Every year, carmakers wait nervously for a report from analyst John Murphy, one of the best prognosticators in the automotive industry. It used to be called the “Car Wars” report, and now it’s the Murphy Automotive Product Pipeline. This is an independent, thoughtful, and typically clairvoyant view of what could happen. This year’s report is an absolute bombshell, noting both that EV adoption is going to flatline and that automakers caught up in EV hype are likely to suffer or maybe even vanish.
The Morning Dump is going to have a bleak note to it if you’ve thought electric cars are the future of American propulsion. Instead, according to Murphy, we’re in for a long period where hybrids are not a bridge, but a “durable solution.” I reluctantly agree. One of Murphy’s charts is about brand survival, and it’s not as likely that Volkswagen is going to be one of those as the company faces down difficult cuts. Nissan is also a company a bit on the bubble, which is bringing back the ghost of CEOs past.
I also think if you’re an EV person, the news that Texas is likely to take over the car market in the United States is also maybe bad news (as a native Texan, I am less bothered by this).
Murphy Thinks Electric Cars Peaked In 2025 And Aren’t Coming Back Soon
You ready for it? Here it is:
Via the new report from Murphy Automotive Partners, this simple chart pretty much knocked me off my chair when I saw it. Not because I think Murphy and his associates are wrong. They probably are not. It’s just such a bold repudiation of the last few years of hype that it feels almost dangerous to say it out loud.
Through MY2027–31e we expect the ICE powertrain to lose share to Hybrids as they represent a steadily larger share of
launches. Conversely, pure EVs are likely to make little headway with only a partial recovery from MY2026 lows, but still below peak 8% penetration. This is far lower than the industry expected even up until recently, and the inflection many investors underwrote has been pushed well beyond this study’s window, especially for mass market. We would go
further, hybrids are not a transition to pure EVs, but where the industry will find the right practical solution for
consumers, justifiable economics, and potentially for the environment.
This is absolutely wild stuff. What the MAPP is arguing is that we’re not experiencing a little stumble this year due to a change of politics and policy, but a long-term and durable abandoning of full electrification that sees the move towards hybrids as inevitable and the EV market as something of a consistent but flat alternative. In this view, electric cars aren’t gathering many new converts but, instead, recycling a lot of the same customers.
I’d like to point out that even two years ago, groups like S&P Global Mobility were treating electrification as an inevitability in their forecasts of powertrain mix:
As we edge closer to 2030, hybrid electric vehicle and BEV powertrain are likely to steer the future of automotive industry trends in North America. Despite more rapid electrification in other regions, North America’s production trails slightly, at just between 9% and 10% for BEVs and fuel cell vehicles. However, projections suggest a significant leap, with 44% of vehicles forecasted to be BEVs or fuel cell car models by the decade’s end.
It was this kind of analysis that felt wrong to me, and led me to first declare in 2023 that 2024 was going to be the “Year of the Hybrid” and then, last year, to declare this the “Decade of the Hybrid.” There simply weren’t enough customers and, unlike in China and Norway, the overall governmental and societal push ran out of steam too early. While politics is a part of this, I do think that the economics and buyer interest are the far bigger reasons, or as Murphy’s report says:
Pure electric vehicle programs have been deferred, re-scoped, or canceled, while hybrids have moved from hedge to headline. The economics are the key driver. Hybrids carry relative pricing power and healthy variable margins, while most pure EVs still lose money at the unit level. Crucially, those advantages look more structural than transitional. Furthermore, the practical use case for most Americans leans heavily towards traditional hybrids.
I cannot fault that logic, which is why so many brands that were recently invested in EV programs have either walked them back or, for the American market at least, entirely abandoned them. It’s possible that environmental concerns, political shifts, and higher gas prices might help full BEVs rise a little faster than forecast, but there simply aren’t going to be enough cars or customers.
On one hand, this does kind of suck. I love hybrids, and bought one, but there are plenty of consumers who would probably do well with an EV if there were more affordable options. The hype cycle caused automakers to overpromise, over-invest and under-deliver in terms of performance and pricing. Not that many automakers ended up making a better, more affordable EV than a Model 3, and by the time they did, they realized there just weren’t that many customers, even with $7,500 on the hood. For American competitiveness in the global market, where Chinese EVs dominate, it ain’t great. I still think that if the industry and those who covered it were more realistic, we could have gotten a future where hybrids and EVs could have grown together, as opposed to one where a single powertrain has to dominate.
Eventually, EVs will catch up, but it’s going to probably be way out in the future.
The other portion of this report, which is subtitled “Survival of the Freshest,” is that the EV “head-fake” caused many brands that weren’t Toyota to be forced to delay the redesign of key models (having expected to replace them with EVs) and now the market is about to become very old:
“The next five years aren’t about who has the most hyped concept, they’re about who actually shows up with the freshest product portfolio after the worst drought in history,” said John Murphy, Founder of Murphy Automotive Partners. “Some of the most familiar names in this industry are closer to the edge than the market realizes. The MAPP is how you see it coming.”
That’s a great sales pitch, and the media preview of the report shows which brands are in trouble, but the only brand named is Toyota (at the top, also the automaker with the most hybrids). There are seven brands in trouble in the United States, and I’ve got some guesses as to which ones those are.
Volkswagen Wants To Cut 100,000 Jobs, Might Not Be Able To
Does anyone know who this guy is? He might be retired by now, but I’d love to talk to him given that he’s sort of the mascot for Volkswagen’s production woes. Here’s another stat, this time from Bloomberg, that should tell you what’s going on in Wolfsburg: Volkswagen employs 628,893 people compared to 383,853 for Toyota. Last year, Toyota sold roughly 11 million cars across its brands globally, compared to just under 9 million for Volkswagen. That’s an extra 250,000 employees to sell fewer than 2 million cars.
The math doesn’t work, and Volkswagen announced a plan to cut 100,000 jobs and four plants. This isn’t really a surprise, given everything, but it’s not great, and VW’s powerful union has something to say about it, especially because of this:
Major strategic decisions at VW need approval from its supervisory board, where labor representatives normally hold half the seats. Currently, they occupy a majority after independent board member Susanne Wiegand didn’t stand for reelection.
According to that Bloomberg report, VW’s labor union is pushing back and can continue to do so. At the same time, VW’s union understands the company needs to survive, so cuts are certainly coming and coming fast.
Oh, Shut Up, Carlos Ghosn
This is a little bit my fault, because last week it was too amusing to not write the headline “Nissan’s Shareholder Meeting Was So Bad That Someone Nominated Fugitive Carlos Ghosn To Run The Company Again.” It’s kinda funny! It’s also not serious, because Ghosn would be a terrible leader of the company.
Unfortunately, saying Ghosn’s name means that a bunch of reporters, including Hans Greimel, were given an excuse to call him, so we have to listen to this nonsense:
“They say bring back what you had before. We want to come back to the golden age of Nissan. It lasted 18 years. It went very well,” Ghosn said. “Common sense speaks. If there is somebody who can fix it, it is somebody with my profile. Obviously, I mean, I’ve done it before.”
I think Ghosn did a good job, but he didn’t do a great job in the end, and a lot of the products he was responsible for were (though we love them) kind of mid. He was smart enough to see the EV wave coming, but absolutely unable to adjust when Tesla showed up and demonstrated the right way to do an electric car. Ghosn had plenty of business sense, but not enough product sense.
At least Ghosn here is reasonable enough to understand that it’s probably not happening, while also insisting he’d be able to save the company.
Texas Might Overtake California As The Biggest Car Market Soon
As a native Texan, I am not surprised that Texas might soon overtake California as the biggest car market. In general, my view is that if California wanted more people, it would invest more in making the state affordable to live in, including making simply having a place to live possible for more people. The alternative plan, as seen in Texas, is a mix of higher density development in historically low-density areas (Austin, Houston, San Antonio, and somewhat Dallas) for more affluent people, and a bunch of crappy, low-quality suburban housing for everyone else. This makes for increasingly fun cities and pretty miserable traffic.
Again, from Automotive News, this has an impact on the car market:
Since 2019, California’s share of U.S. retail light-vehicle sales has been dwindling, to 11.4 percent this year from 12.5 percent, according to JD Power. Texas, meanwhile, has trended in the opposite direction, climbing to 10.8 percent today from 9.3 percent seven years ago. Less than 1 percentage point now separates the states.
Texas already has become the nation’s leader in consumer spending on new vehicles, as Texans favor pricier pickups, JD Power found.
If these trends persist, Texas will become the nation’s new automotive “center of gravity,” said Tyson Jominy, senior vice president of OEM customer success at JD Power and the report’s author.
“California is the place where a lot of new ideas are sort of tried out, whereas Texas is a place where trucks and SUVs win,” Jominy said. “Texas is sort of the prototype of the typical American consumer these days.”
Texas forever.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Well, this is timely. It’s “A Slow Dance” from post-rock band Explosions in the Sky as featured on the Friday Night Lights movie soundtrack.
The Big Question
Name the seven brands that Murphy thinks might not survive the decade.
Top photo: MAPP/Tesla
Meh. EV’s are solidly in the “Trough of Disillusionment” if you believe the Gartner hype cycle.
Adoption is probably rock bottom, but there is no way a flood of cheap used EVs, new and improved battery tech, and new affordable models with wider appeal isn’t going to continue to build the market.
Nobody can predict the future, but where was this prediction from analysts years ago? Oh right, they were predicting everyone was going to be in an EV by 2030. So it seems ‘vibes’ and ‘the zeitgeist’ does play a part in these “predictions”.
If I was a betting man, I would say reality is going to fall about dead even between ‘doom and gloom’ and the most optimistic scenario.
*I’m not an EV driver or evangelist, just someone who pays attention to the tech side*.
Explosions in the Sky is a great way to end TMD – truly a Texas Forever combo with Friday Night Lights.
Electric Vehicles certainly have their place. That place is not everywhere at all times. They should have known.
Meanwhile, Tesla keeps selling EVs and making money at it.
They certainly do, but why can’t anyone else (in the US)?
Because Tesla is really, really good, and it’s really, really hard.
Murphy is completely unreliable, their analysis is always wrong. They actively try to push misinformation, that misinformation gets corrected, and yet outlets still publish their misinformation. You really need to stop publishing them.
As I have said on here for years now – expecting EVs to suddenly takeover the market in the US is a fantasy. There is too much of the US where they simply don’t work well, and we simply don’t have the incentives to do it. With cheap gas, cheap taxes on cars, and now minimal government incentives, there isn’t much reason for many people to go electric. I do think that EVs will slowly grow in market percentage. Maybe even be a majority eventually. But absent some wholesale changes that simply are highly unlikely to happen, ICE isn’t going anywhere. I do think more and more ICE vehicles will be hybrids. There is really no reason for ordinary cars to not be at this point. It’s well-proven tech that is unobtrusive and works very, very well at very modest cost.
