“Carmakers' own statements to investors put electric cars at profit parity with combustion by the end of the decade, and BMW and Volvo Cars say they are already there on their newest models. Price and margin parity comes from scale.”
and
“Renault makes higher margins on its smallest electric models than on its larger ones, and Stellantis expects its ~€15,000 e-car to reach cost parity with ICEs in 2028.”
So, they aren’t only building (small) electric cars in order to meet EU emission regulations anymore.
That page also has bad news “Car CO₂ emissions are barely falling”. I think that’s mostly a matter of time, though. Even if all car and truck sales would be for fully electric vehicles, it would take decades to get rid of all ICE vehicles.
>it would take decades to get rid of all ICE vehicles
If governments were serious and fair about it, they'd just provide decent subsidies (or similar formula) to people who don't have enough money to switch, and it'd happen faster. What's going to happen though, is that many governments will just tax ICE vehicles to death (+ the cheaper chinese vehicles) while blaming you for not having enough money to switch.
Beware the the "fair". Currently, governments are taking in vast amounts through fuel taxes. That will need to be replaced. It wont be an extra fee at registration. Current politics favors use taxes. As the concept of taxing electricity going into cars is a massive cluster of issues (ie the "smart grid" with differemt rates for different uses) the answer will likely be road pricing: a per-mile fee, which could mean manditory tracking. The transition to EVs as fair market actors is not over. It hasnt really begun.
The UK has stated that the current mileage check within the annual roadworthiness test will supply this data.
A clear weakness is that mileage readings can be altered. This used to matter on a smaller scale: dodgy second-hand sales, but now more or less anyone could be considered as potentially incentivised to interfere.
The mileage must remain a changeable field since the recording component may need replacement, for example, after accident damage or to correct a fault in the assembly that recording memory is part of.
Pure mileage is one option but many have voiced other structures such as altering prices based on time/place/road driven, which would require more data than simple odometer readings.
A more central issue is the synergy between fuel consumption and damage to roads. Heavier vehicles do more damage but also burn more gas and so pay more tax, a synergy between cost and revenue. A flat rate based on mileage alone would equate all EVs as the same regardless of some being massively more damaging than others. We would need different rates for difference classes/weights of vehicles.
fuel pump meters can be altered too as well a farm diesel abuses - scofflaws trying to get around paying their fair share will always take some regulatory effort
Do it like taxes, have a low rate for the first X kwhs then increase after. Great aunt Mildred gets to heat her home, your neighbour that has a massive house, EVs, jacuzzi etc etc pays more.
EVs are always going to be an outsized user of electricity, and it's unclear to me why someone's jacuzzi should be heated vat free.
Because the use of a jacuzzi does not burden any public resources. That jacuzzi isn't occupying a space on a road, or adding wear and tear to that road. And you don't need an entire licensing/enforcement infrastructure to regulate who/how/where/when jacuzzis are to be used.
I've seen governments give tax incentives to buy EVs that are then sold 2-5 years later, pumping a secondary market of second hand EVs. Cheaper for the government (they don't pay, they just take less tax).
Another approach is to incentivise middle to high income earners like Australia has done re novated leases on EVs being exempt from fringe benefits tax.
Lower income people aren't buying new cars, they buy second hand.
So be incentivising others to purchase new EVs over combustion, it creates a supply for the second hand market in 5-10 year horizon for those lower income earners. And while subsidies are in place for new models, this further pushes down the price of used EVs.
It'll be interesting what happens to Australias second hand EV market when the subsidies end in 2029.
I agree with what you're saying, I also suspect that governments will tax ics at a certain point, not only to get rid of them but also because they can get away with it because the whole population isn't impacted.
So I'm concerned about a time where the rich have EVs, the poorest haven't, and the government are taxing ics.
I'd like to see some kind of Keighley car standard to get cheaper EVs on the market. Here in Europe we have quadricycles, but the speeds are limited to only make them useful for cities.
>high income earners like Australia has done re novated leases on EVs being exempt from fringe benefits tax.
UK did somethin like that with ZEV Mandate. Salary Sacrifice, almost zero BiK, 100% tax writeoff, no road and luxury tax. All this resulted in flooding the market by luxury 100K pound German EVs, which all ended up on second hand marked 2-3 years later when leases ended breaking depreciation records.
France does this. It's called social leasing and is offered for those with low income but reasonable work related mileage.
It could be argued that just returning the tax money to the people (and/or reducing regressive taxes) is a fairer approach as it gives money to those who cycle or take public transport as well as those who switch to EVs.
Govts could do a lot of things. They could require employers to offer remote work (like during COVID) or provide free charging. Its a lot easier for big corporate buildings, mostly shared by many corps, and have a parking garage to add chargers. They also can negotiate aggressively with utilities and just get EVs charged for free. 20%+ of solar is curtailed anyways, which is only going to increase. Or they can add solar panels. Businesses in every country have tons and tons of incentives and subsidies for all kind of things. Govts have absolutely no problems giving incentives to businesses. Its only when regular people get a tiny benefit for a limited amount of time, everyone kicks up a fuss ..
€25,000 is still pricey. The BYD Atto 1 recently dropped to AU$19,990 in Australia, which is €12,412. I think it will be hugely popular at this price point.
Cars are just more expensive in Europe than in Australia. In Europe, cars are still a bit of a luxury, whereas in Australia, they’re an absolute necessity.
Interesting in which part of Europe are you living to make such a statement for the bit of luxury. The only country I could think of is the Netherlands and probably Belgium.
Because i don't live in a big city (and i would dread to) the 10km commute to work is either
1) 15-25 min by car
2) 25-30 min by bike
3) 40-60 min by public transport, with at least one change
And i'm lucky as we recently moved the office to be a good 4km nearer from my home. That was further out requiring 25min by car, and aobut 1h30min by public transport with at least two changes.
