Too expensive is another issue.

The e-up from VW is the cheapest one they sell. It's 30k, more than double than the combustion version. I simply cannot believe that the same car but with battery an e engine costs 16k more.

Well, VW sells an ID.3 for about 16k€ in China.

That sounds wrong but seems confirmed by https://insideevs.com/news/675842/volkswagen-slashes-id3-pri...

Cost of doing business in China -- the government sets the price. You either play by their rules or get shut out.

Nah, the price is because EV market in China is very competitive. Tesla there still has the brand value and dominates the premium segment, BYD and the likes hold all of the budget segment, where Tesla has no offering. VW cannot compete with Tesla because it has no such brand attachment in China, so it has to compete for budget segment, hence the budget car prices.

Best-selling EV in China after Model Y is BYD Yuan Plus, which costs ~20k USD. That's the niche VW has to compete for.

VW has lots of brand attachment in China. Black Audis have been synonymous with rich officials since the 80s, and VW is not really a slouch either (they aren’t premium like their Audi brand, but that is true over here as well).

VW is just behind on EV tech, they don’t have much to offer their Chinese JV partners beyond a brand.

By that logic, they'd keep VW prices high. China's vehicle manufacturers have made impressive strides of the past few years, especially in the EV market. Considering the growing nationalist tendencies, they'd try to get there citizens to buy more wholly produced and designed Chinese cars. How does lowering prices on foreign ones help that goal?

I can, considering demand is through the roof. If it's a good deal for the customer, that's another story. I'm not sure what the ROI is in fuel and maintenance savings but over the lifetime of the vehicle it's probably close?

Oh I was not questioning VW trying to charge as much as possible.

I just believe the profit margins on those 2 versions are wildly different.

Electric cars are more expensive to produce, for now at least, but that that price difference doesn't excuse a 2x price difference to the end customer.

It is often said that electric cars are simpler than ICE, why are they more expensive then?

Simple usually means fewer parts. Doesn’t mean those parts are cheap. Raw material costs for EVs are still a problem, although the increased demand in the past few years has spurred mining annd refining companies into action and we are now seeing drops in the Lithium and other commodity markets. The invisible hand at work.

Missing economies of scale, for starters.

Simpler doesn’t mean cheaper to the consumer at time of purchase. You have to factor in R&D, price of parts etc…

ICE cars have had decades to bring down the cost of manufacturing, through shared components and improved manufacturing processes.

EVs are newer, with a lot of cost going into R&D that must be recouped and parts that aren’t shareable across their entire lineup of vehicles yet.

The simplicity of EVs results in reduced ownership cost though with little maintenance required

Battery supply chain limits and cost.

If you only have batteries for X amount of cars, selling X amount of expensive cars makes much more sense.

Also despite being conceptually simpler, the cost of the battery is still high.

I would guess the longer ranges benefit apartment dwellers, house renters, etc. People that maybe can't get reliable daily/nightly access to a charger. Apartments and workplaces could dole out stickers for access on specific days of the week or similar to spread out use of chargers.

Or anyone that needs to do a 500-600 km every 2-3 months and is not eager to add 90 mins and uncertainty to those trips.

I think is a fairly common situation in Europe, you might live in a city but relatives are away. You visit but don’t see the point of making a complex planning factoring cold weather, vehicle load, potentially broken chargers no your planned stop,….

And train is not an option if you are carrying a family of 5 or plan on moving around once you arrive.

Why adopt a solution that is worse than the status quo?

At that point it's worth considering renting a car every 2-3 months for those trips, and get a car sized to your day-to-day needs instead.

Of course that's also worse than the status quo (well, probably cheaper than the status quo, but less convenient), so I don't expect people to flock to that solution

> probably cheaper than the status quo, but less convenient

If it lets you get rid of your cars, maybe.

If you also need a daily car (or even two), rental is not necessarily cheap, and beyond convenience it has flexibility issues.

For instance the rental closest to me is a half hour bus ride away, and not open on the weekends, and the prices can vary a lot depending on time to trip or period, and obviously the type of car can triple the rental price.

It’s worth it to me, because I can otherwise get by fine without owning a car. But if I need a daily anyway, it makes more sense to upscale it a bit and get the extra freedom. Especially if relatives start getting up in age and you never know when you need to pack up quick.

It’s the same issue with timeshare vehicles, if people have kids they’ll all need it at the same time (because school schedules), and you’ll always remember when it was not available for an emergency.

Rental is so expensive it compares poorly to owning a small 10-15 year old ICE car.

