The big news this week (unless aliens visit or Switzerland invades Vatican City) will be the long-awaited EPA proposal to curb vehicular emissions in order to dramatically reduce our contribution to a warming planet. It’ll reportedly be a big swing, meant to increase the adoption of electric cars almost tenfold in less than a decade. People will freak out, but I’m going to argue that it’s as important to pay attention to who is freaking out as to why they are doing so. While we’re doing that, let’s also look at Ford’s EV infrastructure plans, how China (who leads in EV adoption) is doing with their own policies, and a little bit about dealerships.
It’s Going To Get Harder To Sell Gas Cars In The U.S. Soon
First came the carrot. President Biden and Democrats in Congress managed to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, a massive cash injection to the automotive industry allowing for more money to build electric cars (via incentives, tax rebates, et cetera). Now comes the stick, in the form of a requirement for automakers to shift their production to primarily electrified vehicles by 2032.
The rules have not been officially announced, but people involved are clearly starting to strategically leak out pieces of the new Environmental Protection Agency rules in order to prep the market and stakeholders for what’s to come. Here’s what The New York Times has to say about it:
The requirements would be intended to ensure that electric cars represent between 54 and 60 percent of all new cars sold in the United States by 2030, with that figure rising to 64 to 67 percent of new car sales by 2032, according to the people familiar with the details, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information had not been made public.
[…]
The proposed rule would not mandate that electric vehicles make up a certain number or percentage of sales. Instead, it would require that automakers make sure the total number of vehicles they sell each year did not exceed a certain emissions limit. That limit would be so strict that it would force carmakers to ensure that two thirds of the vehicles they sold were all-electric by 2032, according to the people familiar with the matter.
That last point is important. The European (and Californian) version of this law is for a fairly strict ban on the sale of gas-powered cars in 2035, albeit with a carveout for e-fuels in Europe. What the EPA ruling is likely to do is allow automakers to pursue their own idealized strategies, which could include hydrogen-powered cars (probably not, but maybe) and a heaping of plug-in hybrids with decent EV-only range.
This is just one source, of course, so let’s go with the Bloomberg report to see what their sources are saying. Here’s their report via The Detroit News:
The proposed standards on cars and light trucks, set to be announced Wednesday in Detroit, are expected to govern tailpipe emissions of carbon dioxide, smog-forming nitrogen oxide and other pollution from vehicles manufactured for model years 2027 through 2032. The plan was described by people briefed on elements of the proposal who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it isn’t yet public.
The EPA is poised to reject some environmentalists’ requests to set standards through 2035, however. Automakers pushed for a shorter timetable, cautioning White House officials in a Feb. 14 meeting that the trajectory for EVs and emission reductions depends on factors outside their control, including investments in charging infrastructure and critical mineral production.
These line up fairly well, and it’s possible that both Bloomberg and the NYT are talking to the same people. So let’s talk about who is going to get mad and what it means if/when they do:
TRADITIONAL AUTOMAKERS
The Automaker complaint is pretty obvious here. Automakers will always, generally, push for the least strict standards possible. Their arguments will likely be something along the lines of: We’re already making a lot of EV-powered cars and can only make so many simultaneous investments, charging infrastructure is lacking in many places, and finding mineral sources that comply with Inflation Reduction Act is not going to be easy.
In fact, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation (the industry’s main lobbying arm) gave both outlets basically the same quote that this is “[N]othing short of a complete transformation of the automotive industrial base and the automotive market.”
They’re not wrong! Market researchers at S&P Global have put out reports recently pointing out that we need way more chargers than we’re building and there are not enough minerals to make all the batteries required under various laws.
PURE EV AUTOMAKERS
Pure EV automakers like Tesla want a full ban on ICE cars for obvious reasons. It doesn’t sound like they’re going to get it.
ENVIRONMENTALISTS
There’s a lot of good news here if you’re an environmentalist or, frankly, if you just believe climate change is real (it is), and we need to act fast or bad things could happen (they already are). The big ask from EV advocates globally has been something along the lines of a 75% emissions reduction by 2030 relative to what we have now. They also want regulations that extend out to 2035 to match with laws elsewhere.
It’s unclear if they’re going to get the former, but they are almost certainly not going to get the latter. If the reporting is correct, the timetable for these regulations ends in 2032. Still, it’s a pretty big win for environmentalists either way. [Editor’s Note: It’s obvious, but worth saying: A passenger car-EV transition alone isn’t going to solve climate change. It should be a step forward long-term, especially as countries clean up their grids and figure out how to make batteries more cleanly (due in part to their efficiency, EVs end up being cleaner than ICE cars even given the current grid, but that delta expands with a cleaner grid), but let’s be honest about how small of a drop in the bucket this is, at least in the grand scheme of this incredibly complex issue. Also: The reduction of local emissions is also highly important, as this has health implications, especially for folks in cities. -DT].
UNION WORKERS
This one is tricky. An early version of the Inflation Reduction Act called for cars to be built by union labor or they wouldn’t qualify for incentives. This requirement was dropped in the final bill. Ultimately, the bill had enough incentives to bring automakers to the United States that it could be a boon for labor in states like Michigan, which recently repealed its right-to-work law. The flipside is that electric vehicles, so far, seem less labor intensive than their gas-powered equivalents, meaning net fewer jobs. Again, from the NYT piece:
The transformation could also spell economic dislocation for American autoworkers, as electric vehicles require fewer than half as many laborers to build as gasoline-powered cars.
