[etchasketch]

I mean...He's not wrong.

I'm going to get crucified for saying this, but I suspect hybrids will likely be the future, with EV use picking up slowly (if at all) over the next 20-30 years. Not saying EVs are like 3D TVs, but as it stands right now, EVs are far too expensive for the vast majority of the US population. I'm going to focus on the US for now. The readership for hacker news skews wealthier, but I would like you all to pretend to be broke, for just one second.

The cost of a battery pack replacement for EVs are exorbitant, and that battery pack replacement cost all but eliminates whatever potential monetary benefit an individual would derive from driving an EV in the first place. Yes, I know blah blah blah the environment, blah blah blah lower maintenance, but look - broke people already take their car the cheapest mechanic or have uncle joe take a look at it, or just don't maintain it at all. The vast majority of people are going to look and see if its cheaper to buy, own and insure than a regular gas car.

The price of a new battery pack for an EV is exorbitant. A chevy bolt battery pack is 8 grand. A tesla pack costs 15k. Other electric vehicles are in the same ballpark. There is no way to get these battery packs new, other than going to a dealer, because "refurbished" packs just keep failing every 2-3 years and you keep replacing cell by cell playing whack a mole until the next cell fails. Ain't nobody paying 10-15k for a battery. You can buy a whole ass car for that amount of money. The readership for hacker news skews wealthier, I know, but truly, there are a lot of people who buy cars for 5-10k and drive them for the next 8-10 years, with rarely an incident. There are a whole lot of people who have never bought a brand "new" car from a dealership in their life. And until EVs get cheap enough to percolate down to the masses, adoption is going to be at a standstill.

As an aside - The reputation of car brands is made and destroyed in the used car market. the Prius has an excellent reputation because (despite battery pack woes) there are people who drive those things for 300k miles plus, regularly. I guarantee that if an automaker rushes and builds shitty EVs that ultimately end up being pieces of unreliable shit 5-10 years later on the used car market, that is by far the easiest and fastest way to ruin their their company and drive themselves to insolvency. Tesla is on the cusp of learning this, unfortunately.

[kube-system]

I disagree that hybrids are the future. Hybrids are the present. They are very mature technology that is better than traditional ICE cars in every way but up-front price, and only by a small margin.

[nradov]

Hybrids are still only 5% of the US light vehicle market. The numbers are growing fast, but they're still more future than present.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-hyb...

[esturk]

Are you sure you interpreted this number correctly? Seems like EV sales (83%) are growing faster than Hybrid (76%) sales. So no, hybrids are very much a temporary stop gap solution. EV will overtake Hybrids soon; possibly in 2 years.

[senectus1]

yup, they're a transition technology.

I live in hope that EV's are an advanced transition technology as well.

[nicoburns]

That assumes a free market. The UK where I live is planning to ban new sales of ICE cars from 2030 and hybrids from 2035. At that point, you either buy an EV or nothing at all (of course, the used market won't transition until later, but that will effectively be on a deadline too once new sales are stopped).

Personally I think 2035 is a more than realistic deadline for affordable EVs and the charging infrastructure to go with it. And the pre-announced deadline should hopefully give companies the confidence they need to invest in these technologies ahead of time.

There will then be another tipping point when ICE/hybrid ownership declines to the point that starts being uneconomical for filling stations to remain open and they start disappearing. At which point ICE cars will be decidedly inconvenient.

[jmspring]

It is possible that "infrastructure" may become feasible in smaller countries like the UK. However, it is far from feasible in large countries like the US. Heck, even here in California, we are under the same future bans of ICE, etc. in the 2030 timeframe. This state can not even keep the electricity on with current consumption patterns.

Personally, I have two ICE vehicles and plan on keeping them running and in good shape for a long time (one is 7 years old, the other 2 and both are known for running well into the 100s of thousands of miles). I don't drive "frequently", but when I do drive it's is a long distance one way. Living in a rural area with things like snow, etc. EVs aren't anywhere close to being ready for such. If the cost of owning an ICE vehicle becomes too much, then I will consider a hybrid.

