Retreating From Evs Could Be Hazardous for Western Carmakers
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As Western carmakers consider retreating from electric vehicles (EVs), a lively debate erupts around the potential hazards of such a move, with some commenters pointing out that established car culture and price sensitivity are major obstacles to widespread EV adoption. However, others propose innovative solutions like battery swapping, which could eliminate planned obsolescence and make EVs last longer, sparking a discussion on the industry's priorities and the need for change. Notably, concerns about used EV battery longevity and privacy issues are raised, while some argue that the industry's focus on frequent upgrades is driven by financial and image reasons rather than necessity. The thread highlights a growing consensus that the auto industry's current model is ripe for disruption.
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That being said, I think Ford’s shift to a range extended EV makes sense for the truck space. I’m sure someone has crunched the numbers on emissions but getting more market share on hybrid/plugin/range extended EVs are definitely better then ICE only. Plenty of manufacturers are offering hybrids- however, the government has historically been too heavily lobbied to push for hybrids by default and reduce ICE only uptake with some kind of sin tax.
The Gresham's law thing: money is just a transfer token. Batteries have a use value. The agents who could profit from hoarding good batteries, don't get to achieve the income of renting them.
It's working fine for scooters, and in China for cars and trucks.
Everyone is now betting on solid state getting both range and rapid charge.
I can only hope we solve batteries making EVs throw-away vehicles either with quick battery swaps or with batteries that truly last a lifetime.
Warranty anxiety is probably a big factor too, which could be legislated. Imagine how reliable cars would be if a 30 year warranty on drivetrain components was mandatory.
0. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/07/heres-one-way-we-know-t...
Think of existing swap infrastructure out there, like propane tank swaps. People already use these systems to rinse defective or expired tanks all the time, and that overhead simply gets built into the price.
Now imagine if you could refill a propane tank at home by just plugging it in to your wall. The only reasons to use such a service are now exceptional cases like travel, or to move defective items.
For every new tank introduced to the supply, on average, how many good-for-good swaps will occur before the supplier gets a defective one? Take the cost of a new one and divide it by that average and that is the minimum overhead for a swap.
For batteries, that number is likely in the hundreds of dollars.
I tend to keep my cars over 200,000 miles. Today's cars last a long time. Still, looking back over the past three year's expenses between 150,000 and 200,000 miles, almost all of them relate to engine peripherals - like a new exhaust system, work on emission controls, and a new gas tank, which an EV doesn't have - or brakes, which on an EV last much longer.
E.g. in Georgia (US), EV owners have to pay a $234 annual alternative fuel vehicle fee.
Plug in hybrid owners may choose to have a alternative fuel license plate or standard license plate. If you opt for the standard plate, you don't have to pay the alternative fuel vehicle fee.
Of course, a better solution would be to pass legislation properly funding road maintenance from the general funds, and raising income taxes to support that. But raising income taxes, even on those for whom a 50% increase in income tax would mean zero change in their actual lifestyle, is politically anathema in these benighted times.
EVs throw a wrench into the plan, and so the flat fee is one currently popular attempt to even out the taxes amongst road users. Another idea that got floated was tracking mileage on all cars every year and then levying taxes based on that. But this gets shot down pretty quickly because people perceive it as government tracking of their movements, and that is unpopular.
Personally I think we should just make commercial trucks pay all of it. They already have the infrastructure and policies in place to collect mileage-based taxes, trucks do the vast majority of damage to the roads they regularly travel on, and taxing them would spread around the tax burden to all the citizens who benefit from the existence of the road network (i.e. you get goods shipped on roads, you ought to contribute even if you do not own a car). Local roads should predominantly be funded through property taxes IMO.
Seems like in other parts of the world pigovian taxes are way more popular. They are extremely unpopular in the US. AFAIK gasoline is largely the same price wholesale across the world, but Europeans (as an example) are completely okay with paying more than twice as much at the pump and so more than half the retail price is a pigovian tax.
I know some people want a pee-in-a-bottle cannonball run, but that doesn't make sense to me. At distances where charging time starts to add up, flying is already much quicker.
If we did long road trips a lot we’d probably get rid of one EV and get an older gas car for that. It wouldn’t be the daily driver.
I see them pretty often in Australia which also has anti yank-tank movement (tongue in cheek name for a big american "truck")
Thst said our most popular cars are still all nearly tonne utes or SUVs so it's a small movement.
At least you could hook up a generator to pump gas at a gas station.
:/ Life's about trade offs.
I think full EVs are great if the lifestyle allows it, but plug-in hybrids seem a better fit for most people without requiring undue compromise.