“We’ve dealt with the loss of jobs before through technology, but when you talk about the speed of this, it’s hard to fathom that we won’t lose jobs,” Mark DePaoli, a leader of United Auto Workers Local 600, said in a recent interview at the union headquarters near the Ford Rouge manufacturing plant in Dearborn, Mich.
Job losses in the auto industry could have political consequences for Mr. Biden, who will need voters in industrialized states like Michigan and Ohio if he chooses to run for a second term. As they have worked on the new regulation, administration officials have held weekly telephone calls with union leaders to try to reassure them.
Ultimately, everyone is going to likely complain, and it’ll tell us a lot about the law when we see who complains the most. These will just be proposals, so it’s likely there will be tweaks.
UPDATE: We now know a little more about what’s going to be in the bill. Read more here.
Ford’s Blue Oval City Will Be More Like A Tesla Gigafactory
Tesla, which wasn’t burdened by a lot of legacy constraints, designed its cars and factories simultaneously to massively simplify the process of making vehicles. It’s quite brilliant and, while journalists complained about Tesla’s four-hour filibuster presentation earlier this year, the substance of the presentation was largely about how the company continues to make cars people want more efficiently than anyone else.
Of course, Tesla has suffered from all sorts of quality control issues and EPA violations for polluting.
Ford’s new Blue Oval City massive plant in Tennessee will be the company’s first new plant in half a century, and its biggest ever at 4-million square feet. This is where Ford will build the vehicle codenamed Project T3, the EV truck that will out Cybertruck the Cybertruck. It sounds like the plant will be a big mix of Tesla ideas with some of the experience Ford’s had building cars for 100 years sprinkled into the mix.
There’s a big Automotive News piece on this that dropped over the weekend: “Ford’s BlueOval City radically changes how vehicles will be made.”
Here are some details:
“When you walk in, it will not feel like a plant that you’ve been in before,” Lisa Drake, Ford’s vice president of EV industrialization, told Automotive News. “Our target was to actually build this truck more efficiently than the best truck we build — and we build trucks pretty well.”
The plant will have fewer workstations, Drake said, and the vehicle built there, known internally as Project T3, will be offered to customers in significantly fewer configurations than today’s models.
“It’s a marvel of simplification,” CEO Jim Farley said at an event here in March.
Farley has stressed a need to reduce complexity and eliminate waste throughout Ford’s operations, saying the company must cut the number of fasteners in its vehicles by half and move to larger casting with fewer parts, like Tesla does, to achieve its goal of 8 percent margins on EVs.
This is essentially the only way to “beat” Tesla. The bit about reducing configurations is also key. Tesla made a point in its presentation earlier this year that it used customer data to find out that its customers didn’t use sunroofs, so they cut them and saved weight and complexity. A car isn’t one big thing. It’s a lot of little things. Still, those little things can add up to one big improvement.
Depending on what happens on Wednesday with the big EPA announcement, let’s see how Ford reacts.
Chinese Car Sales “Meh” Even After Price Cuts
It’s weird to say, but China is ahead of the U.S. car market in many ways, largely because they spent the last decade pumping money into electrified cars much in the same way we’re doing now. Those incentives disappeared in December of last year and the rapidly expanding market has started to contract.
Car sales in March were 1.61 million units, the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) said. In the first three months, sales had fallen 13.4% to 4.33 million units, it added.
Sales of new energy vehicles (NEVs), which include pure battery electric cars and plug-in hybrids, rose 21.9% in March and accounted for 34% of the month’s sales, the data showed.
BYD led the segment with market share of 35.5%, while Tesla (TSLA.O) accounted for 14%.
Some of this is probably just an adjustment to consumers and automakers adjusting to the loss of subsidies. It’s worth noting that, even in a turn-down, BEVS and PHEVs are still kicking ass, making up 1-in-every-3 cars sold in the market.
Consumer Don’t Like Getting Price-Gouged By Dealers
This is going to come to a huge surprise to everyone: People don’t like being price-gouged. The lack of cars caused by supply constraints encouraged some dealers to massively increase the prices of the few cars they did have.
According to market research firm GfK, via Automotive News, this is not making those customers particularly happy with the places they bought their cars OR with the brands:
Twenty-seven percent of customers who paid more than sticker told GfK they would never buy that brand of vehicle again. Julie Kenar, GfK senior vice president of consulting, noted on a GfK webinar March 16 while automakers have no control over dealership pricing, “brands are still being negatively impacted.”
Thirty-one percent of buyers charged above sticker told GfK they’d advise other consumers to avoid that dealership, and 29 percent plan to never use that retailer for service.
With a huge glut of models coming in the next three years, it’ll be interesting to see how brand loyalty is impacted.
The Big Question
If you bought a car from a dealer and paid a high price would you:
- Avoid that brand in the future
- Avoid that dealership in the future
- Talk ish about that dealer to other people
Let us know.
Photos: Ford, BYD, The White House
You know they should have not allowed trucks to be considered commercial trucks unless bought by a business to be used by the business for truck purposes. Billy Ray buys a big old Ford Lightening big tax ramifications if BR aint hauling more than ass. Big old truck land yacht for bossman getting ro site with associates? Sorry not truck duty. But govt be stupid.
Government be bought. Auto industry lobbyists wrote those provisions into place, and paid your congresscritter to pass them into law. Effectively, the American people are subsidizing the sales of oversized, overpriced, high-margined luxury vehicles.
You say “Tesla, which wasn’t burdened by a lot of legacy constraints, designed its cars and factories simultaneously to massively simplify the process of making vehicles.” That’s not quite correct.
Tesla has a track record of making running changes on existing models in ways that significantly affect the production line. I’m not aware of any other manufacturer doing this at the level and frequency of Tesla.
