They are everywhere. The only limit to adoption is that many people live in buildings where chargers can't easily be installed.

I'm surprised Mercedes was ever price competitive for taxis even in Germany, I mean the average VW would do the job just as well at half the cost.

These days they're both priced like they're selling Ferraris anyway so yeah. The ID Buzz starting at 70k EUR is such a joke.

Protectionism on inputs kills manufacturing. Imagine having to pay 15% more for all inputs and trying to compete with someone who doesn't have pay that.

I mostly agree on all points, but what self driving tech is better? I've periodically looked at the options, and nothing really seems to compare in North America. Maybe BYD and others have great tech, but stuff like Blue Cruise works hardly anywhere in Canada, and to me, that makes it virtually useless.

Im sure some of it is personal bias from experience with them but I don't think ICE are as complicated as some people think. 90% of the extra shit on them are unnecessary for it to work but what those things are and what they do and why it broke or failed or how important they are is essentially obfuscated from the general public so they seem like overly complicated magic. The vast majority of cars I see do not fail or get trashed due to engine failure from design flaws or anything, most get trashed because people stop caring about them and treat them like trash and don't replace that $15 sensor, others think they can't afford the maintenance because car manufacturers don't give a fuck about having to take 3 hours disassembling other unnecessary shit to replace a 30 cent sensor that they know will eventually need replaced, but the only number the customer seems to look at is the total cost of the mechanic quote. They think because something is a $1,000+ repair that something seriously is worn or old and that the car is on its last legs, instead of the reality of that one part being a huge pain in the ass to replace but it is otherwise a good reliable motor for another 100,000+ miles. And of the cars that do get trashed because they have actual major mechanical problems, the vast majority of the problems have to do with the body work rusting out and/or suspension components needing replaced after being used for 3x their expected lifetime, which an EV is not going to improve in any way.

Like ive seen people junkyard perfectly working and good cars because it is over 150,000 miles and some service guy who is looking for work/money told them they need to do scheduled maintenance some time soon and they thought the car was too old and was junk. And yet very few cars ive seen would not make it over 300,000 miles if they spent even 1/10th the money of their new car for maintenance on their old.

Europe and Japan are great at the former, the latter no chance.

Europe and Japan should be totally capable of producing super inexpensive batteries. They just don't, at the moment.

> But most people aren't in that situation.

Those who commute from the suburbs actually save even more as hybrids achieve their lowest consumption going a steady 50-70km/h.

Of course the same people could just get an EV and charge at home, but in terms of cost-effectiveness hybrids still win in this use case.

Exactly, usually the companies know what's coming up, like you said. But, properly shifting gears to play a new game requires that you act like a startup again. It likely requires foregoing the fat margins you were used to. And it likely requires going back to the drawing board and actually learning from the market.

And this is what companies find it hard to do. To be fair, I think that is not so bad a things. Companies should rise and die naturally. A few companies monopolizing markets forever does not seem good.

I think it’s less “pivoting is hard” and more “we know what’s right and we’re not going to pivot”.

It’s not hard to have smaller R&D teams work on these problems to keep the innovation going, but most executives are out there prioritizing cost cuttings so that the shareholders get the quarterly dopamine boosts on the earnings calls.

car manufacturers can afford to experiment - it's not like they don't have room in the budget. and they did experiment.

if you don't know GM's history with electric cars: they were positioned to execute a successful transition about thirty years ago, but they simply chose not to.

I've got a Lightning and I think I like the 'converted to electric' aspect. Everything that fits on a regular ICE F-150 fits on my truck. The interior is the same (okay, some trims have a big screen, but not all do). It would be nice if it had a bit more range, but when I look at the efficiency of an R1T or a CT, I don't see that being purpose-built would automatically be a win for Ford. Pickups are not ever going to be competitive with sedans and CUVs for efficiency.

"Americans only want trucks and SUVs." (I hear people say.)

Cool. Then allow BYD non-trucks, non-SUVs into the U.S. then.

The Japanese back in the 70's showed U.S. automakers that price and mileage (in that decade anyway) were important to Americans. I suspect price is still important.

Ford is a bad example because they’ve pretty much abandoned all their non truck and transit van segments for years. Even if EVs weren’t a thing, they do not compete in any of the segments and haven’t for almost a decade. First it was Japanese and German companies eating their lunch, now it’s the Chinese.

Also, F150 lightening is such a failure. There was a recent video of it trying to haul very minimal load and it pretty much drained the battery in less than 100 miles.

> a Ford Mustang converted to electric

I agree with your comment, but I'll be a little pedantic for a minute:

As a Charger Daytona owner, I'd love to call the Mach-E a mustang, but it's really just borrowing the brand. Ford has said unequivocally that they'll never make an all-electric muscle car, which is a real shame. The Mach-E is a great car if you're turned off by a Model Y, but you wouldn't choose it over a mustang GT or a charger Daytona or a Camaro.

> a Ford Mustang converted to electric

The Mustang Mach-e isn't like any other Mustang. It just has the Mustang branding.

the mustang mach e is a purpose built EV. not a mustang with a battery back stuck in.

The lightning isn’t selling, almost at all.

Reuters disagrees

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...

I think #1 will probably play out to a certain extent. Perhaps as an oscillation between low and high as each wave knocks more gas stations out of business and refinery capacity offline. But I have to say, even low prices on gas won't make me go back -- I prefer my EVs in all regards to the ICE equivalents, with the sole exception of marathon (>450 miles per day) road trips, which is not my use case.

I hope #2 won't be the future. It's not as easy to just jack up electric prices because EVs are charging, because they are regulated, and electricity is used for way more than cars (if my napkin math is right, on average people will use around 30% more electricity if they go full electric).

