Unfortunately they're not making the ID.Buzz affordable. And it's the only electric minivan in the US.
jeroenhd · 1d ago
With the random trade wars the US is starting, it'd be crazy to try to export affordable products to the US. Local manufacturers will undercut you the moment you try. Probably better to export the already-expensive luxury products instead for people who are willing to pay the additional taxes as part of the trade-off.
Both of those recalls seem like non issues and are only for government compliance.
They accidentally made an area if the seat that could be used as a seat but didn't have a belt, and they made an indicator glow in a slightly wrong color.
_aavaa_ · 1d ago
One of those recalls actively makes the car worse.
thebruce87m · 1d ago
I’m seeing tons of ID Buzz driving around here in Scotland. I have a theory that people who would have bought a Y are now getting a Buzz instead because of the obvious reasons.
stockresearcher · 1d ago
> tons of ID Buzz driving around here in Scotland.
In North America, VW only sells the long-wheelbase version and only the highest trim levels. And with worse charging equipment. And in the US specifically, they’ve removed the heat pump from the HVAC system and replaced it with a less-efficient heater (Canada still gets the heat pump).
It’s like VW wants it to fail. And I’m happy to let them fail alongside it. Nobody in the US should care at all what VW plans to do. When the car shows up at the local dealership, we’ll see what they have done.
threetonesun · 1d ago
It is both a much better shape in Europe than the US, and a better shape than a Y. Medium sized boxes are incredibly useful as vehicles!
bluGill · 1d ago
It is a safe bet that these won't come to the US at all. Those few of us in the US who like small cars are again out of luck. (though I have to admit despite preferring small cars I generally buy large trucks because the 10% of the time I need a large truck is enough that it is cheaper to use the large truck for everything and not have a car at all)
some_random · 1d ago
You can buy one right now.
bluGill · 1d ago
You can buy the buzz now. (Nice van, I test drive it but can't figure out how to make the payments... I got a used PHEV minivan instead which is in practice 80% EV)
I'm talking about the id.Polo which I don't expect to see in the US. VW brings maybe half their lineup to the US (and none of their cheap brands at all)
threetonesun · 1d ago
The second half of that sentence is the reason for the first half. A little more competition in that market and you'll probably see the price drop, although I think they've got at least 5-10 more years of it being an upper middle class statement piece.
gwbas1c · 1d ago
They need to get the range over 300 miles. I'm on my 4th EV, and the Buzz just wasn't on the list due to poor range.
Now before you start going "but but but," remember that EVs very rarely get the rated range. They lose about ~15 percent after ~2 years, and lose a lot more in extreme cold. Furthermore, the ID.Buzz charges very slowly.
EVs with less than 300 miles of range are fine for a car that's used for local driving, but a van like the ID.Buzz is a road trip vehicle. It really needs a longer range version that can charge quickly.
1970-01-01 · 1d ago
This naming convention is genuinely terrible. It's as if they took a slide out of an old Microsoft marketing PowerPoint. When will we see the ID.Silverlight, part of the .NET family of EVs?
sokoloff · 1d ago
I’m not sure which half of the name you find terrible.
I read it somewhat more positively (or at least clear in communications) as “ID. means electric” and “Polo” means what Polo has always meant in the VW lineup: their mini/compact entry-level car in the lineup.
delecti · 1d ago
How do you say it though? "Eye Dee Dot Polo"? "Id Polo"? It looks fine given that explanation, but it also needs to be words that people can speak.
alistairSH · 1d ago
I assume it's "Eye Dee Polo" - at least that's how I've heard everybody say the bus/van... Id.Buzz = Eye Dee Buzz.
balamatom · 1d ago
Then why fut a pucking dot in there?! What sucking fense does it make?
No comments yet
trenchpilgrim · 1d ago
In German, the ID is pronounced like "idee", the German word for "idea".