Also if i want to do anything beside going in my backyard on my free time, car is a necessity.
European cities are wastly more accessible as a pedestrian than australian or north american cities. And I count northern, southern, central, western and easterneuropenan cities in that.Thre other continents have some examples where the inner cities are also okayish from a pedestrian or cyclist POV, but a lot and especially suburbia is so much worse in pretty much all regions. A mining town in northern Sweden is better than suburbia on Long Island!
Yes - car is a bit of a luxury in Europe if you don't do any of those things - live in the rural parts of the country, leave the urban core, have kids, visit parents, friends and grandparents, go to your rural property, go the mountains, the beach, buy bulky things, buy things in bulk, go to any other city just for exploration and fun, go outside the city to watch the milky way, do anything spontaneous, have job in the trades or have girlfriend.
You may not need car daily, but you definitely need it at least weekly.
Outside France people don't live in big clusters. Take a look at the night satellite view. All those small/continuous towns do not have (functional) public transport. In my 12k-people town we don't have buses other than school buses and long-distance ones. And unfortunately people don't really walk other than for leisure.
As far as I know the closest city with public transport counts 100k residents, but there are 60 smaller towns in my province alone.
Yeah. I was recently without a car for three weeks (bangernomics finally stopped winning) and decided that I'd learned the wrong lesson about car dependency: despite living in a city with a decent bus service, I really did benefit a lot from having a car and needed to buy a secondhand one as soon as possible, even though I am waiting for my leased EV to arrive in a few months.
You have to be quite central in quite a big city to not need a car. But that does cover quite a lot of people - I would say much of the population of London and the most central bits of Manchester and Birmingham, which is easily 10-20m people.
It varies greatly by region. I grew up in a German village - most people got a car when they turned 18, usually a cheap used one. Now I live in Berlin, where I didn't have a car for years, and now I have one (a cheap used one) that I use about once a month.
There also higher tariffs and transport cost. Shipping cars from China to the EU can cost up to a few thousand per car. Local production seems less competitive. But the bottom line is that there are now a lot of relatively affordable EVs in the market. The cheapest cars in most markets now include EVs.
For example the Dacia Spring that is selling for around 17K Euros in Germany. And then there are tax rebates, discounts, etc. that are causing some of these cars to be available for a lot less occasionally in some markets.
Markets where EVs have been available in larger numbers for a while now have a sizable EV market. Australia is relatively early with its adoption, so the second hand market is a lot smaller there. The EU as a relatively early adopter has a lot of EVs from 2020 or earlier that are still under warranty and being traded in quite large numbers now. In the last few months these been a very hot commodity as lots of people are feeling the pain of high fuel prices.
All these new small cars will become a large part of the second hand car market in a few years. There will many be millions of them on the roads in a few years. And they last quite long.
BYD still has some work left to do then since the Volkswagen ID.Polo is 26 390 €. The ID.Polo is also considerably prettier than the Dolphin Surf, so it probably needs a bigger price cut to get customers.
Cars sold in China have 13% VAT. Cars sold in Germany have 19% VAT. Cars sold in the Nordics have ≥25% VAT. Even ignoring shipping, tariffs, local salaries, non-VAT car taxes, etc., there’s no way to price a car the same in China as in EU.
Personal vehicles are atypical as a market in that a huge percentage of people buy used rather than new. So when you look at new vehicle price, you have to factor in that the top 20% (not sure about actual percentage) of people are buying new, then corporate entities are financing a huge segment, like maybe 40%, and the rest of us buy used vehicles downstream from them. €25k is barely above entry level in Europe, but it can only be afforded by most people because of this system.
So you put the tariff on Chinese imports to make the price comparable to domestic manufacturers so they can compete, then give the 10k euro on all EVs sold.
Yeah, these are insane prices considering BYD Seagull (aka Dolphin Surf) cost in China around 9000EUR. It's not great car, but reasonable cheap small basic car, but when it gets to Europe for instance here in Czechia it cost 20000EUR, I fail to see how can anyone justify double price of that car and still think it's cheap.
Rather, China is dumping EVs at a national level. EVs don't generate profits, and entering this market now would only result in huge losses. so under normal business judgment, companies wouldn't enter the EV car market. They can only be produced when subsidies and tariffs are guaranteed to protect them.
Nah. Dumping means unprofitably sold with subsidies making up the difference.
China cancelled subsidies to BYD this year, and last year, those subsidies were 1/3 of BYD profits. Subsidies helped get them off the ground but they were unit-profitable by the time they got to exporting.
Xiaomi never had subsidies at all, their cars were profitable from launch, with 6 month waitlists to buy. Their export plan is to start with Germany first because they're cocky as hell and the cars are really nice.
BYD pricing don't make material sense. Atto 1 appears to be sold at IDR199m in Indonesia, AUD19,990 in Australia, EUR19,990 in EU, and GBP18,500. Normalized in USD, it's 11k, 14k, 22k, 25k respectively. It's clearly set to 19k-25k worth of workers' income, and there is no way that their prices are representative of costs.
My mother do not move more than 100km a day anymore (and even that is a stretch, I think the most she drive is to the beach 25 km away), but 25k€ is a very big investment. She recently bought a second hand electric car for 9k€ and is very happy with it.
There's a bit of a problem that secondhand EVs aren't on the market until a couple of years after someone has bought them new. So there's a bottleneck. In this case all the cheap leasing deals work in favor of the eventual secondhand market.
I was shocked at the thought of having to move "only" 100km a day... we are living in such different worlds. And yes I do commute, but by public transport and less than 30km away and definitely not every day.
I was also shocked reading OP's post, but after thinking about it a bit I came to the conclusion that they didn't meant "100km daily" but more like "having less than 100km range is not an issue because she never drive that much any day of the year".
