The Chinese automaker BYD reminds me of the famous phrase attributed to the sci-fi writer William Gibson - "The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed."
Future EV cars will be cheap to own and run. Self-driving tech will lower insurance costs. You can charge them with your home solar setup if you want. They'll last far longer with lower maintenance costs thanks to simple electric engines with few moving parts. As their construction gets more roboticized it will lower their costs further. The batteries that make up a huge chunk of their current costs are falling in price too. CATL, the world’s largest EV battery maker, is set to cut costs in half by mid 2024.
Some people still think gasoline and ICE cars have a long life ahead of them, and don't realize the industries behind both are dead men walking.
Chinese EVs are cheaper because they are prepaid by Chinese tax payers. That also includes taxes levied from our internet purchases for products made in China.
No, the way this usually goes is that a Western firm will order parts from a company in China, which then subcontracts to a firm that uses slave labor. This obfuscation isn't always easy to find out about, especially if you don't have knowledgeable people on the ground.
They aren't price gouging, they have to pay actual living wages, have higher energy costs (China uses almost entirely cheap coal) and can't as easily use slave labor as Chinese automakers.
And did it by boldly having no understanding of computers at the time which is why all the tech is so different from a lot of other scifi. I recently got through my decade long Asimov kick and am slowly working through Gibson now
I’m an ev fan but I don’t agree that they have more longevity than ICE cars. The current battery chemistries simply don’t allow for it.
Either battery chemistries with 20 years of guaranteed performance would have to be developed, or battery replacement and refurbishment costs will need to come down to say the cost of replacing a head gasket.
This will eventually happen, but current generation of EVs are essentially a recyclable consumable compared to their ICE counterparts.
Cars will become appliances, which is inevitable, but I already think we’ve lost the fun of cars.
I’ll be keeping my manual ICE car until I’ve got to squeeze dino juice from the rocks with my bare hands, even if I have an electric commuting appliance.