This is where EV’s should have begun, not as replacement of gas/diesel powered sedans, but as small city-suburban vehicles that neither would have needed a long range, giant battery packs, long recharge times and high prices. Those cars would not have needed any state or federal subsidies either. From there, gradually, under 100% free market conditions, the cars would have evolved, grown some market share and grown in size as well.
Instead the EV makers went straight to trying to replace the best gas/diesel cars in the market. Now the manufacturers and dealers are left with inventory they can’t sell.
I think Americans are not quite as focused as China, on making things really cheap.
I dialed into Alibaba yesterday, just to look. Everything just continues to get cheaper, and cheaper. And there are SO MANY places offering mini ev’s now.
The prices just continue to fall. About a year ago I got exactly what some here are suggesting VinFast will be. A very cheap, 3-wheel electric vehicle my wife and I can take to the mall together. It was cheap last year, but the price keeps dropping. They are now well below $500. Mine was purchased here in Vietnam.
Now we can’t go far with it, can’t carry a whole lot of groceries with it, but we can make it several miles there, several miles back, it (sort of) has a roof for when it rain, we are very comfortable with riding it together, and we brought back 11 bags of groceries 2 weeks ago. Relatively secure here, and it is so cheap nobody is likely to steal it. It is pretty slow. 😎
That however, is not what will soon be available.
What we will have a true car. Seats four, sporty, quick and a relatively good range. And cheap.
Just not yet.