One thing that EV's have an advantage of is the reduced footprint of their drivetrain. The primary bulk of an EV is the massive battery that usually spans the bottom of the car opening up space in the interior or the ubiquitous EV "frunk" this makes for a more spacious interior and the Y takes advantage of this well.
That being said it seems that 2023 is the year of the EV, my family is currently in the market for a new car and have been pleasantly surprised at the breadth of offerings.
I can't really make up my mind on whether the fact that the model Y is the "best selling model of car" is something to hang your hat on these days. It's a great metric, sure, but it's been in a somewhat limited market. On it's face I can see it's appeal - size, space, EV, extra seating - its NOT A MINIVAN. But it seems like a fairly easy moat to breach. One thing about the Corolla was it's build quality was top notch it was a solid, reliable car and it seems more and more lately this isn't a hallmark of Tesla. I wouldn't be surprised for the model Y to keep the mantle of "best selling model" - particularly because of Tesla's lead in its ability to manufacture electric cars and the surface appeal of the model Y - but I wouldn't be surprised if it lost this lead as well.
If you're in the market, go for a couple of test drives. The competition is mostly regular ICE cars with a battery bolted on, while Teslas are designed from ground up as EVs and it shows throughout in ways big and small. We were originally leaning towards getting a Polestar, but the difference between driving one and a Tesla is night and day.
I drive an ID4 after looking at the Model Y. It's a ground up EV and a solid competitor. As a family crossover it's great. The software is pretty dumb but that's mostly avoided thanks to wireless Android Auto and CarPlay.
What won me over: Rear window was easier to see through, the above mentioned Carplay/AA support, not a fan of Tesla's extreme minimalism extending to things like air vents, brand tainted by Musk.
I test drove a Polestar 2, what are these car designers thinking with rear view visibility!
The between the rear headrests and huge slanted C-pillars you had a tiny sheet of paper sized opening to see out. I honestly thought the mirrors were adjusted wrong and were looking at the roof. Couple that with a half-baked 360 reversing camera that turned every obstacle into a trapezoidal blur, reversing parking that car between two other cars at the end of the drive was terrifying experience.
You only need the rear view for keeping an eye on traffic behind while on the road, so basically the window should be the size of the FoV in your rear view mirror.
For parking, I don't think I have looked at anything but cameras for the last 15 years. The camera is so much better than both looking backwards and using the center mirror. The rear window doesn't show the most important thing you want to see when parking: the area of ground closest to your car.
Especially with 360 cameras because you can then "look" backwards without missing anything happening elsewhere. I definitely bought my last car without 360 cameras several years ago.
And kids running behind the car when reversing. Honestly, visibility is in the top five criteria for me (others include driver's seat, sound proofing and big boot lid). Parking sensors and cameras of course help but are they a total substitute?
The kids case is one where camera has a clear benefit I'd say. Even if you have clear visibility to the rear window, you just can't see anything below the window height. And anyone coming from the sides you'd not see through the rear window either - but a very open vehicle might be a tad better through the side windows? Although with cameras being added to side mirrors or vehicle corners (and large screens!), that can also be expanded.
Total substitute. And they have to be, because once you have them you ONLY look at the screen. There is no chance I'm even glancing in the useless top mirror, nor over my shoulder. I do switch between rear camera and 360 camera though, but it varies between car brands if that's necessary. In the best implementations you see both at the same time.
My campervan (Promaster 2500) has rear windows, but it isn't like I can see anything out of them when I'm driving. Usually just leave them covered anyway.
Varies by state in the us. Some require two mirrors and one must be outside on the left. Some are similar but on the right. Some states you need two outside if the one inside is blocked.
The eGMP platform options from Hyundai (Hyundia Ioniq 5 and 6, Kia EV6, Genesis GV60) were also built in a dedicated manner.
While I have an EV6 (and my wife an ID.4), if I was on the market now, there's a ton of low-mileage Model 3 and Y out there, and the prices have come down significantly.
At least in North America I don't think this is true. GM can't reliably produce the Lyriq or Hummer and is ending the Bolt. Ford has stagnate sales on the MachE and Lighting porduction was stopped during Q1. Toyota and Honda are MIA.
The supercharger access is only a factor in the US. Some people really enjoy the vehicle-to-load capabilities of the EV-6. Aesthetics both internally and externally I think are bit nicer on the EV-6, but that's subjective.
- Cockpit -- EV6 has a panoramic (horizontal) display, plentiful buttons, and a heads-up display. I found this much more ergonomic for my eyes and hands than Tesla's all-in-one center-mounted display.
- Availability of Android Auto/CarPlay -- Tesla's software is more polished than Kia's but I'd rather project my phone. All my stuff's on it.
- EV6 is the #1 recommendation for its class in Consumer Reports as well as #1 in projected dependability for same.