1718627440 · 1d ago
As a German, I would pronounce it as English I. D. It isn't uncommon for companies to use (partially) english names.
some_random · 1d ago
Either one seems totally fine? We got people saying "ay-ch tee tee pee ess colon slash slash" somehow, surely this can't be that tricky
piva00 · 1d ago
The same way as the ID.3, ID.4, etc. are said: Eye Dee Three, Eye Dee Four, Eye Dee Polo.
rsynnott · 1d ago
That's Up, not Polo, tho (maybe that'll be what would've been called the ID.1?)
rsynnott · 1d ago
They may just be backing off the ID.number thing. Their _old_ electric car name was the normal car name with an 'e' in front (eGolf, eUp); feels kind of like they're going back to some version of that.
Which seems sensible, honestly; ID.3 through 8 either currently exist or will soon. Who's going to keep track of which is which?
Zigurd · 1d ago
By comparison, anyway, "Leaf" looks pretty good. While iSomething, or 'e', is derivative and quickly dated. Who would even think of naming a technology product iSomething as if you found this Internet thing just last week.
A measure of EVS going mainstream will be that you don't name them anything distinctive. You name them like a car.
rsynnott · 1d ago
I get the impression that VW may be deliberately going for weird branding and styling precisely _because_ the eUp and eGolf (apart from the names) were _too_ car-like; they really looked almost identical to the petrol variants, and I think for about a decade people didn't realise that VW made electric cars at all. A lot of people thought the ID.3 and 4 were their first EVs.
Hyundai also seems to have done well with their notably-weird-looking Ioniq series. It seems like, at least for the moment, the markets actually want electric cars to be a bit weird.
Hamuko · 1d ago
Terrible naming and EVs go hand in hand.
Tesla's S3XY is quite bad in that it's a shit joke and there's just a random number instead of a letter because you couldn't make it the Model E. And Cybertruck just completely breaks the form further.
Audi decided to name their cars "t-urd". They also blew their load early, since the first EV they made was just called the "Audi t-urd", and then they had to rename it to the "Audi Q8 t-urd" when they realised that they were going to make more than one EV model.
Mercedes-Benz decided that the electric version of the S-Class should be the EQS, the electric version of the E-Class should be the EQE, the electric versions of the GLS and GLE should be called the EQS SUV and EQE SUV, and that the electric version of the G-Class should be called the "Mercedes-Benz G580 with EQ Technology". Oh, and the electric CLA is just called the CLA.
BMW's lineup is pretty inoffensive in that it's quite logical, as the electric equivalent of the 4 Series is the i4, the electric equivalent of the 5 Series is the i5, and so on. Except that the electric equivalent of the BMW X5 is the BMW iX when the electric equivalent of the BMW X1 is the BMW iX1. Oh, and the BMW i8 isn't even an electric car – it's a hybrid.
BYD's electric cars also make no sense. Why does the same car maker have names like the "BYD Dolphin" and "BYD Seal" next to a car named "BYD Sealion 7" and "BYD Atto 3"? What determines whether or not a BYD model has a number in the name or not? And why is the fully electric one called the "BYD Seal" but the hybrid one is called the "BYD Seal 6 DM-i"?
Rivian's makes sense so far, since they have the biggest R1, the more medium R2 and the compact R3. But going by this logic, the R4 should be an even smaller car than the R3. Either that, or the numbering has no bearing on where in the lineup the car actually falls, just what was released first.
Polestar has that same exact problem that Rivian might have in the future: the Polestar 2 is smaller than the Polestar 3 and the Polestar 3 is bigger than the Polestar 4, and the Polestar 4 is smaller than the Polestar 5. And the Polestar 6 is probably going to be more upmarket than any other Polestar, except the Polestar 1, which isn't an EV. Basically, the number says nothing about the car except when it was first released.
The Toyota bZ4X, which stands for "beyond Zero" (as in emissions) 4 (from the similarly sized RAV4) "crossover", is also just a downright awful name. Same for the Honda E:NY1. I don't know what inspired these two to make such awful and complex names for their EVs.