Similar sentiment to, “just rent a UHaul pickup instead of owning one just in case you need to move furniture/appliances”.

It's not a 90min stop to go 500-600km in a lot of modern EVs. More like 10-20min.

I just looked up a trip in A Better Route Planner in a Hyundai Ioniq 6 going on a trip around Texas, 495km trip. 4h44min total trip time, 8 minutes of charging.

Do you really not take a 10 minute break in nearly 5 hours of driving?

As someone who has been tooting the ev horn for a while, generally most arguments against EVs are couched in "I do x now and don't want to change" or they are I heard about x and am afraid of it.

People who are willing to look into the situation on the ground tend to react positively

I used to be one of those people who really tried to just power through and rush through the drive every time, massively minimizing my stops. It felt pretty easy as a single guy doing this.

Now I'm married with kids. Even road trips in my ICE, I tend to stop more often and for a little longer than I would have otherwise. And you know what? Overall, my road trips are more enjoyable. I'm far less drained when I arrive. I'm less stressed on my drive. I'm more alert in the car for more of the trip. Its a much better experience in the end taking a few more breaks on a long road trip, and I look back at my previous min-maxing attempts in regret of stressing myself out so much unnecessarily.

The road trips I've done in my EV have been absolutely pleasant, and my EV isn't even that great for road trips.

As someone who has driven the complete breadth of Pennsylvania (300 miles) dozens of times in my life in ICE cars, the rule is that you add 30 minutes of stoppage per 3 hours of driving, in order to stretch, use the bathroom, refill your water bottle, get snacks, etc. As long as an EV can fill 3 hours of charge (180 miles) in under 30 minutes, charging time adds nothing to the trip. The only thing that matters is that rest stops have adequate charger capacity.

> Why adopt a solution that is worse than the status quo?

Depends. If you believe climate change is a hoax pushed by evil liberals or whatever, the status quo is fine.

If you understand that it is real, then you know that keeping the status quo of burning oil means working towards destroying human civilization. Then it's easy to decide that mild inconvenience of charging an EV is worth keeping humanity around.

Let’s not forget that simply driving an EV is enough to reduce your carbon emissions.

How many miles do you need to drive an EV until you break even on the emissions required to balance out manufacturing of the car, recycling of the battery and car once it has reached its max lifetime use, and how the electricity to charge your EV was generated?

If your concern is climate change, lobbying for EV use probably isn’t the biggest bang for the buck.

I’m not 100% convinced an EV is better for the environment when you consider all of the indirect emission sources.

(I’m bracing for the downvotes, but would much prefer to be proved wrong with citations and research studies)

> If your concern is climate change, lobbying for EV use probably isn’t the biggest bang for the buck.

Absolutely is not. Passenger road transport accounts for only about 10% of CO2 emissions[1], and reducing that is one of the more difficult approaches because you're asking millions of people to each change their personal habits which individually have essentially no impact.

State regulatory changes applying to large industrial emitters will have the biggest impact and while the costs will ultimately be borne by customers, it is more likely to actually happen. This includes both encouraging "green" energy production such as nuclear and renewables, as well as demanding capture and/or reduction of emissions.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-transport

Sounds like most studies point to a little over 20,000mi break even for cars based on the average US grid energy source mix. In my area it's an even higher mix of renewables than average, so probably 20,000 or less.

My EV is already a bit over 26,000mi, so it's most likely past it's break even and I plan on probably putting another 100,000+ miles on it before I sell it.

Existing BEVs are already good enough for city dwellers. Only hybrids need to be charged ~daily. BEVs have batteries 10x their size.

BEVs last a week or more between charges. If you have a charger at work, supermarket, gym, or such, you just plug it in when you have a chance.

I'll be getting an EV when I can purchase one for $50k with more than 700 mile range. Then I won't need to stop more often than our gas car on road trips, and I won't have to worry about the cold/speed/altitude significantly reducing range.

Even in Germany the top selling electric cars are not German. Combined with the uprising of cheaper Chinese brands in Europe in the coming years, I fear the worst for the German car industry. However German car manufacturers like Mercedes-Benz also cooperate with solid state cell manufacturers (https://group.mercedes-benz.com/company/news/220127-prologiu...)

The VW group has by far the largest electric car market share in Germany (~30 %): https://app.handelsblatt.com/mobilitaet/elektromobilitaet/el...