[rsj_hn]

Toyota is more than happy to sell EVs to the UK. This is about not wanting to stop the production of other types of vehicles for Toyota's other markets, which they also want to serve.

Toyota revenue by region (2022) in trillions of Japanese Yen:

    Japan: 16
    North America: 11
    Asia: 6.5
    Europe: 3.9
    Other: 3.0

As with everything else, as the world fragments into different blocs, there will be different requirements for each bloc, and Toyota wants to remain a global car manufacturer.

[nradov]

No one seriously believes that the UK and most other countries will stick to those aspirational deadlines. They will inevitably push back the deadlines due to pressure from the electorate due to costs and availability.

It might work in places like Norway.

[rsj_hn]

I think many of these places in Europe will, in fact, adopt the deadlines and ban ICE vehicles, as they have shown to be resistant to public pressure. There are two issues, one is state capacity both to administer complex infrastructure change like this, as well as to suppress the popular pressures against it. The second is the practicality of the change -- switching to EV cars in Singapore is very different from doing the same on the steppes of Uzbekistan, the mountains of Turkey, or the rural parts of China. Only a fool would try to mandate something across the board -- which brings us back to the EU.

Life is going to get very hard in Europe for the average middle class family. I'm betting on significant standard of living declines in Europe across the board. People will complain, maybe even riot, but that's not going to make a difference to EU bureaucrats or to the British ruling class. If you have middle or lower class friends/relatives there and communicate regularly with them, you can pick up on the general gloomy view of the future in Western Europe.

Fortunately, most of Asia and the US, where the majority of the world's economy and population are located, is unlikely to implement universal mandates (excepting places like Singapore and Japan) -- they will be one option among other options. California, I expect, will relent simply because the state as a whole lacks the administrative competence to upgrade its grid to support mass EV usage. It lacks the competence to provide reliable power even now.

China is rolling out EVs in massive numbers, together with the necessary infrastructure in big cities, simply because there's not enough oil in the world to support 800 million cars driving around China, and it would be an air pollution nightmare -- something that Beijing is very sensitive about. But at the same time, China is not banning gas cars; rural areas still rely on gas cars, buses, and trucks. I remember being in a rickety old bus traveling a pot-hole filled road from Kunming to Li Jiang that lasted about 15 hours - there is simply no way you can do this with an EV. But China is again following a rational plan in which regional needs are taken into account, as China has experience deploying infrastructure at scale and is responsive to public pressures in a way that most western bureaucracies are not. Being a party dictatorship forces you to listen to the public on issues that matter because you cannot fall back on the legitimacy provided by elections -- which is why China just rolled back the zero covid policy. Holding elections often grants the government powers to do all sorts of anti-democratic things, even if the real policies are decided by structures designed to be unaccountable to voters. This is the essence of the administrative state.

It is this unique government structure, together with administrative competence, that's going to allow the EU to enforce these measures even as the rest of the world cannot. But at some point, EU voters are going to get wise to the fact that they are being ruled by structures over which they have no effective levers of control, and then things will get interesting. The EU announced they will create a small army -- they call it a "stabilization force" that can suppress attempted revolutions or unrest, so for a general riot like the Yellow Vests or Dutch Farmer, the local government is expected to suppress it, but if there is successful anti-EU revolution, then this army will be sent in. I expect this stabilization force to be busy in the next few decades.

[Ekaros]

EU isn't unstoppable force. Specially if populist parties not on the side of green-left-wing policies start losing. It is far more democratic than USA for example is. One side just needs to gain momentum and wide range of different populist political parties can overturn these decisions.

[jwalton]

> The readership for hacker news skews wealthier, I know, but truly, there are a lot of people who buy cars for 5-10k and drive them for the next 8-10 years, with rarely an incident.