I cancelled a Model 3 order and went with an EV6. My reasons:
- quality concerns (which possibly are overstated for the average purchase)
- worries over phantom braking
- V2L
- CarPlay
- I was swayed by Elon's politics, but that likely wouldn't have mattered if it had been a slam dunk decision for me.
- Supercharger network is a lesser concern for me, as I own my home. I did do a road trip from Houston to San Diego and back. As far as I could tell, between major cities, EA vs Supercharger coverage was equivalent along the relatively unpopulated stretches of I-10 and I-8
However, given the price differential now vs then, I would likely go for a low mileage used Model 3 now.
Off topic, but Musk v2.0 after the pandemic has been acting as a madman, and making pricing changes all over the board. We booked a Y, but the problem is they removed the $100 per month EAP subscription which could be a real beater for using it in an on-demand basis. Hopefully it comes back.
Yeah, it's the enhanced autopilot. It's not self- driving though, the only thing it does on its own is change lanes automatically and park itself and come out of a parking spot to get you
Sadly, in countries where no Tesla dealerships exist, it's next to impossible to buy unless you have truly unlimited budget. Model Y is in the same effective price range as Bentley: pay $100K in cash then pay $20K for each service or repair (because car has to be shipped 500 miles away on a boat and serviced there, takes 2 months and $20K). And you keep driving your Bentley in the meantime :)
That's situation here in Cyprus, thus in spite of a lot of people with money willing to buy, only 0.8% of cars sold are electric vs ~20% in poorer countries that do have Tesla dealerships. Because when Tesla is there, everyone else tries hard to sell their electrics too.
There are third parties who can do most servicing.... Obviously you don't get the benefits of the warranty though, so you're probably better off buying a Tesla where the warranty has already expired.
And there are plenty of car ferries to/from Cyprus, so you can get one there for under €100.
>The competition is mostly regular ICE cars with a battery bolted on, while Teslas are designed from ground up as EVs and it shows throughout in ways big and small.
This is not true, it's not 2017 anymore. Everyone is designing their EVs from "the ground up".
How is it that people can both think that Tesla will dominate because building EVs is simpler, but also that the legacy auto world can't figure out how to do it?
Because its been over a decade now, and somehow, they're still behind? If I'm honest though, to me it feels like a Kodak situation - the legacy companies could do it, but they like their existing product lines - the ones that bring in revenue today, that they know how to build, that only need small design adjustments each year, that work with their current structure of suppliers and dealers. Why worry about this new-fangled thing you'd have to spend a bunch of time and money to get right when its only going to be X% of your sales for years?
On the other hand, Tesla (and the other new electric companies) have nothing else. It's electric or die. It's carve a space out in the market now, while the legacy players are still dragging their feet, still figuring out battery issues or production issues Tesla dealt with 5-10 years ago, still figuring out how to make good software for the last 20 years, still trudging along as if things haven't much changed. Kodak didn't lose because digital cameras were harder, they lost because they didn't want to cannibalize their existing products with something easier and cheaper.
> The competition is mostly regular ICE cars with a battery bolted on,
Most automakers have long since stopped basing their electric cars on platforms designed for ICE cars that have have EV components badly squeezed into whatever space they can 'find'.
They've been making platforms designed specifically to include EV drivetrain components for a while, and many have shifted to EV-specific platforms.
There's also literally nothing wrong with platform-sharing, by the way; it's more efficient use of design, manufacturing, and service/support networks. The "it must be PURELY designed from the GROUND UP to be a EV" is largely marketing who-haa that hasn't been relevant for a while.
The Ford Lightning? It's largely based off the F150. Who cares? It's still a brilliant car that has been selling like hotcakes and will convert a TON of good-ol-boy types to driving an electric vehicle.
But here's a list of cars with EV-specific platforms:
* Audi e-tron
* BMW i-series
* Chevy Bolt and Bolt EUV, as well as their entire Ultium platform of cars, which I believe includes the HUMMER)
* Porsche Taycan
* Ford Mach-E
* Hyundai Ioniq 5 (and Kia equivalent)
* Lucid Air
* Rivian
* Mercedes EQS
* VW ID series
* Polestar
I'm probably forgetting some?
All have things Tesla doesn't: an extensive dealer network for sales and service, a healthy parts distribution channel, the build quality and reliability people expect from such an expensive car, no worries about bullshit like being banned from getting parts because the company thinks your vehicle shouldn't be on the road, transmission/motor units that are properly sealed so they can be driven in heavy rain and through puddles without issue, windows that spontaneously shatter, their cars randomly braking on the highway, self-driving systems that like to slam into the back of emergency vehicles on the shoulder...
The Ford Mach-E is a modified C2 platform with lots of modifications but definitely not a fresh design. The comparable C2 combustion platform would be the Third gen Kuga/ Fourth gen Escape/Focus.
