• CatfishSushi@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Henry Ford designed the Model T to be a bare-bones vehicle affordable for the everyday person. Volkswagon designed the Beetle to be a bare-bones vehicle affordable for the everyday person.

    The first car company to design an EV that’s a bare-bones vehicle affordable for the everyday person will sell lots of them. Profit per car may be lower but perhaps we need to set the need for maximum profits aside on this particular issue?

    My raises aren’t even CLOSE to keeping up with inflation. Rather hard to splurge on a fancy EV with tons of high-tech nice-to-have features that are just going to break anyway. All I need to do is to get from point A to point B and have AC, heat and a half-decent stereo system.

    • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      He’d be rolling in his grave if he saw the clickwrap agreements they have to get in a modern car now. Can’t start the ignition without sharing your personal data with the car maker and 799 of its “partners.”

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Henry Ford? I think he’d be more likely to be impressed and jealous. He made an affordable car because no one had thought of selling the ability to buy a car in addition to the car itself in his time.

      • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Tangentially related, there’s a supermarket chain in my country that requires you to hand over your personal details to even apply for a job. The rough wording is something like: ‘all your personal information in perpitutity but only internally and with people we do business with.’ Except since selling my personal info would be a business transaction that clause includes potentially every human being on the planet.

    • epyon22@programming.dev
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      2 years ago

      I’m putting money on Toyota and their Panasonic batteries to build something like a Corolla EV for $25k USD 400 mile range.

      Infrastructure is going to have to keep up too. Unless you are in a progressive/new/expensive apartment/neighborhood has reliable access to chargers that’s going to have to change before you can start selling EVs to lower and lower middle class. Right now they only make sense of you have a garage to park in.

        • epyon22@programming.dev
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          2 years ago

          I think they are just being very conservative on their lineup. They’ll hold on to hybrids till they can absolutely rock the EV world. Technology that improves EVs generally improves hybrids also and they will just sell better because they are more flexible.

          • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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            2 years ago

            Well that’s not going to work in Europe, where the EV mandates are hitting now. I guess it’s Toyota’s plan to cede one third of the world car market to European, Chinese and American manufacturers.

        • prole@sh.itjust.works
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          2 years ago

          They’ve been openly working on new battery tech that’s apparently going to change the entire industry. I’m pretty sure they have plenty of interest in selling them, they just don’t have the tech they want for them yet.

          • rikonium@discuss.tchncs.de
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            2 years ago

            Those types of announcements are their equivalent of Tesla’s “full-self driving next year guys!” every year since like 2015?

      • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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        2 years ago

        Toyota has been claiming that since 2010. They are no closer to a “solid state battery” that they have been raving about for the last 13 years. They don’t even sell electric cars in Japan!

        Toyota is widely considered to be the furthest behind the technology curve of all global car manufacturers, aside from maybe Lada.

        • epyon22@programming.dev
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          2 years ago

          They’ve got a huge share of the hybrid market. Why release something sub par (expensive, low range, needs to be plugged in) my guess is they let Tesla and other companies fight it out and learn from them wait for the infrastructure to catch up then sell to the common person not just people who can afford to have a less practical car.

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Also power generation capacity needs to increase for everyone to drive EVs. Just think of all the power that is currently handled by burning gas in personal power plants.

        Though some of that will be mitigated by less need to refine gas and transport it to every gas station.

        • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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          2 years ago

          This isn’t really the case, as there is a lot of spare electrical capacity available at night time, which is when most people charge their cars. That’s also when electricity is the cheapest.

          We charge our two cars off of a 110 volt charger. It uses less electricity than the water heater in our house.

        • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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          2 years ago

          This isn’t really the case, as there is a lot of spare electrical capacity available at night time, which is when most people charge their cars. That’s also when electricity is the cheapest.

          We charge our two cars off of a 110 volt charger. They use less electricity than the water heater in our house.