Stellantis warns about EV costs, NHTSA looks into Honda phantom braking, the Nissan Titan might die. All this and more on today’s issue of The Morning Dump.
Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday.
Stellantis Issues A Warning
Well, it’s looking more and more like fossil fuels will be phased out in automotive use over the next two decades or so. While the new European Union resolution to ban fossil fuel use in vehicles includes an exemption for synthetic fuels, manufacturing capacity remains an issue for synthetic fuels. As a result, EVs are expected to remain the most popular sort of future vehicle, but they do come with some significant costs. Speaking at Stellantis’ Tremery, France factory on Wednesday, Stellantis’ Chief Manufacturing Officer Arnaud Deboeuf announced plans to cut EV manufacturing costs by 40 percent come 2030. A good plan, but one that comes with a grave warning. According to Bloomberg, Deboeuf stated that if EVs don’t get cheaper, “the market will collapse.”
Honestly, Deboeuf has a point. Cheap credit can’t last forever, and consumers will eventually grow less and less willing to stretch out loans on expensive cars when interest rates aren’t at historic lows. Couple that to insane purchase prices and unless residuals remain incredibly high to prop up cheap leases, new EV prices will really need to come down. In addition, EVs are more likely to be considered by younger consumers, and younger consumers don’t have a ton of money to spend. Price parity with gasoline vehicles is a fairly critical goal to reach, and it’ll be an uphill battle to get there. Tesla, Ford, and other manufacturers have recently hiked EV pricing due to supply chain shortages, and battery pack production remains a challenge. Let’s hope that for the sake of everyone, EVs can get cheaper and better quickly.
NHTSA Probes 1.7M Hondas For Phantom Braking
Technology: it’s great when it works. When it doesn’t work, it can cause serious code browns, like having your 1.5-ton explosion-powered transportation machine unexpectedly drop the anchors at highway speeds. Indeed, NHTSA investigators are looking into reports of Honda’s Honda Sensing driver assist suite slamming on the brakes without any present threat. The investigation started earlier this year and has since expanded to cover more than 1.7 million vehicles, most made between 2017 and 2019, all equipped with Honda Sensing. According to Automotive News, regulators are seeking additional information from Honda, and the Japanese company has until about August 12 to respond without facing penalties.
To date, 278 complaints over phantom braking in Hondas have been filed to the NHTSA, and I totally get it. My second Civic press car featured ridiculously touchy automatic emergency braking, so all these complaints make sense. While Honda Sensing in models made between 2017 and 2019 featured a forward-facing radar unit, it also drew heavily on monocular camera data. Now, monocular camera depth perception is tricky, and while the radar unit is likely doing a bunch of heavy lifting, it’s not a huge surprise that some triggers for phantom braking exist.
Apple Wants You To Pay For Gas Using Your Car
As the clock slowly ticks towards the launch of Apple’s insane new CarPlay update, more details about functionality are coming out of the woodwork. Reuters reports that Apple demonstrated the ability to pay for gas using CarPlay at a developer conference this month, although the process seems a little bit clunky. Drivers will have to tap a fuel company app on which they’ve verified payment means to use this function. Fuel company HF Sinclair seems stoked on this development, confirming plans to use Apple’s new integration option. Senior vice president of marketing Jack Barger told Reuters, “We’re excited by the idea that consumers could navigate to to a Sinclair station and purchase fuel from their vehicle navigation screen.”
Honestly, I’m not entirely sure about this. On the one hand, the technology has the potential for some great applications. Some automakers are already letting you pay to charge your EV from your dashboard, and in-car Apple Pay integration with EV charging networks is already pretty great. No more loading money onto a bullshit little card that clutters up your wallet, just plug in and go. However, fueling company app integration seems a bit clunky and has the potential to be hilariously insecure. As ever, I’ll reserve final judgment for when I actually try this tech, but implementation just doesn’t sound that efficient.
The Nissan Titan Might Die
Making cars is hard, but making full-size trucks is even harder. Just ask Nissan. The Japanese automaker entered the full-size market in 2003 with the Titan, yet never quite hit sales targets. Now, with shifting corporate priorities, Automotive News reports that Nissan will kill the Titan within the next three model years. A source familiar with the matter claimed “It’s dead,” elaborating that “There’s no plan engineering’s working on for replacing it, updating it.”