Two things that seem in contention can be true at the same time. They made a sled for the EV, like ie common for EVs. They built the top of it to match the F150. Both true. I’d say it’s a full fledged EV design and an F150.
Just wish we had the battery breakthrough needed to give these vehicles some real range.
> ... windows that spontaneously shatter, their cars randomly braking on the highway, self-driving systems that like to slam into the back of emergency vehicles on the shoulder...
The 2024 ID.4 will likely have an option for their new APP550 motor which will produce 282 hp and a maximum torque of 406 lb-ft. This should help bring it in line with the Y, but probably at a higher cost initially until they can scale production.
I watched Doug DeMuro latest video on the ID.4 and he says it's not fast. On one hand performance might not be needed for a people mover. On the other hand people expect EV's to have superior performance.
The minimalist cabin is the obvious one: it's more spacious and feels much more spacious thanks to the glass roof. I did have severe doubts about the touchscreen and lack of controls, but in practice this has been a non-issue, there are tactile controls for everything you need to actually drive and voice controls for everything you don't (climate, music, etc). The glove box is just stupid though.
Meh, my wife was grooving for a Polestar so I rented a Polestar 1 for a weekend and we both came away feeling like it was good to rent because we definitely didn’t want to buy it. It was like the Swedes put all their effort into the material design and gave no shits about the UX. The UX was something Ford would have been proud of in 2009.
It really does though.. the model Y storage area folds flat completely and my 6'5 self can lay flat with extra leg room and sit up straight with plenty of headroom.
There is no body designed around the constraints of routing exhaust or transmission elements. It is just an empty box.
It was optional in pre-2020 models but recent models have removed the option. This is one reason we didn't buy one a couple years ago. (If they've added the option back since then, please let me know!) https://insideevs.com/news/451393/tesla-removes-regenerative...
I found the EV6 dark and claustrophobic on the inside, and uglier than the Model Y from the rear. Really dislike those weird droopy/saggy lines on the EV6 rear end.
Aside from that, if you want range, the Y beats the EV6, although the EV6 charges faster (theoretically - if you can find a 350 kW charger, and if the rate can be sustained)
Exactly that. When the power goes out you use an extension cord between your car and the refrigerator in the summer or the car and the furnace fan in the winter.
Ah. I'm lucky to live somewhere where that's not really an issue (in 15 years living here we've had a total of 40 minutes of power outages, according to my UPS logs), so I forget that IS an issue for a lot of people.
I've also driven my Nissan Leaf since 2013 with zero shop visits outside of tire shops.
Wah. That is crazy. The total cost of ownership for that car must be incredibly low. Think about what that means for the future of all auto mechanics. Will there be far fewer?
Anecdote about a Nissan Leaf: I'll never forget being on holiday in Sri Lanka, walking through a tiny, countryside village. I was on my way to see a Buddhist temple. I was surprised to see an all-electric Nissan Leaf. It blew me away. I guess she is still driving it today!
> Think about what that means for the future of all auto mechanics. Will there be far fewer?
Definitely. This is one of the reasons why dealerships are reluctant with EVs: apparently a big chunk of their profits come from servicing the cars they sell.
The original "subscription model" meatspace. Sell a self destructing product there needs chronic ambiguous repairs that cost "how important is it for you to have a car?" .
> Think about what that means for the future of all auto mechanics. Will there be far fewer?
In the long run, yes.
If EV conversion becomes a major thing (which could happen if tax credits applied to conversions and if simple, cheap bolt-in kits ever hit the market) then auto mechanics might be quite busy for the next decade or two converting part of the existing ICE fleet to EV.
There was some recent stats released on this from a German org now that the cars have been out for long enough to get good data. EVs did really well.
One surprise finding was that a major part of the EV faults were due to the 12v lead acid battery that some EVs (like Tesla) are now shipping lithium replacements for.
Well, that you need a dedicated EV plattform is such old news, all OEMs knew that since day -10. Tgat they didn't invest in one for a long had a lot of reasons, being unable to do so was none of those.
German here. Cars are one hallmark of our economy. We are behind as well. The Chinese are absolutely crushing it in Asia and Middle East now.
Volkswagen had a market share of ICE cars of ~20%, for EVs it's now closer to 1%. EVs are way easier to build and a lot of Chinese companies are doing it successfully. They are offering cheaper EVs. They are selling in Mideast/Asia and now start to enter Europe as well.
None of these cars is particularly bad - while I'd still take the Korean EVs before anything else today, the Chinese are coming. German manufacturers only produce premium level cars few people can afford and they produce them badly. ID.3 is too expensive for its segment and too much of the car just doesnt work well.
(EU customer here - this colors my impressions also due to different models availability compared to the US or other markets)
The specs and price gap between a Renault Zoe (Inexpensive, with consequently low acceleration, top speed, handling and range, but absolutely a joy to use in a city or on short trips - perfect balance of price/specs) and a Tesla M3/MY is quite wide and should allow some other manufacturers to wedge themselves into a rather popular segment, with profit.