American brands have NEVER been competitive in the rest of the world other than by owning local subsidiaries that built cars suited to local conditions. The number of actual American cars that were exported other than to Canada is absolutely miniscule and always has been. The US market is far too insular – conditions here simply ARE very different than in most of the rest of the world. Even the “foreign” vehicles that sell in real numbers in the US (Camry and Accord for example) are basically America-specific cars that barely sell in the rest of the world. Anything that sells here AND abroad is largely a niche or luxury product. TESLA is really the first American brand to have any global impact (with the same product) in well, forever, but they are fading fast as better local options were developed (and they let thier product line stagnate).
As far as seven dead brands walking – not sure if you mean just in the US or globally? In the US, Chrysler, Fiat, Alfa Romeo, (I think Dodge and RAM are fine), Lucid and Rivian probably (or at least they get bought out by other larger companies), I don’t think Slate has a snowball’s chance in hell of making it long-term. Number seven? I am going to go out on a limb and say Nissan (or at least Infiniti, who have been pointless for decades), at least in it’s current form. I think VW is sufficiently stubborn and big enough to stick it out regardless. I think Volvo/Polestar will bribe Trump one way or another and get to stick around, or Volvo just folds Polestar into themselves and gets around the current stupidity that way.
“American brands have NEVER been competitive in the rest of the world”
Cough… TESLA… Cough.
Did you not read my post? I specifically called out Tesla as the first in pretty much forever. Though they have also pretty much lost the plot in the rest of the world too between Musk, the much cheaper competition, and letting the product stagnate while they chase idiocy like the Cyberturd, robots, and silly self-driving cabs.
So what’s the number 1 selling EV model in the world?
Unfortunately for Tesla, more than one car model exists globally. That they only have 2 competitive models to take up all the sales is an indictment on Musk’s competence. They should have come up with more options by now.
Okay, so what’s the number 2 selling model?
You’ve missed my point, bud
Who cares when it’s just one among MANY?
I mean, the reverse is also true of many foreign brands selling in the US: The Tundra and Sequoia were designed for the North American market, as were the Ridgeline, Armada, Titan, and most of the German brand SUVs.
I get what you mean about American brands, but it’s not like outside makes don’t do the same thing to tailor to the US market. I see that as just understanding your customer and realizing tastes vary widely by region.
Yes. Which is why American companies never really bothered with exporting, and the Japanese made cars specifically for the US market. The Europeans have been modestly successful selling the same cars everywhere, mostly the prestige makes. Economy cars not so much other then the Beetle – but that was 50+ years ago in a very different era.
Very well said.
But there is also something to be said about sharing tech. The Camry and Accord are sold here as different cars, but as a whole, both Toyota and Honda have a lot of tech and parts that are shared globally. And that counts as well.
As for dead brands. Fiat is not going away anytime soon. The 500 still sells in droves and the new panda EV is a great offer at k€ 22. (Do a comparison with the US slate!).
This means they could share parts and tech to create a few sensible Chryslers for US market.
Neary every global company shares tech across markets today. GM is completely out of Europe at this point, but they certainly did – Opels and Saabs shared platforms with mainstream US cars, Ford shares engines and to some extent platforms, but not much product per se currently since they no longer sell an actual car other than the Mustang. Stellantis IS a European company that happens to have a US arm that makes muscle cars and ‘Murican pickup trucks and Jeeps. And a few vans. None of which has much of anything in common with what they produce in Europe. I suppose they still sell a few Jeeps over there. The old Cherokees and Grand Cherokees sold in modest numbers. Do they still?
Fiat is deader than Elvis in the US, no matter how well they are doing in Europe. Their reintroduction here should be an MBA course in how NOT to re-launch a brand, with several chapters devoted to Alfa Romeo as well. I love the cars, but the company was just insanely stupid about how they went about it. The sad part is they had some products that would have been a much better fit for the US than the 500 and the horrid 500L. I think they still pretend to sell the 500X in tiny numbers. The 124 Spider was a great car but got ZERO marketing. Nobody knew what it was. The Alfas were spectacularly half-baked at launch and just reinforced the reputation of unreliable Italian cars. And then the way they made dealers build dedicated Fiat/Alfa “Studios” instead of just selling the the things through every Chrysler/Dodge dealership was the meat in the shit sandwich. That ENSURED that they were hard to buy and hard to get serviced in this sprawling country.
BMW exports half of its Spartanburg production ~200k vehicles a year. This both proves and disproves your assertions – it can be done, but BMW exports more vehicles by value than any other OEM, which suggests it has isn’t done. I remember years ago discussing this with an IHS analyst- I mentioned that the X4 had really small shipments, like 5k or 6k units, and he was like, no they produced more than 50k X4s, and when I looked it up we were both right – I was using at U.S. shipments, he was looking at global shipments from Spartanburg.
Like I said, BMW is one of the prestige brands that DOES manage to sell more-or-less the same product everywhere. They are not an American company, and they don’t make “American” cars, even if they currently make cars in America because labor in the South is cheap. And even then – 200K vehicles annually is very small potatoes. 50K isn’t even rounding error for a big car company. That’s what, a month or so of RAV4s?
EVs are where Hybrids were 25 years ago – subject to the same FUD about batteries by the same people.
EVs are fine until they aren’t. See the saga of my visitor from a week ago. Hybrids give you most of the advantages with very little of the downsides.
The battery is fine, but we are still a LONG way from them being as overall convenient to just splash some gas in and go, and they are still very heavy and very expensive if you want to go very far. Even if they aren’t AS heavy or AS expensive and go farther than they used to for that given size and weight. Hydrocarbons are a miracle of energy density.
Corralary: Texas sucks because of guns, abortion laws, big trucks, and the requirement to read the bible in school.
I don’t think Texas illegally bans guns.
I suspect his issue is that Texas all but makes you buy guns to be a resident, not that they ban them.
Personally, I think people should read the Bible. Then maybe they would figure out what an utter pile of nonsense it is. I figured that out by the sixth grade, but I was precocious. Go myself kicked out of Sunday School for asking “difficult” questions. Like “do you people actually believe this BS?
I think the problem with guns is we do it in a half-assed manner. Either nobody should be armed or absolutely everybody should be armed, and the rules of engagement relaxed. If being an asshole was likely to get you shot, people would be a lot more polite. Heinlein was right about that one, as he was in so many things.
I don’t care whether anyone reads the Bible or not. I think most people should read Meetings With Remarkable Men though.
Some Sunday schools like having someone ask questions.
Most people don’t realize how much protection unarmed people benefit from being around other armed citizens.
The only reason most cities survive now is the increase in armed citizens. Easy to see the difference in cities and countries that restrict human rights.
Personally I have hundreds of hours of training, and I recommend as much as possible for anyone.
Anyone can access extensive training by training with others, if they don’t have the time or funds for advanced classes.
You might be surprized how quickly you learn.
If your assertion were true, red states would have lower murder rates and the US would have a lower murder rate than Europe. Neither of those is true. You vastly inflate the protective effect of someone being armed and vastly underestimate the bystander effect and vastly under estimate the likelihood of an armed person escalating a non deadly situation into a deadly one.
Ideology should be based on reality, my friend
TBQ: Chrysler, Dodge, Infiniti, Polestar, Lotus, Lucid, and Slate.
Additionally Rivian
– Motor Trend: Alisa Priddle
I disagree that Tesla did it right. I think they set back EV adoption by trying to market their products as a tech company first, car company second. What we’re seeing now is as much tech backlash as anything else.
The Korean brands are doing electrification right. Regular cars and fun cars with EV powertrains instead of gas. I picked up a used Ioniq 5, and I won’t go back. I was driving my mother’s RAV4 this last weekend, and just a far worse thing to be in and handle overall. And I’ve test driven American EVs. Garbage, the whole lot. GM keeps putting in increasingly larger screens with no carplay, Ford has given up for the time being, Stelantis sabotaged itself with a do-it-all platform, and Tesla/Rivian want to make iPhones, not cars. Horrid.
What Tesla absolutely did do right is set up a charging system. They seem to be the only company that figured that out. I think some of the progress in manufacturing was pretty good , and limiting the number of models, although the X and the truck seem superfluous.
Hyping the tech and the cult of personality seem like bad moves now, but pre Covid it probably got the company to survivable scale against all odds.
Amusing goofballs are, well, amusing until they are in charge and try to destroy everything.
Fair points all. I am excited to see if Slate makes any sort of dent in the EV market and forces another recalibration from the big American automakers. I’d like to try and see the big 2 (and a half) compete again, full spectrum
I sort of agree with this. I think Tesla contributed to the perception that EVs are super tech-heavy and are only for tech-savvy people.
In fact, part of the reason I also picked up an Ioniq 5 was because it has buttons!
Interestingly I have a friend who has a 2025 Rav 4 and every time I drive it, wow does it feel slow and cramped! It’s crazy to me that it cost roughly the as much as my I5. I mean the Rav 4 is great and gets amazing fuel economy for its size (regular hybrid version), but it is just not comparable to the I5 in any way.
EVs needed early adopters, and relatively wealthy adopters that embrace tech – that’s what got the ball rolling with Tesla. I mean they came out with the roadster first – sexy, lotus designed, 100k (I don’t recall exactly).
The roadster was basically a prototype that they made a few hundred to sell as a proof of concept. I’ve seen a handful around (perks of living around where the company is based) and trust me the Lotus they are inspired on has a much much higher build quality.
They’re also basically getting bricked as their batteries age out and Tesla decided long ago not to bother with maintenance for those.
As a fellow HI5 owner I agree with this statement. It was basically Hyundai/Kia as the only options for an EV for us for all the reasons you outlined. It’s just a car that happens to be powered be electrons.
Yes, I agree. The interior is very non-threatening and traditional, which I like, and everyone who rides in the car seems to like too. I think “a car that happens to be powered by electrons” is a great description.
“…but there are plenty of consumers who would probably do well with an EV if there were more affordable options.”
This is 80% to 90% of the problem.
I am a case study in this. Purchased a 23 Ridgeline to replace my 06 RCLB Silverado 1500 in August of 24.
Still need a truck, still do lots of hauling around town, no towing. Also want a good daily commuter and road trip vehicle. Need my primary automobile to do those 3 things.
An electric truck would have been awesome but the GM and Ford offerings are way too expensive and still not at the quality level I would like. Especially the Lightining.
If Tesla had just made a normal truck instead of the Cyber BS they came out with I would probably have bought one. Tesla’s can be road tripped easily with their supercharger network and their app. My brother does Boulder to St. Louis 2 times a year in his model 3 long range with no problems.
I also can charge at work for free and own a single family home with 2 car garage. Fuse panel is on the front corner of the garage. Can’t make the install of a 50 AMP level 2 charger any easier.
But I still went with gas because of price.
Slate may or the new Ford may be an option in several years though.
