SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
While Canadians flocked to purchase gas-powered vehicles over the summer, electric vehicle sales continued to nosedive, according to new data from Statistics Canada:
Electric vehicle sales dropped 35.2 per cent in June compared to last year. Zero-emission vehicles comprised only 7.9 per cent of total new motor vehicles sold that month, with 14,090 entering the market.
Meanwhile, 177,313 new motor vehicles were sold in Canada in June, up 6.2 per cent from June 2024.
"In dollar terms, sales increased 3.1 per cent during the same period. In June 2025, there were more new motor vehicles sold in every province compared with the same period in 2024," reads the Statistics Canada data.
"Sales of new passenger cars increased 19.5 per cent in June 2025, marking the first gain in this subsector since November 2024. In June 2025, sales of new trucks (+4.3 per cent) were also higher than one year earlier."
Despite dwindling sales, the Carney government remains committed to its electric vehicle mandate of having 60 per cent of all vehicles sold be ZEVs by 2030 and 100 per cent by 2035, banning all motor vehicle sales.
Previously:
- Automobile Sales, Including EVs and Hybrids, Surge in 2024
- Mazda: Americans Want Cheap Gas Cars
- The EV Graveyard
- South Korean EV Battery Makers Reporting Big Losses as EV Demand Slows
(Score: 2, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 26, @03:28PM (28 children)
Up until now, purchasing an EV has been little more than virtue signaling. The EV generally costs double, triple, and more what a traditional ICE powered car costs. And, with few exceptions, those EVs have been crippled on the highway, with limited range.
If Musk's Super Duper Aluminum batteries work out, then the price of EVs will become competitive with ICE powered vehicles, AND, EVs will acquire the range to compete with gas, diesel, methane/propane, or any other fossil fueled vehicle. In fact, EVs can probably sell for LESS THAN most gas powered vehicles, since aluminum is cheap, and there are few moving parts in an EV, making production of EVs very affordable. Best feature of all? You can apparently go from 0% charge to about 80% or 85% in about 20 minutes, unlike EVs currently on the road.
I'm going to buy my defensive radar from Temu, just like Venezuela!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ichthus on Tuesday August 26, @04:04PM (1 child)
So, buying a car that's among the quickest and highest performance for the price, and has the most advance technology available in any car is... virtue signaling?
*cough*2010 called. They want their FUD back.
(Score: 5, Funny) by mcgrew on Tuesday August 26, @06:51PM
"Up until now, a horse and buggy owner purchasing a Model-T has been little more than virtue signaling." -- Runaway1956, August 1925
The #1 domestic terrorist organization in the US is ICE
(Score: 5, Informative) by epitaxial on Tuesday August 26, @04:28PM (5 children)
It's funny how Norway is able to adapt to EVs just fine. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg52543v6rmo [bbc.com]
They seem to have plenty of cold weather and highways.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Tuesday August 26, @06:57PM (4 children)
The EV shines in the winter! No standing there in well below freezing temperatures babysitting it while it fills with explosive carcinogens, just plug it into your house and go inside, and no waiting for a combustion engine to reach operating temperature to get heat, an EV has heat in the winter as fast as it has AC in the summer.
I understand in Norway and the rest of Europe there are plenty of public chargers, unlike our backwards, primitive banana republic (USA). We're so primitive we don't even have universal health care! And people expect us to have Modern cars?!?
The #1 domestic terrorist organization in the US is ICE
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday August 27, @02:55AM (1 child)
Not entirely, depending upon the battery chemistry, they can really struggle when it gets cold out. Sure, you don't have to wait for it to start, but you'll often lose a bunch of your charge due to the temperature. Supposedly Sodium based batteries won't have that problem, but they're not in common use yet. They should be great, you'd be able to get sodium from desalination plants rather than having to work out how much you can return to the ocean without killing all the life in the area.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday August 28, @01:01PM
Yes, my mileage drops by a mpk (miles per kilowatt hour) when the temperature is below freezing. Not a problem, and it gets well below freezing in the winter here, as well as the socialist Scandinavian countries where everybody drives electrics.