And yet... there's hardly anything better than a Zoe, they immediately approach or pass the price of a Tesla (looking at you Volkswagen, Cupra, Audi, Mercedes, etc) while being worse by an impressive margin (paltry top speeds, uncomfortable ranges, rather primitive features, etc). You start getting cars something favorably comparable with a baseline Tesla M3 RWD when you add a good 20k to its price, it's ridiculous. And apparently they're hardly breaking even on those, while Tesla has a decent profit margin, what's wrong with them?
I'm also hoping China and Korea will upend this market because established EU/US manufacturers surely won't.
I honestly don't get the obsession with top speed and power, and I live in Germany. I do know the top speed of every single car I ever drove (I had a time I travelled a lot for work, and thus ended up with a nice list of rentals). First, the only place top speed has any, theoretical, relevance in Germany. Everywhere else anything above 150 km/h is wasted, I'll ignore track days here. Acceleration is nice, but again everything below, say, 8-9 sec. for 0-100 km/h is plenty enough.
And practically, even on the German Autobahn, a top speed difference of 220 to the rare 250 km/h plus doesn't show. One traffic jam, or even just enougj traffic, and everybody ends up next to each other anyways.
Power is nice, because cars simply a nicer to drive. Plus you can pull better, which is also important. Going back in time so, 150-180 bhp was considered top knotch performance, the Audi A3 gained a lot of his reputation in the early 2000s due to two models, just below the S3, having that power output.
I din't know, all the engine size, top speed, power and acceleration discussions feel like me playing top trump (the card game for children were you compare numbers for e.g. cars), and less than an adult objevtively evaluating cars. Not that car evaluations and buying decissions need to be objevtive so, mine aren't. But up talking one model / brand by down talking others, based on purely subjective criteria, is childish. It does allow for great marketing campaigns so.
> I honestly don't get the obsession with top speed and power, and I live in Germany.
I do live in Germany too and routinely drive above 140 where allowed on the autobahn - it's a pleasure. So yes it does actually impact me, in a very real way.
Additionally:
- Top speed of 220+ means you accelerate from 130 to 160 easily, so you can safely pass the slowpoke ahead while not becoming an obstacle to faster traffic. A top speed of 160 means it'll take you a whole lot longer.
- A car with a top speed of 150 is at its limit at 150. Brakes are sized for that, wheels are chosen with that in mind, you better be going in a straight line, it's gonna be uncomfortably noisy, etc. You have very little margin for anything. One designed to reach 220 or 250 is basically in the middle of its comfort zone at 150, with ample safety margins on every metric and a more comfortable ride.
--Edit: I'd like to add a reference to the lower tier cars to my reply. I quoted the Zoe because my partner has it, so I'm quite familiar using it and it's really really fun in the city, it's perfect.
I'm lamenting the big gap between Zoe and Tesla with nothing worth buying in between and the fact that I'm being asked 15-25k EUR extra compared to the Zoe, with hardly more car, which is an awful bargain as you reach the Tesla price with half assed specs. I may not care so much about speed and power (I do, that's another story) but I do care to get something worth my money, and all these other cars aren't.
Until recently I commuted on lengthy stretches of unlimited, mostly, roads. On good days I avergaed out north of 160. Bad for fuel economy, but fun.
Top speed has nothing to do with acceleration, a car can be limited at, say, 180 and still accelerate and be speced for 250. Heck, all German premium brands are, for the most part, limited at 250. Theoretically they can all go faster. Sure, there is a floor, but in practical terms it is much less relevant than people think. Also, it only matters in Germamy on select roads, everywhere else speed limits are much, much lower than car top speeds anyway.
And breaksbare sized fornmore than speed, they are sized relative to engine power and car weight. Speed is simply a function engine power, transmission and weight.
While loving to go fast, going fast in a staight line on a road made to do so is the opposite of dangerous or risky. Saying that, I am in total favor of a speed limit, 130 propably won't work in Germany, so. In general, we need one. And we have them any way most of the time, the percentage of unlimited km of roads is way smaller than people think. Once we have them, maybe we can have more realistic discussion about cars and mobility, at the moment everybody drols over their 300+ bhp "race cars". And brands sell on that image. That doesn't help switching to EVs, nor does it help cutting emissions.
Indeed, even premium German cars suck at basic stuff. For example, their HMI is super slow to boot and Porsche still won't allow more than 3 region updates per year over WiFi, because reasons. Even Porsche dealers don't know why.[1]
Porsche can afford to give their customers Dacia levels of digitalization because they're premium sports cars that sell anyway, but the Asians are coming after the other German brands and will steamroll them if they don't start getting their act together.
