Wow, the car sales figures are quite the rabbit hole with all sorts of figures/trends that I didn’t quite grasp.
For example, I knew (vaguely) that pickup trucks and SUVs usually take the top-spot in terms of sales – the Ford F-series is a major seller and the Toyota RAV4 is huge – but what I didn’t realize is that “cars” make up only 35% of new consumer vehicles sold (or at least they did in January). The other 65% are “light trucks” which comprise pickups, SUVs and “cross-overs”.
Taking this back to electrics, Tesla’s sales in January are thus 0.34% of all vehicles sold (in the US), but 0.66% of all cars sold. Which is pretty good, considering. They can’t be too disappointed with a 34% jump over last year either.
Hybrids make up less than 3% of the total – that really surprised me, given how popular I perceived them to be.
In related news, I’m probably buying my youngest a car this weekend. She very seriously considered a (used) Volt/Bolt, but we’re probably going with a Honda Fit – 31 mpg in the city.
Stusser isn’t just talking about the sale of autonomous cars, actually he’s not talking about sales at all, his entire position is just their availability… but he’s talking about about completely changing the way the USA commutes like an entire shift in transportation as if its going to happen tomorrow.
How much do you think this is skewed by electric vehicles getting access to HOV lanes on the freeways? My wife’s cousin had a hybrid Ford Escape exclusively for his commute from Fredericksburg to DC.
Yeah that percentage is shocking, since locally it is much higher by me. Including my own car!
But I imagine, scratch that, I know they are practically non existent in rural counties. On my daily drive I can’t go more than 3 minutes without seeing another hybrid, particularly a Prius. I go an hour west and I might see one in an hour.
I think just as big an issue as charging availability is charging TIME. I seem to recall reading that the newer Teslas charge halfway in about half an hour, and then it is slower after that?
I make a fairly regular drive of about 700 miles one way, and there’s no way in hell I am stopping 2 or 3 times along the way to sit for half an hour even if charging facilities ARE available. Get me an all-electric that can drive 1000 miles and I would be on it fast, but until then, hybrids are the way.
No, I never said society would completely change and we’d be planting trees in Walmart parking lots in 5 years. I said self-driving cars would be mainstream in 5 years. They’d be available, and pretty good, and reasonably priced. Transforming society will take longer.
You may be right, especially if we constrain the prediction to “in some areas.” I rather doubt the availability will be general, as the infrastructure, driving conditions, and human geography of this country pretty much combine to make much of the nation less than ideal for self-driving vehicles. But in some areas, where the concept makes the most sense and the technical issues are far more tractable, it’s going to happen.
I do worry, though, about mixing self-driving and regular cars on the same streets, as that strikes me as at the very least a rather volatile situation. Sure, one could argue that the self-driven cars couldn’t possible be worse than most of the human operated vehicles out there, and that might well be true. The combo of computer controlled decision making and human decision making mixing it up in close proximity though does give me pause.
It can be a pain in the ass now. The level 1 chargers can go from empty to near full in 45-60 minutes. Level 2 is about 4 hours. Level 3 is trickle charge from whatever dryer outlets use and can take 8-12 hours. EVs like my Leaf don’t work well as someone’s only car.
We have two cars so I use the EV to commute and do weekend errands. I will often drop it off at one of the two nearby level 2 chargers and my GF picks me up and we run errands for a couple of hours and then I pick up my car again.
If I lived by myself and this was my sole car, I’d have to be on top of the charge situation all the time. It wouldn’t really work for me. The Volt/Bolt would, though.
I would accept a definition of mainstream along the lines of “every major auto manufacturer offers one, that can be purchased off the lot with no special effort (wait lists, special shipping, etc).”
Even by that standard though, I think 5 years is impossibly optimistic.
My wife called me to tell me she had been rear-ended by someone while pulling into church parking lot. I immediately thought of this thread and told her to take lots of pictures, get statements, and call the police to see if they can be of witness.
She just called me back and said police are on their way.
Yep. Even on glare ice, the follower is supposed to take that into consideration and keep extra distance. Even when the person ahead suddenly slams on the brakes, the follower is supposed to anticipate that eventuality and stay further back. I’ve never heard a good excuse for rear-ending someone.
It’s in the middle of the night and their tail lights aren’t on and the brake lights don’t work, assuming they’re even applying them. I know someone who got out of a ticket for that reason, and the car they hit was a cop. He came into the road without anything on. They’re lucky no one died.
The county sheriff didn’t give the guy who ran into my wife a ticket. Is that normal? I mean I don’t want him to pay extra money, but I don’t want to have issues with our insurance because that wasn’t done.
I think it depends on circumstances, and I also think it’s officer’s discretion, at least around here. Do you live in a no-fault insurance state? Not sure if that would apply.
