Electric cars?

I'm new here to the forum but I thought I'd chime in. It seems like a lot of people are getting into the electric car trend. It's definitely a good idea to go green, but it's also important to consider the practicalities of it. How long it will take to make the switch depends on a lot of factors, but it won't be instantaneous.

 

What is with these bots now? Did someone write a ChatGPT bot?

 

I always wondered what purpose they serve. There was one last week talking about .pdf and then a second bot showed up to shill a product. But the stand alone bots that bump some super old thread for what appears to be no reason confuse me.

 

But they do seem more reasonable than many of our frequent posters.

 

The "average person's" new car is not $47k. Throw out the Rolls Royces, Lamborghinis, and various other expensive cars that the average person can't afford, and you are looking at a Hyundai Elantra, Kia Soul, or something like that. No one spends $47k on an Elantra.

And there can be additional costs with an electric car. If you get into an accident that damages the battery pack, you have to replace it, and some battery packs can cost upwards of $20k to replace.

However, I did like driving around in a friend's BMW i4. That was a nice car. I don't think I could afford it, however. I suspect my next car will be a hybrid, which are good for long trips. Maybe I'll make my wife drive around in an electric car, which is good for driving around town.

 

People with electric vehicles need to pay for the roads they drive in since they aren’t paying the gas tax

 

We do need additional gas taxes to provide that incentive, along with regular slow hikes to minimum wage to help out the working poor.

 

About 18 states charge extra fees for EVs for this reason. I assume every state will do this. We also need ICE vehicle owners to pay in more since the taxes have basically been capped since the early 1990s. No one is paying their fair share at present.

 

I couldn’t readily find the median sale price but I did find the average non-luxury price and it is $44.5k.

 

Would you like to introduce us to some Chinese software?

 

Is that truly non-luxury, or brands that are not considered luxury brands? Because almost all the major automakers have high-end vehicles in their lineup. You can spend $60-70k on a Ford F-150 pickup, or nearly that much on a Toyota Sequoia or Avalon. Those are high-end vehicles that are not made by luxury brands, but have all the bells and whistles, and would be something that the "average" person would not consider buying.

 

Heck a standard 4 door Tacoma was about 45k last time i checked. Those are pretty run of the mill..

 

The executives at Toyota North America are indicating that the average price for a Toyota in 2023 will exceed $50K.

(BTW, this guy is really solid on Japanese/ Asian car market info. He lives in Florida)

 

This is why the value of used vehicles has risen sharply. I’ll drive my 2015 4 cylinder Nissan Rogue until the wheels fall off. It has just over 70K on it. My wife and I only have one vehicle due to the cost of auto insurance in Florida. We are both retired so it’s not an issue only having one vehicle.

 

Brands, but i submit you have a different understanding than reality. SUVs and trucks are more expensive than passenger cars and yet they account for 80% of new vehicles sold. Further, full-size pickup trucks are the top three selling vehicles in the United States, and 4 of the top 6. Look at some of the rest of the top 11 and you have the Toyota Tacoma, Tesla Model Y, Jeep Grand Cherokee, and Toyota Highlander. The Ford F series by itself sold about as many vehicles as the 4th and 5th place RAV4 and Camry. Also, consider with the top 25 list at the link below - half the sales in the US come from the top 30 models. Is it really any surprise the average new vehicle price is around $45k (particularly with less incentives and auto manufacturers prioritizing higher rooms with supply chain constraints)?

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g39628015/best-selling-cars-2022/

 

This article proves the average price is $48K now. Consider 5 years ago, the average car price, including all those cars you mentioned, was $36K.

This is one of the worst times to buy a car in decades. 3 charts explain why | CNN Business

 

When I bought my 2006 Ford Escape Hybrid, a certified near-zero emissions vehicle that got close to 2x the gas mileage my 2002 V6 gasoline engine Escape it replaced got, I received a $3400 tax credit. If instead, I had purchased a Hummer (or any vehicle over 5000lbs GVW) and claimed that over 50% of its use was for business, my tax credit would have been 50% of the Hummer's purchase price. That was a big part of the reason you used to see so many people driving Hummers that didn't look like they could afford them....they were buying them for 50 cents on the dollar.

There are definitely some inequities in the way things work. Those EVs are also taking pressure off of oil prices, reducing emissions and keeping things like oil filters and containers out of landfills.

 

And average truck is $62K. I am a reformed truck owner myself, having a Silverado until 2018. The mere idea that I would spend $62K on a new one is mind-boggling.

 

Undoubtedly, a percentage of the tax on electricity will be diverted towards road maintenance once enough people use electric vehicles. Right now drivers of ICE vehicles only pay about half the cost of maintaining the roads, from a federal gas tax perspective. The federal gas tax has not been increased in over 30 years, but the cost to maintain the roads has doubled.

 

Scientists may have a solution for battery fires in electric cars: an aqueous battery. I didn't know that EV batteries had volatile organic solvents in them (I assumed that battery fires were difficult to put out and raged for a day or more because they were metal fires, but that's apparently not the case). Another bonus for this battery: it gets charged in minutes, not hours. No word yet on how far the car will go on a charge, or if the battery is the size of a small swimming pool or not.

The research was done at UCF.

Scientists just discovered a solution to one of the most dangerous problems with electric cars — here’s what they found