Retreating from EVs could be hazardous for Western carmakers

34 pointsposted a month ago
by smurda
(economist.com)

114 Comments

favflam

a month ago

I want to see if Kei-trucks can break into the market. The last time a new product form broke into the US market, it was during a big recession (japanese auto-makers got compact cars in). People will value functionality over form if we get into a prolonged recession.

ehnto

a month ago

I love that the world is loving kei trucks and kei cars right now.

I see them pretty often in Australia which also has an anti yank-tank movement (tongue in cheek name for a big american "truck")

That said our most popular cars are still all three tonne utes or SUVs so it's a small movement.

You are right to note the economic situation being a big part of vehicle decisions. Fuel prices has been a driving force, and image plays a big part too.

ashleyn

a month ago

The chicken tax pretty much makes this impossible. The only domestic manufacturer interested in cheap light-duty trucks is Slate, which is still in the development phase and faces a lot of risks, notably high cost for the segment.

jmward01

a month ago

I think big vehicles are ugly and stupid so I like the form as well as the function.

siliconc0w

a month ago

It's too late anyway- China and the other Eastern players have already won. Western Autos are basically walking dead, artificially kept alive by export controls and tariffs.

bataowt

a month ago

Until HN can have an honest discussion on how far behind West is in so many aspects - without blaming Trump for it glibly - each day that passes is a day it falls further behind.

The moment you face the truth is the moment you can start doing something about it.

tim-tday

a month ago

It’s not solely Trumps fault we fell behind. (And let’s be clear, we fell behind China. The rise of Korea and Vietnam are simply insignificant in comparison.)

In fact he tried to fix our pending loss to China in his first presidency with his first efforts towards a trade war. The trade war alarmed China who began a program to internalize supply chains. and when Biden doubled down, China accelerated their supply chain independence at the cost of a residential construction crash and massive financial pain for normal Chinese people. And now in the second trump presidency we see that chinas efforts worked. They succeeded in internalizing their supply chains so they can continue to produce and export even as supply inputs are disrupted.

Which is why we’re seeing that the current trade war isn’t working. China has been able to increase their international exports to the rest often world. When trump slapped our closest trading partners he helped China because he sent our closest trading partners right into the arms of China who have increased their global trade even as the trade war with the us continues.

But that’s not what the article is about. It’s about the about-face from electric vehicles and that is 100% definitively Trump’s doing.

So yes let’s face the truth on those two issues. 1) the US fell behind China and the trade war isn’t working. No it’s not all trump’s fault. But he’s the president and it happened on his watch despite his efforts. 2) an about face on electric vehicles will harm us in the long term (costing us much more later than it saves by redoubling investment in old tech)

epistasis

a month ago

Facing the truth also requires acknowledging the roadblocks. Largely due to Trump but Al Republican and conservative culture, and structural, and some permitting etc.

Saying that Trump is not allowed to be blamed is symptomatic of just how damaged the public discourse is. Too many snowflakes who are terrified of facing basic accountability for the consequences of their beliefs and actions.

wakawaka28

a month ago

[flagged]

tomhow

a month ago

> No doubt this will get several downvotes because HN is in fact overwhelmingly populated by liberals with Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Please don't comment like this on HN. This is a place for curious conversation not fulmination and ideological battle.

wakawaka28

a month ago

Please don't lecture me on HN ethos and fulmination when libs do it hundreds of times every day here and their bullshit generally goes unanswered. I have in fact been downvoted many times and even after 2 years of using the site daily I can't downvote anyone myself.

tomhow

a month ago

You've entered a community that has clear guidelines and a clearly stated purpose and you've brought an ideologically combative energy, in clear breach of the site’s guidelines and intended use. This is only a place where people want to participate because others make the effort to contribute positively and raise the standards up rather than dragging them down. People have no trouble getting to the 500-point threshold to enable downvoting when they contribute positively to the site for a few months, with interesting submissions and thoughtful comments. We have tools anyone can use to report breaches if they want to earnestly show they intend to use the site as intended – flagging and emailing us (hn@ycombinator.com). We push back on anyone we see breaking the guidelines, regardless of “side” (we don't care about the side and often don't even know), and we're routinely accused of favoring the other side by people who refuse to take responsibility for their own conduct.

wakawaka28

a month ago

I explained my side already. The site's policies are selectively enforced by moderators and the liberal hive mind here downvotes most of my posts. Stop trying to deny what I have seen for the past 2 years here. If you think "a few months" of commenting is enough to get basic site features, you're wrong. I disagree with people often and talk straight, and there is very much a liberal hive mind here of established users who leave snarky fulminating comments on political stuff and downvotes on comments. There are also people shilling for particular technologies who downvote me too when I express an opinion they don't like. Anyway, it's clear you don't believe me or want to hold the line for your favorite views. So be it. Maybe if enough people like me complain something will change.

tomhow

a month ago

People have made these complaints for the site’s entire history and we’re routinely characterized as being biased in favour of “the other side” by people who mistake this as being a site where “side” matters.

The people who don’t make this complaint are those who use the site as intended - for curious conversation rather than ideological battle.

wakawaka28

a month ago

>People have made these complaints for the site’s entire history and we’re routinely characterized as being biased in favour of “the other side” by people who mistake this as being a site where “side” matters.

I get what you may aspire to have happen on this site, but it does not live up to those ideals. Probably thousands of people, sock puppets, and bots brigade in favor of their own opinions, regardless of what the rules say. The only people who will really feel left out by this are the ones like myself who don't agree "enough" with the hive mind. I would care a lot less if basic features of the site were not gated by points, as well. Half of the time I feel like I wandered into Reddit.

I reckon that the people who don't make this complaint are the ones who just agree with the hive mind and don't suffer downvotes. I know for a fact I could simply state the exact opposite of what I do in many cases, in the same abrasive style, and get at least neutral treatment. You won't even let my honest constructive criticism here go without downvotes. You aren't the least bit curious what normal users like me go through. You want to prescribe a view of my experience according to your own imagination.

tomhow

a month ago

You're expressing some pain about the situation you're in and I don't want to diminish that. I know very well that it's difficult feeling like you're a lone figure against a mob who are opposed to what you believe in, and that those in power are biased in favour of the mob.