Tesla’s “Alien Dreadnought” concept for the initial Model 3 factory was a disaster. It took a long time to bring humans back in the system and get production up to reasonable numbers. They didn’t stop there.
As evidenced by Munro’s teardown videos, the Model Y has gone through multiple major structural changes since it’s introduction. First was the reduction in the number of parts for the rear chassis, then reduction to a single rear casting, and now the structural battery pack and single front and rear castings. Each change results in a simplified assembly line with fewer robots.
Other running changes include the major circuit boards and the change to the heat pump and integrated “octovalve” for centralized heating and cooling management.
Who else in the industry changes their models and production processes at this rate?
They also release beta software and work it out on the go. Not sure that their process is better. But it is different.
I am totally unconvinced that these big cast parts are a good idea – while I know they are using fancy processes to make these parts, but in general aluminum castings end up with inclusions which can dramatically reduce strength and decrease fatigue life. And – if you ever need to replace something on the car, having fewer, bigger, more complex parts likely dramatically increases the repair burden. The “octavalve” seems to have been designed by someone who has never heard of a spool valve – I am unconvinced by Munro’s exaltation that the octavalve is a good idea.
On the current IIHS crash ratings, Model Y is excellent. So from a strength perspective, the single piece castings are fine. For repair after accident, it doesn’t matter if it’s multiple pieces welded together or single pieces. The manufacturers generally don’t sell the pieces separately, and once any of those structural pieces are deformed, the insurance companies write off the car.
Manufacturers are focused on reducing the build cost and improving safety ratings. A similar big industry change was when Toyota started making one big molded piece for the lower rear fenders and bumper right up to the trunk. Add some crush material inside, and you’ve eliminated the old separate bumpers, the shock-absorbers behind the bumpers, and all the other sheet metal and mount points. The entire industry copied the idea, despite it increasing the cost of accident repairs.
The single front and rear casting are the next cost reduction step spreading through the industry. According to a Reuters article from Feb 2023, IDRA (the maker of the Gigapress casting machines) now has “contracts with three automakers and as many ‘Tier 1’ parts makers. South Korea’s Hyundai Motor is among them” . Big announcements in the last month by Toyota and Ford about rethinking the entire manufacturing process probably means they are buying in as well.
An insurance company writes off the car based on whether the repair is feasible and cost effective. Anything too complex OR too simple can skew that calculation toward a write-off. Meanwhile, many vehicles sold into the lower end of the used car market (to lower income buyers in particular) are insurance write-offs that are repaired to “good enough” status by small shops that buy at auction and then put just enough life back into the vehicle to make it registerable and salable to someone who prefers cheap over shiny. But those kinds of repairs are tricky when the damage has occurred to a casting that variously spans, and provides, multiple vehicle hardpoints. IMO it’s another manifesting of throw-away tech.
I’m worried that all these new mandates will really skyrocket new car prices even more, and as an effect, used car prices too.
EVs are expensive to manufacture, but they can’t be too expensive for consumers, because they will be a market flop.
Some EVs will be loss leaders and car makers can only earn that loss back with selling ICE models for more money.
I don’t see how these mandates are not a lose-lose for everyone, but especially, the average car buyers will get the short end of the stick.
Yeah govt has never been real big on common sense or economic reality. Both parties screw Trump Screw Biden. Everyone okay with that?
Alright, I’ve read all the comments so far, and I’m going to share an unpopular opinion about a dealership experience last July, so heads up.
I had wrecked my 2004 Camry with 204k miles on it (my only car) and needed another one right away, not in 2-6 months. I knew it was a horrible market for car buying, but I didn’t have a lot of choice and just accepted that I’d get shafted one way or another. I was sick of used car problems and needed a car that wouldn’t need any attention for several years (I’m in school full time, have family to care for, I don’t have time for any extra stress or wrenching in my life right now).
I decided that I was going to buy a 2022 Camry Hybrid, so I shopped around in the LA area for one, and of course, they were rarer than pixie dust. Most dealerships didn’t have a single one on the lot. I was looking at 2 month waits minimum with 5-7k markups. Obviously a non-starter. One dealership had a used one with 75,000 miles on it and was asking 32k! For crying out loud.
The last Toyota dealership I checked was a local one. I hadn’t even bothered because I drove by all the time and saw their lot was always mostly empty. To my surprise, there was a (mostly) loaded Camry XSE hybrid on the lot that was almost exactly what I was looking for. $39k MSRP, $42k with markup. I went in and bought it.
People on here will probably call me a sucker, but I could really care less. I love the car and I needed it badly. I’ve already put 19k miles on the car and on KBB it’s still worth $38k, so it’s not like it isn’t holding it’s value.
To answer the question of avoiding that dealer or talking crap about them, I will not do either of those. When I asked the finance guy if they were going to try and sell me a lot of extra crap, he said “we don’t really care if you don’t buy the extended warranty/service plan because the way I see it, we’ll get your business one way or another when you bring your car in.” I respected that and none of the usual scummy sales tactics were used on me.
The dealer is Bob Smith Toyota. Aside from the fact that their lot is STILL almost empty, I recommend them highly. I can buy the factory engine oil/filters from them cheaper than I can get it on amazon. When I bring it in for fluids/tire rotation they are done in an hour. When I came in the replace the wipers (lots of rain in LA lately) the parts guy said that to save me some money, he recommended I just get the rubber strip replaced instead of the whole wiper. I said I’d never done that before, and he said no problem, I’ll have the service guys throw them on for free. Paid $20 total.