The #1 domestic terrorist organization in the US is ICE
(Score: 3, Interesting) by BlueCoffee on Wednesday August 27, @08:31PM (1 child)
EV's are driveable in winter, but they certainly don't "shine". And by winter I don't mean winter in North Carolina which gets two days of snow, I'm talking about Minnesota or worse, Canada.
30% of of the battery is be used up just to heat the cab, defrost the mirrors and rear window, and warm up the battery nest. And the battery always has to be kept warm so the battery is always being used up.
Teslas have those stupid over engineered push-then-pull door handles that easily freeze when the temp is below 0C, and then you have to knuckle punch it to unstick it.
Also, the driver cannot completely turn off the regenerative braking in icy conditions, and sometimes when it kicks in during icy conditions the front wheels lock up and you lose steering control. The traction control/ABS handles it, but it's really unnerving to have front wheels lock up like that when you are slowing down at an intersection with cars in front of you.
I don't think Telsa did any testing in winter driving conditions.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Thursday August 28, @03:44AM
I see you're an auto mechanic. You have my sympathy for the loss of your industry.
by winter I don't mean winter in North Carolina which gets two days of snow
I'm talking about Illinois. Damned cold, far below freezing and plenty of snow and ice. Best winter car I ever drove, and again, since 1968, son.
Teslas have those stupid over engineered push-then-pull door handles...
Nazimobiles? Who cares? I drive a Hyundai.
Also, the driver cannot completely turn off the regenerative braking in icy conditions
...says someone who's never driven one! Braking is braking.
I don't think Telsa did any testing in winter driving conditions.
Why do you think "Tesla" when you hear "EV"? I understand winter driving conditions are as bad in South Korea as Illinois. Musk is a Nazi space alien from South Africa, what would he know about snow?
The #1 domestic terrorist organization in the US is ICE
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday August 26, @06:27PM (4 children)
Can try some numbers. Lets use the numbers from the official toyota website.
A Highlander starting MSRP is $40320 for 25 MPG. A Highlander Hybrid MSRP is $46820 for 35 MPG.
We will make the hilarious assumption that the vastly more complicated hybrid will cost $0 extra to maintain over the life of the car (LOL).
Average gas price is around $3.05 in my state. Varies from day to day, of course. Its still at the high end for the summer vacationers and the upcoming labor day travelers, so realistically its less, but OK we'll pick an intentionally high gas price in honor of inevitable inflation.
(46820 - 40320) = $6500 "hybrid tax". That $6500 will buy 2131 gallons of gas. The non-hybrid will drive 53275 miles on that gas. So I lose money for the first 53K then after 54K or so the hybrid will be cheaper (again, assuming zero dollar cost of hybrid maintenance)
In my state the average driver goes 15K/year so that's 3.5 years before the hybrid will pay for itself. More realistically I drive at most 10K/yr probably much less so it'll be 5+ years.
Another thing to keep in mind is both vehicles have a CVT and CVTs only last 80K, maybe 100K miles before intentionally self-destructing to increase sales. The car breaks even about half way thru the CVT lifespan (optimistically) So either way, we're only talking about "two thousand gallons" or about "six thousand bucks" either saved or not saved before the car meets the crusher, in the grand scheme of things, looking at the environmental damage of manufacturing a car, the hybrid savings is fairly irrelevant. What would be VASTLY more environmentally friendly would be banning CVTs so entire new cars don't have to be manufactured every 100K miles. Cars without CVTs can often go 200K+ and not making an entirely new car saves the environment a lot more than hybrid ever could.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday August 26, @06:37PM (2 children)
Also I assumed 0% interest rates. If you drive few enough miles, I am too lazy to make accurate calculations, but at some point I'd burn few enough gallons of gas that I could pay for it off the investment income (however small) of the $6500 price difference, if I pay cash for the car (thats what I usually do).
Lets say I invest my $6500 hybrid tax. My back of envelope estimate is I'd get somewhat less than 5000 miles of "free" gas to drive in my non-hybrid every year.
Honestly, I don't know if I drive the 15K supposed average for my state. I recall last summer seeing my "around town commuter car" roll over from 50K and here is is almost September and I'm at 54.?K so I may only go 6K this year in my commuter car. If you think about it, 6K/yr is still over 15 miles/day and I'm not even sure how I drive that much... I work at home, my gym's about 2-ish miles away, grocery store is a mile, church is like 3 miles? Even driving my kids around and doing "kid activities" with my kids I still can't account for my 6K.
