On a more serious note though, Western car manufacturers used Covid for a massive price hike (30%?) arguing they have to do it because of parts scarcity, but once supply got to normal levels they refused to bring the prices back to the previous (or similar) price point so now they will be killed one by one by Chinese car manufacturers who - also mostly supported by their state - keep pre-Covid pricing.
Another point about the id range; they rushed it out with half baked software and UX. They probably resolved most of this but it's disturbing that they would do it in the first place.
Finally how much cheaper is electricity? Since 2020 the prices have more then doubled and the prices of charging in service stations are huge. I'm not sure that in the future private vehicles will be affordable as they are today.
That’s a good thing, if you ask me.
Examples like:
Giving preference to diesel vehicles because they produced less C02 than gasoline cars, while ignoring the much worse NOx and particulate for human respiratory heath that diesel engines produce(possible lobby from EU car brands involved).
Denuclearization, because nuclear is scary and dangerous, that pushed energy prices up and use of coal which killed more people via respiratory issues than Chernobyl and Fukushima (possible lobby from Russian oil and gas involved)
And who do you think is gonna work on that? Because politicians aren't gonna start building trains for you where you live, so you're left to fix your own situation by driving a car to work since your boss isn't gonna move his company where you live so you can walk/bike there.
>Even if you love driving eventually you will get old and be unable to drive safely.
Where do you see me saying anything about liking driving? I also don't like brushing my teeth but I still do it because it's a necessity just like driving is for a lot of people in smaller and highly spread out cities where frequent subways/trains are not a thing.
Sure, we can all try to move to big cities with top public transport where you don't need a car, but those cities already have a housing shortage and it's only gonna get worse.
None of the above is easy.
With what money? Because everyone wants things right now and my city is broke from mismanagement(corruption) and most companies here have had mass layoffs so money is going to welfare now.
And history proves the west has started to suck at building rail infrastructure on time and on budget. By the time any rail would be built here, we'll have flying cars. Plus then you have nimbyis who don't want rail next to their homes.
So then isn't it normal that people still prefer to keep their cars instead of waiting decades for fictional rail that might not happen? A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
rails are expansive but they are timy compared to most of the budget and an investment that saves you (roads which I bet your government pays for)
Easier said than done and you know it. Meanwhile the government is making your car illegal in 10 years, but your job will still need you to be at work by them somehow, that's your problem.
> That can only happen when voters care about their side more than other things.
That's why corruption isn't going anywhere because society is more fragmented and partisan than evet due to the ever increasing number of fires that need putting out. You can't get your county to pull non existent money out of thin air for a 20 year rail project when there's a war next door and million of pensioners and refugees that need money right fucking NOW. So taxman and money printer go brrrrrr.
>rails are expansive but they are timy compared to most of the budget and an investment that saves you (roads which I bet your government pays for)
Yeah but the roads are already there and so are the cars, and people's homes and workplaces were built around that existing road infrastructure. You can't tell them to fuck off somewhere else because in 20 years a rail will be there. Once a you build a dense, car-first society over decades with no space for rail, ripping that off and replacing it with rail is impossible in the west. The nimbys alone will kill it even if you had money to build it.
We have new rail projects built but they're cross country in wilderness, not inside the city where its needed daily.
Yes, but it is still important to do this. So get out and do your part. Giving up ensures things get worse.
Landlords would really love that.
Are we back to the "wait for service pack" era ?
Well, also, they've been increasingly pushing cheap stuff out of the VW brand over the last decade or so. I'd suspect that, when the dust settles, they'll have something around the 20k mark, but it'll be Skoda or SEAT, not VW.
> Finally how much cheaper is electricity? Since 2020 the prices have more than doubled and the prices of charging in service stations are huge.
This may be a regional-differences thing (in particular, I bet it differs at least in timing based on whether you're in a mostly-wind country or a mostly-solar country), but at least in Ireland you can sign up to an electricity plan that gives you electricity for like 8 cent/kWh at 02:00-04:00 (vs ~30c at peak times and ~15c at night); this is explicitly marketed at electric car users. Here's a fairly typical example; note that it actually has EV in the name (though it doesn't actually require one or anything). https://www.electricireland.ie/residential/electricity-and-g...
Let's say the first car you get is a Polo and you really like it, so your next one is a Polo as well. Over the decades, you're being moved to making more expensive car purchase.
And to make up for that, a new smaller cheaper tier is introduced at some point. I don't care about cars enough to know when they introduced the Up, but it certainly didn't exist a few decades ago.
I'd also like discussions of car affordability to shift to TCO unless there's been an announcement of free fuel that I've missed.
If you buy/lease new cars every 3 years - which the the typical market for new cars - the TCO is almost entirely based on the cost of the car. Insurance and taxes are based on the price and so there is a direct relation. Maintenance costs are nearly zero as oil changes are cheap and everything else is warranty. What is left is fuel and that is cheap (14000 miles per year at 25mpg with gas at $3/gallon works out to $140/month).
If you buy used cars the economics are different, but you are not longer the direct target for new cars.
Volkswagen may not go bankrupt tomorrow, but it's hardly in a position to bring back pre-COVID prices. They were late to the electric car game which also didn't help with their market power.
I'm wondering why can that be? Probably, because Chinese cars are cheaper?
I'm curious what can motivate me to pay ~€60K for an European car instead of paying ~€30K for the same set of features? Chinese software is crap, but at least the power steering didn't stop working during the test drive, unlike my experience with VW.
Fear and uncertainty mostly. We don't know how these cars will be in 5-10 years. Maybe they have some hidden faults that will come up en masse after certain time? And what about spare parts? These are the questions many buyers ask themselves.