Look, we all saw this coming, right? The Nissan Titan hasn’t exactly stolen much market share from domestic truck makers, and it’s been on sale in its current generation since 2016. Sales have been on a general downward trajectory since 2005, the generation’s getting old, and Nissan will want some space back in its Canton assembly plant at some point. Truthfully, the Titan was killed off last year in Canada, and I genuinely don’t think anyone misses it. The good news is that discontinuing the Titan will allow Nissan to dedicate resources towards vehicles it’s historically been good at making, like the Frontier midsize pickup truck, or sedans. Indeed, two new electric vehicles are forecast for assembly in the Canton plant come 2025.
The Flush
Whelp, time to drop the lid on today’s edition of The Morning Dump. With Stellantis’ warning front-of-mind, how cheap would EVs have to be before you’d consider buying one, and what sort of EV would you want? I’m admittedly a bit flexible, but I’d want to see a nice entry-level EV sports sedan in the high 30s before I’d consider plunking down some cash. While it’s great to see automakers chasing mass-market EV adoption, it almost seems as if people who really like driving are largely forgotten about. Honestly, if this keeps up, I might just end up in a seriously clapped-out Taycan in a decade. Anyway, how about you?
Lead photo credit: Stellantis
I can tell you quite bluntly that pricing has been and will continue to be a large part of any delay I have in going electric. When the time came to replace my daily driver in 2018 my first instinct was to go electric, but everything I might want was way more than I wanted to pay, even with the tax credits. I was NOT interested in leasing since I run cars as long as I can. So… I “settled” for getting a brand new Fiesta ST out the door for under 20 grand and four years later I still love that thing as much as the day I got it. I plan to run that car for hopefully another 10 years or more, thus delaying my adoption of an electric vehicle.
I really don’t need a ton of range—my longest drives are about 50 miles one-way, but daily I’m lucky if I drive more than 7 or 8 miles. I get why the market is trying to alleviate range anxiety, but we would all be better off, and probably driving less weight and cost around, if we reimagined how we use our vehicles. It isn’t something you run to empty. It’s something you put back on the charger when you’re done with it. For a surprisingly large number of consumers (not all, of course), range of about 100 miles would cover the majority of their transportation needs.
I have absolutely no idea how we get there.
Which is why EVs are not the smoking gun that everyone would want you to believe.
All this talk about banning ICE is especially ridiculous considering the ever-increasing demand being put on our power grid. I have several friends working in that industry going on and on about all of the coal-fired plants being taken offline with no capacity to replace them. It’ll be like the whole gas situation all over again – An administration publicly stating that they are phasing out oil, but then going back to oil/gas companies to ask for more production the second people bitch about gas prices. You can’t have it every which way.
Massive solar and wind rollout. Need it.
In the past I’ve read that EVs might achieve price parity with ICE cars when EV battery prices dropped below $100/kWh. Have we not arrived at that price point yet?
Not with the price of cobalt and lithium about to double.
Around $130 for the pack, and a hair over $100 for the cells, from what I can find. They actually went up slightly for 2022, but are still expected to drop below that threshold in 2-3 years or so.
Maybe you could sucker more buyers to an EV with Corolla or Civic prices in the low $20k area. But they won’t because the higher cost ones today sell.
And long term costs for an EV battery? This may not be the best comparison, but how do you think consumers would take it, if new ICE cars were only expected to last 7-10 years before needing a top end or transmission rebuild? Everyone would go nuts to put a stop to that.
I’m sticking with my 15-20 year old cars, thanks. They are reliable, and cheap/easy to maintain.
EV batteries are not expected to last 7-10 years. They are warrantied for 8-10 years. Just because the warranty ends at 10 years doesn’t mean the battery will suddenly fail. No different than the fact that engines last far beyond the typical 5 years / 60K miles.
People said the same things about hybrid batteries but 20+ years later most hybrids get to the end of their useful life with the original battery.
For the cheap evs, I’m not Monru-nonite, but think Sandy’s right, mainland Asia is coming, and we are not prepared, they going to come with the BYDs and Vinfasts and the like, they’ll be cheap, young people will buy them, and then stick with their ‘first car brand’, leaving legacy brands in the dust.