Another novelty of living the suburban life is my 6K miles/yr lifestyle combined with Toyota's ONLY all EV car that supposedly goes 250 miles/charge means I'd only charge my car every other week. Which is about as often as I seem to go to the gas station with my gas car. I wish I could buy a nice commuter car with a 50 mile battery as that would be cheap and its all I need, but they wouldn't make enough profit so we can only buy incredibly expensive 250 mile batteries.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fliptop on Tuesday August 26, @09:11PM (1 child)
Interesting you mentioned "hybrid tax" but didn't talk about the fuel tax (in my state about $0.50/gal). Has your state figured out how to tax EVs for the wear and tear on roads/bridges that have to be built and maintained?
What will the future price be? Even if they can equate a gallon of fuel to x amp-hours of use and charge the same per "gallon", will there be a firmware update for your smart meter that indicates when the EV is charging to calculate it?
Too many uncertainties for me.
Additionally, all EVs I've ever worked on have similar setups for suspension and steering as ICE so the maintenance is still there, and parts for them are expensive. I put front pads and rotors on a Prius last week and it had the same hydraulic caliper setup as every ICE vehicle I've ever worked on.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday August 26, @09:22PM
Interesting theory: If road damage scales with some high polynomial exponent of vehicle weight, they can rely on electric taxes and property taxes. If you have enough property to have enough solr panels to run a large OTR truck 8+ hours per day for hundreds of miles, you are paying enough property tax to make up for the lack of gas tax LOL.
But no I was going for a first approximation where the environmental damage of building a car that uses a transmission design that self destructs in 100K miles is really bad if it'll take 50K miles just to break even on the more complicated powertrain.
I imagine to encourage repeated sales, EVs have to have self driving using hundreds of sensors designed to break/wear out at high expense after a couple years. The idea of a 50 year old golf cart is fine if you're a golf course but bad news if you're a car mfgr. They need to find a way to make the vehicle self destruct in a couple years to stay in business and that competes directly with the "Savings" from alternative drivetrains.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday August 27, @02:59AM
Around here gas costs roughly $5 a gallon, so probably a lot quicker here, plus you use practically no gas with a hybrid if you're stuck in traffic or you have the option to plug it in. Gas here is expensive, but electricity is usually some of the cheapest in the country due to the dams.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26, @06:30PM (11 children)
uh huh. except we all know why canada's not buying evs right now.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Tuesday August 26, @06:39PM (10 children)
Slow economic collapse due to population-replacement-level immigration? Life is pretty rough up there right now. A population under siege by its own government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26, @06:46PM (4 children)
that's just desperate. why not blame dei while you're at it?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ichthus on Tuesday August 26, @06:56PM (3 children)
*knock, knock* Hello. He IS blaming DEI, and he's not wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26, @06:59PM (2 children)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by ichthus on Tuesday August 26, @09:08PM (1 child)
No. DEI is responsible for exactly what the OP's comment said: "Slow economic collapse due to population-replacement-level immigration"
Reading comprehension, lad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26, @09:19PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Tuesday August 26, @07:03PM (2 children)
I'd say Canada is under siege by MY government, not their own, like every other country. American business people and consumers aren't the only ones hurting from King Donnie's illegal import taxes.
The #1 domestic terrorist organization in the US is ICE
(Score: 3, Informative) by Tork on Tuesday August 26, @07:50PM (1 child)
This is not 'troll'. Canada is boycotting the USA right now and, likely, hunkering down for the next 3 years. The CEO of one of those EV manufacturers not selling well up north said that Canada is 'not a real country' and sparked a petition to revoke his citizenship there. Mcgrew's comment is legit.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 2, Insightful) by mcgrew on Tuesday August 26, @09:25PM
My point exactly. It all started with a convicted criminal president who wants to steal Canada like Hitler stole Poland.
The #1 domestic terrorist organization in the US is ICE
(Score: 2, Insightful) by FuzzyTheBear on Tuesday August 26, @11:42PM (1 child)
I suggest you com4e visit us and stay for a while. You sound like an uninformed MAGA moron.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday August 27, @03:01AM
This kind of reminds me of that Family Guy cutaway of Canadian bullies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSGoDP80Mnc [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Tuesday August 26, @06:47PM
The EV generally costs double, triple, and more what a traditional ICE powered car costs.