The thing is, everyone feels like that when they are strongly committed to a particular position or side. Dang has written several times about the "notice-dislike bias" [1], in which you notice more strongly the views you most dislike, and feel like the environment is dominated by those views. We know that effect is real by the fact that we are routinely accused of “putting our thumb on the scale” in favour of the present US administration or in support of the politics/interests of Silicon Valley power figures (which we don't do and which we know very well would destroy HN – and thus, our jobs – if we did), whilst just as often being accused of being biased to the left.

Dang and I have been doing this job in some form for many years and we know more than anything else that the only way to keep HN thriving is to make it a place where all reasonable points of view can be shared and discussed. Yes, the community's ideology skews moderately left-libertarian, which you would expect of a community dominated by technology industry employees. But it's a bell curve, with the majority around the reasonable centre, and several of the top-ranked users on the leaderboard are notable for espousing conservative/libertarian positions, and we always want the spectrum of views to be represented here, otherwise there'd be little to discuss.

To your key points:

> I get what you may aspire to have happen on this site, but it does not live up to those ideals

Nothing in life ever lives up to ideals :) We can only try and push things in the right direction. The outcome will always be messy and imperfect, and we can only ever hope to make it less imperfect than it would be without our interventions. We think we get things about right if we're criticized roughly equally from either side.

> Probably thousands of people, sock puppets, and bots brigade in favor of their own opinions, regardless of what the rules say

We've become pretty good at detecting and killing inauthentic posts; it's surprisingly easy to detect manipulation once you've spent enough time reading all the threads and knowing what authentic discussion looks like. And we have software measures against voting, flagging and commenting that is biased or manipulative.

> The only people who will really feel left out by this are the ones like myself who don't agree "enough" with the hive mind

This isn't a place for feeling like you're surrounded by people who agree with you. It's for engaging in curious conversation and learning from different perspectives. If you're not on HN to be exposed to different points of view and learn from them whilst sharing your own perspectives in a spirit of generosity, you're not going to have the best time here.

> I would care a lot less if basic features of the site were not gated by points, as well.

We have to have some way of determining that people are committed to contributing positively to the community before unlocking privileges that influence what gets seen on the site. Just 2-3 interesting submissions can get you to 500 points. People can do that in a few weeks if they want to. But that relies on you being here to gratify intellectual curiosity rather than engage in ideological battle.

> Half of the time I feel like I wandered into Reddit.

People have been saying this since 2007 :)

> I reckon that the people who don't make this complaint are the ones who just agree with the hive mind and don't suffer downvotes

No, plenty of people take pride in being at odds with the majority. They accept that they're going to get downvotes and accept them with a little pride.

That said, we don't like to see unfair voting on HN, and any time you feel a comment has been unfairly downvoted, you're welcome to email us (hn@ycombinator.com) to point it out and we can look into it.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

bataowt

a month ago

[flagged]

jemmyw

a month ago

The global population is not dwindling yet. At the current derivative of birth rate it'll keep keep growing for 50 years. Of course many places will experience a demographic crisis well before the global population falls.

wakawaka28

a month ago

Many places already are in demographic crisis. "Not dwindling yet" but the fix is in. It will dwindle as soon as old people start dying.

RickJWagner

a month ago

[flagged]

epistasis

a month ago

The vandalism was not anti-EV, was performed by a tiny number of extremists outside of any sort of Democrwric politics, so attributing it to both sides" doesn't make a lick of sense.

It's not like elected Democratic officials were saying "we hate EVs, everybody go out and vandalize Musk's businesses." There is no political movement among democrats to avoid the technological transition that the rest of the world is enthusiastically taking.

There is no comparison, the idea is absolutely ludicrous.

RickJWagner

a month ago

I would’ve respected the Democratic politicians more had they spoken out.

I think Fetterman did, to his credit. I don’t remember any others.

epistasis

a month ago

Ok so now we are asking people uninvolved to a tiny number of incidents to jump (how high?) on things they have no control over. Instead of focusing on the politics that is actually their domain: the unconstitutional destruction of institutions mandated by Congress by an out-of-control executive branch that is breaking the law. Let the FBI and police deal with local property crimes.

And even if more Democratic politicians condemned it, how would you hear about it? What media do you consume that would let you hear that voice? And what does your respect translate into?

Even asking Democratic politicians to condemn the violence shows that you are placing the onus on Democrats for something that they did not do. It's very strange behavior.

RickJWagner

a month ago

I’m thinking the Republicans were affecting EVs through legal means, while the firebombing anti-Musk vandals were acting like anarchists.

Any worthwhile politician should find it easy to pick a side on that one.

array_key_first

a month ago

Right, and materially - what do you think damages EVs more? A few fires, or structural policy choice deliberately intended to destroy the industry?

Yes, we can truly both sides everything. But we can't just claim things are the same when they're obviously not.

It's clear, and indisputable, that most EV adoption is coming from green policy, particularly around the economy. And who is most responsible for that? The explicitly pro-oil republicans, or not-them?

RickJWagner

a month ago

I’d love to have a nice EV, but for me they don’t make economic sense. I think that’d true for many.

Subsidies don’t seem to have permanently changed that.

We’ll also soon see how efficiently fully run down electric cars are to deal with at scale. They could be more harmful than we know.

wakawaka28

a month ago

[flagged]

array_key_first

a month ago

The policy choice to stop subsidizing EVs while, simultaneously halting their adoption from overseas, was intended to deliberately hurt the industry as a whole.

We know this because the people doing it are explicitly pro oil. Trump has gone on a few times now about how much he loves oil.

And, to be clear, the subsidies didn't go away, they moved. If we want to talk subsidies, oil is at the tippy top of that list. It's disingenuous to just ignore it. I mean, for fucks sake, MOST of the corn grown in this country is just so we can turn it into gas. Do a deep dive on that.

> If we leave the market alone, people will allocate resources where they are actually needed the most

If we left the market alone, we would've abandoned gasoline cars a long time ago. They're one of the most, if not the most, blessed products by our government. They get every special treatment, bailout, and subsidy in the book. Down to even the streets. 25 trillion on interstates alone.

wakawaka28

a month ago

>The policy choice to stop subsidizing EVs while, simultaneously halting their adoption from overseas, was intended to deliberately hurt the industry as a whole.

Chinese EVs are a Trojan horse. Even if they weren't, we cannot compete with the Chinese on cost and probably can't trust their quality standards.

>I mean, for fucks sake, MOST of the corn grown in this country is just so we can turn it into gas. Do a deep dive on that.

