[xpe]

I will charitably interpret “heavy research” as a joke.

It is hard to interpret the smugness above in a positive light. It is unhelpful to you and to everyone here.

If you want to compare an electric car against combustion-engine vehicle, go ahead, but that isn’t a key decision point for what we’re talking about.

The TrueCar web page table does not account for a $7,500 federal tax credit for EVs. I recognize it ends soon — September 30 — if only to head off a potential zinger comment (which would be irrelevant to the overall point).

All in all, it is notable that ~2 minutes asking a modern large language model for various comparisons is more helpful than this conversation with another human (presumably). If we’re going to advocate for the importance of humanity, seems to me like we should start demonstrating that we can at least act like why we deserve it. I view HN primarily as a place to learn and help others, not a place for snarky comments.

A better modern comparison showing less expensive EVs would mention the Nissan Leaf or Chevy Equinox or others. The history is interesting and worth digging into. To mention one aspect: the Leaf had a ~7 year head start but the Tesla caught up in sales by ~2018 and became the best-selling EV — even at a higher price point. So this undermines any claim that Tesla wasn’t doing something right from the POV of customer perception.

I don’t need to “be right” in this particular comment — I welcome corrections — I’m more interested in error correction and learning.

[hedora]

Here’s another list:

https://www.edmunds.com/electric-car/articles/cheapest-elect...

The model 3 is 1.5x more expensive than the cheapest car on the list, and it’s not obviously better than other things in its price range.

Here are some brands that have delivered more affordable EVs than Tesla: Kia, Hyundai, Chevy, Cooper, Nissan.

Note that all of these cost about 2x more than international competitors.

On top of that, Ford’s upcoming platform is targeting $30K midsize pickup trucks. Presumably, most other manufacturers have similar things in their pipelines.

Tesla is already behind most of its competitors, and does not seem to have anything new the pipeline, so the gap is likely to expand.

They’ve clearly failed to provide affordable EVs. They’ve been beaten to market by a half dozen companies in the North American market, and that’s with trade barriers blocking foreign companies that are providing cars for less than half these prices.

[xpe]

> Tesla is already behind most of its competitors, and does not seem to have anything new the pipeline, so the gap is likely to expand.

Behind? In what way? Please don't leave your fundamental criteria and assumptions unstated. You are prioritizing affordability above everything else, even range.

If you value your audience's time, please write more directly and clearly. [1] Don't try to sneak something past us. Instead, just come out and say it. Then you'll realize you need to make the case for why your criteria and assumptions are worth emphasizing. That would lead to interesting discussions like:

- What kinds of range do drivers want and why?

- What kind of trips do they do?

This is what we should be doing here -- unpacking our arguments, learning from each other, synthesizing. I'm so done with the low-quality comments from people that have little excuse. If you can write code or survive the tech industry, you probably have sufficient logical reasoning power and an understanding of constructive discussions. Or am I expecting too much? Seems to me such a person has little excuse to not step up the comment quality.

This concludes my lecture.

[1] By taking an extra ~X minutes to do so; it will save N * X minutes of the audience's time where N is the audience size. One you get in the habit of it, X will be relatively small. If you aren't willing to put in this effort, your comment ends up being a net negative towards the goal of helping people quickly and efficiently think about various pieces of the arguments.

[hedora]

“Affordable”, clearly. Even if you want to move goalposts to “affordable long range” the Chevy Equinox meets the criteria and is on the list.

[xpe]

“Moving the goalposts” is a phrase with a particular meaning. I’m not doing that here. I’ve explained myself at length, above.

[Kirby64]

Are we reading the same list?

The mini cooper EV is a joke of a car. 114 miles is ridiculous for $30k. Likewise, the 'base' Nissan Leaf is 150mi for $30k isn't much better.

The crossover/small-SUV segment is a little more competitive, but still you're comparing vehicles with quite dissimilar (n.b., worse) specs for lower prices.

If all you care about is a car that is electric that can be driven, then sure, there's cheaper cars. That doesn't mean they're better or reasonable for most consumers.

[hedora]

The goal is specifically “affordable” cars. Even the 114 mile cooper is going to be fine for commutes. That makes it a perfect second car for two driver households.

I’ve never driven one, but if it’s anything like my i3, it’s probably by far the sportiest thing on that list. Apparently it’s “a hoot to drive”, but the suspension is a bit stiff:

https://www.topgear.com/car-reviews/mini/cooper-electric

$30K for a quirky sporty commuter car seems completely reasonable to me.

(Also, the range is rated significantly higher in Europe for some reason. It probably outperforms EPA in the real world.)

[Kirby64]

An “affordable” car that isn’t useful is worthless. In general, people do not want cars that can only drive 114mi in ideal conditions. It reduces overall battery lifespan (since you put more cycles on it), and also can’t be used for anything except around the town. I would say the same thing about the i3 unless you’re talking about the gas engine generator one.

Also, I looked up mini’s current offerings in the US. They don’t sell that car. The cheapest car they sell is the “Countryman SE ALL4” which starts at 47k and gets a meager 212mi of range.

[hedora]

Our i3 is good enough for 95% of our trips, and we rarely get it below 20% (the computer reports 100% when the cells hit 90%). There have been zero times when we needed the other car at the same time as the i3, and the i3 couldn’t handle either trip.

Also, battery wear out on them is basically unheard of. Even if it were a thing, they have an extremely long transferable battery warranty (try finding an estimated dealer price for a swap). If you do somehow kill the battery, third party replacement ones can have higher range.

I honestly don’t know why you think 113 miles is worthless for a secondary car. Wyoming has the highest number of miles driven per year in the US at 24K. That’s 65 miles a day, so the 113 mile car will be more than adequate for most trips for the average Wyoming driver, assuming they drive daily.

The US average is 14K miles.

[Kirby64]

114mi of range isn’t actually 114mi. That’s my problem. If you treat the battery properly, you’d not use the bottom or top 10% (better would be not using bottom/top 20%, but that’d be impractical at that range), and then you need to add battery degradation of 10% or so. That means your 114mi range is more like 82 miles. Then, because it’s epa range, that means the actual range on the highway is going to be worse. So you’re closing to 60 miles of range.

Sure that’s more than the “average” commute even in high usage areas, but people don’t generally have super consistent average commutes. You’ll have a shorter average commute and then a longer drive with errands and such.

Also, having a car that needs to be essentially fully charged every day means you have to always, always remember to plug it in. Not as convenient as a car you need to charge every couple days.