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Comment by neverminder | Hacker News Reader

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You can buy a new EV for 20k EUR. Soon you can buy used EVs for much less. Of course it takes time before there will be used EVs for only 1000 EUR in the market. Maybe very long as an electric motor lasts longer than an ICE engine.

Also consider the cost for fuel vs electricity (with electricity you pay 1/5 vs gasoline if you charge at home).

My friend calculated and according to real world usage of similar small family cars, the difference is actually 1/12th of the diesel costs, and that’s at pre-war hiked prices. This isn’t a scientific comparison as cars aren’t exactly the same. But volume wise and frame size is about the same.

A lot of European car manufacturers are in trouble exactly because they didn't pus EVs hard enough and let the Chinese take the market

They were pushing it like nobody's business. The problem was a combination of the lack of charging infrastructure and the comparatively high EV prices. Cheaper EVs are perfectly viable in Europe even with the existing charging infrastructure as the Chinese have shown.

Plenty did not do anything for years and then the first ones to come out were super expensive in a "yeah we don't want to but here take this expensive thing".

20% margin is nicer than 5% margin

You must not be familiar with Euro roadworthiness requirements. A car bought for that price will likely run up expenses of at least 80-90% of the purchase price again to get it to pass TüV or the like if it doesn't have it already, with even more looming on the horizon. Instead of buying something with three wheels in the grave, why not just get a monthly train ticket for a fraction of the price?

What do you think will happen to the train ticket prices if you push everyone towards public transport? Depending on which zones you are travelling between in London it can already cost you £300 / month. That's £3600 a year. Not even factoring in safety which becomes a priority if you have a family.

That's a UK thing. You did that entirely to yourself.

Deutschlandticket is 55 GBP / month and valid across all German regional public transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschlandticket. ICE is excluded, but if you are commuting via ICE...

Zurich pass, valid on all public transport is 800 CHF per year.

That's mostly just a UK thing; you can blame John Major, to a large extent.

(Unusually, not Thatcher; even Thatcher was against privatising the railways.)

Arguably it was kind of the same problem as Brexit; the Tories expected to lose in 1992, so felt free-er to put all sorts of stupid shit in their manifesto, including privatising the railways. Then they won. Surprisingly, they did not learn their lesson.

> Not even factoring in safety which becomes a priority if you have a family.

Huh? Are you claiming that trains are more unsafe than cars?

No, it's still very common for people to drive clunkers, and they pass the mandated tests. The AC won't work, and probably not each electric window either, but that hasn't anything to do with roadworthiness.

Especially young men buy these clunkers because they can't afford anything else. Young women more often get better cars as a gift from their parents, who want to make sure she doesn't have to depend on getting a ride from some creep in a clunker.

Because not everybody lives in a city.

This. Seriously, this comment section just reeks of American coastal liberal types who haven't spent a single day in their lives in an impoverished countryside. Half the town I am in right now drive old Toyota Hilux and the other half drive clunkers wishing they could afford an old Hilux. Not a single EV in sight and for a good reason.

I’ve been to impoverished rural areas in the USA thanks to my time in Mississippi. I’ve also been to impoverished rural areas in the rest of the world where they can’t afford to drive an old best up hilux because they don’t have American petrol supply chains so they have no choice but to drive electric. American rural areas are their own kind of entitled.

I would expect that people drive cheap motorcycles in such places (and buy gas from plastic coke bottles). Where would they afford an electric car and not a bike? Where do you have roads enough for electric cars, but no gas stations?

There's areas in South East Asia like islands in the Philippines that are warm enough to not have winter, and so the popular vehicles are covered trikes. On more remote islands, electric is popular because of the aforementioned supply chain issue, and there's also plenty of sunlight to draw from. Doesn't mean that there are no gasoline bikes/trikes, just that electric vehicles outnumber gasoline powered ones.

I agree that this is a problem for a small percentage of peoople and I find it ignorant to playt down this issue.

But EVs are critical to the environment and we have to do something.

Also the biggest issue is not EVs, its the super unclear and slow transition and borderline fighting against it which would allow for cheap EVs to exist due to scaling laws.

Right now about 38 million people in Eastern Europe alone live rural. That is not a "small percentage" by any means. Half the town I am in right now drive old Toyota Hilux and the other half drive clunkers wishing they could afford an old Hilux. Not a single EV in sight and for a good reason.

