electric cars

Going Green – Update 08.23.24

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A quick rundown: First, in the middle of the month, news broke that Superpedestrian was shutting down just 18 months after raising $125 million in fresh funding. A few days later, Micromobility.com, formerly known as Helbiz, was delisted from Nasdaq for failing to maintain a share price above $1. Then came the biggest shockwave of all: Bird, the largest e-scooter company in the U.S. with a one-time valuation of $2.5 billion, filed for bankruptcy.

E-scooter companies are going bankrupt. That should alarm you even if you hate them —https://www.fastcompany.com/91005446/e-scooter-companies-are-going-bankrupt-that-should-alarm-you-even-if-you-hate-them

TBH I never understood this e-scooter thing from the very beginning.

Maybe I’m too risk adverse.

UCLA-led research finds that scooter injuries nearly tripled across the U.S. from 2016 to 2020, with a concurrent increase in severe injuries requiring orthopedic and plastic surgery over the same period.

The study, which compared national trends in scooter and bicycle injuries during the period, also found that costs to treat those injuries rose five-fold, highlighting the financial strain these injuries pose to the healthcare system — a finding that “underscores a critical juncture for discerning the underlying causes of injuries and informing policies for injury prevention,” the researchers note.

University of California – Los Angeles Health Sciences. “Hospitalizations for scooter injuries nearly tripled in the US between 2016 and 2020, UCLA-led research finds.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 9 January 2024 — https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/01/240109121215.htm

Turkey’s Koc Holding said it revoked an agreement with Ford Motor and South Korean battery maker LG Energy Solution for a joint venture to produce battery cells for commercial electric vehicles…LGES said the three companies had mutually agreed to scrap the plan due to the current pace of consumer electrification adoption.

Ford’s joint battery cell plant in Turkey is scrapped — https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/ford-battery-plant-turkey-dropped-slow-ev-adoption

At the end of Q3 2023, Hertz told investors that significant price cutting during the year had “resulted in lower EV residual values, increasing vehicle depreciation expense and negatively impacting salvage cost.” Additionally, its rental EVs were damaged or crashed more often, and the much higher cost of repairs for Tesla vehicles—on average about 20 percent higher than other EVs—has meant that Hertz’s Teslas earn it less money per vehicle than its other rentals.

Consequently, it’s selling off 20,000 EVs over the course of this year. Currently, the company has over 700 EVs for sale, including 35 Chevrolet Bolts, four Kia EV6s, a single BMW i3 and Nissan Leaf, and then 673 Teslas—552 Model 3s and another 121 Model Ys.

Hertz is selling 20,000 used EVs due to high repair costs — https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/01/hertz-is-selling-20000-used-evs-due-to-high-repair-costs/

There is a reason for such unusually rapid depreciation. It is precisely because the device is in need of a new battery – and the cost of that battery is (in this case) in the range of $13,000-plus. Not counting the cost of the installation.

Don’t Buy a Used EV — https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2024/01/12/dont-buy-a-used-ev/

In Indonesia, nickel extraction is causing environmental and social devastation.

The dirty road to clean energy: How China’s electric vehicle boom is ravaging the environment — https://restofworld.org/2022/indonesia-china-ev-nickel/

Over the past few years, as Tesla built out its gigafactory near Berlin, it cut down around half a million trees.Kayrros, a company that analyzes satellite images using AI, made the calculation. Tesla cleared around 813 acres of forest between March 2020 and May 2023, according to the analysis. Tesla cut down 500,000 trees to build its German gigafactory

So going green is good?

Going Green is Not Cheap – Updated 07.04.22

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Polestar sells two models: The $155,000 Polestar 1 hybrid and the $48,400 Polestar 2, a fully electric sedan. And it has grand plans to launch three more vehicles and boost annual sales tenfold by 2025. The company plans to list on the Nasdaq on Friday under the ticker PSNY. 

Electric-car startup Polestar bets you’d rather buy a car from your couch than go to a dealership — https://www.businessinsider.com/polestar-electric-ggpi-stock-tesla-ev-car-buying-2022-6

I hope your battery lasts a long time too.

You pay at least 30-40 percent more up front, for the electric car, itself. And then you pay a sum equivalent to 20-30 percent of its original sales price when it was new, when its battery pack gets old, for a new one. The total increase in cost is at least 50 percent more than the cost of owning a non-electronic car over the same 10-12 year period. And that doesn’t factor in the savings that can be had by continuing to own (and drive) the non-electric car for another 5 or even ten years longer, which is realistically feasible for non-electric cars because they last much longer than electric cars.

The High Cost of Electronic Cars — https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2022/06/20/the-high-cost-of-electronic-cars/

But if your battery does need replacing and you can’t afford it…

Not cheap and not getting any cheaper.

Update 06.23.22

Interest in electric cars has increased as a result of high gas prices, but the rising cost of electric options is putting the vehicles more out of reach for many ordinary consumers….The average cost of raw materials — including the cobalt, nickel, and lithium needed to make EV batteries — is now around $8,255 per vehicle, the research said.

Electric vehicles are getting more expensive because raw material costs have more than doubled to $8,000 — https://www.businessinsider.com/cost-of-making-electric-cars-is-growing-manufacturers-hike-prices-2022-6

Update 07.04.22

If EVs don’t get cheaper, “the market will collapse,” Deboeuf said at the company’s Tremery factory in France. “It’s a big challenge.”

Stellantis: Car market could collapse if EVs don’t get cheaper — https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/stellantis-car-market-could-collapse-if-evs-dont-get-cheaper

The energy and raw material inputs are staggering – and for that reason, so is the cost. How will the cost go down when the materials themselves are expensive, especially in quantity? How will the cost of energy go down, when there is more demand for it – and less generating capacity?

The Canary Just Chirped — https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2022/07/02/the-canary-just-chirped/

Going Green is Not Cheap – Updated 06.23.22

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Polestar sells two models: The $155,000 Polestar 1 hybrid and the $48,400 Polestar 2, a fully electric sedan. And it has grand plans to launch three more vehicles and boost annual sales tenfold by 2025. The company plans to list on the Nasdaq on Friday under the ticker PSNY. 

Electric-car startup Polestar bets you’d rather buy a car from your couch than go to a dealership — https://www.businessinsider.com/polestar-electric-ggpi-stock-tesla-ev-car-buying-2022-6

I hope your battery lasts a long time too.

You pay at least 30-40 percent more up front, for the electric car, itself. And then you pay a sum equivalent to 20-30 percent of its original sales price when it was new, when its battery pack gets old, for a new one. The total increase in cost is at least 50 percent more than the cost of owning a non-electronic car over the same 10-12 year period. And that doesn’t factor in the savings that can be had by continuing to own (and drive) the non-electric car for another 5 or even ten years longer, which is realistically feasible for non-electric cars because they last much longer than electric cars.

The High Cost of Electronic Cars — https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2022/06/20/the-high-cost-of-electronic-cars/

But if your battery does need replacing and you can’t afford it…

Not cheap and not getting any cheaper.

Update 06.23.22

Interest in electric cars has increased as a result of high gas prices, but the rising cost of electric options is putting the vehicles more out of reach for many ordinary consumers….The average cost of raw materials — including the cobalt, nickel, and lithium needed to make EV batteries — is now around $8,255 per vehicle, the research said.

Electric vehicles are getting more expensive because raw material costs have more than doubled to $8,000 — https://www.businessinsider.com/cost-of-making-electric-cars-is-growing-manufacturers-hike-prices-2022-6