If the outage had been longer, I could have made a half-hour trip to an area that had working EV fast chargers and come back with another 5-6 days of power for the house.
This isn't cheap--I think it was generally many thousands of dollars for the cars I looked at that had V2H when I was EV shopping--but it generally gives you something something in the 9-20 kW range of power. For most people that gets into the territory of "as long as you remember not to use the electric clothes dryer at the same time you are making a meal that uses the electric oven and all of its burners you can just continue as if power is not out".
I seriously considered it. In the summer I use around 8-10 kWh per day, and in most of winter under 40 kWh per day. With a car with an 85 kWh battery, keeping it in the 20-80% range, and keeping it near 80% when outages are likely, That would give me several days of backup power during a summer outage, and over a day during a winter outage. In 18 years in my current house I think I've only had one outage that went over a day, and never had an outage so widespread that I would not have been able to find a public DC charging station within 10 miles to recharge the car if an outage actually did last long enough to take it down to 20%.
But the cars with V2H were out of my price range, even before adding the cost of the equipment to use V2H.
If your vehicle has V2L (which is what the one I bought has) it is considerably cheaper. The car gives you one or two outlets similar to ordinary household outlets. Mine gives a single outlet, which you get by plugging an adapter into the charge port. With these you generally don't try to tie it into your house grid. You just run an extension cord (or two if your V2L provides two outlets) to where you want power.
Some people get some sort of socket installed on the outside of their house that a cable from the car's outlet can be connected to, with that socket connected to an indoor outlet. Me, I just leave sliding door open enough for an extension cord to go through, and then stuff the gap with some foam strips that I got at Home Depot.
It is surprising how much a single 120V 15A circuit can do. What I need to get through a one day power outage comfortably (which as mentioned would be an unusually long outage here) is: (1) power for the fridge, (2) power for an electric space heater, (3) power for my computer area and cable gateway (if cable is not out), (4) maybe power for some cooking, and (5) water to flush the toilet.
Any time the weather forecast even hints at something that could cause widespread outages I fill a bathtub with water for #5. For the rest I've been monitoring power used for those things with a bunch of energy monitoring smart outlets (Tapo P110M controlled by Home Assistant using Matter).
For #1, my fridge during a normal cycles draws 90-100W. During a defrost cycles it draws 400W. I have wireless thermometers in the fridge and freezer compartments so I can easily coordinate with other uses such as cooking to make sure I cook at a time when the fridge is going to not need to run for a while (which I can ensure by unplugging it).
For #2 my space heater is usually 1500W, but I've got another one that is supposed to be 1500W but due to age is only 1300W, and I've got year another one which is 1500W on high but has a medium setting that is 1000W. On all but the coldest days 1300W and probably 1000W would keep it warm enough as long as I'm warmly dressed.
For #3 my entire computer setup (Mac Studio, 27" 5K monitor, 24" 1920x1200 monitor, speakers, external Thunderbolt drive bay with 4 SSDs), a network switch, and a Hue hub is about 130W with short spikes to around 170W. If I turn off the second monitor that drops about 25W from that. The cable gateway is 15W.
For #4 I've got a microwave, a toaster oven, and a couple George Foreman grills. The microwave draws over 1900W for the first minute or so on high, but I can set it lower and it is an inverter microwave so on lower settings it actually reduces the amps drawn rather than just cycling between full and off. The toaster oven is 1000W and the biggest GF grill is 1200W.
I should be able to run all of these, as long as I take some care to not run too many at once. Some observations:
1. If I'm not going to use the computer for a while, such as when sleeping, I can run the 1500W space heater, turning it off when the fridge needs to run. I could actually then turn it back on once the fridge has started and gotten past its inrush current (20A, which my V2L has no trouble with). It would then be 1600W total unless the fridge is doing a defrost cycle than it would be 1900W. That's fine because the 400W defrost phase only lasts about 10 minutes and the non-defrost cycle only a bit over an hour, and it is around 3 to 8 hours (depending on how often I open the fridge I assume) after a cycle ends that it needs to run again. That counts as an intermittent load and so should be OK with my extension cords (rated 15A intermittent, 12A continuous).
2. If I'm using the computer I can switch to the 1300W space heater. That plus the computer both in continuous used would be under the 12A continuous rating of my extension cord. When the fridge needs to run I'd have to switch to a lower setting on the space heater until the fridge is done.
3. When I need to cook I'd just need to time it so it happens when the fridge won't need to run, and turn off the space heater while cooking. Nothing I'd be cooking in the toaster over or the GF grill takes more than 20 minutes. The computer stuff could remain powered during this.
