gas.
They can mandate separate metering for the charging circuit and tax it to make u p for the lost gasoline taxes.
those gasoline taxes currently pay for roads. and EVs put more strain on roads due to their increased weight.
ICE vs EV difference is negligible compared to 18 wheelers and alike on road strain.
And 18 wheelers pay a lot more road tax than passenger cars do.
"Mandate" how? Unless they're doing expensive mandatory periodic inspections nothing is stopping me from plugging my EVSE into an outlet meant for a welder, dryer, pool pump, etc.
And can always charge L1 120v, even if it's unbearably slow.
Most people will have an electrician install a charging station. Sure, some people will dodge it, as they already dodge other building code requirements.
Or, they can just tax the car based on some average mileage statistics. That's what my state does. Registering an EV is substantially more expensive than an ICE vehicle.
Is it more expensive per mile though with all things considered?
Probably not.
We bought a used EV, and I ran the numbers vs. a 20mpg car.
The EV will pay for itself in saved gasoline after about 53K miles.
That’s not breakeven time; that’s “the car is free” time.
Breakeven was less than half that long because the old ICE car would have had non-zero depreciation.
Apples-to-apples break even would have been 10-20K miles (ignoring free charging at work), but it ended up being closer to 300 miles. Thanks to a fuel crisis, the price of the EV increased by $5K shortly after I bought it. (It’s back down now.)
From the source, which more clearly states "we're biased", the massive change is because of EV cars in China.
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2024/executive...
What's strange to me is according to the graph it's not just combustion engine cars that peaked, cars overall more or less did too, in the graph.
Are trucks like the F150 not being captured by this data? How literal is "cars"?
Slowdown in the West. This started before covid but was not visible because Asia is still growing.
This graph shows covid years, and it was hard to buy new due to shortages and shutdowns, and supply chain issues.
Cars are too expensive new, that's why sales are down, imo
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Probably looking at total vehicles on the road would be more useful. Maybe cars got a lot more reliable 20 years ago, and so there are a lot more cars still kicking from the early 2000s which would have been scrapped in the past.
This is exactly the problem. It's a game in the existing market without any additional growth.
it's not strange, jeff bezos can buy dozens of yachts, but most people will only buy 1 car for several years
That doesn't make any sense. There are 10s of millions of newly middle class consumers in Asia.
that's another problem - inequality in the global value chain,
China is the most important growth market for passenger vehicles for last 20+ years, this is because of China's continuous industrial upgrading, which has gradually shifted from manufacturing low value-added products (such as jeans) to producing high value-added products (such as passenger vehicles).
this brings '10s of millions of newly middle class consumers', same thing happened in Japan/Korea/Taiwan too
but now, china produced 30 million cars (12m evs) in 2024, which means China's passenger vehicle market will quickly approach saturation, even if all Chinese families purchase or replace new vehicles
btw, '10s of millions newly consumers' is a relatively small number
and there will be no other markets with '10s of millions of newly middle class consumers' unless other countries can accompolish industrial upgrading like China's did
and if these countries(India/indonesia/Vietnam) manage to do so, their industrial upgrading will intensify this competition just like what happened in China now
Maybe that's true, but maybe the average cost of a new car in Asia is quite a bit lower, so the overall effect is still declining total overall sales (measured in USD)?
Here's a fascinating video about a city in China that's full of cute electric cars that cost less than $5000 USD each:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AomxytSwrkY
Seems unlikely that we'll ever totally move away from combustion engines, simply due to sunk costs plus the advantages of energy density and quick refilling. I expect we'll see net-zero carbon emission gasoline and other hydrocarbons sold at the pump within the next few decades, produced with either solar or nuclear energy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8zOHZINyG8
Compressed natural gas (methane) is even easier to synthesize from the raw ingredients than gasoline or diesel fuels. It's used today in many city buses, fleet vehicles, and private cars in certain parts of the world:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction
Such fuels could become less attractive if we invent lighter, cheaper, and much faster-charging batteries than the current state of the art, but I'm not holding my breath.
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Why?
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