Some context for Americans as a dual US/EU citizen: for many people, especially near cities, electric cars are already far more practical in the EU than gas cars. And they're far cheaper and more available than they are in the US. A lot of cities in the EU, even in Eastern Europe, have car sharing services that are 100% electric cars. Anytime I need a car in Europe, I just use an app and walk a couple minutes to the nearest electric car. They're pre-charged, have a range of 3-400 km, and are far faster and easier to drive than gas cars. When I spent some time in the US recently, and had to rent a gas car, I felt like I was using ancient technology. It was so sluggish and inconvenient and more expensive.
I say this because most Americans have the impression that the US on the cutting edge with technology, but in terms of electric cars, the US is really far behind.
> And they're far cheaper and more available than they are in the US
Ekhem, I think you live in a really wealthy place in EU, maybe Norway that subsidies electric cars so e.g. plumbers are driving Teslas.
But in the real world, electric cars are too expensive for normies to buy.
Car sharing - OK, that's available - but I'm yet to drive such car, because in in city in Poland there are only few such cars available (for a normal price) to drive. And I would like to test them out - but not at the price of driving to the other side of the city.
Car rental - tried that - either not available or too expensive to rent (trip to Italy last year).
Dude, you're not in contact with the reality of most people. Most europeans outside of the blue banana buy second-hand cars, which are 99.9% gas cars.
Everyone is, in fact, aware of the price hike of new gas cars to try to make electric cars competitive. Not so long ago it was possible to buy new gas car <15k.
There used to be a large network of electric cars in Warsaw by one of the utilitiy companies, Innogy GO. They had a few hundred cars, very nice BMWs (i3 and i3s), decent prices but, sadly, didn't survive the lockdowns and folded in early 2021.
Could you share more details about this? I have seen different misuses of carbon credits mechanism, this one seems quite novel and creative (in a negative way).
A lot of that depends on having access to relatively cheap charging at home/work. If you only have the public chargers, I really doubt the TCO is cheaper for an EV.
I bought my used 2012 Nissan Leaf in 2015 for $6000. I left it sitting uncharged for 8 months while I travelled and lost no discernable range, I have done absolutely no maintenance other than tires and windshield wipers, and I can sell it for $6000.
Low range, uncooled battery unsuitable for fast charging (degrades - Nissans own words), chademo and type 1 charging sockets only? Plenty low priced ones with bad batteries (funnily enough most from Norway), battery replacement more expensive than buying another car ($6K).
That's not bad. And I'm assuming from the fact that it's a Nissan Leaf that you're in the US. I looked into buying a Leaf at one point, but I was afraid that the battery of a used Leaf would give out.
“In the real world, computers are too expensive for normies to buy”. Was true once too, but things move fast.
A huge difference is going to be in four or five years when currently new cars start really showing up on the used car market. At the same time, there will be more entry-level priced new EVs (in part because of laws like this, but also just the normal technology development cycle)
That is a common fear, but no, it’s not matched by real-world experience. Modern battery tech should usually last the life of the car. The batteries are often fairly modular, so if some individual cells do unexpectedly fail, often the battery can be fixed by just replacing one of 20 or so modules.
European climate has a big range, you have Greece/Spain and you have Norway.
And countries in the middle have few months with temperatures below and at 0 degrees Celsius.
The TCO of a Tesla Model 3 is less than that of a Toyota Camry over a 15 year period. If you can afford a new Toyota Camry, you can also afford to finance a Model 3 to take advantage of the TCO savings.
If you can't, then you should be buying used. But in that case the phaseout of availability for new vehicles doesn't affect you.
> The TCO of a Tesla Model 3 is less than that of a Toyota Camry over a 15 year period.
Nobody can know this because the Model 3 was introduced mid-2017, so the very oldest ones are now only under 6 years old. We need to wait until 2032 to have 15 year data on just the first year production run logevity and TCO.
In that case nobody can know it about any car, except maybe a Lada. You can't buy a brand new 2007 Toyota Camry this year, and the 2022 Toyota Camry is a very different car than the 2007 Toyota Camry.
> You can't buy a brand new 2007 Toyota Camry this year, and the 2022 Toyota Camry is a very different car than the 2007 Toyota Camry.
That is not how TCO over 15 years is calculated.
You need data for the same fleet of cars over 15 years, you don't buy the same car over and over for 15 years. It's not relevant that the 2022 model is different, the TCO is for the 2007 model year cars (using 2007 as the example).
So for a 2007 Camry, we could poll all owners of Camrys built in 2007 to get data about their TCO over the past 15 years. We can't do that for a Tesla Model 3 since nobody has owned one for 15 years so there is nobody to poll yet.
A 2022 Camry is not going to have the same reliability as a 2007 Camry. It might be better, it might be worse but you don't know because they are two very different cars.
The TCO for cars is based on projected reliability, whether it's a Tesla or a Toyota. It's a mathematical model based on incomplete data in both cases.
I feel this a general phenomenon on HN. Someone living in a specific European country will describe a specific good thing about their country (or even just their local area), and then extrapolate to the entire European Union.
18% of Hungarians live in Budapest, and 73% of Hungarians are in some urban area.
The land itself isn't driving anywhere.
This is kinda the opposite problem of those who reject immigration "because {insert country name here} is full" — unless you're living in a city-sate it isn't even remotely full, it's just that most of the people have chosen live close to other people, which both makes it feel crowded and means that goods and services which kinda need high density environments are actually fine.
And what is the definition of some urban area in Hungary? Do you really believe a small towns with 1000-10000 inhabitants have electric car rentals available?
First, why are you reaching for what is by definition the smallest group?
Second, I just looked up Hungarian towns by population, in that range, first one I found was Ráckeve, it has three car rentals.