And finally: the Porsche Taycan Turbo doesn't actually have a turbo. The "turbo" in the name just means "better" in the style of "TurboGrafx-16".
Yes, I could rant about car names all day long. Don't even ask me about how Ferrari names their cars.
hbs18 · 1d ago
> Porsche Taycan Turbo doesn't actually have a turbo
For Porsche cars "turbo" meant "more powerful" for like 10 years by now, predating the Taycan. They sell the 911 Carrera and the 911 Turbo, yet both cars have a turbocharged engine.
Hamuko · 1d ago
Hey, at least it's factually accurate. The 911 Turbo does in fact have a turbo in it. And technically the 911 GT3 does not have a turbo in it, so not all 911 have a turbo in them. Thankfully the 911 Turbo is one that does have it.
BobaFloutist · 1d ago
Also I can never remember if the Chevy Bolt or the Chevy Volt is fully electric, because bolts and volts are both things associated with electricity, so neither one should obviously be the full electric vs the hybrid. Without looking it up, I would guess that the Volt is full EV, because volts are necessarily to do with electricity whereas I suppose a gas or hybrid car could also "bolt"....and, I'm wrong.
general1465 · 1d ago
ID.Polo as an SUV? Polo is a small hatchback, if you want a SUV based on Polo you should use ID.T-Cross. VW you don't even understand your own naming, that's sad.
jgilias · 1d ago
At least where I live EVs are becoming pretty affordable anyway, but in a slightly different way. 2-3 year old used EVs in great condition with good ranges are pretty cheap these days.
rayiner · 1d ago
> A model like the Polo shows just how powerful a name can be,” Martin Sanders, Volkswagen’s sales boss, said, adding, “it stands for reliability, personality and history.”
Did all the clever marketing people move to america.
dvfjsdhgfv · 1d ago
A cynic in me would say that means that the new affordable Polo (~30k€) will be 10k more expensive that the current Polo (ca 20k)...
On a more serious note though, Western car manufacturers used Covid for a massive price hike (30%?) arguing they have to do it because of parts scarcity, but once supply got to normal levels they refused to bring the prices back to the previous (or similar) price point so now they will be killed one by one by Chinese car manufacturers who - also mostly supported by their state - keep pre-Covid pricing.
ZeroGravitas · 1d ago
The ID. 3 has been starting from under 30K since a year ago year so you'd assume they'd pitch this below that as it's effectively the ID. 2
I'd also like discussions of car affordability to shift to TCO unless there's been an announcement of free fuel that I've missed.
bluGill · 1d ago
> I'd also like discussions of car affordability to shift to TCO unless there's been an announcement of free fuel that I've missed.
If you buy/lease new cars every 3 years - which the the typical market for new cars - the TCO is almost entirely based on the cost of the car. Insurance and taxes are based on the price and so there is a direct relation. Maintenance costs are nearly zero as oil changes are cheap and everything else is warranty. What is left is fuel and that is cheap (14000 miles per year at 25mpg with gas at $3/gallon works out to $140/month).
If you buy used cars the economics are different, but you are not longer the direct target for new cars.
ZeroGravitas · 1d ago
A very quick glance at lease costs for the current ICE Polo vs the ID. 3 (so one step up the VW range from the expected ID.2/Polo) suggests monthly fuel cost differences could essentially close the gap in europe, so instant savings from day one are likely with the new ID.2/Polo that was considered to be too costly by (hypothetical) upfront sales price above.
jeroenhd · 1d ago
Even with the price hikes, Volkswagen is having to close down factories, do mass layoffs, and apply pay cuts to keep factories running. American exports getting hit by trade wars also don't exactly help, while at the same time cheaper Chinese cars are taking over more and more of their local market.
Volkswagen may not go bankrupt tomorrow, but it's hardly in a position to bring back pre-COVID prices. They were late to the electric car game which also didn't help with their market power.
pshirshov · 1d ago
> while at the same time cheaper Chinese cars are taking over more and more of their local market.
I'm wondering why can that be? Probably, because Chinese cars are cheaper?