4. If I don't have a bathtub full of toilet flushing water, I might be able to run my well pump from V2L. It's 120V with a 1/2 HP motor which would be under 1000W, but the inrush current may be too high. The specs say maximum of 44A, but from what I've read many people have had success with motors with that kind of inrush current, and the way the V2L system works it is safe to try it--worst case is the V2L safety systems shut it down. I just haven't gotten around to trying it yet.
Overall then it seems like that single 120V 15A from V2L will actually be enough to get me comfortably through most power outages. I had not expected that when I got the car.
https://carnewschina.com/2024/12/05/byd-struck-deal-with-jap...
A mid-size EV battery can easily store 60kWh of energy. That's enough to power a domestic refrigerator for ~12 days (assuming 200w average power usage, which is on the higher end).
I lost power for about a day last year and was very happy to be able to keep my fridge and some emergency lighting powered from an EV battery.
I cannot believe this is a serious question.
A small battery pack can easily run most essential domestic services.
If you live in an area that is poor enough that this is not an option, it loses power frequently due to weather, and no one in power cares enough to fix it, that genuinely sucks, and I feel for you. But, as sibling comments said, some other poor areas don't get gasoline shipments in a timely manner—being poor and neglected is just always going to suck in various ways, and the solution is not to avoid any technological advancements that remove the crutch that your particular poor and neglected area is using to get through it a little easier, but to find ways to reduce the poverty and neglect.
And, frankly, solar power and electric vehicles are both great tools to help with that, especially when used together.
Environmentalists should be happy about this either way. A fleet of high utilization autonomous vehicles will increase utilization rates of each automobile that is still on the road substantially, serving more people with fewer raw materials. Not to mention that as of right now, all of the leading contenders for commercially viable robotaxi fleets are on EV platforms anyway.
It's not that, by and large, over a longer time horizon, new gasoline cars are going to replace these EVs disappearing from the consumer-owned automobile segment so much as EV robotaxis will be gradually replacing almost all consumer-owned vehicles. Enthusiasts will still have their track toys, but as an economic mode of transportation, the personally owned automobile is going the way of the horse and buggy.
I think people overestimate the difference due to the amount of dead-heading needed.
the bigger replacement will still be walking and scooter-like EVs that are cheaper for everyone
Making sub-$100k EV's and then crying that consumer demand is low doesn't make any sense. Meanwhile, the Chinese and Korean EVs are absolutely eating this market by making sub 35k and 50k EV's respectively. In California, 1/4 new vehicles registered was an EV in 2024. By the end of 2025, it was 1/3.
The rest of the world will continue to embrace EV's, and the western (and Japanese) propaganda machine will do what it always does when the rest of the world does better: xenophobia, racism followed by screaming that EVs are a failure.
The moment you face the truth is the moment you can start doing something about it.
Saying that Trump is not allowed to be blamed is symptomatic of just how damaged the public discourse is. Too many snowflakes who are terrified of facing basic accountability for the consequences of their beliefs and actions.
Politically, it seems the people slowing EV adaption can be on both sides of the aisle.
Yes, we can truly both sides everything. But we can't just claim things are the same when they're obviously not.
It's clear, and indisputable, that most EV adoption is coming from green policy, particularly around the economy. And who is most responsible for that? The explicitly pro-oil republicans, or not-them?
In addition to individual considerations, we don't have enough electricity to run all the charging for EVs. And now, we need much more for AI. If we leave the market alone, people will allocate resources where they are actually needed the most. Any other scheme will be disappointingly inefficient.
We know this because the people doing it are explicitly pro oil. Trump has gone on a few times now about how much he loves oil.
And, to be clear, the subsidies didn't go away, they moved. If we want to talk subsidies, oil is at the tippy top of that list. It's disingenuous to just ignore it. I mean, for fucks sake, MOST of the corn grown in this country is just so we can turn it into gas. Do a deep dive on that.
> If we leave the market alone, people will allocate resources where they are actually needed the most
If we left the market alone, we would've abandoned gasoline cars a long time ago. They're one of the most, if not the most, blessed products by our government. They get every special treatment, bailout, and subsidy in the book. Down to even the streets. 25 trillion on interstates alone.
Chinese EVs are a Trojan horse. Even if they weren't, we cannot compete with the Chinese on cost and probably can't trust their quality standards.
>I mean, for fucks sake, MOST of the corn grown in this country is just so we can turn it into gas. Do a deep dive on that.
