People don’t need electric vehicles anymore.

People don’t need electric vehicles anymore and the EV revolution is over. People don’t want EVs, they want hybrids. This is exactly the statement that mass media are trying to push to consumers.

But this is quite far from the truth. People still want EVs, but unfortunately, while demand is strong, the proposition is quite weak for each market segment except the most expensive one. And even in expensive segment proposition is quite bad.

But before I explain why, I must state that in most cases you want to buy an EV only in case you have a house or any other reliable place to charge it. Otherwise, it will be an unnecessary pain for your money.

If you try to review the proposition you will see the following picture: there is no proposition in the lower end. The cheapest EV will be around $30K. Most families need a simple car to go to work and back and that’s. Something like the Toyota Corolla or Honda Civic. Something around $20K. They are basic but you don’t need anything better to travel to work and back. And the second car is usually bigger and more luxurious than the first one. Around $30K - $35K. This car is used for travel and usually wife is driving kids to school in it.

Unfortunately, most EVs just start around $30K and it is mostly basic versions with a quite poor quality interior, lower range, etc. They look and feel like a $15K - $17K regular car and while some people ok to do that for environmental reasons, most people will not do it.

More or less acceptable EV starts at $35K. They have a decent range and interior and in general, don’t feel very cheap. But these are mostly sedans. If you want an SUV then you need to spend around $40K - $45K. And I think it is a price range where you can get a decent EV with a very decent range and quality.

But even in those price ranges, there is pretty much no completion. $35K is the Tesla Model 3 and $45 is the Tesla Model Y. Everything else has much less range, worse quality, and no way to charge one the long trips.

But there are a lot of propositions in the luxury segment: $60K and higher. But regular people simply do not buy such expensive cars. They cost a lot, insurance and registration will cost a lot and there are many ways you can spend these kinds of money on other things that bring more joy than a metal box with wheels.

To summarize: there are no EVs in the lowest segment, and the cheapest EVs are just horrible, and any decent EV starts from $40K. But most choices are at a price range that is simply not affordable for most people.

But not only EVs are expensive. Most manufacturers instead of making what they can best – cars, they decided to create something futuristic. As a result, most EVs simply look ugly or at best - strange. The car is an expensive purchase and everybody wants a car to look nice and not like from a 50s movie about the future.

And many are simply trying to copy Tesla and try to create a computer on wheels. But writing software is very hard and takes a lot of time to polish. Tesla has been doing it since 2008 and it is still not ideal. And a really bad example here is Volkswagen. I have seen videos where a lot of advocates of EVs from Volkswagen after some time start to hate Volkswagen and say that they never will buy anything from them.

And last point is that many expensive EVs have a quite short range and the most important point is that they are very challenging to charge which means that these expensive and luxury cars are simply not suitable for long trips and only good for driving in the city.

This turns away from EVs many buyers and practically if you want to travel on your EV then you have only a single choice – Tesla. But Tesla has a questionable CEO – Elon Musk and many don’t want to buy Tesla just because of Musk and I’m one of such people.

My advice to car manufacturers is to start making affordable cars because the top segment of the market is already oversaturated with a lot of players and not many people will buy cars for that price. But a lot of people will be $20K - $25K EV that is much simpler to service and cost way less to run.

And don’t try to make it look futuristic, make it a computer on wheels or make it drive itself. Just make a car that looks and behaves like a regular car but uses electricity to drive. I would buy something Honda Civic or Honda Accord and I will be very happy that I don’t need to drive to the petrol station or drive it to service every 6 months. I need a simple car that I can drive every day.

Ideally, it will be nice to start working on something like Superchargers because without a reliable charging network, all these non-Tesla EVs are destined to drive in the city only and many people will not be happy to buy an expensive car that is city-only.

Until then there will be a lot of talk but nothing will happen and manufacturers (including Tesla) will lose a lot of money on each EV because what they are doing is not what people want.