And after some thinking, no matter how you look at it, the 60k option is not beating the 30k one.
I'm talking about the id.Polo which I don't expect to see in the US. VW brings maybe half their lineup to the US (and none of their cheap brands at all)
In North America, VW only sells the long-wheelbase version and only the highest trim levels. And with worse charging equipment. And in the US specifically, they’ve removed the heat pump from the HVAC system and replaced it with a less-efficient heater (Canada still gets the heat pump).
It’s like VW wants it to fail. And I’m happy to let them fail alongside it. Nobody in the US should care at all what VW plans to do. When the car shows up at the local dealership, we’ll see what they have done.
They accidentally made an area if the seat that could be used as a seat but didn't have a belt, and they made an indicator glow in a slightly wrong color.
Now before you start going "but but but," remember that EVs very rarely get the rated range. They lose about ~15 percent after ~2 years, and lose a lot more in extreme cold. Furthermore, the ID.Buzz charges very slowly.
EVs with less than 300 miles of range are fine for a car that's used for local driving, but a van like the ID.Buzz is a road trip vehicle. It really needs a longer range version that can charge quickly.
P/E ratios - VW 6 - BYD 13 - Tesla 200
Tesla's valuation is absurdly crazy.
(with 0 revenue coming from those product lines)
VW software has improved a lot in the past 2 years, I went from a hater to a fan.
Never dug the ID3 design, much less its internal panel and controls which are very crappy, similar to a Tesla.
I still think it will have a hard time in Europe (it's biggest market). Most people in Europe live in apartments and locations where you don't have anywhere to charge.
The people that have houses typically can afford a Benz, making it a very niche car.
Until literally every supermarket has plenty of EV charging spots I doubt we will see people really buying EVs in Europe, even if the price is the same.
China is a million miles ahead in EVs, they have chargers everywhere.
Did all the clever marketing people move to america.
1970-01-01•2d ago
sokoloff•2d ago
I read it somewhat more positively (or at least clear in communications) as “ID. means electric” and “Polo” means what Polo has always meant in the VW lineup: their mini/compact entry-level car in the lineup.
delecti•2d ago
alistairSH•2d ago
balamatom•2d ago
piva00•2d ago
trenchpilgrim•2d ago
1718627440•1d ago
some_random•2d ago
rsynnott•2d ago
rsynnott•2d ago
Which seems sensible, honestly; ID.3 through 8 either currently exist or will soon. Who's going to keep track of which is which?
Zigurd•2d ago
A measure of EVS going mainstream will be that you don't name them anything distinctive. You name them like a car.
rsynnott•2d ago
Hyundai also seems to have done well with their notably-weird-looking Ioniq series. It seems like, at least for the moment, the markets actually want electric cars to be a bit weird.
Hamuko•2d ago
Tesla's S3XY is quite bad in that it's a shit joke and there's just a random number instead of a letter because you couldn't make it the Model E. And Cybertruck just completely breaks the form further.
Audi decided to name their cars "t-urd". They also blew their load early, since the first EV they made was just called the "Audi t-urd", and then they had to rename it to the "Audi Q8 t-urd" when they realised that they were going to make more than one EV model.
Mercedes-Benz decided that the electric version of the S-Class should be the EQS, the electric version of the E-Class should be the EQE, the electric versions of the GLS and GLE should be called the EQS SUV and EQE SUV, and that the electric version of the G-Class should be called the "Mercedes-Benz G580 with EQ Technology". Oh, and the electric CLA is just called the CLA.
BMW's lineup is pretty inoffensive in that it's quite logical, as the electric equivalent of the 4 Series is the i4, the electric equivalent of the 5 Series is the i5, and so on. Except that the electric equivalent of the BMW X5 is the BMW iX when the electric equivalent of the BMW X1 is the BMW iX1. Oh, and the BMW i8 isn't even an electric car – it's a hybrid.
BYD's electric cars also make no sense. Why does the same car maker have names like the "BYD Dolphin" and "BYD Seal" next to a car named "BYD Sealion 7" and "BYD Atto 3"? What determines whether or not a BYD model has a number in the name or not? And why is the fully electric one called the "BYD Seal" but the hybrid one is called the "BYD Seal 6 DM-i"?
Rivian's makes sense so far, since they have the biggest R1, the more medium R2 and the compact R3. But going by this logic, the R4 should be an even smaller car than the R3. Either that, or the numbering has no bearing on where in the lineup the car actually falls, just what was released first.
Polestar has that same exact problem that Rivian might have in the future: the Polestar 2 is smaller than the Polestar 3 and the Polestar 3 is bigger than the Polestar 4, and the Polestar 4 is smaller than the Polestar 5. And the Polestar 6 is probably going to be more upmarket than any other Polestar, except the Polestar 1, which isn't an EV. Basically, the number says nothing about the car except when it was first released.
The Toyota bZ4X, which stands for "beyond Zero" (as in emissions) 4 (from the similarly sized RAV4) "crossover", is also just a downright awful name. Same for the Honda E:NY1. I don't know what inspired these two to make such awful and complex names for their EVs.
And finally: the Porsche Taycan Turbo doesn't actually have a turbo. The "turbo" in the name just means "better" in the style of "TurboGrafx-16".
Yes, I could rant about car names all day long. Don't even ask me about how Ferrari names their cars.
hbs18•2d ago
For Porsche cars "turbo" meant "more powerful" for like 10 years by now, predating the Taycan. They sell the 911 Carrera and the 911 Turbo, yet both cars have a turbocharged engine.
Hamuko•2d ago
BobaFloutist•2d ago