Market share is a different measurement unit compared to top selling. From your article:

Tesla hatte VW im zweiten Halbjahr 2022 die deutsche Elektroautokrone abgejagt. Nun verteidigte das Unternehmen von Elon Musk den Spitzenplatz. Der Vorsprung schrumpfte allerdings von 7400 auf 2000 Autos. Die Marktanteile der Marken lagen dabei bei 16,5 und 15,6 Prozent der insgesamt in Deutschland neu zugelassenen Elektroautos.

See also in English: https://www.best-selling-cars.com/electric/2022-full-year-ge...

15.6% only refers to VW branded cars. VW group cars (VW, Audi, Skoda, Cupra,...) have ~30% total market share.

Kinda surprised Tesla hasn't split into multiple brands for high end, mid range and cheapo cars.

That way they can sell cheap shitty cars without damaging their reputation for high end vehicles.

The idea that this is a good idea is very questionable. If you buy an expensive car, you expense quality. If you buy a cheap Tesla you get a cheaper product. Not sure why costumers wouldn't be able to understand that.

The many brands are mostly historical by consolidation in the industry.

Yeah, it's a bit confusing with all those brands. Tesla is just Tesla, but Volkswagen is a company and also a brand, and the company owns the brands Volkswagen, Škoda, Seat, Cupra, Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley and Porsche. But it is owned partly by another company called Porsche as well.

So yes, Tesla sold more cars in Germany than the Volkswagen brand, but fewer than the Volkswagen group.

The interesting part here is how close Tesla is in VW group home market and how far VW Group is away from them in the US/China.

This is essentially due to different marketing decisions by VW. VW, like most car companies, has loads of brands. Tesla has one. Items 2, 6, 12, 13, and 21 on your list are all VW. VW could, if it wanted to move up on that leaderboard, rename the Cupra (Seat sub-brand) Born, which is a mildly weird-looking id.3, id.3 (mildly weird looking trim) tomorrow.

Literally ever large car company signs a bunch of stuff with lots of battery startups. If any of this pays off is questionable. Most of these 'solid state' cell companies will have a very, very hard time. This is research level stuff not, making millions of cars with these cells anytime soon.

I mean if you want your German pride back, Mercedes has a car (exactly one, it's a concept car) on the road that actually does 1200km on a single charge, the EQXX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G7Egi36C4M

It's the coolest concept car in a long time. It makes progress in something that actually matters and it looks elegant, not like an oversized Transformers toy.

Concept cars don't inspire pride. If anything the opposite.

It's funny for me to come across this comment now. Just 15 minutes ago I got home from driving 1,250km today in an EV. Yes, I am tired. Yes, I agree nobody should drive longer in one day.

> 1200km is more than enough. Nobody should be driving longer distances in one day anyway.

No not really. When they say 1200km that's under ideal conditions. Put a roof rack, a kayak or two bikes, load it up with 4 passengers and a trunk full of luggage, and drive up into the mountains on a hot summer day with the air conditioner on full blast, and you're probably looking at a range of 400km. And your destination probably doesn't have a place to charge overnight.

This whole "in one day" mentality is the problem. If you're going to the backcountry of death valley where there is absolutely no civilization, you want your vehicle to hold enough energy for your entire trip, not just for one day.

You do realize that if you do all of those things in an ICE, you'll get a similar drop in range, right?

At any rate, most people never do all those things, nor do they go into some death valley. Because most of us don't like death.

As for the charging places, yes that is an issue. I never had trouble filling my horse with that gasoline stuff, either.

> You do realize that if you do all of those things in an ICE, you'll get a similar drop in range, right?

Yes but when most people talk about 400 miles of range in an ICE car they are usually referring to at least typical (==harsh, if you are in the western part of the US) conditions with AC on full blast and lots of mountains.

When EV companies boast 400 miles of range they're testing it on an ideal track. Very different.

I have a model 3 long range, advertised 358 miles, I get nowhere near that, more like 200 miles in realistic California conditions, which are (a) searing heat in the central valley in summer (b) mountains everywhere else (c) biting cold in the winter anywhere in the far north or far east part of the state (d) stop sign hell in the bay area which forces you to stop and go every block.

Given the weight of the batteries, I expect you’ll see companies and customers opt for a battery half that size. The reduced weight will add a few percent to the expected range, so you might see a 600 mile battery with 45% of the capacity.

> 1200km is more than enough. Nobody should be driving longer distances in one day anyway.

It's not necessarily about the range, there's also charging frequency. I personally don't have anywhere to charge my car where I live (apartment complex) so I have to go to my office building or my city hall/library, etc.. and of course pay for it, while I coordinate whatever errands I have to match the charging time. I would like to do that as seldom as possible.

>1200km is more than enough.

That's 560 kilos more than what Bill Gates said.