I'm curious what can motivate me to pay ~€60K for an European car instead of paying ~€30K for the same set of features? Chinese software is crap, but at least the power steering didn't stop working during the test drive, unlike my experience with VW.
dvfjsdhgfv · 1d ago
> ~€60K for an European car instead of paying ~€30K for the same set of features?
Fear and uncertainty mostly. We don't know how these cars will be in 5-10 years. Maybe they have some hidden faults that will come up en masse after certain time? And what about spare parts? These are the questions many buyers ask themselves.
And after some thinking, no matter how you look at it, the 60k option is not beating the 30k one.
eptcyka · 1d ago
Prices never go down. Neither central banks nor business owners want deflation, do mountains will be moved to avoid it.
ofrzeta · 1d ago
You just need to wait for the Skoda variant of this Polo, presumably e-Fabia or something.
octo888 · 1d ago
I remember when the Polo was about 12k EUR, about 15 years ago!
lifestyleguru · 1d ago
Polo is the new Golf, in terms of price and dimensions. No idea why they do this weird shift, they look even more confused than me.
atq2119 · 1d ago
I suspect at least in part it is to move loyal customers into larger and more expensive segments over time.
Let's say the first car you get is a Polo and you really like it, so your next one is a Polo as well. Over the decades, you're being moved to making more expensive car purchase.
And to make up for that, a new smaller cheaper tier is introduced at some point. I don't care about cars enough to know when they introduced the Up, but it certainly didn't exist a few decades ago.
bluGill · 1d ago
It always was. The US Jetta was sold as the Polo in other countries. The Golf and the Jetta were the same platform/size other than the golf was a hatchback and the Jetta a sedan.
FridayoLeary · 1d ago
I don't think they care. They are chasing the higher profit margins that come with selling "premium" models and sacrificing the budget market to the chinese.
Another point about the id range; they rushed it out with half baked software and UX. They probably resolved most of this but it's disturbing that they would do it in the first place.
Finally how much cheaper is electricity? Since 2020 the prices have more then doubled and the prices of charging in service stations are huge. I'm not sure that in the future private vehicles will be affordable as they are today.
rsynnott · 1d ago
> They are chasing the higher profit margins that come with selling "premium" models and sacrificing the budget market to the chinese.
Well, also, they've been increasingly pushing cheap stuff out of the VW brand over the last decade or so. I'd suspect that, when the dust settles, they'll have something around the 20k mark, but it'll be Skoda or SEAT, not VW.
> Finally how much cheaper is electricity? Since 2020 the prices have more than doubled and the prices of charging in service stations are huge.
This may be a regional-differences thing (in particular, I bet it differs at least in timing based on whether you're in a mostly-wind country or a mostly-solar country), but at least in Ireland you can sign up to an electricity plan that gives you electricity for like 8 cent/kWh at 02:00-04:00 (vs ~30c at peak times and ~15c at night); this is explicitly marketed at electric car users. Here's a fairly typical example; note that it actually has EV in the name (though it doesn't actually require one or anything). https://www.electricireland.ie/residential/electricity-and-g...
bluGill · 1d ago
Unfortunately VW is the only brand of the above they bring to the US. On this side of the pond we don't get the option to buy those others. (unless you import it yourself, but you have to be rich to pay all the costs - last I heard you would have to import 10 for crash testing, and I don't know what else is needed)
rsynnott · 1d ago
Oh, right, yeah, are they even launching this in the US? AFAIK they did not launch the ID.3, their current cheapest VW-branded model, there.
whynotmaybe · 1d ago
> they rushed it out with half baked software and UX.
Are we back to the "wait for service pack" era ?
alistairSH · 1d ago
Sadly, yes, I think we are (or at least really close to it).
jq-r · 1d ago
No, in reality it's "buy a newer model of the same car" strategy. They don't really care about the current/old model.
dotcoma · 1d ago
> I'm not sure that in the future private vehicles will be affordable as they are today.