I know that. Ethanol somehow reduces certain kinds of supposedly harmful emissions, and it gives farmers someone to sell their corn to. We need to support farmers because a market spread too thin on farming means people would starve. If we had crop issues, rest assured that they would probably stop using ethanol until things got back to normal.

>If we left the market alone, we would've abandoned gasoline cars a long time ago.

We had EV cars a hundred years ago and abandoned them. Petrol works better. People could be encouraged to use electric trains or something but it turns out that city life is not practical or desirable for everyone.

>They get every special treatment, bailout, and subsidy in the book. Down to even the streets. 25 trillion on interstates alone.

Every country prizes its auto industry (if it has one) because it is related to nearly every other production capability. Building all the shit the military needs from scratch down to the raw material supply chain is not something that can be done in a hurry. Also, I don't know if you knew, but the interstates are used for rapid shipping and military movement. Trains still exist but they can't compete with trucks on highways for most things.

jemmyw

a month ago

> we cannot compete with the Chinese on cost and probably can't trust their quality standards.

This already played out with Japanese cars and it turned out it was the quality rather than the cost that was hard to compete with. I'm going to bet that EVs from Asia will be better built than anything made in the US or Europe before too long (if not already). They'll manufacture at scale and work out the kinks.

Western companies should have been doing this. I feel that Tesla tried and never really got there. Protectionism alone won't make it happen.

wakawaka28

a month ago

You're oversimplifying (to be fair, so did I). There is usually a cost/quality tradeoff. In the long run I think every major country could figure out how to make things with any given level of quality, and have certain costs in the same ballpark. But our labor costs are higher than nearly any other country. Chinese labor is currently very cheap.

>Western companies should have been doing this. I feel that Tesla tried and never really got there. Protectionism alone won't make it happen.

Just because some people online claim they want $10k EVs doesn't mean they would buy them. It also doesn't mean that we could make them for that price, at any level of effort. We pay auto workers WAY more than the Chinese pay theirs.

Protectionism is why we have not already been flooded with crappy cars from overseas. We do not allow garbage vehicles to be imported. Neither do other countries. Of course, forcing people to buy cars at higher prices or different quality points inhibits domestic innovation. But if the industry dies because of ideological purity, we would be worse off as a nation than we would be driving cars that cost slightly more or lack certain features.

jemmyw

a month ago

> some people online claim they want $10k EVs

I wasn't really thinking about cost, but quality, when I made the comment about what we should be doing. Quality at scale with better processes and automation. I think history shows its the scale that matters. Once you have scale you can improve quality across everything.

> Protectionism is why we have not already been flooded with crappy cars from overseas.

I don't live in the US, but another Western country, one that doesn't protect the car market because we have no car manufacturing here at all. I'm not seeing a flood of crappy cars. The Chinese EVs seem very good on price and (so far, new models take time to reveal problems and serviceability) quality. Regulatory protectionism is a good thing, but I'm also not convinced that folks in China would be happy with crappy cars either.

wakawaka28

a month ago

>Quality at scale with better processes and automation. I think history shows its the scale that matters. Once you have scale you can improve quality across everything.

I agree but I don't think it is possible to maintain an advantage in process or scale permanently in general. If you expect other countries to never figure it out, you're wrong. But there can be a situation where higher local costs in some areas are offset somehow by transport costs or strategic subsidies for domestic production.

>Regulatory protectionism is a good thing, but I'm also not convinced that folks in China would be happy with crappy cars either.

China has many protectionist policies, some of which they have leveraged to steal technology from foreign competitors. The Chinese people are not very happy with their vehicle options, but they do not have the option to buy foreign either for the most part. To give you an idea how unhinged it can be in China, I've heard of campaigns to force everyone to discard perfectly good appliances and scooters to stimulate their economy and eat up excess product. It's a bad move but that's how they roll.

Foreign cars cannot be imported en masse to China, and even the cheapest Western-made cars are more expensive than the average Chinese buyer wants to pay. The cheapest new car on the US market is about $25k I think, and the average is closer to $40k.

>I don't live in the US, but another Western country, one that doesn't protect the car market because we have no car manufacturing here at all. I'm not seeing a flood of crappy cars.

I think you'd be better off buying cars from neighboring countries. Anyway, I think every country that can support car manufacturing should do so for strategic reasons. What I was referring to is US-specific rules about what kinds of cars can be imported. Imported cars are usually the more luxurious models due to the rules. The rules as I understand them involve listing out features that each model has. Bare bones and low-quality cars are rejected even if they could be useful to someone, because this strikes a balance between letting people buy what they want and supporting local industry.

>The Chinese EVs seem very good on price and (so far, new models take time to reveal problems and serviceability) quality.

They are cheap but low-quality and no doubt infused with Chinese spy/sabotage tech. I'm sure that they can eventually improve on quality, but ultimately countries in the West that produce cars now need to guard their own industries against insurmountable foreign competition. Nobody can beat the Chinese on price, generally. Their government will eat a loss to put competition out of business, because they want to take over the world. So the best we can do is act accordingly.

logankeenan

a month ago

> We need to support farmers because a market spread too thin on farming means people would starve.

People would not starve if we stopped the ethanol mandate. In fact, corn prices would fall because the government would no longer force ethanol to be mixed with oil. Less demand would decrease the price.

wakawaka28

a month ago

I'm obviously talking about maintaining spare production capacity. Far worse things than higher prices would happen if we actually had crops fail. If the government stopped requiring ethanol, there would be fewer farmers (although a few might convert to other crops, some land is not suitable for many different crops).

jauntywundrkind

a month ago

The perps were patriots, resisting a murdering (among others, destroying USAID) sociopath committing mass treason against the government.

There were also like maybe a dozen actually destructive cases. No one got hurt. Total property damage was maybe a half million dollars? We're arguing over the dumbest pittances of nothing, even if we add an order of magnitude here. This is ridiculous.

Personally, your post seems to be strongly condemning, as if this was some absurd nightmare situation. I find it just ridiculous cowardice to pretend like this was an actual scary and bad problem. I'm not sure how many 9's of non violent peaceful protest it was, but it was a lot of 9's, and very little actual harm.

