Is the EV Revolution Dead? 

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If everyone is a renter living in an apartment , then no one has anywhere to park and charge their car.

Germany: please buy EVs also Germany: there are no public charging stations in 40% of towns here is my surprised pikachu face when sales plummets after government drops the 5k€ incentive

"Obviously that's really shameful customer service from Hertz." It's the sort of thing you expect from car rental companies in the US.

Making EV non repairable filled with subscription services and data accumulation pushed people away.

Never be an early adopter of any new tech. A laser printer cost $10K in 1984 (close to 30k today). Within a few years, they were $1000. Now they’re about $200 in early 90s dollars.

If a manufacturer brought out an EV that was cheap to repair and reasonable to replace the battery it would sell like crazy.

Germany has a constitution that strict on how much debt its nation can incur each year!? Wow.

The Hertz story is absolutely devastating.

Look into California wanting to tax ev now that they are losing money on the fuel taxes. That’s nuts.

I have an EV. I have a Chinese Segway scooter. $300 brand new for 300+ miles and counting. I imagine I'll get 1,000 miles before it gets crusty.

Cant wait for the EV taxes to start rolling out.....

This is the most even-handed and realistic review of EVs I've seen. Sales aren't falling off a cliff, but sales growth is leveling off well before we have reached a general adoption phase. By the way, the visual mockery of the Cybertruck was hilarious - and deserved.

After having an EV for 2 years, I prefer good milage gas or Hybrid. Have you ever been in a situation where you have less than 50 miles range with 2 charging places ahead and both of those charging places turn out to not be working? I have and it sucks. We need better infrastructure for EV's before I commit to another.

This is what happens when the taxpayer quits paying up to 30% of your purchase and you have to pay for all of it yourself.

It's basic economics. If the EV is cheaper to operate, they will sell like hot cakes. If not, they won't. If the government in US, EU and other developed nations want true adoption of EVs, they need to calculate what it really will take to make the product competitive with ICE.

Many of us can only afford used cars... New or used a car needs to go 200k+ miles without needing an engine/transmission/or electric car battery pack.

Those who lives in residential building almost never have a place to charge, and for trips the infrastructure of charging stations are terrible.. I would love an EV, but I don’t have where to charge and absolutely hates subscription enforcement

You need a house to own one. The ev subsidy is a giveaway to homeowners.

Hertz and terrible customer service, name a more iconic duo, I'll wait.

People complaining about the government taking sides are ignorant about how ICE private vehicles came about in the first place. That process was also about governments taking side of those vehicles (and companies producing them) against public transport, bikes, and pedestrians by making tons of private car infrastructure and laws prioritizing cars against pedestrians (e.g. jaywalking).

Haha only us Brits will get the Arthur Daley reference and then if only nearly 50 or over.

A brittish car dealer did the maths. He compared the price per mile of 6 EV's compared to the price per mile of 6 diesel cars and averaged the cost out for the two groups. While charging an EV at home it worked out at 17 pence per mile, while charging an EV at a fast charger in a public space it cost a whopping 26 pence per mile, and the diesel cars averaged at 18.5 pence per mile. Who in their right mind would buy an EV. It costs just as much to run as a diesel car, cost far more to buy new, and you lose a fortune if you ever decided to sell your EV. The government subsidies don't even cover the loss in depreciation after a year. Add to that that the majority of the electricity generated in the UK and Ireland comes from fossil fuels and you don't even have much of an argument with regards the environment. When the lifecycle of the two types of cars are compared it was found that the production of EV's have a far greater impact on the environment than typical ICE cars, and yet again at end of life the environmental impact of disposing and partially recycling EV is many times greater than an ICE vehicle. So the only time they are actually saving the planet is while they are on the road and the more mileage they do the better. But here is the biggest problem with EV's. There are no high milage EV's on the road. There are literarily thousands of diesel cars on the road that have 150,000 miles on the clock but an extremely small number of EV's that have ever actually clocked up 100,000 miles. Battery technology need to be developed far more before EV's become economically or environmentally friendly as is currently falsely claimed. But there is hope as it look like Ferrous oxide batteries are on the way which would solve two of the biggest issues with EV's. These will be extremely cheap (in terms of financial and environmental cost) to manufacture and their disposal at end of life would be extremely cheap and much of them will be fully recyclable. I personally wouldn't buy a EV even if the government gave me a 60% discount at the moment. EV's make no sense whatsoever currently. But I definitely would consider buying an EV once ferrous oxide battery EV's come on the market, even at full price with no government grant . They will be cheap, environmentally friendly, have good resale values and even if you did have to replace battery packs you would not be looking for a second mortgage

