34
votes
Electric vehicles wait longer on dealer lots than hybrids or ice vehicles in the US
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- Title
- Unsold electric cars are piling up on dealer lots
- Authors
- Joann Muller
- Published
- Jul 10 2023
- Word count
- 574 words
I mean, its a no-brainer. The charging infrastructure is not there. Plug-in hybrids offer the best of both worlds. Even regular hybrids offer some of the most bang-for-your buck emissions reduction per kg of lithium, which is an important metric for worldwide improvement.
That and new vehicles are so insanely expensive right now. I can't afford a $600/mo or more monthly payment for a new minivan. I'm gonna be seeking out older beaters that I can get for $300/mo or less. Fuel efficiency is sadly less important than functionality and cost.
Personally don't care about the charging infrastructure. I know it's a bigger deal for people with only street parking, etc., but even level 1 charging (regular 120v plug) would let me charge overnight for any daily driving. And any city over a hundred miles away I'd usually want to fly to anyway.
I've been looking for a while, my car's doing fine for now but I would really like my next one to be electric, and just don't like how most of them look, at least in my price range. There's a decent amount of SUV/truck type stuff but fewer cars/hatchbacks. And most of the ones that do exist seem to be either more expensive sports cars or extremely budget little things that just have a touchscreen and no physical controls.
Some of the newer stuff looks better, but like you said, they're usually in the $600/mo. range. And even if I could stretch for that, interest rates suck atm.
I’m right with you there. I bought a new car a few years back and am determined that my next car will be electric. The biggest thing that bugs me (in the US at least) is the lack of smaller electric options that could reduce the cost considerably but it seems manufacturers aren’t looking to go small. Honda got rid of the Fit, Toyota increased the size of their Yaris and that’s just the ICE options. I’d love to have a small electric car that I can zip around with and charge overnight for a lower cost. The size may come at the cost of range but I feel like there’s a good compromise somewhere.
Same here, for simple environmental reasons it makes no sense to ditch my current car and buy a newly produced one even if that happens to be electric (I don't drive a lot, tbh). If I get a truly good offer for my current one, maybe. But I also lack sensible charging infrastructure.
Due to how the infrastructure (doesn't) work, EVs are sadly still largely something for people with their own house/home. And that in fact is also inherently really bad for the environment, so it's all tradeoffs, everywhere. Sadly.
Yea, i got a kia ev6 and have been using the 120 outlet until the electrician gets the charger installed.
Now waiting on city for permit to upgrade my service from 100amp to 200. Rates are crazy, i got mine at a great time and is 2.75%, but it's still a lot a month since it was almost 50k
Did notice that Kia/Nissan seemed to have some of the better options, actually having physical controls still.
My thing is just I'm coming from a 2+2 and really don't need or want a bigger car. It feels like I'm being forced into a crossover/sedan. Also, pretty nitpicky, but it seems super weird that all the newer ones only the rear row of seats folds completely flat. The row directly behind the driver always seems to only go down to a ~15/30° slope and I don't know why. When loading friends/families vehicles it seems to have an outsize impact on how much you can actually fit in.
I think it's because the batterys take up so much space that they don't like having less range. I liked the election mini Cooper but it only had 110 mile range.
It's much more likely the high prices than anything else. Automakers are trying to make the most money on the least number of cars, and the lower end of the market is basically disappearing right now. There's only a handful of new cars available for under $20K.
I'd argue that most consumers don't actually care that much about overall ecological impact of their cars, but for everything else, hybrid cars are actually the worst of both worlds; you're basically buying two cars in one because you have the traditional engine and transmission of an ICE car plus the battery, charger, inverter, and motor of a BEV, which means there are more things that can go wrong so the car will require more repairs over time. Furthermore most hybrid cars seem to be using NiMH batteries, which are less dense and thus heavier than a Lithium battery of the same capacity, while having a shorter lifespan. Unless you replace or refurbish the battery, hybrid cars slowly turn themselves into ICE cars.
NiMH batteries, when used peoperly, are also incredibly durable and long-lasting.
And while you're not wrong about the added weight, it only comes out to about 300 lbs more than ICE in the case of the RAV4.