Yes, a brand had it's image destroyed. It did it itself. Telsa's leader set it's brand's name on fire. Molotov'ed itself into kingdom come. From which it seems impossible to recover. A brand that was early in on EV's. But it seems facetious and ridiculous blame this political suicide in public, with nazi salutes and chainsaws, on the left. Get real man; you have to be joking. The left didn't slow this down; what kind of a fool do you take us for?

RickJWagner

a month ago

[flagged]

jauntywundrkind

a month ago

Yeah, indeed, glad you came around; how did this poor nation vote for this crazy crazy crazy shit?

RickJWagner

a month ago

Legally, that’s how.

The pendulum goes back and forth. The right is in power now, so the left will point out deficiencies and promise improvements. If enough people believe things could be better, than the left will win power in the next election.

Then the cycle starts over again. It works wonderfully, and the USA has prospered because of it.

Sometimes immature people do crazy things because they’re narcissistic and want to try to circumvent the rules. They could do the right thing and try to bring change legally, but through either stupidity or lack of morals they instead go outside the law. People all across the political spectrum should view such people as a liability to us all.

jauntywundrkind

a month ago

Alas the pendulum just tore down 1/3rd the white house & Congress.

No respect in the slightest for this nation. The cycle starting over here is a bunch of disgusting plutocrats & Federalist Society nut jobs trying to strip America bare & argue up is down to ignore the bill of rights.

It's not legal. It keeps being shot down. The DoJ is fully in the pocket of the white house which is maybe technically legal but was a deeply deeply disturbing idea even a decade ago. What's happening now is an insult to law, and the terrormongers in power are at war with the justice system, because they have no respect for the law & want to abuse it.

A couple cars getting a bit messed up doesn't scare me at all. To be afraid of the people, to cower and scare as if it's gone great evil? It's so so so so small a trial, doing such little against our society and law. Imo to compare the two feels a farce.

aggregator-ios

a month ago

Unsurprising. GM/Ford will fail once again, along with the BMW/MB/VW and then the government will bail them out again... for the 4th time in 30 years. There is no incentive to be better.

Making sub-$100k EV's and then crying that consumer demand is low doesn't make any sense. Meanwhile, the Chinese and Korean EVs are absolutely eating this market by making sub 35k and 50k EV's respectively. In California, 1/4 new vehicles registered was an EV in 2024. By the end of 2025, it was 1/3.

The rest of the world will continue to embrace EV's, and the western (and Japanese) propaganda machine will do what it always does when the rest of the world does better: xenophobia, racism followed by screaming that EVs are a failure.

dash2

a month ago

Could you give some examples of the Western propaganda machine producing xenophobia and racism?

array_key_first

a month ago

Claiming keeping China out of our markets is a matter of national security because they are IP thieves and anti-democracy. Which, while might be true to an extent, is not the motivation - the motivation is domestic economic protectionism. You might also just say they make cheap junk unlike Americans.

usui

a month ago

It's good you also mentioned "(and Japanese)" regarding the propaganda machine. I don't think it will crash any time soon, but considering how much the economy is driven by the automotive industry, it's scary to see how much the incumbent companies are doing all they can to stifle electric vehicle advances. They aren't just ignoring them, they're doing all they can to spread FUD. To think there was a good start with hybrids too. There's also the ongoing hydrogen fuel attempt which starts to look like a sunk cost fallacy. If nothing changes, the decline is going to be a gradual irreversible ugly one layered on top of the demographic problem.

pveierland

a month ago

One of the big risks for manufacturers seem to be that EVs are fundamentally more compatible with automated production and allows simplifications to the car stack. It would seem that the costs and risks of the keeping the ICE stack alive will keep increasing over time as it loses relevance to EVs.

YesBox

a month ago

Every time I think about EVs, I become filled with dread thinking about what will happen if an area loses power for an extended period of time. I used to live in an area that had transformers blow from rain showers.

At least you could hook up a generator to pump gas at a gas station.

:/ Life's about trade offs.

Edit: Whoops.. Im not against EVs to be clear. But from a safety POV, having two different energy sources is safer than having one. Im not sure if you'll understand this if you haven't lived in a very snowy state.

pveierland

a month ago

You could also flip that and talk about the risks of when your gasoline supply get shut down due to some event. With an EV stack you can generate your power locally and add resilience that way.

jerkstate

a month ago

my area lost power for about 3 days last week and I ran all of my house's critical systems from my EV. it was great - silent, unlike the old generator, and not counting the sunk cost of the car, extremely cheap. Cost maybe $5 in electricity to keep the furnace, refrigerator/freezer, and internet on for 3 days, contrasted with probably $50 in gasoline for a similar amount of time.

If the outage had been longer, I could have made a half-hour trip to an area that had working EV fast chargers and come back with another 5-6 days of power for the house.

3eb7988a1663

a month ago

How expensive is the setup to tie in your vehicle into a house grid? Or can it be something as crude as running extension cables to plug into a powerstrip attached to the car?

jerkstate

a month ago

I did it cheap - I just ran extension cables from my car (previously from a generator). I have a manual transfer switch at my furnace to safely switch between utility power and extension cable power, and just replugged appliances. I think everything drew on average about 800 watts, up to maybe 1500. I split it between 2 1.8 kW 110v outlets in the car.

robocat

a month ago

How did you split the power from the two outlets into your one house supply?

tzs

a month ago

If your vehicle has V2H (Vehicle to Home) the way it generally works in newer cars is that you have a bidirectional charger that can be used to connect the car battery to an external inverter, which is then tied into your house grid the same way a generator would be, e.g., via a transfer switch on the circuit you want to power.

This isn't cheap--I think it was generally many thousands of dollars for the cars I looked at that had V2H when I was EV shopping--but it generally gives you something something in the 9-20 kW range of power. For most people that gets into the territory of "as long as you remember not to use the electric clothes dryer at the same time you are making a meal that uses the electric oven and all of its burners you can just continue as if power is not out".

I seriously considered it. In the summer I use around 8-10 kWh per day, and in most of winter under 40 kWh per day. With a car with an 85 kWh battery, keeping it in the 20-80% range, and keeping it near 80% when outages are likely, That would give me several days of backup power during a summer outage, and over a day during a winter outage. In 18 years in my current house I think I've only had one outage that went over a day, and never had an outage so widespread that I would not have been able to find a public DC charging station within 10 miles to recharge the car if an outage actually did last long enough to take it down to 20%.

But the cars with V2H were out of my price range, even before adding the cost of the equipment to use V2H.

