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Meh, most of the BEV's available are big inefficient wallowing SUV's with hefty price tags regardless of the clean car discount.
I'm hoping some of the Chinese manufacturers will bring affordable sedan or station wagon BEV's to the market. Lighter, better aerodynamics, more range for the same battery size.
Not interested in hybrids, the worst of both worlds
I just cannot bring myself to trust my life to a Chinese car.
I have done business there. I know what it's like. It does not fill me with confidence.
Also it's one thing to be spied on by ad companies (which is bad enough) but quite another to be spied on by an adversarial dictatorship.
Exactly. Same reason I won't use Chinese brand phones.
Nio seems to be the one making waves that no one in NZ has heard of as they don't operate here. They are doing the Tesla promise of swapable batteries for real life, with a network of swap stations. Imagine buying a car and knowing you can in future swap the battery for a longer range one, one with better health, not to mention long range batteries from empty to fully charged in minutes.
The only reason I've heard of Nio was because I bought shares in them a couple of years ago. I sold when I doubled my money, which looks like it was a good move considering how low it is now!
Tom Scott made a video where he tested an automatic swap station:
He also mentions the company is hemorrhaging money at the moment.
Yeah, that is normal for a VC funded company
PHEVs are the best of both worlds for me living in an apartment with limited charging capacity.
We have two shared charges for PHEVs, they can be used for four hours maximum per day, this means that I can drive in EV mode to and from the shops as well as to my parents house, if I need to go further, I turn on Hybrid mode and it gives me great milage for a long time.
I can't imagine why increasing the price of something by $7000 would suppress demand for it
Nobody in this government understands economics apparently.
Oh I'm pretty sure they do. The intended outcome was achieved
I would imagine that people in the market for an EV would have bought it already last december, before the funding was cancelled.
My thoughts too. From memory sales of double cab utes also surged immediately before and plummeted immediately after the prices went up as expected due to their high emissions.
We had planned a new vehicle late this year, changing the price by $7k makes a huge difference to the calculations.
I had a BEV on the budget for late this year (move banks to get a low-interest loan + some savings once the mortgage comes off fixed), isn't practical with the price increase, so will back burner that plan for a couple of years and hope prices drop a bit