Having to recharge the car during a single trip being seen as an issue by OP.
Sorry, my command of English slipped up here. She rarely drives more than 10 km daily for her work,and will drive at most 100km in a single day, so she doesn't need range.
Technically yes - it is a 3-door car with two seats behind the driver. However, in my experience only small persons or kids will enjoy sitting on the rear seats. I recall that the rear seats were good as an extra space for the backpacks or shopping bags.
Good looking but also a quite expensive one! If it will be for masses the prices will likely need to become substantially lower.
And we need the charging capacity for all those vehicles which is a huge issue. For example in the Netherlands this shows the capacity available to use extra power connections:
Open Autotrader -> Fiat 500e -> New -> First car: https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202506113398641 discounted to £15k. That is just a really cheap car. Even the nominal RRP £23,685 is cheap. If you want cheaper there is Dacia Spring and the cheapest BYD.
> The goals of the environmental improvements
The Netherlands of all people should understand about sea level rise and the real world capacity available to absorb CO2.
Quite a lot of Fiat 500s around me in the UK, as well as various species of Mini. But you can see the bloat even there. There's the Fiat 500X, which is a "SUV crossover" (the hilarious concept of a large small car), and the Mini Countryman.
Wanting a large small car is understandable from a certain point of view. People want a car where their line of sight is higher and where they don’t have to do squats while getting in and out.
This leads to taller cars, which are unstable so they have to fatten it as well. That leads to the models you mention.
I get that it's supposed to be a low speed city car where parking ease maybe matters more, but it's hilarious to see an EV where every newton of drag matters designed like a rounded brick on wheels. In fact most modern cars except for sedans seem to not give two shits about aero anymore which is leaving so much range on the table.
The Topolino is a type approval hack: it's an "electric quadricycle", ie legally a golf cart, and limited to 28mph in the UK and not allowed on motorways.
There's been a few of these like the Renault Twizy, and the limitations make them a gimmick that doesn't sell very well.
Crash safety design features are a decent contributor to cost. I suspect manufacturers think shrinking the frame a bit, removing two doors and back seat won't drop the cost enough to convince people to buy them.
Weirdly enough, when these smaller two seaters show up, they are almost always overprice and getting a four seater, and just not using backseats, are a better deal. E.g. the Microlino is €20K, so why not just get the Citroen ë-C3, it's the same price, with better range?
Mazda and Toyota have dragged a bit on pure-EV designs despite Toyota's excellent hybrids, because they're unwilling to give up on petrol engines. But they seem to be gradually getting the memo.
The charging situation need to be factored in. Charging at home, it has enough range. Public charging, range buys the likely hood of charging convenience.
Public charging infrastructure in most of Europe is exceptional[0], especially for cars like the Polo, which is a car typically used in populated areas.
in the US, I go to pump twice a week to fill my small car(Miata gang) which gets roughly 38 MPG. Those two trips are maybe 3 minutes max combined.
If I where to go EV home charging instead, I'd need to have it more or less plugged in every night. Which of course isn't a shower stopper especially when fuel savings are factored in.
But in my case the MSRP of my car+ fuel costs+ time/convenience is a slightly better experience than if I had a full EV with it's associated MSRP/convenience.
I look forward to my first EV, cuz I know I'll have a "come to god" moment where I realize how much easier/simpler charging at home is.
My mother gets motability and has an ev so where does this fit in between the standard model where middle classes buy ev vehicles and poor people buy used ice vehicles
Motability is a leasing scheme, and for complicated reasons the manufacturers (especially Stellantis) are offering cheap lease deals.
In the case of Stellantis I believe this is driven by "compliance" requirements - the need to sell a certain percentage of EVs to avoid being fined by the EU. So they're not especially great EVs, but once they go to the lease firm they're counted as "sold". Someone may take a loss on the depreciation later, but not the driver.
A special consideration for Motability is that PIP recipients aren't allowed to save up for anything, so whatever vehicle they have has to be on finance.
> PIP recipients aren't allowed to save up for anything
That's incorrect.
Some, not all, PIP recipients are also in receipt of means-tested benefits, such as Universal Credit for example, which has a £6k capital disregard, and a reduction of benefits between £6k and £16k, and no entitlement over £16k. (Also I'm sure there are PIP recipients who work and receive no other benefits)
There surely are PIP recipients who would end up with savings of over £6k if they did not spend their PIP on anything else, and Motability is a legitimate way to spend it in the eyes of the DWP.
idk how is it that HN articles often match whatever currently obsesses me. I'm going to buy an EV next year and i'm looking for a 2nd hand one exactly in this range.
Enjoy the overnight cheap electricity while it lasts. The only long-term strategy is investment in solar and batteries – use your temporary savings the government is giving you to invest in solar etc. Some governments are signalling that we have a role to play in electricity infrastructure investment...
Governments are only temporarily letting you get away with not paying the 0.35-0.80 EUR fuel duty on each litre of petrol/diesel (which then has VAT added. These taxes amount to 100s of billions a year across all of Europe). UK is steaming ahead with a per-mile tax on EVs and hybrids, for example.
It's not the 90s. Once you put it on finance, it's often cheaper than a monthly rail pass. Depending obviously on where you are and how often you travel. And also far cheaper than doing the same trip on taxis/uber even just a few days a month.
>Once you put it on finance, it's often cheaper than a monthly rail pass
Cannot this be said about anything? Choose a long enough finance and it's "cheap". Let's forget you'd be paying (at least in Europe) easily 1.6x the price of the car because of the small payments.
True, but it enables you to compare things against those which you can't buy upfront. London Travelcard zones 1-6 is £3264 annually or £313/month, but there's no option to buy multiple years in advance as if you were buying a car outright.
£313/mo is more expensive than the cheapest new car leases, but you wouldn't want to drive a car through London zone 1, and you'd have to pay £18/day in the congestion zone.