Considering how few cars they are able to sell and how good my experience has been, I don’t begrudge Bob Smith Toyota my 3K markup. Heck, I recommend them. I needed a car fast so I was willing to pay more for it. With 10% inflation, the same car will probably cost that much more in a year anyway.
Alright, everyone come at me now! Tell me how I’m the reason why dealerships can get away with charging markups in the first place!
I think this shows the quality dealerships are low on inventory. If in this market the dealers lot is full? He is the devil Bobby Bushae.
Sounds like you did it with your eyes wide open. The fact that you didn’t know about the wiper rubbers or think of doing it yourself indicate that buying an old beater may indeed not be your best option, so points for self knowledge.
I still would have gotten a Prius variant over a Camry, but you’re not alone in being afraid of seeming smug.
I grew up without any exposure to cars, so everything I know is something I figured out for myself in the last ten years or so. Unless I read it somewhere.
If the new Prius had come out already, I would have been tempted, but this happened when it was still the 4th-gen one (yuck).
I’m guessing that Camry is a much nicer ride than a Prius, even one of those new cool looking ones.
Bought a ’22 Maverick a year ago – XLT, 2.Ot, AWD, Towing pkg. New. Sitting on Raleigh, NC Ford dealer’s lot.
… paid sticker. No markup.
1.9% financing…
Dealer markups are an incredibly shortsighted choice. I’m the person friends and family go to for car purchases and I have along memory. Every single dealer who tries it gets logged in my mind palace. When it comes time to buy, those dealers have zero chance of ever making a sale or getting a service visit.
Good luck keeping those protective franchise laws after you completely piss off your community.
Just remember if they have limited inventory supply they still need to pay their employees, utilities, rent, licenses, and other bills. So $30k markup? No. But if sales are cut in half they do need a little extra. Especially when they could sell at sticker to another dealership. And fire everyone not in parts or repairs. You can always hire salespeople.
This. Overhead costs are the same (building lease, salaries, utilities) even if your sales are 30% of what they used to be. Marking up cars a LITTLE to keep the lights on is not the same thing as ripping everyone off to make a huge windfall.
Not necessarily. I remember the salary “haircuts” of the last recession. Folks saw their incomes slashed and in many cases it took years for those to return to pre-recession levels.
I also remember the stories of corporate tenants renegotiating leases for lower rents. That can happen when vacancies are high which is a HUGE motivator for corporate landlords to fight for an end to WFH by any means necessary.
Dunno about utilities. Maybe negotiate with your landlord to install rooftop/parking lot solar. That’s what I see a lot of places doing.
Without knowing the enforcement mechanism for the new emissions regulations, it’s all moot.
Several manufacturers happily paid fines to keep a gas guzzling portfolio of trucks on the sales floor in the past and can do so again if fines are the only penalty. If that’s what the consumers want, they won’t be wrong to do so, as long as the checks clear.
Hybrids are the best option right now for the average person.
Plug-in hybrids specifically
Depending if you own a house or not, If you have off street parking or not. I do like the Idea of the Prius with a solar panel setup.
Best case numbers: 400 Watts from a roof-size solar panel. A Plug-in Prius has an 8.8KW battery that is good for 25 miles. You can’t solar charge overnight so let’s assume parking lot during 8 hour work day. In a perfect case you can get 9 miles of range while at work. Realistically when efficiencies, sun angle, weather, dirt, mounting and other factors are applied, you would be lucky to get 3 miles of range which won’t cover very many trips. For most people and the manufacturer it is not worth the investment and maintenance.
You know you can add more than a single panel on a roof right? A carport has enough space for 3kW or so, a residential or business roof even more.
Or were you incorporating a single panel onto the roof of the car? If so 3miles/day sounds about right.
https://www.techradar.com/news/hyundais-new-electric-car-has-a-solar-panel-roof-and-the-ability-to-charge-other-evs
Its enough to keep the interior cool with the A/C though.
I’ve definitely recommended or discouraged shopping at specific dealers before. The brand doesn’t matter to me as much as the cost of entry. If it’s a terrible deal I’ll walk. Buying and holding cars means I have one opportunity to get a car at a decent price. If not at that dealer their competition in the next city over can try earning my business.
Last week I discovered the most egregious dealer pricing, and I’m going to name and shame. Towbin KIA, Henderson, NV. Remember the TV show “King of Cars”? Yeah, that guy.
The car is a base KIA Rio5, S trim. MSRP including freight is $18,800.
This dealer gave me an out-the-door price of $32,xxx!! Setting aside the 8.5% sales tax, that’s 67% OVER MSRP!!
One of the dealer add-ons was “powdercoated wheels” for FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS. I’m not sure if that means they powdercoat the steelies and put the hubcaps back on, or if it’s other wheels, but to have wheels powdercoated is about $200/each.
I’m still in shock at the gall.
I’m shocked, shocked that they’re trying to sell a Rio5 for even MSRP…well, not that shocked.
Did they throw in pinstripes & Pep Boys quality floormats? Ziebart?
“If you bought a car from a dealer…”
Whoa, slow down, I’m already having difficulty with this chain of thought.
“If you bought a car from a dealer…”
Seriously!!! What do those words even mean?
I haven’t dealt with a “dealer” since Massachusetts legalized it.
I think I’m astonished to hear that Ford expects only “8 percent margins on EVs.”
They didn’t specify whether they were talking about gross or net margins. If that’s the gross margin, Ford is in very big trouble. If that’s the net margin, that would be an excellent return on investment.
I would still think the big money is chasing much higher returns, which leads to things like Tesla’s cap being ten times larger than Ford’s and other…oddities.
