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Speculating about the next years, Fred Lambert writes that once there are good all-electric options across the car market internal combustion engines will be as good as dead.
Before 2025, there's going to be a point where there's not going to be a single car buyer in their right mind who's going to want to buy a new gasoline car. Not a single one. Because they're going to look at the market, they're going to look at what's out there, and all the different electric car models that are out there now. By that point, by 2025, there's going to be dozens and dozens of more EV models than what's available today. And attractive ones!
It's going to be hard for someone to justify buying a gas-powered car at that point, because they're going to think about the resale value of it.
I think the resale value of gasoline cars is going to drop massively in the next five years, and predicted value is going to drop even more drastically. Buying a gasoline car right now is a bad choice. Buying a gasoline car within the next five years is going to be just a financial suicide for most people.
Earlier on SN:
Every Electric Vehicle on Sale in the US for 2019 and Its Range (2019)
Australian Plan to Ban Petrol and Diesel Cars (2019)
Have We Reached Peak Car? (2018)
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @09:59AM (10 children)
so, you find a use case or two to "prove" evs are NO GOOD
brilliant.
People hae posted on earlier articles on SN about how evs meet a huge percentage of user's real world requirements.
But people like you will always find one use case where evs are no good, and somehow manage to "prove" they are no good for anyone.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by choose another one on Tuesday July 09 2019, @11:21AM (7 children)
No, the other AC gets it.
A "huge percentage" of users' real world requirements doesn't do any good, whatever alternative to ICE you are looking at it needs to meet 100% of a users real world use case for an ICE - otherwise the user has to have an ICE _as_ _well_ (hence the "two car families" comment).
I drive a 7-seater, the vast majority of the time with only 1 or 2 people in it. Why not have a 2-seater? A 2-seater would meet maybe 80% of my requirements, 4-seater probably >90%, but the 7-seater can happily carry 1,2,3 or 4, it meets 100%.
EVs will win when they meet 100% of the requirements for the vast majority of people, meeting 95% of the requirements for 100% of the people means ICE still has a place, for everyone.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Tuesday July 09 2019, @01:22PM (4 children)
You underestimate the power of the marketing dollar. In a few years, anyone who needs to seat 7 people will be viewed as "old", "bad for the planet", "unhip", or "doesn't have what plants crave". Cramming all 7 people in to a 2 seater like a clown car will be stylish. At that point, good luck even finding a vehicle that will seat 7, despite the fact that the roadway traffic will still be full of giant big rigs.
I have needs for a telephone where I can actually HEAR people, doesn't drop out every time a plane flies overs, has no battery or built in computer that can get infected, lasts 30+ years, and does NOT need to go places. "simple" cell phones are literally marketed for "old" people. I'm not even sure if one can still sign up for new residential proper POTS service any more. What is out there does NOT meet the needs of a lot of people, yet every fucking consumertard uses one and expect everyone else should to.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @04:30PM (1 child)
This depends upon where in the country you are. In some areas (mostly urban) you can no longer sign up for new POTS installs, nor get an existing working POTS line repaired when it next needs some repair. You end up being told "you must migrate to FIOS/Fiber now".
In other parts of the country (typically the more rural areas) you can get POTS, simply because the phone companies have not installed any alternatives (yet).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @07:08PM
The relevant thing though is that you can still get real land-line service everywhere if you actually want it, even if it's not delivered over old-style copper pair. If you're far enough out that you can't get land-line service, you're not getting cell service either and will have to use a satellite phone.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 09 2019, @05:35PM
Which will be countered by the marketing of the people selling those 7 seaters. Never underestimate the power of the marketing dollar, right?
(Score: 2) by Oakenshield on Tuesday July 09 2019, @08:54PM
I got quite the belly laugh out of this. There's a lot of country out there between those East and West coasts. Despite the hate and vitriol and environment shaming for way over a decade, I see literally tons of gigantic pickup trucks being used as a daily commuter car for one all over the place. Every soccer mom and yuppie and wannabe plops their butt in a SUV to go to the grocery and Starbucks. My sedan represents less than half the motor vehicles I see on my daily commute. Most of the time I can't see traffic lights as the cars surrounding me are so high. Despite the hysterical nonsense spouted by the envirocrazies for the past decade, trucks and SUVs outsell cars by such a margin, Ford is giving up on making them.
The war was lost when I started seeing Porsche, BMW and Mercedes SUVs popping up everywhere. Electrics may be the future, but micro clown cars will be left to the Danish and their like minded brothers. Until you see electric Suburbans and Navigators, don't count the ICE out.
As was posted before, cell phones meet 100% of most users real world needs. I dropped my POTS two years ago when I realized I had received one non-spam call on it over a six month period. I spent about $500 on my newest phone - which replaced one four years old - and it will pay for itself in ten months of not paying for POTS service. My monthly cell bill is half of my old POTS service (Google Fi). My sister dropped her POTS nearly ten years ago. I've not heard one complaint from her in the meantime and no attempts to restore it. If you want a "home phone" cell phone, get one that supports Qi charging and leave it on the charging pad when you aren't on a call. Or get a flip phone with no smarts. They are making them again. Leave it on a long charging cord and you have your home phone.
All in all: Apples/Oranges. An electric car would satisfy 90% of my needs but until it hits 100%, it would always be nothing more than a second car.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @04:05PM
It doesn't need to meet the needs of 100% of the people, it just needs to meet the needs of enough people that the infrastructure for ICEs is no longer viable. At that point, whether or not the remaining people like it, the gas stations and the like will stop providing them with service. Things will go back to the way they were in the past where if you have an ICE you better carry enough fuel with you for the trip as you won't be able to fill up midway.
In practice though, I would expect that over time there'd be a boom in the rental of cars capable of driving many hundreds of miles on a charge as it's likely cheaper than buying a car that can go weeks without charging for daily use.
I already do that with my motorcycle, my day to day bike is a small displacement one that gets great fuel economy and is super nimble. If I need to hit the open road for a longer trip, I just rent something appropriate for the ride. I'd have to rent for a ridiculous number of days before I wind up spending more money.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Tuesday July 09 2019, @07:09PM
I suspect that 100% of your real world use cases has been adjusted downward. That is, your paradigm for vehicle use has adjusted to match what current vehicles are generally capable of.
Have you ever wanted to transport a large quantity of dirt or other loose material that might fit in your (let's call it a) minivan? Maybe you are working on your garden and need topsoil, but you don't want to ruin the upholstery. Or, maybe you bought a king-size mattress that you couldn't take home the same day because it wouldn't fit in your minivan. No worries, though, because the mattress store offers free next-day delivery. Both examples would reasonably fall inside your use case, if your vehicle could accommodate. As it is, though, you can easily find a workaround.
As vehicles evolve, alternative solutions will spring up alongside to fill in the gaps between our expectations and vehicle capability.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by SunTzuWarmaster on Tuesday July 09 2019, @12:54PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DutchUncle on Tuesday July 09 2019, @01:33PM
"use case or two" - I grew up in NYC, high population density, and assumed that subways would serve everyone. In college I met a rural person who lived 2 miles from the road and another 3 miles to the PAVED road. There is no one solution that will cover every situation. The rapid refueling ability of gasoline/diesel is a serious advantage for long-distance travel, and there are a lot of big places where people do long-distance travel, even if you personally don't live there and aren't familiar with living that way.