That’s a good thing, if you ask me.
weweersdfsd · 1d ago
Yes, what Western world really needs is more people moving to already unaffordable big cities, because they can't afford a commute from cheaper areas.
Landlords would really love that.
darkwater · 1d ago
Not in the way you think. We are going to keep the same, but older, ICE fleet running for many more years, unfortunately.
FirmwareBurner · 1d ago
Yep this. The EU is one of the champions on regulatory self-owns/own-goals like these by pushing legislation that sounds good on the surface without too much though, but ends up having worse send and third order effects.
Examples like:
Giving preference to diesel vehicles because they produced less C02 than gasoline cars, while ignoring the much worse NOx and particulate for human respiratory heath that diesel engines produce(possible lobby from EU car brands involved).
Denuclearization, because nuclear is scary and dangerous, that pushed energy prices up and use of coal which killed more people via respiratory issues than Chernobyl and Fukushima (possible lobby from Russian oil and gas involved)
Banning ICE cars prematurely before the market, charging infrastructure and consumer demand can catch up on its own, will have similar negative effects.
FirmwareBurner · 1d ago
Good only if public transport gets significantly more coverage end frequency, otherwise more working class people get financially wrecked. Not everyone lives in Amsterdam, Vienna, Berlin or London to not need a car.
bluGill · 1d ago
Something for everyone to work on... Even if you love driving eventually you will get old and be unable to drive safely.
FirmwareBurner · 1d ago
>Something for everyone to work on
And who do you think is gonna work on that? Because politicians aren't gonna start building trains for you where you live, so you're left to fix your own situation by driving a car to work since your boss isn't gonna move his company where you live so you can walk/bike there.
>Even if you love driving eventually you will get old and be unable to drive safely.
Where do you see me saying anything about liking driving? I also don't like brushing my teeth but I still do it because it's a necessity just like driving is for a lot of people in smaller and highly spread out cities where frequent subways/trains are not a thing.
Sure, we can all try to move to big cities with top public transport where you don't need a car, but those cities already have a housing shortage and it's only gonna get worse.
bluGill · 1d ago
Politicians do what they think voters want them to do. Thus talk to your neighbors about this and point out that they could have good transit service (if you live in the US you might be the only neighborhood in your state, but you can point to other countries). Write letters to your politicians. Attend community meetings. Make sure you build bridges with conservatives - there are many conservatives pro transit messages but nobody knows them. Be careful about bridges with liberals who don't care about transit except as a way to do something else they want (since this results in bad transit which gives those who are against transit another "it can't work here" project to point to).
None of the above is easy.
FirmwareBurner · 1d ago
>Politicians do what they think voters want them to do. Thus talk to your neighbors about this and point out that they could have good transit service
With what money? Because everyone wants things right now and my city is broke from mismanagement(corruption) and most companies here have had mass layoffs so money is going to welfare now.
And history proves the west has started to suck at building rail infrastructure on time and on budget. By the time any rail would be built here, we'll have flying cars. Plus then you have nimbyis who don't want rail next to their homes.
So then isn't it normal that people still prefer to keep their cars instead of waiting decades for fictional rail that might not happen? A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
bluGill · 1d ago
step one is fix the corruption. That can only happen when voters care about their side more than other things.
rails are expansive but they are timy compared to most of the budget and an investment that saves you (roads which I bet your government pays for)
FirmwareBurner · 1d ago
>step one is fix the corruption.
Easier said than done and you know it. Meanwhile the government is making your car illegal in 10 years, but your job will still need you to be at work by them somehow, that's your problem.
> That can only happen when voters care about their side more than other
things.
That's why corruption isn't going anywhere because society is more fragmented and partisan than evet due to the ever increasing number of fires that need putting out. You can't get your county to pull non existent money out of thin air for a 20 year rail project when there's a war next door and million of pensioners and refugees that need money right fucking NOW. So taxman and money printer go brrrrrr.
