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Comment by wffurr | Hacker News Reader

What does news like this do to current year EV sales? We needed to start transitioning the vehicle fleet around the world to EVs and alternate transportation modes years and years ago to make a dent on climate change.

But now if EVs are going to have triple the range and be cheaper in a few years' time, why spend money on a 300 mile range EV now? Surely the resale value will plunge and current buyers will lose their shirts on them.

I suppose that's good news for buyers in the secondhand market hoping to pick up cheaper vehicles, but it's a disincentive for new buyers.

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Electric cars won’t “make a dent” in carbon emissions until most of our electricity comes from renewables and nuclear. At least in the USA, we are many years away from this. BEV uptake is unfortunately not the rate-limiting step.

And even if we had 100% renewables tomorrow, cars would still be incredibly inefficient (2 ton car for most times only 80 kg load (aka one human)), loud, dangerous for everyone not in a car, expensive for owner and state, etc…

Good thing these batteries will show up in all kinds of vehicle once the tech is proven, then. Smaller urban runabouts, ebikes, scooters, etc.

The Osborne Effect keeps on giving, though in this case, it's industrywide instead of just one company.

Thanks for the phrase that describes exactly what I was imagining.

Looking that up led to an interesting and concerning article on the economic impact of the transition to BEVs: https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/25/the-osborne-effect-on-t...

Manufacturers could alleviate that by planning for battery pack upgrades. Offer customers an upgrade path, transition the old batteries to utility storage until the end of their life and then recycle them.

To the extent that the old range was a deal breaker for buyers of used cars, it will hurt. To the extent that buyers of used cars were needing a little bit more depreciation, the depreciation will be back stopped. And the depreciation, in turn, would shift some buyers toward those older EVs, to say nothing of the new buyers that could be enticed by range.

Look at depreciation of Intel Macs after M1 came out, maybe?

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