More efficient manufacturing, falling battery costs and intense competition are lowering sticker prices for battery-powered models to within striking distance of gasoline cars.
More efficient manufacturing, falling battery costs and intense competition are lowering sticker prices for battery-powered models to within striking distance of gasoline cars.
Bringing down the dealership price means fuck all if they’re worthless on the second hand market, unless there’s some miracle tech that prevents the battery capacity from dropping like a lead balloon internal combustion engines are never going away. A car from the 50s can still travel the same distance on a full tank but an electric car from the early 2010s can barely get around a car park on a full charge.
Hydrogen is the way to go, it can be created using clean energy and it’s exhaust tends to be cleaner than the air it took in.
Toyota managed to run an engine from the 80s on high pressure hydrogen with barely any alterations and there have been trials where mains gas in the uk has been replaced with hydrogen. We’re so close to having the access required to transition to hydrogen but there’s only one or two models that can use it rn.
How much have you spent in maintenance over the last 70 years to even keep it running?
Not even remotely true.
Assuming you need a new battery every 10 years or so considering that’s their usual lifespan you’re looking at spending $70,000-$140,000 at 10,000 - 20,000 per battery according to a quick Google search. Do you really think that someone is spending $2,000 a year just making sure a tiny roadster that was designed to be repaired with a spanner on a driveway can run?
Again, not true.
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a31875141/electric-car-battery-life/
If the battery is at less than 70% at 8 years, they’ll replace it free. My 10 year old Volt is still doing close enough to what it was new that I can’t tell the difference. It’s not like the battery just goes poof and turns into smoke after 10 years.
A tiny roadster from the 50s is what, an MG, Fiat, maybe a Triumph? Any one of them are probably spending more time getting repaired than actually driving.
Keeping a car from the 50s running today isn’t just tightening a bolt here and there anymore. Even sourcing the parts is likely going to be non-trivial at this point.
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I read a report that Model 3 LFPs were down to around $7k. CATL claims te be under $5k this year for a brand new pack good for about a 200 mile range. Analysts predict under $3k for that pack in 2025. This is even ignoring the potential to remanufacture an existing pack, reusing the parts of the packs that don’t degrade, and potentially reclaiming some value for recycling the cells. LFPs also have more durability, so likely to be a 15 year workable lifespan for most drivers.
This is a rapidly evolving situation, with prices going down dramatically for battery. If it lands at less than $5k for a 15 year maintenance item, then that’s even less than I spent keeping my 15 year old Acura in working order toward the end, ignoring the extra costs I had to spend on the gas compared to the EV charging. About half the gas cars I’ve owned have been a money pit for maintenance, and the other half haven’t been super cheap either. The EVs have been much lower maintenance, though admittedly the maintenance cost will be high years down the line, but I wager in aggregate it’ll be cheaper than the maintenance costs of my traditional cars have been.
I’ll take your hydrogen and raise you trains and public transit.
Building up our modern railed transit network and expanding people powered transit together is the only solution we have that’s been demonstrably successful for cities in the long term.
because hydrogen is a storage problem. Toyota is waiting and expecting government to build the infrastructure when its supposed to be pushing for the interest in it themselves.
the major reason why EVs won was the Tesla charging network, and unless Toyota is commited to investing in the equivalent to it, its not going anywhere. the biggest reason is EVs being able to be charged at home, something the current infrastructure of hydrogen lacks.
Hydrogen all day…there’s people who converted their pickups on YouTube that I saw like 10 years ago…just a guy in his driveway. Zero reason why companies haven’t done this yet other then sheer ignorance or greed from oil, or both.
I personally don’t trust EVs to fix anything…it just takes control away from end user and makes 2nd hand market almost nonexistent
Or maybe it’s because hydrogen tanks take up a fuck ton of space and are impractical because of it. The Toyota Mirai has a horribly small trunk for a vehicle it’s size. In anything smaller and you have almost no trunk. And retrofitting it into a car not designed for it? Good luck getting any reasonably sized tank in there without hacking away at the floor and making your own.
Additionally, the like 2 whole hydrogen stations in the US have shut down.
Let’s also not forget that a big gas cylinder of hydrogen is basically explodium waiting to go bang in a crash as well
Pretty sure that they tested those hydrogen tanks for safety and they really don’t cause issues. There’s loads of safety systems in there.
The biggest issue that I have with hydrogen tanks is that the hydrogen makes those tanks brittle over time. I recall that those tanks need replacing every 8 years. Again, that’s due to the hydrogen, it’s not due to how much it was driven.
There is often suggestions that an EV battery doesn’t last, see some comments here. Hydrogen tank issue is ignored for whatever reason.
EV batteries last way longer than conservative media likes to push on their viewers.
And once EVs become bigger and bigger in the market then battery repair will be more and more common. When batteries “die” it’s typcally just a small amount of cells that are super degraded, and the rest of the pack is otherwise fine. Swap a couple 18650s from a parts battery pack and you could get a pretty solid boost in range.