Electric Cars Are Suddenly Becoming Affordable
nytimes.com
More efficient manufacturing, falling battery costs and intense competition are lowering sticker prices for battery-powered models to within striking distance of gasoline cars.
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Oh, so you mean used electric cars.
Oh, so you mean not yet, but maybe affordable soon.
For fuck's sake...
New cars have always been expensive and out of reach for most, which is why the average new car buyer is well into their 50s.
I don't see how people can logically make an argument about the necessity of switching to EVs for the environment while also demanding that everyone gets a brand new car. Scrapping a bunch of perfectly good cars to build new ones is not going to help out our climate issue.
I'm not seeing "cash for clunkers" types of arguments here - I've always seen EV adoption as more about market share of new cars rather than share of the entire fleet.
Of course the former leads to the latter, eventually.
KIt’s too early for a “cash for clunkers” type of thing. That will be more effective when EVs are the typical new car and we want to retire older used gasoline cars a little faster. I do hope to see it soon,but to it this soon
I read that the issue with used EV's is that you eventually need to replace the battery pack which can sometimes cost you as much as the car.
Edit: Seems I was misinformed. Glad to hear that replacing EV batteries is not much of a concern.
The idea that replacing an EV battery costs as much as the car itself is total rubbish. Sure, batteries aren't cheap, but they're not going to bankrupt you. Modern EV batteries last a long time, often more than a decade, and are covered by solid warranties. Plus, battery prices are dropping fast as technology gets better. Scaremongering about battery costs is just plain wrong and stops people from going green, which is the last thing we need
And if you buy a used car you will eventually need to replace a ton of parts. Honestly, unless the used EV that you buy is a Leaf, many EV batteries will last 200k miles and still have 85-90% of their range left.
If it’s even possible. I’ve personally swapped the main battery pack on a Gen 1 Prius. Not easy, but more tedious than technical. Lifting the assembled unit was a hell of a chore but a coulple strapping dudes managed it. Reconditioned cells are available in a lot of places. I’ve had a Nissan Leaf and would get another one, but even finding a battery, let alone any info on swapping it was pretty much impossible.
The second generation(2018 on) had a defect in their battery packs that caused a lot of them to need full replacements right after Nissan announced they weren't making Leafs anymore, so any extra batteries that might exist were used in Warranty repairs for that
Took my shop just shy of a full year
Like 16 years ago you could buy a brand new chevy aveo with an msrp of $10,300.
Small econoboxes used to be cheap and affordable.
Regardless of where you fall on EVs or new car pricing, the Aveo was hot garbage and there's a reason why they only cost $10k. This is the same reason why you don't see any of them on the road anymore.
True, but at the time you could get a Toyota Echo or a Honda Fit or a Ford Fiesta or even a Nissan Versa which are all small cars that no longer exist.
And I see plenty of them still on the road.
Those were priced higher and comparable to the compacts like the Corolla, Civic, and Sentra.
I think there just wasn't enough demand since people would rather pay a little more to get a little more car than they need for those rare times when a lot of cargo space was needed. Additionally, tiny CUVs like the RAV4 have increased in popularity quite a bit and still get great fuel economy, further reducing demand for the sub-compacts. These cars were also marketed toward young people like college students who have a harder time affording a new car these days and would rather buy a good used one for much cheaper.
You're not wrong about any of that, much to my dismay. I was just pointing out that those cars did exist and car companies can make them. The market and regulatory conditions just don't make it profitable.
If most of the people buying cars are in their 60s they're going to want economic cars with high seats because their knees and backs can't take getting into something lower. (I can say that because my knees and back already hurt, but I'm too stubborn to stop driving my compact manual car.)
There were a lot of good ones on the road that were sub $14 that still exist and are good for 200,000+ miles. I just pointed out one of the absolute cheapest.
Why don’t we stop subsidizing fossil fuel companies to the tune of $1Trillion Anually, and instead put all of that money towards subsidizing purchases and further R&D of electric vehicles? Oil and Gas corporations could enjoy the competition of the free market, and we the people could get access to new EVs for under $10k out of pocket - it would be a win-win!
That’s ridiculous. Who’s demanding that?
We need to push new EVs, because there are not enough used ones. What do you think a used car starts as? Be happy every time someone buys a new EV, because there’s another used one in 3+ years.
I got a new EV, because I needed a vehicle, and my pattern is to buy new and drive into the ground
And of course Tesla's are cheap used, they are an absolute train-wreck in the quality control department.
Yeah, rhat they are.
What do y'all thinking "becoming" means? If they meant they are already affordable, they would have used the term "are."
The problem is that they have been "becoming" affordable for 25 years, since the EV1.
Yes, they are slowly becoming more affordable.
Becoming would mean in the process of being affordable. Meaning some have already become, meaning there are affordable cars now.
Pedant.
You're not wrong, but in fairness the headline says EVs are becoming affordable, not that they are affordable.
Not only that, most of those cars coming available are from Hertz — they’re rental cars. But not just any rental cars… most are from Hertz’s Uber fleet.
So these are EVs with over 100,000 miles on them, worn out back seats and blistered rear armrests that have been driven by employees using a fleet lease vehicle. And migrating the cars’ software ownership to an unlocked non-fleet private owner state has proven to be… difficult.
Idk wtf any sensible person would willingly buy a new car unless there was no other option.
I don't know. I've never had a new car.
Uswd cars have gotten crazy expensive relative to new in the past few years. If the difference between new and used is only like $1k new can make sense.