What are your electric vehicle plans?

In My Humble Opinion
81

Possibly. Also possibly not.

PCs were colonizing an empty space: before that, to a rounding error, zero people had home computers. Meanwhile, IBM’s existing mainframe and mini business turned their noses up and any sale less than $500K at a time when that was real money.

Conversely, the car business is already mass market. And e.g. GM, don’t just know how to make IC engines as you say. They know how to make all the rest of the parts beyond the powerplant that go into cars, how to market cars, how to sell cars, how to service cars. All at planetary scale. And, as Tesla has had to learn very expensively, how to design cars for production and how to actually build them with low cost of assembly. And again at planetary scale.

As with the e-commerce revolution, the biggest thing standing in e.g. GM’s way is internal inertia. If they can overcome that they can crush the upstarts like grapes. The upstarts, like Lotus, Maserati, etc., may well continue to exist just fine as niche products for specialist buyers, be they sporty or some other niche.

But the betting is the vast bulk of the e-vehicles on the roads in e.g. 2040 will be coming from the current big companies. With the caveat here in the USA that there are big manufacturers in China that you and I have never heard of. Much like Kia & Hyundai 20 years ago, they may trickle onto the scene then quietly ascend to a decent market fraction.

82

Honda, for one, has said, “We’re not going to build electric cars.” Instead they’re going to build high efficiency IC and hybrid cars, on the theory that people are looking for fuel efficient vehicles more than they want electric cars specifically. Others, like Volkswagen, are betting big on the electric car future.

83

I’d be really surprised if GM could come anywhere near crushing Tesla no matter how hard they tried. Even if they could get rid of that inertia. They could likely crush Rivian, which isn’t delivering trucks yet, but Tesla, by all reports, has a 5 to 10 year head start on EV technology. Everyone’s going to be playing catch-up to them for quite a while.

Toyota is going the same way. I don’t think this is a good way to move to the coming EV world. Once they decide to go to real EVs, they’ll be even further behind.

They’re going to come closest to being the “Tesla killer” that the anti-Tesla crowd has been claiming is coming. (They’ve been claiming this for about 8 years now. Somehow it never happens.) Unlikely to actually kill Tesla either, though.

84

Not disagreeing. I was using “e.g. GM” simply as a concrete easy-to-type example of “established car manufacturer.” And nodding to my post a few farther up about their impending Hummer EV.

Among the existing world-scale ICE vehicle manufacturers I think you’re right that GM specifically is probably not destined to be the standard bearer.

85

Earlier this year, Volkswagen had massive software issues that caused delays in its EV launch, although I think the problems were resolved. Other companies are likely to run into such problems.

86

No chance for me to buy one anytime soon. The problem isn’t the day to day usage, where charging works great, it’s taking longer trips and wanting to choose what I do based on me instead of the needs of the car, as well as dealing with natural disasters. My next car is very likely to be a hybrid, but ‘pure plug’ models mean I can’t go camping/fishing/cabining at a lot of places, have to plan trips around the car’s needs (like picking only hotels with charging), and need to add significant delays (for charging, only going 55, rerouting to hit chargers).

As far as getting through disasters goes, despite what some people here think, gas stations generally have backup power to run gas pumps after a hurricane, while car chargers require the power grid. Hurricanes and ice storms will occasionally knock power out for a week or two, which would kill home charging. Although a supercharger station might have power back earlier, there would be significant lines to use it, and I wouldn’t want to count on it.

Also, this reminds me of an amusing (but relevant) bit of info from the contentious EV thread last year: I used a trip that I made that year as an example, and several people chided me for saying that my destination was 70 miles from the nearest charger when the city was due to get a supercharger at the end of 2019. Checking today, about a year later, there still isn’t a supercharger there, and it’s listed as due to be complete by the end of this year. I don’t know what the deal is with that particular charger, but I would definitely advise anyone looking at a vehicle to only count chargers that exist, not ones that are coming by the ‘end of this year’ for at least two years running :slight_smile:

87

My fully-electric SUVUV dwarfs your puny hybridmobile.

88

I would have chosen “I may get one eventually”. I usually keep vehicles a LONG time. It would depend hugely on what acquisition and operation costs and the support infrastructure are like at the time that purchase comes up.

89

If this ever actually gets to market, I’d dig one.

90

Considering how little I drive and that I drive cars until they are completely worn out I don’t think I will need another vehicle for many years. While I have always bought used vehicles in the past my thought now is that I might get a new self-driving car in 10 years or so and probably electric.

91

I’m crossing my fingers hoping my Mach E will be here before year’s end. It was built on October 31 (meaning, probably, the underbody sheet metal hit the line). I’ve got my L2 charger installed at my own expense, and the company spammed me today suggesting I’m an idiot because I’ve not charged yet. Yeah, I need to block the WIFI that’s not needed on what should be a friggin toaster without lasers on its head.

I had a Fusion Energi a few cars ago.

I have backup gasoline Expedition for emergencies, long road trips, trailer trips, and apparently bicycle trips because the Mach E doesn’t have a receiver available, and my bike rack needs one.

92

Looking forward to your report! Which variant did you order?

I’m a little surprised your L2 charger has a WiFi connection. The Tesla chargers don’t, since the car handles all the monitoring and controls. I guess this is a third-party system of some kind?

93

It’s a ChargePoint L2 charger, which is the plurality charger in North America right now, so WIFI shouldn’t be a surprise. Its MAC is now blocked on my gateway.