I expect that as a practical matter #3 is here now, it just hasn't filtered down to retail car sales in the US yet.

For a while maybe, but cheap EVs are being manufactured in Europe as well, and while this could reduce petrol prices, it's also going to reduce the need for petrol stations, and I think makes petrol basically dead even in a cheap-petrol scenario.

A Renault Twingo is going to cost something like 20,000 euros. That's twice the price of a Dacia Sandero, but a Dacia Spring is 16,900. The difference is only 4000, which could easily be a year's petrol.

Toyota hasn’t offered pure electric where I am, just hybrids. And they have only just started offering plug in models I can charge.

I’d love a Corolla or Camri EV - I’m not sure what ‘the Corolla of EVs’ is considered to be.

Yep. My Lightning is the first vehicle I've had with a spare in a number of years. Even donut spares are getting much less common, not just on EVs.

Colombians are asking that question too. My guess is that Tesla is selling them at a loss to compete against BYD. They may be sending unsold inventory from the US/Mexico market as well.

The average person in the west isn't losing sleep over China either. That anxiety is mostly manufactured by the media pushing the narrative that they are an existential threat. Maybe they are, I don't know. But what I do know is that western companies love it when they can sell you overpriced products made in China, but panic the moment chinese companies sell the exact same product at a fair price.

> The only reason why cars are the size and shape they are is because ICE engines couldn't be made smaller. Electric engines on the other hand are small enough that I can have the chassis of a fully functioning car be light enough to lift by one man.

You have seen a motorbikes/mopeds, scooters and micro-cars surely?

An electric bike is essentially a moped which have existed for like 70-80 years now? A small cars have been around since the 1950s.

Cars are the shape they are because normally you want the option of carrying 1-5 people. 5 people is 2 adults and 3 children. BTW cars in the past were much smaller. Compare the size of any car from the 1930-40s in the UK to a modern European car and you will notice it is much smaller they are.

I own three electric motorcycles and respectfully disagree. You can't make tube and canvas that let a passenger survive getting t-boned by a Yukon Denali or an F-250. One high-profile accident with a mother and her child getting peeled off the road with a coal shovel are all it'll take to kill such a form factor forever.

The problem isn't the form factor you're describing, it's that you can't put those on the road with 1000+ horsepower machines that are 50 times heavier. And on top of that, a lot of people just don't want to give up their heated massage seats and connected infotainment and removable third row or whatever crap they pack in minivans these days.

The Smart for Two existed with an internal combustion engine.

Of course ICEs can be tiny. Look at motorcycles, rollers and motorbikes. The demand for small cars is just not there anymore

Your first three paragraphs are sound.

But surely the problem with the final paragraph is the transition? Assuming the old style of vehicle remains on the road, then my lightweight one is at risk of being crushed. Only a niche minority would choose that (as a cargo bike owner, I'm also one, but I recognise most are not, with good reason.)

Unless we built a whole separate infrastructure.... We already see a lot of electric scooters using cycle lanes.

> The only reason why cars are the size and shape they are is because ICE engines couldn't be made smaller. Electric engines on the other hand are small enough that I can have the chassis of a fully functioning car be light enough to lift by one man.

Nope, the Smart existed for quite a while. Safety standards made cars slightly bigger (e.g. the new Renault Twingo is bigger than the original), but modern American "cars" are massive because that's what marketing has convinced Americans it's what they need. American vehicle manufacturers are pretty terrible at everything, and efficiency standards nudge them that way anyways, so making massive cars with high margins is a good deal for them.

In Europe there are SUVs, but the average car is a VW Golf or a Renault Clio sized. They are pretty decently sized, good visibility, can fit a family of 4, etc. Yeah, you can't haul a 50 ton campervan offroading up to Kilimanjaro, sure, but that's not what 99% of car trips are for.

> I think we will see small, light weight and intrinsically pedestrian safe cars made of tubes and canvas replace the heavy monstrosities we have now.

Renault Twizy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy ) exists, but doesn't sell all that well (compared to "normal" cars).

The Citroen Ami ( https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_Ami_(2020) ) is pretty popular in certain places (saw a ton of them in Amsterdam and semi-rural areas in France).

This is a bit out of touch with reality, presumably you don't have a car and seemingly are against any normal sized cars or bigger. A very narrow use case should change the world we all live in?

Tiny cars can't do longer distances (aka higher speeds) safely, physics of car collisions won't let you. They have been around for quite some time and popularity is as it is. If you are hit by 50kmh car as a cyclist (seems like frustration/fear of yours thats behind your words), whether car weights 600kg or 1300kg doesn't make much difference to your resulting state. Personal cars have specced brakes according to their weight so breaking distance is cca same regardless of weight.

Where I live (also went through kids birthday party today back & forth few times) - somebody with ebike would freeze their ass in windchill of fast moving bicycle would be below -10C (situation 5 months of a year), slip on partially frozen road could be fatal, moving around on rather narrow roads that have very little room for anybody but cars (Switzerland here but no high altitude) would be literal playing russian roulette with rest of traffic, triple that with wide cargo ebike. Alas, all parents came to the party in forest hut just above our village in their ICE or hybrid cars.

Tesla will report a very bad 2025 and my prediction is that the stock will go up anyway. The valuation is totally detached from the fundamentals. Tesla is a company which is falling behind in technology and there is not much indication that they will br able to fix that. But stock will likely stay high for a long time anyway.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...

You managed to write the name wrong, Jaecoo not Jaewoo, and it's chinese not korean. On top of that it's a throwaway account.

Even reuters disagrees.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...