>What stands out most is Tesla's integrated central control unit, or "full self-driving computer." Also known as Hardware 3, this little piece of tech is the company's biggest weapon in the burgeoning EV market. It could end the auto industry supply chain as we know it. One stunned engineer from a major Japanese automaker examined the computer and declared, "We cannot do it."
Might very well turn out that premium OEMs big failure wasn't being late to the EV game, but failing to switch their behind the scenes marketing game from traditional print journalism, and the online versions of it, to online only, blog-like car journalism.
Still digitalisation so, sure. And still linked to EVs, traditional car journalism still caters to a crowd of ICE fanatics, but overall much more a thing of marketing than engineering. For Tesla, the risk still is Musk. But they seem to be doing a good job of distancing themselves enough from his recent antics to not be hurt by them, while staying close enough to benefit from his personal brand.
but failing to switch their behind the scenes marketing game from traditional print journalism, and the online versions of it, to online only, blog-like car journalism.
Yea, I can't help to notice that my 13 year old, who on the whole knows and cares nothing about cars, thinks that Teslas are the coolest cars ever, has already decided that their first car will be a Tesla and wants our next car to be a Tesla. Brands like Merceds, BMW, Porsche etc. mean very little to them.
If you have proplem with 2012 computing controlling a car, you should never get even close to a modern airliner... What do you need 2023 computing for, running LLMs or mining bitcoin while driving?
There's a difference between technology for the sake of comfort/entertainment and technology for critical elements of a product able to kill you and others.
If I need to get an eye-surgery and the equipment runs on Android, I'd rather go for the one running on Android 4 for 10 years already, than the one running on Android 13 for 6 months now...
Like that story about a Tesla driver driving off a cliff in California and everyone surviving the crash? A story that even ended up in french and German newspapers
The source seems to be a February article from Automotive News interviewing several Toyota execs off-the-record: https://archive.is/0LZYf. The relevant quotes are midway through
Toyota is first and foremost a manufacturing company; they go to absurd lengths to ensure their supply chain is as robust as can be and that the product they deliver is reliable. It just happens to be cars. (And forklifts. And probably lots of other stuff, too)
The downside, of course, being that most of their offerings appear quite, uh, boring.
Upside? Anecdotally, my 26 year old Toyota Land Cruiser (With 300k miles on it!) has cost me less in workshop visits and parts over the 140k miles I've owned it than the missus' 2016 VW Passat has over 30k miles of ownership. And the Passat isn't a bad car at all. Has the Land Cruiser beat on fuel economy, though.
The subsidies the government introduced over a decade ago to incentive sales
were pretty cray. They even exempted electric cars from road tolls.
(This has been removed) has boosted the sale of electric cars enormously-
Norway has the most e-cars per capita in the world.
At least last time I checked.
As a result, I have a lot of friends and coworkers that own Telas.
Nearly all love them and would not trade.
However, the build quality is subpar.
Nearly all have had their car in the shop at least once.
The rather extreme lack of spare parts has been a big problem
for the owners.
I think this has been improved for a while but I am not certain.
Some had to wait months for a spare part needed to fix their problems.
Primarily it has been water leaks, parts that are not "fitting together"
right in interior and exterior.
The second is the touchpad control system.
I have wondered if this could in part be due to the extreme cold we have
every now and again.
But like I said the owers are still in love with their cars and would not
trade it.
The newer Supras and now GR Corolla also seem pretty exciting to me. Toyota is also (one of) the last manufacturer still making mid-sized trucks with manual transmissions.
So, cars are not technology? What about, I don't know, aircraft, power plants, ships, medical devices, laptops and phones (the hardware portion of those?
And which "tech" is top notch with Tesla, self driving? Their marketing is more than just incredibly good so.
Cars haven't changed in any fundamental manner for the better part of a century at the very least, so no cars are not so-called "technology" at this point. Not even the EV fad, because electric vehicles predate cars powered by combustion engines.
What has changed is the technology behind controlling those cars. On that front, it surprises me in absolutely no way that Tesla, an information technology company, does business in ways that the car industry can't even dream of.
Seriously? Try driving a car from, say, the late 80s and one from 2020.
But ok, only software is tech, got it. So when exactly is mechanical engineering no longer a STEM discipline? Seriously, that take is simple hybris of the software crowd, and totally ignoring all the hardware tech all of us use all the time. But ok, a while ago the only measure of car quality was chassis panel fitting (if there ever was a truely German over engineering nonsense, that is it), now it is the feel of the car entertainment system. To each generation their own marketing abuse of technology I guess.
A car has wheels, an engine/motor(s), and a mechanism to make the engine/motor(s) turn those wheels. This hasn't changed more or less since the invention of cars, regardless electric or combustion.
What has changed is the way the car is controlled. No longer are cars controlled by physically connected cables and wires that move to user input, cars are now controlled digitally by computers that respond to user and environmental input. This is where the technology is, and this is where tech companies like Tesla naturally and obviously have an edge on car companies like Toyota.