I can't tell what engine types the two which aren't "fancy old-timer VIP cars" rent out (and not only because even Chrome refuses to offer to translate for me), and you might not count the location anyway because it's on a short distance train line to the capital.
Making a prediction from the number of vehicles in their publicity shots and the penetration of electric car sales, I'd guess even odds there's at least one electric vehicle, in that location, at the moment, that gets rented out.
Looking at the google maps aerial photos of some of the places with population of 1k, I wouldn't count such small places as urban. I'm not sure what definition Wolfram Alpha used when I asked it for the number.
If you haven't noticed, Hungary only has one really big city(Budapest, around 1.5m people), the second biggest has around 200k people and from there on there are mostly towns under 100k population size. What they call a town starts at 1000 people (the smallest number I have used).
Why are trying so hard to make believe something exists when it does not?
Please believe that average Hungarian(or European) is not living couple of minutes away from an electric car rent company. What user 'yosito' wrote is a figment of imagination. If you don't believe me, there are many Europeans here who are telling you he is wrong.
Can't reply to yositos reply, so replying here instead. Exactly
Specifically, "Anytime I need a car in Europe, I just use an app and walk a couple minutes to the nearest electric car." - I doubt that's the case for the car majority of Hungarians.
I know it's not the case for the majority of Swedes. I live in Gothenburg, the car mecka of Sweden/Northern Europe. We have electric car rental if you live in the city center (along with the other 10% or so of the inhabitants). I actually live quite close to the Volvo factories. Nope - definitely no 2 min walk to pick up any electric car rental.
Hungary is pretty small. You can drive pretty much anywhere in the country from Budapest on a single charge. And there are charging stations all over the country as well. I've personally driven all over the country in an electric car with no issues... well, except a few times when I ended up off-roading in a tiny Volkswagen by mistake and almost getting stuck in the mud.
In 2021, Germany had 15.6 plug-in EVs per 1000 people, compared to the EU average of 11.0 and the US figure of 6.2.
If you're not interested in cars, you may need to look more carefully to spot them. Here in Denmark, there are plenty of Teslas around, but there are also EVs from normal brands (VW, BMW, Volvo etc) which go unnoticed, except the lack of an exhaust pipe.
Look especially at new cars, 31% of new cars in Germany are electric.
Generally speaking, in southern Europe, electric cars are very expensive (prices start at 2-3 times an annual salary), electricity is expensive, and refuelling is complicated. There are no pre-charged electric cars anywhere; electric mopeds are available, but they are slow and have a small range. Are you sure you're in Europe?
I live in southern Europe, electric cars are 15 to 20% more expensive than equivalent ICE cars. They also get government subsidies which makes the difference much smaller. Considering the lower TCO because there's lesser need for maintenance, lower road tax, occasional free parking, and the fact that PV in homes are very common here I think owning electric is generally favorable.
Yes electric cars are more expensive but the initial investment is not that different from buying any new diesel or petrol powered car.
Well, there are also some of us EU citizens, born and bred in the EU, who still love the concept of having our own car, waiting for us in our garage.
We also like, from time to time, to drive thousands of km during leisure trips (read: driving to a holiday destination while hopping from a nice place on the way to another) without being constantly worried about the battery range.
Oh, and we appreciate our car being designed with comfort in mind (read: spacious) rather than range (read: see those ugly dome-shaped Prius).
> And they're far cheaper and more available than they are in the US.
But they are still very very expensive! In Germany for example:
- Kia Niro EV, crosover/mini-suv, 47.590 € (ICE with mild-hybrid 32.590 €)
- BMW 3 wagon, ICE, starts at 46.300,00 €
So no, thank you. If I have that much money I will buy anything but expensive, lower class EV.
For people with a low budget, probably cheapest wagon option is Dacia Jogger, starting 16.900 €. Find my reasonable priced, decent sized wagon for someone who can afford max 20k loan for a car.
So no. If prices of EVs don't drop by 20%, and range (real, not on the paper) doesn't increase to at least 450 km in light winter conditions then I don't want to see an EV, although it's cool to drive.
Also I live in a pretty new building, 5 years old in a really big city. We don't have chargers in the underground garage, although there is close to 200 apartments here.
Ugh, no. There are a lot of EVs, but they are much less practical for Europeans that for Americans, because they can charge them at home, and we usually can't. And car sharing in Europe (and probably other region too) is an extreme hassle - it is very expensive (unless you can make a super optimized multi stop same day route, basically a lot of trips same day), it is not widespread yet, and you can get hit with huge car damage fees many days/weeks after the trip, for pre-existing damage. And for travellers it is close to impossible due to drive permit restrictions.
It's when you mostly live without a car but occasionally need one for transportation and day trips. You usually can rent them by the hour or day and as you said it's a slightly different user experience than traditional car rental agencies.
I know some people who use public transport / (e-)bikes exclusively but every once in a while want to visit a relative out in the wood or make a bigger purchases which would be hard to transport otherwise (some of them also own a cargo trailer for their bikes).
It's not a majority by any means but for some people it work
They would have to maintain and store a basically unused car otherwise.
I've been driving electric cars exclusively for about a decade and this week I am borrowing my father's new expensive audi to do him a favor and "sluggish and inconvenient" is not critical enough!!
These cars are just dangerous. Trying to accelerate rapidly to make a merge? Actually impossible. A stoppage in traffic is coming? Just mash the brake pedal hard.. Maybe they have a deal with brake pad manufacturers... Sitting at a stoplight and want to fumble around with something? If you accidentally slip off the brake pedal, the DEFAULT behavior of the vehicle is to GO. What kind of design is that? Not to mention the gas station 'experience'
I say this because most Americans have the impression that the US on the cutting edge with technology, but in terms of electric cars, the US is really far behind.