Remember when VW had hundreds of slaves in Brazil until like a year after I was born? That was pretty wild.
Horses are better than cars ! A horse is a vehicle and a pet at the same time !!
They say this whilst trying their best to make EVs the printers of the car industry. Update? The car stops and bricks itself for the duration of it. Want basic features? You have to pay a monthly subscription for the car you already payed for. Need it repaired? Have to bring it to a dealership with criminal prices because every part is serialized and they have you by the balls. Need a new battery after it kicks the bucket in 4-5 years? Expect to pay $10-20k for a new one. Oh and of course the center terminal/tablet is now crucial for the cars function, so anytime that malfunction it bricks itself again. Oh and it will always track and spy on you with GPS and onboard cameras and microphones.
People aren’t going to realize EV’s are better until the can actually afford one.
Also, maybe one day America will get their heads out of their ass and realize that public transportation is better EV’s.
He is assuming people have brains and use them lol. Look how stupid the “average” human being is. It’s those stupid people who gave us Trump, sold our privacy for convenience, and allow billionaires to exist, etc etc. We will never have nice things 🙄
I can understand people sticking with horses more than I can understand sticking with ICE cars. A horse is an animal with a personality, you might feel like it’s like losing a friend.
But why do people have so much sentimentality over having cars that have tailpipes?
I’m waiting for a used EV. I’ve never bought a new vehicle and have no desire to.
It’s not really a matter of realizing what’s better. It’s about what is cheaper.
They should’ve thought about before they puffed metric tonnes of NOx into our lungs.
That’s what I think. EVs aren’t functionally equivalent to ICE cars yet - most of them can’t go as far between fillups, and they take longer to fill up. Those are steadily improving. But the cost benefits are there. Back in 2013 when I bought my Leaf I went from spending $1800/year on gas to $300/year on electricity, and in 12 years my only maintenance costs were windshield wiper blades and a set of tires - which I would have needed with a gas car. But no oil changes, tuneups, no filters, belts or hoses, no spark plugs. No radiator problems, starter problems, pump replacements. I mean it’s almost like not having a car at all, except you have a car.
And they won’t need to cheat their emissions tests with evs
Also article quotes an executive but no labor leaders
It also has the added benefit of watching you all the time!
Other than that EVs are pretty dope.
I have no doubts about electric cars being nice or “the future”, but the price of these things is still a problem.
A (reasonably) new one with the range I need (~400km+) costs way more than I care to spend. That is partly because batteries still cost too much, but also very much because they still have a tendancy to gatekeep larger range figures for use in luxury cars.
And getting older second hand is still too much a questionmark in terms of how much of a chance there be you’ll end up having to fork over big for a new battery or motor and/or write it off prematurely.
Another problem is that I also have no way to charge it at home and would be fully at the mercy of public charging infrastructure. And generally speaking as a taller man, I feel some of them can also be quite lacking in terms of interior space.
Depends what you mean by “better” I suppose. Riding a horse is more enjoyable for me. Car is more efficient for long distance travel. I pretty much never drive a car for pleasure though.
Make it affordable and I’ll buy one tomorrow.
Let’s talk VW specific. I would absolutely love an ID.Buzz. But you made the fucking thing SIXTY THOUSAND DOLLARS.
ID Buzzes have been selling for $15-20K under MSRP this year. My wife and I never expected to get one after they announced their pricing, but then $15K off a fully optioned one won us over. We grew tired of waiting on Honda to update their Odyssey. We’d been hauling 3 kids in our Accord Hybrid for 3.5 years and would have loved to drive an Odyssey hybrid. I did not want to buy a van with a V6 gas guzzler sporting less tech than my 9 year old Accord.
Heh, my understanding is that they are affordable, assuming you’re buying Chinese cars and your country hasn’t levied absurd tariffs on that one country in particular.
The car is also unnecessarily big, it feels like
Edit: I misunderstood
The Buzz is a van, it’s meant to be big so you can put stuff in it. It’s actually too small for my liking as it’s too low to fit my dirt bike in without a struggle and too short for a 1200x2400 sheet of ply/metal/whatever (my Transporter fits both of these nicely though).
Oh I thought it’s e.g. ID.3 ID.4, mistook “buzz” for “*”
Did VW ever implement one pedal drive? Total non starter for me a few years ago (got a volvo instead).
One pedal driving is coming this fall in MY2027. I’ve never had it, so driving in B mode feels good enough to me.
