Honda says making cheap electric vehicles is too hard, ends deal with GM::The platform was to use GM’s Ultium batteries.
As trade with North America and China degraded that was one of the worst casualties.
China has a booming market for small EVs. It is not an understatement to say they are years ahead of us in that regard.
What is it North America? Because you said I’m not allowed to have public transit and now I’m not even allowed to have the type of car I want.
Oh boy do I love freedom.
Oil companies invented a psyop in North America centered around male insecurity with their masculinity. That’s why the best selling vehicle in North America is a massive gas guzzling pickup truck that the average person can’t come close to affording but drives anyway.
They’ve also targeted maternal instincts. You can’t get a mother to look at a car unless the hood is taller than someone else’s child.
Also car seats are enormous and don’t fit well into compact cars unless the passenger side seat is all the way up and maybe not even then. Good luck if you have more than one kid that needs a car seat too.
Who said anything about compacts? A modern station wagon would work great inplace of an SUV.
I’m just explaining why parents might opt for a larger car especially if they have multiple children. It used to be mini vans, now it’s SUVs or crossovers which are probably not much bigger than station wagons.
They’re needlessly taller. That’s why I mentioned the hood height. You lose fuel economy and you make it more dangerous for kids crossing at cross walks.
I like when people drive lifted pickups without a speck of dirt in the bed. I call those vehicles the Pedestrian Killer 9000
Emotional Support Vehicle
Small dick emotional support
Pavement princess
I call them small dick compensators
The male safe space? :-)
Emissions regulations apply differently to vehicles of different sizes.
It also makes up for their obviously small penis as well. Use to be muscle cars.
And here you are, furthering the psyop
they make them in Vietnam too but nobody cares because they’re still expensive and they suck ass
Having spent a lot of time in China, I have not seen a huge uptake on electric vehicles because they don’t have the infrastructure or charging stations for it. That said, I haven’t been there in the last three years or so but I don’t expect that to be changed radically.
I know that the Chinese government has spent a lot of money trying to entice people to buy electric cars by allowing civilians to use the coveted green parking pass that is good anywhere if their vehicle is electric.
This led to some major expansion of their electric vehicle brands. I don’t know what kind of percentage change it is but it’s big enough to shake up their automotive industry.
Although it seems a bit of a weird move to me considering how good their public transport is.
The bus and train in China can be pretty wildin so I get why a lot of people hate using it. That said Guangzhou subway is pretty nice and Japanese like.
I expect with the amount they’re investing in FCEVs that EVs will only last another decade-ish.
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So, like all the others, while China will produce cheap eCars. Look, I don’t want to predict the future, but if I only have 20-30k for a new car, I simply physically can’t buy a 60k SUV. You can’t jump into a saturated market of other car companies, who almost all seam to want only expensive eCars and expect a good outcome. There’s only so much money in the pockets of people and only so much people are willing to pay for a used eCar, if it needs expensive battery replacement soon. Not going to happen. Build cheaper cars or fail.
Not to mention not everyone has a garage or nearby charging spot to charge an ev.
Perhaps dealing with infrastructure first would be interesting…
Good point. It’s a sort of chicken egg problem. Lack of ev and no investment for infrastructure, resulting in even less ev.
Here in Germany, in my local town, they build hydrogen fuel stations instead of charging stations. Very strange.
Hydrogen may not be such a bad idea until there’s electrical infrastructure. Hydbrid hydrogen-electric even?
Or maybe instead of blocking everything on the theory a complete charging solution will magically appear despite no demand, we can go ahead with the 59% of the population living in a house, and can decide to install a charger. Maybe we can go ahead with charger networks we already have, already allowing most road trips and getting better continuously. And we can use all that demand, all that money to keep building out a better and better charging solution.
FYI - buddy of mine has an EV at a townhouse with no opportunity to charge, and just goes to a supercharger once a week to top off. It may be inconvenient, but it’s not onerous
Planning on a 1-to-1 swap between traditional cars and EVs is the crassest mistake. It would take a paradigm shift that emphasizes remote work, carpooling and carsharing in order to make private transportation really sustainable.
Charging infrastructure is getting better. I’ve had an EV without home charging for three years now and I’ve managed just fine. Overall it’s no more inconvenient than having to go to a gas station.
I have a plug-in hybrid. I try to charge while running errands. I (almost) never can. In my area, most stores don’t have chargers and those that do, typically have a slow charger with 2-4 spots. Those spots are always taken.
Electric cars don’t normally need a battery replacement during the car’s lifetime. If the battery needs to be replaced, the car has usually already been running longer than most ICE cars ever would. The used market for EVs used to be pretty dire, with little supply and awful pricing. But it’s slowly getting better. But of course the fact remains, that there is currently a lot of demand for cheap EVs and little supply. The Chinese are gearing up to eat up that part of the market.
Why does it have to be new? Whats wrong with a nearly new car that is only a couple of years old? Warranty, at least in Europe covers the major components like body shell and battery for 7 to 10 years now.
