The Chevy Bolt's sales prove America is craving a cheap electric car
Two things which radically shake up EV worldwide, are a pricepoint closer to reality for working people, if need be shored up short-term by government assistance, and realistic information about milage.<p>Two things which impede take up are governments obsessed with the income streams from road and petrol taxes, and individuals on the edge of the curve for distance or load, who decry the vehicle can serve their needs. It obviously can&#x27;t but they just haven&#x27;t run the numbers. We have 10,000 people in cities, for every farmer. We have 1000 people in cities not doing trades with 400km drives, for every one which does.<p>It&#x27;s entirely true a small family car which can&#x27;t do 500km will not suit a farmer or tradesperson who has a 400km daily commute with a tonne of stuff in the back. Statistically, the overwhelming use of cars in western society is for short hops, under 150km. Some people (a lot) are &lt;40km a day.<p>It is also true that as volume ramps up, supply of recharge facilities is going to be a pain point. And, that LONGTERM the supply of lithium and other inputs is concerning against the rate of mining and industrial development. These are entirely solvable problems. There is no impending Erlich&#x2F;simons &quot;limits to growth&quot; in lithium.<p>If I have to see another input saying &quot;we don&#x27;t have enough lithium for the coming 4.5million cars&quot; as if they are all due to arrive next tuesday, 4pm, or &quot;batteries are useless after 10 years&quot; which ignores massive amounts of clear sensible potential re-use and re-cycling in the battery, I think I&#x27;ll scream. I do acknowledge mining is dirty. All mining. If you don&#x27;t like lithium mining, you&#x27;re ignoring the fugitive methane problems in Oil and Gas, and mining in generals effects on the landscape to get aluminium and steel and magnesium and plastics and glass and tires.<p>The biggest missed opportunity here is definitely pricing. If I was in car sales I too would have priced to the peak. But what we need, is price to the floor. We need the processes which drive to a $20,000 car, not a $120,000 car.
The author is right here, that a Bolt is a more significant EV than a tesla. And the coming VW ID4 sled will be too, if VW get pricing right. And the BYD. and MG. China is all over this space.<p>The second biggest missed opportunity is battery swap. It works, and it works at scale, and we know it works. It requires socialising batteries as shared commons you &quot;rent&quot; and it requires policing to get bad batteries out of circulation, but it solves the recharge time delay problem. It just didn&#x27;t suit Musk, and didn&#x27;t suit his ideation of Tesla in the market. Putting batteries into the subframe and the structure won&#x27;t make battery swap any easier.<p>I tried to get the body corporate of my 5yo condo to talk seriously about charge stations. It was impossible to get them over the capital works cost. The developer who made this condo, put them into all their subsequent developments and to me, that tells a story. There has been no above-cpi increase in the cost of sales in these newer condos: it&#x27;s simply a cost of doing development now. Sucks to be in an older building, with a body corporate scared of capital works.