> Cars haven't changed in any fundamental manner for the better part of a century at the very least, so no cars are not so-called "technology" at this point.
So only new technology is technology? What a daft definition.
You're validating the opposing argument with those examples.
Windows 3.11 and 8086 are no-longer in active development. But the Windows operating system and the Intel x86 chipset are still being developed, and are relevant topics of current conversation.
Similarly, "cars" aren't new as a concept. But recent news developments regarding recently developed cars counts as tech relevant to Hacker News.
> That being said it seems that 2023 is the year of the EV, my family is currently in the market for a new car and have been pleasantly surprised at the breadth of offerings.
My wife and I are in the market for a second car, after buying an ICE SUV at the beginning of the pandemic and having no car for 10 years before that (living in San Francisco).
There’s a lot of options for a $40,000+ primary family car, but my impression is that there is a notable lack of options in the “second car” or “economy car” categories. We already have the ICE SUV for road trips, camping trips, IKEA trips, etc. We will probably need a second car very soon (moving from the Bay Area to LA and less WFH schedules).
Am I just supposed to get a Leaf or a Bolt? Plug in hybrids seem very cool to me but barely exist in the US (is this really too much cognitive load to figure out how fuel economy works?). Where’s the $25,000 electric Corolla with 100 mile range?
Of all tue existing OEMs, Toyota propably botched the EV transition the most. Which actually is quite a surprise for me, to be honest.
Regarding cheap (-ish) EVs, you have Stelantis (Peugeot, Opel, Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Citroen, Chrysler). They sell a small hatchback, VW Polo sized, as an EV with, if memory serves well, a range of 300 km, for about 25k € in Germany. It is available as a Peugeot 208e, a Opel Corsa e and, more expensive and a cross-over SUV thingy, a Peugeot 2008e.
So it sure is possible. And a prime choice for a second car, in our case an EV for four, decent range and luggage space is simply out of budget for now. A smaller one, the classic second car, totally possible. But hey, you only replace cars if you have to, and now that is the big one. So no EV yet...
I always considered our Model 3 as a second car because we mostly just drove it for local errands and commuting, and I assumed it just didn't have the range to do more.
We recently decided to use for a 2000+ mile road trip instead of using our ICE minivan, and I was blown away with how well the Tesla did as a long road trip vehicle.
We had no range anxiety because of the Super Charger network, and stopping to charge for 45 minutes after driving for 3 hours was far more enjoyable than anticipated.
Where it really did well was also surprising. Have you ever been going up a slight grade on a long highway stretch and find yourself needing to pass a slower vehicle? Most cars I've owned, when already going 65+, take a bit of time to pass a truck going up a hill. Even my 400HP+ modified Subaru STI takes its time as it needs to build turbo pressure and RPMs before it'll get fast enough to comfortably pass up hill.
The Model 3 doesn't even know there's a hill. It'll go from 60 to 120 as fast as it goes from 0-60 like the hill doesn't exist. Fully loaded with 4 adults and their stuff too.
Combine the raw power the car has with the climate control, good sound, full glass roof, ample cargo space and legroom, and it's the best car I've ever used on a long trip, no question. It's just not sub-$40k (at least for most people - I bought mine for $35k from a family member).
On local trips in the cold (where it's frequently below 0F) I've not noticed any difference in power. It may very well have reduced specs but I'd never no. I've not been motivated to test it with snow, ice, and other cars on the road.
If I were driving 280+ miles per day in the dead of winter I'm sure I'd notice since the range does seem to shrink in the cold. Then again, I've never been impacted by that since I only drive about 40-80 miles a day at most on a typical day.
I have read dozens of articles, buying guides, and reviews of electric and hybrid cars, and I’ve never even heard of that make, so I’m guessing it’s not available in the US.
Toyota took a big bet on hydrogen power, so we’re not going to see an electric Corolla until they finally give in. As for the price point, electric production is still scaling out. And consumers don’t think they want vehicles with shorter range, even if that’s all they need. First, the car has to sell.
I’m not convinced by the common wisdom that “consumers demand longer battery range.” That’s especially irrelevant to the “second car” market which surely must be pretty big. I think it comes down more to how ridiculously cheap gas is (despite incessant complaints) and how long it would take most people to come out ahead even just buying a hybrid instead of a pure EV. It sure would be nice if gas were more expensive!
It seems that EVs are stuck in the range wars, the headline spec for an EV above all else is its kWh and range. It’s ridiculous, no ICE car gets marketed by range, and if they did you’d find that EVs are about on par range wise, they are just less convenient to refuel.
The value proposition of a hybrid makes EVs difficult to stomach, why get one EV when you can get two hybrids for the same price? Toyota will 100% jump on EVs once they become economical, but until then they are still making the car for the masses.