… Maths.
“Get Ready For Everyone To Freak Out Over The New U.S. Emissions Regulations”
Well not everyone. I’m not. Tesla isn’t. And neither are environmentalists or people who have asthma.
And for The Big Question…
If I went to a dealer after dealer and found all vehicles I was interested in had insane markups, I would have walked away and paid more for a Tesla since Tesla doesn’t use dealers.
The dealer would never have gotten my sale in the first place.
Tesla already has to cut prices to compete. With more EVs they’ll have even more competition in their corner of the market.
Well, this is just one piece of a much broader set of policies to address climate change. Also not sure that you’re correct that it’s just a small drop in the bucket” – feel like you should at least put some numbers or stats behind that to back it up…
I agree this is a small drop, but I would also like to see some numbers on how much impact passenger vehicles have vs things like semis, trains, planes, and container ships. Not to mention electrical production facilities, various factories, mining, etc.
The commonly referenced claim of 27% of CO2 emissions from transportation is for the entire US Transportation sector, of which consumer sector is responsible for around 56.6%, or ~15% of the total US CO2 emissions.
Taking away that 15% (even if we get it down to “only” 5%) is nothing to scoff at, however, it won’t be the silver bullet so often touted.
Thanks Elmer (and Jonathan), these numbers help put some things in perspective.
I know these policies are for the US, but it’s also good to know the bucket size globally, where it’s even a smaller drop in the bucket. Globally, 11.9% of CO2 emissions are from road transportation, of which 60% (7% of total global CO2 emissions) is from cars, motorcycles, and buses. The other 40% is from road freight. Emissions by sector – Our World in Data
“Emissions from light-duty vehicles in the U.S., such as cars and pickup trucks, came to nearly 1.1 billion metric tons of CO2e – about 17% of all carbon emissions in the country.” https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/09/a-brief-introduction-to-climate-change-and-transportation/?gclid=CjwKCAjw586hBhBrEiwAQYEnHTp6QAFqxBciJq7elY6MPcoU5zlomdwxQYLGw7jvDHsYIsMguuqhnBoCAg4QAvD_BwE
Exactly…not a drop in the bucket at all.
I get the broader point, and do hope to see more aggressive action taken against stuff like this -> https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/10/opinion/superyachts-private-plane-climate-change.html
An old friend of mine would often ask the question: “How many yachts can you ski behind.” It was a chuckle for me at first, but when you start to see what kind of wealth is needed for one yacht, let alone multiple, it gets depressing in a hurry.
You can’t really blame the brand, but I can see how that negative experience would bleed over. I would, however, avoid that dealership and tell everyone I know (and everyone I don’t) about how awful they are. Obviously, I won’t buy from that dealer either. It makes no sense to say, “I hate this price, but fine, I guess I’ll pay it,” only to complain about it later.
I’m very much in favor of BEVs and hybrids of all types, and I’m thrilled to see them catching on as well as they are. However, there is just too much to do in order to have BEVs be our one and only choice before we make it our one and only choice.
We all know infrastructure isn’t there yet. We all know battery chemistry needs to be improved and made from more sustainable substances (which is coming, I think/hope). We all know the price of BEVs needs to come down. We all know there needs to be an honest rethink of habits from the public writ large.
The consumer gets made to feel bad if they don’t choose an environmentally friendly choice. While one can argue consumers SHOULD make environmentally friendly choices, why is it ONLY on the consumers? Where is a carbon tax for corporations? Where is the (international) effort to clean up shipping emissions? Should I go on?
And then there’s the public that needs convinced this is what SHOULD happen. In Ohio, farmers and NIMBY’s combine to stifle wind and solar projects. There is a (loud) conservative cohort who believe it’s arrogant to think Man has had enough time to meaningfully affect the climate; and also that green projects are fine, so long as they don’t have to see it or have any of their tax money spent on them.
Instead, we get all this effort to get headlines, but not address the problem in a meaningful way.
I feel no remorse for driving a gas powered vehicle.
First and foremost I wouldn’t get ripped off because I’m knowledgeable of the process and have enough self control that I can still back away when when I really want a car but the dealership isn’t budging on a lackluster deal. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again, although I understand I’m operating from a place of privilege here and that not everyone is so fortunate. So I’ll play along.
Having one or even two shitty dealership experiences isn’t enough for me to avoid a brand. Hell, I dealt with several scummy Hyundai dealerships in my process to get an N and the way I see it it’s that manufacturers don’t have much control over how dealerships operate…and if the car is good enough I can put up with shopping around a bit. It also helps to establish contact well before you walk in. That lets them know you’re serious and you can get a deal going ahead of time. Buying the Kona N was painless for me because I’d been in contact with the dealership for a few weeks, had a relationship with them, and had worked a deal out ahead of time. It’s easier to catch flies with honey than vinegar.
I would, however, avoid a bad dealership in the future. They clearly didn’t want my business that much so there’s no use in giving them any…and I don’t appreciate being taken for a fool, and a lot of dealerships just see us as idiots waiting to be ripped off. Also in my experience some sales people can be outright aggressive and I don’t respond well to that. I had a sales manager pretty seriously argue with me over my unwillingness to pay a markup on a car and I straight up walked away when he started insulting me. There’s no use in letting them drag you into the mud with them, and they will try.
I’m personally not into Karen-ing. I’m never going to go online and write a scathing review or ask to talk to a manager or anything like that. If I had a really good experience I’ll leave a positive review, if I had a lousy one I leave it alone. Plus there’s a good chance they can figure out who left the review anyway. I will tell people asking me for car advice (this happens a lot actually) to avoid that dealership though. My thinking is that if they’re willing to get testy with me, someone who knows more about the cars than their salespeople do, I can’t imagine how it’s going to go for someone who isn’t knowledgeable.