There’s B mode that will aggressively regenerate, but nowhere close to one pedal. Although I’ve found myself using the adaptive cruise control for no pedal drive
They still have a break pedal, if that is what you mean.
I wanted a Ferrari, but they made the fucking thing 6 HUNDRED AND 40 THOUSAND DOLLARS.
I’m not paying $640k for that thing for other reasons. What the hell was Ferrari thinking? Are they trying to make the ugliest Ferrari ever so they can say “see, nobody wants and EV”?
You probably don’t even know how much you’ve spent in gasoline and repairs for the ICE cars you’ve owned.
I calculated this. Came out to somewhwre under $5k to drive my Golf 4 for like 8 years including the buying price. But yea whatever floats your electric boat big dog.
$5k doesn’t buy 8 years of gasoline. Also, note that it’s always the gasoline people who think using names like “big dog” is a good idea.
I think that’s entirely possible depending on where they live and how much they drive. I have a spreadsheet with my gas spending, and I’ve spent around $12k on gas since 2016. That includes some cross-country road trips, and taking my car to the race track, where it can burn 3 tanks in a day…
For the last 6 years or so, I’ve only spent $3k in gas on my daily, since I don’t have to go far and work remotely now. Gas prices in the PNW aren’t exactly the cheapest either.
deleted by creator
My wife’s plug-in hybrid charging (at home) costs the same as fuel for an ICE vehicle that gets 60mpg running 87 octane. Electricity is cheaper, but it’s also not free.
you might want to re-check your math.
What are you driving that gets 60 MPG?
A 300cc motorcycle
Condolences to your wife. The rest of us are very happy with our PHEVs. Electricity is not free? Are you saying nuclear plants, hydro-dams, power grids and wind turbines aren’t free? Ok I’ll keep that in mind, thanks!
Not where I live. All those charges for the use of their electricity here. I definitely do not have space to set up my own personal nuclear reactor on my patio. Not even sure I could scavenge enough free materials to build it, even if I found free designs/blueprints.
An uncle on my mother’s side used to hike in the backwoods with a wheelbarrow and a pitchfork to get materials. On a good day, he’d have a nuke reactor done by dinner. I assumed it was free but who am I to know.
Is that some kind of gotcha or something?
The average car buyer does not want to buy an expensive EV just to have an EV and will buy a $40k Toyota Sienna before they buy a $60k VW ID.Buzz.
Pretty easy to grasp…It’s not rocket surgery. Make affordable EVs and not upmarket EVs and people will buy them. China figured that out.
That extra $20k is for the EV’s battery. If you don’t spend it there, you’ll spend it on gasoline and ICE maintenance. Look at life cycle cost. Total costs over 8-10 years of ownerership. The average buyer will have less noise, less emissions, instant torque control, home charging, and cost savings if they keep the EV long enough.
Even assuming those numbers are accurate it’s irrelevant. If I don’t have $60,000 then I can’t buy a $60,000 car even if it would be a sound investment over the long run.
If you insist on buying a car new instead of second-hand, that’s on you.
Dude I’m only using your numbers.
$40k and $60k are YOUR numbers. I subtracted YOUR numbers to get 20k.
The used market isn’t much better. I can’t afford a $26,000 EV with 100k miles on it. That’s insane.
sounds like you want a free car.
A higher budget surely allows for more options and less excuses. In my view, anyone with a 50k budget has no excuse to choose ICE over EV.
You have a rough point, but a $20k delta is too much. Thankfully, the comparison is between a “special” car and a boring workhorse, so the price delta isn’t reflective of the practical choices. 7-passenger PV5 looks to be about $50k, so less than $10k delta between a Sienna and a comparable EV van. Still a pretty big gap, especially to take up front, but closer to reasonable given your reasons. We are seeing the gap close more aggressively in the 5-passenger segment, but 3-row still has been focused on EV only for ‘premium’ experience.
Lack of noise and emissions, instant torque control, and the possibility to charge at home are indeed premium experiences. A lot of ICE pushers are trying to get a free lunch here.
Sure, those are premium things, but don’t actually drive the manufacturer’s cost as those come mostly for free.
So it drives bigger margin for them instead, but at the expense of people perceiving EV as somehow fundamentally too expensive.
They’re inherent in the battery system. The manufacturer’s costs are in the battery. Propulsion, silence, no-emissions, instant torque, and home charging are the features we get with a battery whether we like it or not (no downside really). Price-wise, there is no point in talking about them separately. ICE pushers apparently forget the other features of the package. Manufactures must obviously charge a price for the package.