"New and used vehicles are substitutes. When the price of a good’s substitute increases, the demand curve for that good shifts outward and the equilibrium price and quantity supplied both increase. Thus, increasing the quality-adjusted price of new vehicles will result in an increase in equilibrium price and quantity of used vehicles....Practically, when new vehicles become more expensive, demand for used vehicles increases (and these used vehicles become more expensive"
I see your point and feel/hope the same cost structures (IE;cheap chinese cars) will eventually get here( here being US for me). It's not like detroit is bustling anymore anyways.
But on that note, chinese companies aren't building a 10k car profitably. Their OEMs have a dizzying array of subsidies and agreements that allow "market friendly price fixing" and protection from going bust. They are very smartly playing a long game that might end up making everyone better off, we'll see.
A EU or US OEM in the same position would just not be possible from the start.
-An existing one IE VW or Ford could leverage massive chains to drive down MSRP, but the public nature of the companies won't allow that for too long.
-A new OEM ie "slate trucks" has gone thru this, seeing MSRP jump by 1/3-1/2 simply because decision of the then ruling party changed rebate scenario, as well as global shipping rates skyrocketing.
That said, if the EU car industry falls over completely*, there's no longer a reason for protectionist trade rules, and the EU then gets the benefit of cheaper Chinese cars.
* Short-term, Trump's tariffs and the significance of the US as an export market to several major EU producers are bad; long-term, China's actually really good at this and out-competing all western production, US and EU. Just like the chicken and egg, which comes first of "governments stop protecting the industry because the industry is important" and "the industry stops being important because the government stopped protecting it" is… well, "stop assuming all eggs have to contain chickens": there's plenty of ways either could fail independently of the other, but when it fails, the mutual support goes with it and it stays down.
I think the better news (from https://www.transportenvironment.org/articles/ev-progress-re...) is:
“Carmakers' own statements to investors put electric cars at profit parity with combustion by the end of the decade, and BMW and Volvo Cars say they are already there on their newest models. Price and margin parity comes from scale.”
and
“Renault makes higher margins on its smallest electric models than on its larger ones, and Stellantis expects its ~€15,000 e-car to reach cost parity with ICEs in 2028.”
So, they aren’t only building (small) electric cars in order to meet EU emission regulations anymore.
That page also has bad news “Car CO₂ emissions are barely falling”. I think that’s mostly a matter of time, though. Even if all car and truck sales would be for fully electric vehicles, it would take decades to get rid of all ICE vehicles.
>it would take decades to get rid of all ICE vehicles
If governments were serious and fair about it, they'd just provide decent subsidies (or similar formula) to people who don't have enough money to switch, and it'd happen faster. What's going to happen though, is that many governments will just tax ICE vehicles to death (+ the cheaper chinese vehicles) while blaming you for not having enough money to switch.
Beware the the "fair". Currently, governments are taking in vast amounts through fuel taxes. That will need to be replaced. It wont be an extra fee at registration. Current politics favors use taxes. As the concept of taxing electricity going into cars is a massive cluster of issues (ie the "smart grid" with differemt rates for different uses) the answer will likely be road pricing: a per-mile fee, which could mean manditory tracking. The transition to EVs as fair market actors is not over. It hasnt really begun.
The UK has stated that the current mileage check within the annual roadworthiness test will supply this data.
A clear weakness is that mileage readings can be altered. This used to matter on a smaller scale: dodgy second-hand sales, but now more or less anyone could be considered as potentially incentivised to interfere.
The mileage must remain a changeable field since the recording component may need replacement, for example, after accident damage or to correct a fault in the assembly that recording memory is part of.
Pure mileage is one option but many have voiced other structures such as altering prices based on time/place/road driven, which would require more data than simple odometer readings.
A more central issue is the synergy between fuel consumption and damage to roads. Heavier vehicles do more damage but also burn more gas and so pay more tax, a synergy between cost and revenue. A flat rate based on mileage alone would equate all EVs as the same regardless of some being massively more damaging than others. We would need different rates for difference classes/weights of vehicles.
fuel pump meters can be altered too as well a farm diesel abuses - scofflaws trying to get around paying their fair share will always take some regulatory effort
I don't know why they don't just tax electricity?
Do it like taxes, have a low rate for the first X kwhs then increase after. Great aunt Mildred gets to heat her home, your neighbour that has a massive house, EVs, jacuzzi etc etc pays more.
EVs are always going to be an outsized user of electricity, and it's unclear to me why someone's jacuzzi should be heated vat free.
Because the use of a jacuzzi does not burden any public resources. That jacuzzi isn't occupying a space on a road, or adding wear and tear to that road. And you don't need an entire licensing/enforcement infrastructure to regulate who/how/where/when jacuzzis are to be used.
I've seen governments give tax incentives to buy EVs that are then sold 2-5 years later, pumping a secondary market of second hand EVs. Cheaper for the government (they don't pay, they just take less tax).
Are you talking about UK? that resulted in luxury EVs nobody wants because E-trons and Mercedes are unrepairable.
Another approach is to incentivise middle to high income earners like Australia has done re novated leases on EVs being exempt from fringe benefits tax.
Lower income people aren't buying new cars, they buy second hand.
So be incentivising others to purchase new EVs over combustion, it creates a supply for the second hand market in 5-10 year horizon for those lower income earners. And while subsidies are in place for new models, this further pushes down the price of used EVs.
It'll be interesting what happens to Australias second hand EV market when the subsidies end in 2029.
I agree with what you're saying, I also suspect that governments will tax ics at a certain point, not only to get rid of them but also because they can get away with it because the whole population isn't impacted.
So I'm concerned about a time where the rich have EVs, the poorest haven't, and the government are taxing ics.