>rails are expansive but they are timy compared to most of the budget and an investment that saves you (roads which I bet your government pays for)
Yeah but the roads are already there and so are the cars, and people's homes and workplaces were built around that existing road infrastructure. You can't tell them to fuck off somewhere else because in 20 years a rail will be there. Once a you build a dense, car-first society over decades with no space for rail, ripping that off and replacing it with rail is impossible in the west. The nimbys alone will kill it even if you had money to build it.
We have new rail projects built but they're cross country in wilderness, not inside the city where its needed daily.
bluGill · 9h ago
> Easier said than done and you know it.
Yes, but it is still important to do this. So get out and do your part. Giving up ensures things get worse.
mhb · 1d ago
Volkswagen has some new naming scheme for some car. More news at 11.
thiago_fm · 1d ago
Love my Polo, it's by far the best car of its category for what you get, with many ADAS features, very good infotaintment system. It's my first VW.
VW software has improved a lot in the past 2 years, I went from a hater to a fan.
Never dug the ID3 design, much less its internal panel and controls which are very crappy, similar to a Tesla.
I still think it will have a hard time in Europe (it's biggest market). Most people in Europe live in apartments and locations where you don't have anywhere to charge.
The people that have houses typically can afford a Benz, making it a very niche car.
Until literally every supermarket has plenty of EV charging spots I doubt we will see people really buying EVs in Europe, even if the price is the same.
China is a million miles ahead in EVs, they have chargers everywhere.
They accidentally made an area if the seat that could be used as a seat but didn't have a belt, and they made an indicator glow in a slightly wrong color.
In North America, VW only sells the long-wheelbase version and only the highest trim levels. And with worse charging equipment. And in the US specifically, they’ve removed the heat pump from the HVAC system and replaced it with a less-efficient heater (Canada still gets the heat pump).
It’s like VW wants it to fail. And I’m happy to let them fail alongside it. Nobody in the US should care at all what VW plans to do. When the car shows up at the local dealership, we’ll see what they have done.
I'm talking about the id.Polo which I don't expect to see in the US. VW brings maybe half their lineup to the US (and none of their cheap brands at all)
Now before you start going "but but but," remember that EVs very rarely get the rated range. They lose about ~15 percent after ~2 years, and lose a lot more in extreme cold. Furthermore, the ID.Buzz charges very slowly.
EVs with less than 300 miles of range are fine for a car that's used for local driving, but a van like the ID.Buzz is a road trip vehicle. It really needs a longer range version that can charge quickly.
I read it somewhat more positively (or at least clear in communications) as “ID. means electric” and “Polo” means what Polo has always meant in the VW lineup: their mini/compact entry-level car in the lineup.
No comments yet
Which seems sensible, honestly; ID.3 through 8 either currently exist or will soon. Who's going to keep track of which is which?
A measure of EVS going mainstream will be that you don't name them anything distinctive. You name them like a car.
Hyundai also seems to have done well with their notably-weird-looking Ioniq series. It seems like, at least for the moment, the markets actually want electric cars to be a bit weird.
Tesla's S3XY is quite bad in that it's a shit joke and there's just a random number instead of a letter because you couldn't make it the Model E. And Cybertruck just completely breaks the form further.
Audi decided to name their cars "t-urd". They also blew their load early, since the first EV they made was just called the "Audi t-urd", and then they had to rename it to the "Audi Q8 t-urd" when they realised that they were going to make more than one EV model.
Mercedes-Benz decided that the electric version of the S-Class should be the EQS, the electric version of the E-Class should be the EQE, the electric versions of the GLS and GLE should be called the EQS SUV and EQE SUV, and that the electric version of the G-Class should be called the "Mercedes-Benz G580 with EQ Technology". Oh, and the electric CLA is just called the CLA.
BMW's lineup is pretty inoffensive in that it's quite logical, as the electric equivalent of the 4 Series is the i4, the electric equivalent of the 5 Series is the i5, and so on. Except that the electric equivalent of the BMW X5 is the BMW iX when the electric equivalent of the BMW X1 is the BMW iX1. Oh, and the BMW i8 isn't even an electric car – it's a hybrid.
