Why Are Electric Cars More Expensive To Buy?

Post date: 23-Apr-2020 12:25:37

In Norway where electric vehicles or EVs are everywhere in the first six months of 2019 more than half of new cars sold in the country were fully electric tax incentives driving in bus lanes and free parking are some of the factors that helped and it has a goal of scrapping all sales of fossil fueled vehicles by 2025.

But this isn't a global trend Canadians are buying electric more than ever before but they still only make up 3.2 percent of the vehicles sold in the u.s. fume free cars make up 1.9 percent of the new passenger vehicle market and on a larger scale make up less than 0.5 percent of the global vehicle fleet so why is it taking so long to make the switch especially given that these type of vehicles go way back like way back to the 1800s when the first successful electric vehicle in the US made its debut.

Compared to gas and steam powered cars they were easy to drive and didn't emit smelly pollutants by the turn of the century they accounted for a third of all vehicles on the road but somewhere along the ride they hit a bump as roads got better and cheaper oil was discovered electric cars just couldn't gain traction even when gas prices began to soar [Music] they also weren't exactly the most sharp-looking car on the road and when GM pulled the plug on its own sleek futuristic EB1.

It didn't seem like electric cars would ever win the race at least not until a certain Silicon Valley startup known as Tesla came along with its zero emission luxury cars and then in 2015 with its relatively affordable model 3 which had people lining up to put down a deposit on a car they hadn't even seen yet it's been a game-changer they have succeeded in convincing everyone that battery electric vehicles can have high performance you know they can be sexy everybody wants them that you it's really been a complete shift in the perception and life use and the model 3 is very successful despite the setbacks they've had.

They've it's the number one selling EV in the world this this year so far today it's difficult to even find a Tesla owner who isn't incredibly passionate about their ride I had heard previous owners say that there was no question and that they were completely sold on the technology and that registered but it only really became clear to me once I got behind the car and I drove it and the technology far exceeded my expectation but Tesla's still belong to the higher-end EV owners.

Which brings us back to why consumers are still so hesitant to give up gas there's still a lot of knowledge gaps people don't realize they're gonna save money which is a key factor they don't know that it's convenient they don't know the why it's environmentally beneficial that's Carrick Lehrman she spends a lot of her time busting EV myths and can often be found at the world's first electric vehicle Discovery Center.

She says the initial concern consumers have is the price the challenge is people look at that upfront sticker price instead of looking at what we call the total cost of ownership most TVs fall in the 30,000 to $45,000 range but many countries offer financial incentives to help bring the cost down and then of course the savings made on the fuel costs electricity is about one-fifth the cost of gas here in Ontario so for example if you're spending on average about twenty five hundred dollars a year on gas fuel.

I'm spending about five hundred dollars a year on electricity for my vehicle less maintenance as well no oil changes no transmission no muffler which some argue is why some car dealerships are reluctant to sell EVs in the first place their business model depends on the revenue from from the regular maintenance that was gasoline cars.

The dealerships are not doing a great job of promoting them they're not necessarily the the highest profit margin product so they don't have a strong incentive at this time but the dealerships we spoke to point out that customers usually do their homework and know kind of car they want even before they walk through the door we still see a lot of dealerships that aren't carrying them I think you have to keep in mind that the first couple of years that v's came out there were only two or three makes and models available in very few dealerships but we know.

That's going to change over the next three to five years another main issue drivers have about EVs is range anxiety in terms of charging times and locations that depends on the type of car you have the type of charger and where you're going most EV drivers plug in their car at home and charge overnight but for those long distance drives level three chargers are slowly popping up along highways around the world Canada has close to 7,000 public charging stations.

But according to a 2017 study by go compare it still ranks among the worst equipped countries for v's I mean from where I said I think it's happening as fast as could be expected just because of the all the technology shifts that have to happen the infrastructure the training a lot of retooling of factories and so on I mean it's not something that happens overnight so how do these cars actually run Wow you can't even tell no a lot of people ask.

Is it on ooh that goes really fast really fast yeah I'm already at 50 and I'm not even yeah yeah yeah you don't feel guilty because you're not burning any dad while the car itself leaves a far smaller carbon footprint Manufacturing most EVs including the high powered batteries actually produce a bigger carbon footprint than manufacturing most gas cars but many experts believe all roads do lead to EVs eventually it's estimated that by the mid to late 2020s electric cars will cost the same as internal combustion competitors and eventually even cheaper as the price of batteries go down that combined with a number of Engineers automakers and policy makers putting a new focus on EV development 2040 is when you can expect to see more of these cars on the road by then 57% of all passenger vehicle sales and over 30% of the global passenger vehicle fleet will likely be electric why do you like the Tesla.