Mine was $48k last year, a '24 Ioniq 6. Biggest, roomiest car I ever owned, including the '02 Concorde and the '74 Le Mans. EVs are generally in the ballpark with comparable Goldbergs (your Rube Goldberg insanely complicated transportation machine), but all they make is the insanely fast cars like the Mustang and the new Charger, or luxury cars like the boat I'm driving now. Which is the best car I've driven, let alone owned, since 1968.
Gasoline is four to five times as expensive as electricity and there's almost no maintenance needed. Not even brakes; the disk brakes are only used at under 5mph. No vibration (except the radio) and no gear shifting.
And if the car in front of you doesn't have a tail pipe, you're almost certain to be unable to outrun it. Your Rube Goldberg car is to mine what a buggy was to a Model-T. Don't knock it until you try it.
The #1 domestic terrorist organization in the US is ICE
(Score: 4, Informative) by turgid on Tuesday August 26, @09:01PM (1 child)
The term "virtue signalling" is an alt-wrong dog-whistle. It's a rhetorical failure.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by ichthus on Tuesday August 26, @09:14PM
The term "dog-whistle" is a leftist figment. It's a rhetorical failure.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Sourcery42 on Tuesday August 26, @03:53PM (16 children)
The linked article just drops some statistics and spouts the typical far right talking points. I'm not at all familiar with the counter signal, but after this limited exposure, I suppose they're like the Fox News or Newsmax of Canada, eh? Before someone feels the need to attack me for liberal bias, I have two ICE cars and zero desire to replace either with an EV any time soon, and I think that ZEV 60% of sales by 2030 mandate they're whining about is batshit insane too.
Has anyone seen any meaningful analysis of the EV sales trend? That's what I really find interesting here. I get the impression that EV sales are booming in more developing economies, but stalling, or at least growth is, in more established markets. Certainly, some of that is infrastructure differences when you compare North America to China, for example. Could be we're through the Early Adopters in the mature markets and EVs are struggling to gain traction in the broader market, always a tough transition for any new entrant to an old market. Could be a natural consumer feedback loop driving concerns about range anxiety, resale value, service, quality, actual cost of ownership. Could lies, damn lies, and statistics to prop up a particular viewpoint. I actually RTFA, but you won't find any of that there.
(Score: 5, Informative) by datapharmer on Tuesday August 26, @04:20PM (3 children)
This says little about how Canadians feel about EVs and a lot more about them boycotting U.S. goods due to MAGA policies, and thus avoiding Musk’s Tesla which had been a significant percentage of EV sales prior to November but now is a negligible number. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/tesla-registrations-quebec-1.7547483 [www.cbc.ca]
Many other EVs are significantly more expensive than the Y or 3, so it likely shifted many of those buyers toward an ICE vehicle.
As someone with a Tesla in our household I can say I think it is a great car, but I totally get why someone wouldn’t want to buy one with Musk running the company. Politics aside the recklessness he’s shown repeatedly in public gives one pause about using any product he’s directly involved with and the self-driving nonsense is nothing but a distraction from the fact that almost nobody wants the ugly and poorly designed cybertruck (say for maybe a few rich people that long for their old Aztec).
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Sourcery42 on Tuesday August 26, @04:57PM
There it is. Who would have thought a figurehead acting like a literal Nazi could be bad for business?
I've never had any interest in Tesla for a number of reasons. I haven't bought a Detroit designed shitbox for 25 years, and I'm happier for it. Outside of the Nissan Leaf, the Japanese automakers seem very reluctant bring EVs to North America. Toyota is content to double down on hybrids. There are starting to be more options like the Acura ZDX, Nissan Ariya, and Honda Prologue, but they're all big SUVs, that I also refuse to buy. Oh well, I'm not in the market either. I keep cars forever. I've only had my oldest for 5 years, so it probably has at least another 10 in it. Plenty of time to wait and see.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday August 26, @07:20PM
Tesla isn't the only EV on the market!
almost nobody wants the ugly and poorly designed cybertruck
They sure love those butt-ugly Hummers, though! And those poorly designed pickups with HUGE cabs and teeny tiny beds.
