Periodic reminder that space flight is cool, alt-right billionaires are not. You can get to space without fashy billionaires.
The same Tesla fans who are completely shocked that BYD sells more cars, will also be surprised to know that China has its own space station, and is ahead of the US in the race to a manned mission to Mars.
A key component of US arrogance, is assuming that we are the best at something, without even checking around. 🤡
We assume that our way is the only way and the best way, and that we must be exceptional.
"Tesla is brilliant! You have to start with the sports car, then the luxury sedan, then the mid-priced sedan, then affordable cars have to be last! That's the only way it can possibly work!" 🇺🇲🤡
That statement is just false. You can just start with affordable cars and stay there.
@mekkaokereke tesla's business plan makes way more sense when you realize it was just doing arbitrage on government subsidies and a little bit of greenwashing, and was only incidentally in the "sell cars to people" business
It still served its purpose of forcing the established manufacturers to enter the EV market. Without Tesla, they would still sell you their "clean" diesel well into the 2030.
Good point about my viewpoint as a european citizen.
Asia with its overall higher population density and often significant smog problem is naturally an easier market for EVs. It probably also helps that the Chinese never really got much knowledge of how to built an "efficient" ICE, so for them, it makes a lot of sense to avoid a race that they can only lose and instead bet - rightfully - on decadent EU and US manufacturers reacting to slowly to the change, granting them an advantage.
I am pretty certain that while they would never admit it, that the Tesla Shock was what brought classic automotive manufacturers up to speed. They owe Tesla that fighting chance against the chinese storm about to begin.
The Nissan Leaf is certainly interesting, yet somewhat again proves my point:
Even with
pitiful range
a cheaped out interior
the economies of scale of a large manufacturer
it still ended up almost twice as expensive an comparable ICE car.
For electric cars, to make a dent into the combustion engine world, they need to approach the price for ICE and have good enough range. We are there today and there are more and more announcement of manufacturers now promising cheap electric cars (without a doubt motivated by large amounts of fear from the chinese).
Slight bit of goalpost moving: Yes the Nissan leaf was relatively expensive, but it was by no means a sports car or a luxury sedan. The Nissan Leaf initial customer base was willing to pay a little more for what they believe in.
And most of the top selling EV brands in China never started with a luxury sedan or sports car. They went straight to the massively underserved affordable entry level commuter car market.
If a brand new EV company in the US started today with an EV that was available for under $20,000, with appropriate safety features and fast charging, even if it compromised on range, it would do well.
Profit per vehicle would be less, but volume would be much more. They would take EV market share from Tesla.
This is starting to happen. The only question is, will protectionism make this US auto companies that serve the need? Or will converted Chinese EVs be sold here?
@CelloMomOnCars@AdrianVolt@mekkaokereke@tess is off-putting to see how many barrels of oil the 2- and 3-wheelers offset compared to personal vehicles, yet personal vehicles already require the majority of lithium while they are only 14% of all personal vehicles sold
We took the Lithium of a bajillion eBikes, and squished it all into one ginormous vehicle, like a Hummer or a Cybertruck.
We're so confused. We want to go EV because it's better for the environment, but we have this weird sense of masculinity defined by white US men, where caring about the environment is seen as a weakness. So we want to look like we're rolling coal.
And yes this view of "masculinity" differs by race.
We say that masculine men don't care about the environment. But again, the issue isn't gender, gender identity, or gender expression. It's race, and differences in perceived masculinity by race.
Non-white men are more likely to care about the environment, than white women.
While there are racial and gender differences in how people look at the climate crisis, I think it's safe to say that ALL Americans are held hostage by
a car industry that forces the American public to buy large cars (that make large profits) and
a lack of viable alternatives like public transit. By "viable" I mean it works for everyone not just "the undeserving poor".
The EPA could have mandated smaller EVs. But they backed down to industry.
If Europeans, and some Asians, were given only large cars to buy, they could boycott the whole car thing by switching to public transit with bikes for the last mile. Americans don't have that option.
OTOH, large cars are a real status symbol in EU, not least because everyone knows how much extra you pay for them (last I looked, various taxes alone added up to an extra €20,000 for an Audi Q5 bought in NL, whereas it's near-zero for a smol EV).
@kilpatds@CelloMomOnCars@mekkaokereke@AdrianVolt@tess as a cyclist and a parent I just want common sense legislation like "a short person (let's say 20th percentile of adults) in the driver's seat should have a direct line of sight on a 3 foot child standing 3 feet in front of the vehicle"
I heartily agree with you! And:
You won't get it by wishing for it. Please find a group you can advocate with, and join the growing push for the safety tests to include people outside the vehicle.
The coverage on this is lacking,* partly because journalists are also mostly drivers, so it's DIY car safety communications now.
The real reasons for vehicle size grow (yes, vehicle, not just cars) are:
-Vehicles grow slowly, making the difference between the prior model and the new one small in most cases . This means that the buyer rarely feels drawbacks of the new size.
Size only affects
manufacturing costs in a small way. What makes a vehicle is expensive is all the technical parts, meanwhile Tin/Sheet metal is dirt cheap.
Leaving (sold for high profit margin) luxury equipment aside, the technical difference between a full size car and a small car, are quite small. This means that the smaller car isnt particularly cheaper to produce than a much larger one. But people naturally only are willing to buy a smaller car, if it is significantly cheaper than a larger one, especially as the difference in fuel consumption is also pretty insignificant.
This also helps to explains why all the cute very small cars made by startups are incredible expensive for their size.