If your vehicle has V2L (which is what the one I bought has) it is considerably cheaper. The car gives you one or two outlets similar to ordinary household outlets. Mine gives a single outlet, which you get by plugging an adapter into the charge port. With these you generally don't try to tie it into your house grid. You just run an extension cord (or two if your V2L provides two outlets) to where you want power.

Some people get some sort of socket installed on the outside of their house that a cable from the car's outlet can be connected to, with that socket connected to an indoor outlet. Me, I just leave sliding door open enough for an extension cord to go through, and then stuff the gap with some foam strips that I got at Home Depot.

It is surprising how much a single 120V 15A circuit can do. What I need to get through a one day power outage comfortably (which as mentioned would be an unusually long outage here) is: (1) power for the fridge, (2) power for an electric space heater, (3) power for my computer area and cable gateway (if cable is not out), (4) maybe power for some cooking, and (5) water to flush the toilet.

Any time the weather forecast even hints at something that could cause widespread outages I fill a bathtub with water for #5. For the rest I've been monitoring power used for those things with a bunch of energy monitoring smart outlets (Tapo P110M controlled by Home Assistant using Matter).

For #1, my fridge during a normal cycles draws 90-100W. During a defrost cycles it draws 400W. I have wireless thermometers in the fridge and freezer compartments so I can easily coordinate with other uses such as cooking to make sure I cook at a time when the fridge is going to not need to run for a while (which I can ensure by unplugging it).

For #2 my space heater is usually 1500W, but I've got another one that is supposed to be 1500W but due to age is only 1300W, and I've got year another one which is 1500W on high but has a medium setting that is 1000W. On all but the coldest days 1300W and probably 1000W would keep it warm enough as long as I'm warmly dressed.

For #3 my entire computer setup (Mac Studio, 27" 5K monitor, 24" 1920x1200 monitor, speakers, external Thunderbolt drive bay with 4 SSDs), a network switch, and a Hue hub is about 130W with short spikes to around 170W. If I turn off the second monitor that drops about 25W from that. The cable gateway is 15W.

For #4 I've got a microwave, a toaster oven, and a couple George Foreman grills. The microwave draws over 1900W for the first minute or so on high, but I can set it lower and it is an inverter microwave so on lower settings it actually reduces the amps drawn rather than just cycling between full and off. The toaster oven is 1000W and the biggest GF grill is 1200W.

I should be able to run all of these, as long as I take some care to not run too many at once. Some observations:

1. If I'm not going to use the computer for a while, such as when sleeping, I can run the 1500W space heater, turning it off when the fridge needs to run. I could actually then turn it back on once the fridge has started and gotten past its inrush current (20A, which my V2L has no trouble with). It would then be 1600W total unless the fridge is doing a defrost cycle than it would be 1900W. That's fine because the 400W defrost phase only lasts about 10 minutes and the non-defrost cycle only a bit over an hour, and it is around 3 to 8 hours (depending on how often I open the fridge I assume) after a cycle ends that it needs to run again. That counts as an intermittent load and so should be OK with my extension cords (rated 15A intermittent, 12A continuous).

2. If I'm using the computer I can switch to the 1300W space heater. That plus the computer both in continuous used would be under the 12A continuous rating of my extension cord. When the fridge needs to run I'd have to switch to a lower setting on the space heater until the fridge is done.

3. When I need to cook I'd just need to time it so it happens when the fridge won't need to run, and turn off the space heater while cooking. Nothing I'd be cooking in the toaster over or the GF grill takes more than 20 minutes. The computer stuff could remain powered during this.

4. If I don't have a bathtub full of toilet flushing water, I might be able to run my well pump from V2L. It's 120V with a 1/2 HP motor which would be under 1000W, but the inrush current may be too high. The specs say maximum of 44A, but from what I've read many people have had success with motors with that kind of inrush current, and the way the V2L system works it is safe to try it--worst case is the V2L safety systems shut it down. I just haven't gotten around to trying it yet.

Overall then it seems like that single 120V 15A from V2L will actually be enough to get me comfortably through most power outages. I had not expected that when I got the car.

Aachen

a month ago

That sounds like the extreme version of "but I need a fuel car because I want to drive it to France once a year for holiday". Driving something around all year for a once-a-year event is silly, but this is just insane. In a good life, you don't need this fallback from grid power even once in your lifetime!

At least, not beyond the inconvenience that is having to stay at home like 1 unplanned day per several decades. That's still three and three quarters of a nine of uptime even if you'd get the recent Iberian peninsula event every 10 years, and assumes you emptied the battery coincidentally the day before the outage. If you're not an EMT or power plant technician, you're doing more harm than good by being the person who can drive to work during a power outage and find that you're the only one there and nothing works anyway

rstuart4133

a month ago

> That sounds like the extreme version of "but I need a fuel car because I want to drive it to France once a year for holiday".

Having just made the 1,000km trip to the French Alps and back again in a Tesla Y, that's not a valid excuse any more. Back at home in Australia driving 2,200km from Mackay to Melbourne in a EV also a common enough holiday trip.

The 5,000km trip to Perth might be a stretch, but it's considered a major undertaking in a conventional car too. You are crossing some of the most remote places on the planet that has paved roads. The problem isn't charging. It's that you need to carry spares - like drinking water for emergencies, and spare tyres.

It's the tyres that would stop me from doing it in a Tesla Y. The Y doesn't have a place for a spare tyre, which is a disease that seems to afflict many modern cars of all types. It doesn't even come with a jack. Worse it needs special tyres that are hard(ish) to find in a major city, let alone 1000km from anywhere.

Unless grandma lives in a place without electricity, the one issue you won't have in Australia or Europe is charging. EV charging points are everywhere now. Most parking lots have them. I dunno what the situation is in the USA, but if EV charging points are a problem I'd suspect deliberate government interference because in Australia at least every one seems to have been built privately. Unlike Europe Australia does not have much in the way of EV subsidies, yet they are springing up like weeds.

I suspect the reason is location, location, location. Similar to petrol stations, but unlike a petrol station the upfront investment is low, they aren't manned so no wage costs, in a shopping centre they attract customers and they seem to markup the cost by 80..150%. What's not to like? So get in early and get the best spots.

