Electric cars are rapidly approaching the point where they're actually cheaper than ICE cars, due to lower operating costs. As they scale up, they may well become cheaper up front, too.
I try and follow the market closely and the numbers don't seem to make sense yet. Furthermore evs will not solve urban transport problems unless they will be unviable to many. Now, taking pointless, huge and very polluting SUV status symbols of the road (that's where they are made to go after all...) will bring vast benefits to everybody involved and guess what? It doesn't have to be the poorer people who feel the pain. But e bikes? That's a great idea. A government program to trade a car for an e bike and merits would be amazing. E scooters likewise are officially illegal, but i think police here are very wise to turn a blind eye to them.
I'd love to believe in this, but the issue is really government policy, at least in the US. Most areas have road design and zoning that's hostile to anything that's not a car, especially bikes.
We recently moved from Munich, and there we didn't even have a car, just public transport and biking for us. Now we're living in Kirkland, we have no car and will probably get another one, and biking will probably be minimal, honestly. We can bike okay to the closest grocery store/shopping center, but going further seems sketchy.
A lot of working poor people rely on being able to do low cost maintenance themselves or bringing it to a family member or close friend with experience or a very trusted repair shop. They would never get their car serviced at the dealer given the costs. If the cost of repair is too large they sell the car for scrap and buy another bottom of market car and repeat the process. What happens for these people in the EV age, when its illegal to work on your own Tesla and everything will be serviced at a first party dealership?
I think a more likely issues is the large capital cost of replacing the battery will put a floor on the affordability of EV's. Bangernomics[1] is probably on its way out.
Well, I think the idea is that while it would be difficult to work on an EV motor yourself, it's also much less necessary, as electric motors are much simpler, with far fewer moving parts. I don't know if we have enough data yet to evaluate, but EV's should be much lower maintenance in that regard.
Outside of the powertrain, seems like the rest of the car should be similar though, like tires and brakes, right?
It will be similar but who knows if you could do stuff like change rotting suspension bushings, change cabin air filters, replace rusting brake lines with third party parts or if Tesla will sell you these parts themselves directly (I'd expect not). I looked up how you change the headlight bulb on a tesla and it apparently involves removing the front wheel. Most other cars that's a thirty second job.
For Tesla that doesn't surprise me, but they're unusual in many respects. I'd be more surprised if what you're suggesting became true for EV's in general.
