The Toecutter said:
The batteries, control systems, motors, thermal management, were all "good enough" by the 1990s. The barriers of entry into the market were mostly political by that time.
I was working in that field back then and - no, they really couldn't. The one EV that managed to get to market, the EV1, had a stated range of 105 miles, with most drivers reporting 80 or so miles of range. That's not good enough to make significant inroads into the market.
And the ones that didn't make it to market were worse. I drove one of Ford's attempts at this. It was early 1990s and it was very cool to feel what it was like to drive an EV. But it had to be on a track, because the inverter would 'trip' for no apparent reason and require a power cycle several times an hour.
And the electronics weren't in much better shape. We did a lot of work on EV chargers back then. We thought ours were pretty good but they were still huge and heavy compared to today's versions.
This becomes a lot less of an issue if we use more efficient vehicles that require smaller battery packs and less materials for the same performance and range. The problem is that the auto industry no longer wants to build cheap cars.
Super cheap cars get cheap by taking shortcuts that render them less efficient. Use of cheaper/heavier steel is one. Removing body pans is another. Thinner gauge power cabling, simpler treatment of tail aerodynamics, cheap (and flat) mirrors etc all reduce both cost and efficiency.
Sure, you could spend your money on efficiency instead of something else. But it's still money.
The wealth gap has become so obscene in the U.S. that most working people will never be able to afford even the cheapest new cars available
I see no pressing social reason for more than half the people in the US to be able to afford a new car, as opposed to a used one (or an ebike, or scooter, or public transportation.)
I think we will soon be seeing a glut of used cars on the market as more and more people can't make the payments and get their vehicles repossessed.
Perhaps. But that solves the "there's no affordable cars" problem pretty neatly.
What used to be a $500 beater has become the $5,000 beater
So I did a little research to see if this is true.
I started driving in 1983. If I had bought a $500 beater back then it would now cost $1500 due to inflation. And when I do a search on Truecar, the cheapest nearby beater (with 200K miles) is $1499. See below.
How does someone with less than $500 in the bank and ruined credit get an EV that they can be certain will get them back and forth to work without requiring a repair that costs more than the vehicle is worth before they can even finish paying it off?
Same way they do exactly the same thing now with a gas car.
I don't think the argument "no one can afford a car" can be made, since 286 million registered cars in the US right now - more than the number of licensed drivers.
I do agree that the widening income gap is a problem. The solution there does not involve making cars so cheap that even the poor can afford them. The solution there is to reduce the income gap.
For that matter, how does one keep a cheap used EV charged while living in a cheap apartment or even government housing? In my hood, cheap 49cc mopeds are a greatly more common solution to reduce vehicle expenses than used Nissan Leafs and Chevy Sparks, even if all of those vehicles are around.
Again, they don't. I do not claim that people who are driving cheap 49cc mopeds will rush out and buy EVs. I do claim that the people who can afford cars today will be able to afford EVs, should the oil supply crater.
If gas becomes so expensive that people can't afford to use gas cars, as is happening to the poor in America already, they don't switch to used EVs. They go without cars altogether. The rungs of the socioeconomic ladder that are priced out of automobile ownership outright will continue to move upward
If they cannot afford a car, they will not be able to afford an EV or a gas car.
If they can afford a car, then they will switch to an EV. The speed at which that happens is set largely by oil prices.
I think soon an opportunity for a low-cost 3-wheeled electric micro-vehicle priced similarly to a moped, that offers weather protection and rudimentary crash protection, that is capable of sustaining highway speeds, will present itself. It would be greatly preferable to taking the bus, or walking, be much more comfortable than a motorcycle, and making it accelerate and/or corner like a car that costs 100x as much would be very inexpensive to do, adding a lot of value to the proposition. Who cares if it doesn't have heated/cooled seats, bluetooth connectivity, leather upholstery, infotainment centers, and all this other crap.
Unfortunately "all this other crap" includes things like crash protection, acceleration, repairability and cornering. I assume you have seen the "EVs" from China that you can buy for $2000 new. Specifically:
-A 'Jeep' for $1700
-Two seater, three wheeler for $1760
-A 'VW microbus' for $2000
-4 door pickup for $4500
They are out there. Some of them are even three wheeler micro vehicles. None of them are remotely safe, but some are even street legal (on some streets at least, due to the three-wheeler exemption.)
It gets you from work to back and around town for pennies, if something breaks it can be repaired by Bubba mechanic down the street with some hand tools in a few hours over a six pack of beer, and you won't need to go into debt for nearly a decade to "afford" it.
Well, as always you get what you pay for. And those Bubbas are currently fixing gas cars, and are beginning to be able to fix EVs.
needs a new engine, lmao its a none interference lump the vavles and pistons can not touch.
