> can be had for less than the price of the average new car.
Emphasis mine and obviously they are factoring in the $7,500 tax credit which I guess is fine.
I dislike this "price of the average new car" line and it gets repeated a lot. Car manufacturers must love it since it tries to normalize that price as "average" when its not very representative. Grand total "average new car" price that the media is using everywhere is $33,666, but that's only because of the average price of luxury cars and trucks driving the number way, way up. There's a breakdown by sector in KBB's numbers:
Scroll down to the second table for more realistic numbers. At any rate the median new car price, if we could get it, would be much more telling. Sadly I can't find it anywhere.
After the tax credit the base model is the average cost of a Mid-size Pickup Truck ($30,045) or average cost of a sports car ($30,712)
But well above the average cost of a mid size car ($25,095) or crossover ($27,056) or subcompact ($17,218)
What is amazing to me considering these numbers is that there are enough people buying new cars every year to keep all these car manufacturers around. I'm a pretty decently employed individual, doing better than most my family and I've only bought one new car ten years ago for $15K a Mazda 3. Who are all these people buying new cars all the time?
I'm going to do some cocktail napkin math and see if it makes any sense.
The total amount of new vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2015 was 17.5 million [1]. Since the average is $33666, we can assume half are above, and half are below that price. In reality, there are far fewer than half above that price, since an outsized sale price pushes that average up.
Half of 17.5 million is 8.75 million. The U.S. Census estimates the 2015 population was 323,995,528 [2], with 116,211,092 households [3]. With every household replacing their car every five years or so (total guess), that leaves us 23.2 million households that should have been buying a car in 2015. That means that about 37.7% of the eligible U.S. households bought a car worth over $33666.
That is bizarre enough that it leads me to believe there is a serious fault in my methodology or it just so happened that car sales were abnormally high in 2015 due to an enormous rise in consumer confidence. Either way, I'm more confused now than when I started scribbling on my metaphorical cocktail napkin.
This is a classic market sizing question that you would get asked in any consulting interview.
I didn't understand why you split the market into 'above-average' and 'below-average' prices though? I highly doubt the distribution is symmetric -- most of the probability mass is probably in cheaper cars, and there are smaller numbers of very expensive luxury vehicles pulling up the average price [1]. In that case, a much smaller number of households buy the 'above-mean-price' vehicles. Also, wealthy households tend to replace their cars more frequently; luxury car dealerships do much of their business in rolling people over every 3 years into a new vehicle lease.
In any case, 116mm / 17.5mm cars per annum households is 6.6 years per car per household, which seems totally reasonable to me since many households own multiple vehicles, and many vehicles are owned outside of households.
[1] http://fortune.com/2015/02/17/luxury-car-sales/ - 'Top-shelf brands, with cars generally selling for more than $40,000, represent a big and growing slice of the car business. They now account for 11% of total new car sales, when measured by number of units sold'
Thank you! It's a good thing I haven't gone for any business consulting interviews lately.
This context helps to explain what's going on, especially the cars per year metric you added. It would be nice to have more information, but it appears that 11% luxury segment can have an outsized effect on the mean sales price of the vehicle sales.
How does one size a market? I've always been curious about this. Where do you go looking for the data? Are there any biz-dev people that could point me towards some introductory material?
In a real interview, you normally wouldn't have access to a calculator or a computer. The point is to show you can arrive within a factor of 2-3x of the actual real-life answer just by smart guesstimating and doing arithmetic in your head.
One reason is because consultants often get asked these sorts of on-the-fly questions by clients, and they need to provide reasonable answers without looking them up.
Is testing who can sound the most competent while pulling a number out of their ass really the best test to determine the right candidate? There are good consultants out there, but there are also the horror stories.
For better or worse, consultants are often paid by clients for sounding like the smartest person in the room. Bullshitting convincingly is very much part of the job.
Anyway, if the technique is good enough for Fermi [1] or Drake [2], what's the problem?
Fermi questions can be polarizing, especially for precision/accuracy focused individuals. Beware. Drake equation has its criticisms, and ET has yet to phone home.
First, households have more than one car. If you assume on average cars last 15 years and the average household has 2 cars that's.
116,211,092 * 2 / 15 ~= 15.5 million new cars per year which is within the ballpark of 17.5 million new cars.
Next, averages tend to be well above median. One BMW might bring the average up relative to 20 Honda Civics. Further, the low end of the market is more likely to buy used than new. So ~1/3 of the market is buying new cars, 15% of that is buying the expensive new cars and your looking at top 5% income earners at $167,000+k/year.
Granted, not everyone making 150k is buying a 50k car, and some people making less than 150k are buying 50k cars. But, if you think in terms of that kind of income then a 50k car is less ridiculous than you might think.
My wife and I each have a car. Most married people I know each have a car, so to me that's not ridiculous at all.
My new neighbors, though, are ridiculous in their car ownership (in my opinion). They are a married couple with only a new baby, but for some reason they have three cars. I've never seen them drive the third car, it's just in their garage and they park the two cars they do drive in the driveway.
In rural and low-density suburban areas, it's expected (and basically required) that everyone in the house who has a job also has a car.
Take a look at the size of high school and commuter college student parking lots on Google Earth, and then consider that every single one of those cars probably belongs to a household with 3+ cars (mom, dad, teenager).
Very common for parents to upgrade and pass their old car down to their 16-year-old instead of trading in.
Plenty, it's often a work vehicle or for teenage children, sometimes it's a commuter car. RV's are also fairly common as are motorcycles which might not count. Other times, it's just a car waiting to be sold / repaired.
PS: Don't forget all those Verizon van's are part of that 2 average.
I own three cars. One is my dad's old Vanagon. I haven't had the heart to sell it, and it is useful a few times a year for camping, scuba diving, or hauling. I probably should replace it with a trailer for those needs, but I haven't yet. It cost me $0, registration for it is about $120/yr, and it doesn't bump up my insurance all that much. Could I save money by just renting a van when I needed one, sure, but not all that much, and it has sentimental value.
Besides, there have been a couple of times where simply due to bad luck both of our newer cars were in the shop at once. Having the backup of the CVCC for a few days was genuinely useful.
I have three cars (and two motorcycles), and there's just my wife and I; no kids, but two dogs that have to be planned for. Why three cars? Well, the Scion xB (DogMobile) was purchased new 12 years ago, it's paid off, and it can carry dogs and bicycles. The Nissan Leaf was pre-ordered the day we were able, someone has to kick start that electric car thing. And since a nylon tent isn't going to contain an 80lb. pit bull terrier when it hears a raccoon at 3 a. m., we bought an '81 VW camper van.
Now, we could get rid of the Scion and use the VW as the new DogMobile. But the Scion is long paid off, reliable as a hammer, and we don't put miles on a temperamental old VW that wasn't that reliable to begin with (in comparison to a Toyota-made Scion). The resale value on Leafs is horrible, and we like the car. Long since paid off, too, and since it's our "nice car": no dogs allowed.
Oh, and my Dad just texted me this weekend asking if I wanted his 1963 Austin-Healey 3000. As much as it pains me, I'm probably going to turn him down and let him sell it. Too many vehicles the way it is, and nowhere to put the Healey except a storage unit. But until I give a definitive "no", there's the possibility that we could be a four car family.
Ridiculous, yes. But for some the vehicles just kind of pile up.
I'd wager there are even more 3+ car less-affluent families.
Having multiple, older vehicles that are 1. fully paid off, 2. dirt cheap to insure, and 3. old enough that you can actually work on them yourself is a good way to make sure you have something usable at any one time, even if the general maintenance needs are higher than average.
A household across the street from me has five residents: mother, father, employed daughter, twin sons in high school. They have at least three cars now, and I'm pretty sure I've seen four (one, to be pedantic, a pickup truck).
A household next to me has within the last five years had three residents: mother, father, son then about twenty. They had three cars.
A household down the street: mother, father, employed daughter, employed son (the last there part time). All have their own vehicles:sports ute, truck, sedan, truck.
It is possible that a household at the end of the block, mother, father, daughter in high school, has three cars; but I'm not sure whether father and daughter use the same car or a different one.
We are in a city, close to public transportation. I suspect that as one gets farther out into the suburbs, one finds more households with three or more cars.
3 person household with 2 drivers. 3 cars, FMV totalling about $5000. I keep an extra car to get to work when one of the others is broken down. One of the vehicles is a compact pickup with a canopy for diversifying utility, if needed.
We're well below median household income; but we must have transportation at all times.
I have found the sweet spot for used cars to be about $4000. Won't need too much work for a couple years, and I refuse to take the depreciation on more expensive cars. Cash-and-carry, I will not have a car loan, either - not paying interest.
What is the average household exactly? One of my neighbors are baby boomers whose 30-year-old daughter still lives with them. They have four cars (two for the dad, one for the mom, one for the daughter). Across the street is some kind of flophouse -- a 2-bed 1-bath house, whose occupants have no less than 7 cars. It causes no end of consternation for my wife and I who have merely one car each, and we often can't park in front of our own house because the neighbors are taking up all the spots.
For the people I know, it seems more of an overabundance of caution vibe. A bit more like "Let's have a third SUV, in case one breaks down and we suddenly both need to drive multiple people to different hospitals across snow covered rocky terrain."
We have four, one of my neighbors has at least six (family of three), another about four or five. The guy across the street probably has at least four.
Pretty much all the families I've known have at least two cars.
Good analysis. The used car sales aren't captured by this metric so it automatically pushes the mean up. However, it still accounts for an exceptionally high sales year, since none of the used car sales are included in that 17.5 million figure.
Maybe car sales are highly variable from year to year?
People also weren't buying new cars in 2008-2011, so there are fewer used cars resulting from that on the market. Plus, interest rates are really low. So a new car bought in 2007 + 5-7 years would be getting replaced.
People, not households, buy and use cars so that's a weird way to calculate. You're also not counting any work vehicles which are very numerous and often expensive vans or trucks.
A quick search shows there were 260,350,938 registered highway vehicles in 2014. The truth is US auto fleet age is older than it has ever been so car sales are not abnormally high and could actually accelerate (assuming robots don't drive them all!).
Maybe? It's total car sales, this is cocktail napkin math. Wouldn't the amount owned by taxis and rental companies have to be absorbed by the U.S. population anyway? If anything it takes away the amount of eligible households, making the issue even stranger. This is because utilization of rental cars is going to be lower than purchased cars.
Without looking up the stats, my guess is that this number includes leases. Which artificially inflates the number for "new car sales". Not only that but manufactures have been offering insane financing 72 months .9% apr. Which brings down the cost to own for people who probably shouldn't be buying a new car. Car manufactures remind me more of financial companies then car companies.
Leases do not 'artificially' inflate new car sales. They are not really different from regular financing. In both cases the new car is sold and paid for by a financial institution. And the customer can use the car as long as all financial conditions of the deal are met. For instance, in both cases you can pay off your balance earlier to own the car outright. Or you can sell car before the end of the lease/loan terms and use proceeds to payoff the balance.
They really are (or subsidiaries are). Ally Financial (or Ally Bank until a few years ago) started as the part of GM financing their auto loans. I'd bet Ford and Chrysler have similar groups, and foreign automakers as well.
Rental cars get sold on at fairly low mileage. My point was that "people" don't have to buy new every car that other people buy used. I have bought an ex-rental car in the past that was 1 year old with 10000 miles on the clock.
> With every household replacing their car every five years or so (total guess)
I think the issue is here. Yes, most households don't hold onto a car for longer than 5 years, but not all households upgrade to a brand new car every time. (Heck, I've never owned a brand new vehicle ever.) So one new car sale could result in 2-3 households upgrading their vehicle, as cars are passed down the line.
Enormous respect for someone rolling up their sleeves, showing their back of napkin math, and ending with, "Huh, that's weird (and very possibly wrong)."
>> Who are all these people buying new cars all the time?
I'm not sure where you're from, but this is Hacker News, so I'll just ask - Who are all these people who can afford to live in California? ;-)
It's all relative. Remember, the annual new car market is the number of cars on the road divided by the life of a car. This accounts for the sale of used cars as well.
Purely anecdotal, but my wild-assed guess is that most middle class Americans spend $20-30k on one every 4-5 years. Some people are enthusiasts and will spend more than that on the same timetable, and some people are extra frugal and will spend less, less often.
People with families will probably spend a little more for a minivan or SUV, which will skew it higher. Students (or people in their 20s in the early phases of their careers) will spend less, balancing out the minivan purchasers. Totally guessing though.