I would love an EV, but I'm not at the point in my life I can afford a brand new car of any kind, and EVs aren't affordable on the used market yet.

the quickness with which this was adopted is frightening. only a few years after tesla became more adopted and "guys let's make selling fuel cars illegal in 20 years" like wtf

I love the driving experience of my two BEVs. But if you cannot charge at home, EVs aren't for you. Even here in Norway, DC charging is often overwhelmed and also much, much, much more expensive than gasoline and power at home. I rarely pay on excess of 1NOK even in winter at home, 0.3 NOK in summer but at the DC charger it's 4.5 to 6.5 NOK. The only thing I do not recognize is the cheap used EV market, I'm unable to find reasonably priced vehicles.

In Italy public charging station are selling the kWh by one euro or more. Go figure why no one drives electric, when it's more expensive than petrol.

Maybe the different reason, The world economy is not doing well its getting worse and worse people cannot afford to buy car .

The US needs tons of EVs, namely metro and commuter rail cars. The electric personal vehicle will never be an actually useful green solution.

New Jersey is trying to kill EV in that state. DMV fees went from a $300-ish Dmv fee to a $1300-ish DMV fee.

Most car buyers are not buying EVs to save planet. They are buying EVs to save money. But now EVs are getting taxed on par with ICE vehicles, they are expensive to charge if you don't can't charge them at home, now they are expensive to maintain and essential features are locked behind paywalls.

Hybrids reduce gas consumption by 30% on average that maybe the way to go until electric vehicles issue get worked out.

Toyota Camry hybrid. 675 mile range. Refuels in 4 minutes anywhere. When EV’s can do that, let me know. Think and read before you respond.

I'm always surprised how many people get an EV before actually doing a little research or critical thinking.

I build EVs for an ICE company. People hate the thought of EVs because they think they are going to be forced into one

My experience with rented ev: prepare for 30 minutes of fiddling around with it, figuring out how to start it, and calling some number to ask if they will release the plug from the charger, because it refuses to come out by itself.

It's not that I don't want an EV, it's that I don't want a rolling iPad. I don't want a car that hoovers up all my personal data and sells it to Google as I drive. (My phone does enough of that already.) I don't want a car that will brick itself because of one bad OTA update or worse, a malicious hack. And I really don't want a car that can't be repaired. That's what modern EVs are now: Disposable vehicles.

i remember walking past an EV charging station and everybody there looked miserable just sitting in their cars waiting for it to charge. why would i want to be 'elite' like them if they look/feel like that.

The BIG bonus of an EV over ICE is the commuter. If you're driving an hour to work, parking all day, then driving an hour home, and parking over night, you can recharge your car every day, and never have to worry about buying gas. It's a big bonus. But if you're working from home, that pattern of behavior is gone, and the big strength of EV is also gone.

You list their low volume as a positive, but to me it's a huge negative. I live on a blind turn. The quietness of EVs is a real danger

Diesel Mechanic here: the problem with battery EVs, IMO, is that a plug-in hybrid more or less offers all of the advantages of an EV while still having the flexibility to engage in longer trips. Essentially, there is no USP for pure battery vehicles.

Mr Boyle, there is no more money, reality is about to hit everyone in the face.

The only real serious obstacle here is lack of public charging. In Norway where they have that sorted 80 percent ev share is fine.

dang Mr Boyle, nice suit!!

EV producers have been pricing with the incentives taken into account, because they can

You missed the key reason Toyota has an EV. California mandate. If you are a US auto manufacturer, you must offer an EV to sell your brand in Cali. Most manufacturers HQ in California and the rest is simple. Also why Bz4x is such a dog.

