Public AC charging in Germany isn't great, but DC/Fast charging is quite good. I traverse the entire country with a Kia Nero EV, and that's not really a problem using either EnBW, Tesla or Ionity chargers. Besides these networks there are enough others with mostly nation-wide coverage (but not as cheap as these).

(EnBW and Ionity for 39ct/kwh, tesla for a bit more or less, depending on time and location)

> poor public charging infrastructure in Germany

Dunno, had a trip through it last year, there are more than enough chargers. Some of them were literally free.

I have 70kWh battery though. Also, I paid much less than 40k for my chinese SUV. The software is buggy though, a random reboot on motorway doesn't feel nice.

You're making me very happy with my decision in 2021 to resist the appealing design of the Honda and buy an id3 with a reasonably sized battery.

Also your in winter are you running the heater constantly? I find just dressing for outdoors, leaving the heater off and using heated seats/wheel means I only lose maybe 15% range.

Inversely I leased a Fiat 500e for a year in Detroit Michigan and had no issues with range ~130 miles. I would plug it in nightly as I had a level 2 charger installed at my house. The experiment was quite successful. I just didn’t like front wheel drive on somedays with heavy snow. I used it for commuting to work, buying groceries and visiting friends nearby. It met my needs and I feel a slightly bigger car with 4 doors and 200-250 mile range should be sufficient for most of the people (assuming it is affordable)

Might I suggest choosing an EV that has more range?

The Mini Cooper E, the one adapted from the i3 platform from 2013 but without the nice parts of the i3 such as the light carbon fiber monocoque, the aluminium frame, and the rear wheel engine and rear wheel drive?

Basically there's an adoption curve. "Western carmakers retreat" is showing they pushed ahead of the curve and got bitten so they're correcting.

THIS is where public subsidies makes the difference, finding and spending the way out of the pain points to make the adoption curve steeper.

I hate to say it, but doesn't a lot of this have to do with your poor choice of vehicles? You bought a 35kW battery-equipped EV and replaced it with an EV with a 32.6kW battery. What did you expect?

I don't see poor software as a problem that's related to the powertrain. My ICE vehicle from 2016 has poor software that never gets updates.

You overspent on a Mini because Minis are overpriced vehicles. On mobile.de I see a used VW ID3 (82 kW (Pro S)) with 60000 km miles on it listed for 22000 euros. I see a Kia EV6 GT-line with 18000km (77 kW) for 33000 euros.

I totally understand the issues with broken and insufficient chargers, as we have that same issue in the USA, but that's why you maybe avoid getting the kind of vehicle that has some of the smallest battery on the market if you need that range.

I could see a future integrated feature among cars brands doing this with their cameras. Teslas in your area on the road are already monitoring everything, then flag available street parking spots so autopilot cars looking for parking are dispatched to the nearest one. No need for drones if you already have a sufficiently large fleet of cars on the road.

Dear god, the street level noise pollution of flying taxies, but democratized so everyone can have it! :/

Makes me happy for once about the restrictive drone policies where I live.

> The other day I was joking with friends about how I'd love to have a car with a deployable surveillance drone to help with parking and so if I'm stuck in traffic I could have my drone scout ahead and see what's up.

The Yutong electric buses that Ember use around where I live have something like this but I guess it just uses the cameras mounted around the bus. When the driver closes the door, the central screen on the dashboard does a kind "fake drone flyaround" of the bus, even showing reasonably realistic depictions of vehicles on the road around it.

Basically the Larry David periscope car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQRm1cg8T8I

His idea was like a back up camera, but front-facing and elevated (retractable).

Make the drone carry a couple of orange cones (or just look like an orange cone itself) and you can even have it save the spot it finds until you get there.

Get a deposit down on the Xpeng AeroHT! https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/xpeng-land-aircr...

This is both really cool and also fucking insanity - the lengths we’ll go just to avoid building better train service.

> Sooo... where's the retreat?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gqyyly9v8o

    Volkswagen has said it will cut 50,000 jobs in Germany by 2030 as its profits dropped to their lowest level since 2016.

    It said it was hit by US import tariffs, intense competition from China and high restructuring costs from the shift to electric vehicles.

    Honda to lose as much as $15.7 billion this fiscal year.
    The write-down is latest in industry grappling with EV transition.

> Sooo... where's the retreat?

As the article says; "In the US"

Renault Mégane and Scenic EVs are also great.

Porsche... Eye roll

GM has a ton of EV models and has been doing a ton of EV investment, R&D, etc. How can you say they’re somehow not EV enough? I think this article’s author is an absolutist and believes any company that doesn’t go 100% EV regardless of market demand is stupid. I think that’s irrational. And I love my EV. But it’s going to take 20 years or more for the entire country to even get to a place where all your suburbanites can afford the $5,000-$10,000 for the panel upgrade and wiring to charge at home. And they are the easiest to win over. Urban is tougher (and I assure you, many people drive in cities!) due to lack of residential garages, and parking garage facilities don’t have sufficient capacity to “just” add 500 level 2 chargers. Typical 500-car garages today have about 5. And of course rural has longer range needs which raises cost.