I'd like to see some kind of Keighley car standard to get cheaper EVs on the market. Here in Europe we have quadricycles, but the speeds are limited to only make them useful for cities.
>high income earners like Australia has done re novated leases on EVs being exempt from fringe benefits tax.
UK did somethin like that with ZEV Mandate. Salary Sacrifice, almost zero BiK, 100% tax writeoff, no road and luxury tax. All this resulted in flooding the market by luxury 100K pound German EVs, which all ended up on second hand marked 2-3 years later when leases ended breaking depreciation records.
Harry Metcalfe video about this scheme from 2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwUDR8WTTKQ
France does this. It's called social leasing and is offered for those with low income but reasonable work related mileage.
It could be argued that just returning the tax money to the people (and/or reducing regressive taxes) is a fairer approach as it gives money to those who cycle or take public transport as well as those who switch to EVs.
Govts could do a lot of things. They could require employers to offer remote work (like during COVID) or provide free charging. Its a lot easier for big corporate buildings, mostly shared by many corps, and have a parking garage to add chargers. They also can negotiate aggressively with utilities and just get EVs charged for free. 20%+ of solar is curtailed anyways, which is only going to increase. Or they can add solar panels. Businesses in every country have tons and tons of incentives and subsidies for all kind of things. Govts have absolutely no problems giving incentives to businesses. Its only when regular people get a tiny benefit for a limited amount of time, everyone kicks up a fuss ..
€25,000 is still pricey. The BYD Atto 1 recently dropped to AU$19,990 in Australia, which is €12,412. I think it will be hugely popular at this price point.
I can't imagine a car selling for that price in the US. :(
Cars are just more expensive in Europe than in Australia. In Europe, cars are still a bit of a luxury, whereas in Australia, they’re an absolute necessity.
Isn't it just different levels of import duty and/or proximity to China?
(normally something being essential drives the price up)
Interesting in which part of Europe are you living to make such a statement for the bit of luxury. The only country I could think of is the Netherlands and probably Belgium.
about to say the same.
Because i don't live in a big city (and i would dread to) the 10km commute to work is either
1) 15-25 min by car
2) 25-30 min by bike
3) 40-60 min by public transport, with at least one change
And i'm lucky as we recently moved the office to be a good 4km nearer from my home. That was further out requiring 25min by car, and aobut 1h30min by public transport with at least two changes.
Also if i want to do anything beside going in my backyard on my free time, car is a necessity.
But you can walk to your neighbor 200m down the road. That feels (and actually may be) illegal on other continents.
European cities are wastly more accessible as a pedestrian than australian or north american cities. And I count northern, southern, central, western and easterneuropenan cities in that.Thre other continents have some examples where the inner cities are also okayish from a pedestrian or cyclist POV, but a lot and especially suburbia is so much worse in pretty much all regions. A mining town in northern Sweden is better than suburbia on Long Island!
Yes - car is a bit of a luxury in Europe if you don't do any of those things - live in the rural parts of the country, leave the urban core, have kids, visit parents, friends and grandparents, go to your rural property, go the mountains, the beach, buy bulky things, buy things in bulk, go to any other city just for exploration and fun, go outside the city to watch the milky way, do anything spontaneous, have job in the trades or have girlfriend.
You may not need car daily, but you definitely need it at least weekly.
I do ¾ of those things, including two children and a wife, without a car.
Outside France people don't live in big clusters. Take a look at the night satellite view. All those small/continuous towns do not have (functional) public transport. In my 12k-people town we don't have buses other than school buses and long-distance ones. And unfortunately people don't really walk other than for leisure.
As far as I know the closest city with public transport counts 100k residents, but there are 60 smaller towns in my province alone.
Yeah. I was recently without a car for three weeks (bangernomics finally stopped winning) and decided that I'd learned the wrong lesson about car dependency: despite living in a city with a decent bus service, I really did benefit a lot from having a car and needed to buy a secondhand one as soon as possible, even though I am waiting for my leased EV to arrive in a few months.
You have to be quite central in quite a big city to not need a car. But that does cover quite a lot of people - I would say much of the population of London and the most central bits of Manchester and Birmingham, which is easily 10-20m people.
It varies greatly by region. I grew up in a German village - most people got a car when they turned 18, usually a cheap used one. Now I live in Berlin, where I didn't have a car for years, and now I have one (a cheap used one) that I use about once a month.
Jeez, cars are absolute necessity in US, and yet still ave cost new runs $50,000 US or about 44,000 euros.
I can assure you that a $50k car in the US is nowhere near 44k€ in Europe. You're lucky if it's below 54k€.
You can always buy a Corolla for 25k. People who buy new car have extra money and want an expensive one.
There also higher tariffs and transport cost. Shipping cars from China to the EU can cost up to a few thousand per car. Local production seems less competitive. But the bottom line is that there are now a lot of relatively affordable EVs in the market. The cheapest cars in most markets now include EVs.
For example the Dacia Spring that is selling for around 17K Euros in Germany. And then there are tax rebates, discounts, etc. that are causing some of these cars to be available for a lot less occasionally in some markets.
Markets where EVs have been available in larger numbers for a while now have a sizable EV market. Australia is relatively early with its adoption, so the second hand market is a lot smaller there. The EU as a relatively early adopter has a lot of EVs from 2020 or earlier that are still under warranty and being traded in quite large numbers now. In the last few months these been a very hot commodity as lots of people are feeling the pain of high fuel prices.
All these new small cars will become a large part of the second hand car market in a few years. There will many be millions of them on the roads in a few years. And they last quite long.
Volkswagen Golf starts at 32 706 € here. BYD Dolphin Surf, the cheapest car BYD offers, starts at 24 590 €.
You know the old joke - I don't have to outrun the bear, need to outrun you. China's companies goal is to keep their cars 10% cheaper than the locals.