Fix the price issue and sales will come.
Did you look at used options at all? I’ve been keeping my eyes on used EV pickups for awhile and they definitely take a depreciation hit with not a lot of miles
Yes. Most will still to expensive at that time.
It is a shame too because a EV would be awesome for me. Just came down to the money.
I do think my next vehicle will be EV though.
Fair enough! When my wife went shopping to replace her worn out RAV4, we scooped up a used Ioniq 5 for under 30k miles under $30k. Love it. I hope EREV tech forces electrified pickup prices down.
Yep I can’t disagree with this at all. Even used EV trucks, which are difficult to find at all, are quite pricey.
The Slate is super cool, but I suspect it will be inadequate for people who truly need the utility of a truck.
I’m curious to see what Ford’s upcoming EV pickup looks like.
Too bad about that livable climate for our kids, eh?
That horse is already out of the barn and he isn’t coming back. Adaptation is what needs to be happening, not thinking that the piddling bit of change that the world’s wealthiest countries can do at this point will mean a damn thing. The OTHER 7B and climbing people on the planet who would all like a nice middle-class standard of living like they see on the Internet will ensure that what we do is meaningless, and they will probably keep breeding like rabbits for a while yet. Not to say that improving efficiency isn’t a lofty goal, but if you think it’s going to CHANGE anything, I have a bridge to sell you.
The best thing we could do for Mother Earth is a mass human sterilization project to get the human population down to something a whole lot more sustainable.
The climate will be survivable, the worst case models are nowhere near the runaway greenhouse.
Not like the personal transportation emissions from passenger vehicles in America was going to make or break the climate anyway.
Not on its own, but its indicative of a culture that doesn’t give a flying fox about addressing the issue.
Most people have other things to worry about in their life. When you are trying to figure out how to pay $12k in medical bills your car is broken and your kids need attention the “climate” is pretty low on your priority list.
People have to be comfortable to be able to worry about something so intangible , otherwise they are just trying to survive day to day.
I think we are already seeing adjustments – people aren’t having as many kids in Western countries. Birthrate dropping. And it makes sense. Our society makes it difficult to have children. And DINKS look like they are having more fun.
Personally I think about half the world population might be a good idea. Less strain on all the natural world’s ability to provide for us the basics.
Bitch about it to the Chinese.
You mean the China where 35% of the electricity is produced from renewables (U.S. is like 20%) and where they keep adding nuclear. A couple of decades ago you might have been right, but for at least last decade China has been installing more renewables than anywhere else – by a very large margin. China still burns a lot of coal but is running away from it as fast as they can. Similar dynamic with EVs, where China has been aggressively pushing this new technology.
Go on believing that. I’ll look at the emission stats and coal tonnage.
Battery vehicles run on electricity, not magic.
Ignore, already posted above
It’s a shame.
Also, has this Iran debacle not knocked some lets-not-be-so-dependent-on-oil sense into some government and corporate heads (of the US)?
It’s disappointing all around.
If we get to a point soon, as predicted by this chart, where hybrids and electrics make up 1/3 of the market, I think that’s a real accomplishment. I’m somewhat surprised it didn’t happen a decade ago, at least for hybrids, but better than nothing. However, until we see viable hybrid options for full-size trucks and SUVs, there seems to be a cap on the size of the hybrid marketplace. As far as electric sales and market share are concerned, I just think gas has to be a lot more expensive than it currently is for many people to make the switch. Think $8 a gallon. In Texas, not LA. On an ongoing basis, not for a quarter or six months. I guess that would drive hybridization of the full size trucks, too. Gas is just too cheap, in a sense.
The simple solution is to require a CDL for full size trucks to get fewer pavement princesses hogging the road and running over pedestrians.
A drivers license and maybe speed limits based on some combination of stopping distance and kinetic energy would be a start.
I think a million Joule speed limit would a good idea.
Basing licensure on the overall energy impact of a vehicle is an interesting idea. Going to have to think on that one.
Drop the federal gas subsidy and boy howdy those pickups stop making sense for most folks. Then we might also take steps to balancing the budget. But not in this America
Gas being too cheap in the US is the entire reason why our automotive landscape (and literal landscape as people are incentivized to do stupid things like suburban sprawl and driving umpteen zillion miles a year) is stupid from top to bottom.
Making cars more efficient only fixes half the problem as it just incentivizes using them more (or at least not using them LESS). NOBODY should be driving a 6000lb vehicle just to commute to work and back. or even a 4000lb one. And nobody needs an ordinary family sedan that will outrun a Ferrari from my youth.
Good points.
This is why all cars should get 7 mpg.
And gas should be 9 bucks a gallon.
Nah. $12/gal and 40mpg (including trucks\SUVs, they should not get a pass on anything unless you need a CDL to drive them, and you should need at least a “CDL Jr” for anything over 5Klbs) would be what I would love to see.
My crystal ball shows a future world where we (normals) can only afford inexpensive transportation cars. They will be electric, range won’t matter cause we will not have disposable income to travel, and Slate will survive with their relatively cheap little truck. Going the way of the dodo? In America I presume not worldwide, Dodge Chrysler, Nissan, Lincoln, Buick, Mitsubishi, Mazda and my outside of the box candidates Mercedes, Audi, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mini and Fiat (are they even still here now?)
So in other words, same as it has always been?
The average person is not driving anything particularly interesting or impressive. Not today, certainly not in the past. Interesting cars have always been the purview of the relatively wealthy. The current best-selling RAV4 is priced right at where the meat of the market has always been, adjusted for inflation, while including content and abilities we couldn’t even dream of 40+ years ago. Cheap cars have never sold in big numbers in the US, and the current price only looks scary because inflation is, in fact, a thing. $40K is the new $20K, just like $20K was the new $10K was the new $5K was the new $2K.
“ Cheap cars have never sold in big numbers in the US.”
The Model T (15 million) and Beetle (21 million) would like a word.
The model T wasn’t actually that cheap – fairly expensive initially, and got to just barely affordable by a decently paid working man with mass production – and that was er, 100+ years ago. Beetles also weren’t cheap (they cost as much as a much larger American car, and were about the most expensive “economy car” you could buy), and the vast majority of them were NOT sold in the US. You also need to consider what you were getting for the price. Not much by modern standards.
I hear my dad’s voice saying Mars bars were 10 cents when I was a kid. I totally get the inflation adjustments, but for most of us normals our wages earnings investments never kept up so a $25,000 anything is now a bargain.? My inner cost accountant looks at the Slate for example and immediately scrolls up the asking prices on used Ionic 5’s and 6’s with 25,000 miles.
You are getting a LOT more for your money with a used Ionic 5 or 6. And the chances of the Slate NOT having catastrophic depreciation as well are slim. Especially when they most likely go under. The chances of them pulling off a Tesla are slim.
Agree. And I love the looks of the 5, but as it happens I like the looks of a simple Slate too
I don’t disagree that the Slate is a GREAT looking little rig. I just find it hard to believe that very many people are going to want such a bare bones vehicle for that price. $25K may be “relatively” cheap, but it feels like a lot of money for something that is basically two seats and a steering wheel at that price. *I* happen to like plain-jane single-cab trucks, because I only have interest in trucks to do the most trucky things, but there are some very good reasons they are dead like the dodo bird in the US market. I fully realize that most have different needs than I do. I don’t have enough need for a truck to be willing to pay even 1/5th of the price of this thing. I’d just buy a beat old Ranger and only drive it when I absolutely need to do truck stuff. Which isn’t often enough for me to bother owning a pickup. Catch 22, that. A utility trailer was WAAAAY cheaper than a spare truck, and I tow that with my BMW convertible. Which is a whole lot more fun when I am not doing trucky stuff with it, aka 99% of the time. Hauls just as much or more than a Ranger too.
The Ioniq 5 has grown on me. When they first came out all I saw was a Dodge Omni, but I like them now. The Ioniq 6? Eeesh. Those guys were huffing the good stuff when they designed that, even if it does kinda look like a stretched 4dr Ur-Saab.
Yes, and yes and I probably like the 6 a little because I am a Saabophile. I miss my 900S convertible, but alas not enough to buy another. Another concept is to divide 27,500 (Tax, Shipping) bu 30 bucks to rent a u-haul. 800 plus trips to Lowes/a nursery near you. Witness my ongoing battle between hopeless car romantic and that Cost Accounting classs I took. in college.
Oh yes. The only reason I spent $800 on a utility trailer of my own is that there is no U-Haul convenient to me anymore, and with a new house being built, I am using it JUST enough to justify it vs. $30 to rent one for a day. But a truck that costs at minimum a grand a year to insure and register no matter how cheap it is – nope. And Florida doesn’t let you drop the insurance when you aren’t using it like I do with my cars in Maine.
I had a 900CVT – feel much the same, LOL. Loved it, no need for another one, especially at the prices a decent one commands today. I get to drive it anytime I want I am in Maine anyway, sold it to a buddy who stores it in my garage!
I have an Accounting degree, it does make you look at things a tad bit differently when it comes to assessing cost/benefit.
Don’t forget the tag cost goes up. Well here it does. 1 collector plate is $150, good forever. Just don’t drive it in January. (We put so much salt down it is a wonder the entire population doesn’t have a stroke) Spouses renewal on the hybrid $225 per year. Insurance on collector car: full coverage + a check is some dumb fuck runs into me ($10,000) on the Del Sol. 17/month premium.
So maybe an old (20 years) small pickup for those carry crap adventures.
Accounting Degree also but went right to the Tax dept. at big 8 (LOL I’m that old) as I effing hate accounting.
Doesn’t save you anything either place I live. In Maine antique plates just get you out of annual inspection.
In my experience, collector insurance companies would not insure the sort of cheap shit little truck I am interested in no matter how old. I couldn’t get them to insure my Land Rover Disco without a big fight. And even then, it wasn’t THAT much of a savings, given how cheap Maine is to start with. Nothing like as cheap as my Spitfire.
I loved the tax prep side of accounting, and hated the rest of it. If tax prep was a year-round gig I would have been happy doing that, but it really isn’t Planned to go into tax law but ended up interning in criminal law, then never practiced. Fell into IT and never left. A twisted path.
Yup.
This blog goes on and on about how we need cheap cars again, yada yada yada, over and over.
No one wants a cheap car. Never have. Cheap car means you are poor.
Most cars are dull. There are three kinds of cars, dull, fuller, dullest. People want a toaster on wheels.
RAV4 yes, but don’t forget the other best selling cars, all boring:
Model Y
F150
Yawn.
Today we think all cars were cool in 1968. I was there. They were just like today, a few cool ones and 98% boring appliances.
And then as now if you rolled up in the budget Biscayne people smirked.
