The US is roughly 30% of the world’s car spending, and if Toyota made a car only for the rest of the world, it would be more expensive than a competitor’s platform which is sold in EV and non-EV forms everywhere. An EV is still more expensive than the equivalent ICE and it would be even more expensive if it doesn’t share a platform.

An EV built on a dedicated platform doesn’t become more profitable than the shared platform version until it sells about two million copies. That’s because it costs $1B more in fixed costs for a dedicated EV manufacturing setup. If that car isn’t going to sell that many, it’s not worth making dedicated. In Europe EVs are still outsold by ICE 4 to 1. Even if I did sell two million copies, all you have done is recouped your $1B, not made any more profit than if you did the shared platform.

In my area of the country there is one very simple modification manufacturers could make to ensure their vehicles are wildly more useful: add diesel heaters. Heat the batteries and the people during the winters rather than using onboard power to do it. It would sip diesel and contribute hugely to utility. I am in the process of building my own because nobody makes one

For me it's cost. I'd have to sink a couple of grand into getting my home electric up to speed most likely, and then I'll be paying a bunch of extra money to get the car. Turns into a math problem about paying for electric now or gas over the next n years and electric usually breaks even or loses.

I drive a Toyota PHEV and love it. All of my daily driving is EV, and then I switch it into hybrid mode on the weekends for longer trips. Hybrids/PHEVs are great.

But I would much rather be doing all of my driving in EV mode. I just think it's going to take another generation of battery improvements before we start seeing affordable 3-row MPVs (which is what I drive) with decent range. The VW Buzz and Kia PV5 have well under 300 miles range, for example.

China does have some pretty awesome looking EV MPVs like the Zeekr 009, which supposedly gets up to 500 miles range. But that won't be available here any time soon.

Improvements in charging speed and improved charging infrastruture will also help a lot.

Very impressive for a combustion engine, but still way worse than the ~90% efficiency of a battery electric car

Lol @ all the "maintenance free" EV owners, can't wait for their dilapidated shitboxes to fall apart in 5 years time because they've never been serviced. Many get away with it because they lease them.

Most EV owners don't even know there is a cabin air filter or how to change it, then go on Reddit and YouTube to complain their EV smells like mold and cat piss. It's insane how uninformed some of them are, they act like it's newfound knowledge that you need to fill the windshield washer fluid (which they boast about filling with tap water, or paying $100 to special order magical OEM Rivian fluid instead of a $2 jug at Walmart).