Aachen

a month ago

I guess I didn't make it clear that this quoted argument was meant to sound silly. I know you can go on holiday with EVs! My mom was a bit apprehensive about spontaneously needing to find chargers and figure them out, and so I invited her to a weekend trip for just the two of us, one of the goals being to see together how charging works out in different places and countries and how often that ends up being necessary etc. It was no problem at all if you can figure out the different payment methods (most worked with a magic card she got with the car, others wanted paypal via a web portal etc.)

3eb7988a1663

a month ago

Considering how expensive cars are, I do find the trip-to-grandma reasoning useful. Most people want a single vehicle that can do everything. Dismissing that with, "Well just drive differently" or "You can do the hassle that is renting a car" is not a compelling sell. What if I want to do my vacation trips during the holidays where rentals are already booked?

I think full EVs are great if the lifestyle allows it, but plug-in hybrids seem a better fit for most people without requiring undue compromise.

Aachen

a month ago

What trip to grandma can't you do anymore with an EV?

> What if I want to do my vacation trips during the holidays where rentals are already booked?

The same as you do when any other part is booked out: go elsewhere or do something else. I don't buy a backup train in case the one I want is booked out one of the next ten summers

Consider also the lifestyle change that's "growing older more healthily" by not having a population sit in exhaust fumes for 2x the daily average commute length

Ekaros

a month ago

Why there focus on sitting in traffic. Instead of more visionary solutions like banning single family homes and razing them all to ground and replacing them with high rises next to offices supported by forced public transport? Surely that should be the true alternatives for use of ICE and not EVs.

rootusrootus

a month ago

We’ve already had some experiences with this in Florida after a hurricane. EVs do quite well, turns out, better in many cases than gas cars. The grid is a very high priority for fixing, more so even than gas supplies.

quasse

a month ago

> Every time I think about EVs, I become filled with dread thinking about what will happen if an area loses power for an extended period of time

A mid-size EV battery can easily store 60kWh of energy. That's enough to power a domestic refrigerator for ~12 days (assuming 200w average power usage, which is on the higher end).

I lost power for about a day last year and was very happy to be able to keep my fridge and some emergency lighting powered from an EV battery.

danaris

a month ago

Rooftop solar is getting cheaper, easier, more efficient, and more reliable every year.

If you live in an area that is poor enough that this is not an option, it loses power frequently due to weather, and no one in power cares enough to fix it, that genuinely sucks, and I feel for you. But, as sibling comments said, some other poor areas don't get gasoline shipments in a timely manner—being poor and neglected is just always going to suck in various ways, and the solution is not to avoid any technological advancements that remove the crutch that your particular poor and neglected area is using to get through it a little easier, but to find ways to reduce the poverty and neglect.

And, frankly, solar power and electric vehicles are both great tools to help with that, especially when used together.

eldaisfish

a month ago

More batteries.

I cannot believe this is a serious question.

A small battery pack can easily run most essential domestic services.

hypeatei

a month ago

The common advice among "preppers" and more anxious individuals is to never let your gas gauge go below half or 1/4 tank. I think people are much more anxious than they realize about running out of gas in a black swan event.

eurleif

a month ago

When a hurricane impacted my area last year, I kept seeing Facebook posts for a week or two afterward from people asking where to find gas. Meanwhile, the power never went out, so my EV was able to charge without issue.

beej71

a month ago

I worry about that, too, but with my gas car. :)

anonym29

a month ago

Unpopular idea: the personal automobile segment will shrink so rapidly when autonomous, ubiquitous, low-cost EV robotaxis reach widespread proliferation, that many of the existing automotive manufacturers today will become increasingly commercially non-viable and wind down operations anyway, only further accelerating a trend that has already begun due to the rampant, multifaceted rise in total vehicle ownership costs far above CPI inflation.

Environmentalists should be happy about this either way. A fleet of high utilization autonomous vehicles will increase utilization rates of each automobile that is still on the road substantially, serving more people with fewer raw materials. Not to mention that as of right now, all of the leading contenders for commercially viable robotaxi fleets are on EV platforms anyway.

It's not that, by and large, over a longer time horizon, new gasoline cars are going to replace these EVs disappearing from the consumer-owned automobile segment so much as EV robotaxis will be gradually replacing almost all consumer-owned vehicles. Enthusiasts will still have their track toys, but as an economic mode of transportation, the personally owned automobile is going the way of the horse and buggy.

ViewTrick1002

a month ago

> A fleet of high utilization autonomous vehicles will increase utilization rates of each automobile that is still on the road substantially, serving more people with fewer raw materials. Not to mention that as of right now, all of the leading contenders for commercially viable robotaxi fleets are on EV platforms anyway.

I think people overestimate the difference due to the amount of dead-heading needed.

8note

a month ago

one step further - the overall market for vehicle transport will go down as cities smarten up and build in ways they can afford, rather than scaling on bigger roads that go further away and require tons of infrastructure to service.

the bigger replacement will still be walking and scooter-like EVs that are cheaper for everyone

ksynwa

a month ago

It will shrink even further when everyone has their own cheap personal teleportation device

general1465

a month ago

As somebody who owns an EV, that thing won't catch on (Western or Chinese) unless infrastructure will start being operated by sane people. Currently the "app problem" instead of accepting a debit card on the charger is the biggest pain in the ass followed by unmaintained chargers, because government subsidized building them and not maintaining them. If these two pain points are not fixed, don't expect any kind of boom, more like slow withering out of EVs in western countries because it is constant PITA to use them.

kyriakos

a month ago

This is a US or local problem primarily. At least where I live there is a law in place requiring public ev chargers to be available with credit card payments and are forbidden from needing users to subscribe.

rcdemski

a month ago

I just finished a road trip from Colorado to SoCal by EV and this was the first trip where I didn’t once need an app to start charging. It was a nice change from my last one. Rivian’s network has been amazing now that non Rivian EVs can use it, and Ionna has appeared with delightfully retro futuristic looking equipment that doesn’t even have a backing app - just payment and go.

aggregator-ios

a month ago

A strange and anecdotal take. Infrastructure is already here. Millions of Americans are happily driving across the country charging their EVs just fine. You probably had a bad experience with a Chargepoint L2 charger in a garage that needed an app to operate and the FTUX on that is really painful. But, no one is using a L2 charger while roadtripping. L2 charging is primarily only for home or work use while parked for 8-12 hours. All the L3 chargers that people use during trips feature tap to pay.