There is not a single sports car that you would get hit with a 50% depreciation just for driving off the lot.
For leasing, you aren't paying for the full cost of the car either, in fact, depends on the company you could actually come out ahead when compared to purchasing.
No trade-in, but you're only paying the depreciation and not the full value of the car either.
I've had friends lease recent model cars on 3year/12K terms and get about 60% residual value on their term sheet. I think 1/4 to 1/3 is an extreme case, unless you're choosing really crappy manufacturers that are known to fall in value quickly
I used to think the same. We bought a new car 3 years ago with a financing which we still need to pay for 3 more years. However, we had to spend nearly $1000 on a new set of tires and alignment recently, and now I'm thinking it is better to get another brand new car as soon as we get a deal from the manufacturer or the dealer.
What makes his comment even weirder is that the top pick all-season tires on consumer reports are about $450 installed at Costco and the stock tires that come on most cars are so bad (road noise, winter handling) that you usually hope to have them gone before the first or second winter. Some people even donate them before driving off the lot.
Maybe for a specialty tire, but I'm guessing that is pretty rare. My pilot is in at $650(fouth set @ 60k each. Roughly a penny a mile vs 15 for the whole car.)
For your car that sounds great, but tires really depend on the vehicle. Costco's price for the tires that came on my vehicle are $250 apiece (5 person SUV).
You have to add tax, installation service (and in my case, alignment) to that. I guess you have to put things in perspective. Not everyone can afford to just donate a set of stock tires.
I guess it is a good deal if the residual value of the old car pays for the rest of the financing plus the down payment on the new car, and the monthly payment stays the same. Actually it is frustrating for us to have to spend this much on maintenance on a car which is just 3 years old.
New Tires is a very strange (and illogical) reason to purchase a new vehicle. How is that any more frustrating than filling your gas tank when it's empty? All vehicles (used, new, gas, electric) need new tires after x amount of miles. This is a regular and expected maintenance item that all vehicle owners must deal with. It would be a different story if a critical component like your transmission unexpectedly went out well before it's life expectancy.
Honestly, if you consider $1,000 on new tires to be a frustrating expense, then you really can't afford to purchase new cars in the first place. A new vehicle is a multiple of the cost of new tires and even more so when the balance of your last vehicle is rolled into the new financing and spread out over payments with interest. I worked at a car dealership while in college. There's a reason the "finance guy" drove a 10+ year old Honda that he paid cash for.
Your logic uses the faulty assumption that you should always have a monthly payment. You shouldn't. Average live of a car is much longer than even a 7 year loan so at some point you shouldn't be making payments on it any longer. If you just keep rolling into newer cars, you are spending more than you need to.
Sure, but technology always gets better as well, including many safety features in addition to convenience ones. For example things like backup cameras, blind spot monitors, cross-traffic alerts, collision avoidance, adaptive cruise control, might not have been available on most cars 10 years ago.
Also, there is a certain value in having a reliable car with predictable monthly costs. Sure, you can get an extended warranty to cover unexpected expenses, but there is still the hassle factor of having your car constantly in the shop after a certain point.
There's nothing wrong with buying a car and keeping it for 10 years, but there is also nothing wrong with having a new car every X years.
For the most part though, reliability has improved a lot. You have to factor in mileage too of course (and weather--which can lead to rust problems). But a 10 year old car isn't necessarily an unreliable clunker these days.
You're right of course about features, including safety features. Personally, I'm not going to get rid of a reliable running car for most new technology. But then I've always been a drive car until (or a little bit past :-)) the point where it's not reliable transportation any longer.
Why would that be better ? Deprecation of new cars in the first 3 years is crazy high, they loose 50% value in that time. Buying a new car every 3 years is one of the worst thing s you can do financially.
Boring midsize cars do not depreciate nearly this much. A $22,000 Honda Accord depreciates only $10,500 over five years. Besides, they depreciate this much because those first years of car ownership are worth the most. The car is under warranty and is most trouble-free during the early years. People pay that much for the first years of car ownership because they get more utility from newer cars, not because they are suckers.
A lot of cars coming off lease these days that are two or three years old get certified by the dealer, which gives an extended warranty for the person buying the used car. That's a nice little bonus where you buy the car when it starts hitting linear depreciation and you still have a decent warranty.
The average consumer is awash in debt. The guy next to me just bought some truck for around $40k with a 72mo loan. His wife leases some BMW 3 series, and can't drive on the weekend.
They eyeroll at my 2002 Honda, and I eyeroll at their $1000/mo payments.
You might have just happened to pick an amazingly well-aging car. My friend has a 2006 Mazda3 as well and it runs incredibly well, and it still looks like new cars. It's one of those cars you never feel like you need to upgrade from.
I know a few people who buy new cars, but they're very well-off and can afford it. I bought a new car once in my life (when I was young and dumb and my first paycheck made me think I was some kind of millionaire), but realized my mistake and ended up selling it pretty much right away. Now it's purely used from here on out.
Or, buy a new car and expect to own it for a decade or more. It's just as economically viable. And to some the knowledge that you are the single owner and have taken excellent care of it is valuable. (As opposed to the unknowns of a used car.)
Availability of cheap credit combined with dealer incentives (an offer like 0% for 72 months is not that rare nowadays) moves the conversation from "can you afford a $40,000 car?" to "can you afford a $556 monthly payment?"
To top it off, when you're financing, used car loans are rarely as attractive as manufacturer/dealer incentives - BankRate says they average about 3% annually nowadays, so an 18% mark-up to the value of the used vehicle over the 6-year ownership period.
I think it's a lot of money to spend on a vehicle, but if you look at leasing, lots of vehicles are less than $5000 a year, which is an easier number to wrap your mind around if you figure many of the people paying it aren't super focused on saving.
Out of 330M people even if 5% of population is buying a new car in the given year that is whooping 15M cars per year. USA sells around 17M cars year +-2M. One simple proxy to arrive at the 5% figure is the number of people in 16-19 age group where they might get parent's old car and the parent might buy a new one. That population is around 20M in USA.
Of course I have not accounted for taxi fleets, car rental fleets, corporate purchases etc. In fact go to think of it 17M cars per year does look like a very low number.
Not just households buy cars...companies, fleet vehicles, rental car companies. People lease cars and need to get a new car every 3-5 years.
Also, I'd like to think your average developer is more financially literate/savvy than your average American. Otherwise, the housing crash wouldn't have happened. You know, people with no money buying expensive houses. People carrying credit card balance and rolling them over.
Here's one case: I just bought a new Tundra a couple months ago (cash because I don't like debt). I could have saved $5K (15%) and gotten one 3 years old with 40K miles on it.
That's the problem with some models. The resale value is SO good that the value proposition for buying used is almost nil.
Since my trade-in Tundra was 10 years old with 178K miles, let's assume that's the life of the new vehicle too. I don't think saving 15% to buy a vehicle that's 20% through its life span is a good deal.
"Since my trade-in Tundra was 10 years old with 178K miles, let's assume that's the life of the new vehicle too." That's a terribly faulty assumption. The average age of all cars on the road in the US is 11 years old. Yes that is mean not median, but even the median is likely to be >8 years old. Your 10 year old truck probably was at the midpoint of it's life.
> That's a terribly faulty assumption. The average age of all cars on the road in the US is 11 years old.
No, my assumption is fine. Oddly, yours is flawed. My assumption doesn't use national averages that include southern states and non-coastal states where cars last forever. In my unique living conditions, my assumption is fine.
Again, there are more factors at work here. The trucks practical life was over, not because it couldn't be repaired, but because it didn't make sense. When a repair bill becomes greater than the value of the car, you stop repairing it.
I would have love to keep it. But the repair bill was 8k which still didn't fix some things like the rust in the truck bed.
With unlimited resources you can keep anything on the road. But 8k is about 25% the cost of a new truck, so you'd have to be bonkers to put that much into something that old.
Think of it this way. It sounds like you're surprised by the number of new cars being purchased, but presumably you're not surprised that people are constantly buying used cars. And yet, roughly every used car that's purchased corresponds to a new car being purchased, unless you're expecting total car ownership to decline.
The lifespan of the average car sold today is significantly longer than in the past. A new car can be sold as a used car several times before it ends up being recycled. I don't think it follows that there is a 1:1 ratio of used to new car sales.
Which is essentially burning money. It's funny because the people who usually can't afford a new car, will think they can afford it when leasing, while in the end they spend the exact same amount of money (even more since the leasing corp usually wants to make money too).
Why is it essentially burning money? Usually leases offer very competitive financial incentives, and are structured so you're paying off the depreciation of the car at an extremely low interest rate. Another way to look at it is you're getting a well priced new car that has a guaranteed buy back price in 3 years, all without putting down any capital (or a small amount).
Because leasing companies make a profit... they know exactly how much a car depreciates and they make sure you pay for that depreciation plus profit for the leasing company.
There are some tax advantages with leases that some people can take advantage of, but for most people, leasing is not going to save them money but it does provide a convenient way to always have a new car.
Many manufacturers operate their own lease. For BMW, you are likely to come out ahead than purchasing the car and selling it yourself after 3 years. Their residual value for lease is artificially high.
For Maserati, some of their models actually carry a negative money factor, so you are being PAID to lease. You can lease an $80k Ghibli for $600/month for 3 years, that's way less depreciation than if you bought and sold the car after 3 years.
I've done the analysis, and while there are some bad leasing deals out there that represent what you are probably thinking of, the very best ones offer incredible value for money (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12475939).
That assumes efficient marketplace for selling the car at the optimal residual value once you're ready to get rid of it.
Between low-balling used-car dealers and Craigslist randos asking if you'd take personal checks, for many people selling a car is more stressful than buying a car.
Living in a state that charges 6-10% sales tax on selling your car is an incredible reason to lease. (As you only end up paying tax on what you leased for, instead of the purchase price).
Assuming you want to keep driving new cars, that is.
I have looked at it a few times and the lease payments are pretty well correlated with the expected depreciation over that time period. Cars loose a lot of value in the first three years. If you plan to sell the car after three years, leases are not that bad.
There's an assumption there about getting higher residual value on a used vehicle than what the dealer has in the lease paperwork.
The marketplace for used cars (before Beepi and Shift) is hardly efficient, and you might extract optimal price if you're willing to drive to multiple used-car dealerships or meet random people off Craigslist at random hours to accommodate test drives.
Some people would rather not deal with that, hence leasing that provides a guarantee a used vehicle will be accepted at pre-negotiated residual value.
I buy a car every ~2 years because I like technology. Driving a Tesla Model S now, and looking forward to the company releasing self-driving software before I upgrade to the new version.
> At any rate the median new car price, if we could get it, would be much more telling. Sadly I can't find it anywhere.
The best I can find is $24000 [1], which sounds believable. But that's not referenced. There's a lot of articles stating that most people actually can't afford new cars [2]. Those articles, and studies they're talking about, are comparing median income and average car price, though.
I did an analysis on this a while ago since no one publishes median figures [1]. Average base price of the top 20 best selling cars in the US is a good proxy, and that amounts to a bit over $23k. Bolt is obviously way higher than that. Of course, then people go and add several grand worth of upgrades so that base price doesn't reflect the true transaction price very well. Average transaction price in the mass market segment is around $31.5k
> *Kelley Blue Book Average Transaction Prices do not include applied consumer incentives
Trucks make up the top 3 best selling vehicles in the US by a large margin -- accounting for 42% of the top 10 best selling vehicles in the US. They are also the most heavily discounted because their margins are so high. And KBB intentionally leaves that information out of their figures.
So all those $8-12k discounts on Ford/GM/Dodge pickup-trucks are not even taken into account for that average. Meaning KBB's numbers are complete trash.
I wonder if such statements are taking total cost of ownership into account? After subsidies it's more expensive to purchase than similar models and trim lines of gasoline powered cars, but electricity is much cheaper than fuel and you have much less maintenance to do as well.
I drive about 800km per month and I'd pay $10/mo in electricity to do that in a Bolt, versus $150/mo in gasoline for my current car.
What ? Even in Germany with it's high fuel prices i will get 800km with 50-70 EUR of fuel. Charging that 60kWh battery would be around 16 EUR worth of electricity here but only results in half the range. So still cheaper, but nowhere near your numbers.
> I drive about 800km per month and I'd pay $10/mo in electricity to do that in a Bolt, versus $150/mo in gasoline for my current car.