I know that. Ethanol somehow reduces certain kinds of supposedly harmful emissions, and it gives farmers someone to sell their corn to. We need to support farmers because a market spread too thin on farming means people would starve. If we had crop issues, rest assured that they would probably stop using ethanol until things got back to normal.
>If we left the market alone, we would've abandoned gasoline cars a long time ago.
We had EV cars a hundred years ago and abandoned them. Petrol works better. People could be encouraged to use electric trains or something but it turns out that city life is not practical or desirable for everyone.
>They get every special treatment, bailout, and subsidy in the book. Down to even the streets. 25 trillion on interstates alone.
Every country prizes its auto industry (if it has one) because it is related to nearly every other production capability. Building all the shit the military needs from scratch down to the raw material supply chain is not something that can be done in a hurry. Also, I don't know if you knew, but the interstates are used for rapid shipping and military movement. Trains still exist but they can't compete with trucks on highways for most things.
This already played out with Japanese cars and it turned out it was the quality rather than the cost that was hard to compete with. I'm going to bet that EVs from Asia will be better built than anything made in the US or Europe before too long (if not already). They'll manufacture at scale and work out the kinks.
Western companies should have been doing this. I feel that Tesla tried and never really got there. Protectionism alone won't make it happen.
>Western companies should have been doing this. I feel that Tesla tried and never really got there. Protectionism alone won't make it happen.
Just because some people online claim they want $10k EVs doesn't mean they would buy them. It also doesn't mean that we could make them for that price, at any level of effort. We pay auto workers WAY more than the Chinese pay theirs.
Protectionism is why we have not already been flooded with crappy cars from overseas. We do not allow garbage vehicles to be imported. Neither do other countries. Of course, forcing people to buy cars at higher prices or different quality points inhibits domestic innovation. But if the industry dies because of ideological purity, we would be worse off as a nation than we would be driving cars that cost slightly more or lack certain features.
People would not starve if we stopped the ethanol mandate. In fact, corn prices would fall because the government would no longer force ethanol to be mixed with oil. Less demand would decrease the price.
Subsidies don’t seem to have permanently changed that.
We’ll also soon see how efficiently fully run down electric cars are to deal with at scale. They could be more harmful than we know.
There were also like maybe a dozen actually destructive cases. No one got hurt. Total property damage was maybe a half million dollars? We're arguing over the dumbest pittances of nothing, even if we add an order of magnitude here. This is ridiculous.
Personally, your post seems to be strongly condemning, as if this was some absurd nightmare situation. I find it just ridiculous cowardice to pretend like this was an actual scary and bad problem. I'm not sure how many 9's of non violent peaceful protest it was, but it was a lot of 9's, and very little actual harm.
Yes, a brand had it's image destroyed. Set it afire. Molotov'ed itself into kingdom come. From which it seems impossible to recover. A brand that was early in on EV's. But it seems facetious and ridiculous blame this political suicide in public, with nazi salutes and chainsaws, to the left. Get real man; you have to be joking. The left didn't slow this down, what kind of a fool do you take us for?
The pendulum goes back and forth. The right is in power now, so the left will point out deficiencies and promise improvements. If enough people believe things could be better, than the left will win power in the next election.
Then the cycle starts over again. It works wonderfully, and the USA has prospered because of it.
Sometimes immature people do crazy things because they’re narcissistic and want to try to circumvent the rules. They could do the right thing and try to bring change legally, but through either stupidity or lack of morals they instead go outside the law. People all across the political spectrum should view such people as a liability to us all.
No respect in the slightest for this nation. The cycle starting over here is a bunch of disgusting plutocrats & Federalist Society nut jobs trying to strip America bare & argue up is down to ignore the bill of rights.
It's not legal. It keeps being shot down. The DoJ is fully in the pocket of the white house which is maybe technically legal but was a deeply deeply disturbing idea even a decade ago. What's happening now is an insult to law, and the terrormongers in power are at war with the justice system, because they have no respect for the law & want to abuse it.
It's not like elected Democratic officials were saying "we hate EVs, everybody go out and vandalize Musk's businesses." There is no political movement among democrats to avoid the technological transition that the rest of the world is enthusiastically taking.
There is no comparison, the idea is absolutely ludicrous.
I think Fetterman did, to his credit. I don’t remember any others.
And even if more Democratic politicians condemned it, how would you hear about it? What media do you consume that would let you hear that voice? And what does your respect translate into?
Even asking Democratic politicians to condemn the violence shows that you are placing the onus on Democrats for something that they did not do. It's very strange behavior.
Any worthwhile politician should find it easy to pick a side on that one.
He didn't say that.