BYD still has some work left to do then since the Volkswagen ID.Polo is 26 390 €. The ID.Polo is also considerably prettier than the Dolphin Surf, so it probably needs a bigger price cut to get customers.
Insane to think those are reasonable prices.
10 years ago, a new Renault Clio had a starting price under 14 000 €.
The Dolphin sells for about €6700-€8900 ($7500-$10.000) in China.
They see how the EU allows EU car companies to gouge their citizens and figured "eh, might as well join in on it. Pure profit."
Cars sold in China have 13% VAT. Cars sold in Germany have 19% VAT. Cars sold in the Nordics have ≥25% VAT. Even ignoring shipping, tariffs, local salaries, non-VAT car taxes, etc., there’s no way to price a car the same in China as in EU.
And further down the rung, the electric Twingo, Panda and such go toe for toe with the cheaper Chinese EVs.
You just have to wait 2 years to get an ID.Polo :P
oh I didn't know about the ID.Polo, i was looking into the ID.3 neo life
Meh, there is already a flood of used Tesla Model 3s that are cheaper with not that many miles and you are getting a Tesla.
Personal vehicles are atypical as a market in that a huge percentage of people buy used rather than new. So when you look at new vehicle price, you have to factor in that the top 20% (not sure about actual percentage) of people are buying new, then corporate entities are financing a huge segment, like maybe 40%, and the rest of us buy used vehicles downstream from them. €25k is barely above entry level in Europe, but it can only be afforded by most people because of this system.
https://www.bydauto.be/en/
The BYD Dolphin Surf is 20K Euros in Belguim. This is the same care as the Atto 1.
Presumably it's European duties designed to drive up the price of cheap Chinese electric vehicles that is the difference.
Apparently the EU has tariffs of up to 36% on Chinese electric vehicles.
My Seal had these duties (presumably) but then a 10k EUR subsidy, which sounds odd to me, but must be some policy legacy code.
The tariffs are anti dumping measures.
So you put the tariff on Chinese imports to make the price comparable to domestic manufacturers so they can compete, then give the 10k euro on all EVs sold.
Thanks, I knew I was missing something. So basically, tariffs for Chinese vehicles, subsidies for EVs.
Yeah, these are insane prices considering BYD Seagull (aka Dolphin Surf) cost in China around 9000EUR. It's not great car, but reasonable cheap small basic car, but when it gets to Europe for instance here in Czechia it cost 20000EUR, I fail to see how can anyone justify double price of that car and still think it's cheap.
https://www.byd.com/cz/konfigurovat/dolphin-surf.html
Sounds like saving EU car companies at all cost paid by EU customers who are not interested in saving them.
Rather, China is dumping EVs at a national level. EVs don't generate profits, and entering this market now would only result in huge losses. so under normal business judgment, companies wouldn't enter the EV car market. They can only be produced when subsidies and tariffs are guaranteed to protect them.
Nah. Dumping means unprofitably sold with subsidies making up the difference.
China cancelled subsidies to BYD this year, and last year, those subsidies were 1/3 of BYD profits. Subsidies helped get them off the ground but they were unit-profitable by the time they got to exporting.
Xiaomi never had subsidies at all, their cars were profitable from launch, with 6 month waitlists to buy. Their export plan is to start with Germany first because they're cocky as hell and the cars are really nice.
BYD pricing don't make material sense. Atto 1 appears to be sold at IDR199m in Indonesia, AUD19,990 in Australia, EUR19,990 in EU, and GBP18,500. Normalized in USD, it's 11k, 14k, 22k, 25k respectively. It's clearly set to 19k-25k worth of workers' income, and there is no way that their prices are representative of costs.
If I heard correctly, it costs about $6000 to ship a car from China to Europe. Add another 27% in tariffs and EUR19,990 seems fairly priced.
what about fuel vs electricity prices?
I'm reminded of the tesla semi graph (near bottom of article):
https://www.notateslaapp.com/news/4740/tesla-unveils-next-ge...
US diesel: $0.50 and $0.80 per mile
US electric: $0.20 and $0.25 per mile
My mother do not move more than 100km a day anymore (and even that is a stretch, I think the most she drive is to the beach 25 km away), but 25k€ is a very big investment. She recently bought a second hand electric car for 9k€ and is very happy with it.
New car is always a big investment, second hand is the way. 25k car will be even cheaper in few years.
There's a bit of a problem that secondhand EVs aren't on the market until a couple of years after someone has bought them new. So there's a bottleneck. In this case all the cheap leasing deals work in favor of the eventual secondhand market.
I was shocked at the thought of having to move "only" 100km a day... we are living in such different worlds. And yes I do commute, but by public transport and less than 30km away and definitely not every day.
I was also shocked reading OP's post, but after thinking about it a bit I came to the conclusion that they didn't meant "100km daily" but more like "having less than 100km range is not an issue because she never drive that much any day of the year".
Having to recharge the car during a single trip being seen as an issue by OP.
I think it's a max, not a minimum.
Sorry, my command of English slipped up here. She rarely drives more than 10 km daily for her work,and will drive at most 100km in a single day, so she doesn't need range.
I keep seeing nissan leaf prices starting at $2k USD:
https://www.craigslist.org/search/area/sfbay?auto_make_model...
this is fine for people just bumbling around town
I just want a two-seater EV. The Smart ForTwo hasn't been updated in ages and the only other ones are either quadracycles of vapourware.
Where are the runarounds for people who don't need to lug around kids or baggage?
I guess you look for the car like Fiat 500e [0]. It is a two-seater with an electric drive.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_500e
It's a 4 seater no? Even if the rear seats are small.
Technically yes - it is a 3-door car with two seats behind the driver. However, in my experience only small persons or kids will enjoy sitting on the rear seats. I recall that the rear seats were good as an extra space for the backpacks or shopping bags.