I don't get those figures at all... 800km (500 miles) is approx two-three recharges on the Bolt or about one tank of gas (depending on vehicle). Ignoring how incredibly cheap you are claiming electricity is ($5/full charge), there's nowhere on earth where a full tank of gas costs $150 (or even two full tanks).
Something went badly wrong when you came up with these figures.
> there's nowhere on earth where a full tank of gas costs $150 (or even two full tanks).
My vehicle holds 30+ US gallons. Filling up once is USD$75 at Costco (yesterday). Figure $90 at a regular station. (depending on the price of gasoline.) Filling up twice will probably exceed $150.
The 30+ gallons get me about 500-540 miles typically.
The cost of petrol in Canada meets the figures quoted in the parent post. Gasoline is about $1.30/liter around major metros in Canada; a Toyota Corolla gets about 5.7 km per liter (highway). 800km would consume about 140 liters of petrol, about CAD182.
> a Toyota Corolla gets about 5.7 km per liter (highway).
This article lists it as[0]: 4.9 L/100 km on the highway.
That's $52 Canadian, not $182 Canadia. I'm pretty sure that 5.77 km/liter figure you're quoting is 100 km/liter making your figure off by a huge amount.
There are a ton of systemic subsidies for gasoline powered cars. It isn't irrational or unfair to subsidize a new technology until it has proliferated enough to challenge such an ingrained technology as hydrocarbon fuels. Costs will come down as volume goes up, and early state R&D gets paid down.
I tried to specifically point out that the tax credit accounting of "cost" is fine by me and that I am including its benefit in my numbers for comparison. My post is not about that.
> A 10.2-inch touchscreen is standard equipment, but a navigation system isn’t offered. Instead, you’ll have to rely on a connected phone to pull up Android Auto or Apple CarPlay.
Hallelujah! I really hope the rest of the manufacturers and their car lines come around to this model. I know they make more $$ on their $2000 nav packages, but people are rejecting them in droves because they are horrible and need to be updated through clunky, often expensive processes.
The phone navigation apps are made by software companies who actually have to compete with each other to make the best system. Compare to car nav systems where you only have one option, and the comparison of navigation systems between different cars is going to be a very very small factor in which car you end up buying. You buy the car you want and take whatever you get for navigation.
Car manufacturers (to generalize a bit) are not particularly good at software, and do not have much incentive to get better at it.
I much prefer inbuilt nav systems when they're done well (integrated, simple dash view is a must) like in VW Golf and Merc A Class. Phone can't compete to having just the right information, right when you need it in the console. Particularly when travelling and hiring cars.
Used to agree with you. Then my Merc GL550 needed a nav update. For only $450 I got a "self installable" DVD that needed a trip to the dealer, only to find out it was still years behind. Bring on the iPhone 7.
Yes, love the navigation in my Audi. Console and in dash display, Google Maps with traffic. No nannying "you can't enter a destination unless the park brake is on", and additional nice integrations like "65 mi to empty, next fuel is 48mi, redirect to gas station now?"
Oh, AND I can use either Android or Car Play in my car, as well.
Have you used CarPlay yet? You get the large touch-screen control, Apple-standard UI, and up-to-date info. The only downside if Apple Maps is still behind Google Maps. But, it's also WAY ahead of most in-car nav systems.
I have a cradle for my phone that puts it right next to the map in my built-in nav system. I never use the nav system anymore, because it's so much easier to enter information on the phone, real time traffic is there, etc.
I still like the map, and I have it on most of the time, just because I like maps, but I'd never pay the extra for the nav system again.
The navigation assistance in my car is significantly better than the one Google Maps offers. For one thing it doesn't lose its mind every time I go under an overpass. For another, the UI is vastly superior: it shows me the distance to the next waypoint prominently in the center of the display, between the speedometer and the tachometer. When approaching a turn, the same area of the display is used to show the configuration of the intersection, even complicated ones like double forks or t- or y- shaped intersections, or even acute turnbacks. My car never barks orders like Google Maps does. If it needs to say something, it is awfully polite, saying things such as "If possible, make a legal U-turn." And finally my car's navigation responds to a voice command to stop navigating, which Google Maps doesn't seem to know.
In my experience the only thing Google Maps navigation has going for it is superior data. I really wish I could have my car's UI with Google's data.
Hasn't been my experience, but I've never had a car nav system, just attempted to use other people's. Could be a learning curve issue since I'm used to my phone UI and not the cars'.
People downvoting honkhonkpants, please don't. You may disagree with him, but it's a well thought out discussion.
Theoretically the car nav has access to inertial/distance sensors which help a ton in tunnels/weak GPS spots. But I bet few cars have this. It would sure be nice to have this exported to phones somehow. (Heck, have the whole OBD feed exposed. One can dream...)
I imagine a car's sensors could be more accurate than a phone's because they're in a fixed orientation. Plus it can tell if you're turning the wheel and should have the same distance info that the odometer gets.
The OBD-II data should include odometer readings. I assume phones could at least get that via bluetooth dongles, but I'm not aware of any nav apps that do.
> In my experience the only thing Google Maps navigation has going for it is superior data.
Well, I think most people would include price as something going for it as well.
Plus, data is huge. I have a nav package in my car but never use it because it can't route me around accidents/construction like Waze does. Driving in rush hour traffic on a construction-laden road every day, this has proven invaluable...
Those may be fair criticisms, but the only way you're likely going to get what you're asking for (Google's data with a UI as good as your car's) is through a more open and competitive model. On your phone, you probably have literally dozens of choices for GPS apps, but in your car you have one. And the one in your car will never get appreciably better, you're stuck with it.
As much as I hate bringing Tesla into every EV thread, Tesla's nav uses Google data, and they've reved the UI for all car owners back to the first Model S shipped.
With CarPlay and Google Auto you can get some of these features. What I'd really like to see is a way for a phone to get access to the car's odometer, that is how car navigation systems continue to work in tunnels (by using dead reckoning).
After a road trip that showed me just how bad Apple Maps and Google Maps are, I switched to a third-party GPS app, and it combines the great UI and mapping directions (like you say, exquisite lane guidance[0]) but with the pros of a mobile phone (easier search/input and up-to-date maps and POI info)
Re: tunnels, with apple maps, I've never had an issue in tunnels. In Boston, going under the city on the 93, it predicts where I am in the route probably using the speed I was at when I entered the tunnel. I think the big dig is > 3 mi long tunnel.
You'll love using your phone for navigation, until you go to Canada, where you don't have data. (Or affordable data.)
I have a 2010 Prius, and I'm quite happy with its built-in navigation. Its UI is worse at first-time address entry, but is substantially better for... Just about everything else.
> You'll love using your phone for navigation, until you go to Canada, where you don't have data. (Or affordable data.)
In that case just use the HERE WeGo App (for iPhone: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/here-wego-effortless-city/id...) which has free offline maps for pretty much every country and doesn't need a data connection for navigation in offline mode. I use it every time I'm in another country.
I love HERE, I used it for a lot of international travel. I just wanted to also throw out there that google maps now, and for a while, offers offline navigation.
Rogers is expensive, but what you're paying that 2x premium for is the cell phone towers in the rural parts of the country. The one time I saw download speeds on my cell phone approach the maximum theoretical was on a highway in the middle of nowhere in Ontario where I was probably the only person using that cell phone tower. If you live in an urban area and don't need the coverage, you can get a reasonable "unlimited" plan from WIND Mobile for $60 CAD/month.
I'm on Wind mobile for my primary phone and pay around CAD 35/m (40 if you factor in taxes) for unlimited data (3GB full speed, throttled for more - but have yet to throttle me even though I always go above my data limit).
It's great if you travel in any area with coverage, anything outside and you'll have trouble - I recently decided to drive to Scugog (from Oshawa) - I didn't have data from almost the entire ride.
I was lucky as I had HERE maps (with downloaded offline maps).
This is great advice for a Canadian who needs cellphone coverage. This is not great advice for an American who is visiting. (The best advice for that situation is ordering a pre-paid SIM card. Or not using your phone for navigation.)
Sat Nav apps are available and at reasonable pricing (Think I paid ~£20 for CoPilot a few years ago which included maps for all of the UK and Europe, worldwide could be acquired for a little more)
Edit: When I was in Uganda I used OsmAnd (open street map android) for offline navigation and it worked fine (especially considering the standard of mapping and roads available in Uganda).
My car is pre-loaded with full mapping data for all of Canada and the US.
I suppose I could achieve the same effect by clearing up space on my phone, figuring out exactly where I'm going, grabbing offline data for it, praying that I don't ever drive out of that area, deleting the offline data after my trip...
My old Highlander had a DVD that provided the map data and stayed loaded all the time for that reason.
Each year was a new one for a couple hundred bucks. I bought mine, but given that it's a DVD, out of curiosity I checked if it was possible to pirate them and I only found one possibility in some Russian guy's home directory Apache index. Toyota Highlander dealer navigation DVDs weren't that hot of a commodity when I looked, rather surprisingly.
I'm very much ready to jump on the hype train for Android Auto, but sadly there's still a long list of countries they don't serve[1]
> The Android Auto app is currently available in the following countries: Argentina Australia Austria Bolivia Brazil Canada Chile Colombia Costa Rica Dominican Republic Ecuador France Germany Guatemala India Ireland Italy Japan Mexico New Zealand Panama Paraguay Peru Puerto Rico Russia Spain Switzerland United Kingdom United States Uruguay Venezuela
I wish there were a way to make a more interoperable system though. Android Auto isn't available in all countries. It also locks you into the two main phone OS's. What if you have a Windows Phone? Or Sailfish OS? Now you can't connect to your car.
Reminds me of Superbook kickstarter project to attach your phone to a laptop-shell, and use your phone like a desktop. The future looks more and more like Bring Your Own Device.
I came here to post this exactly comment. I even have the same quotation sitting in my clipboard right now. Apple CarPlay or Android Auto is the best of both worlds; I can't imagine a dedicated nav system being better. (Best cause, a really good one might be the same, except tied to one car and lacking any other search history. And much more expensive.)
Au contraire, I much prefer my 2016 car's built-in navigation system with consistent performance and features to the ADHD ever-changing, signal-dependent, random notifiers asking stupid questions, craptastic voice input, arbitrarily failing navigation apps of the two major mobile providers.
I don't WANT to update my navigation system. That's exactly what I HATE about Google Maps etc. In fact, I have gone so far as to opt out of updating my car's system to enable Android Auto after I tried it out in a rental and found it to be an epic bowl of buggy fail that nearly got me in an accident.
And of course, that didn't stop the Android team from breaking basic Bluetooth support in Android 7.0.1 on my Nexus 5x because they're go-getters in that department.
My car is a useful device that I need to count on daily, not a @#$%ing mobile app like Candy Crush.
But will you three years from now? I get what you are saying, but you are comparing a 2016 nav system to a phone. If you've got a nav system that's a few years old it's a headache (and possibly costly) to update, might be missing features in newer nav systems or might simply be broken and outrageous to fix (a problem that could also apply to an Android Auto head unit, to be fair, but at least you have a backup then).
In my case, I'm still quite happy with the Nav system in my wife's 2009 Rav 4 actually. It works as intended to this day. It's missing some fanciness, but I'm just not about the fancy.
The issue is updating the system with new maps. My car's nav system is now about two years old and I find about 1 in every 20 addresses or so it doesn't recognize.
Overall I do feel built in nav systems offer the best experience, I just wish car manufacturers could figure out a better update process.
Sounds like your complaint is half against Android Auto (and Android in general).
I wonder if it would be cost effective for you to simply have another dedicated device and data line if you get a Bolt? Reusing an older device ($0) + $10/mo data sounds better for even 5 years of service (10125) = $600 vs. $2000 for nav system.
True, but more likely I suspect is that in 2018 and beyond they'll offer a navigation option. Then again, they still don't offer blind spot indicators on the corvette so who knows?
As for me, I just bought a car this year, and while the next one will be electric, I'm pretty happy with the current set of wheels.
I wish the nav was simply easier to update. In fact, I wish the entertainment system was an Android offshoot with GPS and wifi built in. Shouldn't be so proprietary.
The Bolt may work in terms of range and charging but it remains impractical for most of the general public.
A Bolt costs roughly $32K (depending on incentives, maybe more). A Toyota Camry Hybrid starts at $26,790. And, I know what you're going to say, "electricity is free!" That's just untrue. Recharging electric cars is far from free.
