I don't know where this "softening EV demand" narrative that's all over the news is coming from, but I don't have the numbers at my fingertips so I guess it could be true.
As a Tesla owner living in flyover country, I would say aside from politics there's a few things influencing the market.
- People still assume Tesla = $100K+ car. Nobody knows what Model 3 or Model Y or Model S is, and I can't blame them since the cars all look the same
- People still see my car and ask me what the gas mileage is, even when they know it's a Tesla, they just assume Teslas are hybrid cars like a Prius
- People still have no idea where the Supercharging stations are or that they even exist, because there aren't nearly enough of them around here
- People still haven't processed the idea that you can plug in your car and charge it at home
I wanted a Model 3 a little while back. When I did the numbers it would have cost about 3 times as much to run as my little Honda even including gas. Mostly because of the insurance price difference. I think I would pay about $400/month compared to the $100/month I pay now.
If you have a lot of money it's a great way to go, but electric is going to have trouble competing in the economy market for a while until they start making cars that make the insurance people happy.
>One favorable sign for Toyota: Its head of sales in North America said recently the market for hybrids is “smoking hot” and the company is trying to make as many of the vehicles as possible. Last month, Toyota had a little more than a week’s worth of Prius hybrids in stock, compared with more than two months’ supply of its electric SUV, the bZ4X.
“I have continued to say what I see as reality,” said Toyoda. Someone needs to convey to the industry what will make car buyers most happy, he said, and “if regulations are created based on ideals, it is regular users who are the ones who suffer.”
Not even just a decade long market leader, the new Prius has been heralded by auto reviewers as pretty much the first Prius that is actually kind of 'cool' looking and sporty and isn't just a econobox designed purely for best fuel economy with compromises in everything else.
So, they're comparing a huge step release of the Prius (which, always generates a lot of sales) vs. nearly the worst EV on the market.
Which is really fucking weird, considering they (Toyota) already made a fantastic RAV4 EV from 1997–2003(!!) and 2012–2014. The second time was a collaboration with... you guessed it, Tesla.
Or just make PHEVs. Cars that have small batteries, that are big enough to do 95% of your driving on electricity. That still let you jump in and go somewhere without hoping that there is a place to charge up. And even when running the ICE engine, you're getting fuel economy much higher than a regular ICE car.
I think that if everybody could reduce their ICE usage by 90%, and only use 1/4 of the batteries, that is a win-win for everybody. People driving around in 200-350 mile EVs, that only drive less than a 1/4 of that on a regular basis are just wasting batteries that could have gone into other cars and saved them on the cost of their current car.
Like seriously, how often do you drive more than 100 miles? Once a week, once a month? We all know the stats for people's commutes are far shorter. Most people don't need long range EVs except for once in a while. That's what pro-EV people have been saying for years.
Even a Jeep Wrangler 4xe that only has like 10 miles of range... if your commute is 20 miles round trip, that's still half the gas usage. That guy probably wasn't going to buy an EV anyways. PHEVs are also a way to get skeptics to reduce reliance on gas.
Not directly addressing the content of the article, just a bit of a rant:
The problem is that in a lot of cases, EVs aren't a drop-in replacement for an ICE car. The idea of driving powered by electricity is very appealing to me, but for functionally equivalent cars (size, range, etc.) EVs do not exist at a competitive price point for my use case. Just listing a few issues below.
- I have one of the smallest car available on the market (not available anymore in fact, but w/ever) and have no need nor interest in a bigger car. The catch is that I almost exclusively use my car for long day trips on the weekend, typically ranging 3-450km (I commute by train and bike/walk for other daily errands). EVs in the same convenient compact format do not have 3-450km of range. Maybe 250km advertised range at most, which will amount to less than 200km of real-world highway kms. Frankly I will not put up with (potentially multiple) recharging breaks on what is supposed to be a quick daily excursion.
- Related to the previous point. My small car cost less than 20k new. Equivalent EVs (equivalent in usability i.e. sufficient range for my use case which as stated would actually mean a much bigger car) start at ~60k. Even with the lower running cost of an EV, that price difference will never be compensated over the lifetime of the car.
- EVs are extremely convenient if you can always recharge at home, and extremeley inconvenient if you always need to recharge at a public charging station (btw the price at public charging stations is a racket in France and Switzerland, not sure how it is elsewhere). Like many Europeans, I live in an appartment and my car is parked on the street. The possibility to recharge at home does not exist. To mitigate the inconvenience you need more range to recharge less frequently, which mean a more expensive car.
Developing is the key word in that sentence. As pitiful as Toyota's hydrogen sales numbers are, at least they have something on the market. BMW is behind even that.
If they ever manage to produce and sell them, it'll cost you a whole bunch to operate. Hydrogen for refuelling is somewhere around 13-18$/kg, which at a 6kg tank you're looking at 78-108$ to refuel. An electric car by comparison (which also costs less to buy) will set you back ~40$ for 100kWh AND you get to charge at home rather than go out of your way(if you're in California). If you're anywhere else in the world (which is an unfair comparison since you couldn't refuel you hydrogen car in the first place, but that's a different matter) that price can get down to something like 3$ in other places in the world.
They have one if you followed that link. But, to your point, no point trying to sell one without infrastructure!
A friend in San Diego had a Toyota Mirai, only available to lease, and had to therefore refuel at the station off Del Mar Highlands road. There's just no infrastructure.
I did go through, sorry if I gave the impression I didn't. I was referring more to their statement (as translated at least):
"The pilot fleet of the BMW iX5 Hydrogen is not intended for sale. Depending on market requirements and framework conditions, we intend to potentially offer our customers a production vehicle in the second half of this decade. The small series is an important step on the way to this customer offer."
As a Tesla owner living in flyover country, I would say aside from politics there's a few things influencing the market.
- People still assume Tesla = $100K+ car. Nobody knows what Model 3 or Model Y or Model S is, and I can't blame them since the cars all look the same
- People still see my car and ask me what the gas mileage is, even when they know it's a Tesla, they just assume Teslas are hybrid cars like a Prius
- People still have no idea where the Supercharging stations are or that they even exist, because there aren't nearly enough of them around here
- People still haven't processed the idea that you can plug in your car and charge it at home