The #1 domestic terrorist organization in the US is ICE
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday August 27, @11:00AM
> Politics aside
But that's one of the biggest problems. Politicians and the media have politicized the heck out of this choice, and have done things that significantly change the calculations. For instance, a couple years ago, Texas added an additional annual fee of $200 on EVs only, on the idea that these vehicles aren't paying their fair share of highway maintenance costs, which is funded by a gas tax. I wanted personal experience with an EV, so I got a used Nissan Leaf. Had it for about 6 years. That political change was one of the factors behind my decision to get rid of the Leaf.
I'd say I learned quite a bit about EVs from owning one. They are wonderfully quiet and low maintenance. Ideal for short trips. (More on that in the next paragraph.) But they do have downsides. Firstly, you have to plan a bit more. You can't forget to put it on the charger the night before. If you do forget, and you don't find out it's low until you're rushing off to work the next morning, you're screwed. You will be late to work. Or you have to get a ride. Or, if you also have a gas burner, you'll have to use that. Whereas a gas car, you can forget to fill it up and not be late to work because you can zip into and out of a gas station in 10 minutes.
As to the short trips, the best way to use an electric car is to take no trips longer than its ROUND TRIP range. Do ALL your charging at home. Why? The public charging network is not reliable enough. Even the idea of recharging at your destination, while that avoids the worst waste of your time, of sitting around waiting for it to charge at a point along the journey, is still too chancy. Ahh, you're going to visit someone at their home that is at the limit of your one-way trip range, and think you're going to recharge by plugging into your host's wall outlet so you can get back home? Think more carefully about that. EVs pull so much juice that you will have to inform your host not to have any other electrical appliances on the same circuit, or it is likely to trip the circuit breaker. A refrigerator starting up is enough to do that. And if this is not noticed, those hours you thought you were getting charged up, you weren't. And now you're in the embarrassing position of having to impose on your host longer.
Another gotcha is the charging cable is most idiotically designed so that the cord is not long enough for that heavy brick to rest on the ground. It will be dangling from the outlet, and this weight is all too likely to slowly pull the plug out of the outlet. That's bad. Destroys outlets. When the connection weakens, the resistance goes up, and that causes heating. This heating can easily be great enough to melt and scorch the plastic of the wall outlet.
One other thing I learned is that tires can't take being powered by electric motors. Oh yeah, the Leaf felt wonderfully grippy and powerful. Heck, one time I needed that power. Was on the street during a storm, saw wind whipping the trees ahead back and forth harder and harder, then saw a huge tree branch just seemingly floating along in the air. It was a tornado. I stopped to look more carefully at the weather and wait for some debris to blow past in front of me, and when I saw that tornado, and saw it was coming straight at me from my right, I floored the Leaf and got the hell out of the tornado's path. But that is thankfully quite rare. The problem with that grippy power, is that's also the feel of that electric motor putting more stress on the tires than they can take. Can easily wear the tires out before they've reached 25% of their lifetime range. Once I realized that, and that the Leaf has this "eco mode" that is engaged by putting the gear shifter into drive twice, I used eco mode exclusively. No more premature wearing out of the tires.
Hypermiling techniques can really help increase an EV's range. I learned that what I read online is true. The difference in range from traveling at 30 mph vs 40 mph is significant. Driving slower is perhaps the #1 thing you can do, in any kind of car, to get more range. One of the frustrating things about the fact that going slower is a big fuel saver and range extender, is that much of this is another consequence of politics and marketing. You'd think the severe constraints of having such limited range would inspire manufacturers to pick that low hanging aerodynamic fruit they ignore. You'd be wrong. If the Leaf had aerodynamics like the Edison 2, the winner of the X Prize for a car that can get 100 mpg, then the difference in range between traveling at 30 mph and 40 mph wouldn't be so surprisingly big.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday August 26, @07:16PM (10 children)
The trouble is wanton ignorance. The people who manufacture autos don't want you to know how much better they are! They don't want to sell you an EV! They don't want you to know that the piston drive train is an obsolete, over-complicated mess with thousands of moving parts to wear and break and need constant supervision (check your oil and coolant!) and maintenance.