Part of reducing the impact of cars to the environment is making them last longer and EVs have the opportunity to be fully refurbished at what would have been the end of their normal lifespan to better than new. Replacing the battery pack for a more modern and denser version, replacing the motor for a more efficient and powerful one, even replace the entertainment unit with a more modern one. Sure, this is expensive but you are basically getting a new car for considerably less than a new car.
While I personally think Musk can eat a bag of dicks, the ability to upcycle early Teslas using Tesla parts is very welcome. It needs to be legally mandated that manufacturers have to offer this and end the cycle of scrapping cars.
What you described is already done with ICE vehicles. Engines and transmissions are rebuilt all the time. Even cars that are totaled are typically given a second life.
Ultimately it’s the vehicle’s body and frame that determine when it’s at the end of it’s life. You’re not going to put a new battery in a tesla with a rusted out frame.
Arguably the lifespan could be worse for EVs since replacing the batteries is so expensive (more than a typical engine rebuild) that many probably won’t be willing to put that much money into an old vehicle.
Rarely happens though in practice with ICE cars, average age of a car being scrapped in the UK is about 13 years, average age on the road is about 8 years. Car lifespan has been increasing in Western Europe as car reliability has improved. In general Cars do not rust as quickly as they used to, obviously there will be individual Friday afternoon shit boxes or even entire ranges as with Merc between the 90s and early 2000s. But in general they are light years better than pre 2000s and especially pre 1980s when they could start rusting their first year.
In practice the cost to repair vs. value of the car tends to dictate its lifespan in Europe, it becomes cheaper to replace the car than fix it. This is the cycle we need to end.
Current it tends to be limited to enthusiasts to upgrade the capabilities of ICE cars such as more powerful or efficient engine, etc. I do not see this market changing with EVs, you can already by performance upgrades for Teslas for example, even if I wouldn’t touch these 3rd party performance upgrades with a ten foot pole (outside of things like brakes and suspension).
Retrofitting a much more efficient engine to a modern ICE car is difficult, it requires all sorts of other upgrades to enable it and manufacturers have been busy trying to lock people out, see BMW and their ECU encryption. Retrofitting a larger battery, particularly to earlier cars is reasonably trivial in comparison and the old battery still has value, whereas a knackered gearbox/engine/ecu combo is worth considerably less for the average car.
This should be similar to a right to repair law for EVs that also enables them to take advantage of the latest tech.
I’m the US the average age in the road is over 12 years and the average retirement age is about 20 years now. We don’t have any required extended warranty rules but do require that OEMs produce parts for at least 10 years. Most parts for most vehicles are available from the aftermarket vendors though.
We have similar parts availability but when a job costs £1500 and the replacement car is £1500 with newer tyres and brake discs most just opt for scrapping as it doesn’t make sense to keep the average car.
If you savvy you break the old car yourself and sell off the working parts for more than the value of the whole car.
Final owners just run the car till it breaks or fails it’s MoT and is no longer road worthy then scrap it for a new one. Cars just depreciate faster than they become unrepairable for large amounts of money (see the costs for a proper restore or retromod).
COVID fucked with depreciation for a while with 7sed being more expensive than new for white goods cars but that’s over now and depreciation is huge again.
In my experience, at least in the US, most people aren’t getting rid of their car because a new car is cheaper, they do it because the cost to repair the old car exceeds the current car’s value. This is actually a very poor justification for buying a new car but it happens all the time. People get scared when they get a high repair bill and jump into a multi year auto loan costing 250+/month.
Cars are expensive here though so you’re unlikely to buy new for much less than 20k and the reality is most consumers aren’t buying base model cheap compact cars.
Of course you may be able to buy used cheaper but people who are afraid of repair bills aren’t usually rushing out to replace one old car with another.
It depends on if the car is about to enter an expensive period or not, if its not been looked after and/or is an unreliable model then when one thing goes it will be quickly followed by a whole bunch of other repairs. Cars can rapidly become a money pit and sunk cost fallacy applies very strongly to them. Its usually better to be dispassionate and cut your losses, especially if you can make money back breaking the old car yourself.
New vs. old is a difficult one. If you cannot work on the car yourself then having a fixed cost for a car that all non consumables are covered by the dealer can be very attractive. Plus you can offset some of the consumables costs for the first year or two as they will be brand new on the car. If you have the skills, tools, and time to do it yourself then usually its cheaper for a second hand car assuming you can choose a good one thats been looked after. Far too many people who think they know better know fuck all when it comes to choosing a good used car.
This was very much me when I was buying my first car. I was talked into not paying finance on a nearly new car and instead buying my dads old car that had just failed its MoT. I spent a few hundred fixing it myself and getting it back through the MoT. I then did about 50k in it over two or so years but I had to work on that fucker almost every week and spent thousands doing so. With hindsight the couple of hundred on the nearly new car would have worked out about the same cost and I would have saved hundreds of man hours of labor.
I think that there is a lot more mileage in taking a good old car and converting it to be an EV. Its not going to fit every use case but it is going to replace a lot of the old knackered rubbish that is in older ICE cars and is going to cost significantly less to run for the next decade of use before it needs another big refurb. My dream is to get an early Range Rover and do this to it.