This is EXACTLY who should be buying an electric car. If you're commuting around 15km each way, then you drive aboout 15000km a year. Over 10 years, in a gas car you're getting something like 7L/100km, which at local gas prices here in Ottawa is around $13,000 over the life of the car. For the same amount of driving over 10 years, an electric will cost you about $2K in electriciy. And that's not counting all the other money you save in things like oil changes and reduced brake wear and the fact that the electic is a lot less likely to break down since it has fewer moving parts.

Right at this exact moment, car prices are all crazy because of supply shortages, but in pre-covid days I bought myself a second hand 2015 Leaf for around $15K. If I'd wanted to buy a gas car and keep it for 10 years, to break even on gas and oil, I'd have to have bought a second hand gas car for around $3-4K, and even pre-covid, that didn't buy you anything that would run trouble free for 10 years.

Yes, eventually I'll have to replace the battery pack, and that will be expensive, but even up here in the frozen wasteland of Ottawa where my range drops precipitously in the winter, I seriously doubt I'll have to replace it in the first 10 years, so if I opt to do that, it will be instead of buying another car later.

All of this ignores any rebates you'd get for buying electric, too, which makes the gas car even less attractive from an economic standpoint.

Everyone's financial situation is different, and there's certainly people for whom that $3K gas car will make sense, but long term the electric is going to win from a financial perspective.

[etchasketch]

You're not wrong, and honestly you raise a lot of good points. But remember I told yall to pretend to be broke for a second. If you live in apartment complex of 400 ppl, out in the semi-suburbs of a major city, there aren't nearly enough charging stations to charge everyone's car. Unless you dangle an extension cord out your 2nd story window and park right in front to charge your car.

That 2k cost for electricity you mentioned is for people charging at home, in their garage, with their own charger, and the latter two are things that people who live in the city are probably not going to have.

https://walletburst.com/tools/electric-car-savings-calc/

At 57 mpg (which is what the latest prius gets), and gas at 2.50 a gallon, and assuming electricity costs 0.13 cents per kwh, you only save 150 bucks a year in gas. Thats 12 dollars a month. That's nothing. If an electric car costs just 8k more than an equivalent gas car, thats 50+ years to break even.

12 dollars a month - broke people are just going to work an extra shift or 2 and make that money and not think about it. Better than than missing work because you couldn't find a spare charger in the city, or paying 20 bucks for a fast charge overpriced public charger.

As an aside, using a fast charger just once - just one time a month - is likely to eat whatever savings in electricity you would otherwise have from buying an EV.

I will concede that if you use the calculator above and plug in $5.00 a gallon, then the average payback comes down from 50+ years to around 10. But - at least in the states, the places that have gas at 5 dollars a gallon also have electricity kwh costs of ~30 cents per kwh. And if you plug that into the calculator, the payback goes back up to 50+ years. Actually, the numbers are suspiciously quite similar. It's almost as if you can't win. Is it a conspiracy? I don't know.

[jwalton]

> That 2k cost for electricity you mentioned is for people charging at home

This is very true. Although I would point out in the older EVs, they charge just fine from a straight 120V socket, since they don’t have enough range to warrant a fancy fast charger.

My analysis also fails to take into account the cost of financing. I’m not sure how much of an impact that would have without doing the math, but it would definitely skew things towards the gas car or hybrid.

[boxed]

This touches on a more fundamental problem in society: it's expensive to be poor. To me the role of governments should be to mitigate that. Progressive taxes are part of it, but this situation with cars is another.

[boxed]

huh. This comment is now downvoted a lot. Can someone who wants to downvote explain why?

[jemmyw]

I'm going to disagree with you. EV adoption is an s-curve and we're at the bottom of it. There will be rapid adoption once it gets going, just like there was for other technical changes, including cars themselves.

All the problems with EVs are manufacturing at scale issues that will go away.

