The market is there for worse and much cheaper electric cars, just not mainly in US.
The cars are actually quite nice. I have no complaints. It’s possible that maintenance issues will emerge later, but that has already happened for Tesla. At this point we can’t claim they’re lower quality.
The US market is there for a cheap, nice electric car. Tariffs make it untenable.
I'd consider owning a very cheap small EV for my daily needs, but not at the prices they command today. Even something like a Nissan Leaf is far too expensive for that.
Is that due to EV prices or car prices in general? I guess it depends on where you are and what price you pay for electricity. But I also think a lot of people haven't internalized the price inflation of new and used cars in the last 4 years. A second generation Leaf with less that 25k miles can be had for less than $15,000, and it is should be eligible for a $4,000 used EV tax credit (if your income is under $150k):
My current daily driver is a 20 year old Mercedes E class that I bought for $4k. It's a V8 and takes premium gas, but I average close to 20mpg and don't really drive enough miles for that to be a huge dealbreaker. With $4/gal gas I might burn $8/day with typical driving. That might be roughly 10 kWh in a Leaf? I don't know what the losses are in charging but if that's 20 kWh to recharge, that would be maybe $4/day? So I'd save maybe $80/month if I drive 20 days a month? That's all very wild guesstimating but seems like it would take 10 years to pay back the price difference, also considering that I could not really drive the Leaf on any longer trips at all.
This is only true if you do a joint file. If you're a single filer, it phases out once your income is above $75k, or $112k for heads of household.