It's a dealer to junkyard gravy train in maintenance costs. The only normal maintenance on an EV is wiper blades and fluid, and tires (or these strange things called "tyres" in Britain). Not even oil changes.
How much maintenance has your ceiling fan needed? Don't expect the manufacturers to tell you how much faster and roomier they are, or how much better the handling is thanks to all the weight on the bottom, or any of the other dozens of advantages over the obsolete Rube Goldberg tech.
The #1 domestic terrorist organization in the US is ICE
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday August 26, @09:25PM (1 child)
Batteries...
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday August 26, @09:44PM
Yes, forgot about the 12v battery. It probably only has four or five years, but at least it's under the hood and not under a fender like the '02 Concorde that took a trained mechanic forty five minutes to change. Dumbest design I've ever seen on anything.
I consider the main battery an unreplacable part, like when the rack and pinion went out on my '85 Chevy in 2006 I paid $500 for in 2003. The labor would probably cost as much as the battery, and I hear they're damned expensive. I'll find out if I don't trade it in before that.
But the battery is basically the gasoline, electricity is so cheap. My car will go twenty miles on the electricity it takes to refine a gallon of gasoline. I don't see a difference on my electric bill.
The #1 domestic terrorist organization in the US is ICE
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Tuesday August 26, @09:31PM (7 children)
That's total BS. They all have steering, suspension and brakes, it's the same or very similar to what's been around for decades, it takes the most abuse from driving, and it needs repaired. Every vehicle needs regular alignments too, including EVs. Most vehicles need brakes before 80k miles at least once. Suspension and steering too before 120k. If you're keeping your EV until it dies and it gets to 200k you'll probably have repaired/changed parts at least twice and brakes 3 or 4 times. The same as every ICE vehicle out there.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Tuesday August 26, @11:34PM (1 child)
My first EV is five years old now. The maintenance so far:
- At two years a replacement filter for the AC
- At two years: cleaning of the breaks. (Break pads themselves are just fine, just cleaning some dust from them)- At two years a replacement filter for the AC
- At four years a replacement filter for the AC
- At four years: cleaning of the breaks. (Break pads themselves are just fine, just cleaning some dust from them)
- At four years: callback for a piece of wiring in the steering column, a part also used in the non-EV versions.
- New set of tires (fun fact: it is really easy to accelerate to fast with an EV)
So after five years maintenance is virtually nothing. My experience might be just a single datapoint, but it is at least one more point than your imaginary bullshit.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Wednesday August 27, @12:15AM
How many miles on it?
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday August 27, @12:44AM (4 children)
They all have steering, suspension and brakes
I've been driving since 1968 and yes, there is shocks/struts. But I've had exactly one car with any kind of steering problem sans wheel alignment, and I try to stay out of potholes but I've had a few cars aligned.
But the braking is regenerative. Rather than converting kinetic energy to heat by use of friction, it reverses the motors, making generators out of them and converting the kinetic energy back into electricity. The drum brakes are only used at less than five miles an hour so are unlikely to need any maintenance.
Yes, I've had wheel alignments, rarely. Shocks and struts when I've owned a vehicle for longer than the seat stays comfortable. But almost all visits to the mechanic (who was me when I was poor) were for oil changes, points and plugs, water pumps, starters, and all the other zillion things needed to keep a Rube Goldberg machine with its complications and hassles running.
Pistons are a pain in the ass. I say good riddance to them.
The #1 domestic terrorist organization in the US is ICE
(Score: 2, Informative) by pTamok on Wednesday August 27, @08:44AM (3 children)
Brake maintenance on BEVs can be expensive, because the discs on disc brakes can rust due to lack of use and require replacement - precisely because regenerative braking is so good. This is why Volkswagen used drum brakes on its newer BEVs. Owners of some BEVs with disk brakes are advised to periodically do hard braking from motorway speeds to minimise this problem. With hard-enough braking, the regeneration system can't (or is possibly programmed not to) capture all the kinetic energy, so some has to be dissipated as heat in the brake components.
Note that the mechanical brakes need to be good enough to stop the vehicle within legally mandated limits if the regenerative braking fails.
