this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
46 points (82.9% liked)

[Dormant] Electric Vehicles

3207 readers
1 users here now

We have moved to:

[email protected]

A community for the sharing of links, news, and discussion related to Electric Vehicles.

Rules

  1. No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, casteism, speciesism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia.
  2. Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
  3. No self-promotion.
  4. No irrelevant content. All posts must be relevant and related to plug-in electric vehicles — BEVs or PHEVs.
  5. No trolling.
  6. Policy, not politics. Submissions and comments about effective policymaking are allowed and encouraged in the community, however conversations and submissions about parties, politicians, and those devolving into general tribalism will be removed.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Well R&D costs a ton of money

The reason why Chinese ones are so cheap is that the government is subsidizing them

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

thats the correct thing to do if you want to transition away from oil fast.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I agree on that, there should be more incentive for people to get EVs

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago

BYD also owns the entire supply chain, from lithium mines to battery manufacturing to car assembly to sales. Nobody else can do that right now.

And China has the overwhelming advantage in lithium supply to the rest of the world.

IIRC it’s not R&D that is the main cost of EVs these days, but the cost of the batteries themselves is still absurdly high. It’s down to $139/kWh as of Nov 2023, but keep that in perspective of an EV: a 72 kWh battery is $10k in raw material costs alone. I think I remember seeing a quote that affordable EVs (unsubsidized) can’t become a realistic goal until lithium prices break the $100 threshold.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

That and the fact that a lot of auto makers in the US only want to make luxury EVs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

It's almost like the US has spent billions developing electric cars that the Chinese manufacturers don't have to spend on.

🤔