Volkswagen launches its first all-electric SUV, the ID.4
I feel like the prices on electric vehicles are starting to become their biggest hurdle (instead of range, availability, or charging which are solved enough).<p>If you&#x27;re from California or New York, I&#x27;m sure $40K starting for this or a Model Y seems complexly within your means, but there&#x27;s a large chunk of the US (by population AND land) where &lt;$20K new sedans remain popular and &quot;nicer&quot; vehicles are still in the $20-$30K range (and we&#x27;re talking about SUVs and other family sized vehicles rather than small sedans).<p>People love to spam $40K US &quot;average&quot; while entirely ignoring that the average is a highly abusive figure containing $80K+ trucks and luxury vehicles, as well as a few $15-32K vehicles dragging that figure down. It doesn&#x27;t really reflect anything useful.<p>Go look at this map[0]. How many of &quot;the most popular car by state&quot; are $40K? Zero. But yet an electric is going to replace a $21K Honda Civic by 2025? Really?<p>And I&#x27;m not dumping on the manufacturers here: From what I understand batteries remain the lion&#x27;s share of an electric vehicle&#x27;s total production cost (I&#x27;ve heard as much as $16K&#x2F;vehicle). So this isn&#x27;t profiteering, this is the tech not yet being ready price-wise for the mass adoption everyone seems to believe will come soon. Worse still as electric vehicles become more popular the rare earth metals that seemingly remain popular within the batteries may increase in cost offsetting our future reductions.<p>To be clear: I want to own an electric vehicle. I&#x27;d trade my current Subaru Outback ($27K) in tomorrow if I could buy a comparable electric. But those start in the $40K range (and honestly the cheapest trim is just a hero model, they don&#x27;t intend to sell many, and blackmail buyers with missing basic features accordingly).<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;insurify.com&#x2F;insights&#x2F;most-popular-cars-by-state-2020&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;insurify.com&#x2F;insights&#x2F;most-popular-cars-by-state-202...</a>