I still genuinely don’t like dealerships and have had more bad experiences than good. Some might say it’s because I’m an ass, but I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever been a dick to anyone who’s trying to sell me a car…and most of my bad experiences have been the result of me being unwilling to take a lousy deal. I also understand that I’m the opposite of an ideal customer for most dealerships.
I have good enough credit to always qualify for the best terms they have available, I always buy well under my budget, I don’t let raw emotions drive my decisions, and I usually know more than anyone in the sales department does about the car I’m there to see. I am absolutely a headache to deal with from their perspective, especially when plenty of people come in everyday and impulse buy cars way outside their budgets on 11% financing.
But that’s still not an excuse to be unprofessional. I’ve seen a lot of car sales folks do stuff that would get you fired from pretty much any other person facing job in
an instant but for some reason their behavior is acceptable in car sales culture. At the end of the day their business model is predatory and they’re not our friends.
If I actually paid a high price for a car, that probably* means I felt it worth it. My ’14 Compass loan was $14,700, for 43 some odd thousand miles on it, in 2018. I felt that was worth it. If it was, say, $22,000? Absolutely not.
*After I spent $5,600 on my first car, an ’06 Dakota with 109,000 miles on it, that never had working 4WD and the mom-and-pop shop refusing to say that it was broken and that the warranty didn’t cover it, I believe I can make far better choices. That ’14 Compass takes my driving far better than I think any other vehicle could.
Hey Ford: Good luck getting high-quality people to work at your lovely “city” in Tennessee. A whole lot of people- especially those under 40- do not want to live in a place that makes crazy laws. The Red State brain drain is real, and it’s spectacular.
TN, like most places, is a mix. The Ford BOC is near Memphis (not Nashville) which is heavily democratic (and has both great BBQ and Soul). The outlying area near the plant is rural, and in-between the plant and Memphis are the suburbs (mostly white middle-class). The area has an extremely low cost of living (property/taxes/utilities/no state income tax) and decent climate so a factory worker with decent pay can do very good down here.
Yes it sucks when the RWNJs are in charge at the state level and without decent alternative candidates + the insane gerrymandering I doubt it will change soon, but it’s not fair to paint anyplace with a single brush. (Steve Cohen represents Memphis in D.C. and he’s unapologetically Democratic).
Glad to see the plant going up. It’s a bit out in the sticks for many in Memphis (about a 40 minute commute from the city) – but hopefully it’s going to work out alright. I do hope Ford is planning on providing decent training – the education level down here isn’t quite bad, but could be better.
Sure. But, F*ck the UAW.
Waiting for the power grid to have meltdowns over the coming years.
Also, It amazes me that the EV push that hurts low income people the most, is going forward without addressing any of their issues. (Cost, lack of charging, long term costs of vehicles).
.…consider low income people when writing laws?! Sounds like COMMUNISM to me!
It does really suck. It’s ridiculously expensive to be poor in this third world ass country, and it’s by design.
I agree. They
The conversion to Evie is part of an overall move to control the population by controlling the movement of people. In California they’re forcing cities to build so-called low-income housing near Transit corridors. The City of Huntington Beach is fighting the state of California right now over this issue. What they want to do is force poor people to live in these apartments so that they will never save up money to buy a home out in the suburbs and that they will never have to buy a car so that they get everywhere they need to go by bus or bike. Everything is interconnected and they are using climate change as an excuse to force a change in our society in the United States.
Sir, I believe you were looking for TTAC. You’ll find it through the door on the far right.
You sound a lot like OldGuy and dammit you are right. There is no plan, this hasn’t been thought out at all and it seems to be largely driven by political buzzwords and manufacturers large consumer vehicle profits, with little thought about how it’s going to be made to function.
That power grid meltdown in the U.S. will happen anyway even without any EVs, because much of the infrastructure is nearing a century old, and the companies that own it keep taking as much profit as possible instead of updating/maintaining it. Massive sections of the power grid needed to be updated 40 years ago, and were not. It’s a ticking time bomb.
EVs really aren’t a major problem for the grid. Every gallon of gasoline extracted from crude oil takes about 8 kWh of electricity. That is enough electricity to run a Nissan Leaf 35 miles, or about the same distance as its closest gasoline equivalent(such as a Versa) will travel on a gallon of gasoline.
To minimize the impact of EVs on the grid, it would make sense for those who charge at home to have available a programmable charger set to not start charging the car until off-peak hours. This will save the operator money.
For fast charge stations, it would make sense to store power in massive LiFePO4 battery banks to level out the load, and to allow all vehicles present to use fast charging at the same time if the situation calls for it.
As an EV owner who is ready to sell their remaining ICE vehicle for an EV, I hate the proposed ruling. It sounds too heavy handed, which will get a lot of pushback.
Can the politicians grow some balls and fix the gas tax? Our roads are shit and aren’t getting the funding they need. With the number of EVs on the road, the gas tax needs to be replaced with a mileage tax. If you want to motivate people to switch to EVs, have ICE drivers pay a mileage tax plus a fuel tax at the pump. Increase the fuel tax over a period of 25 years until it penalizes those who refuse to make the switch.
Ah, so pay $90k for a Tesla or we’ll tax your ass off for driving a Honda Accord.
No thanks.
So you’re in favor of continuing to attack low-income people that can’t afford an EV and/or don’t have access to charging?