The Bolt costs roughly $10 to recharge its 238 mile battery. A Camry Hybrid can drive approx 680 miles on a full tank and costs $37 to completely refill. So you're saving about $8 per every 680 miles you drive.
So the breakeven for the cost difference of the two vehicles (@$5,210) is 442,850 miles. Neither car is going to make it to 400K miles, so therefore you won't make your money back from a Bolt.
PS - Yes, my post uses tons of assumptions: Incentives for the Bolt, cost of electricity, cost of gas, average miles figures, and so on. You cannot make a post about this topic without doing so. Feel free to pick particular figures/assumptions apart, but pointing out "this is all based on estimates!" isn't very constructive within itself.
So, in Northern California where I live, gasoline is $2.50/gallon, so to fill the Camry's 17 gallon tank it's $42.50, and for 680 miles that's $0.0625/mile. If I can get the baseline rate in my area, I pay $0.12025/kwh. Assuming there's a 10% loss on charging (no idea what the actual loss is, so just choosing 10%) the 60kw battery, that's $7.9365, and for 238 miles that's $0.0333/mile. That's a savings of $0.0292/mile.
If you drive 1000 miles a month (average), that's $29.20 in savings a month, or $350.40 a year in fuel costs (assuming base gas/electricity prices inline with what I have here). If you think gas prices will average $3.00/gallon for the lifetime of the car, the fuel savings are $41.80/mo per 1000 miles, $500.40 a year in fuel costs for 12,000 miles, and evens out at just under 125k miles. For $2.00/gallon the 1000 mile savings are $16.70, $200 for a 12,000 mile year. That said, I think I average about 20,000 miles a year on the family car that we use to ferry kids to/from school and most daily errands.
The very important thing to consider though is whether or not you have access to free public charging. If you can find a free public charger and work it into your schedule in some way (maybe run some errands by foot in the area), you might be able to eliminate almost all of your home charging. If I was able to do really good at this, and only home charge for 10% of my usage on average (probably a tall order), and assuming that availability of free chargers doesn't change drastically for the worse, at current gas prices that would put my average (12,000 miles) yearly savings at $710.04. I consider $3.00/gallon a more likely average over that time, and that puts the yearly savings at $860.04, and it evens out at just under 73k miles. .
That's not super compelling when compared to a Camry Hybrid, but it may be cheaper overall, depending on how the future unfolds. That said, if what others are saying and Hybrids have increased maintenance costs, it may be enough to make electric the clear winner in this comparison, but I don't know.
Hybrids seem likely to have more maintenance costs than pure EVs, but I think it's clear that EVs are still too expensive to be truly cost-efficient. If what you care about is lowest TCO, you can get a car of comparable size to the Bolt for like more than $15k cheaper, and of course you won't make that back up in fuel.
I expect that the Bolt will also have crappy resale value, if, as I think we all expect, EVs continue to get substantially better over the next few years.
The reason to get a Bolt right now is because you are ideologically committed to EVs or because the whole deal of mostly not having to deal with fueling up your car/liking the acceleration profile of an EV/etc., not because it's genuinely the lowest TCO.
True. This is a voting with your dollars situation. If you favor the way in which electricity is generated in your area over using an IC engine then the Bolt is your car regardless of how the finances work out.
I expect that the Bolt will also have crappy resale value...
The battery pack replacement is a major maintenance cost, even if everything else is running fine. That's something a used EV buyer should take into account.
A spent battery also has very high resale value, compared to used auto parts. You can sell it back to the manufacturer for stationary storage. And even if it's being recycled, it still has substantial value. So it's not as huge a cost as one might imagine.
Toyota's hybrids have low maintenance costs; the transmission varies the gear ratio by electronic means and is overall far simpler than either a manual or automatic.
My 11 year old Prius (not even a plug-in) with 150k miles - No engine, brake or transmission maint costs whatsoever (other than the basic manufacturer recommended checkups and minimal at that).
On the downside is that it's not fully EV, still stinky gasoline.
As an EV owner, the bigger benefit is the vastly simplified maintenance schedule. I don't know how the TCO works out, but in general, the EV is much less of a pain compared to my wife's ICE.
EVs still need lots of the expensive maintenance associated with gas cars (like tires, brake systems). If you compare maintenance costs on KBB between cars and their EV counterparts, you'll see that EVs have about 10% maintenance cost discounts over their gasoline counterparts.
It helps that maintenance on gas cars has been reduced dramatically due to advances in chemistry and material science, allowing for very long maintenance intervals and "lifetime" fluids in transmissions, cooling systems, and differentials.
I'd take that 10% number with a large mouthful of salt as it's a basic projection at this point in time. Of the few who have pushed their teslas to 200k they've documented very low costs as compared to ice.
More moving parts simply means more failure costs over time.
But at this point in time, we do not have hard data to compare ice with ev.
Also, simply incorrect on breaks. Regenerative breaks means rotors and pads have a much much longer service interval.
These EVs have been around long enough that this information is based on hard data. At least 5-6 years for most models (the Leaf is from 2010).
A Prius has regen-braking too, so you can get 100k on a set of pads. You still need to flush the fluid though because it is extremely hygroscopic and begins to break-down and lose effectiveness with age, so it isn't something you want leave for the decade it takes the pads to wear, lest you find the brake pedal on the floor when you need it the most.
But tires are the biggest maintenance expense of a car. And EV's weight + torque can make them eat tires. Edmunds didn't even get 10k miles out of the $1600 tires on their Model S.
You may not realize, but EVs should use special tires. Michelin makes EV-specific variants of their lineups that are designed to handle the heat and load requirements of an EV.
You two are over here arguing cost when I was talking about how much less of a hassle owning a EV is due to the reduced impact to my schedule.
I think there are more people like me out there in the world than there are the financial independence types that scrutinize over marginal TCO discussions. And, those people aren't buying new cars anyways.
The "moving parts" FUD in regards to ICE is largely unwarranted in a reasonably modern (i.e. made in this century) car. Use good synthetic oil and you'll likely never have a problem with moving parts in the engine. Likewise transmission. If the engine has a timing belt, preventative maintenance on that every 100K miles or so. Compare to battery pack replacement.
ICE engines probably do need fluid changes more than EVs. However that's not a huge expense all things considered. If you give them at least moderate care, ICE engines are very reliable.
I maintain all the vehicles in our household. From the coil packs that regularly fail on the mazda. The water pumps that fail periodically on both the mazda and honda to the lead acid batteries that die every 3-4 years due to the cold winters.
More moving parts simply means more things will wear out more quickly. Regardless of which brand of synthetic oil I pour into the engine.
For someone like me, I'll stick with ice for now because the cost and time to do this work has a great ROI compared to the premium for EV.
I did assume that. I was also adding another data point to the discussion. Running this business made me realize thats some cars rarely break down. Numbers are ridiculously low on some models and that is one the major reasons our business is sustainable
Completely agree. I'm personally having a hard time switching from Ice because (a) I do all my own maintenance. And (b) even cars such as Fords can do 200k with little to no significant failures.
I used to do all my own maintenance as well. I guess I'll eventually have to do maintenance on the EV, but so far it's just been tire rotations (free), wiper fluid, and tire pressure.
I think his numbers are too high as well. I pay $0.2 per kilowatt hour, and live in one of the most expensive electricity areas in the country. To completely charge the 60 kw/hour battery it will cost me only $12.
In many parts of the country, power is much, much cheaper than mine. My friend pays less than $0.10 per kw/h in Georgia, which also has a $5,000 state subsidy (on top of the $7,500 federal subsidy).
Do the math with $6 full charge cost and a $12,500 subsidy and it quickly turns in the EVs favor...
Just a minor note: the unit is "kw multiplied by hour (kW hour)", not "kw per hour (kW/hour)". kW measures power. Hour measures time. Power multiplied by time = total energy.
> I pay $0.2 per kilowatt hour, and live in one of the most expensive electricity areas in the country.
PGE charges tiered rates, each tier of about 325 kWh where I live, and the rates in the third tier are almost 40c per kWh. During summers and when using an AC, that's the marginal rate people you end up paying to charge your car. They might offer lower rates specifically for car charging but will impose other restrictions making it less attractive.
I assumed he used california prices. I live in canada and electricity is half the price as it is in cali based on that website (but the weather could affect millage as well).
Let's also add the saved time/trip distance in not going to the gas station.
But separately, depreciation on EVs is a bit unknown. The powertrain should be good for a very long time - but the battery pack may cancel out any benefit relative to IC cars.
Local electricity cost multiplied by the capacity of the battery listed on the Bolt's site (ignoring any inefficiency).
Cutting e.g. $3/charge off the cost doesn't really swing the figures towards paying off the Bolt's extra $5.2K starting price over the life of the vehicle.
This is the height of cherry picking. Bolt at this point is not about dime for dime. Its about a lifestyle. There is reason the top 2 or 3 vehicles with highest customer satisfaction are Tesla S and Volt. Keep the green cred aside, from pure science perspective I am blown away by SolarPV and EV combination. I mean, I produce electricity on my roof top and run the car, and it is cheap, but the ROI takes a long time. Is it great business right now, no. But I am driving on the up to date tech, not a 10 year old tech. I pay 3cents per kwh on the electricity on my solar.
The upfront costs are not prohibitive, they are just upfront, and in return, you can sustainable feedback loop, less gas station visits, less oil changes, few moving parts so fewer "unknown" repairs. Regular maintenance is a breeze. The ride is head and shoulder above a mid-lux vehicle.
So 60 kw-h is $7.20. Brings the breakeven miles down a fair bit, and I guess it should be possible to have quite lot cheaper electricity for charging (and lots of people will have to do the calculation with higher prices).
This number (which actually varies somewhat widely depending on which source you look at) hides a huge standard deviation.
For example, http://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/ lists the overall number at $0.1044 but by that ranges from $0.0776 to $0.1705 if we ignore the Alaska and Hawaii outliers. And even then, the number this lists for Massachusetts is $0.1535 but my bill (in Masachusetts) say $0.1906....
Of course gas prices vary quite widely state to state too.
More specifically, the numbers on that site appear to only include the actual retail price of energy, but does not include other items like fees, distribution charges, and transmission charges.
As an example, the 'energy' charge on my electric bill is basically the average for my state (Oregon), but the rate I actually pay is about 50% higher due to other fees.
Right. In a recent discussion here about electricity consumption, I Googled National Grid's rates and used those. By coincidence, I got an electric bill the next day and realized that National Grid is almost exactly half my electric bill with the balance being the actual supplier of the electricity--so about $0.20/kWh is Massachusetts.
Oh, they don't include the distribution/transmission charges? Then they're totally useless; on my bill the transmission charges are larger than my generation charges (transmission is about 60% of my bill; generation is 40%).
I don't know anything about car ownership, but if it's more expensive to buy, but cheaper to operate, how does that conclude to being impractical for the general public? shouldn't things like interior space, handling, durability and craftsmanship determine its practicality?
I'd say the biggest simplification in your analysis is only factoring cost, but not the cars themselves. Again, what do I know, right?
I'm not sure why cars eventually get scrapped, but I have a 13 year old car with 130k. Other things started breaking which make driving bothersome. Cloth started drooping from the headliner, the glovebox got loose and stopped closing, leather seats crack. I'm happy that cars last longer and longer, but I'm not sure how practical 400k is for any car unless a lot of care is put into it.
There are many reasons, besides lower cost, why people buy particular cars. Also, are you sure you aren't being confusing with how you're using "impractical"?
Unaffordable is impractical. Most families cannot afford an extra $5K unless there is a reasonable amount of benefit to them, they don't have that kind of disposable income.
So unless they can quantify why a Bolt is superior to a Hybrid (and cost definitely isn't a winning argument) you'll struggle to convince the average American household to own one.
> Unaffordable is impractical. Most families cannot afford an extra $5K unless there is a reasonable amount of benefit to them, they don't have that kind of disposable income
If 'most families' acted in the rational manner you present above, then people wouldn't be leasing/financing new cars at the insanely high rate we do in the US. Given that there's a market for it though, the Bolt seems like a great option for GM to offer....
There is no relationship between "unaffordable" and "won't cost exactly as much as an equivalent hybrid until driven 450,000 miles." If you're equivocating, why not condemn the hybrid by comparing it with a traditional gas engine?
I thought the point was to stop polluting? If not polluting has to be cheaper and easier, too, none of these conversations will make any sense.