Two issues: * Lack of chargers * THEY ARE EXPENSIVE

Why would demand grow? People who want an EV have them; and has been zero done to address the issues (weight; lack of range; lack of charging infrastructure)

Range is still a problem here in the US.

lol ad I got before the video was for an EV

a Chevy Volt ad popped up before this started, the irony.

U.S. electric vehicle sales in Q2 2024 totaled 330,463 (up 22.9% from Q1 2024, and up 11.3% year-over-year). That's significant growth. More than one in three vehicles (37%) sold in China in the second quarter of 2024 were BEVs, PHEVs or hybrids, up from 30% in the equivalent quarter in 2023. Meanwhile, total EV sales grew by 21% in Q2 2024 vs. Q2 2023. That's significant growth. Growth of electrified vehicles year-on-year in the top five European markets outperformed the total vehicle market in the second quarter of 2024. EV sales increased by 11% from the same period last year. That's significant growth. You've made a video based on some bad assumptions and created some misinformation. Why?

The main cost of an EV is its battery, which is a consumable. Expecting resale value on a used EV is like expecting resale value on a used can of petrol. If the EU actually wants to help with green initiatives, they should stop burning money giving handouts to the wealthy and to soulless corporations and instead pass laws mandating things like user-repairability, standardization of electric vehicle parts, banning of any subscription-based services associated with EV's etc. These laws would make electric vehicles far more attractive to consumers, but are clearly not things any of the auto makers are willing to do themselves without regulation forcing them to.

As a battery scientist who specializes in lithium ion batteries, there's no way those explosions I saw in footage were the direct result of a runaway lithium ion battery reaction. They almost never fail catastrophically, the cells themselves would have to have been quite small for a pager (vape batteries are significantly bigger), if they were made by Motorola then they likely had safety features in them like seperator membranes that have shutdown functions, and moderately safe electrolytes + cathode materials that don't rapidly oxidize like that. The biggest clues for me were: 1) They all went off in unison and reliably. Anyone who's done battery safety testing will tell you identical cells won't fail identically depending on how you test them. 2) It takes some effort to get one to explode and no, a tweak to a battery management system (BMS) isn't going to accomplish what happened in those videos. They had to have been rigged up with explosives.

TOYOTA WAS RIGHT! Their Hybrid car sales are up double digits and growing. People want Hybrids not EVs! Toyota leadership said that the EV tech is not good yet so hybrids are the future. They called it even when most car companies started to pivot to EV and kind of ridicule Toyota for pivoting towards hybrids.

I bought a Prius in 2006 and drove it for 14 years before the battery finally crapped out. I'm an urban dweller but I do make longer trips now and again so the hybrid was perfect for me. I loved that car. One of the things I've seen in the city lately is a lot of eBikes which make total sense. I suspect eventually, as the infrastructure grows, EVs will become more popular but hybrids are so universal with their self-charging batteries I think they'll be dominant for a long time.

Too expensive !

The market that flips their car every 3 to 5 years is not that large. New, or even used, EVs are very expensive. My last car cost $4000, not $34,000. I looked for a used EV. They were all over $20,000, for a used car with a questionable battery. I can't afford to take the risk.

If EV popularity is so low, why are the US and EU imposing such high import taxes?

Hybrids are the future. Regenerative braking is great, and nit relying on gigantic battery packs is also great.

Jaguar is going to suffer with its commitment to go all-electric

On the subject of flammable chips, I once threw some flavor twisted something or other fritos into a campfire and it burned brightly with a faint green color for quite a while!

My wife refuses to let me buy an EV. She thinks it will burn down our house.

Patrick come on man, a normal battery can’t detonate and blow your hand off

Your ev will only explode if someone packs c4 in itt

Plug-in hybrids are the best to me. My favorite rental car I've ever had was a Rav 4 plug-in hybrid. They gave it to me with a full tank and a 857 kilometer range. I drove several hours away, sat through traffic, got into stop and go driving, charged it once overnight, and drove several hours back. I returned the car with a 612 kilometer range. I rented a non-plug-in hybrid rav 4 and a similar trip cost me 1.5 tanks of fuel.

