Interesting thought... If those with higher income, who presumably can charge overnight, keep buying new electric cars, will the market for used electric cars saturate because others don't have this privilege (that much) and other infrastructure is not good enough yet?
If you want everyone to drive an electric car, then you need to make it the value buy when it comes time to replace their current car.
People are keep cars longer, might be time for another cash for clunkers program with an extra incentive to replace it with a electric.
But until interest rate go down and car price level off, people are not rushing to get cars.
Poor people will be able to buy used electric cars in the future. They'll still pay the same for the electricity as rich people, just like for gasoline.
If I were to skewer my own arguments, I'd aim at the batteries. They wear out, they are still expensive, mass production doesn't appear to bear the same cost reduction opportunity as other products...
Yes, right now electric vehicles are certainly an "upper middle class" thing. But that's largely because EVs are still new and the "average" person just can't afford to buy a brand new car every few years.
However, in 5-10 years we should start to see a mature market for good quality used EVs, making them much more accessible. At that point, better reliability, better driving experience, much lower operating costs, etc will make EVs the obvious choice for many, if not most, buyers.
Perhaps, but I fear that even if you build a $18k electric car, you will still have a hard time getting a lot of people on board due to the limited lifespan and high replacement cost of batteries (at the moment at least). I've never paid more than $5k for a car, and I see a lot of people in my (pretty poor) state driving $1k clunkers. My current car is 18 years old, meaning if electric it would be nearing the end of the useful life of the second set of batteries. ICEs well maintained, can have a very long lifespan.
I'm not saying that these issues can't be overcome, but I think it will be a much longer time before these types of vehicles trickle down to the lower 50% of the US customers, let alone, poorer nations, given that the current state of electric cars doesn't even begin to meet the needs of many people in the less dense parts of flyover country (yes range!)
I realize my argument made it seem like I was using the sales data to justify my claim, but that wasn't really what I was going for - my mistake. I am aware of the demand issues, but the question is how far does that scale?
The current market for EVs seems to be middle to upper class city-dwellers who own their own homes and commute less than an hour each day. That is certainly a sizable market that will scale to a point, but what about after that point? What about rural folks who have no need for an EV and are perfectly content to drive ICE vehicles the rest of their lives? What about people who refuse to buy EVs for ideological reasons? What about car enthusiasts who love the roar of a V8? What about people who can't afford to spend 35k+ USD on a new (and base) model EV? What about people who need heavy duty trucks? What about people who have large families and need something with generous seating capacity and the ability to tow the occasional boat or RV for family trips?
Point being, there are large parts of the market that are either underserved because there isn't an EV that matches their needs, or they have no desire to be served at all.
Knowing that gas cars have a limited future and can foresee running costs rising sharply while resale value plummets incentivizes people to buy electric already.
People without a ton of disposable income probably aren’t buying electric vehicles today (or brand new cars in general). The industry will cater to those folks in the medium term, I think; but for now I think it’s just one of the trade offs of being an “early adopter”.
And yet people on hacker news or other high income forums seems to say "Just buy a EV".
It's the "Let them Eat Cake" of 2022. Poor people driving economy boxes and living in a 4th floor walkup apartment with 3 roommates aren't buying an EV... even if the savings are better long term.
It's the "Buy a better pair of boots they'll last longer".
And yet - people seem oblivious - like Marie Antoinette that the poor class can't simply upgrade to solar and use an EV and avoid the gas prices which hit their bottom line pay every week in the form of higher prices and higher costs to travel.
Who cares about bread when it costs so much to drive to the gas station? Let them get an EV
An expensive phone is about 500-1000€. A cheap EV is in the 20K neighborhood, and the functionality is pretty bad compared to a cheap second-hand utility car (pretty hard to travel outside your city). Even when regulations push prices up, it's still far more economical to buy a cheap gas car than a cheap EV.
Even in Europe there are plenty of countries where many people can't afford an EV. They can afford second-hand ICE cars. So unless there can be a second-hand market of EVs for about 6K without worrying about the battery, and with a similar functionality of a second-hand ICE car, then yes, EVs will be for upper income brackets.
And I'm not even mentioning that most people lives in apartment buildings, and it's very likely that your car sleeps in the street.
I've seen this discussions around here. People won't buy EVs in the near future because they are expensive, have very low range, you have to have a house, or own a flat (because nobody will pay for a charger installation in a rented flat) with garage, etc.
What people is buying is little electric Scooters. Most of them are <500€ and you can charge em everywhere. It makes sense for travelling inside a city. Spending 20K for not being able to go from Santiago to Madrid, doesn't make any sense.
electric cars cost way too much, homeownership is harder than ever, its hard to see an economy where people are buying a lot of expensive electric cars in bulk in the near future
But also more then what a good part of the population is willing to afford to pay for a car. Weather hear or in the US a lot of people buy second,third,fourth hand.
And that's a problem I think massively underestimated, a least currently electric cars are kinda badly suited for being resold, especially if they come from companies with pretty bad service/walled garden reputation like Tesla.
Eventually we will but it will take a shake-up of the market by an outsider who does not have an existing business based around cars priced at current levels. Electric cars are far less complex than ICE-based vehicles so there is no real reason for them to be more expensive. The current excuse for their high prices is the cost of the battery pack but battery prices have been on a downward trajectory for a long time now. Eventually a newcomer will find the lure of selling an EV for half of the lowest priced competitor too large to ignore and the rest will be history. That newcomer will be derided by the existing sellers and the media which depends on advertising income from those established actors but that attack won't succeed if the increase in price-performance is large enough.
reply