> It’s ridiculous, no ICE car gets marketed by range,
That's because every ICE car gets 400-600 miles per tank, and there are filling stations essentially everywhere.
For EVs, more range compensates for all concerns about charging availability.
All the chargers at work were busy? No problem if you've got several days of range.
Loved ones live in the middle of nowhere, with limited options for charging en route? Friend living in a flat who can't help you charge over night? Not a problem if you've got plenty of range.
Changed jobs and got a longer commute, or lost access to charging at work? Not a problem with 300 miles of range.
En route chargers along your route only charge at a meagre 40 miles per hour? Competing charger networks mean you only have access to some chargers? 300 miles of range means you can just go to a better one.
Worried about battery degradation with age, or lower battery performance due to your area's weather? Want to use the fastest charging, which only charges to 80% capacity? If you've got range to spare, no problem.
The situation will probably be different in a decade or two, when every gas station gets equipped to charge EVs at 300+ miles per hour.
Yeah, I’m also looking for something I can actually buy through normal channels (granted in in the last few years it has been difficult just buying any car has been difficult from a party who isn’t clearly a scalper) and expect to have some level of support availability. Not really looking to buy a car the same way I buy Raspberry Pi clones from AliExpress.
An electric motorcycle might suit you well as a second vehicle. There’s tons of them in that price range. It would help with horrible LA traffic as well.
Yes, that's why it was a failure. Most news outlets theorized that it was a compliance vehicle for California but that was never confirmed by Mazda. If it was a compliance vehicle, Mazda spent way too much money on R&D to sell it for that price. At $20k, it might have had a better shot.
Agreed. I would love a good electric minivan (e.g. an electric Honda Odyssey). There are supposed to be a few coming down the pike but I had to buy a cheap used internal combustion one for now.
The Pacifica seems interesting as the only PHEV around. 32 miles on electric will take you a lot of places while still having a motor means you can haul heavy stuff or even tow without range dropping to nothing.
I have one and it has been great. We had to buy the most expensive trim to get one - not sure that is true anymore. We mostly use the battery as we live in a small city. Most of our commute and errands are within range or it swaps to gas. I fill up every other month if that. If we go on the road of course it’s basically an ICEbox but still gets better mileage than my older toyotas did. It charges the battery from our home charger in a couple of hours so on weekends we end up using the battery twice a day.
My next-door neighbor (single dad with three kids) has one and it's a goddamn delight. He just got a Tesla to replace it because he took a new job that's outside of the battery-only range of the minivan and his eldest is big enough to sit in front now. Not nearly as nice of a car, but he wants to be all-electric, and was stuck on his commute. Alas.
If the middle seats on the hybrid were stow and go like the rear ones I’d already own one of these. Sadly that’s where the batteries are.
I like the simplicity of an all electric drivetrain but I’m a single car household so range anxiety and charger time/availability is a real consideration still.
My plug-in Prius gets about the same range. If that range is sufficient for most of your driving, I think PHEV is a fantastic compromise between driving electric most of the time and switching to ICE when you need the additional range.
Minivan seems like a great form factor for an EV. Unfortunately, the small number of companies that still make minivans are also the companies that are slowest to adopt EVs.
They aren't the most aerodynamic and had surprisingly bad fuel economy the last time I looked, but after those concerns it's hard to beat a minivan. I was shocked just how little cargo capacity my father in law's big fancy Mercedes SUV has - I was able to fit more in a Honda Fit (which explains the name!)
The talking point about Tesla reliability is outdated.
Model 3 was one of the most reliable cars in Germany in 2022.
"Germany’s ADAC, which is the largest automobile club in Europe, published the results of its latest reliability study, which analyzes vehicle breakdowns and their causes in 2022, and the Tesla Model 3 ranked at the top of the chart."
Tesla reliability is also often conflated with "build quality", and the sources for Tesla's poor build quality differ vastly, but a not-insignificant source of it wasn't objective information but rather surveys. Surveys that specifically ask "How does build quality compare to expectations". Which isn't a fair question because people hold different expectations for Teslas than other cars.
I'd be interested in how many times each car had to be seen by the manufacturer, rather than full breakdowns (i.e. at the side of the road, can't continue the journey). EVs should be much more reliable in terms of full breakdowns, but with all of the complex systems I've seen more small things go wrong.
I own a Model 3, and one thing I didn't fully appreciate until a recent 2000+ mile roadtrip is how good the Tesla Super Charger network is. Even in remote parts of Nevada we were always within range of a Super Charger. Using the onboard nav system made that even better, since it's aware of how busy a station is, or if the station is even functional, and would route accordingly.
I don't know much about other charging networks, but I've used non-Tesla chargers a handful of times over the past two years, and every time, it was a poor experience. They've been slow, some have stopped working a few minutes into a charge, or don't work at all. In two separate cases the chargers I drove to didn't actually exist, despite being directed to them by those networks' apps. In one case, they weren't built yet, and in another, the chargers weren't even properly mounted to the ground and getting blown around by the wind and leaning over as far as the underground cables would allow.