The most important factor that the hybrid brings is that it helps eliminate the hardest part for ICE to do efficiently: 0-25. For city driving, that 300 lbs pays dividends in stop and go traffic thanks to regenerative braking. Even on the highway, being able to kick on the electric for just a moment helps round off those hugely inefficient short bursts of accelleration. Which is why despite that extra 300 lbs, they're still more efficient than regular ICE.
Only 300 pounds?
An EV battery pack is going to be about three times heavier, granted, but it’s also getting rid of the engine, a complex transmission, and the fuel tank. A six-cylinder engine weighs about 400 pounds by itself. Even if a hybrid is more energy efficient than an ICE car, it still isn’t as efficient as an EV, which is also more reliable.
That's true to an extent, but wholly-electric cars have the disadvantage of either needing huge batteries or having a restricted range; hybrids have neither of those problems. Although most car journeys are short, and a smallish range would be fine, we all like to think we can go anywhere, so people want electric cars with 300+ mile ranges, which is resource-costly to the environment.
True, and I wish that people would purchase the shorter range EVs.
Which car you will need in your life will highly depend on your use case, so I never try to pretend that EVs are the perfect and best choice for everyone. I'm just saying that hybrids are not quite as good as they're made out to be. The increased mileage is great, but I think in the scheme of things it's not significantly better than a good high-efficiency ICE model. Though with the US obsession with huge cars, those aren't necessarily easy to find.
Forget the charging infrastructure, how do I charge an electric car at home?
Apartment dwellers are SOL, I don't know of any apartment complexes that offer EV charging at every resident parking spot.
At home, it's an expensive proposition. My house was built 50 years ago, and my garage lives on a single 120v circuit. How many thousands of dollars will it cost me to put an EV charger in there, on top of the cost of buying the car?
I really want an electric car, but ICE and hybrids are still way cheaper.
What I really really want is to live in an affordable walkable city with good mass transit so I don't need a car at all, but these literally do not exist in the US.
IIRC at least some electric cars can slow charge on 120V. While hardly ideal, if you plug it in when you park, and don't drain 100% every time, overnight should keep you topped off.
Technology Connections had a good video about full electrification and EVs (seperate videos) that covered this.
Technology connections is one of the best channels I've come across in a long time. Definitely something everyone should check out.
Some states have laws that compel apartment complexes that offer parking to install EV charging equipment at those parking places. Though do keep in mind they can stick you with the bill for it.
Depending on the car, $0. Most EVs get sold with an EVSE that can operate on a standard 120V outlet, and many can be restricted to run at lower wattages so other things can keep running on the same circuit.
I'll be the first to agree with you that they are too expensive. There are some very cheap used ones if you're OK with the low range, though.
My 1980s-built house only had 100A service for the whole place and needed a panel upgrade plus running of a dedicated 50 amp circuit to my garage in order to charge an EV at 240V. We could have just used 120v charging on the existing circuit but that wouldn't have met our needs.
It wasn't cheap, but worth it in the long run as we now have two EVs. The whole job probably came to $3k, including the panel upgrade, city permit, new circuit, conduit, etc, and an EVSE capable of charging two vehicles at the same time. Without the panel upgrade it would have been about half of that. If I could DIY it all, the materials would probably have been a couple of hundred dollars plus the EVSE itself, which was about $800.
You can charge from home just fine on 120v, you plug it in at night. most of the time you don't use 100% of battery, so it's really just a trickle charge top up. it's rare you need to fast charge.
it worked fine for me with a M3.
If you live in an apartment, the answer is "not". And that is the biggest issue EVs still need to solve, they depend on people with their own houses/plots.
My country has a law that states a landlord cannot forbid you from getting a charging box if you park on the rental property (so street parking in dense cities is still a problem).
That certainly helps getting parking garages and apartment lots electrified.
I got a quote for $2k to put a 240V line into my garage as my breaker box was on the other side of my house. I already had several 120V outlets so I’ve been charging off of those for 4 years without any issues. 97% of my charging is at home.
I have a feeling it will be more for me because my house and garage are not attached. I would either need to dig up the patio, or run ugly high voltage cable between the two rooftops.
My plan is to just sell this house and buy a good one, if mortgage interest rates ever return to Earth.
A lot of people here park on the street. They run extension cords from the front porch across the sidewalk, and put one of those heavy duty cable-ramp covers over it. It's not a huge deal right now as maybe one house every 5 blocks has an EV and a minority of those need a charge on any given day. But I can see it eventually becoming a hassle when I need to push a stroller over a sidewalk full of charging cars. It'll be like running over a highway rumble strip.