Exactly. There are about 1% actually cool cars sold every year, at best. For every super cool muscle car there were a million secretary specials with a six and an AM radio. And a hairshirt little pickup truck that is the opposite of what actually sells is only going to be cool to a select group of weirdos (many of whom will be afraid of getting thier tinfoil hats shocked if they buy an EV). Many do to hang out on Internet forums though. And reality is it’s going to be $30K+ equipped the way most people would need it to be, with the SUV roof and a back seat. That is really real money.
The problem is the thing isn’t cheap ENOUGH for what it is. $25K is still real money, and there is a literal ocean of warrantied low-mileage used alternatives that are simply better all-around vehicles at that price than this thing. Well under $20K to start (what it would have been with incentives possibly, though more likely they would have made it $30K and just made it a little cheaper out the door and pocketed the additional profit) and I could see it being a minor hit. Absent incentives coming back bigly post-Trump, I don’t give them a snowball’s chance in Hell of actually making it long-term. If they have ANY initial quality glitches (good luck with that these days) they are SCREWED. They don’t have a Musk with his unique talent for getting people to light money on fire in a game of financial musical chairs. I just can’t see Bezos being as “save the world” as Musk. He won’t keep pumping money in if he doesn’t start seeing a return.
Time will tell. Maybe I am wrong. <shrug> I didn’t see Tesla lasting this long, though I still think that house of cards is pretty doomed eventually unless they make some big changes.
Uh, Mazda outsold Chrysler, Lincoln, Dodge, and Mitsubishi COMBINED in 2025. They’re not going anywhere. They have a great lineup and seem to be going after Acura and Infiniti with semi-premium vehicles with great quality and competitive pricing.
I’d expect Infiniti and Acura to die off before Mazda bows out.
For all its problems, Nissan still sells well in the US, perhaps propped up by rental fleets, though Subaru is catching up fast (not sure if that’s a commendation to Subaru or an insult to Nissan).
Toyota has a stake (I think it’s 15%?) in Mazda, so that helps I think (they also make the CX-50 with the RAV-4 on the same line in Alabama. Buy the Mazda!) I hope they make it and keep punching above their weight. Looking forward to seeing what the next-gen Miata (NE) will be.
I have my doubts about SLATE, but they have a sugar daddy (Bezos), so there is a chance they’ll survive long enough to the point they’ll bring models (with power windows and AWD) to the market, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Well we were talking about my crystal ball, which is fallible and based entirely on whatever springs to mind. I agree that Mazda is a great little company. Operative words are little company. Also that liquid red color is to die for
We’ll see. Once gas spiked I got a lot of questions about my EV from coworkers. They liked how it didn’t need oil changes and other ICE maintenance. And how it could charge at home. I’ll keep on spreading the word.
Amen. The Midwest will be a fertile ground for EVs as more moms and grandmoms start looking at economics. Hubby will groan and moan, make some comments about his masculinity, but once he’s driven the wife’s EV for a while it will become as normal as ICE cars are today.
Almost every person who has asked me with genuine interest about my EV has been a woman. Every coworker with an EV has a wife who now wants one and is convincing their friends. They don’t have the hangups that of men who tie their personalities to their car, they don’t have to worry about maintenance, don’t have to stop for gas, don’t have to *think* about it, and all while being cheaper than ICE. Get in, press the button, drive. The Blazer EV, R2S and similar midsize SUVs are aimed right at Midwest wives, and I can’t wait to see it.
The charging at home piece is huge for reducing the risk for being SA. Not having to get out and be stationary while paying attention to both the gas pump and the surroundings is a big deal. Even at a fast charger, being able to lock the car while it charges is another layer of protection that an ICE vehicle can’t offer. And most people don’t fast charge that often.
I have the reverse problem, my wife does not want an EV (or a minivan) couldn’t even get her to test drive a bolt.
She doesn’t have to do any matinence for her ICE and I fill it up most of the time with gas for her so maybe that’s the problem. Only one other friend I have has an EV (Silverado) and it’s the husband’s truck. But we do not live in the Midwest, so maybe it’s regional?
Interestingly, the original market for electric cars circa 1900-1915 was also women, for many of the same reasons. They just worked, like an appliance.
I literally had a coworker who told me she couldn’t buy an EV because her husband doesn’t like them. Like… is it 1920 again? I mean I know our government is desperately trying to bring that era back, but how embarrassing!
No, I get that. If the husband is a skeptic or worries about the rumors of a fire risk – of course he would express his concerns and hopefully they would act together and make a different choice.
That’s how it works at my house too except we both love our EV.
I am much too strong willed to ever take my partner’s advice if it’s unreasonable and not based in fact, so the idea that someone could overrule me for a spurious reason makes me cringe.
Thankfully I am dating a super smart doctor who is also very into EVs.
I married a librarian who knows everything. In a good way! We reason out big purchases, Smart lady thankfully.
That’s awesome! Librarians are the best and so under-appreciated.
I also started getting more questions from coworkers, but that hasn’t translated into people actually buying EVs. In fact I know several who literally just bought new ICE cars, neither of which were even hybrids! And they complain mercilessly about the cost of fuel.
I literally don’t understand why so many people are under the impression that EVs require these huge, life-changing compromises to operate. You’d think they could look around at all the EVs on the road and talk to a few people who are super happy with their EVs and go “oh, maybe I should make the switch,” but critical thinking skills seem to be in short supply these days.
I have a relative who would financially benefit from an EV and are in the process of replacing a vehicle. In the end they’ll likely buy another large domestic vehicle to commute ~150 miles round trip per day.
An EV is off the table I think b/c they perceive EVs to be more expensive, they worry about needing to charge it away from home, and a whole list of unknowns.
It’s shame b/c an EV could nearly pay for itself saving them ~450-$500 per month in gasoline alone.
When we got our first EV, my wife’s wild approval (it was her car) was because she no longer needed to stop and get gas every week. She just hated pumping gas, and the ability to top it off every night in the garage was THE selling point for her.
It wasn’t even on my list of why I like EVs (other than the reduced cost of electricity vs gas), but was on top on hers.
I’m male and very much like not going to a gas station. Especially like not going into the gas station.
The way I see it EVs are some degree of cheaper batteries away from just being the economical option and at that point it’s pretty much inevitable that they’ll start increasing their market share as the rational side of the market is sizable (the irrational one is possibly larger but it’s still a lot of cars on each side).
Fun fact being that suburbial America is the perfect breeding ground for EVs with everyone being able to charge their vehicle at home. Back in Europe (the parts I frequent at least) adoption isn’t great and pricing is only half of it, the fact that most folks have nowhere to regularly charge their EV stops many from considering them.
And then a few weeks later when the crisis ended, they went back to being the typical American consumers. At least I expect that is what happened. 😉
That famous short American attention span.
Still complaining about gas prices. But not considering ditching gas.
Has anyone improved on the original Honda Insight?
Nope
Do we need denser cities when remote offices are the efficient choice for most companies?
Construction engineering and housing laws in cities are as obsolete as the Russian apartment blocs most cities are adding now.
Meanwhile, the next epidemic is coming to roost in denser cities first. Given that coming experience and the gradual realization that you never have true ownership in an American city, how rapidly will flight out of cities become?
Only economics holds that in check now.
“Has anyone improved on the original Honda Insight?
Nope”
If you’re carting around a kids soccer team, towing a boat or living in your car I’m pretty sure the answer is yes.
For its size I agree, of course.
It is so much better designed and engineered, and repairable than I would have believed any mass produced car would be in that era!
Can they mass produce to that design standard, or will they? Remains to be seen
Yeah, the Insight was the best commuter since the Nash Metropolitan, I imagine.
The Sienna hybrid or Ioniq 5 are probably the closest to ideal for larger vehicles, at least for now.
Denser cities with more public transit and bike/pedestrian infrastructure are certainly going to move the needle a lot more than just switching everybody to EVs from gas, but both are necessary.
We’ve already recovered from the COVID blip of people moving away from cities. Humans are a social species, so aggregating in cities where there are more opportunities seems a natural thing that happens. We’ll probably get a blip again in the next pandemic, but if the Plague couldn’t kill off urbanization, I don’t think anything will in this century. I certainly could be wrong though.
City life isn’t for everyone. Maybe not even for most given how cramped, expensive and dirty everything is in the lower rent areas.
It’s not, but urbanization trends over the past several centuries show it’s for most people. Most vehicles should be EV or EREV, but cities should be built properly so only folks who want to drive are the ones on the roads, like we see in the Netherlands.
People urbanize at least in part for job opportunities. When people were allowed to WFH during the pandemic many left cities and had to be forced back with threats and RTO mandates. Seems strange that if people WANTED to live in cities they’d have to be strong armed to return.
American cities suck. They don’t have to but they do. Other countries, other cultures do a better job of making their cities better places to live.
For me personally that involves good mass transit, lots of bikes and fewer cars and especially fewer trucks.
“Not Just Bikes” is an interesting channel to watch and think about. Especially the older episodes.
I know people were forced back to work, but I don’t know if I buy that they were forced back to the cities. I’d be curious if there are any studies on that. I’m pretty antisocial, and I still have no desire to move back to podunk. I can work wherever, but I want to live someplace that isn’t an hour drive from any civilization.
FYI there are these places that exist between urban city life and rural podunk. You get to live around other people in housing units that don’t share all their walls, maybe no shared walls at all. Most have their own small private parks/gardens and reserved places where you can park 3-5 vehicles.
It gets even better! Often in these “suburbs” crucial shopping is only a few minutes away. YMMV but in some you can even *gasp!* walk or use a bicycle for light shopping and recreation.
I’d consider the 40k population town that I grew up nearby to be Podunk. It was an hour or two away from anything of note. YMMV
Rural areas have a function for producing food (I grew up on a farm), but suburbs are antisocial and resource-intensive, especially the modern, car-dependent iteration. Rail suburbs were an interesting development. Obviously, many people like suburbs, but I find them to be the worst of both worlds.
“suburbs are antisocial”
“I’m pretty antisocial, and I still have no desire to move back to podunk”
Sounds perfect.
“suburbs are antisocial and resource-intensive, especially the modern, car-dependent iteration.”
No less so than posh urban areas. I don’t imagine a fancy luxury apartment is any less resource intensive than an equivalent 2000 sqft suburb home with a full basement and a garage.
Suburban life does not require every licenced resident to take a Suburban or similar Canyonero to the corner store for a quart of milk any more than an urban dweller has to call any limousine to do the same.
“I find them to be the worst of both worlds.”
I find them the opposite. Suburbs offer reasonable privacy, peace, quiet, and some room to spread out but still have most of the amenities and resource access. Of course YMMV, if you have to commute hours each day because your company prioritizes real estate value and the illusion of productivity over energy efficiency and employee happiness then perhaps urban life is the better choice despite it’s many, many other shortcomings.
I found the right blend to be a “micropolitan” town with a university for events and diversity.
University towns do punch above their weight for transit and other amenities!