Currently EVs have enough demand that there's 6+ month waiting list where I live for all the models I've looked at. That tells me that although they're a small % of the market right now, they want to be a bigger share.

I watched a review of a Byd Atto3 yesterday. That's a cheaper EV and the reviewer said he couldn't believe how well built it seemed + features at it's price point. We're at the start of the road here, manufacturing at scale is one of those things people always seem to underestimate.

The question is probably: can we dig up enough lithium? I think everything else is irrelevant tbh.

[bryanlarsen]

S-curve is in 3 parts. Early, middle & late. The early & late phases are quite long with few people in each. The middle stage is quick with most people.

Many people think they are late adopters. Most aren't, but some are.

[erik_seaberg]

The biggest problem with EVs is that nearly half of drivers don’t have private garages.

[nradov]

Even those of us who do have private garages end up having to use them for other purposes like storage, home gyms, workshops, etc. In high cost areas it's exorbitantly expensive to buy a larger home so people use the garage for other purposes and park their cars on the street.

[bryanlarsen]

Most people with garages don't park in the garage, they park in front of the garage. But you can still plug the car in when you're parked in front of the garage.

[SkyPuncher]

I want to own an EV, but every time I look into it, it's just not worth it yet.

* I live in rural America. I do a lot of local driving, but when I don't, it's often 200+ miles and a good amount of that is 500+ miles. Many parts of that route do not have charger infrastructure. I'd have to buy/rent an additional car for these hauls.

* Towing range. I tow a small trailer occasionally. All vehicles reduce their range with towing, but it's even harder in an EV when the infrastructure isn't in place.

* Winter. Winter kills range.

[senectus1]

Same story here, but For Australia.

[ivraatiems]

I agree that HN's perspective, and mine, skew too far in one direction, but I think you are skewing too far in the other direction - the "vast majority" of people in the United States are not so broke that they cannot afford reasonably priced new vehicles, or we'd be selling a lot less of them and at lower prices.

Consider that the average new car in the United States cost $48,000 in 2022[0].

I own a new 2023 Chevy Bolt. It cost $36,000; the base price is more like $27,000.[1]. The Tesla Model 3 starts right around that average number at $48,000[2]. The Ioniq 5 starts at $42,000[3]. The Mach E likewise, around $46,000[4].

Electric cars are priced right around what people are paying, on average, for new cars.

You're right that battery packs are very expensive - right now, for new vehicles. But the very first Tesla Roadster was only made in 2008, and the model S, in 2012. We've only had a market with multiple decent choices for reasonably priced EVs in the last three to four years. Give it time.

Also, just to add: a "bad battery" isn't necessarily one that's worthless. My Bolt's battery gets ~250 miles of range now. I don't drive a quarter of that on an average day, nor do most people. Batteries degrade over time - they don't necessarily give out or totally stop working.

[0] https://www.kbb.com/car-news/average-new-car-price-hits-reco... [1] https://www.caranddriver.com/chevrolet/bolt-ev [2] https://www.caranddriver.com/tesla/model-3 [3] https://www.caranddriver.com/hyundai/ioniq-5 [4] https://www.ford.com/buy/mach-e/build-and-price.html?gnav=sh...

[LinuxBender]

I've rented a Prius a couple of times. It's a little small for me but that car was much more zippy than I expected. I know a few people that own one and they've been happy with it for many years. I don't think it would work well here in the snow but if Toyota built a plug-in hybrid AWD Tacoma Crew Cab I would seriously consider it, especially if there is no telemetry junk in it.

[jononomo]

I somehow ended up paying $2k for a 2009 Prius with 80k miles on it in 2019. I've driven it for three years and it has not had one mechanical issue at all. Absolutely perfect.

[LinuxBender]

That's a really good price. You got lucky.

[baldeagle]

There is a plug in hybrid Rav4, and it is delightful for what it is. Fast acceleration and light off road capability make it good for city driving, backwoods gravel, and even some rutting out jeep trails.