Also, these people are at the brink with all the bullshit from Brussels and let's not forget these are the same people that can fire up their tractors, load them up with manure and have a delivery to Brussels as they have done so in the past already.

> I agree that this is a problem for a small percentage of peoople and I find it ignorant to playt down this issue.

Back when I was poor as an European I just commuted by bus. Then I bought my first car for the equivalent of 1600 Euros (in 2014 at that) and while I was saving 30 minutes on my commute daily, I was spending a lot on fuel and insurance.

The clanker lasted about a year before it started burning too much oil and making weird rattling noises from the engine. Long term the purchase alone was less then half of all expenses over the course of that year.

I don't believe it's reasonable to buy a 1000 Euro car if that's the only thing you can afford, because the expenses will just keep piling up.

Leasing of small cars for an affordable price got a lot more common the last x years, but if you have no option at all and you life in a small city, you might just need to have a car.

Even ifts the cheap car which you replace in 1-3 years

It seem to me that Europe has the public transit to be able to do that. The problem in North America is that having a car is pretty much necessary for most people, or at least deemed so, thus you can't quickly phase out heat engines (ICE's waste most energy as heat).

Public transit is good but only in big cities. In the other rural areas without a car you are pretty much fucked, and those are also the poorest areas... people there cannot buy a car unless it is a very old used one

I think this is true, that "in North America is that having a car is pretty much necessary for most people" and that in Europe it's necessary for some people.

This is neither a pro nor anti EV point though, it's not related to that. "Needing a car" says nothing about whether it's an EV or not.

We'd have a sprawling affordable EV market much sooner if it weren't for the insane countervailing duties against Chinese BEV imports

Love the bandwagon takes. It's so obvious that you are personally against this and will latch onto any argument against EVs. No way you gave a shit about "denying personal vehicles to the poor" until you heard that sound bite as an argument against EVs.

oh yes, europe is so famous for its extensive oil fields allowing for cheap oil for heating and transportation to the poor masses

You really gotta be careful with such statements. You obviously mean EU, there are rich oil fields in Europe. Just real far to the East.

Still lots of cheap ICE cars being sold in Europe.

Without the Toyota pickup truck, how will Marty take Jennifer to the lake? Throw a couple of sleeping bags in the back ...

Here's a data point about how out of touch with reality this opinion is:

the 10 cheapest new cars you can buy in the UK in 2026

https://petrolblog.com/articles/cheapest-new-cars-uk-2026

This includes 4 or 5 EVs and a couple of hybrids.

Yeah, it's a bit odd; the "electric cars are expensive" narrative has become so entrenched that it is still trotted out even when it is no longer true.

Today in Ireland, you can get a VW Polo for 25k... or an id.Polo (the electric version) for 20k. Now, there are a couple of things going on there; the id.Polo is benefiting from a 3500 eur grant, and the Polo has about 1000 eur of VRT on it (electric cars are exempt). But _even ignoring subsidies_ they come in at about the same price. And, presumably, give it a couple of years, and the electric version will be solidly cheaper.

You must have missed the part about poor people from rural regions. They don't have 20K, they barely have 2K, they are not eligible for credit/lease and you obviously have never been to countryside if you are suggesting a Citroën Ami with a straight face.

I don't think that you're here in good faith and your tone is poor at best. You put words in my mouth that I did not say.

But, can you explain why "I don't see this ever being reality with EVs" ? Not just "not now" but "not ever". Wow.

If vehicle X is the same price or cheaper than vehicle Y when new, then given ten years and the resulting resale price drop, it sells used for the same price or cheaper than vehicle Y, not so?

I don't see the confounding factors as permanent, merely due to EVs being fairly new on the market. But now the new ones are plentiful, and the same price or cheaper as the ICE equivalent across market segments. So the rest is only a matter of time.

Change does not happen overnight. No-one is expecting it to. Arguing as if it's otherwise is straw-manning.

For 1k euros you'll get an absolute shitbox that will need 1k euros a year in maintenance, will kill you if you get in any kind of accident and won't be able to drive in most cities because of pollution requirements.

I had to replace the shitbox I bought for 5k euros 10 years ago, the same model/year with twice the kms now costs 9k+. And I consider that the bare minimum in term of road worthiness and safety, cars have been a luxury for a long time

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