I’m sure the legacies will still sell as many $50k+ EVs as they’re willing to make though. (“omg we’re sold out again??? this is so crazy! Oh well, at least our dealers can upcharge!”)
Automakers are not rolling out $30,000 EVs for one simple reason, they can sell all the $50,000 EVs they can make.
Electric vehicles are still in the phase where supply and demand is being worked out so prices are going to fluctuate for raw materials with pretty wide swings. Currently there is a lot of demand for raw materials like lithium, nickel, and cobalt. The chemistry for batteries is continually changing. Cobalt is very expensive and sourced from unstable regions of the world so it has been systematically reduced and replaced by cheaper materials for batteries. At the moment everything automotive related is increasing in price. I would love to find a gas powered Sprinter van that gets 200mpg and costs $20,000 new. I’m betting we will get to a 200 mile range electric vehicle that costs as much as an entry level fossil fueled vehicle before we see the 200mpg $20,000 Sprinter.
Especially since they can easily sell any Fiat or Pug small car under the Dodge or Chrysler name to sell a small car at a fair price.
Axing the small cars wasn’t a good idea now, was it? ????
People can’t afford new cars anymore, stuck buying used.
Make cute kei-size cars and trucks with a battery. And then a size up from kei.
Small, basic cars that happen to be electric are the way forward. Make them like regular cars but electric. That’s why the F150 Lightning is so successful.
I don’t want driver aids. I don’t want massive digital screens across the dash. I want an electric vehicle with 300mi+ range, fast DC charging, and good cargo space. Unfortunately the current market doesn’t seem to recognize that this is (I think?) a considerable market niche?
I was thinking how great it would be to have a smaller, simpler truck like a 2010 Ranger, with no bells and whistles, but as an EV. No big, fancy screen, all physical buttons. Heck, I’d take one with hand-crank windows, to save weight and battery. But that’s not going to happen anytime soon.
But as I thought about it, I came back around to the realization that the Maverick is probably a pretty good compromise.
It’s still a bit big/bulky to get the fuel efficiency of other hybrids, but you get the functionality of a basic truck, and they really have kept (most of) the unnecessary “techy” bits to a minimum.
This. Stellantis may be crowing about prices now, but soon they will put their fully-electric Ram on the market for 65k. They have zero room to talk about pricing when they’re a major part of the problem.
I probably only have 20 years left on this planet, and if need be, I can keep my ’02 Silverado going that long. It only has 102k miles, I only drive about 5-6000 miles a year at this point, and 220k is quite doable in these trucks. I ain’t skeered.
How cheap would an EV have to be? You’d have to pay me to take it and I’m still gonna resist it. I don’t want a grown-up Power Wheels that looks like an appliance.. when someone builds an EV that somehow dodges the ego-attachment, has a manual transmission and is serviceable in my driveway without an electrical engineering degree I MIGHT consider one.
I would buy the current 300 plus mile Pro model F150 for the base price of around 40K if there were any to be had. The reality is you cannot buy many of any vehicle right now without waiting or paying well above initial purchase price on used vehicles just outside of warranty.
EVs could be made cheaper if they were more basic. There’s too many bells, whistles, and frills added to further increase margin on them (i.e. captive buyer audience, subsidize the engineering costs). If they were pared down, focused more on range or reduced weight than performance, we could see the elusive $30,000-or-less EV for the regular, mainstream buyer. Y’know the people who need to buy to push the initiative for developed charging infrastructure and adoptions rates.
But hey, what do I know?
Agreed. I have long thought the same thing. Unfortunately, it is not as simple as sacrificing power for range. Batteries with meaningful range that can recharge quickly is the nut that they have yet to crack. Big, powerful motors are easy to fit and provide the necessary party tricks to distract from the crap range and associated anxiety. Assuming that nut is cracked in the near future, everything out today is going to look like a joke in a few years. Worrying about how far you can get and where to recharge is anything but luxury, but a feature of these current “luxury” electric cars which I think is unacceptable (can’t afford one, anyway). I also believe people will get a false sense that EVs are ready for prime time with all the money going into charging infrastructure, but will be disappointed when they actually try using it. I just can’t do it right now.