BYD's electric cars also make no sense. Why does the same car maker have names like the "BYD Dolphin" and "BYD Seal" next to a car named "BYD Sealion 7" and "BYD Atto 3"? What determines whether or not a BYD model has a number in the name or not? And why is the fully electric one called the "BYD Seal" but the hybrid one is called the "BYD Seal 6 DM-i"?
Rivian's makes sense so far, since they have the biggest R1, the more medium R2 and the compact R3. But going by this logic, the R4 should be an even smaller car than the R3. Either that, or the numbering has no bearing on where in the lineup the car actually falls, just what was released first.
Polestar has that same exact problem that Rivian might have in the future: the Polestar 2 is smaller than the Polestar 3 and the Polestar 3 is bigger than the Polestar 4, and the Polestar 4 is smaller than the Polestar 5. And the Polestar 6 is probably going to be more upmarket than any other Polestar, except the Polestar 1, which isn't an EV. Basically, the number says nothing about the car except when it was first released.
The Toyota bZ4X, which stands for "beyond Zero" (as in emissions) 4 (from the similarly sized RAV4) "crossover", is also just a downright awful name. Same for the Honda E:NY1. I don't know what inspired these two to make such awful and complex names for their EVs.
And finally: the Porsche Taycan Turbo doesn't actually have a turbo. The "turbo" in the name just means "better" in the style of "TurboGrafx-16".
Yes, I could rant about car names all day long. Don't even ask me about how Ferrari names their cars.
For Porsche cars "turbo" meant "more powerful" for like 10 years by now, predating the Taycan. They sell the 911 Carrera and the 911 Turbo, yet both cars have a turbocharged engine.
Did all the clever marketing people move to america.
On a more serious note though, Western car manufacturers used Covid for a massive price hike (30%?) arguing they have to do it because of parts scarcity, but once supply got to normal levels they refused to bring the prices back to the previous (or similar) price point so now they will be killed one by one by Chinese car manufacturers who - also mostly supported by their state - keep pre-Covid pricing.
I'd also like discussions of car affordability to shift to TCO unless there's been an announcement of free fuel that I've missed.
If you buy/lease new cars every 3 years - which the the typical market for new cars - the TCO is almost entirely based on the cost of the car. Insurance and taxes are based on the price and so there is a direct relation. Maintenance costs are nearly zero as oil changes are cheap and everything else is warranty. What is left is fuel and that is cheap (14000 miles per year at 25mpg with gas at $3/gallon works out to $140/month).
If you buy used cars the economics are different, but you are not longer the direct target for new cars.
Volkswagen may not go bankrupt tomorrow, but it's hardly in a position to bring back pre-COVID prices. They were late to the electric car game which also didn't help with their market power.
I'm wondering why can that be? Probably, because Chinese cars are cheaper?
I'm curious what can motivate me to pay ~€60K for an European car instead of paying ~€30K for the same set of features? Chinese software is crap, but at least the power steering didn't stop working during the test drive, unlike my experience with VW.
Fear and uncertainty mostly. We don't know how these cars will be in 5-10 years. Maybe they have some hidden faults that will come up en masse after certain time? And what about spare parts? These are the questions many buyers ask themselves.
And after some thinking, no matter how you look at it, the 60k option is not beating the 30k one.
Let's say the first car you get is a Polo and you really like it, so your next one is a Polo as well. Over the decades, you're being moved to making more expensive car purchase.
And to make up for that, a new smaller cheaper tier is introduced at some point. I don't care about cars enough to know when they introduced the Up, but it certainly didn't exist a few decades ago.
Another point about the id range; they rushed it out with half baked software and UX. They probably resolved most of this but it's disturbing that they would do it in the first place.
Finally how much cheaper is electricity? Since 2020 the prices have more then doubled and the prices of charging in service stations are huge. I'm not sure that in the future private vehicles will be affordable as they are today.
