There's a fucked up thing happening in America where they say it's free market capitalism but instead they add massive tariffs to foreign vehicles allowing our shit companies to remain shit. Otherwise we would have Chinese EV's with all of the bells and whistles for 20-30k that last 200k miles.
AI: 300,000+ Miles (480,000+ km): Extensive data from BYD e6 taxi fleets operating in Shenzhen, China, showed that after three to four years of round-the-clock service, units routinely hit 300,000 miles with around 10–15% battery degradation.
The cheapest BYD in Australia (~14k USD) takes 30 minutes to charge from 10 to 80% which gets you about 95 miles of driving. The money you save in fuel and maintenance can buy you lunch while you wait. Not ideal for large distances but who is driving their personal vehicle that far daily? The average daily drive distance is ~22 miles so you charge fully like once a week with the absolute cheapest model. Americans are missing out.
The average American drives over 200 miles a week. It takes 1.25 hours to completely charge. The 30 mins is from 10-80%. That’s more time than most people want to spend 1-2 times a week charging their car.
As for the car itself it makes a lot of compromises to reach that price point. For instance it takes 15 seconds to reach 65mph, a bumpy choppy ride due to the suspension, cheap easily scratched plastic interiors, etc. Which is fine if you’re looking for a super cheap car.
You do realise that most people charge their vehicles at home rather than fast charge stations anyway, right? You can literally plug it into the wall of your garage and if you are one of the relatively few Americans that don’t have a garage then you can just charge while you do grocery shopping or even at work. Lack of charging infrastructure is not a valid argument in 2026.
Germany and France have mandated that large commercial parking lots provide EV chargers. Most of central and Western Europe has decent coverage. Supermarkets in Aus and NZ have rolled them out too since some of them previously integrated fuel stations. The US is behind on electrification.
How many hours do you sleep or spend at home a week? I would bet more than the quoted 40-60. You literally have to plug in when you get home and unplug when you leave. That covers the 2/3 - 3/4 of Americans that live in single family homes (US Census Bureau). Even if you want to restrict that to restrict that to detached houses so you can be almost guaranteed that they have a garage or spot next to the house to run a cable then that’s at least 62% so for almost TWO THIRDS of the population, charging isn’t an issue. You’re spending more time on the internet arguing with strangers than it would have taken to fast charge an EV.
They’d have a 25ft+ cord they’d have to put away and set back up every day too because you’re not supposed to leave them laying where you’re gonna charge or mount it on a wall or fence and have a long unsightly cord running across your yard all the time
People don’t want the hassle of having to babysit their battery when gas is fast and reliable.
Never mind if they have to go on longer road trips. 70% of non EV drivers worry about finding charging stations or the time lost to charge it.
You can’t just tell people their concerns are unwarranted and EVs are so amazing it’s worth it to put up with the hassle.
Its all relative to where u live. In the "green" states the EV stations are found almost everywhere including apartments, malls etc.. along with pretty heavy rebates to purchase EVs and to install the necessary electric charging units.
Normally higher rebates if the charging unit will be publicly available.
Only 5% of rental properties have EV charging stations. In green cities like Denver, San Fransisco, Portland, Seattle are only around 10-12% with Silicon Valley being an outlier at 14-18%.
That leaves the vast majority of people looking for somewhere else to charge their cars and 90 minutes is a long wait especially having to do it weekly.
"These" Americans want gas cars, EVs would be too progressive for them
People don’t want to spend 90 minutes charging their cars. A perfectly valid reason to not want to own an EV. People aren’t avoiding them because they’re too progressive.
How are people who live in apartments gonna do that? Or people who don’t want to hire an electrician $1000-2500 to an install 240v charging station plus up to $4k more if they have to upgrade their service panel?
$1500 annually on gas not $5k. Thats based on $3.77/gal but gas hasn’t increased by more than 3x over that number and the cost of electricity has increased as well.
How are people who live in apartments gonna do that? For homeowners you’re asking people to change their habits and diligently charge nightly when 95% of EV owners don’t even charge daily (every 3 days). People don’t want the hassle when it takes 3 minutes to fill their gas tank. Never mind longer trips away from home that become more limiting and time consuming.
They don't have to charge them every night, most people don't drive enough to spend a whole night's worth of charge on a daily commute. For apartments, the infrastructure isn't ready yet, only 9% of US apartments have charging stations installed. Unfortunately, we're just not as fast at building stuff as other countries, but I imagine that's partly the fault of the government, which won't allow Americans to import good Chinese EVs, so there hasn't been as much of a push to install the infrastructure. 2/3 of China's car sales are EVs, so it's pretty obvious that they've got everything working already.
None of that's relevant to the concerns you brought up, though. What's the real difference between filling up at a gas station once a week or two and plugging in your car twice a week before you head inside? Frankly, the EV sounds like less of a hassle to fuel, you don't need to stop at a gas station.
Charging a midsize EV on a standard 110v outlet can take 40-60 hours. It is an added multi thousand dollar expense to install 240v charging.
So if you’re not charging daily you’re creating charging deficits. The average American drives 200 miles week. They may likely have to public charging to make up for those deficits. These are things gas car drivers don’t need to worry about AT ALL.
Also if they go on longer road trips you’d have to drive out of your way to find a charging station and spend 1.5 hours to charge back up. Road trips can take 25% longer in an EV
People don’t want that hassle when they can fill up their cars once a week for 4 minutes and not have to worry. When they’re on road trips gas stations are off of almost every highway exit and take 4 minutes.
One day I’m sure these things won’t be a problem but today it’s too much of a hassle for many people and those concerns are valid.
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u/bortodeeto 8h ago
There's a fucked up thing happening in America where they say it's free market capitalism but instead they add massive tariffs to foreign vehicles allowing our shit companies to remain shit. Otherwise we would have Chinese EV's with all of the bells and whistles for 20-30k that last 200k miles.