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Cheap Gas Fuels Switch From Electric Cars To SUVs
schwit1 points out news that's sure to clash with Earth Day narratives: drivers who bought hybrid and electric cars are switching back to SUVs at a higher rate than ever. Quoting:
According to Edmunds.com, about 22 percent of people who have traded in their hybrids and EVs in 2015 bought a new SUV. The number represents a sharp increase from 18.8 percent last year, and it is nearly double the rate of 11.9 percent just three years ago. Overall, only 45 percent of this year's hybrid and EV trade-ins have gone toward the purchase of another alternative fuel vehicle, down from just over 60 percent in 2012. Never before have loyalty rates for alt-fuel vehicles fallen below 50 percent. ... Edmunds calculates that at the peak average national gas price of $4.67/gallon in October 2012, it would take five years to break even on the $3,770 price difference between a Toyota Camry LE Hybrid ($28,230) and a Toyota Camry LE ($24,460). At today's national average gas price of $2.27/gallon, it would take twice as much time (10.5 years) to close the same gap.
Tax gas and spend the proceeds on "green" R&D.
Table-ized A.I.
We've read this a 1000 times. Stupid people think prices will be low forever. A year later said people cry they are paying $250 a week for gas. Can't fix stupid.
My Camry Hybrid is quieter, smoother, and has over 30 extra HP compared to the 4 cyl Camry. You don't ONLY get improved mileage from most hybrids. They should be comparing the cost of the hybrid vs. the V6 model when calculating years to make up cost (not a perfect comparison, but much closer). They are just skewing statistics...
car is being repaired. Ridiculous! 20 MPG and every time I step on the brakes or the gas it rocks back and forth like a rocking chair. It seats about as many people as a sedan and can carry only slightly more junk than a sedan. Why do people want to drive these things? They aren't attractive, they don't stop/go fast, they can't carry much stuff. I don't get it.
I don't understand why so many people want to drive pickups either. In a pickup you can only haul stuff you care about in decent weather. I get it if you're a farmer or ranch hand and need to haul messy stuff year round, but why would anyone else want to drive a truck? And why is it that the bigger the pickup, the greater the odds that they will back into parking spaces?
Love,
The Oil Industry
P.S. We secretly own Whole Foods. You dumb fucks have been giving your money to us all along.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
TFA is beyond dumb. It's not people switching back, it's people buying a second car for their household. Many people have one EV and one ICE car.
EV sales are rising fast. Few people switch back after getting one and realizing how great they are, mostly because they did their homework and made sure it suited them before spending tens of thousands of dollars.
Um, No.... From the article "about 22 percent of people who have traded in their hybrids and EVs in 2015 bought a new SUV". These are direct trade-ins, not the purchase of a second car.
Life changes. People who are single or a couple who have smaller cars, no matter what type, will buy a bigger car when they have kids, get married, etc. I'm willing to bet that this explains a good percentage of this.
Other explanations might include buying SUVs to tow new recreational toys such as a boats, snow mobiles, etc. There aren't many hybrids on the market that are set up for towing.
Let me know when Toyota starts shipping hybrid vehicles with batteries that actually retain their ability to recharge to a usable capacity for 10+ years.
They've been shipping those batteries... since 2001. See this 10 year checkup from Consumer Reports:
http://www.consumerreports.org...
Moreover, Toyota made it so that you can replace individual battery cells, instead of only being able to replace everything at once. My GF's Prius needed a few cells replaced, and the price was quite reasonable. ($250? I forget the exact number.)
For most people, especially ones with NEW cars, the cost of fuel is such a small portion of TCO that gas mileage is almost inconsequential within reason. People get psychotic when gas swings one way or another because people are idiots, who cannot ignore the 20-80 dollars they spent today in favor of focusing on the 500 dollars they pay every month.
Maybe they shouldn't assume that fuel cost is the reason people got rid of their electrics. Maybe they got tired of the low range, or the length of recharge times, or the inability to haul large items (they are in for a surprise on how little you can put in an SUV, though). Maybe they got tired of having one car for fuel economy and one car for everything else.