Avg Chicago gas price in the past few years has been $3.50. That's $60 to fill that tank, not $37 for Chicagoans and others in urban areas with high gas prices.
Avg 3-5 cents kwh for overnight charging here via ComEd's hourly pricing system. Assuming a decent level of inefficiency here via the charging process and ComEd's variable rates after 8pm I'm closer to $3 to charge than $10.
So the Camry gets 3x the range, but at 20x the cost. The Bolt is 6-7x more economical per mile for me in Chicago, which is fairly impressive.
Not sure how that plays out from a real dollar perspective, but I imagine after incentives the Bolt might be the cheaper option. I also imagine an EV car is a simpler machine than a ICE car, so you may have maintenance and reliability benefits. Personally, the complexity of a hybrid is a pretty big turn off. I'd rather just get a lower HP ICE car that naturally gets good milaeage and deal with worse performance than go the hybrid route.
The nice thing with electric is you get all these cost savings and you get some decent performance as well. The Bolt does 0-60 under 7 seconds. The Camry Hybrid is almost 10 seconds.
In the UK, I'd get rather different numbers: the Camry hybrid fuel tank is 70L, petrol is currently ~£1.20/l, pound at 1.22 to the dollar (thanks Brexit), so a full tank would be $102.48.
That gives a saving of $74/680m or breakeven around the 50k miles point, if my maths is correct.
Actually, the cost of the fuel itself is slightly cheaper in the UK because they've got a lower delivery cost (smaller country, shorter pipelines & tanker truck routes). The difference is, of course, taxes.
There are proposals in the US to change how states collect tax from cars if electric vehicles gain widespread adoption. Currently the highway trust fund gets most of it's money from the motor-fuels tax and that will dry up. Mileage-based taxation is being looked at, where your odometer reading would be collected via the OBD-II port.
> "EVs often require a warm-up period before they can deliver maximum regen braking. Tesla gives the driver a warning when full regenerative braking is unavailable. Chevrolet doesn’t do so. This can be alarming to the driver who lifts off the right pedal expecting significant deceleration and gets virtually none"
Whoa, inconsistent brake feel? That's kind of terrifying. You'd think Chevy would calibrate the brake feel across states.
it's not brake feel... it's the feel off the accelerator. when you let of the accelerator in a Tesla, it doesn't coast, it's like letting of the trigger of an electric drill.. it quickly grinds to a halt. it's strange to get used to at first but you get the feel by the end of a test drive. it is strange to still be pressing the accelerator as you pull up behind a car at a red light.
this weird feel is one of the problems that halted tesla's collaboration with toyota on electric rav4 drivetrains.
Toyota’s rejection of Tesla’s proprietary regenerative braking system, as it enabled the system upon release of the accelerator which Toyota felt was too abrupt and disconcerting for their customers. Any adjustment meant opening up and sharing either Tesla or Toyota’s “code” – of which neither was willing to do
What there is is that, if the battery is completely full, the energy has nowhere to go. So the car does not use full regen. This could be mistaken for a "warmup".
As another poster commented, this changes the accelerator feel, not the brakes.
I disagree completely. Sure, the change in feel is related to the accelerator, but it's the slowing down of the car that changes. In a gasoline car that would be referred to as "engine braking". Imagine if in your gas car, when the tank was full, it didn't engine brake. I can imagine people getting caught off guard when the car didn't slow down like they expect.
Muscle memory is very important, and having the car behave unexpectedly is bad.
For non-Tesla cars, the effect is really minimal. As in, noone expects to actually "break" at a stop light with the regen only. Yes, I have tried, even with the Leaf's "B" mode, which increases regen.
I've heard that the Tesla's regen is so aggressive that it will even turn on the brake lights. In that case then, I agree.
Surely they'd fit a braking resistor to cover this case? Most VSDs support them so I'd be amazed if it was too much trouble to use one with a car controller.
I admit being lazy here, but I wonder what kind of resistor (and what kind of cooling) it would be needed to dump the regen braking electrical energy there instead of battery? Probably impractical...
It's more of an engine-brake feel as you experience in a vehicle with a manual transmission.
I doubt it's that alarming. When you let off the accelerator in a manual transmission vehicle, it's more of a "test the water" type of thing, and then you can change gear from there.
It's not like people are going to rely on engine braking to come to an immediate stop.
Does Toyota have a patent on this? I know my 2005 Prius even in pure EV mode has a consistent brake response... I believe it simply bleeds off the excess regen if batteries are already fully charged (ie, going downhill on a long slope).
My 2004 Prius (which should have the same behavior as your 2005) definitely doesn't have consistent brake response: the first inch or so of travel is completely electronic and when the battery is completely full (having gone down a long hill) it doesn't do any regeneration at all and neither letting off the accelerator nor using that first inch of brake travel does absolutely nothing.
If you're in B mode, it will use compression braking (and if you're stopped, it'll bleed off energy by spinning the engine without any gas), but that doesn't change when you actually press on the brake pedal.
I rented a 2009 Prius once, and was surprised by the brake pedal being completely electronic. When the battery was completely full, I noticed the brake pump noise occurring immediately upon touching the brake, instead of partway down the travel like it usually does when regeneration is working.
My mom's Leaf also has a fully electronic pedal, but I've never driven it down a very long hill with a fully-charged battery, and there's no telltale brake pump noise, so I don't know if it changes its behavior with the battery filled to capacity.
Interesting, I've noticed my 2008 model Prius effectively using 'B' mode when the battery is full and I'm heading down a hill even thought it is in 'D' mode.
Maybe I just haven't noticed the change in brake feel or it is a UK specific feature.
The Prius can dump the energy into turning the engine over, just as a regular ICE would.
You can hear this by starting at the top of a hill with a full battery and in `D` mode. Then, as you roll down it, you can hear a noise from the engine as it is being turned over as it uses the regen energy.
Side note: I wonder if they fixed the terribly noticeable transition between regen braking and mechanical braking that I experienced in a few rental Volts.
One of the first things EV manufacturers will have to take care of is standardization of their fast charging networks so that the network of one manufacturer can be used by cars from another. If they don't get that worked out it will be a huge stumbling block to EV adoption.
It's being worked on (there were some talks between Tesla and a French manufacturer) but it isn't there yet.
Yup, we will have a world with many adapters. I don't think it'll be a big of a problem though.
Also, Tesla has already done so much for any car manufacturer:
- They have made all patents free to use by anyone.
- Elon has stated that he would welcome other car makers to join in on the Tesla Supercharger network if they are willing to contribute in an equal manner.
Seeing as Tesla has more Evs on the road than anyone else by a large magnitude, and they have proven their charging network far more than anybody else, it's odd nobody else wants to join in. But that's Wall Street for you. Nothing will be given away "free", and we can't be seen working with the competition. Despite many of the 'shareholders' are institutions who likely would own shares of both companies regardless. And at the end of the day, Wall Street is a secondary market that should mean jack.
Hell, the only reason other companies are now pushing for EVs so much is because Tesla lit a fire under everyone else and despite Wall Street betting against them (high volume of shorts), Tesla is now the top selling luxury sedan in the U.S. Now everyone else is scrambling. We will see one or two major automotive companies that have been prominent in the last century fall. They will either A. not keep up with the EV world (maybe they receive too much money from the fossil fuel industry) or B. Their tech will not keep up and/or fail and they will lose all their competitiveness.
Just anecdotal: I rarely see the Nissan Leaf but Teslas are everywhere. I think it's a matter of range when you include air conditioning and traffic: you can't venture our in a Leaf with less than a full charge.
I live in Boulder, CO USA where Nissan Leafs are a dime a dozen. I own one and love it. It is perfect for around town driving which is about 80% of our driving.
Ah, I live in an area of Houston that's being gentrified. Houses are torn down and condos or townhomes replace them that each cost more than the lot and developers stack as many on the lot as they can. (I moved here 15 years ago when it was still cheap). I assume my neighbors are able to afford Teslas to go with their $800k condos and that's why I don't see many Leafs.
First, the Volt has a combustion engine. That does not qualify it as a comparison to a Tesla or a Chevy Bolt.
Second, not sure where you are getting your numbers, but both the Model S has sold more than the leaf, add in the Model X, which is also out selling the leaf A LOT in 2016 and it's not even close. Also, people are dumping their leafs so quickly, most of them are sitting in used car lots which they are having to slash the price of them so much just to move them.
They aren't "dumping" them. The vast majority of leafs were sold on 2 year leases and those leases are now up. Hence the accumulation of pre-owned models. Most people just trade up to the newest model.
Shareholders have many different avenues to diversify their assets. Companies do not need to, and should not, attempt to diversify themselves for the sake of diversity.
the good news is that the actual cost of the charger itself is probably a small part of the cost of the charger station construction and installation. They can easily tear out obsolete charging units and use the existing electrical conductors to deliver the same amount of power with a compatible connector.
Even if they have to pull new cables to deliver more power the conduits will already be there.
Standardization has happened, the market has spoken, Tesla has won.
Seriously, Ford, Nissan and whoever spent many many years in committees designing one charging standard after the other. Meanwhile, Tesla built an actual high amps charging network. The other manufacturers need to realize they have wasted 5+ years with dick in hand doing nothing.
People in informal language constantly use "exponential" to mean "more than linear." Which drives me completely insane, but I think it's time to just accept it.
Hell I'd be happy if it were used to describe sequences with more than just two values. I hear it constantly used in comparisons of just two quantities where the intended meaning is just "a lot more".
Yes, this gets to me too. You can fit any sequence of n points with a curve described by a polynomial of n-1 degree. therefore, you need at least 4 points to know that the curve is not cubic, and an infinite number to know that it is exponential (though you can usually surmise as much sooner, because many natural phenomena are exponential or logarithmic).
What frustrates me is people saying "exponentially more" when comparing two things, like the Bolt has exponentially more range than the Leaf. I mean, you could fit an exponential curve to those data points, but also logarithmic, so why bother?
There's no hope of curing this in the popular press, but I think technical people should still be careful with the term. I think it's great that someone's called it out on HN.
People often use big-O (asymptotically bounded above) when they really want big-Θ (theta, asymptotically bounded above and below). Strictly by the definition, for instance, binary search is O(e^x), as well as O(x^12), O(x), and O(lg x). However, binary search is Θ(lg x), and not Θ(any of those other functions).
With big theta you strictly have to talk about best and worst cases, because for e.g. insertion sort, what's true of worst case is not true of best case (and vice versa). For big-O, what's true of worst case is also true of best case, so talking about worst case suffices. Big-O is less precise and therefore more useful, because average case usually = worst case anyway.
That's not right at all. Exponential is constant^x.
Also you can put "n *" in front of all of them if you want, but multiplying by a constant is usually omitted because it doesn't affect the shape of the graph.
Yes. To be precise, power, which is energy per unit time, is cubic in velocity: it takes 8 times as much power to go twice as fast (because of air resistance). But for a given distance, the energy required to traverse it is quadratic in velocity: it takes only 4 times as much energy to cover the distance at twice the speed, because it takes you half as long to get there.
ETA: There are other sources of drag, of course -- tire drag, and mechanical friction in the drivetrain -- but AFAIK the power required to overcome those is linear in speed, and so the energy is constant for a given distance. Anyway, at highway speeds, air resistance dominates.
For many people this won't have the mythos or upstart appeal of the upcoming Tesla Model 3-- and that's a shame, cause they did a real good job on it.
Yet I do believe the 200+ mile range and price will get enough people in one and really start to shift the EV from being an early adopter accessory to a viable everyday car.
EV are only viable for those who own their own homes. Many electric vehicles have been adequate for my needs, but I continue to drive a car with an internal combustion engine because I can always buy gas.
My apartment building has two EV charging stations (always taken) and my work has 9 (always taken).
I don't think vehicle technology or execution has been the limiting factor for a while.
"Range anxiety" is a condescending industry term. People are anxious about the range of their EV because the range sucks, not because of some mental barrier.
I don't think it's the range sucking as much as it is a question of what you do when you run out. Gas stations are far more common, and far quicker to use, than charging stations.