Good looking but also a quite expensive one! If it will be for masses the prices will likely need to become substantially lower.
And we need the charging capacity for all those vehicles which is a huge issue. For example in the Netherlands this shows the capacity available to use extra power connections:
https://capaciteitskaart.netbeheernederland.nl/capaciteitska...
All red. The goals of the environmental improvements should connect with the actual real world available capacity. Otherwise it's just a dream.
> quite expensive
Open Autotrader -> Fiat 500e -> New -> First car: https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202506113398641 discounted to £15k. That is just a really cheap car. Even the nominal RRP £23,685 is cheap. If you want cheaper there is Dacia Spring and the cheapest BYD.
> The goals of the environmental improvements
The Netherlands of all people should understand about sea level rise and the real world capacity available to absorb CO2.
Ah wow, they got down quite a bit already! Here it's around € 20k it seems. Not bad.
> The Netherlands of all people should understand about sea level rise and the real world capacity available to absorb CO2.
That's interesting!
The 500 has four seats and is available in 3 or 5 doors!
If you want a really small car, which Americans don't, there's the Topolino.
Topolino is not a car, but a quadricycle with the same regulation applied (45km/h max speed)
Possibly not what you're after, and possibly not available to you even then, but there is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MG_Cyberster
I guess the target market is small, otherwise more options would exist.
If you buy a car anyway, might as well pay a bit more and get one that is useful in more situations.
I think battery size is also an issue.
But there are very few small gasoline cars as well, even in Europe.
Quite a lot of Fiat 500s around me in the UK, as well as various species of Mini. But you can see the bloat even there. There's the Fiat 500X, which is a "SUV crossover" (the hilarious concept of a large small car), and the Mini Countryman.
Wanting a large small car is understandable from a certain point of view. People want a car where their line of sight is higher and where they don’t have to do squats while getting in and out.
This leads to taller cars, which are unstable so they have to fatten it as well. That leads to the models you mention.
Apparently, someone heard you:
https://uk.smart.com/en/models/hashtag-two/
That's a concept car only with no intention if being in sale.
well according to that site, they intend to ship it in 2027
Fiat Topolino / Citroën Ami / Honda Super-N
Honda e? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_e
Discontinued (tbh don't know why - i think it was limited run, closer to a concept car than a full production) - but a good looking little city car.
It’s a cute car and I really wanted one but it was similarly priced to a Tesla whatever and could barely do 200km on a single charge.
Honda projected sales to be 10k annually in Europe and 1k in Japan.
They sold less than 12,000 of these globally over a span of 5 years.
Smart ForTwo Has been discontinued no?
There is the Fiat Topolino if you are ok with a pure city car.
I get that it's supposed to be a low speed city car where parking ease maybe matters more, but it's hilarious to see an EV where every newton of drag matters designed like a rounded brick on wheels. In fact most modern cars except for sedans seem to not give two shits about aero anymore which is leaving so much range on the table.
The Topolino is a type approval hack: it's an "electric quadricycle", ie legally a golf cart, and limited to 28mph in the UK and not allowed on motorways.
There's been a few of these like the Renault Twizy, and the limitations make them a gimmick that doesn't sell very well.
Have we forgotten the monstrosity that was the G-Wiz?
> Renault Twizy
Ah so that's where the Fiat Multipla designers went after getting fired.
Crash safety design features are a decent contributor to cost. I suspect manufacturers think shrinking the frame a bit, removing two doors and back seat won't drop the cost enough to convince people to buy them.
Weirdly enough, when these smaller two seaters show up, they are almost always overprice and getting a four seater, and just not using backseats, are a better deal. E.g. the Microlino is €20K, so why not just get the Citroen ë-C3, it's the same price, with better range?
Electric Miata when?
"Soon (tm)", say Mazda: https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlyon/2026/07/31/can-the-ma...
Mazda and Toyota have dragged a bit on pure-EV designs despite Toyota's excellent hybrids, because they're unwilling to give up on petrol engines. But they seem to be gradually getting the memo.
You can find a new sub 25K EUR car in Europe but the range will suck.
For example the VW Polo starts at 25K but if you want the bigger battery, its 35k.
The 25k VW ID.Polo has a range of ~300km. In Europe, that's way more than enough for >95% of trips for >95% of people.
around 150km in the winter, unacceptable range for a new car. A 28kWh ioniq could do that and they are cheap and come fully loaded.
My commute is 23km one way, and the shops are even closer. I'm the 95%.
The charging situation need to be factored in. Charging at home, it has enough range. Public charging, range buys the likely hood of charging convenience.
Public charging infrastructure in most of Europe is exceptional[0], especially for cars like the Polo, which is a car typically used in populated areas.
https://electroverse.com/map/48.43680,5.81610,4.50/
I wouldn't say execeptional.
There are many times I tried to charge and got asked to indstall apps or the charger wasn't working. Blocked by a petrol car.
Charging in europe comes with a learning curve.
For my commute I'd have to charge every 2-3 days in winter. Not a show stopper, but an extra 10k for more convenience is a bit much.
If you're charging at home, that's not a problem. It still takes less time (20 seconds a day) than going to the pump once a month for 15 minutes.
in the US, I go to pump twice a week to fill my small car(Miata gang) which gets roughly 38 MPG. Those two trips are maybe 3 minutes max combined.
If I where to go EV home charging instead, I'd need to have it more or less plugged in every night. Which of course isn't a shower stopper especially when fuel savings are factored in.
But in my case the MSRP of my car+ fuel costs+ time/convenience is a slightly better experience than if I had a full EV with it's associated MSRP/convenience.
I look forward to my first EV, cuz I know I'll have a "come to god" moment where I realize how much easier/simpler charging at home is.