Yeah, you hit on both of the reasons that my next vehicle is unlikely to be electric. The only reliable place I could charge would be at home (after installing a charger), because there's a ton of drama around the limited number of chargers that we have at work and there aren't really any/many public chargers around here. A friend of mine bought a Rivian and tried to take a trip out to the mountains (we have a cabin our there), and said how much of a pain in the ass it was because of the lack of chargers. They had to plan their whole trip around visits to a nearby city so that they could charge. No thanks.
And cost-wise? A base Model 3 is $10k more than a base Toyota Corolla. At 33mpg and $3.25/gal gas (where I am in NC), it would be 25k miles before the cost of gas made up for the increase in price assuming ALL of my electric charging was free (it definitely wouldn't be) and assuming I qualified for the tax credit (I don't, my income is too high). Since I don't qualify for the tax credit, and I would end up having to pay for all/most of my charging at $0.12/kwh, It would actually take me more like 140k miles to make up that difference. To be fair, that doesn't account for the cost of your occasional oil change and such, but that's really not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. Electric cars break, too (and are often way more expensive to fix out of warranty).
I'm under no disillusion that I'll be driving an ICE vehicle forever. But for me, it just doesn't make sense in any way right now. The technology, cost and infrastructure aren't there for the masses to adopt this yet. So it will continue to be a niche thing for now.
A model 3 and a Corolla don't really compare though. I really wouldn't want to put more money into Musk's pocket right now, but you might want to drive a 3 (if you enjoy driving). I don't think I'd recommend the base model, but my AWD from 2018 is so much fun. Going from $6k/year for fuel to $0 was a big consideration, but that was only part of the picture. Endless spending for BMW maintenance was yet another factor. Fewer moving parts is better.
I was going to say that everyone qualifies for the federal EV tax credit, but yeah, it looks like that's not the case anymore since it's not available for $300k+ joint filers.
For the charging infrastructure, maybe that's more of an issue in the EV-unfriendly states? I'm in California and chargers are everywhere.
Yeah, I have no doubt that a Model 3 overall nicer than a Corolla, but I was trying to find something similarly sized and that was the first thing I thought of.
We're unfortunately just over the tax credit limit by about $3k last year, and likely more this year. So yeah, no credit for us.
As far as charging infra, I would imagine that California has the best charging infra in the country. I travel a decent amount, and the Bay area at least has the most I've seen of the places I've visited. I live in North Carolina and it's not nearly as ubiquitous here, despite a steady increase in electric cars on the road. But our gas is also much less expensive than California's.
It'll all come together in due time. But not is not that time (at least for me).
And that's the issue with EV adoption in the US along with the antiquated single phase (yes, split phase) electric grid.
Over here gas costs around $7.50-$8.00/gallon, and every single home and apartment has three-phase electricity at around 16 to 32A per phase. Also electricity costs under 10c/kWh and dips down to negative prices when it's windy AND sunny.
After the '70s oil crisis in the US, subsequent governments have bent over backwards making sure that gas remains cheap for most Americans. Carter was an unpopular President and subsequent Presidents have made sure never to make the mistakes that Carter made. The Federal gas tax is a fixed cost, not a percentage, and hasn't been changed since 1990 (so it's gotten cheaper accounting for inflation.) States add their own tax on top but again, so many people drive ICE cars in the US that gas prices are largely seen as a third rail here. It makes it challenging to build demand for EVs because even though there's plenty of externalities associated with ICE combustion, politicians are just loathe to increase the cost of gas.
Yea, I heard stories of people actually losing money doing DoorDash or Uber because of rising gas prices during the pandemic combined with the heavily car-centric culture in the US.
Yeah, I could see how that could lead to easier adoption when you already have the infrastructure in place to support charging, the ROI of purchasing an electric vehicle is much lower due to high gas prices, and you have cheap electricity. Those conditions are not the case in the US, and the combination of those things will unfortunately slow adoption.