Mass transit is virtually non existent in most cities. Crime is wildly out of control.
The orchestrated insurrections in American cities continue. Skill with defense is advisable.
The NYC subway system that I ride extensively without issues every time I visit would like to have a word with you.
.Nyc is one of few cities in USA with mass transit.
Their safety issues are routinely in the news here.
A city and state notorious for repressing human rights.
Saddest part is the us once had wonderful electric mass transit, that was destroyed for profit.
Relatives lived in LA in the forties, never thinking of owning a car.
Listen I’m with you on the destroyed electric mass-transit. Scranton, PA, near where I live, used to have a network of electric rail cars, which must have been amazing.
Not sure what you mean about NYC repressing human rights, unless you mean that you might face consequences for espousing anti-human right beliefs, in which case you deserve it.
Also not sure about “safety issues” routinely in the news in NYC. Those old subways carry millions of people every day with far, far lower rates of injuries or fatalities compared to driving a car.
Where is “here”?
And what human rights?
I have lived half my life in San Joaquin County and half in NYC, and raised a family in Brooklyn because it was a vastly better place to do that than central California. Even in the 1990s.
I’m moving back to NY, about 100 miles from the city, but with the geezer discount, I can take public transit to anywhere in the city for $14. My kids can pay $29. I’m dependent on a car to get to the station, but that’s 12 miles away and parking is cheap.
California has been crippled financially since Prop 13. The state went from having the best schools to being pretty bad.
That said, most of California’s problems are because so many people historically have wanted to move here, and the people who live here would rather they didn’t, and they keep building in really dumb places.
And yeah the LA transit system and the San Francisco / Oakland systems were pretty great from what I heard. Ther are still a bunch of abandoned subway tunnels in LA, but lots of them have had skyscraper foundations out through them.
Privately owned mass transit seems doomed to fail, at least in the US.
NY is a rather safe city for US standards and average for first world.
But it’s also a city of 10 million people. If you want to find crimes there every day, you’ll find them. If you think there are pretty lousy areas there, they sure are —although there’s pretty much nowhere there these days you can’t just walk through during the day no problem—.
If you want to report them every day, you’ll make it look like a criminal cesspool. There’s a lot of money being invested into making it so.
You mean the crime that is at historically low levels. I feel safer in New York or Boston than in almost any rural area in Texas. The blue cities have also done incredible work combatting the opioid epidemic that still seems to be ravaging other areas of the country.
Yeah, the murder belt bordering the “Gulf of America” is pretty bad.
Crime is pretty low in NYC without having to compare it to historical levels. It has a lower crime rate than any city in the US, which is pretty remarkable considering Wall Street is in NYC
I suppose the Wall Street crimes don’t hit the statistics for a variety of reasons. Also the count of crimes doesn’t necessarily take into consideration the scale of the crime.
Tell me about it. We got wiped out by Madoff. I remember there was some discussion at the time about how many crimes that counted as.
He delivered the eulogy at my father-in-law’s aunt’s funeral.
Madoff took down a family in my network which eventually caused them to close down their local factory because they had no money left to invest in new capex to meet the increasing competition. They were early investors and took “distributions” over decades to pay taxes on the income, which led to them being asked to pay back these funds to the Madoff receiver – which might have been fine if they only looked back the 5 years the IRS let them amend their taxes and recover refunds – but they had been asked to account for their decades of distributions. A huge nightmare.
My father in law, who had been raised by the aunt I mentioned was a very early investor along with others of his relatives, who may have been the first investors having known him from his childhood. Supposedly he mowed their lawn. He died about six weeks before Madoff was arrested. The receiver wanted to claw back millions from his estate that had been spent years before, and sued us for it.
We definitely need to do a better job building out mass transit. Many of the large cities have good, or at least passable, systems – DC, Boston, NYC, Chicago, but in the US it has the impression that its for the poors, so people wouldn’t want “those people” to have nice things.
Charlotte is actually doing a great job investing in their system and are building out the light rail pretty quickly, from what I can tell. It’s one of the reasons I’m targeting it for my next move.
Depends on how close the Honda Civic hybrid of that time was. Ive heard drive train wise its rather similar but with an extra cylinder.
I’m talking about the over all build of the Insight, lightweight panels, cast aluminum structure, access to parts, low aero drag.
The car is remarkably tough for its size and weight too. I would have preferred a larger engine, but it is a remarkable water mark.
The ones my friends have saw 80 mpg when below 300,000 miles, where they are now.
The number of people doing any of those things is absolutely miniscule when compared to the auto market as a whole. If you need to cart around a soccer team, the *team* should be investing in a van. Or if it’s your OWN soccer team, figure out that contraception is a thing.
Though I would not have chosen the Honda Insight as my example, as it had LOTS of problems that the Honda fanbois like to ignore in addition to being a tiny little two-seater that was FAR from cheap. I would say a second or third gen Prius is a far better super-efficient “everyman car”, even if not AS efficient, the difference is rounding error when you are hitting over 50mpg. Though for the price, I would have just bought a stickshift Corolla and driven less. You could buy a LOT of gas for the difference in price between a Corolla and a Prius back in the day.
There was the Civic hybrid; similar hybrid system including the available 5MT but with four doors, a real back seat and a trunk.
And still nowhere near as good as the equivalent Toyota. Sold in tiny fractions of the Prius, for good reason. Honda has never really quite figured out hybrids, maybe the current ones are finally decent, but they always seemed to have a lot of issues that Toyota simply didn’t.
As I have also said here many times, Toyotas are the cars I respect the most while having just about zero desire to ever own one. Fabulous cars that simply do not push my buttons. But perfect for anyone who just wants boring transportation.
Maybe so but AFAIK it was the only other hybrid one could buy with a stick shift, at least till the disappointing CR-Z came along. So it had that level of engagement.
Having driven one – they aren’t engaging. Mildly more interesting to drive than a Prius, but not enough to not just buy the much better car – which is what almost everybody did. And the automatic Honda hybrids (which most of them were) were quite unreliable.
What were it’s shortcomings? Anything that could be improved with parts out of the Civic bin like SI suspension bits without hurting the efficiency too much?
It wasn’t particularly efficient, the hybrid system was not particularly reliable, especially in the CVT version, which was the vast majority of them. And it was expensive for the not impressive efficiency.
When was the last time you saw one vs. the last time you saw an equivalent Prius (which are still absolutely everywhere).
Hard to tell since a Prius stands out. You KNOW a Prius is a Prius which is why a lot of people bought them. A Prius was a virtue signal. South Park even did a episode on it.
The Civic hybrid OTOH looks like a base Civic with not so much as a graphics package to show off how much it was saving the world. Civic buyers got no accolades. Even the 2nd gen Insight sort of blended in.
Had the Prius been a hybrid trim of the Corolla it might have been a lot less popular.
The numbers don’t lie regardless. Google say Honda has only sold about 250K Civic Hybrids (plus relatively small numbers of thier other hybrid products) in total in the US since 2002. Toyota has sold over 2M just Prius-branded vehicles (Prius, V, and C) since a slow start in the late 90s. And that’s with sales of the Prius dropping off a cliff as Toyota has made ALL of thier mainstream products hybrids optionally or in many cases exclusively over the past few years. And Toyota’s hybrids just work in a way that Honda’s too often have not. The torque-split differential-based tech shared with Ford is just the creme de la creme of hybrid tech. Honda’s goofy efforts have not worked nearly as well, and sales reflect that.
Shame that Ford is not taking nearly as much advantage of the tech they jointly own. But let’s face it – they would love to make nothing but F-OneFiddies and Exploders plus a few Mustangs for fun if they could.
Not directly at cheap bastard who we all love, but I don’t get the “A Prius was a virtue signal” thing. They just work rather well, and seem to be as reliable as a hammer. Changing headlight bulbs is a pain, and getting to the battery when it’s dead is a catch 22 situation. I can’t figure out why people who don’t own one care or feel so insecure
If “ virtue signaling “ is some sort of code for I don’t give a fuck about being fashionable and will wear socks with sandals, play the Ramones, Patsy Cline, and The Magic Fliute on the same mixtape (that’s some seriously twisted Mozart BTY even without the snakes) and maybe don’t wash my car, well wherever.
Some cars are entertaining, but sometimes you just want to get somewhere.
Virtue signaling seems to be one of those things that people who know they are assholes think other people of doing to call call attention to what assholes they are when the “virtue signalers” aren’t even thinking about the assholes. Who even has the time for virtue signaling, or cares enough about whoever is supposed to be offended by it
Also, Priuses are really cheap to buy and cheap to drive.
Virtue signaling is indeed a thing but those folks moved from Priuses to Nissan Leafs around 2011, then to Teslas soon after. That well is long dry though and I’m not sure what the virtuous thing is now, however I expect the Slate will be the next one.
I owned one, it was barely better fuel-wise than the regular Civic it replaced if that was driven sensibly. And FAR worse when driving in the mountains once the battery was depleted on a longer uphill until the next downhill was reached. Not worth it in comparison and overrated. Or perhaps the regular Civic was underrated. The best thing about it was the blue interior color.
City stop and go driving is where hybrids traditionally shine when compared to their ICE only brethren. How did it compare on that front?
It didn’t “shine”. The engine didn’t shut off very often, and I simply am not stuck in Manhattan for hours every day. Honda’s system just wasn’t as efficient as Toyota’s. If all you do is commute and never reach a higher average speed than mayby 10mph then maybe it’s a few mpg better than a regular Civic but not enough to do it again or seek one out due to the added complexity over a normal one.
There are good hybrids and what’s the point hybrids, I felt the Civic was sort of stuck, not enough of a noticable MPG bump to be worth it and not enough (none) of a power bump to appeal on that part.
If you’re in a city all day long an EV (any EV) beats it hands down.
It wasn’t a bad car, it just wasn’t appreciably better than a regular Civic.
Honda made a change and software patch update to the software in around 2010 (in both new and already sold cars) that altered how the hybrid system worked due to having too many battery failures due to degradation. As a result it worked the gas engine more, the battery less, and changed how it worked which did affect fuel economy and performance. This is not reflected in early road tests as it was a change/update well after launch.
My stock 74 Fiat with original carb and carefully tuned ignition hit 45 mpg in the mountains at freeway speeds.
In no way is the maximum potential for fuel mileage being exploited.
Not even close. Imagine if we could be happy with the entirely adequate performance standards of the mid-90s, and all of the technological progress had been put into economy instead of power. And without the increasingly ridiculous size and weight.
I understand the rest of the world can buy cars like that, just not here in freedom land.
Indeed. Though sadly the “jack up all the things” madness is catching everywhere.
The easiest route to better mileage is less weight, less frontal area and running the engine at wide open throttle to reduce pumping loss.
All of which your Fiat excels at.
All of which most cars in the American market absolutely suck at.