The article is trying to paint a picture that people who switch are shortsighted idiots, but there are many other far more likely reasons that people switched.
It does make one feel better about one's own inferior intellect if one paints everybody else as an idiot.
Slashdot Quote: The first version always gets thrown away.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I don't care how cheep gas gets, Plenty of EV charging stations are 100% free. Last I checked, no one in my area was giving away free gas?
Further, people are obviously uninformed or misled on how EV's are, in the most important ways, superior automobiles for the daily use:
1) ZERO MAINTENANCE (except for breaks & tires, wipers/fluid)
2) Vastly fewer points of failure - NO: fuel pumps, alternators, starters, automatic transmission(unless you count a 1 speed transmission), main seals, mufflers, fuel injectors, heater cores, etc., etc...
3) Electricity is far cheaper than any gas any where every day.
4) Used EV's are SUPER CHEAP right now - http://goo.gl/ZAJV81
5) EV's are super quiet, peaceful, meditative.
Your Imperial gallon is larger than a US Gallon.
So he Mazda 6 gets 46 mpg on gas in UK terms.
The Chevy Cruze Diesel gets over 55 mpg.
Also the US uses a different testing method than the EU so often the same car with the same engine will get better ratings in the EU.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The other fact is that pure gas cars are getting really good milage. The Mazda 6 is rated at 40mpg on the highway. The new CX-5 CUV is over 30mpg hwy.
Those are highway mileages. Anything with regenerative breaking will beat pure gas cars around town where there's a significant amount of brakeing.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
There's another reason. There are a lot more hybrid, diesel, and efficient trucks and SUVs becoming available. Most Americans' sense of the fuel efficiency of vehicles is distorted because it's measured in MPG. MPG is actually the inverse of fuel economy. Consequently the amount of fuel saved by vehicles like the Prius is exaggerated.
Here are the EPA figures for a 2004 3L 4WD Toyota Highlander, a 2015 3L 4WD Toyota Highlander Hybrid, and a 2015 Prius. Say you'd previously owned the 2004 Highlander and were looking to replace it. If you looked only at MPG, you'd think the Prius saves you a lot more gas than the Highlander Hybrid. The Prius gets 31 more MPG while the Highlander Hybrid only gets 9 more MPG.
But MPG is the inverse of fuel economy. Scroll down to "Annual Fuel Cost". The 2004 Highlander is estimated to cost $1900/yr in fuel. The Highlander Hybrid $1300/yr. The Prius $700/yr. In other words, switching to the Highlander Hybrid saves you $600/yr. Switching to the Prius saves you $1200/yr. The Highlander Hybrid gives you 50% the fuel savings of a Prius despite "only" getting a 9 MPG improvement vs 31 MPG improvement. How can this be? Because MPG is the inverse of fuel economy. Every time you double MPG, you save half the fuel you did in the previous doubling.
A lot of people laughed when hybrid trucks and SUVs first came out. If you want to save gas with a hybrid, why are you buying a big truck instead of an econobox like the Prius? But they were being deceived by MPG being the inverse of fuel consumption. If we as a country want to reduce fuel consumption, it's actually the low MPG vehicles like trucks and SUVs whose fuel economy you want to improve first by hybrid-izing them. They're the ones burning a disproportionately large amount of fuel, so improving their mileage first will save more fuel. Economy cars already burn so little fuel that making them a hybrid gets you little improvement. e.g. Dropping a hybrid in a 35 MPG economy car to get 50 MPG only saves you $350/yr by EPA estimates. While dropping the hybrid in a 19 MPG SUV to get 28 MPG saves you $600/yr. In other words, each SUV-buyer you can convince to buy a hybrid SUV instead saves nearly twice as much fuel as each environmentalist you convince to switch from their already-efficient car to a Prius.
If we really want to save gas, we should be concentrating on ways to improve the mileage of pickup trucks, SUVs, minivans, and tractor trailers (actually most of their cargo should be shifted to trains, but that's another argument). The rest of the world uses liters/100 km to avoid this misconception about fuel economy.