We rented a Model Y last year for a trip around Florida. Florida is one of the better states for charging, but we still had to plan around where the chargers were. It was really inconvenient. We booked at a hotel that said it had chargers, but they were broken so every night I had to drive down the road to the Tesla charger and charge the car there then drive back before going to sleep. Getting from A to B was a pain since I had to use the special route planner to figure out how long it would it take since I needed to included the charging stops. 2 to 3 hour trips easily increased in length by an hour since we needed to stop for charging and they were often out of the way.
The whole experience soured us on FEVs. PHEVs, on the other hand, is exactly what I want. 80% of my trips are with 10 miles of my house and 90% are within 20 miles. A PHEV with a 25 to 30 mi range would cover 80% of my trips with just at home charging and when I need to go longer, I can run it hybrid.
I've had the opportunity to rent electric cars as well, and turned them down for the same reason. I don't want to plan my vacation around finding car chargers.
PHEVs do seem like a nice middle ground, though. I think it's a good way of electrifying average driving, while still being able to take advantage of existing infrastructure for longer drives. If anyone has a PHEV truck by the time I'm ready to get a new one (a few more years down the road), I'd heavily consider it.
There are rumors for a PHEV Ford Ranger. https://fordauthority.com/2023/06/ford-ranger-phev-out-next-year-coming-to-u-s-report/
Ahh, good to see some more options in this area!
Hearing these stories about other states makes me much more appreciative of the charging infrastructure in California. It's almost a non-issue here (unless you're a street parker as other folks have discussed.)
It shouldn't be surprising that EV buyers are chasing the lower priced models that do qualify for the $7,500 federal rebate. The article doesn't mention chevy bolts and Tesla model 3's sitting on lots (because they're likely selling like hot-cakes). All of the high inventory vehicles mentioned are at or above the $40,000 price point (post rebate, if applicable), with most going much higher.
That said, I wonder if this is a new phenomenon for the luxury EVs because production capacity has finally caught up a bit, or if there is a sudden shift on the demand side.
I imagine it's a little bit of both. I'm decently well off financially, but I got my last car for $10k. I don't personally know anyone that could even consider buying a 40k vehicle right now. With cost of living skyrocketing with no end in sight I'm more surprised that those vehicles are selling at all. Rent has gone up $50+ every 6 months where I live for the past 4 years. Food prices are tickling gods toes. Switching to an expensive vehicle for the environments sake isn't even an option to dream about for most people.
Yeah the cars are expensive and interest rates just got super high.
The EV producers started matching capacity but they're filling orders for the highest specced models first rather than the affordable ones so I think people are probably just holding out for the cheaper models to hit the market.
For the most part I think the charging infrastructure concerns are kind of just people having trouble adjusting their ideas about how they actually use their cars. Some inane number of vehicle trips do not go more than 50 miles before coming home. More than half of daily vehicle trips in the US are less than 3 miles from home!
I think once people adjust to the fact that you're not filling up gas all the time and the car is just always charged whenever you're at home, they'll begin to realize that ranges in excess of 200 miles are just an anxiety-driven extravagance. It's not crazy to have an EV as the daily driver and rent a gas guzzler for the once-in-a-blue-moon road trip you need to do. It wouldn't even be crazy to simply put a little gas-powered inverter generator in your frunk to charge your battery on the go. I can imagine that becoming a special class of devices that become available for rent if more economical EVs start to gain more widespread adoption.
The real challenge with EVs is for people who have to park on the street. There isn't a great solution for regularly charging those so monster battery capacity actually does end up being useful. But people who charge by street parking probably also have far FAR fewer vehicle miles traveled with their cars than people with garages and driveways. So it might be a bit of a hassle to charge it periodically, but probably something they'll be willing to live with.
The infrastructure problems are definitely real some of the time at least. I just took a short (300 mile each way) road trip through Indiana with my EV and definitely required some planning and fingers crossed. On some of these rural highways there's only one charging stop for 100+ mile stretches, and therefore its super busy and you might have to wait. Even worse is when 2 of the 4 stalls are broken at the one location...
I'm looking forward to next year when I can use the Tesla superchargers per their agreement with GM. There are plenty of those all through Indiana that will at least provide backup options.
Of course you're right that most of the time there is no problem at all b/c I charge at home each night.
Let me guess... Electrify America?
Ding ding ding!
Yeah this is going to be the real killer. Hopefully they get reliability better once it's more established.