The Chevy Bolt is $27,000, has a 260 mile range, 200 hp, and goes O-60 in 6.5 seconds. It is small outside but has the interior volume of a midsize car.
Flush: ONLY way I’d consider a EV is if they don’t look like every other fucking egg shaped pile of shit all ready on the roads… And as a Rural living business owner…I want an EV that won’t lose a quarter of it’s charge or more just going to fucking town the ford lightning peaks my interest but soon as I’d have to haul a customers car out of state it’s worthless. And my fleet is OLD 1962,1976,1979,1984 and 2003 respectfully…all of those can go anywhere at any time and have been doing so for that many years. There’s cars in the junkyards only a few years old with the plastics already crumbling. Tell me EVs won’t be a problem very soon, alot of businesses won’t be able to stay open if they don’t have cars to work on ( ice), and don’t say for one god damn minute they need to get with the times! Do you know how much tools cost? Try the necessary tools to work on EVs? Fuck that!
This push is beyond retarded, ironically I like some EVs…but the more you keep trying to ram it on me the more I DISLIKE them… I’m tired of this song already…change it..
As much as I’d hate to admit, I’d say PHEVs are a more viable middle-step before we can realistically go full electric. When you consider the electrical grid upgrades required, charging infrastructure, energy storage limitations, lack of truly standardized charging (akin to standard sized fuel nozzles), and the general lack of political will to force any of the aforementioned issues; the number of societal, infrastructural, and technological steps just seem too great to be done in the next 20 years (at least in the U.S.).
If manufacturers really cared about EV development, they’d get off their asses and roll out solid-state batteries such as those that Toyota et al. developed.
Also, whatever what happened to Mr. Musk’s million-mile battery? Did he sell it off to the engineers at Area 51? We will never know for sure…
There’s a wold of difference between proof of concept prototypes and mass manufactureable, affordable, reliable products.
The concept of a space elevator is a good example. We have the know how and possibly the tech to do it, unfortunately it would cost several years’ worth of the global GRP to pull it off…
In the case of the space elevator, we definitely lack the tech. Carbon nanotubes are the only thing strong enough, and nobody’s managed to make one more than about 1/100,000th as long as we’d need.
I’m hoping I can find a new electric for about the same money as my Civic Si someday. Preferably about the same car. Same size, same level of features, etc. Essentially an Civic with an electric drive train.
Is that so much to ask?
Chevy Bolt is $27,000, has 200 hp, and goes O-60 in 6.5 seconds.
Civic Si is $27,500, has 200 hp, and goes 0-60 in in 7.1 seconds.
I’m really wondering how much you CAN bring prices down with the current battery and motor technology. The raw materials aren’t cheap or easy to mine and purify. The batteries and motors aren’t cheap or simple to manufacture. Economies of scale are only going to help so much so I really wonder if we’re going to find that the current EV technology is an evolutionary dead-end, and it’ll require something completely different to reach real sustainability.
Clearly Toyota thinks so too or they wouldn’t be investing so heavily in hydrogen tech.
I’m pulling for Toyota on this.
Hydrogen just isn’t happening. There is no sense to burn a lot of energy to convert H2O over, and still is an energy loss to get it from CH4.
After all that, you have a fuel that is really difficult to store or transport, so the large users of Hydrogen is for on-site use
a Hydrogen pipeline would be very difficult to create that is both cheap and have low loss.
It’s far easier to move electrons around the country than H
For small cars, it also just doesn’t make sense in terms of mass or volume. By the time you add up the motor, fuel cell, and pressure tanks you’re in BEV territory at best, and battery tech’s likely to improve more than tank construction in the next few years.
For bigger vehicles where the pressure tanks are bigger (same thickness means less overhead for bigger tanks), hydrogen can start pulling ahead of BEVs, but even there I think solid state batteries are going to eat into that advantage pretty far.
“Legislating away” fossil fuels is not going to succeed. We’ll stop using them when better, more viable alternatives exist. Electric cars are currently too expensive to build and the infrastructure for charging them isn’t ready yet. Attempting to ban fossil fuels before we’re ready to switch off of them is just inviting “extensions” or reversal down the road. Do I think electric cars are the future? Yes. Unequivocally yes. But that future isn’t here yet for the first world countries let alone the third world ones.
“Legislating away” fossil fuels is not going to succeed.