As for maintenance, seeing 1 charger be down out of 10 is not an infrastructure problem. EV drivers figured out waiting in line and queuing just fine. And with most stations charging at L4 speeds, the wait time is short.

denimnerd42

a month ago

I bought an EV. it's fun to drive and it's affordable to recharge. However, I wouldn't buy another anytime soon. The depreciation is horrible. They are basically destined for a landfill once they no longer work. I can go to a junk yard and pull an engine for my Toyota tomorrow if I need to.

sagarm

a month ago

Massive depreciation means cheap used EVs. I don't see the issue.

Luxury ICE vehicles also depreciate rapidly, and yet they're quite popular. Plus EVs are likely to have longer usable lifetimes -- though with different issues -- than gas cars.

denimnerd42

a month ago

Luxury vehicles I've never understood, especially the non Lexus variety. so don't expect me to explain that.

Due to all the people in my fmaily I have 4 cars so I wouldn't go from 1 EV to 2. If the current EV gets destroyed I do think that used EVs are the right way to go and would buy a used one for sure.

They do still feel like throwaway cars. I'm not sure how you can argue they will have a longer lifetime. If the battery dies surely no one is replacing that at cost? It's more than the car is worth. At least with an ICE each part can be replaced in your driveway with a few hundred in tools and the part probably exists locally used or new.

bestouff

a month ago

I bought 1 used EV a few years ago. That thing seems like it won't age, everything works like day 1. My next car will be an EV, for sure.

wakawaka28

a month ago

Have you ever heard, "You get what you pay for?" If used EVs were worth a damn, they would drive down the prices of petrol vehicles too.

>Plus EVs are likely to have longer usable lifetimes -- though with different issues -- than gas cars.

You need to do some basic research, friend. EV batteries are not designed to be replaced at any sane price. They are built even more crappy than late model petrol vehicles. EVs depreciate rapidly because their useful life is short and problems are many. A 10 year old Honda Civic with a gas engine likely has another 10 or 20 years of life left.

An EV probably has a max life of about 15 years without a MAJOR overhaul which is likely not even doable for less than the price of a new EV, if you can even find someone willing to do it. Battery integrity is very hard to determine from sensors and external examination. If a cell has been damaged, it can start an inextinguishable fire which could take out a whole garage. These factors further hurt the resale value.

EVs were popular before petrol engines were perfected. But those EVs had swappable and relatively stable batteries and the cars did not have to conform to modern standards for acceleration, crash safety, and range.

condensedcrab

a month ago

Rather disappointing as an environmentalist. But the established freedoms of the car culture and price sensitivity in NA (probably parts of Europe, idk) hard to overcome — “what if I want to road trip though!”

That being said, I think Ford’s shift to a range extended EV makes sense for the truck space. I’m sure someone has crunched the numbers on emissions but getting more market share on hybrid/plugin/range extended EVs are definitely better then ICE only. Plenty of manufacturers are offering hybrids- however, the government has historically been too heavily lobbied to push for hybrids by default and reduce ICE only uptake with some kind of sin tax.

terribleperson

a month ago

Plug-in hybrids also have tax advantages in some jurisdictions.

E.g. in Georgia (US), EV owners have to pay a $234 annual alternative fuel vehicle fee.

Plug in hybrid owners may choose to have a alternative fuel license plate or standard license plate. If you opt for the standard plate, you don't have to pay the alternative fuel vehicle fee.

Aachen

a month ago

Wait, you pay extra for driving a cleaner vehicle when you live in that region? I'm not sure if I understand it correctly or if that's the full picture. Do EVs pay less for road taxes, emission fees, or get some different rebate that this fee is meant to balance?

rootusrootus

a month ago

It’s an attempt to get revenue that would otherwise be collected as gas tax. In practice it’s usually about twice as much as a gas car would generate in tax proceeds. Even in EV friendly states like the PNW.

Aachen

a month ago

Ah, I think I understand the difference: we pay taxes for electricity (it's ~35ct/kWh atm) and so there's plenty of proceeds for electric cars as well. Afaik for you it's normal to pay less than half, but then this flat fee for EV owners seems strange when everyone else (in the world, and those driving combustion vehicles) pays per actual usage

rootusrootus

a month ago

We tend to structure taxes with specific targets, rather than rely on general funds for everything. The idea being that public service funding is somewhat targeted towards those parts of society who take the most use of it. Gas taxes traditionally are how a good chunk of our road maintenance is paid for (a good bit comes from the general fund, too, but usually the gas taxes are restricted so they can only be spent on road-related expenses).

EVs throw a wrench into the plan, and so the flat fee is one currently popular attempt to even out the taxes amongst road users. Another idea that got floated was tracking mileage on all cars every year and then levying taxes based on that. But this gets shot down pretty quickly because people perceive it as government tracking of their movements, and that is unpopular.

Personally I think we should just make commercial trucks pay all of it. They already have the infrastructure and policies in place to collect mileage-based taxes, trucks do the vast majority of damage to the roads they regularly travel on, and taxing them would spread around the tax burden to all the citizens who benefit from the existence of the road network (i.e. you get goods shipped on roads, you ought to contribute even if you do not own a car). Local roads should predominantly be funded through property taxes IMO.

Seems like in other parts of the world pigovian taxes are way more popular. They are extremely unpopular in the US. AFAIK gasoline is largely the same price wholesale across the world, but Europeans (as an example) are completely okay with paying more than twice as much at the pump and so more than half the retail price is a pigovian tax.

danaris

a month ago

The difference is that, in many places, the gas taxes are specifically earmarked for road maintenance.

Of course, a better solution would be to pass legislation properly funding road maintenance from the general funds, and raising income taxes to support that. But raising income taxes, even on those for whom a 50% increase in income tax would mean zero change in their actual lifestyle, is politically anathema in these benighted times.

3eb7988a1663

a month ago

Is there any advantage for a hybrid car using the alternative fuel license plate?

fencepost

a month ago

In some cities with HOV lanes on expressways having an EV (with plates) lets you use those lanes with only one person in the car. How important that is to any given buyer obviously depends on where and when they're driving.

terribleperson

a month ago

It used to entitle you to use the HOV lane in Georgia, but it no longer does. You also have to pay an additional fee for it as it's a non-standard plate.

pornel

a month ago

I've already been roadtripping across Europe multiple times in an EV that needs 20 minutes to recharge per ~3 hours of driving (e-GMP). To me this is great, and wouldn't be faster in an ICE, since I need the breaks anyway. EV charging is unattended, so it takes less of my time than refuelling. The chargers are already everywhere, even in rural areas and in the freakin' Alps.