Or if you’re one who thinks home charging isn’t a necessary prerequisite to make EVs attractive, it’ll take that long for fast charging tech to improve even more, and for those public fast chargers, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and need tremendous amounts of power which needs to be brought in, are gonna get built.

And you might argue either is a roadblock that can simply be blown up by strategically placed money bombs, but no Western government has that much money just lying around. The $7,500 handout (that mostly padded EV margins) was the best they’re gonna do. The government isn’t going to bankroll every shopping center in America to put in 10 350kw fast chargers at a cost of $5,000,000 per site, or pay $7,000 for every home to get a service upgrade. And even if they did this, it would take a decade just to build and install all that to get to 90% EV adoption. My point is gas cars are going to be popular and sell well for 1-2 decades more at least. “Retreating” from those would be the real bonehead move.

Tesla is also retreating from the being a car company, at least they don't see being a company that sells electric cars to consumers being a great business to be in long term.

Tesla is a hype company more than a car company. Also, me personally, I consider them all rolling coffins.

The third-biggest BEV maker is VW AG, a legacy car brand. Likely soon the second, given their hefty (33% last year) growth vs Tesla’s modest shrinkage; unless something changes they’ll overtake in a year or so.

I feel that Renault is also standing out as a company that's going in the opposite direction.

I thought Totyota is still one of the EV leaders. Alongside Kia and Hyundai?

Electricity costs more in Europe than the US, but so does gasoline, by about the same ratio. EVs in the US have lower running costs than internal combustion cars.

The EV industry in general is growing quite well in Europe. It's just that China is capturing the biggest share of that growth.

French manufacturers, on the other hand, are experiencing a revival by prioritizing EVs and treating ICE vehicles as a secondary focus. If you look at the numbers across the Volkswagen Group (the entire AG, including Audi, Porsche, and Skoda), a clear trend emerges: the only brands currently in trouble are those that abandoned an EV first approach.

Skoda and Cupra are thriving, and it’s not just because of their affordability. They are steadily increasing their EV sales percentages while heavily promoting them as first class citizens within their portfolios. Porsche, by contrast, is hitting roadblocks because they are trying to retrofit their new EV first models to accommodate ICE powertrains. Meanwhile, Volkswagen Nutzfahrzeuge just posted their best quarter ever, driven specifically by their ICE lineup.

The main problem for German automakers was losing their core identity by chasing a "Modern Luxury" business model prioritizing low sales volume in exchange for high per unit margins. Electricity prices are simply not a factor in their demise.

I'd love to see that math

Oh please, it hit two euros a liter thanks to the orange turd

By limiting imports and offering alternatives in home. Also, the myths about reliability ads a lot.

The same way Chinese tech companies “compete” with Western ones: By not permitting them to do business in China.

Tarrifs mostly

On long-term support and parts availability perhaps - I seriously doubt most of Chinese models bought now will have parts readily available in 5+ years.

VW (and their other brands) and BMW have good new EVs coming to market now, while Toyota is waking up too. They will survive I think. Stellantis though, not sure about them. And many Chinese carmakers will be gone too.

Volkswagen is on a faster pace to become irrelevance due to dependency on diminishing exports, high energy input costs in Europe, and labor union which wont't let them right size the company. Good luck VW

I don't think this is true, at least for Tesla, which has a very mature and wide range of chargers almost everywhere. AFAIK, Rivian can also use Tesla chargers now.

And Lucid.

I’m not sure it’s the infrastructure so much as the cost for these vehicles. Well, Tesla has political problems but Rivian and Lucid don’t - but they are priced quite high.

It's not even the infrastructure. It's generally a lot of FUD. Everyone fears they have to buy a 800-mile range SUV for the frequent roadtrips they take apparently. I commute 1000 miles every month. That is 4x DCFC every month vs 2.5 petrol fillups for the same period.

I also know a lot of drivers who plan to get an EV when their current car stops working. A lot of people are feeling economically anxious right now. They know gas is a dead end so they are squeezing every last mile out of the cars they currently own. Car companies can't exist on the wishes of their customers. Everyone is doing a lot of hoping that its the right time. The EV rebates were a great tool in getting to that tipping point but they were cancelled too son in my estimation.

AlSo by goverment lobby, tHe mosT equal branch of modern USA

How is the Western approach more sustainable? Once EVs get bootstrapped, they are better than ICE vehicles in almost every respect. Once your society is built around EVs, there’s barely a reason to use anything else. That feels a lot more sustainable than having a hard dependency on fossil fuels in perpetuity.

Yes it's bad when you're set to pick big overconfident losers. See also: 1929

No way that European car companies give up that easily. I bet you didn't know that VW is currently the #1 EV seller in Europe and #1 car seller in China (with a small but increasing fraction of EVs there, though):

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...

the question is where they'll be able to sell them: Europe is going to ban the sale of ICE cars from 2035 so, unless someone finds a loophole, that's a whole market gone.

Zonda is a model from Pagani Automobili.

Gas powered cars can't fully replace EVs either.