I don't own a car at all currently (bus+bike+lyft/uber for me). I've been thinking about buying one, but the longest ride I'd like to do is to get to Washington DC to see friends and family. The DC metro area (and to be real, my preference would be to park somewhere and take transit once I got to the region) is 235 miles away, which is right about the top rated distance for this bolt - but when you read that the observed range for highway driving is 190 miles, and add in unexpected detours and the like, it makes me think I'd need to plan to recharge along the way. Thinking about where I could do that reasonably - and I would totally be down to stop for an hour for a meal and the like - and looking at map of the supercharging stations, leaves me with not a lot of redundant options. Charging station full or out of service? Odds are good that the whole trip will lose its competitive advantage over taking the bus or train rather quickly.
To me that's the source of range anxiety. If I knew I had decent charging options all over the place, I'd want one of these pretty badly.
I get that the EV market is seeking people who make small trips and commuting and the like because that's the easy end of the market to capture, and that's how a lot of people use their cars. But as a society I wish we could just better address those needs via investment in things like urban mass transit and the like.
No, that's the silly all-or-nothing thinking I'm talking about. What if you only want to go further once a year?
What's the cost of a one-time 30m wait to refuel instead of a 5m wait? I think it'd be far less than the benefit of no refueling wait the other 364 days of the year.
Also, the cost isn't infinite. If you were, for instance, totally unable to drive the electric car to the ski hill for your vacation you could rent another car, so worst-case you're out like $200 which is far less than you'd save in fuel the rest of the year.
Most people simply get stuck on the costs instead of being able to amortize them across the whole period and weigh them against the benefits.
Recently started driving a plug-in hybrid. I get 20 miles electric range, 500 miles hybrid range. I don't worry about range at all when I'm in that car. When I get into my gas-powered car, and realize I only have 50 miles of gas in the tank... I get range anxiety.
It won't take long for this entire 'range' question to invert.
I won't ever buy one because I need to take trips home once a month and the drive is 800+ miles. Companies will always be hard pressed to sell the idea that you need to take an extended break just to refuel your vehicle on a road trip.
If you're trying to drive for 14 hours continuously for the safety of everyone else on the road I hope you take extended breaks...
I would never take a privately owned vehicle on a road trip. One of my coworkers rented a giant obese SUV for a road trip and when it broke down in the literal middle of rural nowhere, it was no problem, the rental car company drove another car to their breakdown in much less than an hour, then they didn't have to deal with paying for 100 mile tows and scammy rural mechanics knowing you will pay anything to get the heck out of there. Also no wear and tear on their regular car. Plus its fun to drive something new.
Well, OK, but don't you always come out ahead flying on anything longer than 200 or so miles? (hmm a coincidental number?) I mean even Amtrak is faster than driving, if its direct and no transfers.
Flying takes 2 hours minimum, to pad for security delays, and have time before boarding.
There's also getting yourself to the airport. They tend to be far on the outskirts of town (This also involves paying an arm and a leg if you opt to park.)
If you need a rental car on the other end, you can also look forward to 30 minutes for shuttling, waiting in line, paperwork...
Combined with the cost (Especially for multiple passengers), and the largely unpleasant experience of flying, and I will happily drive 300 miles from Vancouver to Portland, over taking a plane. 400 is probably my limit.
If all the driving you're doing is in the city, yes, an electric car is a great option. They are not a great option for a longer road trip. (Also, fuel economy/effective range goes down quite a bit when you are going above 60 MPH - and most cars are traveling at 75 MPH on an interstate. Gas cars will spend only a little more time at a gas station, but doing the same in an electric will cost you a lot of time.)
It is only more cost effective to fly if he is the only person in the car. As soon as you add one passenger, the drive is the better value (depending on value of time).
JSYK, it's probably better in the long run to use a rental or fly for that 800+ mile trip (depends on how long you stay). At a minimum, you might want to consider a good roadside assistance policy, if you don't already have one.
I wish people would stop fighting you on this. You are exactly the kind of person who should own, or periodically rent, an ICE car. Your situation is unusual, but it's an excellent reason to stick with an ICE. And there are plenty of ways to do your part reducing emissions while still driving an ICE.
For most people, EVs will be better overall. But I wish proponents wouldn't act like there aren't corner cases like this where it doesn't make sense.
Roughly 60% of the US housing inventory is composed of single-family detached houses[0]. Even if we assume an EV isn't practical for half of the households living in those units for some reason (need more range, can't have a charger installed for some reason, etc.), there's still a huge amount of room for EV marketshare growth without addressing that problem.
I agree generally, but think this is changing. My building has probably 10 ports, and you can get a reserved space with a charger, so you always have your spot open and a charger available.
This will change when people can make some money off charging. If you can fill up 200 miles of range for $10 in 30 minutes, then you might consider an EV even without a home charger.
Or when it's required. Landlords have to run electricity into every apartment, running it to every parking stall is a pretty small incremental upgrade.
Considering that this is something apartment dwellers can't do themselves, and there isn't a direct profit motive for the landlord, this is where regulations should come in.
Yea this is at odds with rising percentage of people who rent instead of buy. I park on the street, maybe public streets would be equipped with electric chargers with meters.
Autonomous driving will solve this. You won't need to own your EV, you'll just be able to pay $0.50 for a cab ride, and it can go charge itself whenever.
Autonomy will also eventually allow for in-fight recharging. A vehicle will just pull up behind you and plug in.
It's great that it doesn't have upstart appeal. Nobody cares about the latest Subaru at this price point either. EV's need to be boring to succeed. It can't all be Porche-level cars with a price point to match.
That's fine with GM. If you go to a Chevrolet dealership, they'll usually have a Corvette Stingray on the showroom floor. Most buyers will admire it, then buy the sedan or mini-van.
Agreed. This looks pretty nice. They did a good job.
> $30,000. The liquid-cooled lithium-ion battery pack stores 60.0 kilowatt-hours of energy (equivalent to about 1.8 gallons of gasoline), enough to earn a 238-mile range
The biggest drawback for me would be the inability to charge quickly.
With a Tesla you can take it on a road trip, as long you plan it around hitting supercharging stations. In the bolt, you can go 200 miles, but have to stop for the night to grab a full charge.
But if you aren't the type of person to drive more than 4 hours a day, or have an alternative vehicle for longer trips, this could be a great choice.
Before anyone says otherwise, there are already more CCS quick charge locations than there are Tesla Supercharger locations, before the Bolt has even gone on sale. The number grows every day. There were zero Superchargers when Tesla started selling its cars.
Not even close - there are roughly 2x as many SuperChargers as CSS stations. Also, CCS stations are clustered around population centers and not optimized for long road trips. Lastly, CCS charging can't be built in to the purchase price of the Bolt.
As a car driver, I've never taken or wanted to take a long road trip in any car. If it's more than 2 hours away, we fly or take a train. As an EV driver, the DCFC stations in population centers are what's needed. They're what let me drive to the next city over in my Leaf to shop, eat or visit people. The companies building these things are putting them where the demand is.
>>People don't take thousand mile road trips every day
Yes they do. Everyday thousands of tourist drive from BFE to Orlando, it's one of the reasons stretch of I-4 along the attractions is the deadliest in the US (too many tourist that all drive differently).
It may not be common in your region of the world, but it is extremely common in other regions.
And certainly many people routinely drive 200-300 miles or so for a weekend trip--to rural locations that aren't going to have much in the way of charging infrastructure.
If you're going from pretty much any major city to ski areas, mountain hiking, kayaking/canoeing, etc. you can easily be looking at a couple hundred miles or more. You may not do that but it's a very common weekend activity for many people in urban areas.
The challenge with the CCS stations is they are generally only one or two plugs. As CCS cars become more prevalent, they're going to need much larger setups, with 8, 10 or 12 plugs at each station. The wait to quick-charge is bad enough. It would be a lot worse if you had to wait 20 minutes just to get on the charger.
There are only one or two plugs because there are no cars to use them. BMW's sold just 22K i3's to date worldwide. Chevy's sold a few thousand Spark EV's. Tesla and Leaf don't use CCS. Most of the time the chargers sit completely idle. There's no need, nor financial projections to justify, building more CCS plugs per location. The ratio of CCS plugs to CCS-capable cars is probably better than the ratio of Supercharger plugs to Tesla cars. Tesla's locations are the ones known for the lines of waiting cars.
Keep in mind the Bolt hasn't gone on sale yet. Nobody's bought one, there are zero Bolt drivers available to pay money to Blink/CP/NRG that are laying out $50K+ to build each CCS charger. If they've built nearly 900 of them around the nation anyway, on the premise that the cars are coming, think about how fast the network can expand when there are actual cars on the road to justify doing so. Volkswagen is going to dump almost $2 billion into building CCS chargers as part of its settlement for the emissions scandal.
Like all technology, early adopters will suffer "just one or two plugs" for a while... or not, if you're in Pennsylvania like me, and the chargers are unused and available 100% of the time I check Plugshare... so that in a few years, when there are half a million or more EVs on the road... that is, potential customers... we will have created demand that led to those additional plugs being built.
Complaining that there are only 1579 fast charge plugs for the Bolt before it goes on sale is like complaining there weren't enough iPhone docks available before the iPhone came out. The accessories showed up after the customers that can buy them did.
Fair enough. I've seen full J1772 charger stations, but you're right that I haven't seen full CCS stations. As the number of CCS-capable cars increase, we should see improvements in station capacity and reliability.
40km per hour of charge time, 9 hours for a full charge.[1] It doesn't look like it has the ability to use superchargers, or charge quickly in any way.
For $750, Bolt buyers can opt for direct-current fast-charging capability via a Combined Charging System (CCS) port. As of September 1, 2016, there were 1061 CCS fast-charging connectors in the United States, versus 2010 Tesla Supercharger hookups. Most CCS stations charge at 50 kilowatts, and Chevrolet claims they can be expected to add 90 miles of range in 30 minutes of charging. Not bad, but that’s roughly half the rate of Tesla’s 120-kW Superchargers, and access to CCS chargers definitely isn’t included in the price of the Bolt.
My water pump went out on my (gasoline engine powered) car today. All 6 of my fuel injectors did earlier in the year, so I'm a little sensitive about vehicle repairs today.
Out of curiosity, I wondered if the upcoming Tesla Model 3 has any water pumps. It has no need to cool an engine, right? So, maybe I'd avoid replacing fuel and coolant parts. Less parts, means lower cost of ownership, right? ...Maybe?
Teslas have 3 water pumps, to pump ~26 quarts of coolant to keep the battery cool. Sigh.
Maybe I'd have no fuel injectors to replace in a Tesla, but the physics of getting me from 0-60 in a reasonable amount of time must necessitate a minimum complexity.
I wish I could fast forward ten years to see total cost of ownership of EVs versus gas/petrol powered vehicles.
The motor and drivetrain is significantly less complex than an engine. A Tesla has a dozen moving parts in the drivetrain. Your gas car has thousands. Not only does a Tesla not have fuel injectors, it doesn't have a fuel pump, or spark plugs, or valves, or piston rings or pistons or connecting rods or rod bearings or a cam shaft... The electric powertrain is magnitudes simpler.
Not only that, but while it is orders of magnitude more difficult to fix than a classic gas engine, those don't really exist anymore either. Pretty much any engine electric or otherwise is out of range for typical home repair. (And I say this as someone that still has a manual with the thought that I could replace the clutch on my own, if I want to.)
I hasten to add that I do not know the expected cost of repairs between the two types of engines. Would be a good fact to know.
You are partially correct. The battery is very difficult to fix at home. But the motor and stator can be replaced in your own garage with just a few hours of work -- again a magnitude less time and effort than replacing an engine.
You are not allowed to fix your Tesla at home. Tesla refuses to release repair information. If they do that, I can't imagine they'll sell you parts or allow others to make them either. Perhaps the new DMCA exception for car repair will change that, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
That's not true in Massachusetts. There, Tesla does provide access to repair information, at an exorbitant price, because Massachusetts has a "right to repair" law on the books that requires automakers to make repair information available to independent mechanics.
We need that same law at the Federal level, except with some more teeth so that the repair info isn't locked behind a ridiculous price tag. If I were dictator, I'd make a law requiring all repair info for major products to be freely available. Companies used to do this several decades ago, and it was much better for the consumer, and didn't have any adverse affect on the companies (except that they couldn't make extra profit by monopolizing repair, but that's not "adverse" any more than it's "adverse" that I'm not legally allowed to own slaves).
Yeah, with an engine you can conceivably fix parts of it yourself. An electric motor is much simpler, so if something goes wrong, it's more akin to blowing a piston or a rod -- you're likely going to need to replace the whole thing.