I’d like to preface all of the following with something: a vehicle should account for no more than 10% of a household user’s budget, some say up to 15% but most of the literature I’ve seen puts it at or under 10% to maintain fiscal responsibility. That’s monthly ofc, and puts the total budget somewhere around $1,200-1,400 on most of these cars
So how many people do you know who make between $120,000-140,000 per driver?
Some of us do, most of us don’t
I know plenty of people who cannot and or will not for various reasons ever make that much in their lifetimes
Let’s say a 19 year old getting their first car without support. You think they can afford a 60k car? Hell even a 40k? At +6% apr? They still need a car and not all of us have or had parents to help us foot that bill
How about even a used one ran into the dirt at 20-25k to “establish credit”? Think that’s a good idea either for someone like that? Its a terrible one
Further, if literally anything goes wrong with the battery before it’s paid off but out of warranty… Then what? File bankruptcy at 20-25? Take the credit hit and be unable to buy another vehicle or, or get student loans, or be able to get a mortgage because your credit is shot?
No matter if the payback even makes sense we have prime examples that the economy is down right hostile to EV owners with the EV tax road hike increases forcing EV users to pay up to 10x road “gas” tax equivalents of what petrol does in the US regardless if they drive 1,000 miles in a year or 40,000
Plain and simple, all commuter/work vehicles are not worth $40,000-60,000. They are grossly overpriced and have been since at least 2020
The $70,000 GMC EV work truck trim with 450 miles of range? That’s worth $45,000 max. The Tesla model 3 dual motor (which I paid $60,000 for new in 2023 btw) are worth $35,000 max brand new top trim model and has never been worth more than that despite the insane market gauntlet we’ve been run through
The person you are responding to is not even slightly wrong
Vehicles are grossly overpriced.
Front loading potential savings is not an acceptable practice in an economy where people do not have the option to go without a vehicle to function. Prices needs to crater. Companies need to be making any profits they do make off the back of quantity sold, and off government subsidies and cutting out middle men not massive margins per lesser quantities of vehicles at our expense, because as things stand they’re making their margins off of government bailouts anyways and consumers are perpetually the ones getting bent since taxes are our money and these incompetents are increasingly demanding more and more of it
I don’t think you wrote all of that just for me.
I didnt write it 🙃
VTT with a bit of editing removing punctuation and breaking up blocks of text
LLMs are useful for some things
Only if someone cares to read it.
That extra $20k is for the EV’s battery.
People need to stop quoting Elon Musk. That was true in 2012. Buzz battery is 90kwhr, the cost of batteries is now $120/kWh. So the whole pack costs $11k. Funny how with ICE now one quotes the cost of a catalytic system or how much mining goes on for the platinum and rhodium in cats. ID Buzz is overpriced, plus it’s not even good. It’s a small van.
China figured that out.
This isn’t an issue with electric vehicles its an issue with EV’s from traditional ICE based car companies, and the governments refusal to subsidize their purchase or the companies that manufacture them.
Sure, they have to buy their batteries from China, who probably enjoys that profit margin. Traditional ICE based car companies dug their own graves by insisting on staying at the starting line for 20 years, pushing their ICE garbage instead of supporting local refinining.
Traditional ICE based car companies dug their own graves by insisting on staying at the starting line for 20 years
Good thing we re-elected an administration that will encourage them to keep standing at the starting line, scratching their butts, watching the race on tv
Traditional ICE based car companies dug their own graves by insisting on staying at the starting line for 20 years, pushing their ICE garbage instead of supporting local refinining.
Nope. Joe Biden spent billions on battery valley to make batteries in the USA, then you idiots re-elected Trump and he put your asses back in the stone age. That’s why Detroit is fucked. Then, he tariffed any imported batteries.
Yeah shame. Take out all the tech bullshit I dont want and I bet that number gets cut nearly in half. Abs, efi, maybe airbags if you want.
We can make simple vehicles. They just refuse to. Becuase simple won’t break and be unrepairable by the end user. Gotta jeep those stealerships in business with proprietary tools.
In short, with late stage capitalism you will never have a good car again.
I’m certain airbags are a legal requirement.
Unfortunately, software defined vehicle is cheaper to build, then you get all the fancy stuff “for free”. One of the many problems legacy manufacturers have is the extra miles of wiring they need to install, mostly manual labor
