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Originally Posted by rmay635703
In other news the RAV 4 hybrid is the best selling hybrid
RAV4 Prime will likely do well when it releases.
And the best incentive to purchase a BEV is to charge reduced title+registration and forgo the subsidy that not everyone can use.
A 2011 leaf with its baby battery should pay about $25 a year all in like a moped instead of $665 for title + registration but you would never convince the state legislature that a 25 mile winter range car shouldn’t pay a $550+ premium over a gasser
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I expect the RAV4 Prime to do well, as the Prius Prime did pretty good and eventually killed the Volt. Consumers will be even more interested in a CUV.
The best incentive to purchase a BEV is not reduced title/registration, it's probably the $7,500 federal tax credit. If you polled people and asked if they would rather have no registration/title fee, or $7,500 back in taxes, I bet I know which most would favor.
That's not to say further incentives for EVs wouldn't boost sales, but they are already generously subsidized and the masses don't want them. Some of that is due to ignorance, but consumers have legitimate financial and practical reasons to not purchase them.
I think of things like our public education when we spend more than most any other country and have comparatively poor results. The "solution" then is to pour more money into education, and we're surprised when we get the same results. We keep repeating that process without questioning if the problem really is money. Likewise with EVs, the solution to mass adoption isn't something like HOV lane access, or reduced registration fees, or massive subsidy... maybe the problem is the nature of the technology in the current state.
As our culture increasingly moves towards materialism, we increasingly misidentify root problems as materialistic in nature; solvable if only we threw more money at it. Is the cure for breast cancer just a few million dollars away? Would our depression and suicide epidemic go away if only those people had more money? It's not that easy.
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Originally Posted by ldjessee00
I see switching to EVs like switching light bulbs. You could take the approach that it is worth while to switch to a more energy efficient bulb right away, saving money (and reduce pollution) now, or you can go along with the sunk cost fallacy and think you need to wait for the current one to burn out. I see the advantage of trading/selling my gas vehicle while it still has some value.
I have seen a SUV sitting in a person's yard with them trying to sell it over a year. No one wants to buy it. Every month or so, the price goes down a $100 or so. Curious as to how many years it will sit before they decide to scrap it, part it out, or it just turns into a entropy sculpture in their yard...
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Switching light bulbs and switching vehicles are very different. We can very easily do the math on the ROI of an incandescent light bulb vs LED and justify the slightly higher initial upfront cost to switch. It may be harder to financially justify switching out existing fluorescent lights to LED. At any rate, lightbulbs are an insignificant purchase compared to a vehicle, which is often the #2 largest expense for most people.
Some people with long commutes may be able to financially justify an EV over ICE purchase, but not most people. The #1 cost of vehicle ownership for most people is depreciation. The way you hedge against depreciation is to purchase a cheaper vehicle to begin with, and EVs are more expensive than their ICE counterparts.
The cost of ownership calculator linked in my signature makes this point clearly.
As you've pointed out, there are other factors to purchase an EV besides financial ones. It's nice not having to stop at the petrol station, and in theory the car should be more reliable and require less maintenance. It's nice that there is practically no local pollution, and that it reduces demand for foreign oil.
Your anecdote about the guy who is bad at selling a vehicle isn't an indication that ICE values are plummeting.
As a huge tangent thought; the way to effectively contend to with reality is to perceive it as accurately as possible. Al Gore would say that we must accept an inconvenient truth. The inverse truth is to reject wishful thinking.