My mother gets motability and has an ev so where does this fit in between the standard model where middle classes buy ev vehicles and poor people buy used ice vehicles
Motability is a leasing scheme, and for complicated reasons the manufacturers (especially Stellantis) are offering cheap lease deals.
In the case of Stellantis I believe this is driven by "compliance" requirements - the need to sell a certain percentage of EVs to avoid being fined by the EU. So they're not especially great EVs, but once they go to the lease firm they're counted as "sold". Someone may take a loss on the depreciation later, but not the driver.
A special consideration for Motability is that PIP recipients aren't allowed to save up for anything, so whatever vehicle they have has to be on finance.
> PIP recipients aren't allowed to save up for anything
That's incorrect.
Some, not all, PIP recipients are also in receipt of means-tested benefits, such as Universal Credit for example, which has a £6k capital disregard, and a reduction of benefits between £6k and £16k, and no entitlement over £16k. (Also I'm sure there are PIP recipients who work and receive no other benefits)
There surely are PIP recipients who would end up with savings of over £6k if they did not spend their PIP on anything else, and Motability is a legitimate way to spend it in the eyes of the DWP.
idk how is it that HN articles often match whatever currently obsesses me. I'm going to buy an EV next year and i'm looking for a 2nd hand one exactly in this range.
Sevenfold! Whatever happened to -fold? It's all 10X this and 5X that these days, nobody says times or fold any more
The hyphen tends to get dropped when it a word becomes more ... commonplace.
Huh? I think you have misunderstood. I'm not talking about a hyphen.
My pet peeve is all the dumbasses pronouncing "10X" as "ten ex"...
Easy to rise sevenfold when you have close to no sales at that price point due to lack of offerings
These cars are very widespread, but almost exclusively thanks to Chinese companies, and Chinese EVs are effectively banned in the US.
(N.B.: I'm not anti EV)
Enjoy the overnight cheap electricity while it lasts. The only long-term strategy is investment in solar and batteries – use your temporary savings the government is giving you to invest in solar etc. Some governments are signalling that we have a role to play in electricity infrastructure investment...
Governments are only temporarily letting you get away with not paying the 0.35-0.80 EUR fuel duty on each litre of petrol/diesel (which then has VAT added. These taxes amount to 100s of billions a year across all of Europe). UK is steaming ahead with a per-mile tax on EVs and hybrids, for example.
And nuclear power for base load, batteries and solar is not enough.
I tried but the wife just won't let me put an SMR in the garden.
Time for a new wife then
25k is still too fucking much.
8999 and we can start having a conversation, people can’t afford a 25k new car for gods sake.
It's not the 90s. Once you put it on finance, it's often cheaper than a monthly rail pass. Depending obviously on where you are and how often you travel. And also far cheaper than doing the same trip on taxis/uber even just a few days a month.
>Once you put it on finance, it's often cheaper than a monthly rail pass
Cannot this be said about anything? Choose a long enough finance and it's "cheap". Let's forget you'd be paying (at least in Europe) easily 1.6x the price of the car because of the small payments.
True, but it enables you to compare things against those which you can't buy upfront. London Travelcard zones 1-6 is £3264 annually or £313/month, but there's no option to buy multiple years in advance as if you were buying a car outright.
£313/mo is more expensive than the cheapest new car leases, but you wouldn't want to drive a car through London zone 1, and you'd have to pay £18/day in the congestion zone.
If you can't afford a new car, just buy a second hand one?
"New and used vehicles are substitutes. When the price of a good’s substitute increases, the demand curve for that good shifts outward and the equilibrium price and quantity supplied both increase. Thus, increasing the quality-adjusted price of new vehicles will result in an increase in equilibrium price and quantity of used vehicles....Practically, when new vehicles become more expensive, demand for used vehicles increases (and these used vehicles become more expensive"
https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2022-04/Final-TS...
Being interested in/annoyed at the price of new cars even as a second-hand car buyer is somewhat justified
8999 euros that's very good cargo e-bike territory. I think that's naive to expect car in the same price range.
If Chinese companies can build a 10k€ car somewhat profitably, why wouldn't European ones be able to?
- The battery and motor ecosystem is dominated by Chinese companies. These will happily build EU factories. Embrace and learn.
- Market size is not too much of the problem.The Chinese market is a lot larger, but not ten times.
Perhaps regulatory capture in the EU by large established players is a big part of the problem?
I see your point and feel/hope the same cost structures (IE;cheap chinese cars) will eventually get here( here being US for me). It's not like detroit is bustling anymore anyways.
But on that note, chinese companies aren't building a 10k car profitably. Their OEMs have a dizzying array of subsidies and agreements that allow "market friendly price fixing" and protection from going bust. They are very smartly playing a long game that might end up making everyone better off, we'll see.
A EU or US OEM in the same position would just not be possible from the start. -An existing one IE VW or Ford could leverage massive chains to drive down MSRP, but the public nature of the companies won't allow that for too long. -A new OEM ie "slate trucks" has gone thru this, seeing MSRP jump by 1/3-1/2 simply because decision of the then ruling party changed rebate scenario, as well as global shipping rates skyrocketing.
This is why "financing" and "second hand" exist.
That said, if the EU car industry falls over completely*, there's no longer a reason for protectionist trade rules, and the EU then gets the benefit of cheaper Chinese cars.
* Short-term, Trump's tariffs and the significance of the US as an export market to several major EU producers are bad; long-term, China's actually really good at this and out-competing all western production, US and EU. Just like the chicken and egg, which comes first of "governments stop protecting the industry because the industry is important" and "the industry stops being important because the government stopped protecting it" is… well, "stop assuming all eggs have to contain chickens": there's plenty of ways either could fail independently of the other, but when it fails, the mutual support goes with it and it stays down.
buy used
https://www.craigslist.org/search/area/sfbay?auto_make_model...