Hybrids drawback is their complexity leading to many problems and no one to fix them.

If your car goes down in value quickly, AND is more likely to be totalled even in a minor accident, you are going to be hit with bad negative equity.

🤣🤣🤣 Showing a picture of the Hammerhead Eagle I-Thrust when talking about the cyber truck. That killed me!! 🤣 We went with PHEV Pacifica. The mileage varies due to weather n driving habits. Lower mileage in the winter and when on long trips. In general we are seeing +80 mpg now. My electric bill went up $20/month.

Virtue signalling comes at a cost.

So, EV sales have slowed, and suddenly the "EV revolution" is dead? Right. It couldn't possibly have anything to do with high interest rates or those massive tariffs on cheaper Chinese EVs that make them unaffordable in the U.S. and Europe. Clearly, people want EVs, especially when they see the price of fuel these days. But no, let’s focus on hybrids because, after all, who wouldn’t want the complexity of maintaining two powertrains instead of just going electric? If Chinese EVs could get here without those tariffs, we’d see a whole different story - and that’s what’s really being left out here.

Is the problem that people don't want EVs, is it that the legacy automobile manufacturers produce garbage quality and expect top-tier prices? Allowing Chinese EVs to be sold without tariffs for 10-years would be a fascinating experiment. Purportedly, the the Chinese company Xiomi is marketing in Australia a car meeting Tesla M3 standards for under $US 20,000. If a US homologous car was marketed at $25,000 and failed to compete successfully within 5-years, I'd be astonished. I am very happy with my wife's PHEV and my BEV.

If EVs ever do become massively popular, parking garages everywhere are going to have to be knocked down and rebuilt because they aren't able to handle EVs extra weight.

I see there being two major issues with EV's 1. EV makers have added predatory tech practices into their cars, making the experience worse. 2. EVs only work well in specific use cases, and most people aren't in those use cases.

We bought 2 EVs 3 years ago. On a lease. They are cheaper per month tham our old gas guzzlers. We also did long trips and could do 1200km per day easily, charging included. No issues whatsoever. We char for free from our own solar roof, that we pay a lease of 50€/mo. So the cars are more modern, safer, quicker, cheaper to run... Absolutely no negatives.

I want a "hybrid" with electric drive train, and a turbine engine connected to a generator which can run on gasoline or diesel. These units are tiny. Their problem is they can only produce constant power, and suck at acceleration. That's where the EV drive train comes in. Needs lithium batteries AND super capacitors. Can charge for short term demands or power up to turbine for longer drives.

Elon said they will be pushing out a $25k car soon. As soon as he did that people stopped buying EVs in general because that would depreciate existing cars horribly, And you can just wait and buy that for cheaper anyways

Someone I know owned an EV. Got tired of waiting for it to be charged. Switched to a fairly basic ICE vehicle. I don't have a house, my apartment complex has no chargers, I'm not going to drive to a mall just to charge my vehicle.

People have recommended that employers include charging stations. The cars would be charging as they sat stationary in the parking lot.

Cost per mile is everything and it's hard for me to wrap my head around $50,000 vehicles. I'll let somebody else take that hit and I'll purchase it used several years down the road. It's also kind of crazy to spend that much money on a vehicle in an environment of stagnant wages not pushing towards that being affordable at all.

Peter's sister's experience with Hertz, though horrific, could have been a whole lot worse, by Hertz standards. At least she wasn't arrested and jailed, which is not that rare, when renting from Hertz.

I hate the constant beeps and notifications in modern cars. Always warning you of something. I get why they're there, I just dislike constantly being warned of something I am perfectly capable of watching out for.

I don't get why Tesla stock is so strong when it's obvious to anyone they are on a downward spiral

On the minus side of EVs is that they are heaver on average than ICE cars, which degrades the roads faster. Repairing the roads more means more greenhouse gasses released into the atmosphere.

Plug-in hybrids seem like a natural first step while charging infrastructure catches up. Why exclude the PHEV sales data as a way to say that people don't want EVs?

