I used that as a point where I think there would be a market, if the price was cheap enough. Vehicles like the Leaf I mentioned in my post were around 80 miles per full charge, which I’m sure contributed to anxiety. I’m POSTIVE many/most American buyers wouldn’t be interested in “only” 120 mile range at the current price points, but at around 20k? I think there’d be a number of people that would work for. Maybe the number needs to be higher, but I’m trying to find a price point where you need fewer batteries to keep weight and costs down.
And again, our new PHEV with a manufacturer stated 42 mile all-EV range (we get a good bit more than that with our driving) can my wife’s entire round trip commute of 26 miles on half a charge, and get that entire amount back in less than 9 hours over overnight charging on level 1 (!).
Range anxiety is real, but the concerns (IMHO) are excessive for people who can charge at home. With 120 mile range, my wife could, as a random example, drive to and from work nearly 5 days a week, and only have to recharge once.
But my numbers aren’t meant to be hard and fast, just my best guess at what might work and be able to compete (with the aforementioned substantial tariffs to offset Chinese efforts to flood the market even at a loss/near loss) with Chinese models made to our safety and equivalent feature standards.
I guess we have different definitions of what a big or small part of the problem is. 23% (actually less than that because I specifically talked about “people’s private vehicles” which wouldn’t include semis) is not going to save the environment, even if we got rid of it entirely rather than just making it more efficient by powering the cars with coal electricity.
Per your cite, industry as well as electricity generation are much bigger problems (and moving emissions from “transportation” to “electric generation” isn’t a massive help, even if you trim the total through efficiency increases).
There is no magic bullet. We need to shave Greenhouse Gas production from all over. Cars, trucks, power production, ships, flight, cement creation, agriculture, livestock, etc.
My point in responding to the OP was to point out that, contrary to many popsci documenteries that show gridlocked cars on the highway whenever they talk about global warming, personal vehicles are actually only a small part of the problem; so the framing in the OP, akin to “if only we cared about global warming we’d be importing Chinese electric vehicles”, is a bit of a skewed view of the situation.
What an absurd position. What, because there are four major sectors to CO2 emissions and none are more than a third of the total, then addressing any one of them is not a big deal because it can’t “save the environment” by itself?
~25% is an absolutely huge portion of the problem, and it’s especially critical since it’s an easy one to solve. Technologically speaking, it’s already been solved, as every EV driver knows. The tech is just not yet evenly distributed.
Stop getting your information from popsci documentaries. They’ve misled you already on a number of points.
Over 85% of electrical generation added in 2023 was emissions-free. That is the trend already, and it’s only going to go more in favor of clean energy in the future. We are already solving that problem. Coal plants are also retiring at a rapid rate. This could still be pushed harder, but it is a problem that will be solved sooner or later without extra intervention.
Also, it’s a part that ordinary private citizens can actually take action on by themselves. Sure, replacing dirty power plants and industry with “green” versions is good, but most of us have little ability to actually make those decisions.
Well, you’d be wrong with that assumption. I don’t know what “framing” or zeitgeist or popsci documentaries you are talking about. I’m asking a simple question based on the article I posted, which suggests American consumers may be conflicted about Chinese-made EVs (environment vs our industry), and asking what people here think.
At no point was it implied that this particular issue was make or break by itself.
It is a valid concern that, for any small improvement we might make, there is always pushback of the nature of “solving this won’t save the environment, so it’s not worth being concerned about.”
Every large problem is just a bunch of 1% fixes added up. Therefore we should take every one of them seriously as long as they are practical.
That is a very salient point, and why any credible candidate is going to apply massive tariffs or outright bans on Chinese imports of battery electric vehicles regardless of how good (or not) they may be for the environment, notwithstanding how much more vulnerable it would make the United States economically if the Chinese manufacturing infrastructure experienced serious disruptions. We should be onshoring all of the end item manufacturing that we can (and as much of the supply chain as is fiscally and ecologically viable) in anticipation of increasing disruptions in global trade that are inevitable with demographic collapses in major high tech manufacturing nations, loss of secure trade oceanic routes, and the impact that major climate-induced storms will have on marine shipping and major shipping ports.
Let me ask you to take a hard look and give a sincere response to this question: do you see any of this happening at any useful scale? I know that the “green transition” crowd wants to craft the narrative that if we all just put our noses to the grindstone and get to the task of doing everything to reduce emissions it can all really happen, man, and look at all of the solar and electric cars and this cool pilot DAC plant we just installed in Iceland running off of volcanic steam, and our animation of how we’re going to frack our way to mass geothermal energy around the globe, et cetera.
