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Comment by csomar | Hacker News Reader

> But even if you limit yourself to cars, a friend just bought a Volvo S90 Recharge electric car to drive in Ho Chi Minh City.

The heck does this mean? Suddenly, vietnam is going to follow the trend and buy electric cars? This car costs something like $60k in Vietnam. The country gdp per capita is $2700. Most people who can buy cars will probably buy an old gas car.

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The most common car I saw in Vietnam was some colossal Ford truck. Straight up American-sized and bigger than anything I’ve seen anywhere else in Asia.

Everything was either a tiny scooter, or a massive truck well oversized for the narrow and crowded roads.

In countries where wealth divides are big, people go all out on large and expensive items. I could see 60k electric cars taking off among the top 2%, which still amounts to millions of people.

Isn't that the point? That people in poor countries mostly buy old cars from other countries? Which currently of course means they are gas powered. But what about the day when old cars start to be mostly electric? Wouldn't electric cars become equally, if not more attractive to poor countries?

Electric cars don't age in same way as mechanic/based ones which we had 100 years to perfect. People buy those used cars from other countries because any skilled mechanic in dirt poor country can repair most of it, dismantle engine to last screw. And nobody is importing a Maserati for example.

I don't see this happening in EVs, at least not current generations. On super-proprietary cars like Tesla probably never.

I think this is a myth in several ways. First of all, modern ICE cars are anything but easily repairable with their complex exhaust treatment and turbo chargers. They are very delicate machinery and won't be on the roads for 40 years like cars from the 80ies might be.

And then, electric cars seem to be pretty easily repairable. Just look at all the home-built electric conversions. Or the guy who builds new Teslas out of totalled ones.

I think it is even the other way around. There was a startup in Germany which designed a small electric truck with Africa in mind. Basic, cheap, not only repairable but designed to be assembled by the customers. This is way cheaper to do with electric technology then with combustion engines.

Electric cars are made of the same metal and plastic that ICE cars are so we'll see. Wireless technology already allowed Africa to leapfrog over some of the mistakes of the west. EV vehicles backed by solar and stationary batteries may let them leapfrog again.

It absolutely happens with EVs as well. I’m Ukrainian, here people have been importing totaled cars from US for years, including a lot of Nissan Leafs and Teslas. Some businesses restoring those totaled Teslas grew from a garage shop into large and successful enterprises.

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