Warranties on electric cars are insane right now, I suspect specifically to counter some of that new owner anxiety. Chevy are putting a 100,000 mile/8 year warranty on the battery systems in the Bolt; Ford are putting a similar warranty on EV components in their electric/hybrid range. Tesla do 8 year unlimited mileage on battery and drive units. You shouldn't have to pay for a repair on the battery cooling system in a new EV.
A buyer should check the warranty offered on replacement batteries. A coworker had the hybrid battery replaced on her car, and the car maker only offered their usual 12 month parts warranty on it, not the remaining time on the initial battery warranty.
The water pump on an EV can be engineered to be significantly easier to maintain/replace - the one in your car is driven by the engine and usually bolted directly in to your engine. This necessitates some crazy levels of work to get to in some cases.
There's also no possibility for a backup on an IC engine, if you water pump dies, you're not running. It would be pretty easy for an electric car to have their simple water pumps cover for each other to provide a limp-home or reduced power-mode.
I wonder if anybody close to the auto industry could shed some light as to whether there are engineering reasons behind what appears to be a deliberate effort to make their EVs look as ugly as possible.
There is one front end shape that supports both aerodynamic constraints and safety considerations; that is why the front of pretty much every vehicle looks the same. Only trucks look really different, and that is because most truck buyers would eviscerate any truck that looks like a car.
For the back end of this car, it is good to know that the battery pack looks something like this ____==== . It is slimmer in the front, and taller in the back. The rear must be taller to allow any room for rear passengers and cargo.
Additionally, the whole industry is moving from sedans to crossover/SUVs, and the Bolt EV is indicative of that
As for the styling cues, there are a lot a people who still want to remind people that they own and drive an environmentally friendly car.
I don't know if I just got used to it, or if they changed it extensively, but the styling of the production vehicles seems muted compared to the pre-prod vehicles.
Can you point to any particular styling cues or reason you think the vehicle is ugly?
Aerodynamics. Mercedes had a concept car in 2005 that was modeled after a fish Ostracion cubicus, which supposedly has the lowest coefficient of drag found in nature.
Agreed, I just spent 5 minutes perusing the threads here ... talking about range and charges and base price ...
I support electric, and my next car -will- be electric .. but at the end of the day. this car is as ugly as hell. I'll support it only to the support the industry and more entrants.
Except for a week later he ditched the Bolt and was back in his Tesla. He was just trying it out because he had a demo. He quickly found out that the Bolt is no comparison really and switched back to the Model S.
This will be an unpopular opinion, but I think it's too early to push full BEV cars. I think the perfect car now is the plugin hybrid and this is what the industry should be pushing across all types (SUV/CUV, small car, mid-size, etc.) Reasons are:
* Supercharger can charge at 1.2kWh per minute. (90kWh/75minutes). That means a 10kWh battery can be charged in about 8 minutes which is comparable to a typical gas station time.
* Many plugin hybrids have about a 10kWh battery that gets about 25-30 mile EV range.
* The battery in one Tesla (90 kWh) could be used to build 9 plugin hybrid cars. Since the battery is so much smaller, the additional car price is also much less.
* Big improvement for the environment. The US likes SUVs. And many car trips are short distance (getting groceries, going to school, etc.) If these can be covered by the battery, then the impact of the low-mpg SUV is much reduced.
* Ironically, it would allow a business opportunity for gas stations. Imagine a EV quick charge cable right next to the gas pump. Fill the up the gas tank and quick charge the 10kWh battery at the same time.
* It would be a good fit for those without garages (such as apartments). The EV part of the car is simply a nice to have. The charging is quick enough to do it at those charging stations at supermarkets, workplaces, etc. But it's ok if they can't find any empty EV parking spots, the gas engine will get them home.
Don't bother with hybrids if all of the shortcomings are covered with gasoline. A good EV or a good gasoline car are both better than a hybrid, so what is the point? Who wants to buy a car that is heavier and slower than their full gas and full electric counterparts?
It's always too late to push for something that is just a bad product.
> A good EV or a good gasoline car are both better than a hybrid, so what is the point?
I don't think this is true. A plug-in hybrid will always have an advantage over a gasoline car, in that it can do short trips without starting the gas engine at all. So for repeated short trips, it acts like a BEV. But unlike a BEV, there's no range limitation or worrying about where to find a charging station.
I've thought fairly hard about a pure BEV and I can't see myself getting one except as an additional vehicle. But I could see getting a plug-in hybrid like the Volt in the near future. Anecdotally, all the people I know who are seriously considering BEVs are buying them as second or third cars. There's certainly a market, but I think it's going to saturate pretty quickly, because a lot of people don't want to have one vehicle for known-distance commuting and then another vehicle for unknown-distance or long trips. While these trips may represent a small percentage of driving in terms of actual mileage, they're enough to shape the choice of cars. (E.g. someone may not drive to grandma's house out in the sticks more than a few times a year, but if the car can't handle that drive, it's not going to get purchased, period.)
Lots of Tesla owners have it as their only car. (Or they own multiple cars, but all EVs.) I'm one of them. Of course, Tesla is the only one out there that can really handle those long trips. The Bolt can't unless all the stars line up.
I really don't understand why other manufacturers aren't pushing hard on fast charging networks. As you say, those long trips may not be common, but people won't buy the car if it can't make them.
If the goal is environmental (reduce the impact of burning gasoline), then currently a full BEV is inferior to plugin hybrid. The success criteria should not be number of BEV on the road. Rather, it should be total electric miles driven. For that goal, what is more likely to succeed in the market? A really expensive full BEV? Or a SUV, pickup truck, etc. that is only a little bit more expensive than gas version and has a 25 mile EV range?
Toyota and Ford hybrids have been successfully used by cab companies for quite some time now. The old Honda IMA setup was troublesome, but their new setup is great.
It's not like standard gas power trains are simple anymore either--turbocharging, direct injection, and dual clutch transmissions are common, even in affordable cars.
Totally agree, the transmission for the Prius is astounding. It is truly amazing that they replaced everything about past transmissions with a single planetary gear system and it works beautifully.
Interested in an EV but think $30k is a bit pricey? A 2013, 2014 and even 2015 Nissan LEAFs can be had for $9-11K. I just bought a 2015 Nissan LEAF (S trim) which adds many of the features of the higher SV trim from 2013/2014. Total price at 26k miles? $11,200 (with tax and fees in CA).
Not a solution for the long distance folks, but for my 46 mile round-trip commute, I can charge each evening on 110 and don't worry about going out to dinner or other side trips I want to add to my day.
We did the same thing. 2014 Nissan Leaf had about 18k miles on it, still had full battery capacity (no "lost" bars). The range is just north of 80 miles.
On full charge the car estimates a range of 90 miles. That assumes eco mode and my driving style. It's a guess at best. The battery is at full health, I didn't consider buying a car that had a degraded battery.
That's a lot to pay for a car. I bought a used 2001 Mitsubishi Gallant 10 years ago and it still is a solid daily driver. I think I paid $7,000 or so for it.
Perhaps in 5 years a used Bolt will be a sensible purchase. Until then, I'll let everyone else buy them new and pay the depreciation for me.
Yep, $7-$8K is my market for cars. You may have to look around a bit but you can find something well-cared for, reliable, and with many years of life left for that money.
My brother used to sell used cars and a good friend runs a couple small dealerships nearby. I call him when I need a car, tell him what kind, how much, what features and he goes out and finds one at auction for me.
It takes a month or so, but I always end up with a great deal.
If you know someone who can do that for you, it's a great deal for you and an easy sale for them.
I'm really curious to see how the traditional auto companies do with electric cars. Tesla owns the dealers, Chevy has a network of dealers that are used to making significant money on service. According to Edmunds, 44% of a dealers profit comes from service.
Losing 44% of your profit is going to be a big deal to a lot of dealers.
I'm wondering if the Tesla model that so many dealer networks have been battling will be required to make the transition to EVs. A manufacturer that has, say, 40% of their dealers dry up is probably going to, for survival sake, start dealing direct. That's my theory anyway.
There will still be a good bit of service work. Crash repair/body work, brakes, tires, air conditioning, random little faults like switches and sensors and fans, etc.
There will definitely be service work, but I'm expecting it is going to be a lot lower frequency than with a traditional ICE car. I mean, I have a really good relationship with my Audi service guy... Don't get me wrong. But I'd prefer to do less chatting that ends with a thousand dollar plus invoice.
"60.0 kilowatt-hours of energy (equivalent to about 1.8 gallons of gasoline)"
Interesting. Just for an oranges to apples comparison, I wonder how many KWh the most efficient gas powered generator can produce on 1.8 gallons of gas.
So to charge a 90kwh battery, you need roughly 99kwh of energy.
Which for me, since it's charging in my garage, the excess heat is actually kind of nice as it will keep my garage slightly warmer in the winter and thus my house as my garage is on the lower floor.
Either way, it's still WAY more efficient than any time of combustion engine. Including hydrogen. Hydrogen is kind of a wasted effort (unless we are doing fusion ;p )
I don't know about the most efficient. Looking at the first result of a gasoline powered generator at Home Depot -- the DEWALT 7,000-Watt Gasoline Powered Electric Start Portable Generator -- the description states, "The 7.5 Gal. steel fuel tank provides 11 hours of runtime at 50% load."
That's 11 hours at 3500W for 7.5gal == 5.1 kWh/gal.
1.8 gallons in that generator gives about 9.2 kWh. Or, 11.7 gallons to get 60 kWh.
Some other quick searching says gasoline has 33.4 kWH/gal and that typical gasoline engines in cars are around 25% and the best peak at maybe 35%, giving between 8.4 kWh/gal and 11.7 kWh/gal. Which is between 5 to 7 gallons for 60 kWh.
They covered 238 miles on a trip w/ 34 miles indicated remaining, so if they went ~250 miles total on 60 kW-h that would be equivalent to a ~140 MPG car.
The performance of the Bolt EV is MUCH better than a Sonic (6.5 second 0-60 for the Bolt EV; 8.7 for the Sonic; 6.4 for the Mercedes GLA mentioned above), and the feel of the electric drive is smoother than any gasoline powertrain (barring possibly a Bentley); so you are definitely getting more than fuel savings with your extra $22k. It is still up to the buyer to decide if those features are worth it.
Disclaimer: I work for GM and drive a Sonic. I did not work on this program.
I'm not sure what you mean, so I'll talk generally about the Bolt EV: it's hard to categorize.
It's not marketed as a luxe vehicle like the Tesla; it doesn't have the same performance as the high end Teslas.
It's more expensive than seemingly comparable vehicles, until you try to find a vehicle to compare it to.
It's quicker than most (nearly all) compact cars and crossovers.
It doesn't have the ground clearance to be regarded as a Crossover/SUV, but it is too tall to be considered a hatchback. While being a tall vehicle, it has a low center of gravity due to the battery being very low and heavy.
It is a small car, but it is heavy, again due to the battery.
All in all, this car will have to make it's own market, because there really is nothing exactly like it.
Less known, but also important is the 30-70 or 50-70 time, which is actually even more impressive in the Bolt, due to no lost time to downshifting and engine spooling.
They're factoring in the fact that most people will take $7500-$10000+ off that price via tax credits (either themselves or via the leasing company), so it's a $28-30K car. There's no avoiding the remaining markup: that's essentially the cost of the battery.
I think it's not a perfect replacement for a traditional car yet, but it's an incredible leap forward towards that goal for EVs. We are legitimately close to seeing widespread adoption of EVs by regular folks.
My takeaways:
1) Lease! EVs are evolving so rapidly that buying one outright seems unnecessarily risky. Or wait and buy one used for cheap.
2) We really do need standardized charging. If it's free, as I have heard, why doesn't Bolt and other forthcoming EVs support the Tesla Supercharging technology? Being instantly able to leverage that network would be a big deal.
3) The holy grail is going to be 500-700 miles of range, where you can do road trips (goal being a reasonable driving distance per day, not swapping drivers).
I am really excited about the Bolt and planning to get one next year when the lease on my Nissan Leaf is up. However, I really dislike how leather seats are bundled with other options on cars nowadays. I do not want leather seats. They are annoying to maintain and easily damaged by my big dogs. I'm really hoping there's some way I can order a Bolt with the other options (especially heated seats) and no leather seats, but there probably isn't.
You should definitely check out the BMW i3. I just bought the 2017 model with Range Extender. It has some excellent cloth seat options, and favors use of recycled materials that are environmentally friendly over leather (although you can still get leather if you really want it).