World governments: hold my beer.
The percent of the globe covered by reliable electricity generation, and the kWh capacity in those areas, is MUCH, MUCH more important than the wishful thinking of Eurocentric governments.
https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access
I’ll take the opposite side. The charging infrastructure and grid upgrades won’t happen without a timeline that clearly lays out when they will be needed. No utility is going to spend billions in grid upgrades without a clear timeline of when they will have customers for that extra capacity. What is needed is a steady regulatory timeline that lays out that transition – with time to make the change.
The EU did this way back in the 00’s. They passed CO2 fleet limits that don’t ban ICE vehicles directly but realistically cannot be met without a steadily increasing number of electric vehicles. 2015 and 2020 rules were signed into law in 2009 giving manufacturers plenty of time to adapt. Then 2025 and 2030 rules were set. Now they are working on 2035 rules. They are giving the industry more than a decade to get ready for that last step.
So far the EU has stood firm. Manufacturers asked for a delay in 2020 – the EU said no and manufacturers met the standard. As a result the EU went from 3% plug-in as a percentage of new car sales in 2019 to 22% in the first quarter 2022.
The other thing that is missed from the conversation is that nobody is banning ICE vehicles. They are talking about effectively banning the sale of NEW ICE vehicles in 2035. We replace about 6% of the vehicle fleet per year so even if sales of NEW ICE vehicles were banned in 2035 we would still have gasoline vehicles on the road in 2045 – 2050.
Man why didn’t anyone warn us that implementing EVs would be rife with all kinds of problems?
O wait they did!
I am always leery when a persons argument is “Just think of the children ”
That being said EVs or manufacturers really did need the kick in the but Tesla gave them.
If only the industry had spent more of the last two decades working on the problem instead of pushing back and whinging about how hard it would be.
2 decades? I would say 5 decades.
Carter ( the president, not the manufacturer of carburetors ) started programs to stimulate the production of electric cars ( amoung other things ). Reagan ended them, saying that the market would take care of this. In a way, Reagan was correct. But the market has been slow to get to where we are now, which is not far enough.
Why do EVs need to be cheaper to slow the automotive apocalypse? $100k SUVs and pickups are fine? $90k Hellcats? Ugh. Can anyone build something affordable that is nicer than a Versa?
The carpocalypse is pretty much here because everyone seems to enjoy the hyperinflated prices. It just makes me feel sorry for pretty much any self-proclaimed “car enthusiast” born after the 20th century.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/30/automobiles/collectibles/vintage-sports-car-depreciation.html
SMH.
The affordable ICE is a used car. Used BEVs aren’t similarly affordable because they have an expiration date on their energy storage.
Sure, you can find one to buy for a few grand on occasion, but if that battery craps out it’s cheaper to gamble on another beater than replace it. That means their time to hit the crusher is monumentally shorter, eliminating the beater vehicle market in the future and pricing out everyone that relies on it.
Less than 25% of cars in the USA are older than 15 years old so ICE cars aren’t as long lived as you might think.
I expect the typical modern liquid cooled EV battery to last 20 years if not abused with a lot of fast charging or deep discharges.
Excellent point. You can’t allow an 80k Jeep and then be mad that an EV costs the same. Stupid people.
This post is just one automaker begging for the gubmint to bail them out via more cash infused in the process.
The Ford Maverick is a good price (~21k), if you can get one.
I just want an affordable EV with about 400 miles of range and charging speeds that could take me from nearly empty to nearly full while I grab a quick bite. Prefer something roomy and comfortable over sporty. Something that could be my primary car for virtually all use cases.
The 400 miles range is not there but the charge speed is the time of a quick meal already. As for affordable, that’s a loaded one. EV’s with 300 miles of range and 10-80% charge in 20-30 minutes start at $42k before federal and state rebates if applicable. I daily a model 3 and they are roomy for a small car and I came from a Charger and am tall and fat. The Hyundai and Kia are roomier and at that $42k price.
The problem with my 400 mile range and the charge time is that I am afraid that increased range will come from more battery, rather than more efficiency, so it may be a tradeoff. I really like the Kia and Hyundai, but they’re tough to come by at MSRP and I would like just a bit more range. I used to say 500 miles, but I think 400 is enough for the trips I take.
