You need the money to buy one. Europeans do not have much money, and less and less of the working population have the employment arrangements which the banks demand to allow them to get a nice car loan, even if they wanted to borrow money for a new car. Gas vehicles can be purchased used from the past three decades.

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PorciiVorbesc an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Wait, why are you being downvoted? Not every European has Norwegian money to buy an EV. Wealth disparity across the EU is massive.

I just came from my short Euro vacation and majority of EVs I saw at the tourist spots had license plates from countries with above average wealthy people: CH, NL, DK, etc. Germans, Italians, eastern Europeans, etc mostly had ICEs.

You can't mandated all switch to EVs unless you can somehow mandate they all have the same wealth too, which isn't the case.

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Aaargh20318 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Taking out a loan for something that depreciates as fast as a car seems like the dumbest thing a person could do.

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xoa an hour ago | parent | next [-]

>Taking out a loan for something that depreciates as fast as a car seems like the dumbest thing a person could do.

...what? For most the world by area (so at least 20-30% of the population, even in Europe) arbitrary point to point mechanical transportation is a requirement for work/life at least a significant chunk of the year. Most will also either flat out need, or find quite valuable: 1) Having that capability on demand. 2) Being able to permanently customize it to suit their needs (be it accessibility, having tools and organizational systems onboard, or most basically having what can be transported along with them match their common/rare needs).

The most economical way to manage that in general is owning your own vehicle. But it's a large capital expenditure upfront. Getting a loan to spread that out over time is one of the most basic purposes of debt. The ROI is in the actual utility, not in some sort of asset appreciation. Which is how most economics is right? I didn't replace all my incandescent bulbs with LED bulbs because I expected to be able to resell them later for more money, I bought them because they deliver far more useful visible wavelength photons per watt, and with more precise tuning and far less toxicity and other concerns then fluorescent. If I needed to replace 10k bulbs and wanted to get a loan for it the economics would be pretty straightforward to pencil out even with the expectation the entire value of the bulbs would go to zero wouldn't it? Taking out a loan for an EV car isn't any different.

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carlosjobim 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Well then the enlightened hacker argument simply turns into: "People who can't afford an electric car are stupid".

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overfeed 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Or more charitably to the consumers: "Having all EVs priced as luxury vehicles is stupid." Fortunately, non-American manufacturers are doing something about this, while Americans continue to dream about an electric Ford Maverick.

	▲	AnthonyMouse an hour ago \| parent [-]
		A new Chevy Bolt starts at $27,600. The least expensive new ICE car in the US is still over $20,000 and will cost you most or all of the difference in fuel depending on how much you drive. The real "problem" is that price-conscious buyers will be buying used, and then you need EVs to be a larger percentage of new cars for a few years before they're a larger percentage of used cars.