[LinuxBender]

Those look nice. I need a pickup though. I have to put hay in the back from time to time and inside a SUV it gets really messy. I would also want more ground clearance. I could use a trailer but it really limits where I can park.

[toast0]

I'd be surprised if Toyota doesn't offer hybrid trucks soon. Ford is doing it, Toyota has good hybrid tech, it's relatively easy to stuff some batteries under the bed, etc. The current generation started MY2015, so maybe their next gen Tacoma will be a good time to add hybrid options.

[alphabettsy]

Toyota already offers a hybrid version of the Tundra.

[reducesuffering]

Yes, because of the initial electric motor boost, 2010+ are quick off the line. The new 2023 Prius have that and 194 hp...

[alphabettsy]

They make an AWD Prius.

[pokstad]

I agree, but unfortunately we won’t realize this until years after ICE banning laws go into effect. Poor people will continue to buy used ICE vehicles as they always have. The issue of EV cost won’t become apparent until the remaining ICE vehicles and infrastructure are retired and poor people are left with two options: EV vehicles or none at all.

[kkfx]

Hybrid is no future simply because they mean a small battery FULLY discharged, heavy stressed, so that can't last much, + the electric powertrain with the result of rolling most of the time on gasoline/diesel moving more weight than necessary...

Hybrid are classic absurdity of those who fear the new matched to those who want to profit from their fears...

[epolanski]

Hybrid are likely much better for the environment unless you live in an area were electricity is mostly renewable/nuclear.

[kube-system]

Even if your local power is 100% fossil fuels, there is a significant per-mile benefit to utility scale efficiency. Natural gas power plants are about double the efficiency of a very good internal combustion engine.

[epolanski]

That doesn't make any sense to me as the car can just run on natural gas itself without having to disperse so much in the conversions leading to charge a battery:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_vehicle

[kube-system]

ICE engines mostly generate waste heat, even when natural gas is the fuel.

Generating the power across town with the same fuel (in a turbine instead of ICE), transmitting it, converting it to DC to charge a battery, converting that back to AC and spinning an electric motor is more efficient. Yes there are more steps, but none of them are anywhere near as awful as ICE efficiency.

[epolanski]

That still makes no sense, you can use the engine to generate electricity directly like the Honda Jazz does.

https://insideevs.com/reviews/443380/2020-honda-jazz-fit-hyb...

[kube-system]

Internal combustion engines are approximately 30% efficient. No matter what you do with that energy next, you’ve already lost 70% of the energy.

Combined cycle turbines are about 60% efficient.

Does this make sense?

[bryanlarsen]

A combined cycle gas turbine is about 60% efficient, and you lose about 20% in transmission, converting to DC, charging, and converting to AC to run the motor.

A natural gas combustion engine is 40% efficient and loses 5-15% of that in the transmission.

60% * 80% > 40% * 95%.

[SkyPuncher]

Essentially benefits of scale. Larger engines run more efficiently.

[esturk]

Hybrids have the hidden/extra cost of getting your Catalytic Converter stolen which should be tacked on to maintenance.

[fragmede]

I'm not sure why you're focusing on the replacement cost of the battery pack. Used cars buyers aren't typically considering what the cost of a replacement engine is when they're buying.

Also, the data on this stuff is already rolling in since the first gen Nissan Leafs hit the market in 2010, the Tesla Model S in 2012.

[etchasketch]

>Used cars buyers aren't typically considering what the cost of a replacement engine is when they're buying.

That's because engines, properly lubricated, and run at a set RPM (i.e highway miles), have a lifespan that is far in excess of what a normal person would reasonably drive in half their adult lifespan. Dependent on brand, of course. But plenty of people racking up 400k-500k miles on original engines. That shit used to be unheard of back in the day.