This isn’t different from anything else. Everything attacks low-income people, they’re going to get screwed no matter what. Pollution and climate change attack low-income people. High real estate prices attack low-income people, as do landlords and employers who don’t pay decent wages (whether that’s for day care workers, low-tier health care workers, retail workers, whatever). Sure, redistributing income (via taxes if necessary) is a better solution, but try to sell that one.
I’ll make sure to buy an EV while I have no way to charge it except at my local grocery store where they shut off power to the charger after 2 hours instead of being able to fuel up at a gas station.
I’ll take “how to get elected out of office” for 500$ Alex.
Based off the other comments, even suggesting dual taxation to influence consumers would get someone recalled from their office in record time.
how about replacing gas tax with a tire tax – it’s the tires after all that wear down the roadways. it would be fuel agnostic – ICE and EVs both taxed. and it is not a regressive tax cuz it is usage based (like the gas tax that EVs dont pay).
just an idea…
Just keep riding bicycles my guy, we’ll keep driving our ice cars
Just like OEMs idling plants to “stabilize” inventory levels? They all see that they can now make more money selling less at now inflated prices. I blame it on both OEMs and Dealerships.
I refused to pay over MSRP, which is why my car search lasted over a year.
Many people who buy new cars like to trade them in for a new one once the warranty runs out. Those people will be too underwater in their loans to trade in their car when they want to. They will be forced to delay that purchase 2-3 years. Dealers will hit a dip in sales that will last 2+ years (longer for Toyota) that may break the dealerships viability. I expect the dealers to start having a rough time soon.
Uh, I call bullshit on this one. They simply don’t want to. But when a dealership represents your brand with their giant sign and massive waving American flag, you absolutely have a stake in them not being utter shitheels.
Dealerships are independent businesses. Manufacturers really don’t have that level of control over retail pricing, hence the term MSRP (manufacturers suggested retail price)
As for OEMs having a stake in dealers not being “utter shitheels”, yep, they definitely do, yet there a lot of limits on what they can realistically control. It’s a constant battle.
Direct sales will be come more and more common as a way to stop this.
It’s obvious, but worth saying: A passenger car-EV transition alone isn’t going to solve climate change.
And yet passenger car drivers are the ones being compelled to sacrifice, unlike (pretty much) anyone else.
I’ll believe government and industry are serious about tackling climate change when there’s talk of CEOs and people like Al Gore giving up their multiple mansions that each use more electricity to heat an outdoor pool for a weekend party than an upper-middle-class family of 5 dwelling in a McMansion will use all year, private jets that emit more pollution for a single trip to Davos Switzerland than a Cadillac Escalade will use in 12,000 miles of driving, oversized yachts that will use more fuel for a single 2-hour joyride than a 4,000 sq ft off-grid cottage in Alaska will use all year, and most of their meals having ingredients whose distance from the plate is multiple times the circumference of the entire Earth. And then people working McJobs driving clunkers, living paycheck to paycheck in crappy apartments, are the ones being asked to sacrifice and are being increasingly taxed.
It’s always everyone from the homeless underclass all the way to the privileged upper middle class and everything in between being told to sacrifice, but NEVER the aristocracy imposing these rules on everyone. The elite of society by themselves consume more resources and emit more pollution than the bottom 90% of the world’s population put together. Time to trim the fat, starting at the very top, otherwise it will be in vain.
Converting your lifestyle to an EV is simple and costless when you have the means to fly first class every time you want to travel more than 200 miles away. That is why our “betters” don’t see it as a sacrifice at all.
This is it, right here. Relying on EVs as your single vehicle is not viable for most people. In addition, most EVs right now are asininely expensive, not just for the car but then to install fast chargers at home (which is kinda important if it’s your only car)…. and that’s because cars like Teslas are current status symbols. When there are many affordable, “economy car” equivalents then I’ll begin to believe we’re serious about EVs. Until then, Hybrids are what we should be doing.
Yep. What about the millions of apt dwellers who will never have a home charger, and likely can’t afford these vehicles? Also, the long term cost and reduced lifespan of an EV further hurts low income people.
EVs could instead be designed to last a human lifetime. There’s a lot less maintenance items and moving parts in one vs ICE. It all comes down to making the battery accessible and repairable without proprietary tools, without computer software locking the DIY mechanic out of battery swaps or swapping in different drive systems or chargers.
That Triumph GT6 EV conversion I built is dirt simple to work on, but the automakers will never build something with that philosophy in mind because it won’t allow a recurring revenue steam. The “car of the future” is likely to require a subscription for you to even drive it at all, the way things are going.
I’d walk before I pay a subscription to get to my destination. That’s called a bus pass.
We need the auto industry to sacrifice per-unit profits by offering inexpensive, reliable, REPAIRABLE(with basic tools), good cars that double or triple the current efficiency, regardless of whether they are ICE, diesel, or EV. This would do a lot in the longer term, especially once these cars filter down to the used market. Things need to be built to last instead of built to be thrown away, and they need to use a lot less energy for their use case.
But that doesn’t maximize profits for our “betters”.
We need our communities redesigned to where automobile usage is no longer compulsory, by making them walkable and by offering convenient mass transit, and getting rid of many zoning laws. But our “betters” don’t want the poors having access to “their” neighborhoods, nor do they want thriving local economies supplanting their business chains.
Sadly, as great a technology as EVs are, most of them are currently built to be disposable, and they consume almost twice as much energy as is necessary for the level of practicality and performance offered, which increases cost. There is no good reason a 5 passenger midsized sedan needs to consume more than 150 Wh/mile on the highway, and we can also get 80 mpg with ICE hybrids and diesels with a focus on load reduction, without giving up any performance and in fact increasing it.