Prior to my roadtrip the charging network wouldn't have been much of a selling point for me since I usually charge at home. But after? I think it's far more important than I realized.
This is reasonable. OTOH a really mass-produced car means that its production becomes optimized, quirks eventually fixed, rough edges polished, etc. With model Y, Tesla has a chance to polish the design and the production process and make the car reliable and of stable quality.
They of course can squander that chance, but they never had such a chance before at all, to my mind.
It's not a huge difference to other manufacturers - the idea of putting different things on a common chassis and iterating that one slowly was happening for a while. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_platform
From what I understood on a previous thread that talked about EV owners wanting to go back to gas cars, the main reason Tesla owners like their EVs more than other brand owners is not based on the actual vehicle, but due to ease of charging because of the supercharger network and other Tesla features to dispel range anxiety.
That in itself is a good reason to buy a Tesla right now (it may evolve in just a few years in the future): it's the one with the best charging experience. Considering how much hassle a bad charging experience can be, I imagine this has an influence on sales figures.
Really loved the idea of an electric car / plug in hybrid but it feels like EVs are just not adequately designed for Canada.
The main issues are (A) not enough charging infrastructure (fixable) and (B) poor battery performance in cold weather.
I think the cold weather thing could be fixable but from my perspective it seems like EVs are designed with California in mind so there seems to be little incentive to fix those issues.
Additionally Canada wants all new cars to be EVs by somewhere around 2030 but it seems like a not very well thought out plan.
Personally I ended up going with a standard hybrid.
- Fantastic mileage in the city.
- Good cold weather performance.
- Highest reliability by consumers reports and other publications.
- No range anxiety.
- Battery lasts a very long time since it is used less and stays at a medium charge.
We went for a Model Y. The heat pump is way more efficient in the winter than resistive heating. Combine that with starting out at room temperature because it's garaged, and we see little winter range loss.
We never have charging issues, and we've gone to rural Saskatchewan, tourist Quebec and all parts in between. The trans-Canada has great supercharger coverage, rural Saskatchewan has welders you can unplug and tourist Quebec has chargers at the hotels.
I bet our battery lasts longer than yours. 99% of driving is local, we plug in at 50% and charge to 80%, which is a lot easier on a big battery like ours than the small battery you have. Even on road trips it basically stays between 20 and 80.
Not really going to argue your points (they seem well researched!), however I think for most consumers there's still that last level of "thinking" required to feel comfortable having an EV as a primary vehicle.
Including as you mentioned having a heated garage compared to people such as myself who have to rely on street parking which can comprise both the battery distance and the ability to consistently charge.
Lastly I do think there's a catagory of people who take pride in figuring out how to make systems work for them specifically (in this case EVs in Canada). I myself am that way about many things in my life but when it comes to my vehicle i just want it to work.
It's good to know that your experience is working though and hope for EV coverage to expand in the future.
I think the Supercharger network was a significant competitive advantage. With the news today that Ford will be adopting NACS in the near future for North American vehicles, I do think their EV options will start to become more compelling.
My dream car is a minivan -- it is literally the most practical kind of vehicle I can think of, so that is what I fantasize about getting. Why are you so impressed that the model Y is not a minivan?
Wouldn't any car just be better if it were a minivan?
In case you weren't aware already, the next-gen VW "bus" will start sales in the US next summer/fall. I expect other car manufacturers will begin sales of their minivan EV replacements around that time as well.
Unfortunately for VW, they are trying to cash in on the "cool" factor and nostalgia for the vintages buses and the vehicle is outrageously expensive. For $60k, I don't features in addition to gimmicks and the backseat is pretty tight. Not to mention the interior tech and controls for this first generation of VW ev's is comically bad.
I think I might give a try for MY (if its suspension got any better), but where I live there is no real place for servicing it and insurance costs 7x the price of a new leaf for example which is insand.
That being said it seems that 2023 is the year of the EV, my family is currently in the market for a new car and have been pleasantly surprised at the breadth of offerings.
I can't really make up my mind on whether the fact that the model Y is the "best selling model of car" is something to hang your hat on these days. It's a great metric, sure, but it's been in a somewhat limited market. On it's face I can see it's appeal - size, space, EV, extra seating - its NOT A MINIVAN. But it seems like a fairly easy moat to breach. One thing about the Corolla was it's build quality was top notch it was a solid, reliable car and it seems more and more lately this isn't a hallmark of Tesla. I wouldn't be surprised for the model Y to keep the mantle of "best selling model" - particularly because of Tesla's lead in its ability to manufacture electric cars and the surface appeal of the model Y - but I wouldn't be surprised if it lost this lead as well.