Engines degrade by use. This is not the case for lithium ion batteries based on the way they are used in electric vehicles. Degradation is based on DoD - depth of charge. You cycle a lithium ion battery between 50%-60% instead of 10-90%, and you increase the lifespan exponentially. It's not linear. It's exponential. If automakers wanted to, they could add 2k to the wholesale price of the car, make the battery pack 20% larger, cycle the pack in a more narrow window of its capacity, and if age wasn't a factor, no battery pack would fail before the 20 year mark. Unbalanced degradation with age, as it is, is virtually the only reason every battery pack fails.

When you have a prius, and your battery pack fails, all the places that sell refurbished packs do it by taking the battery packs apart, finding the one cell thats shot, replacing it, and magically the whole battery pack works again. Why is it that one cell out hundreds? It's not as if that one cell was charged or used more than the others, they are all in series/parallel. The car charges all the cells the same. That particular cell just degraded faster than the others. The technology currently exists to make lithium batteries that last 20+ years, but it is nigh impossible to predict that during year 17, cell #345 is going to degrade 0.0032% faster than its peers and will cause the whole pack to fail.

Almost 100% of priuses will need a battery replacement by year 15. It averages from 9-15 years, with the peak happening 12 years from manufacture. Oddly enough, on the PriusChat forums, there was someone who tabulated this but cars that spent most of their life in Canada and Northern states trended toward lasting longer than cars down along the gulf coast and in southern states. Not sure if there was a large enough sample for significance, but I'm sure with the sheer about of priuses that have been sold in the past 20 years, this can be figured out.

[fragmede]

First gen Leafs don't sell very well for exactly the reasons you mention, but the TCO for the 3rd or 4th owner of a vehicle is hard to calculate regardless. 10+ year old cars end up needing major work like a valve job or a timing belt, or some emissions thing if you're somewhere that checks that. Battery packs aren't alone in having this lurking unseen potential cost. Most Americans can't just absorb $1k+ of work to keep their car running, even if the engine is technically fine and could last another 200k miles.

If your argument is that EVs won't take off because fresh batteries aren't cheap, I mean, you're right, they're not. The refurb battery market is huge though. Instead of paying the dealer a couple grand for a brand new pack, Uncle Joe or the local cheap mechanic, and YouTube University can do it, often for as cheap as couple hundred, with practice. Plus less waste for the environment.

Given the millions of EVs already sold though, and the various EV-only mandates globally, I think it's moot because they're already here, unlike 3D TV which had no such government mandate. The average used car price from a dealer in November was $31k, and a 2012 Tesla Model S can be had for around that much (Nissan Leaf even less than that), so I think the electrified future's already here. Just gotta let it percolate out to the rest of us.

You could be right though, I don't have a time machine :) It's just EVs are so stupidly much easier under the hood. No PCV valves, no carb or fuel injectors, or O2 sensors, no emissions crap. There's still some complexity, but it's just not the same.

[smileysteve]

Hybrids are more expensive to maintain than Evs, you have 2 systems that are linked together, the ice half requires very active lubrication and cooling.

You talk about battery refresh costs, but a hybrid that uses 85%+ of the capacity on every trip will wear much quicker than the EV that uses 10% of its capacity on 95% of trips.

[jahewson]

I disagree. You’re looking at old cars, but every car manufacturer sells new cars. The average non-luxury car in the US costs $42,000. Manufacturers are going to produce the product that new car buyers want.

[themitigating]

Battery packs can be used. I just had to do this because of my own stupidity but a new VW GTI engine with installation is 20k.

[homeland221]

The main reason EV is popular now is because of Tesla as adult toy. As Tesla stock prices getting hammered (and tanking olin coming recession), EVs popularity overall will take a dip. EVs are generally front-loaded cost. As long as you get a new car and totally ignore any of those batteries swap and disposal. EVs is very cheap. Once you considered entire cost, then ordinary cars (or even non-lemon used cars especially from Toyotas) aren't that bad.