One of the defining things about American vs European cars in the 60s is that European cars were optimized to be driven at peak power, and American cars were optimized for peak torque. Buying the “towing package” helped with American cars but generally driving at peak power for more that a a couple of minutes or so would boil the coolant out.
One of the cool things about hybrids is that the engine can be smaller so that it’s running closer to peak efficiency, and the electric motor steps in when extra work is needed. The un-cool thing about hybrids is that when you their power budget, they just sort of stop rather than allow you to thrash the engine for a few seconds. Trying to tow an immovable object with my Prius is a puzzling exercise, At least in reverse, I haven’t tried going forwards.
BTW, Diesel engines always operate at WOT, which is why they excel al less than full power
“Has anyone improved on the original Honda Insight?”
NopeYes.“Do we need denser cities when remote offices are the efficient choice for most companies?”
We don’t need denser cities, but we do need less urban sprawl.
“Construction engineering and housing laws in cities are as obsolete as the Russian apartment blocs most cities are adding now.”
Wut???
“Meanwhile, the next epidemic is coming to roost in denser cities first”
Unless of course people get themselves vaccinated and listen to qualified doctors, not quacks and Fox news.
“American city, how rapidly will flight out of cities become?”
With higher fuel prices, not rapidly at all.
“Only economics holds that in check now.”
Economics has always held things in check.
Overpopulation and density will accelerate disease mutation faster and faster.
We cannot get vaccinations until they are produced.
I had covid A likely, before any vaccines were out and had long covid from that.
My first vaccination stopped those breathing issues.
Are you familiar with the pattern of the multiple flus in 1918?
The same patterns apply to new variants spreading.
mRNA (messenger RNA) Vaccines can be developed in a week. Manufacturing still takes a while but still it’s faster. Previously it would take a year if it was similar to something you already had a vaccine for.
Of course some idiots have decided that it is good politics to be against mRNA vaccines.
“mRNA (messenger RNA) Vaccines can be developed in a week. Manufacturing still takes a while but still it’s faster. Previously it would take a year if it was similar to something you already had a vaccine for.”
Prions enter the chat….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion
All known prion diseases in mammals affect the structure of the brain or other neural tissues. These diseases are progressive, have no known effective treatment, and are invariably fatal.
This is such a weird argument that it’s basically a non-sequitur.
Prion diseases are vanishingly rare and can only be spread by consuming inflected brain tissue or having it enter your bloodstream somehow.
That is mostly because prions are so poorly understood. Prions weren’t even named until 1982. The diseases they cause take years, not days or weeks to develop so progress in their study is very slow. The more they are studied the more concerning they are:
“Misfolded proteins are also linked to other neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which have been shown to originate and progress by a prion-like mechanism.”
More worriesome is chronic wasting disease in deer. That prion has been shown to remain active in the soil for up to 16 years and infect deer through eating grass that up took soil borne prions through their roots. That is a very recent discovery. As is it’s discovery to have infected deer now in 33 US states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_wasting_disease
Its not known if that infection can cross over to humans but in 2024, “it was revealed that two men from the same hunting group contracted Creutzfeldt–Jakob, prompting medical researchers to speculate transmission had occurred from consuming CWD-positive venison.”. So its not an impossibility.
I actually find prion diseases fascinating and have been following potential CWD to human transmission closely. However, worrying about prion diseases is wayyyyy down on my list of things to worry about. You’re more likely to get struck by lightning!
The thing is you KNOW when you’ve been hit by lightning. It’s instant, painful and obvious. It’s also usually not too hard to deduce when someone else was killed by lightning. And humans have known about lightning since the dawn of humanity.
Prions are different. Science didn’t even know about them till the 1980s. Unlike lightning prions strike silently, then there is a gap of years, sometimes decades till symptoms appear and those symptoms can look like a lot of other things. Who knows how many cases of prion infections have been misdiagnosed or just remained a mystery?
I’m not that worried about them either…yet. The more that is learned about them however, the worse I find them to be.
Here’s a link that gives more info on the actual Prion diseases including symptoms
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmissible_spongiform_encephalopathy
One thing of note… some people with early onset dementia could actually have a Prion disease.
The good news is they are rare:
https://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/prion-diseases
For now. They aren’t well studied so we don’t actually know if they are that rare or not.
Well I’m telling you THEY’RE RARE DAMMIT!!
Because if they weren’t, then we’d have to worry about it.
So you shut your mouth with that logic and reason of yours.
Now I’m gonna go stick my head in this nice looking pile of sand…
Oh just wait till they’re weaponized. I imagine they’re what inspired Borg nanoprobes.
LA LA LA CAN’T HEAR YOU… ENJOYING HAVING MY HEAD IN THIS SAND…
Yup, generally caused by eating infected meat, or medical procedures.
If we stopped feeding animal byproducts to livestock, screened for prion disease in blood donors, cleaned surgical equipment more thoroughly and – checked notes- quit the cannibalism, don’t eat grandma’s brain, then it would go are mostly.
Living in densely populated areas doesn’t seem to be a factor.
Oh, and hunting. “feeding, baiting, and providing mineral licks cause deer to congregate… increasing the risk of prion exposure.” seem to be a big factor.
Also not a city problem generally.
As an armchair microbiologist I could imagine a weaponized common pathogen (bateria, fungi, parasite whatever) designed to infect humans and express low doses of harmful prions which would then go on to self replicate on their own.
That WOULD be a problem in cities.
There has been a recent announcement of serious cases of amnesia that seem to be short term.
Last I heard, cause unknown. Very strange.
I experienced a mild version recently, which I ascribed to allergies before I heard of this news.
I was blanking trying to get a number correct I had solidly memorized.
Later, feeling clearer, I could remember it very clearly.
Probably not the same issue, but a very odd experience anyway.
A temporary memory event in large numbers is definitely strange news.
Yeah, TGA sounds like the first act of an invasion of the body snatchers type plot. A pandemic of short term memory loss would be pretty bad. Unless we are already living in it. Are we ? Seems familiar, but…
Let us know if you wake up tomorrow and it turn out that you’re Katie Couric.
I haven’t heard any suggestion of a cause.
They keep finding new side effects to drugs and diseases that have psychological effects or are detrimental to clarity.
Being temporary is a new level of weirdness.
I can still easily account for my memory lapse as caused by allergies, often under rated for their harm. The abrupt snap to clear memory of long number strings was the weird part. Like a switch turned off and on. I haven’t changed treatment.
There are drug side effects that only show after years.
One of the new allergy drugs years ago began affecting my internal clock.
Turns out when it’s not right, you can barely do anything.
You might think you don’t have one, but you’ll know if it’s gone.
I thought you were joking about Katie Couric, but I see she broke the story.
Doesn’t seem like my experience, but they don’t seem to understand these events.
Yeah the time and consciousness thing is pretty weird, especially if you are paying attention to it. There is a lot of filling in the gaps that the mind does.
It sounds like you’ve been looking into some of the filtering and processing our senses go through. I started looking at these effects related to racing in particular, but find they apply to everyday life too.
Recently I read that this includes time lost to this processing we are unaware of.
I haven’t learned anymore about that so far.
I’ve actually done some real world testing of these things. It’s very different seeing that. I discovered some real world applications related to that.
When I had a chance to get some personal specialized firearm training, the instructor completely revamped my approach to shooting. He didn’t call it that, but he had me use that clock to sync firing to the perfect moment. Sounded very weird and sloppy, but I immediately got better.
Following an idea I read that if you’re training for defense, you should speed up your shooting to stress yourself.
They expected this to reduce accuracy.
I incorporated this into practice and even qualifying. Funny thing is my accuracy improved a lot. I found it felt comfortable, still waiting for that pacing.
I’m headed to shooting without sighting, known to be more accurate if you get there.
The population density of ZIP code 11215 in Brooklyn, New York, is approximately 32,185 people per square mile. Unfortunately, it’s such a desirable neighborhood I can’t afford to move back, but it’s pretty nice. Too many million dollar households. The apartment I used to rent is a 6 million dollar coop now. Or a 10 million condo.
Zip code 10282, in Lower Manhattan, has a population density of approximately 85,755 people per square mile, and average household income is $500,612. The median household income is $250,001, and the per capita income is $205,317. Lots of kids there I personally think that neighborhood sucks other than the Tom Otterness playground. It was fun in 70s and 80s though.
Anyway, people say that places like NYC, and California are too expensive, but the problem really is that they aren’t expensive enough to get people to move to somewhere else. The other problem, in NYC at least, is the they have pretty much run out of marginal or undesirable neighborhoods. For a while I ask friends what bad neighborhoods are left and no one can think of anything “Maybe Brownsville” is the consensus but it’s not cheap either.
Construction rules are still very restrictive when it comes to innovation in design and improvised materials.
Most cities have abusive, illegal courts that exist only to end run past constitutional protections. Even worse, some rural areas now are mired in this, seriously degrading land value, as it should.
California is notorious for costly bureaucracy that applies to the most rural locations.
The Berkeley city govt was even using earthquake rules in an attempt to drive out the Shipyard improvised community, which used a number of shipping containers.
We need denser cities so we stop turning farmland into urban sprawl, can reduce the need for commuting and therefore emissions, and walkable cities are just… Nice.
Remote workers don’t need a city.
I like walkable cities, but they are rare now.
Remote work and jobs that will probably be lost to AI are the same batch of jobs.
Possibly.
I remain wildly unimpressed by ai so far.
Massive investment is definitely not proof that they know what they are doing.
I’m becoming more and more convinced AI is more a management boogeyman negotiating tactic than anything else.
Look, I loved my two OG Insights. Great repairability. Fun to drive with the stick shift in a slow car fast way. With modern battery tech, they’d still be outstanding.
But they were essentially no-compromise fuel economy supercars. Two seats, limited cargo capacity, spartan ride & handling. No cruise control, fer cryin’ out loud. Real world lifetime fuel economy was 53-54mpg over a cumulative nearly 600k miles.
Now my Maverick hybrid AWD is averaging 39-40mpg, seats 5 in much greater luxury, has a payload capacity of 1400lbs, and can tow up to 4000lbs. That it gets within 15min of the Insight is amazing progress.
Anyone making predictions about the US car market in 5 years is guessing. Even two years ago, did anyone foresee that a felon would be elected president, tank the EV market, then give it the biggest boost it’s maybe ever had by starting a war in the Middle East? Anyone? Bueller?
That’s what I thought.
The US as a country has bipolar or schizophrenia or whatever other personality disorder you care to name. Our behavior is wildly unpredictable right now and until someone gets us on some meds to even us out, the wild ride will continue.
Edit:
That’s a bold claim. I would argue that Tesla derailed the EV car market by making them focus on crap most people don’t want. The thing Tesla did right was prioritizing a charging network. The cars are mediocre at best.
did anyone foresee that a felon would be re-elected president?
FIFY. And kinda, yes. By the same voters for the same reasons he got elected the first time.