BEV performance from a standing start is phenomenal. You need to be in a pretty exotic petrol-engined vehicle to be able to beat a run-of-the mill BEV from the lights. Exuberant use of this will reduce your tyre life. Considerably. (Pushbike users know that petrol-engined vehicles are lousy at accelerating from stationary.)
My (electric) fuel costs for a recent 275 mile trip were about USD 6.50
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 27, @10:21AM (2 children)
Which brand? How much kWh spent?
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday August 27, @02:35PM (1 child)
Car: MG MG 5
kWh: Roughly 100% -> 35% and 81% to 37%, which with the battery being roughly 55 kWh is about 60 kWh. Charging on slow chargers costs about 10 US cents per kWh.
Dry roads, warm, but not hot weather. 60 kWh for 275 miles is about 4.6 miles per kWh - uphill out, downhill back, mostly driving at 50 mph.
Wet roads, or sub-freezing temperatures give far worse fuel economy: winter doing the same trip gets me more like 3 miles per kWh.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday August 27, @03:26PM
Just checked the car stats: for the past 2,608 miles it has done an average of 3.98 miles per kWh. That's summer driving.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DadaDoofy on Tuesday August 26, @07:25PM
Here you go:
https://executivedigest.sapo.pt/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Mobility-Consumer-Pulse-2024_Overview.pdf [executivedigest.sapo.pt]
https://drrichswier.com/2023/12/31/david-blackmon-the-one-simple-reason-electric-vehicles-are-doomed-to-fail/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=david-blackmon-the-one-simple-reason-electric-vehicles-are-doomed-to-fail [drrichswier.com]
https://www.westernjournal.com/hertz-selling-fleet-electric-vehicles-shifting-back-gas-cars/ [westernjournal.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26, @06:17PM (13 children)
Have EVs solved the privacy issue yet? Where basically you are driving a rolling collection platform on wheels and you need proprietary apps that harvest your data to use a charger anywhere away from home?
I'm genuinely curious. I have a really simple petrol car that works fine and has readily available, still manufactured replacement parts 40 years later. When EVs solve the privacy issue, I'll hop on board.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Tuesday August 26, @06:36PM (3 children)
Nothing is preventing you from disconnecting the LTE antenna.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26, @06:47PM (1 child)
The LTE antenna? On my phone? When I'm trying to charge somewhere away from home and need to download a shady app to get the charger to work?
(Score: 3, Funny) by epitaxial on Wednesday August 27, @03:04PM
The car you dipshit.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday August 26, @11:20PM
Yet. I'd bet that will change soon, if it hasn't already.
(concept being that more and more there are things that will only work when connected to the 'net)
(Score: 5, Touché) by bussdriver on Tuesday August 26, @06:45PM (1 child)
Did you not read about onstar and how most modern cars sell you out or at least collect data to betray you in the future?
Your car insurance discount at the price of them tracking you will be eventually sold and used in ways you'll never be aware of. Already, those apps use google services for location which is a 3rd party that banks all your data for future mining and only willfully deletes what it has already analyzed into their data. (You could call it a form of compression of your data that turns it into THEIR data; in which AI is the easiest to create and obscure as opposed to previously manually created statistics on your behavior.)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26, @06:59PM
OnStar? You mean Big Brother Star? That stuff came out 15 years after my vehicle rolled off the assembly line. My vehicle has outlived them all, and will outlast any GM product made in the past five years.
We can do what-about-isms all day.
Did you know your license plates are being scanned by the garbage trucks when they pick up your trash and that information is aggregated by insurance companies along with the condition of your yard and the upkeep of your other vehicles to determine your rate? This is also how the repo man finds vehicles. Or that doorbells are uploading facial recognition data from my morning run? I have very little control over that. I have no choice, really.
That doesn't mean that I'm going to bend over and just install Windows 11 on all my personal devices and let Google AI scan my shit and just be some gamer techbro who gets excited about new colors on the latest iPhone.
I pay my insurance without an app. I auto-pay. I don't have an insurance app.
I literally choose not to run Google Play services on my phone. I choose to run libre software where I can. I've been this way for 15 years.
Not being able to refuel my vehicle on a drive is a non-starter for me.