EV technology is improving year on year. Range will get longer, and price will reduce. I don’t have an EV for some of the reasons in this video, but I still think it’s the future (just not at the pace car manufacturers and governments expected). Also the price of oil is fairly low at the moment which skews the maths. EDIT: Also governments need to agree on charging standards, it’s so silly having so many different chargers!

Here in Southern California it’s very common to see a line of cars waiting to use the chargers in a shopping plaza. People sitting inside look bored out of their minds and they haven’t even plugged in yet. Looks like horses are about to make a come back!

Until you can charge the battery to full in 15-20 minutes, EVs will remain a secondary market

The concept of EV is great, but the execution has been lacking and given the average premium that you have to pay for those cars, consumers, like myself, are less tolerant of countless quality issues. We bought a Tesla Model X last year, because we have solar and battery backup at our house, so it made sense. It was some of the best driving experience, in terms of handling, power and smoothness, I've ever had. It was also very convenient to be always ready to go, not having to worry about fueling up. We've never ran into an issue with charging, even on longer trips, because of Tesla's Supercharger network. However, all of that was overshadowed by the shotty quality in the rest of the vehicle. Seals were tearing, doors rattling, interior fake leather peeling, misalignments, everything rattling... it was a bit of a nightmare. On top of that, customer service was some of the worst I've dealt with in my life. Running a vehicle company is challenging, but if you're asking for a premium on top of the average market price, provide a premium product.

Q: Are EVs terrible products? A: No They're not. On the ground: Hyundai owner with minor damage to the battery looking at $41,000 replacement bill.

I want an EV more than anything. They’re amazing to drive. I just can’t afford one. They’re $$$$. I’d say fluctuate the price and then we can see how it affects sales data before we can conclude if people want them or not.

Self charging hybrids have always been my ideal. No grid needed, still can gas it, amazing mpg, less emissions due to electric

Elons lack of appeal must be playing a role too

The PRC is the biggest auto market in the world, and EV adoption, whether full EV or hybrids continues apace, so more and more EV's will enter the market overall. In terms of the resale issue, this might be rectified if battery swapping become more common. I find the Laptop analogy flawed - one of the big issues with resale isn't the power source, but that a five year old Laptop is usually obsolete, regardless of the State of their battery. The lack of charging, particularly public charging, will be a big problem - this is why the PRC's vast buildout of recharging stations has made a difference in their uptake. Also, a lot of Chinese buyers are first time buyers, and many are willing to buy smaller City cars and have no notion of long car rides (that is what HSR is for...), so this will also continue to drive additional EV adoption.

To charging station companies: I don't want to sign up for your stupid app, I don't want to top up your special card with pre-set amounts, and I want every charging station functional, just like the outlets in my condo, since you are piggy-backing on that completely functional infrastructure. 99% of my financial interactions can be completed via card tapping. Why can't you get your collective acts together and replicate this? I have money, I want convenience. Will not be recommending EV until this part of your industry changes.

EV Companies are voluntarily stalling innovation and making everything incredibly complicated for the sake of better revenue. You can't praise innovation and then put your self driving behind a 15000$ addition to the cost when all you need to do is enter a serial to make it functional. Plugs should be regulated like USB-C in Europe, where all EV use the same plug. Parts should be easily swappable. Broken batteries should take 2 second to swap at the store and should be guaranteed for at least 10 years with no cost for swapping. EV have a lot less parts than gaz cars, they therefore should cost less but once again, prices have been jacked.

Not buying a used laptop is about all the dicey tech inside it, not just the battery. It's, therefore, a poor argument against EV since modern gas cars are also buried in tech that is just as likely to fail and costs thousands to repair if it does.

What people don't realise - until they drive long distance and fast - is that the power (electricity) needed to glide in city traffic is a factor 10 to 20 lower than rushing at high speed over the highway with amenities like heated seats "on" etc. sucking battery power on top. Therefore if you travel far you will inevitably spend time to recharge often at places you don't like being too long. Bottom line: EV's like for example BMW i3 are OK for commuting (you don't need 600 hp!) but for travel and long distances you'r better off with the good old ICE.

You mentioned at the end of the video that countries are all heavily invested in people driving EVs but why is that? What is there motivation to have everyone drive them?

It was a bubble. The early adopters have theirs and now the bubble has burst.