There aren’t many national politicians who aren’t felons, so there’s that.
Oh that’s not true,
The combination of someone that actually wants to make things work, can afford to be in politics, is willing to put up with how miserable the job is, isn’t a nut, and chooses to go into politics rather than using their gifts to do some else is vanishingly small, and the tool set and mathematics of American politics brings out the worst people, but there are some out there.
Some of the best (and some of the absolutely worst) people in politics are staffers and lobbyists. The ones that are really good (or bad) know that they can get more done behind the scenes.
There are even some good people that work for terrible employers , lobbyists keeping them from being worse.
Oh, wait you said “many” , but still you have to be convicted to be felon.
Tesla’s software (not UX) and energy efficiency are still class leading (and I still don’t like them, mostly due to UX and chassis)
I have to say, I am still not a fan of Tesla’s “screen for everything” ethos, but I drove a Model 3 Highland recently and was surprised at how easy it was. The touchscreen gear selector was no big deal; there’s an animation that shows you in which direction to swipe. The indicators on the steering wheel were similar to a motorcycle (although they’ve since brought back indicator stalks). Even climate control was fine – actually better than the haptic controls on my Ioniq 5 that are difficult to read when it’s sunny outside.
And yeah, Tesla really does the efficiency thing well, especially at the price point of the Model 3 and Y.
I suspect I’d really enjoy owning one, but the fear of being perceived as an Elon stan will likely prevent me from ever doing so.
Tesla made the first EV that had decent range and power — absolutely changing the EV landscape, and creating a template that all other EVs have been emulating (and improving upon) ever since.
Also Tesla mastered using good enough rather than perfect batteries, and focused on scaling production. I don’t think anyone else would have seriously predicted that a bunch of laptop batteries would be adequate or cheap enough.
Historic performance is no guarantee of future performance. The abysmal performance of EV sales in the US is the result of the American Automakers fighting against it like it is a life or death existential battle to them and they paid off Congress to adopt their fight. Between Congress and OEM marketing departments they have delayed the inevitable, but like Kodak before them, they failed to adapt and decided to delay. They have for decades been losing against a global billion dollar battery research industry that is larger than the US OEMs and EVs will be cheaper and better in every metric that matters than any fossil fuel Ford, GM, Chrysler can sell. Remember these companies are in business to make money, not to innovate or make great products so these US companies will do everything they can to ban these EVs. Im looking fwd to the lawsuits and we may have one very soon from Polestar
Something pretty big is being overlooked: new battery chemistries. As is being demonstrated in the renewable energy sector, the financials together with greatly improved performance will make it foolish not to take EV ownership a lot more seriously in the next few years. (I think that if everyone truly appreciated how totally f’d we are from an environmental standpoint, that the current crop of EVs would be selling much better in the US — but everyone doesn’t appreciate how f’d we are (especially in the US) — alas.
Excellent point. EVs are wildly cheaper and easier to manufacturer than ICE vehicles except for the battery. Prices for batteries continue to fall, and we’re seeing wider adoption of LFP cells which are even cheaper to produce and have some benefits over NMC cells.
Just like how solar panels + batteries have gone from being “green” to just the cheapest way to make money selling electricity, producing EVs will eventually being the best way to turn a profit for car companies.
If you have maths that will show we can build our way out of environmental issues, that would be entertaining.
Governments have shown no interest in true efficiency in basics that matter like efficient housing before fantasy cars.
Well if we can get fusion power to work we could just run atmospheric scrubbers off the excess energy. You could even use that and turn it into synthetic gas or coal if you wanted.
This could maybe work for nuclear too.
I would hope so considering fusion power IS nuclear power.
I would surely like to think that if we had fusion, solar, hydro, wind, and other green energy sources that we wouldn’t use that energy to make synthetic versions of fossil fuels that we would then burn…
Not worried about classic cars, not worried about the odd machine – I’m talking about daily driver energy consumers like car, trucks, ships, trains.
For fusiom It really depends on how efficient it is, if we barely get much power from it and it remains clean but expensive then it won’t happen anyway.
Specifically I was talking about the atmospheric carbon scrubbers, what do you do with the extra carbon? Make a beach entirely out of diamonds? Bury it? Or make a little $ on replacing fossil fuels.
Well most of the time government has very little interest in the next big thing until they get their nose shoved in it. The good old, invisible hand of capitalism is going to Bitchslap the US government right about next Tuesday or so. The only problem is that is that at every opportunity we have given China a head start in EVs and renewable energy. When we show some signs of progress, some politicians sabotage the thing.
The only reason that EVs aren’t happening is that governments, some unions, and some very large commercial interests are all against it.
Look at how power companies react to efficient housing. That’s where real potential for efficiency is. I have a Panasonic battery bike.
I think battery cars are like a talking dog, at current stage. Pretty much equivalent to jet packs and turbine cars.
This is what I’m really interested in. Eventually, there has to be a way to make a battery that doesn’t weigh a literal half ton or more, and for less money than it does now. I don’t know shit about batteries so maybe my hope is misplaced, but it sounds like there’s a lot of research going into just that.
There are a few nice battery improvements coming to market fairly soon, but the holy grail of new batteries are solid state batteries — still a few years from wide production. They’re far more energy dense (so can get double the current range — farther than any ICE car after a fill-up — while taking up less space and adding less weight), they’re less prone to thermal runaway events that can cause fires, and there’s less battery degradation over time. Most companies making them are in the testing phase now, and working through the challenges of mass production (the hardest part).
Batteries are being asked to do things they currently are not capable of.
Power is all that matters, yet you still can’t carry these batteries on aircraft.
I’m spending more and more money on lead batteries, while my lithium packs have a limited lifespan and high cost and risk.
So you have a lead battery smartphone? Or do you just not use one?
You are buying lead acid batteries? I just put a LFP pack into a golf cart at work b/c the lead-acid equivalent that I took out was two or three times more expensive to purchase and only lasted 5-6 years. Also those battery to battery connections were frequently unreliable b/c the cart sits outside and the rain falls on a portion of the pack. The new battery is all under the seat and has two connections vs a dozen.
I put similar lead-acid pack in my GE lawn tractor (52 years old!) b/c it’s lead-acid pack wore out in ~5 years and it’s replacement lead-acid pack also was twice or three times more. It is a drop in replacement.
I’ll be looking for LFP replacement batteries for my x3 UPS backups at the house as they wear out too.
If I believed projections by industry experts on the future of American technology, I would already be impossible to devastate further. Fortunately, I don’t believe our collective fate is very predictable right now.
“Murphy Thinks Electric Cars Peaked In 2025 And Aren’t Coming Back Soon”
That chart is only US data. But the world doesn’t end at the US border.
So I think he’s wrong. Right now we are just in a lull caused by Crooked Trump and his gang pulling BEV incentives and other shit. And they are doing that to keep their oil industry backers happy. But they are only delaying the inevitable.
Globally, BEV sales continue to grow… especially with the recent spike in energy prices.
And then when the next wave of cheaper BEVs comes out in the form of the Slate, the vehicles built on Ford’s new universal electric car platform, GM’s BEV-N platform, the next gen EV platform Hyundai-Kia are working on and others, you’ll see a new generation of BEVs which will cost the same as a regular ICE vehicle, but have much lower operating costs.
And then buying a BEV will become a no-brainer for the masses.
Though there will be a contingent of the car buying public that will cling to their ICE vehicles in the same way that people were clinging to their carburetors in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
And then you’ll see a big the big EV growth again and eventually, BEVs will make up the majority of vehicle sales.
Basically I think you are right. I might keep an ICE around for towing and hauling seven people but it rarely is driven these days b/c the driving experience in our BEV is so much better despite being a smallish car (1st gen Kona EV, think VW Golf size vehicle).
Want my money? Give me a 1990s Honda analog car with a modern EV drivetrain similar to the Kona. No touchscreen. Just analog gauges, single DIN radio, three knob heating and cooling. 250-300 miles of range. Put it in a 1st gen CRV body i.e. not a large vehicle. Give it AWD. Enough sound proofing to make it quiet.
Sort of a 1990s Honda Slate. I will always have a BEV as my daily driver from now on. I might consider replacing our V6 SUV with an EREV at some point just so I could tow for ~350-400 miles per go.
“ (1st gen Kona EV, think VW Golf size vehicle).”
I’m familiar with the Kona EV and vehicles with the same basic powertrain… the Kia Soul EV and Kia Niro EV.
They were on my ‘potential candidate’ list when I was last in the market in 2024. Back then, they were still expensive and thin on the ground used.
But I’ve checked recently and the prices for good used examples have come down A LOT.
“Give me a 1990s Honda analog car with a modern EV drivetrain similar to the Kona. No touchscreen. Just analog gauges, single DIN radio, three knob heating and cooling. 250-300 miles of range. Put it in a 1st gen CRV body i.e. not a large vehicle. Give it AWD. Enough sound proofing to make it quiet.”
+1.
But for me, I’d skip the AWD and I’d want to retain the rear camera which I find quite useful at times. And I’d want a stereo that is modern enough to read modern USB drives and play FLAC audio files so I don’t need to keep stacks of CDs in the car or rely on audio streaming.
With a single DIN radio slot, a trip to Crutchfield Audio would yield whatever you wanted.
I’m with you, I want AM/FM/bluetooth/AUX maybe/USB maybe. And these exist for not much money.
Yep. It’s just crazy to ignore broader worldwide industry trends just because some temporary policy changes have slowed (but not reversed or even halted) EV adoption in the US specifically.
I have no doubt that the US will continue to lag behind the rest of the world when it comes to EV adoption for some time, but for a myriad of reasons, growth of this segment is basically inevitable.
After our entire electric grid is reimagined and rebuilt, I presume.
Who will pay for that?
I’m betting not battery car companies.
Will there be an environmental cost to that?
Will it delay further the upgrades on road transport now fifty years overdue?
We know there are human, environmental and economic costs to those delays, increasing daily.
“After our entire electric grid is reimagined and rebuilt, I presume.”
The grid doesn’t need to be rebuilt. At most, just some capacity needs to be added here and there.
“Who will pay for that?”
Who pays for the current grid? It’s the utilities who then pass on the costs to businesses and consumers… the same as it ever was.
“I’m betting not battery car companies.”
That’s because they’re not in the electricity generation or electricity distribution business… except for Tesla.
“Will there be an environmental cost to that?”
Everything has an environmental cost… even you and I breathing.
“Will it delay further the upgrades on road transport now fifty years overdue?”
Which upgrades to what form of road transport? And which of those are precisely 50 years overdue as opposed to 51 years, 45 years, 20 years or some other number overdue?
In highway infrastructure, pretty much everything. And fifty years is an average.
Some major bridges are a hundred years old.
The planned separation of heavy truck traffic from light vehicles would be a major infrastructure upgrade.
