We never wanted their “electric cars” … we wanted their cars, but electric.
The basic Seat Leon combi is currently 22.000€ on promotion. And that's a spacious family car. No EV car exist at that price point in that size with a range that most people would be comfortable with it.
Yes they will exist in the future but we are still a decade away from that at least.
How much will you spend on fuel during that decade? Seems likely it will be more than today's upfront cost differential. Possibly a lot more.
Disregarding the range because that's a different topic. Fundamentally EVs will be of a different size than ICEs because the big and heavy battery has to placed somewhere low, which is usually under the passenger area floor. Then the car must be higher to accomodate that and also sturdier etc., so at that point we have a bigger and heavier car for the same interior space. And also pricier of course. So it's better to forget the Seat Leon Combi and look at the EVs with fresh eyes.
Or you can retrofit an EN to a ICE shell, like Stellantis did with eg the Opel Astra TS which is also cheap for an EV, but mostly everyone agrees this is a dead end.
One more point regarding the price - that's our own (EU) making. Chinese EVs in China are much much cheaper.
And surprisingly to me it is even pretty damn efficient despite being originally designed as a gasoline-powered vehicle.
The salesman aren't knowledgeable about them, they don't have ownership experience with them, and EV's generate dramatically fewer lifetime "service" visits and parts sales.
This was common with the f150 lightning, where salesman were pretty much "If you want it I can do the paper work, but let me show you the regular F150's we have here if you like to drive places without headaches."
It is interesting with the current oil shock what will happen to US automakers that have all but abandoned fuel efficient cars.
