EV'S

[wireman]

https://www.autoblog.com/2023/10/26/auto-execs-are-coming-clean-evs-aren-t-working/

I know you are probably sick of this topic, but a new article on the state of affairs of the EV industry. Interesting reading with a lot of options to sidebar to other articles.

FYI, I was kicking tires at my local Ford dealer where I do business yesterday, and I saw a whole bunch of new Mustang Mach E's in various trim levels.

Looking at their website they show having 55 available and the window stickers I looked at it seems most were built around September.

They are either selling the hell out of these, or over ordered.

If your pining to buy a Mach E and can handle the interest rates, it might be time to jump in.

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[CletusVanDam]

I have a crystal ball and can see how California will attempt to reach their EV quota:

State and local agencies will replace their fleets with Electric Vehicles.

Or, rephrased: State taxpayers will buy thousands of vehicles that agencies didn't want or need, and many of the vehicles will gather dust / bird poop /wasp nests until they are eventually replaced again.

 

[coopny]

EV's can hurt to buy right now to be honest. The price points are still pretty high. The tax credit can be useful and would be directly accessible to a whole lot more everyday Americans if it was a refundable credit, but it's non-refundable, so you have to owe at least $7500 to get the true value of it (which requires playing games with withholding, estimating your short/long term capital gains and interest income, etc. to get the full value). Interest rates are sky high and the people that can most afford to buy EVs (individuals filing singly making $150K+/Head of household $225K+/Married filing jointly $300K+) are ineligible.

Even if you can afford it, if you don't need a new car the interest rates are a massive disincentive. Ford has already cut the Mach-E price a couple times.

Even if you can afford it and are tempted and need or really could use a new car... Ford's announcement that future model years of Ford EV's will use Tesla's NACS connector standard (which is smaller and easier to connect than CCS) is a huge disincentive. GM followed twoweeks later. Rivian followed. So did Toyota (including Lexus) and BMW (incl. Mini and Rolls-Royce). Essentially all automakers in the North American market right now have agreed to incorporate NACS (except Stellantis and Volkswagen) by either 2024 or 2025. Most major automaker deals for NACS (incl. Ford and GM) have included access to Tesla's supercharger network (one of the most mature and generally fastest and most reliable networks with the most locations).

What does this mean? CCS and NACS are charging port standards. So you have an immature rapidly growing market... where pretty much all the future cars are gong to have a different port than what Ford/GM/Toyota/etc. are selling right now.

If you are buying pretty much any non-Tesla EV right now - you are looking at a future in a few years where every single time you need extra miles and you're not home, that you're going to have to go in your frunk/trunk and pull out an adapter to plug in the charging port to then plug in Tesla's NACS plug. And when you're done, to unplug said adapter and put it in a secure location again. Sure for a few years there may be a lot of charging stations with one of each, but the writing's on the wall.

That would have to mandate a pretty substantial discount for me to be interested to get a vehicle with an obsolete connector... this is all as automakers talk about increased range, better tech, cheaper battery tech to make EVs more accessible, etc...

Probably sending a lot to CA — state mandated EV sales starts in, basically, one year (50% new car sales must be full EV) what a thrill to be in the “Peoples Republic of Kalifornia”.

Update:

Evening news, doing their usual cheerleading job, just announced that in CA EV sales have jumped to 20% of new car sales. No mention of how many are going the other way, or how strikes have hurt ICE vehicle shipments to the lots.

CARB says the sales target for 2026 for new cars is 35% ZEV and PHEV. ZEV = Fully electric or hydrogen, PHEV is plug-in hybrid. Plug-in hybrids have to be able to do 50 miles real world driving on battery alone before falling back to hybrid and can make up only 20% of the green vehicle quota (so for 2026, automakers would have to sell 28% electric/hydrogen, 7% plug-in hybrid, and 65% non-plugin hybrid or ICE). It doesn't hit a majority until 2028 (51% of new vehicle sales).

California's target is still ambitious, but saying that 50% of new car sales next year have to be EVs is quite simply not accurate.

 

[Robins21]

Nope, they can keep them. Have zero interest.

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