I actually had two thoughts on this relative to the Bolt:
These look contradictory, but it's genuinely true. For point 1, I ordered a Bolt and had to wait seven months to get it. One of those months was because I ordered it before it went into production, but still, it was a LONG wait time. One of my friends liked my Bolt so much he went to buy one before they go out of production, couldn't find any on lots, and had to order one with a sixteen week wait time (and this is with them fully in production). /r/BoltEV had (maybe still has?) a community sourced spreadsheet of how long people were waiting for their cars, as well as people who were literally flying across the country to grab one that appeared on a lot somewhere.
So, how is point 2 also true? Well, on 2020-2022 models, there was a significant battery recall where the cars had to have their batteries replaced, and Chevy didn't have thousands of batteries sitting around ready and waiting to go into these cars. This meant that there were also months-long waitlists for getting the battery installed, and it also meant that the cars that dealers already had on their lots were un-sellable until they had the recall done. This was going on when I went Bolt shopping, where each dealer I talked to had some Bolts on their lot, but they literally couldn't sell them to me and in fact had lengthy waitlists of people all wanting to claim them once they were fixed. One dealer let me test drive a Bolt, but I wasn't even allowed to leave the lot with it because it was still awaiting recall.
I genuinely wonder if all those Bolts waiting on lots for recalls skewed the numbers mentioned in the article, though I suspect not (especially because they seemed model-specific). To me the main culprit is what you identified: that almost every EV sold in the US is ridiculously expensive. The only reason I got a Bolt was because it qualified for the tax credit AND because my previous twenty-year-old car was not long for this world and I absolutely needed a replacement. I was priced out (or didn’t fit — I’m tall) of every other EV option.
Yep, for sure. I'm also a Bolt owner. First I bought one of those 2020 models that was sitting on the lot forever (before the battery recall), and then I swapped it for a 2023 EUV via my state's lemon law after the recall. Love the vehicle and it really is the only affordable option. Although the new Tesla model 3 price with rebate isn't actually terrible. Too bad there's hardly any back seat room in that car, which is saying something coming from a Bolt :).
From what I've seen as well, vehicles that are in the 40-60k range are being marked up by pretty much all the dealers by another 10k for "market adjustment".
There's also people who sit just beyond the threshold for qualifying for rebates, whose tolerable price point is even lower because they can't get the rebate. Their salaries might be a little higher but the financially responsible among them aren't any more willing to spend $40k+ on a car than someone who does qualify. The only ones buying luxury EVs are those pulling paychecks well beyond the rebate qualification point or have very high debt tolerance, which is a relatively small subset of the population.
I fall into this bucket. I'll likely be leasing an EV some time this year, but I'm going to avoid the higher priced options if at all possible. Something like the Bolt is basically exactly what I'm looking for.
Thats why I say these EV rebates are just pork for the auto industry, rather than actual incentives to ditch gas guzzlers.
Could fully fund 2-3 pedal-assit e-bikes for the cost of one high-end EV rebate. That could get a lot more people out of cars entirely for daily commutes.
Or hell, only providing rebates for used cars under $25,000. Better to get more slightly older hybrids replacing very old ICE-only vehicles.
Rebates on used hybrids (or used EVs… a used e-Golf or something would work fine) with a higher eligibility limit would work best for me. I like the idea of e-bikes (and even just regular bikes), but where I live I wouldn't feel safe on the road on anything bike-like with the lack of bike lanes and proliferation of SUVs and trucks.
Chicken and Egg problem but getting more ebikes on the road will help build political will for proper bike networks because you'll have fewer voters whom only care about cars.
Anecdotally, I got a used 2022 Bolt EUV recently, and every new listing I called about was an order that had already been picked up but hadn't been removed from the dealer's website. When I asked a dealer about order lead times, they said they wouldn't expect to get it this year.
I’m curious about an apples to apples comparison. Are ICE and Hybrid vehicles at the same price point selling at a faster rate? KRebel pointed out that they are aren’t talking Tesla or Bolt.
I own 2023 MachE and have seen 4 or 5 in my area and counting. The 3250 rebate isn’t as awesome as the 7500 rebate. But I also saved for the car for 2 years and can afford the payments.
The other interesting thing is that the vehicles sitting on lots around here are used EVs and drab colors. I haven’t seen anything with color sitting on a lot.
I wonder if there is a good data set on this.