I fully expect to be in an electric vehicle in just a couple years, easily. For now, my PHEV is pretty great for my use case.
On the one hand, it feels that humanity cannot function without some fossil fuel dependent transportation – but on the other hand, all manufacturers (except Honda) also said that emissions controls were impossible back in the 1970s.
I imagine that when my daughter is my age, having an old car will be a bit like owning a horse today. Either that, or Mad Max.
I believe synthetic fuels could gain traction later in the decade if enough progress is made. Not sure if this along with new manufacturing technologies will ease the batshit insane prices but only time will tell.
Remember, maintaining the status quo is far cheaper than trying to actually improve things for the better. Which is why we’re in the late stage of capitalism.
I think we are in late stage capitalism but that statement has always been true.
I use the Sinclair app on my phone for the discount. I don’t imagine it would really be more convenient on the car screen, but we just want to integrate everything now, don’t we?
I use the ExxonMobil app on my phone. It would be easier to just do it on the car screen and not have to pull the phone out of my pocket every time. All I’m doing is telling it the pump number and hitting “authorize.” You used to be able to do it on the Apple Watch but they killed that part for some reason.
Flush: Not really looking for cheap with an EV, more looking for something that’s just a car. I don’t need all the fancy shit, as I’ve said previously (https://www.theautopian.com/the-2023-toyota-corolla-hybrid-takes-after-its-big-gr-brother-and-starts-spinning-all-four-tires/comment-page-1/#comment-18502) give me something that’s nice and simple. Cheap will follow
Yep. I spoke to a tow truck driver and he loves Taycans and Teslas (especially the Model X) because he makes sooooo much money off of them. Getting a bricked Model X out of a parking garage can cost thousands…
Totally agree, I have a Bolt, which is probably about the most basic EV there is at this point, and the electric drive is great, but basically all of the issues we have are from software that is not EV specific. The infotainment is buggy and sometimes freezes, locking out access to heated seats and heat in general. The windshield wipers seem to have a blizzard mode that disables one or the other. The blind spot monitors had issues from the factory that showed up just before covid, and after 4 attempts at different dealerships, I finally got them fixed. Even the charge door latch mechanism (mechanical, not software) usually takes multiple tried to latch or unlatch, and sometimes pops open when driving. These are all things that are non-issues on my almost 30 year old Jeep. It would be really nice to have an EV that is super basic that can be abused and doesn’t care.
Other than that, the main thing I’d like to have in a new EV would be Na ion batteries, with similar specific capacity to the batteries in the Bolt. A battery with basically no rare materials, inexpensive (at $40-80/kWh, the 60ish kWh battery pack I’m used to would only be $3-5K- https://cleantechnica.com/2021/07/30/catl-reveals-sodium-ion-battery-with-160-wh-kg-energy-density/), is fine with low temperatures, charges rapidly, has an expected life span of 25 years, and has almost no risk of the euphemistic “thermal events” would be game changing. Unfortunately, companies, at least in the US, seem to be chasing the “if I can’t drive 500 miles without stopping, make one 5 minute stop, and drive another 500 miles the car is worthless” crowd. I initially thought that I’d want more than the 200 or so miles of range that the Bolt has, but at this point if the charging infrastructure gets build out, I have zero desire for longer range, even for long trips. We recently drove over 4 hours without stopping in a rental car, and I could barely walk when I got out of the car. Stopping 15-20 minutes every 2-3 hours is what we do most of the time anyway on trips, and far preferable.
Goddamn, this. Moderate range + high durability should be a slam dunk. You’d think GM in particular would be all about this given their, erm, thermal event travails.
I completely agree on the range thing. The desire for long range EVs is a symptom of the lack of public DC fast chargers. Build out the charging network so there are chargers every 25 to 50 miles like gas stations and the need for long range EVs goes away. An EV with a 250 mile range like our Bolts (I have a 2017) would be fine.
Even now EVs make great cars for commuting and local trips for those of use that are married and have two cars (the majority of people in the USA). I had a Spark EV before the Bolt and drove it 8500 miles a year without leaving my metro area once.
This is why the Maverick base at 20K getting 42 mpg is selling so much better. than the Escape it is based upon.
Because it has the market all to itself while there are many other vehicles comparable to the Escape.