After three years and 50k miles with a Model X, the idea of buying a non-EV seems ridiculous.

Everybody knows it won't fully replace it.

It's impossible to go on a long off-road travel with the EV equivalent of 50L of gas in a jerrycan.

But some are twisting the narrative to say that because of that reason EV will fail.

Millions of people could use an EV in their daily life, just like I can go without a pickup in my daily life and rent one whenever I need one.

> Fully

Everyone's willing to admit that.

EV tech is there to replace the vast majority of gas powered cars.

We don't need to get to "fully" to have a replacement event. Horses can travel down trails that cars cannot, that didn't save them.

> no one is willing to admit the EV tech isn't just there yet

The easy explanation is that it's because it is there. The article is about the rapid decline of companies that believe otherwise. They aren't doing to great.

I think 80 or 90% of new cars in northern Europe are electric.

Saying EV tech isn’t there to replace gas is like saying gas tech isn’t there to replace diesel.

Gas powered cars are niche or legacy.

98% of new car sales in Norway are EV at this point. How do you admit something that is not true?

I only hear people in certain countries say this. Meanwhile many countries with rough terrain and long roads are already all in on EVs.

The EV tech seems to be good enough already in China

They just have to replace most use cases. There will come a point, not too far away, where battery progress makes them cheaper to purchase than petrol cars (for many use cases the point may already have come where TCO is lower, and Trump’s oil crisis will only speed the arrival of that point for more use cases.)

That's a strange statement considering that 20% of new vehicles sold globally are EVs. And that's not just China propping up the numbers: 20% of new vehicles sold in the EU are EVs as well.

Obviously that's not "fully replace" territory, but that is most definitely a critical mass beyond being a niche vehicle category.

The EV market globally is growing much faster than the ICE market. At the rate of technology and pricing improvement, EVs taking over the majority of sales is almost inevitable.

It's just not growing as quickly in certain markets like the USA, and many predictions were too aggressive.

Who is really going to prefer ICE vehicles when we start seeing median MSRP vehicles start to reach customers with 400-500mile+ range numbers? This isn't some crazy idea (e.g., see the 2026 BMW i3, estimated range of 440 miles in an entry level premium sedan - in 5-10 years that's the kind of spec you'll be seeing in a cheap Kia).

There just isn't that much more progress in battery technology and pricing left to achieve to make ICE fully obsolete, and that is exacerbated by oil prices that are now set to rise for years to come.

Strawman, basically no one argues "fully". Yet.

It’s invariably made from fossil fuels.

If you want to make synthetic fuels it’s similar effort and efficiency to make methane as it is to make hydrogen. In fact converting one to the other is trivial and the conversion from methane is how we actually make hydrogen today.

Hydrogen has a lot of issues. It’s a pain to store since it’s corrosive and does not liquify or stay liquified without cooling and extremely strong pressure vessels. Methan is already used pretty commonly. A lot of busses run on methane today.

So we’re taking methane, a fuel that’s used in transit already and that we gave a shortage if right now since it makes fertilizer and the hormuz straight is blocked. We’re taking that precious methane and converting it to hydrogen (not at all green to do this and the carbon goes into the air at this point) and then we’re awkwardly transporting this and storing it in cars with all the problems that has just to burn the hydrogen in the car pretending that we never released co2 in the process.

Now you might say ‘yeah but in theory you could use electricity to make hydrogen’ and I’ll point out that’s grossly inefficient to just using a battery electric vehicle and it’s not at all done at an industrial scale due to the reality that it was always just a way to sell fossil fuels with an obfuscation of where the release of carbon occurs and never intended an actual reasonable way to store electricity.

Hydrogen ICE is not a viable technology for many reasons. Combustion temperatures would require exotic alloys to manage and the power density is quite low. I remember BMW made a H2 ice version of one of their large V12s and it made like 125hp...

People have been trying hydrogen. It’s generally a bit of a disaster.

And increasingly I think that is being quietly admitted. It has a weird afterlife in buses (where the range potential is interesting for long-range intercity routes), but even there, at this point, it’s marginal. The Irish transport authority placed an order a few years back for 800 BEV buses… and three hydrogen buses, for instance. A decade ago, BEV buses and hydrogen buses were both basically experimental. Today BEV buses are ordered by the thousand; hydrogen buses are still experimental.

(Also I expect hydrogen _trains_ to hang around as a concept for a while, and it _may_ actually be viable there where adding overhead lines is not.)

> It would allow legacy vehicles to stay on the road

How? Hydrogen cars _are electric cars_; they just have a fuel cell instead of a battery. If you’re imagining that they have, er, a four stroke engine that they burn hydrogen in or something, yeah, that’s not a thing.

I suppose if you wanted to get _really_ weird you could have a hydrogen turbine car? But again, that’s nothing like current petrol cars tech (and would be horribly inefficient relative to the fuel cell ones).

In my personal experience, range anxiety is much stronger with hydrogen because hydrogen stations are very rare and unreliable.

Also, a hydrogen car needs a battery anyway. Just make a bigger battery and skip the hydrogen part. Cheaper, simpler, lighter,…