The reality is that there are so many vested interests in the current systems, and virtually no political support to invest in the kind of ‘transition’ that would be required to have any manifest impact upon emissions, and for sure nobody leader willing to make the hard call that in order to cut emissions we’re going to put tens of millions of people into famine in the near term, and more coming. This is all notwithstanding that the next several decades of mean surface temperature rise are already baked into the excess thermal energy absorbed by the oceans and the increasing likelihood that we’ve blown past several climate tipping points that will prevent reversion to anything like the pre-industrial baseline.
If you want to sell BEVs to the public, the “to save the environment” angle isn’t just unappealing to many, it is also pretty flatly a lie even if you ignore the impact that all of the resource extraction required to build and support these vehicles would have at national scale. If you think electric vehicles are a benefit, the real selling points should be the convenience (lack of having to gas up, low maintenance, high reliability) and low total cost of ownership, which is what is going to make the difference with most potential middle class buyers over some fanciful thesis about saving the planet.
The Youtube channel Aging Wheels does a lot with electric vehicles. The Chinese vehicles seem to be particularly bad (poor build quality, things not working correctly, etc).
Also, if we end up in a war with China, which our defense folks seem to think is one of our greatest current threats (Taiwan, South China Sea, Philippines…), don’t be too surprised if all of the Chinese vehicles in the U.S. suddenly decide to brick themselves.
That’s already the case. EVs are superior vehicles in almost all cases. People who buy high-end EVs mostly don’t go back to ICE (less so for the shitty low-end models or ones that were an afterthought by the automaker).
The most important thing is for manufacturers to figure out how to produce them efficiently. Tesla and the Chinese have managed this. Other automakers are still getting there. It’s obviously possible since it’s been done already. But progress has been slow for most US automakers.
EVs do not require massively more resources than ICE cars. It’s mainly that ICE automakers have had a century of practice making them and only a few years of practice making EVs. They’ve also let the characteristics of ICE construction ossify the rest of the institution and made it very difficult to make changes (a big one is that they’ve largely been unable to fully integrate the various heating/cooling systems within the vehicles, leading to redundancy).
Electric semis in particular will rapidly take over the industry once they’re produced in volume. They have a payback time of just a few years. Forget every other factor; they’ll save $50-100k per year just in diesel costs. Fleet operators are much more concerned about the bottom line than typical consumers.
I used to have a plug-in hybrid. It was a lemon, and i replaced it with an ICE vehicle. I really miss the convenience of not needing to constantly monitor the gas tank.
I agree that the greatest current threat to world peace, irredentism, is unprofitable. Regardless of government policy, we — as in, those in this thread — should reinforce that by declining to buy Chinese vehicles so long as China threatens Taiwan.
The 42 mile electric only range of your PHEV would satisfy the daily driving distance of the average American, which is 29 miles per day. So in theory, a 100 mile EV might work for many, though perhaps as the second or third vehicle in the house. And yet, no one wants that.
I would be thrilled if a cheaper, smaller, lower range EV was available. I almost never need to drive over 50 miles in a day, in the random scenario where there is some unexpected driving between planned charges there are charging stations everywhere so I don’t really have to worry, and there are multiple cars in many households so the road trip vehicle doesn’t need to be the lightweight low-range EV. It would be great for something to break through the frustrating combo of American car culture and car company offerings of exclusively oversized, overengineered monstrosities.
If I may blunt - and you know I will whether or not I have anyone’s permission LOL - it is not the American way. If something is good for the environment or good for your health or a medication you need to literally stay alive, America overcharges you for it. I just love “convenience fees” because the REAL convenience is for the company that is charging the fees. They don’t have to open envelopes, process checks, etc. Thus THEY save money. My point is that, according to our Capitalism, the problem with cheap Chinese electric vehicles is the “cheap” part. Sure, it would be nice to save the environment and ensure a future for humanity but, if we can’t make a big profit on it, tough luck.
Our plan (mentioned in other threads) is for the next car to be BEV only, with the PHEV still coving commutes but being available for the long drives. So similar to your 2nd car scenario. And for a two driver household, having that combination makes sense to me at least for the near to middle future.
But IMHO (again) the reason having a BEV as a second or third car for commuting has been a slow adoption is again, not everyone has a home or good local charging yet, and the cost point. Buying a low cost electric could change that, but no one wants to spend the 30k+ for even the lower end BEV, and few if any yet trust a used BEV.
I mean, and I know this is beating a dead horse (heh), look at the failed Elio Motors. They (vaporware IMHO) promised originally a sub $10k car (trike actually) to be made and sold in the USA that would get around 70mpg with already on the market parts! And people lines up and put down substantial deposits. Of course, nothing happened, and the current scam is to make it an all electric version for $15k. There are plenty of people interested -if the price is low enough-.