There isn’t even enough road for standard everyday loads on freeways where I am.
Any disruption can delay traffic for a day, even with everyone taking detours.
There simply aren’t enough alternate paths to handle a blocked freeway.
Last time it happened to me I had to go directly 90 degrees away to finally find a route. A big circle.
Most freeways could be improved simply by paving.
Many people already route around freeways here.
Going north to 80, I was routed completely around St Louis on rural roads.
“In highway infrastructure, pretty much everything”
Even the carpool signs?
https://www.kingstonist.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/f763f07a2ad2c8fd28b5074452bda2ac-scaled.jpg
“Some major bridges are a hundred years old.
The planned separation of heavy truck traffic from light vehicles would be a major infrastructure upgrade.”
So… completely separate from and irrelevant to the electric car discussion, eh?
“Any disruption can delay traffic for a day, even with everyone taking detours.”
Which is the same as it ever was.
“Even the carpool signs?”
Clearly Canada is way ahead of the US in carpool sign technology.
Demand isn’t only caused by EVs. It’s also that new subdivision, that new business, that new restaurant, that new grocery store, or that data center. The grid will grow and develop as necessary.
My L2 charger + EV closely approximates an electric water heater in terms of annual power consumption. I did my part – when the old water heater wore out, I replaced it with a heat pump water heater that uses a fraction of the power of the old water heater. And dehumidifies my basement as a side benefit. Also cools it in the summer.
I’ll happily do my driving with no tail pipe emissions. Perhaps the metropolitan haze will dissipate a little. Maybe the cities will be a little quieter. And whatever new electrical generation is created can power the growing city and the cars that we drive.
There’s already plenty of capacity to charge EVs during off peak hours at night.
Could the grid use some updating and hardening, absolutely, but EVs aren’t going to crash the grid. That’s just oil industry FUD.
When I was in middle school (~2006) I remember doing some kind of research project on EVs. My conclusion was that we wouldn’t see a transition to EVs until we had made a significant transition to hybrids first. I like EVs and want them to succeed, but we tried to skip a very important step in the transition process. It was obvious enough that middle school me realized it (believe me, I was no child prodigy), yet people still tried to make EVs happen before most people had even driven a hybrid.
BEVs are already superior vehicles to hybrids for a radius of ~300 miles from home.
Hybrids are still superior in large vehicles and tow vehicles. Oddly enough it is difficult to buy a hybrid pickup truck or to buy a HEV that is stout enough to tow say 5000lbs.
My family generally employs a strategy of one newer, one older vehicle. One big, one small. It is a cost reduction strategy. We don’t need two expensive vehicles, we don’t need two large vehicles, we don’t need two long distance tow vehicles.
Plenty of other buckets to put the savings into in our budget i.e. junior’s university funding, or paying the mortgage off faster, retirement.
The small one does all our miles out to about ~250 miles. It is rare that we drive further. In our case this also happens to be our EV so the ICE rarely gets driven anymore.
Prius HEV vs BEV of similar size? BEV every time b/c we can charge at home.
Of course everyone has to make the right choice for them.
Wait, someone finaly found out that VW’s problem might be that they are realy inefficient? I mean, it used to be that simply “VW bad!” (what seams to resonate really well with the authors and commenters of this site – I say that while I enjoy the comments and articles about some other topics) is a good enough explanation.
They have a lot more employees and they spend a lot more at R&D than for example Toyota or Hyundai-Kia. Of course they have to get better at these kind of metrics if they want to stay competitive.
It’s hard to optimistic about much these days, including the state of the automotive industry and market in America. 🙁
With the average transaction price nearing $50K now, often for a car that will likely be shorter-lived and more costly to own over time than a comparable model from 20 years ago, it’s just sad. Wet belts, plastic oil and transmission pans, subscription models to keep features functional, tons of buggy and never-actually-finished software defining functions vital and superfluous committing you to ‘connectedness’ that harvests and sells data about you and your driving habits… it’s all a dystopian mess.
Ok, so America has been, and will probably continue to be slower to transition into EVs that Europe or Asian markets. No big surprise there. I still think EVs could be cheaper to own over time than traditional ICE cars are, but only if the manufacturers decide that’s a priority, which (so far) they don’t seem to be doing. And of course, the protectionism of the US car market persists, with the Chicken Tax, assorted arbitrary tarrifs, fudged math to make large and inefficient vehicles more profitable to sell… it’s all more of the same. 🙁
I find all of it sobering and depressing. Luckily, I don’t need to buy a new car, but if I did, I think it’d feel like buying one with a gun to my head given all the caveats and downsides that are a part of our current reality.
“Clear my eyes, make me wise
Or is all I believe in lies
I really don’t know when or where to go
And I can’t see a thing ’til you open my eyes”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjKx-yLOGEY
You can opt out the data collection. If you REALLY want to opt out, find and remove the modem. A fellow with the same EV as mine did that early in his ownership, documented the process on a webpage. It was simple once you knew where to look. About 10 mins work. About 10 mins on our older Acura too.
I went the easier route and opted out of everything electronically via webpage forms. Hopefully Hyundai is honoring the opt out.
Do not underestimate unhappiness with new cars, new prices, and their repairability.
Current car prices make it viable to say no to new.
It certainly would be a short list once I eliminated vehicles with engineering liabilities.
Me in 2026 shopping for cars at a dealer: ah yes, I’ll take the low mileage 1999 model you have stuffed in the back lot please…
Seriously – we bought a used EV with very low miles. It is far out of warranty now.
My project since then has been to casually keep an eye on the forums. What are the engineering liabilities of our car? Surprisingly few. What is the most optimized solutions to the maintenance. Well, I could take it to the local dealer and tell them to do whatever is necessary and pay a bill for nearly $1K for a coolant replacement. Or I could (and I did) call around and the dealer in the next city over said the coolant change is $250 there. Knowing the cost of supplies and the shop time to do it, this is a good price.
Our particular EV has a gearbox bearing problem in some cars. I could let the dealer deal with it and pay the thousands of dollars, or I could buy a replacement bearing kit for $350 and DIY the work. I can even buy a whole new gearbox from an online OEM for $1800 and fit it myself.
Chargeport flap sensor: $350 for a new assembly online or 4-5 times that much at the dealer. It was an easy DIY.
Bad onboard charger? Available used for just a few hundred dollars. Easy part swap. No such problem with our car.
No doubt the Murphy report has resulted in heavy usage of ‘FUD’ and defiant ‘I’ll never buy ICE again’ proclamations across the EVangelist social media spaces today.
Whether the report’s prediction holds true depends largely on what happens in 2028. If America’s reactionary politics swings strongly Progressive, EV incentives will return in full force, possibly paired with ICE disincentives to turbocharge EV adoption. Unfortunately, most of the EV options will still be a poor diversity of $50K and up EV trucks and crossovers and swelling demand for affordable EV options will provide a glide path for Chinese automakers to penetrate the U.S. market; not necessarily as Chinese nameplates but as largely entry level vehicles rebadged as U.S. and Japanese brand models.
Sounds like it’s time for GM to revive Geo, but with Chinese EVs instead of Korean cars this time?
I could see that happening. We consumers can’t buy Chinese EVs but the legacy brands can sell rebranded versions of them to us… 😉
The Chinese EVs are already here in the USA in the form of hundred thousand car parts, many EV parts, made in China.
Both the Ford 30k EV and the slay should be in production by 2028, maybe EV adoption will increase in 2028 no matter what.
I am curious to see if the EV sales % does stay flat. I feel it’s not going to because the DC Fast charging infrastructure is growing so quickly and vast majority of that is on the back of private dollars and some new products coming into the market.
DC Fast Charging tracker shows about 7k fast charging sites nationwide with 200kw+ output.
of those 7k sites.. 3k of them opened in the last 2 years.
all the infrastructure I regularly use to DC fast charge didn’t exist 3 years ago.
Plus there’s a lot of nice EV products coming to market with very fast charging and great range. I hear enthusiast friends of mine who have money to buy expensive products talking about being interested in what’s coming down the pipeline as their next family vehicle.
Do all these new chargers require an app? I just want to put the card in and get stuff, whether that be electrons or gas. For the love of Jasonia I don’t want any more apps.
No! And you can thank Biden’s infrastructure bill for that – basically, federal DCFC grant money was tied to the ability to use the chargers without an app.
A lot of DCFC still have apps as an option, like EA, which are necessary to use if you are a subscriber and want their discounted rate. However, every single non-Tesla DCFC I’ve used in the last year or so has had a credit card reader. Some new companies like IONNA (which consistently operates the best and cheapest DCFC with both CCS and NACS plugs) don’t even have the option to use an app. It’s really very similar to filling up a petrol car.
The whole crazy need-an-app-to-charge phase legitimately kept me from recommending EVs to people who weren’t tech-savyy. I mean, some apps were so bad they were barely functional and incredibly frustrating to use even for me. Thankfully, that era seems to be over!
Walmart’s rollout has thus far required an App but the program manager has said that customer feedback already told them that they need to put CC readers on all their chargers, and will be retrofitting them to units in place and working to have them on units going in.
Tesla’s network is still built around plug and charge, with the app for manual activation. so their app isn’t going away, but many EV drivers could avoid having to use it.
Interesting about the Walmart chargers! They haven’t hit any of the Walmarts near us. Very unfortunate to hear they still require an app at this point, so hopefully that changes soon.
I have to say, the Tesla app is so good, even just for using their chargers, it helped me understand why so many people are totally enamored with their Teslas. The app is super easy to use, fast, and it just works. I don’t often use Tesla chargers since they’re pretty slow, but when I do I’m always impressed with the experience even though I need an app.
If you have a Tesla you don’t even use the app. You pull up, you insert the wand, you get in your car and tap the button on the screen to start and stop charging. The phone stays wherever it is/was. THIS is what Tesla owners love about their cars and every other maker COULD theoretically incorporate it into their own software but won’t because it makes their own tech and charging solutions look as medieval as it usually is.
Oh yes, I know how plug and charge works for Teslas.
My Ioniq 5 actually supports plug and charge and it’ll work with Superchargers, but I prefer using credit cards, so haven’t set it up. I’m actually not a huge fan of the idea of plug and charge.
What I was commenting on is that if I have to use an app, Tesla shows how it’s supposed to be done.
only if the vehicles come with buttons and CarPlay!
Tesla is the exception that proves the rule. I’ve daily driven a Tesla Model Y for about 2 years now. I don’t miss buttons in that car since their interface is legitimately good. The screen is close to hand, often used stuff stays in the same spots, it’s snappy and glare resistant. Contrast that to our 11 year older Toyota with an early touchscreen. Nothing stays consistent, it needs a firm jab to register and it’s a long reach. The buttons are absolutely necessary.
That’s why we got an Ioniq 6 instead of even looking at a Model 3 (before we realized the other issues with Tesla’s ownership).