They are too damn expensive.
Despite making a pretty comfortable salary, I refuse to buy any car for more than $20k. This means I buy used, and I have yet to see an appealing used electric car get anywhere close to that price.
This is the biggest issue. We bought a 3 yr old Fiat 500e back in 2018 after their precipitous price drop (New = $34,000, 3 yrs old = $8000). Its saved us a ton of money on gas but more importantly, on maintenance. I refuse to spend more than 15k on a car, so Im doing maintenance on my ICE cars fairly regularly.
Is it an "appealing" car? Well its a ridiculously small grocery getter with the appeal of a VW Beetle and the Fiat 500 body has been in production for over 50 years, so... I guess so?
Used car prices have been insane for the last couple of years in my experience. I recently chose to buy a new battery for my old hybrid for that exact reason.
I was able to get a low mileage Volt for $20k 3 years ago. Technically an EV - some of the time! It’s all around very useful. Tons of storage space, electric and gas engines. No complaints.
20k seems like a good max price to me. I went just a bit over that (23k, iirc) for my new car a few years ago, but I was lucky enough to get a 0% interest loan on it, so that felt okay.
That wasn't our experience at all in the SF Bay Area. We were trying to buy a Chevy Bolt and dealerships would run out of stock in hours. Most of the dealers were charging extra to buy one (they called it a "Market Adjustment Rate".) I was on vacation when we bought ours which is why I was able to go and snatch ours up in a few hours (and we didn't have a car at the time which made it a bit harder.) Of course the SFBA has a lot of EV infrastructure already and has urban areas where EVs are generally more efficient.
A lot of it is cost/dealers still being crap about marking up beyond MSRP, AND just generally being a trash experience, but mostly it's cost. We recently bought an Ioniq 5 ltd and it is by far the most expensive car I've owned, it's definitely very nice but most people can't afford to spend $50k on any car period. The more affordable models that are eligible for the tax credit are flying off, despite Chevy not wanting to keep making the Bolt for whatever reason.
EVs will win out though, eventually, they are just better vehicles, and once we end up in another bull market when supplies are high they are going to fly off the shelves, imo. But we aren't right now, people's budgets are already getting squeezed. Used car prices are skyrocketing because nobody is buying new.
Aren't there still very long waiting lists for the Tesla 3 and Y?
I think this is just because the non Tesla charging infrastructure isn't there yet.
I waited 8 months for mine and missed out on tax credits, but, while I hope that my next car doesn't have to be a Tesla, it will be electric.
Day to day, an EV is just so much easier. Aside from the mechanical simplicity, it's way easy to just plug it in whenever you feel like it and never have to go to the gas station.
The problem is if you want to go on a road trip. It's a bit of extra work sometimes. It's too much of a pain to bring it camping where I like to camp, and there's like 1 super charger on all of Staten Island so I had to fly instead when I wanted to drive there. That's a pain.
That all goes away if there is a level 3 charger at, even, 1/10th of all gas stations.
I hear the NACS is better than CCS (but don't care enough to look into it). That seems like the solution.
These problems go away once the charging infrastructure is there.
Right now in North America there seems to be roughly the same number of CCS and NACS DC fast chargers.
The thing that really sucks is that CCS is essentially open to everyone - Teslas can use an adapter and there are only two models that use the incompatible ChaDeMo standard - Tesla's chargers use proprietary tech that doesn't play well with everything else.
I've heard that Tesla was going to open up their network to work on GM cars, but I haven't looked into details.
NACS is being standardized by SAE right now as SAE J3400.
My Civic will be paid off in about 2 years, and I plan on driving it for quite a while after that. My hope is that my next car will be electric, but the infrastructure is not there in my area at all, and it's simply not feasible or reasonable to get one for most people. The only people who have them in my area all work for the same employer who has well maintained chargers in their private parking lots. Sure, you can slow charge through a wall outlet, but if you want to take a trip anywhere you're still planning your trip to go way out of the way to be able to make it.
I know that's the case because a family friend came to visit in his Tesla. He drove us around as we took a trip around 1.5 hours away, and we needed to find a charger for him and wait at it for an hour or so or we wouldn't have been able to make the trip back home.
When the infrastructure hits a critical point, the sales will spike and overtake ICE cars. But it's simply not the case yet.