this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
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I'm wondering if that's what this legislation will do.
It's focused on ensuring that a target % of all cars a manufacturer sells be electric. And in order to do that, they need to get more people to choose to buy electric.
They can achieve that by raising the prices of their ICE vehicles and selling less overall volume, but the proportion of EVs would be higher. or the seemingly easier option would be to create more cheaper EV options that people are interested in buying.
Plus, making those budget cars would be a little lighter (less motors and electronics), require less precious metals (less electronics), and therefore be more a little more energy effecient as well as cheaper to maintain (less electronics to replace).
Fewer electronics to replace doesn't matter if we have no right to third party repairs. many EVs are locked down, so they have you over a barrel on replacement part pricing.
Most people can't afford $35K for a new car.
Fewer and fewer people can afford the lease or finance payments on a new car, period, and fewer people can afford homes where they can charge an EV, while landlords can max out the rent all they like without having to spend on frills like chargers.
Meanwhile, we're reducing taxes and shovelling grants at the rich to build housing that they won't build, that'll require people to buy cars that they can't afford because we aren't going to build that new housing in a way that's suited to public transit--which we aren't going to build anyway.
The housing/transport/fiscal-policy clusterfuck is fractally shortsighted: it looks shortsighted when you first look at, but it gets more and more shortsighted in new and interesting ways the closer you zoom in.
People buy those cars they can't or can barely afford because they have no other choice in the majority of Canadian cities due to car centric design.
The Mirage being $18K, and being almost the last subcompact standing, is a symptom of the issue.
Like house prices, car prices went bonkers over the last decade as manufacturers raised the floor chasing margin. At around the start of the last decade, we had the Mirage, Fit, Yaris, Versa, Accent, Rio, Spark, Sonic, Fiesta, City Golf, 500 and Mazda2. Of that group, almost all of them are gone, as are many from the next step up (Focus, Cruze, Caliber, the non-GTI Golf, etc). Interestingly, the platforms aren't gone, they've just been jacked two inches and covered in plastic cladding.
Why? Because cheap credit made it easier to get people into something more expensive.
The average price is indicative of a captive market, rather similar to what we're seeing in housing, and it's going to get nastier as OEMs do not want to see 1979 or 2008 again, where they're forced to make do with lower margins. We'll see "tax incentives" and lowering of interest rates before then, just like we're seeing with housing, because we've collectively made the decision that people with money must not, ever, lose money--and the more money you have, the more it must be protected--but people without money deserve to be ruthlessly exploited.
I saw used 2013 Honda Fits going for 17k in BC last week. Is that mirage still available??
The fundamental problem is that battery powered EVs, or BEVs, need vast amounts of raw material when manufactured. That basically guarantees that BEVs are never going to be cost effective once you get past small and short-ranged cars. That ensures that BEVs are simply not going to be the main type of cars. They are really ideal for things like e-bikes or golf carts, not larger vehicles like SUVs or commercial vehicles.
In reality, society needs to focus on non-BEV forms of zero emissions transportation. Ideally, that means more mass transit or walkable neighborhoods. But for situations where the car is unavoidable, it is almost certain that we have to find a true replacement for conventional ICE cars. If not e-fuels, then something like hydrogen cars.
That's actually a dubious claim, given how much fossil fuels are needed in the mining and production of battery related materials. Same is true of battery recycling. It also needs significant amounts of fossil fuels.
But the main point is that the alternatives, such as e-fuels or hydrogen, require nearly zero fossil fuels or problematic raw materials. Even steel can be made from hydrogen-based reduction instead of needing fossil fuels. So it is a massive improvement over BEVs, in a way that BEVs probably can never hope to match.
The ideal solution will always be getting rid of the car entirely. We should always be pushing all alternatives. But we should not be trapped in the "EV now!" mentality for the car itself. It is not really solving any problem except for a minor reduction in oil consumption.