👇
The smaller the vehicle is, the higher the benefit of adding just a bit more space into it. A Smart with 200 liters of more trunk space is a significantly more useful vehicles at almost no buy price and fuel consumption costs, so why should you buy the competing smaller vehicle instead?
I said vehicles and not just cars before and I come back to that now: Take a look at E-Bikes and CargoBikes.... they grow in size ever since batteries have been good enough.
Take a random cargo bike: Increase the size of the cargo box by 30cm in length . You now instantly have significantly more cargo carry capacity - at almost no cost.
The direct benefits of more size almost always outweight the cost of the size increase, so there is a natural tendency for
customers
and
manufacturers
to flock towards bigger vehicles.
Going big serves both the interest of the manufacturers and the customers, so to stop that, you need regulation to force both of those to 👇
Naturally, this is not going to be popular. Customers will be very angry with you for taking away their 30000 € large sedan and replacing it with a 29500 € Smart like tiny car. From their viewpoint, they get far less value for their money than they used to and the difference in fuel consumption does not justify the closeness of the price tag. In fact, a lot of them will likely try to cheap out on maintainance of their new tiny car to recoup at least some of that loss which then results in those tiny cars having a poor lifetime as they are poorly maintained and treated which hurts the environment, as a replacement needs to be produced sooner.
Meanwhile manufacturers will also be unhappy, because not only will you destroy their nice profit margin of selling larger vehicles, but the cultural shift towards the car as an unloved object of utility will also wipe out most companies except for the cheapest bidder- which👇
is unlikely to produce in Europe or America and instead will produce as cheaply as possible in China, sinking most car related manufacturing jobs in Europe and America. It will also cost some workshop jobs, as there is really no reason anymore to do anything but the most important repairs and maintainance.
As a result, it isnt very suprising, the no such legislation has been passed in the US or the EU and that is unlikely to change.
In the USA, you can't even buy the A1. I once tried to buy an A3 and was refused a test drive, they kept wanting me to sit in an A4. That was before the Qs.
As for cargobikes: they allow you to ditch the car altogether.
@AdrianVolt@CelloMomOnCars@mekkaokereke@blikkie@tess The crash-standard restrictions steal interior space. Cars from the 70s/80s have WAY WAY thinner doors... the driver is WAY closer to the side of the car. But they kill you if you get t-boned, and so the crash standards outlaw them.
To get the car to pass the US crash standards, you add width to the exterior, which cuts into interior space, which then interlocks with your points about "a slightly larger car having much more usability"
@AdrianVolt@CelloMomOnCars@mekkaokereke@blikkie@tess Other countries put different car classes into different categories for crash safety. You typically have a "toy car" class of auto with different restrictions (low power, small motor, etc) that also has different/reduced crash safety standards.
AND THEY SELL.
And we can't get them here to test if they'd sell here, because they're illegal here.
You can't point at the result of a tilted market and go "the market has spoken"
I was not aware, that the US basically ban smaller than car vehicles like #PersonalLightVehicle . That of course is not good.
In Europe, we have multiple vehicles classes that allow such vehicles to be on the "road". But I have to dissappoint you... they sell quite poorly which isnt very surprising, because they are almost as expensive as a small regular car, have very little in comfort and safety and at least when combustion engine powered, dont even consume particular less fuel.
Some Quad Bikes saw some popularity a decade ago or so, but they were primary used a joy ride, not really as an car alternative.
As I have mentioned elsewhere, the moment you want 4 wheels - and you really want to from a driving dynamics and safety standpoint - things quickly get expensive and since you probably also want some weather protection (or why not use a bike?), price further increases.
And to the point of this thread, the top electric bus maker in China, and Europe, and the US, and the world is... drum roll please... BYD. Not Tesla. Stella Li, not Elon.
And she builds those BYD buses profitably, in California, in a union factory, while employing Black and brown and women employees, and promoting them to positions of leadership.
"That statement is just false. You can just start with affordable cars and stay there."
I am afraid that is not the way it works:
Developing new innovative things is a very expensive process as a lot of highly skilled and well paid labour is behind it.
You now have developed an awesome product, but you are also deeply indebted. You now need to sell your product to recoup your money.
Because your product is brand new, there is no large scale manufacturing base for it available. Of course, if you have a few billions lying arround, you can build one yourself but most companies dont.
So we have just ruled out that you mass produce your new product on an grand industrial scale. This makes your product more expensive to produce = higher sale price.
Because you will sell fewer units, you have to make more money per unit sold = higher profit margin = higher price.
Because your product is brand new, you need a target demograpic that can afford to take some risks.
So you need to make it attractive to those well off buyers. So it has to be an very attractive product, because those people have a lot of choice.
Look at the history of technology innovation please: From washing machines to dishwashsers, to videorecorders and home computers..... they all started as luxury products before they became mainstream. The other way rarely works... because the already existing but less innovative product can almost always beat you in cold economics.
This is precisly why all startups to date that tried to start with cheap cars failed. Because if you aim at the cost conscious buyer segment, you will find out the hard way that this segment is not willing to pay for innovation.
Take SonoMotors for example: Certainly made a nice cute small car.... perfect for cost conscious commuters... but it went bankrupt because those commuters did the math that a - larger, more comfortable used vehicle is just a much better deal for them.
acceptable sales numbers once it was sold as a lifestyle product. Being one of the most advanced small vehicles ever back then and low fuel consumption did not sway cost conscious buyers. But being a lifestyle product made it attractive to those who could afford to throw 30K at a puny two seater.
At least the #Microlino team has taken the hint.... and they try to make it a lifestyle product. They better be successful, because as a cost conscious buyer, I am certainly not throwing so much money into such a bit of "car".
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