Crazy to see how far behind Japanese car manufacturers are getting these days. Japan disrupted the auto market and made small, fuel efficient, cars popular. Now Honda and Toyota are starting to feel like 70’s Detroit.
Meanwhile Hyundai and Kia are absolutely smashing it (in Europe and Asia) with their cheap, reliable cars
can’t really agree with the “reliable” part but yea, they are affordable.
2013 Hyundai Elantra here. Despite full synthetic oil changes every 5k miles and new filters every year, my engine has now failed for a second time in 100k miles. The mechanic is telling me it needs a new engine, which is going to basically exceed the value of the car.
But at least it was cheap!
Kia and Hyundai are the most stolen cars in North America due to missing basic security measures like steering wheel locks and the ability to spoof the key fob with a cell phone. You could also take a Hyundai or Kia that is near it’s fob and just drive off in it. There was no proximity shut off until a recent OTA update, and it didn’t work on every model
They’re cheap in NA and they’re likely to stay that way until they add proper security measures. In response, both State Farm and Allstate have raised insurance rates on Hyundai and Kia made after 2015. They’re cheaper because they cut corners, and the end customer foots the bill on the insurance side
Prius anyone? Still a better approach than a full electric.
PHEV’s are getting reclassified/re-regulated by the EU, because:
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The stated average emissions are based on actually plugging in to charge, which most owners don’t bother with, considering electric propulsion only accounts for like 1/15 of the cars total range
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It has been regulated in a way that gave the manufacturer only small emissions penalty for increasing the motor size & weight of the car - because it was still considered to be electrically powered.
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The design itself leads to a heavier car (having 2 propulsion systems)
Meanwhile, the full EV market has been more self-regulating in the sense that they have kept the weight/energy requirements down in order be competitive on range.
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I would not say a better approach, but it is a workable one. We have one already and will be getting a second one in the next few months. Our next new car will be an all electric, but that is a few years down the road.
No it’s not.
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Last I looked into it, Toyota was still supposed to have some of the most efficient combustion engines out there, with something crazy like 40%(?) thermal efficiency.
We did nothing and tried everything!
That’s a bummer. Was interested to see what a Honda EV with ultium cells would be like. A sub-$30k EV is what a lot of people are looking for, judging from my experience buying a Bolt. Hope they can figure out the unit-economics
I somehow lucked into finding a 2023 Bolt EV at MSRP last year, and got a really good trade-in offer on top of that. It’s been such a great car.
The one dealership that didn’t have a markup near us sold out immediately and we ended paying a slight markup at another place, but after all the incentives and trade-in it was a steal.
We love our EUV, I don’t think I’ll go back to an ICE car after seeing how convenient home charging is and one-pedal driving is great.
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07’ Civic here. You distracted drivers better not run into me. Please I can’t afford another car.
08 civic and still going strong.
GM has blamed the Ultium bottleneck on an unspecified “automation equipment supplier.”
Rockwell Automation has entered the chat.
Rockwell is like Comcast. You have no opinion on them or a blind raging hostile opinion of them.
Edit: on a serious note the systems engineering folks have been telling this before my parents were born. This should not have been a shock to anyone. Diversity in components means greater ability to withstanding changes, the tradeoff is you are going to run less efficiently even in good times.
I want to talk about trains.
How about trains but we only use electricity to power them, and let’s say put overhead electric fuel lines over them. Trams. I wanna see more trams. Solves most of the issues EV’s have with batteries.
Idk, even if you made almost everything out of aluminum , thats like $2000 for the raw metal for the frame and body, 8k for a 80kwh battery, about 5.5k for a 166HP emrax 228 motor off the shelf… with no transmission, the most expensive components combined are less than 20k. I dont see how even a 35k EV would not be profitable with some sensible off the shelf components.
That’s parts don’t forget labor and transportation.
China does it lol
I love everyone in this thread who is talking about how expensive EVs are while ignoring they can buy a cheap 15 year old ice car and save thousands 🤣🤣🤣
Isn’t the whole point of an EV that they don’t have ICEs?
If I’ve got my heart set on a steak for dinner tonight, the fact that sausages are much cheaper isn’t really relevant information.
Isn’t the whole point of an EV that they don’t have ICEs?
Honestly this is the first time on Lemmy I’ve felt like I was on reddit with such stupid argument logic.
You can want what you want. Doesn’t mean it’s a smart or only choice. You are going to spend more money in most cases and you won’t make up the money for at least 6 or 7 years (at least in the states) unless you drive a ton.
Then don’t complain that the steak is too expensive and eat your damn sausage.
i drive a 1st gen Yaris that is literally older than me. not the best for climate change, but it was 1500€ and uses less than 6L/100km. super cheap to drive. if an electric car was available at that price, and had a possibility of driving 10-20 more years, i would’ve bought it on the spot.
Lol a used car is far more environmentally conscience than a new EV.
True, but they did have to be new at some point. Presumably you might like to buy a used EV one day.
