Sure, I mostly agree, but EV's do change that more than ICE, because with a car and a given range and given wind resistance, the larger car will take significantly more batteries to achieve the same range, and since batteries are a major expense and more a commoditiy, it does cost significantly more to make a larger EV (if you want the same range)
On Sunday, January 22, 2023, 12:57:48 AM PST, Bill Dube via EV <ev@lists.evdl.org> wrote: Labor is the main expense in car manufacture. Materials for a larger vehicle add only an incremental cost. Luxury options cost just a tiny faction of what they consumer pays for them. It is not uncommon that the luxury option is just a change to the firmware and the additional cost to the manufacturer is actually zero. This is why there has always been a push for larger cars and SUV's. Larger = more profits. If you consider that all cars, regardless of size, have just four wheels, four brakes, four tires, one engine, one steering wheel, one engine management computer, etc. The labor is the same to assemble, not matter what size the car is. As the car grows in size, it is a larger shell of the same thickness, but the extra internal volume is air. The materials scale with the surface area, and not the volume. People are willing to pay considerably more a larger car, but they cost close to the same to manufacture. You perceive that you are buying a bigger banana, but you are in reality just buying a bigger banana peel. The edible/nutritious/useful portion is unchanged. People buy cars for emotional reasons, not for practical reasons. The automakers exploit that. Why wouldn't they? Bill D. On 1/21/2023 12:54 PM, Lee Hart via EV wrote: > Lawrence Rhodes via EV wrote: >> I keep hearing that Tesla might introduce a smaller, cheaper EV. >> That would >> open up EVs to a wider range of drivers, but would also cut into their >> profits. > > I continue to wonder why a smaller cheaper car would mean lower > profits. It seems like there are endless examples of cars (and many > other products) where profits *increased* when cheaper versions were > produced in higher volumes. > > A smaller car uses less materials, so can be cheaper to produce. _______________________________________________ Address messages to ev@lists.evdl.org No other addresses in TO and CC fields HELP: http://www.evdl.org/help/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20230122/db8cd05c/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ Address messages to ev@lists.evdl.org No other addresses in TO and CC fields HELP: http://www.evdl.org/help/