I know some people want a pee-in-a-bottle cannonball run, but that doesn't make sense to me. At distances where charging time starts to add up, flying is already much quicker.

ggm

a month ago

Battery swap. Great for industry growth, but the manufacturers selling into US and Europe decided not to go there and disputable claims "it can't work" and false applications of Gresham's law are used to explain why.

The Gresham's law thing: money is just a transfer token. Batteries have a use value. The agents who could profit from hoarding good batteries, don't get to achieve the income of renting them.

It's working fine for scooters, and in China for cars and trucks.

Everyone is now betting on solid state getting both range and rapid charge.

tengbretson

a month ago

The incentives for such a swapping system are completely busted.

Think of existing swap infrastructure out there, like propane tank swaps. People already use these systems to rinse defective or expired tanks all the time, and that overhead simply gets built into the price.

Now imagine if you could refill a propane tank at home by just plugging it in to your wall. The only reasons to use such a service are now exceptional cases like travel, or to move defective items.

For every new tank introduced to the supply, on average, how many good-for-good swaps will occur before the supplier gets a defective one? Take the cost of a new one and divide it by that average and that is the minimum overhead for a swap.

For batteries, that number is likely in the hundreds of dollars.

wrycoder

a month ago

An EV with a degraded battery and miles per charge is still very useful for retired people who are tired of traveling long distance and can plug in at home. There should be a good market for them.

I tend to keep my cars over 200,000 miles. Today's cars last a long time. Still, looking back over the past three year's expenses between 150,000 and 200,000 miles, almost all of them relate to engine peripherals - like a new exhaust system, work on emission controls, and a new gas tank, which an EV doesn't have - or brakes, which on an EV last much longer.

UniverseHacker

a month ago

Battery swap would just about eliminate planned obsolescence in cars- EVs should last just about forever if the batteries aren’t impossible to replace. The only real wear items in an EV drivetrain are a few cheap bearings that already will probably last a million miles. This would devastate the auto industry.

PlunderBunny

a month ago

What about the interior? There’s no one thing you can point to in a car interior and say “that’s no good after X years” but we’ve all seen the interior of old cars. The batteries in modern EVs will last the lifetime of the vehicle [0] but what factor(s) determine that lifetime are unknown I think.

0. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/07/heres-one-way-we-know-t...

UniverseHacker

a month ago

You can build a car interior that pretty much lasts forever, but it’s not cheap. There’s plenty of 60s and 70s Mercedes around with MBtex and zebra wood interiors that still look pretty much new after 6 decades of regular use. It’s eerie how good those old Mercedes interiors are, I’ve seen cars in the junkyard that were almost completely crumbled to rust powder, but the interior still was flawless. A good upholstery shop can also rebuild a car interior.

jmward01

a month ago

My two biggest concerns buying a used EV: - privacy (my #1 concern for any vehicle right now) - how long the used battery will last

I can only hope we solve batteries making EVs throw-away vehicles either with quick battery swaps or with batteries that truly last a lifetime.

rootusrootus

a month ago

Most EVs can have the battery swapped in less time than it takes to drop in a new engine. The real issue IMO is reliable availability of refurb batteries at a reasonable price, and reliability at least on par with an engine.

dboreham

a month ago

Battery life isn't a concern with current EVs.

UniverseHacker

a month ago

I’m not sure that is true. I’m a fan of classic European cars and a 70s or 80s Volvo or Mercedes is still a reliable and practical car. It does not seem likely that current battery tech is such that current EVs will have full range on the same batteries in 50 years- in my experience modern lithium batteries often loose 20 percent capacity in just 3-5 years even if you carefully manage them and limit full charge and discharge. And it does not seem like battery replacements are practical or affordable.

I just don’t see current EVs lasting like good quality ICE vehicles do when properly maintaining, because of battery aging.

ehnto

a month ago

I'm not sure that tracks with my experience, plenty of 20-30 year old cars still running around. The people upgrading every few years do it for financial or image reasons rather than because the car stopped working.

Warranty anxiety is probably a big factor too, which could be legislated. Imagine how reliable cars would be if a 30 year warranty on drivetrain components was mandatory.

UniverseHacker

a month ago

A quality car will last just about forever if you take care of it, Irv Gordon put 3.2 million miles on his 1966 Volvo and it was still in good shape at the end. But most people don’t maintain a car like that, however an EV has the potential to last like that with almost no maintenance.

mattmaroon

a month ago

I don’t think it’s planned (car companies have been competing heavily on lifespan for decades with results) but battery lifetimes seem to already be such that it can last basically forever.

But most people replace their ICE looong before the battery dies. I’d assume the same would happen for EVs too.

norir

a month ago

That sounds great. We can focus on planning the obsolescence of the auto industry rather than having the industry continue to extract rents on society. Of course this will be a political nightmare, but it does seem like truly the sooner the better.

lisbbb

a month ago

You are not allowed to decide how everyone else should live. But just for the sake of argument, take a trip to Montana and get back to me on how well universal EVs would work in much of the US. They're fine for urban and suburban areas. They aren't so great for agricultural work, and certainly not great for people who live in places you probably haven't visited. I don't even think EVs are a solution for people in Nebraska, let alone places where the weather gets really extreme.

condensedcrab

a month ago

I think that’s where a range extended EV makes plenty of sense, and why I don’t think it needs to be a blanket ban on ICE for pure EV only.

user

a month ago

[deleted]

api

a month ago

Our family has EVs and rents a gas car for the occasional road trip. We did the math and it’s cheaper than buying and owning and doing the maintenance on a gas car.

If we did long road trips a lot we’d probably get rid of one EV and get an older gas car for that. It wouldn’t be the daily driver.

myko

a month ago

It would be nice if the cars from China could be purchased in the US

api

a month ago

It would be the end of the US auto industry. Of course they kind of deserve it. The Japanese also beat them to a pulp for much the same reason: refusal to offer practical affordable efficient vehicles to the silent majority who just want a fucking car.

blell

a month ago

It is only hazardous if we can’t get rid of the insane regulations that have been imposed. And I’m pretty sure we will in the next ten years or so.