The ChargePoint is manufacturer agnostic, so it has its own metrics. I opted against the Ford system because it was sold out, ironically.

94

Not in the near future, at least for a non-hybrid. The infrastructure for them in a lot of Canada is pretty poor, I frequently take trips that would be beyond their current range, and I’m not certain how well they would do in the winter (batteries usually do not do well in the extreme cold). Actually, if anybody has used an electric vehicle in the cold (and by cold I mean -20 to -40 Celsius), I would be interested in your experience. Maybe next time we need to get a car I would consider it, but hopefully that won’t be for a decade or so.

95

There’s a guy on the Saskatoon subreddit who posted a fairly detailed review of the Model 3 in cold weather last year when it dipped to -43 (edit: actual -43, not wind chill). He’s…ummm…a bit of an enthusiastic Tesla owner, but I see no reason to doubt any of his reports:

96

I thought there was a poster here who lived in Western Canada and had an electric car.

97

There’s a few different types of western Canada. Alberta will have the same kind of summers and winters as that guy up there in Saskatoon. Interior of BC is milder (although still lots of snow) and the west coast just does not get cold. BC has or had rebate programs for electric cars and there is more infrastructure. I’ve seen quite a few Teslas (for example) in the interior of BC far from large centres versus in my small pocket of Alberta. However I do see more and more Teslas on the streets of Calgary. And why not? Any electric car would be perfectly sufficient for Calgary city driving. And there’s probably an ICE minivan or pick up in the garage.

98

For want of an apostrophe. :man_facepalming: From the above reddit thread:

5) How does it handle the snow? Better than my girlfriend Tiguan . . .

99

I am somewhere in-between the “within a year” and “1-5 years” range. As soon as we feel comfortable with non-essential trips, I’d love to checkout the Ford Mach-E, VW ID-4, and Tesla Model Y - all CUV-style full EVs - and see which one really feels the best. At which point we’ll probably look at the lease options. I expect that 3 years out, there’ll be more options and one of them will likely be better for us, so I’d rather not purchase an EV right now.

But I went with 1-5 years because realistically, I think we’ll probably won’t get it until sometime in 2022.

100

Three weeks ago I drove out to see someone/get something. A 48x mile round trip. We did sit & catch up for a while, but that wasn’t the ‘plan’ & if the somewhat local-to-meeting point attraction that I’ve long wanted to go to not been sold out (stoopit COVID & capacity limits), I would have driven another 30 miles out/60 RT & not sat there so long. I didn’t stop at all on the way out, & on the way back I stopped once for fuel (<4 mins for 300+ miles of range) & 2 mins to go inside to pee at an out-of-the-way distance of maybe 50’; then maybe 10 mins to buy (& eat, it was one of the messier options) fast food at another location. I’m of the opinion that when I need to spend hours sitting in a car, the last thing I want to do is spend more time sitting in a restaurant chair; no, get me to my destination ASAP so I can do other things with my day. Total planning time: 0 mins.
One of my requirements is a large rear opening (SUV/wagon/5-door hatch - why don’t we get them in the US when the make those for the Euro market??? [/rant]). Besides not wanting a Tesla, besides thinking the X is butt-ugly, it’s also either $75 or $80 thou for the base model; that’s more than every car I’ve ever bought…combined!
I would consider a Hyundai Kona EV, which is literally ½ the cost of the X but that vehicle only has a 258 mile range. Even assuming that there was a recharge station at the exact midpoint of my drive, I’m not sure I’d be comfortable with that as I would have been pulling in on fumes (electrons?). That’s less assured with any EV that’s not a Tesla. I appreciate that they’ve done a lot to build their own charging network, but I haven’t drank their Kool-Aid & therefore, that’s worthless to me as I wouldn’t get a Tesla. Remember, if I run out of gas in an ICE, roadside assistance can bring me a gallon or two; if you run out in your EV, you need to be towed to a charging station. Much more expensive & time consuming if you miscalculate, & at best, I was 15 miles from empty on that trip. Therefore I would have needed two refueling stops, making that trip much longer than with my ICE.

This weekend I left my house about 8:30am drove 450-46x-ish miles round trip to a photo shoot & got home around 1:30am. Got into town about 15 mins before I needed to be at the site so I took a few mins to fill up my tank, only other stop was a quick one at a convenience store for a bio & snack before getting back on the interstate to drive home. I was utterly exhausted when I got home, & that was with refueling taking 5 mins of my slack time; can’t imagine how much worse it would have been had I needed the time to charge an EV.

This was only my third trip like this this year, but in a normal, non-pandemic year it would be more like ±9 trips annually. (The first/other trip was to rural VT before COVID, so wintertime, where the high that day was only 7°, which would mean EV range degradation.) The cost to either buy, insure, & maintain a dedicated ICE for these trips or rent one that often would more than offset any savings that I’d get for daily driving my ICE.

When the infrastructure for recharging gets close to gas stations, both in sheer number &, more importantly speed of refueling/recharging, I will consider one (& I will absolutely consider a hybrid for my next new car) but until then, I have zero interest in an EV

Also, I find it interesting that the majority of EVs are sedans while the ICE manufacturers are going away from sedans. There’s no EV pickups (yet), there’s no vans or large SUVs. Towing package on the X is a $1250 option, kind of expensive. Are there any reasonably priced convertibles (the Tesla roadster at $200,000+ is a one percenter vehicle)? Why is there such a difference in what the majority of EVs sold are vs. ICE vehicles?