Technology

Namely, the average lifespan of a ICE car is 12 years. While it’s definitely better for the environment to replace a functional ICE with an EV after two to four years, buying a new car when you don’t need to is a big financial cost and so it shouldn’t be surprising that many people are waiting until their cars get old to replace them.

Precisely! And while the ongoing environmental cost of burning gasoline is a concern, there's also the environmental impact of the chassis, the internal electronics. That's a sunk cost right now. And that's not counting making sure you have access to charging infrastructure. When I was renting, I simply didn't have street access to a regular home plug. And my workplace also didn't have any electrical infrastructure in its parking lots (despite years of begging from employees.) There are still a lot of reasons an EV might not make sense for individuals.

All that said, my next vehicle will definitely be an EV since I can charge at home now. But only when our car gives up the ghost from a cost to repair perspective.

We simply don’t have the time left anymore for any one solution to be expanded to the point it can solve the problem on its own, if that was ever possible to begin with.

This is such an important point. We are too late in the game to have the luxury of choosing a single sector or a single solution to pursue before the others. We need to hit all sectors with a diverse barrage of solutions, and we need to do it yesterday.

To quote UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, "In short, our world needs climate action on all fronts -- everything, everywhere, all at once."

While I agree with most of the articles points, even if they and the title are nearly all phrased in very hyperbolic language and the extent of the “slowdown” has been rather overstated given that sales are still increasing

I'd argue it's an outright falsehood. "Slowdown" implies that sales are going down. They're actually going up, but the pace of acceleration has gone down. The subtitle in the article here:

Fewer people are buying electric cars — the slowdown hints at a problem at the heart of America's EV push.

This is literally false. More people than ever are buying electric cars.

What has actually happened is that the EV market went from supply-constrained (where manufacturers were building them as fast as they could and selling each one they built to waitlisted customers) to some models becoming demand-constrained (where manufacturers are building them faster than they can sell them).

This is due to a number of things, only some of which apply to the industry as a whole. First, there are some models that just aren't really that heavily desired by the public, at the price points they're being sold at. The Ford F-150 is a pretty good example, where Ford misinterpreted the demand from people who signed up on the waitlist, and then chose to prioritize the highest priced trim levels (rather than the entry level F-150 Lightning). So even if people are interested in the entry-level $50,000 F-150 Lightning still have to wait (and oh, by the way, Ford is raising the price to $55,000) while the $90,000 models pile up in dealer lots.

Second, dealers are actively sabotaging EV sales. Everyone I know who has tried to buy an EV from a traditional dealer has been steered towards a hybrid or a traditional ICE vehicle, and sales staff seem to be intentionally ignorant about the EV models sold by their dealership. The EV maintenance model is a threat to dealer business models, where service/maintenance is a very important part of their revenue, so the incentives of the dealer aren't lined up with the incentives of the manufacturer.

Third, the traditional automakers released their EVs into some headwinds, because interest rates have increased, and Tesla had the profit margins to simply be able to drop prices in a way to make the newest non-Tesla EVs seem like a bad deal in comparison. The average Tesla transaction dropped from $65k in October 2022 to $50k in October 2023, with big price cuts on almost all of its models.

So electric vehicle sales are up. The difficulties that some manufacturers have even in this climate of sales going up is, in many cases, specific to those makes and those models.

we don’t have the grid capacity

For those not in the industry, "grid capacity" here doesn't refer to power generation, but power distribution. With renewables, generation is comparatively easy (storage notwithstanding). But getting the power where it needs to go is not. Right now, thanks to a grain-oriented steel squeeze, the lead time on transformers is longer than the commissioning time for an entire solar farm. Switchgear is also hard to get your hands on, especially with SF6 being phased out.

The good news is that these long lead times are caused by demand. Right now, utilities are racing to expand and reinforce the grid in preparation for the next 30 year's worth of EV demand, renewable storage/transmission, and distributed generation. Utilities are risk-averse by nature, and do not move without conviction, so it's rare and noteworthy to see this kind of industrial momentum.

Source: I design MV distribution equipment in the US.

I agree, but personally I'm glad they're putting a strain on the grid. The grid has been crumbling for decades, I'm happy to see new infrastructure being built to support the loads - and most of it renewable.

We can't immediately convert all cars to EV, we don't have the grid capacity or enough charging stations, yet.

Well sure, but there's no suggestion of converting "all cars" to EVs "immediately". Even if ICE cars were banned for new sales tomorrow, it'd still take a decade and more for the existing rolling stock to gradually be replaced by new vehicles.

A 10 year period for utility companies to gradually upgrade their infrastructure doesn't sound desperately unrealistic.

We also don't have the grid support for everyone to start charging at home. At least not where I live. At the moment even solar panels are becoming a problem, major peaks during sunny days, where energy prices even go negative and people with dynamic energy contracts turn panels off.

It's framed very inaccurately in the news as well. You'll see articles about how ford reports people aren't buying their electric lineup. Meanwhile the dealership is marking them up so high that they are now priced too high for the target market. But the articles never mention that part

The article doesn't whiff on this, it lays out why it's too expensive.

1. The strategy was to replace gas cars with EV 1-to-1 to solve the climate crisis and save the car industry.
2. Gas cars have gotten bigger over the years because of marketing, bravado, "safety", and regulation-skirting.
3. EV-makers have largely bought into that and made all these huge EVs.
4. Huge EVs require bigger batteries which are more expensive in raw materials and manufacturing.
5. Huge batteries are heavy and dangerous.
6. Range anxiety has encouraged even more oversized batteries on already oversized cars.
7. Huge batteries are the main source of cost, meaning EVs end up being a luxury.

So, yes--they are too damn expensive, however a vehicle that meets our actual needs wouldn't be, if it existed in North America.

For sure drive your car until the wheels fall off, but all cars have some kind of proprietary software on them. It is a big sticking point in the fight for right to repair. As far as free goes, Tesla and BMW are really the only ones being shitty about subscriptions and shit like that in their software. I have a VW ID.4 and never have to pay anything to use the software.

Similar reason for me. Although, as long as I could get a car without internet connectivity, I would even be fine with non-free software but even that is too much to ask nowadays. This also applies to gas or diesel powered cars though, so I will stick with my sedan from 2015 too, might even have the engine redone completely in a few years if there are no proper options by then.

It's also a downside. Now we have bought a Leaf I never want to buy an ICE again. But here in NZ there aren't many second hand options for a reasonable price. Luckily prices are dropping.

That's part of the issue. In my case though, I easily spend more than $5500Aud on petrol a year. And especially due to all the new battery tech being released like sodium ion, and an increased number of second hand cars, prices will likely rapidly drop and range will rapidly increase too.

It's really a tradeoff between upfront cost (EV), and long term cost (Cars).. And the upfront cost keeps dropping, and long term cost of cars will keep growing (rightfully, as there should be environmental and health taxes on it)

The cost is certainly a factor, but the thing about fueling up quick is a mindset shift. Imagine instead of fueling up once or twice a week, you start everyday at Full. The places the charge time becomes relevant is road trips, and there are currently cars that can go from 25-80% in 15 minutes. While that is not all, most of them do it in 20-30 minutes. On any road trip that is enough time to use the restroom or grab a bite. Having done road trips in an EV, the longer stops and potentially adding a couple extra stops does not significantly effect arrival time, and I feel way less fatigued when arriving.

The first article is specifically about Tesla which is a reason I don't recommend them. The second article is not specific to EVs, it talks about all modern cars. Build quality non existent? Have you tried an EV yourself? I drive a 2016 Leaf and it feels better built than ICEs from that time.