The trouble is that ALL anyone does is blame Trump, when both parties have undermined US industry for the past 50 years or so. I think there is no clear solution to keeping industry here. Protectionism often undermines competition and raises costs. But with the current monetary system, and our collective labor/wage standards, we cannot compete in the long run. We will ultimately have to resort to some protectionism for critical industries.
>Too many snowflakes who are terrified of facing basic accountability for the consequences of their beliefs and actions.
I think both of our political parties are unwilling to admit fault. Unfortunately, people like you only want to shit on Trump and Republicans.
No doubt this will get several downvotes because HN is in fact overwhelmingly populated by liberals with Trump Derangement Syndrome.
It’s my pet theory that China and friends have been running some serious propaganda in the West which has culminated in this red vs blue vitriol that’s bordering on mindless, thought terminating cliches. I say that because they routinely get away with far worse and very few people speak up against it nevermind do something about it. The air around it is so quiet it’s as if people are siding with them (and perhaps they are).
Blaming Trump won’t help rewind the clock, and there’s ultimately very little he’s personally responsible for in the grand scheme of things. This started decades ago and you’re up against a country that will use every dirty trick in the book, because they are playing to win.
Please don't comment like this on HN. This is a place for curious conversation not fulmination and ideological battle.
The people who don’t make this complaint are those who use the site as intended - for curious conversation rather than ideological battle.
I get what you may aspire to have happen on this site, but it does not live up to those ideals. Probably thousands of people brigade in favor of their own opinions, regardless of what the rules say. The only people who will really feel left out by this are the ones like myself who don't agree "enough" with the hive mind. I would care a lot less if basic features of the site were not gated by points, as well.
I reckon that the people who don't make this complaint are the ones who just agree with the hive mind and don't suffer downvotes. I know for a fact I could simply state the exact opposite of what I do in many cases and get at least neutral treatment. You won't even let my honest constructive criticism here go without downvotes. You aren't the least bit curious what normal users like me go through. You want to prescribe a view according to your own imagination.
In fact he tried to fix our pending loss to China in his first presidency with his first efforts towards a trade war. The trade war alarmed China who began a program to internalize supply chains. and when Biden doubled down, China accelerated their supply chain independence at the cost of a residential construction crash and massive financial pain for normal Chinese people. And now in the second trump presidency we see that chinas efforts worked. They succeeded in internalizing their supply chains so they can continue to produce and export even as supply inputs are disrupted.
Which is why we’re seeing that the current trade war isn’t working. China has been able to increase their international exports to the rest often world. When trump slapped our closest trading partners he helped China because he sent our closest trading partners right into the arms of China who have increased their global trade even as the trade war with the us continues.
But that’s not what the article is about. It’s about the about-face from electric vehicles and that is 100% definitively Trump’s doing.
So yes let’s face the truth on those two issues. 1) the US fell behind China and the trade war isn’t working. No it’s not all trump’s fault. But he’s the president and it happened on his watch despite his efforts. 2) an about face on electric vehicles will harm us in the long term (costing us much more later than it saves by redoubling investment in old tech)
Luxury ICE vehicles also depreciate rapidly, and yet they're quite popular. Plus EVs are likely to have longer usable lifetimes -- though with different issues -- than gas cars.
Due to all the people in my fmaily I have 4 cars so I wouldn't go from 1 EV to 2. If the current EV gets destroyed I do think that used EVs are the right way to go and would buy a used one for sure.
They do still feel like throwaway cars. I'm not sure how you can argue they will have a longer lifetime. If the battery dies surely no one is replacing that at cost? It's more than the car is worth.
>Plus EVs are likely to have longer usable lifetimes -- though with different issues -- than gas cars.
You need to do some basic research, friend. EV batteries are not designed to be replaced at any sane price. They are built even more crappy than late model petrol vehicles. EVs depreciate rapidly because their useful life is short and problems are many. A 10 year old Honda Civic with a gas engine likely has another 10 or 20 years of life left.
An EV probably has a max life of about 15 years without a MAJOR overhaul which is likely not even doable for less than the price of a new EV, if you can even find someone willing to do it. Battery integrity is very hard to determine from sensors and external examination. If a cell has been damaged, it can start an inextinguishable fire which could take out a whole garage. These factors further hurt the resale value.
EVs were popular before petrol engines were perfected. But those EVs had swappable and relatively stable batteries and the cars did not have to conform to modern standards for acceleration, crash safety, and range.
As for maintenance, seeing 1 charger be down out of 10 is hardly an infrastructure problem. EV drivers figured out waiting in line and queuing just fine.