(Score: 0, Troll) by mcgrew on Tuesday August 26, @07:24PM (6 children)
Nice troll, boy. The "privacy issue" has absolutely NOTHING to do with an auto's drive train.
Of course, since you're AC, maybe you're just ignorant?
BTW, EVs don't need replacement parts any more than a ceiling fan does.
The #1 domestic terrorist organization in the US is ICE
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mhajicek on Tuesday August 26, @08:31PM (4 children)
Gas stations work without an app.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 4, Informative) by mcgrew on Tuesday August 26, @09:31PM
So do the EV chargers I've used, one at Walmart and one at the Hyundai dealer. IMO requiring an app should be illegal. But all they know is that you stopped to charge there, your car is on camera at a gas station and if you pay at the pump the station and the credit card company both have your data.
The #1 domestic terrorist organization in the US is ICE
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Tuesday August 26, @09:35PM (2 children)
True, and most have an app that gives you $0.05 or more off a gallon.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26, @10:16PM (1 child)
"True, and most have an app that gives you $0.05 or more off a gallon."
Almost as good as that $0.10 discount for using cash.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Wednesday August 27, @12:22AM
FTFY
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26, @09:18PM
> Of course, since you're AC, maybe you're just ignorant?
I'm a paying member of this site. Since the beginning. There is no GDPR in my country and we are in sort of a fascist technostate now. Maybe there is value among the comments of AC's.
Also, stop trying to "tech bro" me on EV's. You got spun up over nothing. I want an EV. But when I go places, I want to be able to charge my EV without an app. I don't want nor do I have a phone that can do those apps.
If an app is mandatory, then I want laws to protect the data that is collected.
I have a reliable vehicle that I can work on. I mostly bike places. It's a compromise.
(Score: 5, Informative) by DannyB on Tuesday August 26, @06:47PM (4 children)
At a family reunion a few years ago, I learned from a relative who works for one of the big oil companies that:
There simply will come a point where most people can not afford fossil fuels.
They were formed millions of years ago. We've extracted a lot, and continue to do so. What we've used is not coming back.
Conclusion: fossil fuels are going to eventually be too expensive for most people. Not this decade. Probably not next decade. However it is simply an inevitability. There's not an infinite supply of it. That is a simple fact.
Of course, some people don't believe in simple facts.
Also related but inconvenient, burning all that fossil fuel has changed the composition of the atmosphere. We keep getting more extreme weather, as someone once inconveniently predicted, yet people simply stick their fingers in their ears.
If we sing a slaying song tonight, what tools will be used for the slaying?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Tuesday August 26, @07:28PM (2 children)
Why should they care? They don't give a rat's ass about the future, only their own wealth. The oil will outlast everyone alive today. Using it like we do may cause the underground oil to outlast civilization. The changing climate should by now be obvious to even the most stupid moron on the continent.
The #1 domestic terrorist organization in the US is ICE
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday August 26, @09:09PM (1 child)
If we could extend their lifespans to a couple of hundred years, we'd soon see their attitudes change.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Touché) by mcgrew on Tuesday August 26, @09:34PM
Shortening them would be faster and might even save civilization! They would probably rather die than see their industry die, anyway. More humane than forcing a long life on 'em. Being old ain't for wimps!
The #1 domestic terrorist organization in the US is ICE
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday August 26, @09:06PM
Read all about it [exeterclimateforum.com].
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 5, Informative) by MostCynical on Tuesday August 26, @10:46PM
In Australia, Chinese EVs are out-selling Tesla.
BYD, Ola, Chery, etc etc
The anti-loonie backlash against Elon has hurt sales, but the cheaper Chinese alternatives have hurt more.
New Teslas have quite a different tail light treatment, so are easy to spot.
Many EV buyers have home solar, often with a battery.. so maximising use of "free" power.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Wednesday August 27, @01:55PM
"Despite dwindling sales, the Carney government remains committed to its electric vehicle mandate of having 60 per cent of all vehicles sold be ZEVs by 2030 and 100 per cent by 2035, banning all motor vehicle sales."
This is a pipe dream if there ever was one, but maybe it explains why Canadians can't have nice things. It might also help to explain why 1 in 5 Albertans actually support succeeding from Canada to become the 51st state.