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Why Americans aren’t buying more EVs
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
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Of course there aren't many people buying EVs when the only ones available in the US are high end luxury models.
Import a bunch of those cheap Chinese EVs and lots of people will buy them. It won't hurt the US manufacturers because they don't produce any budget models.
It will hurt US manufacturers, because their budget gasoline cars won't sell.
And they'll spend more money fighting the inevitable pivot to EVs than they would if they just pivoted now.
There's the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Bolt/Spark, Mini Cooper EV, Hyundai Kona/Ioniq 6, Fiat 500e and more. These qualify for subsidies if purchased new plus all the gas savings make them decently affordable or you can always buy them used as most people do.
Most people are going for the midrange models like the Model Y, Model 3, Ioniq 5, etc though since it's not really ideal to buy the 'worst' version of something when making a large purchase. People want more range, space, and features. Even with ICE cars, the subcompacts sell/sold pretty poorly.
They also qualify if purchased used. I'm looking at Bolts priced at $13-17k after the used EV credit. That's pretty decent, I just need to go test drive a couple and make it happen.
But that only works because I'm replacing a commuter. It would be a non-starter for a family car because the maximum range is our minimum distance between stops at gas stations on road trips. We recently drove >800 miles each way on a road trip to visit family. On gas, that took us 12-13 hours. With an EV, I don't think we could make it in a day, even if recharges took 20-30 min (and that's a pretty big if, because the fast charging network isn't great).
Or start building affordable EVs here.
Back in the 70s when Toyota, Datsun, Honda etc started eating the big 3's lunch on affordable fuel efficient vehicles, they responded with smaller cars of their own.
If they're not willing to respond to market demand and competition, do they even deserve to stay in business?
Isn't that what the "free market" they claim to love enforces?