Also, the less tax money flowing to our “betters”, the better it is for everyone. They’re currently trying to find ways to tax EVs by mileage to make up for the declining revenue from less gasoline taxes, still not addressing the fact that multiple industries that put 50,000+ lb vehicles on the road are accounting for almost all of the road wear, industries that our “betters” own and whom maximize their profit by not paying their fair share of the infrastructure usage.
The rich keep getting exponentially richer by not paying their fair share and designing an economy around planned obsolescence, then using a massive military and police apparatus to enforce the maintenance of their privilege should the little people ever get uppity. All of which is consuming the Earth and polluting it. Then the little people get blamed.
The thing is, our “betters” want us confined into ghettos, without personal rapid transportation. That is why things are the way they are and why they are trending toward ordinary people being priced out of existence. I’m almost certain that this imbalance will eventually become so grotesque, that my use of a 4,000 mpg equivalent custom vehicle along with run of the mill ebikes will eventually end up taxed or taken off the road altogether to “save the environment” while the rich continue travelling around in private jets and yachts guzzling more fuel/energy in mere seconds than these vehicles will use in an entire lifetime.
There are a lot of skilled folks on here, but your definition of “repairable” for electric cars has to include, “Smart enough to not fry yourself working on high voltage”. It’s a less common skill than you might think. HV is far less forgiving than most of what you’ll run into on your average ICE. How do you deal with that?
Skills can be learned. Bubba mechanic, even drunk, is not as stupid as he appears, and is well capable of learning how to deal with high voltages safely. It’s just a different set of skills have to be learned, and it won’t be done overnight.
Working on ICE cars is also hazardous as hell, just in different ways. It’ very easy to start a fire working on an ICE car, or to destroy major components of the car in advertently.
You’re certainly correct that the current corporate socialism in the US foists most of the sacrifices onto the middle and lower economic classes. However, the “Al Gore’s Mansion” trope is way past being true. Between energy-efficient retrofits and running on renewables, Gore’s house is, well, more or less on par with that 4000-sf off-grid Alaskan cottage.
And isn’t that the point? We can have nice things while being environmentally sensitive *at the same time*.
It’d be nice to have more funding sent to research universities to fast-track development of carbon capture fuels (like Porsche’s E-Fuels) so we can responsibly keep our loud pedals, too. But that would require corporations to actually pay for the socialism they enjoy.
Al Gore has multiple mansions. And a single 4,000 sq ft off grid cabin will consume far more resources than the average person can afford to consume anyway, which is why I used it as a basis of comparison. Al Gore’s ecological footprint is easily 100x that of the average American and 1000x that of the average African, as is the ecological footprint of all of the other people in his socio-economic bracket. Any proposal to “save the planet” that does not address this will be entirely in vain. The super-rich are consuming a greatly disproportionate share of the world’s resources, and it is enabled by a highly lopsided distribution of wealth/income coupled with a tax system whose burden has been disproportionately placed upon labor to the benefit of capital. And then there’s the other ways labor is taxed: each dollar of profit extracted from the laborer is money the laborer generated but was not paid. All of the corporate lobbyists writing laws that are enforced on working people who didn’t even get a vote for said laws are also using tax payer dollars and an oversized government to enforce these laws.
IMO, the solution to this is greatly less government in our lives, not more(government involves massive resource consumption and generated pollution to function, most especially the military, but most of its other functions do as well). Although unlike what has historically happened, I think any and all tax cuts should start from the bottom up, instead of disproportionately benefitting the wealthy, and any wage increases should also start from the bottom up, even to the expense of wages/capital gains at the top. It would greatly alter our consumption patterns if the rich had greatly less and the poor and middle classes had slightly more, probably for the better. Especially if goods were built with quality and longevity in mind, rather than filling up landfills only to be replaced over and over again.
If your average burger flipper could afford an EV, and if that EV was repairable with basic tools at your local shop or even by a shadetree mechanic, I don’t think there’d be nearly as much hostility to the concept among the working classes.
Bill Gates was asked recently about why it wasn’t hypocritical of him to fly by private jet, and responded by saying basically “I throw money at it (to buy offsets)” and therefore it’s OK.”
Great, so if you spend enough you get to virtue signal about your footprint being offset and dictate to the poors what they can buy, drive, and eat. Facking wankers, the whole lot of them.
While I would argue other people are asked to sacrifice, I do think that we are focusing on the wrong people. If I switch from a Hyundai Elantra GT to an Ioniq 5 I’m going to make a much smaller impact in overall emissions than if we got rid of one billionaire’s yacht.
One transatlantic flight emits more CO2 than my 12 mpg F350 does in 400,000 miles of driving.
But who’s got the lobbyists? The airline industry and the wealthy. Our elected leaders are supposed to lobby on our behalf, but our tax dollars aren’t enough.
If I bought a car from a dealer and paid a *high price*, I’d be way too embarrassed to tell anyone about it.
I suppose I’d avoid that dealer in the future, though.
This is extremely relevant.
In the past couple of years, I’ve known a lot of people who went and upgraded to new, or new lightly used cars. Everyone has claimed to have “gotten a great deal”. Nobody has admitted to paying above MSRP. In general, I don’t think most people are honest about what they bought their cars for. By the numbers we’re a nation of people getting bent-over by dealers, turning around to their friends and claiming the opposite.
Also see King of the Hill episode where Hank learns that he was being ripped-off buying all his cars at sticker price for years.
“Not a dime over sticker” lol