The i3 is not only a blast to drive, I think it gives the Chevy a run for its money. First, it has 114 mile electric range, and an additional 70 mile gas range (in the range extender version) by firing up a small 2 cylinder generator. So, you essentially have an infinite range as long as you're within 70 miles of a gas station.
Also, it's a BMW, and drives like a premium car. Expect great handling, and great performance. It's BMW's fastest production car from 0-42 mph, beating out even all of the M cars, so that tells you a little bit about how zippy it is.
The i3 is cool but I want a pure EV. There's no comparison between pure EV and hybrids in terms of how much nicer they are to own. We've had our Leaf for about 2.5 years and the only maintenance we've done is tire rotations and replaced the cabin air filter.
Even though the engine in the i3 REx and the Volt don't get used as much as the engine in a Prius, it still adds a lot of failure points and a lot of additional maintenance that pure EVs don't have.
You can buy a BEV (full electric with no generator) version if you want. Since you already owned a Leaf, you probably wouldn't have range anxiety in the i3 BEV because it gives you about 110-120 miles range.
The handling is truly impressive. Perfect 50/50 weight distribution, and the battery is in the floor so you have a very low center of gravity. It can also do a U-turn on a 2 lane road, as it has an extremely tight turning radius.
It's very fast off the line a well - it is BMW's fastest production vehicle from 0-42 mph, beating even the M class cars, so that tells you how "snappy" it is.
Huh? Annoying to maintain? Leather is really easy to maintain: you just wipe it off with a damp cloth! It does help to use some leather cleaner and conditioner on it a couple times a year. But leather seats are easy to keep looking new for many years; cloth simply doesn't age well like this. Try spilling a drink on cloth and see how easy it is to clean compared to leather.
And you're complaining about damage from dogs? How do you think cloth seats are going to fare with dogs? Most people who have nice cars and dogs end up getting some kind of fancy seat covers or other dog-specific solution, as far as I can tell, so their seats don't get ruined.
I've owned leather seats in the past, properly maintenance requires more than just wiping with a damp cloth. Yes, you do have to use leather cleaner and conditioner if you want them to last a long time.
Cloth holds up much better to having drinks spilled on it than leather. The leather could potentially be permanently damaged if you don't clean it up quickly. Most cloth seats will just need paper towels. If you really don't clean it up for a long time you can steam clean cloth seats, which you cannot do with leather.
I'm wondering if maybe you've never had real leather seats and are mistaking pleather or vinyl for leather? Vinyl seats will hold up pretty well to abuse, but they are awful to sit in.
My cloth seats hold up fine to my dogs. Typically cloth seats nowadays are a lot more resistant to scratching and tearing than leather seats are.
GM has heated cloth and leatherette seats on many of its trucks. I think the decision to package heating and leather together is for marketing reasons, not because of any technology-compatibility issues. (They're both "premium" options and bundling them together makes sense if you are constructing a multi-thousand-dollar package.)
I know some don't like the packaging but CUVs are selling in ever increasing numbers and should help with sales more than if this were a sedan. I was very impressed with the range they obtained with both EPA and how some individual drivers fared.
Going to be real curious what drop off it experiences in winter. I am seriously considering a lease for one of these, I would not buy any first generation practical EV; I don't consider any of the sub 100 gang to be practical.
What I am really curious about is how this will effect pricing on the short range EVs. I don't see the pricing to remain steady on anything short of 200 miles going forward.
Even Consumer Reports likes it, though they state the boxy form is dork like it in no means goes full dork like the i3. Again, CUVs are the where the market is hot now and this was a great choice by GM. CR review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIYG0NR42LU
If you're not ready to make the jump, the Volt gets to play electric car for most journeys, kicking over to being a fuel efficient hybrid for long ones. The Gen 1 is cheap right now, and gets around 42 electric miles in the summer, 35 in the winter. The newer ones have increased range.
I have a 2013 Volt, and in the summer I actually get around 55 miles to the charge, one just needs to learn to be less aggressive with the accelerator (there's an indicator on the dash that helps with this).
I started out by doing that, but now I just ignore it and drive as usual. The 42 mile range is enough to get to and from work (my wife and I actually carpool, and she can charge it for free at work).
I have a Chevy Sonic now and like the way it looks, and this thing looks a little more SciFi than the Sonic. I think saying it looks "boxy" or "dorky" is wrong, and it's in the eye of the beholder. There's no need to tell people how they should feel about it, so I'm disappointed in that reviewer.
It will trash the short new and used EV market less than 200, Leaf, i3 etc.
Even now the depreciation on Leafs are crazy, and this just makes it more so. The way I look at it right now the EV market is like fast moving computers, everyone is scared to buy in that they will miss the next upgrade and have buyers remorse, and that is the 200m mark. This just confirms it.
My father was leasing a Leaf. He just leased a new one, brand new, otherwise identical to the one he had before, and substantially lowered his (already insanely low) lease payments.
If I were in a two-car household, I'd probably make a Leaf my second car right now because, for all that it's a way worse first car than a 200 mile range EV, it's not much worse of a second car, and the cost pressure downward on it is insane right now.
Agreed, I bought a used one with 25K miles for $10k about 14 months ago. The pricing is even worse now and for our family it has become our primary car, we are putting around 2500 miles each month and drive our ICE twice a month.
I'm a bit worried about the battery but looks like I'll be getting it replaced before the battery capacity warranty is up (60k miles).
Yup, I'm at 76% of the original capacity, and that makes a huge difference running heat or doing highway miles.
Out of warranty, to get a new battery, you don't get to keep the core, is $5,500. That warranty runs out at 60K miles. I was delighted to see the Bolt warrantied for 100K miles but will need to look at the details to see if that covers accelerated capacity degradation.
25,000 miles is about 300 full cycle recharges for a Leaf.
That is definitely the cycle number where you'll start to see a capacity drop, but 25% still seems very high for that range.
First and 2nd gen batteries will generally have to be replaced around 600 +-10% cycles. It's 'normal' for all pure EV vehicles - so the durability of the battery pack is directly proportional to its capacity.
What gets me is the subsidies going to buyers of these expensive new cars. Of all the things the public can spend taxpayer money on, we pick luxuries for (by and large) already-well-off people.
California has mitigated this to a degree by making their state subsidy means-tested: [1], which is a good first step.
There's a public benefit to those subsidies in that it's creating a marketplace for electric cars that probably wouldn't have otherwise existed. Who buys them is largely immaterial.
It would be nice if the funds for the subsidy came directly from fuel-carbon taxes, but those sort of revenue earmarks are mostly for appearance's sake anyway.
It's meant to jumpstart the market. The federal subsidies begin to phase out once the manufacturer sells 200,000 qualifying vehicles. That means that the total cost of the subsidies, in the grand scheme of things, is not all that high.
Sounds like the government is saying, we'll pay 200,000 cars X $7500/car -> $1.5 billion to help fund electric vehicle development. This is like $5 per capita (1.5X10^9 divided by 300,000 people) over 2-3 years.
Essentially. It's not quite right because it doesn't cut off immediately at 200,000, but rather phases out, and it's 200,000 per manufacturer. On the other hand, no manufacturer has even come close to that point, and only Tesla looks like they'll reach it any time soon.
Carbon doesn't care about what class it comes from. Tesla would have never gotten off the ground if rich people didn't give them money. Now we have the Model 3 to look forward to thanks to people buying luxury cars.
"The Bolt starts at $37,495 in LT trim, but a $7500 federal tax credit will pull the price under $30,000."
I don't understand this because the last time I went into the VW dealer they had the MSRP of the e-Golf crossed out with a sharpie, and the price was written in higher, by the exact sum of the state and federal credits. How can the buyer expect to capture all of the federal incentive?
This looks like a great deal if you live in Washington and drive daily. Our gasoline prices are second only to California in the continental US (will be #1 if the carbon tax ballot measure passes) but electricity is very cheap here -- I pay less than 7 cents per kWh.
Remember this is GM's third generation EV, so they have a lot of experience, but not the volume of Telsa (yet).
The first generation lead battery was almost mythological- loved by their customers but hated by GM. GM was probably losing a fortune on each leased.
> Remember this is GM's third generation EV, so they have a lot of experience, but not the volume of Telsa (yet).
GM is definitely at about the same volume as Tesla -- They've sold ~130,000 Volts / Amperas, maybe ten thousand Spark EVs, and a few thousand Cadillac ELRs..
As of the end of Q3, Telsa has sold 160,000 total vehicles, so GM and Tesla are likely within ~10%-15% of each other in total EV sales.
I think I'll stick with my 2000 Ford mustang with 220k miles. The syncros in the transmission are mostly out, so I have to double clutch to down shift, but that just makes me feel more in control. Plus I can do awesome burn outs when ever I feel like it.
I doubt your Mustang can smoke the tires at 80+ mph. Test drive a Tesla.
Also, while we grew up thinking of gas engine sounds as powerful, after driving an EV gas engines just sound like angry lawn-mowers. People in their hot cars seem like kids with playing cards in their bike spokes.
At least for the next 10 years of my life, I don't think I would ever pay more than $10k for a car (used of course). And unless I wreck my current car, I'll probably still be driving it in 10 years.
And if the Tesla can smoke tires, I'm sure they'll release a software patch to "fix" that in the future.
I am looking at all these calculations here on HN and can't stop thinking "in 30 years all of this is gone. just gone." there won't be individuals owning cars any more. Mostly. If not 30, 50. Doesn't matter.
You might have it but the insurance will be so high for a human driven vehicle you won't have it and then you don't want to drive on a public road. I am pretty sure it'll be insurance who will drive this change.
So who wants to go into the charging station business? GM has said they're not going to do it. There's a startup, "EV Oasis", which has a few charging stations in Southern California.
i3 driver here. IMO, the Bolt looks better. And true four doors instead of suicide doors makes a big difference for the kids (mine still can't remember which door closes first.)
It looks like a normal car. As it should. Can't wait for the days of auto manufacturers bashing their EVs with the ugly stick to end.
Dang, just looked up the suicide doors. That's... interesting. The driver and passenger seatbelts look like they are attached to the rear doors, so when you pick up someone, and they get in the back, you have to unbuckle so they can open the door.
Are the major car companies even trying to make reasonable electric cars? They all look so weird and have weird design decisions that make me not want to buy them at all.
It's improving. The Golf EV and Fiat 500e are basically the same exteriors and interiors with EV drivetrains. The Mercedes 250B EV looks extremely normal. I believe Ford has some normal-looking EV options.
But BMW went all-in on a new platform and new materials, and that led them to the suicide doors. I don't think there's any excuse for the front end, though.
I give credit to GM for being able to scrape its parts bin for the last 4 years to come out with a car that's slightly better than the 5 year old Leaf. However it still shows a company that is clueless about the future and has no real plan or vision other than producing a "me too" product made out of bits and pieces of other, subpar, disposable Chevys.
I'm looking at ~2.5-3x range, more interior space, much better performance, and better handling. Which metrics are you looking at that are merely 'slightly better'? Oh, and which parts bin did GM scrape that 60Kw/230mi drivetrain from?
Okay, let's address the substance of what you said. Which subpar Chevy did they pull the battery and drivetrain out of? Because the 230 mile electric platform is the interesting part of the car.
Where is the sub 30k Tesla? Being able to design a car such as the model 3 is a huge feat, no doubt. However execution is equally as important, and no matter which way you slice it, GM hit the market first. It is not always fair, the innovator should receive the rewards, but in this case the existing player executed first.
> can be had for less than the price of the average new car.
Emphasis mine and obviously they are factoring in the $7,500 tax credit which I guess is fine.
I dislike this "price of the average new car" line and it gets repeated a lot. Car manufacturers must love it since it tries to normalize that price as "average" when its not very representative. Grand total "average new car" price that the media is using everywhere is $33,666, but that's only because of the average price of luxury cars and trucks driving the number way, way up. There's a breakdown by sector in KBB's numbers:
http://mediaroom.kbb.com/new-car-transaction-prices-up-2-per...
Scroll down to the second table for more realistic numbers. At any rate the median new car price, if we could get it, would be much more telling. Sadly I can't find it anywhere.
After the tax credit the base model is the average cost of a Mid-size Pickup Truck ($30,045) or average cost of a sports car ($30,712)
But well above the average cost of a mid size car ($25,095) or crossover ($27,056) or subcompact ($17,218)