Well, also, they've been increasingly pushing cheap stuff out of the VW brand over the last decade or so. I'd suspect that, when the dust settles, they'll have something around the 20k mark, but it'll be Skoda or SEAT, not VW.
> Finally how much cheaper is electricity? Since 2020 the prices have more than doubled and the prices of charging in service stations are huge.
This may be a regional-differences thing (in particular, I bet it differs at least in timing based on whether you're in a mostly-wind country or a mostly-solar country), but at least in Ireland you can sign up to an electricity plan that gives you electricity for like 8 cent/kWh at 02:00-04:00 (vs ~30c at peak times and ~15c at night); this is explicitly marketed at electric car users. Here's a fairly typical example; note that it actually has EV in the name (though it doesn't actually require one or anything). https://www.electricireland.ie/residential/electricity-and-g...
Are we back to the "wait for service pack" era ?
That’s a good thing, if you ask me.
Landlords would really love that.
Examples like:
Banning ICE cars prematurely before the market, charging infrastructure and consumer demand can catch up on its own, will have similar negative effects.And who do you think is gonna work on that? Because politicians aren't gonna start building trains for you where you live, so you're left to fix your own situation by driving a car to work since your boss isn't gonna move his company where you live so you can walk/bike there.
>Even if you love driving eventually you will get old and be unable to drive safely.
Where do you see me saying anything about liking driving? I also don't like brushing my teeth but I still do it because it's a necessity just like driving is for a lot of people in smaller and highly spread out cities where frequent subways/trains are not a thing.
Sure, we can all try to move to big cities with top public transport where you don't need a car, but those cities already have a housing shortage and it's only gonna get worse.
None of the above is easy.
With what money? Because everyone wants things right now and my city is broke from mismanagement(corruption) and most companies here have had mass layoffs so money is going to welfare now.
And history proves the west has started to suck at building rail infrastructure on time and on budget. By the time any rail would be built here, we'll have flying cars. Plus then you have nimbyis who don't want rail next to their homes.
So then isn't it normal that people still prefer to keep their cars instead of waiting decades for fictional rail that might not happen? A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
rails are expansive but they are timy compared to most of the budget and an investment that saves you (roads which I bet your government pays for)
Easier said than done and you know it. Meanwhile the government is making your car illegal in 10 years, but your job will still need you to be at work by them somehow, that's your problem.
> That can only happen when voters care about their side more than other things.
That's why corruption isn't going anywhere because society is more fragmented and partisan than evet due to the ever increasing number of fires that need putting out. You can't get your county to pull non existent money out of thin air for a 20 year rail project when there's a war next door and million of pensioners and refugees that need money right fucking NOW. So taxman and money printer go brrrrrr.
>rails are expansive but they are timy compared to most of the budget and an investment that saves you (roads which I bet your government pays for)
Yeah but the roads are already there and so are the cars, and people's homes and workplaces were built around that existing road infrastructure. You can't tell them to fuck off somewhere else because in 20 years a rail will be there. Once a you build a dense, car-first society over decades with no space for rail, ripping that off and replacing it with rail is impossible in the west. The nimbys alone will kill it even if you had money to build it.
We have new rail projects built but they're cross country in wilderness, not inside the city where its needed daily.
Yes, but it is still important to do this. So get out and do your part. Giving up ensures things get worse.
VW software has improved a lot in the past 2 years, I went from a hater to a fan.
Never dug the ID3 design, much less its internal panel and controls which are very crappy, similar to a Tesla.
I still think it will have a hard time in Europe (it's biggest market). Most people in Europe live in apartments and locations where you don't have anywhere to charge.
The people that have houses typically can afford a Benz, making it a very niche car.
Until literally every supermarket has plenty of EV charging spots I doubt we will see people really buying EVs in Europe, even if the price is the same.
China is a million miles ahead in EVs, they have chargers everywhere.
P/E ratios - VW 6 - BYD 13 - Tesla 200
Tesla's valuation is absurdly crazy.
(with 0 revenue coming from those product lines)