Oil companies invented a psyop in North America centered around male insecurity with their masculinity. That's why the best selling vehicle in North America is a massive gas guzzling pickup truck that the average person can't come close to affording but drives anyway.

You don't sound like you're from NA, but here in the US we have trucks that are colloquially known as "Child Killers" because when you're driving them, you literally can't see what's in front of you. They are all over the roads, and make for an extremely bad experience for people in smaller vehicles, people on bikes, and pedestrians. Not to mention, they're often driven by people that lean heavily into road rage.

Imho, the problem is that North American roads are not safe for small vehicles. If you're a suburbanite who spends an hour in your car every day on expressways full of trucks and SUVs, you don't generally want to be in a slow, tiny, short, vulnerable vehicle where you're beneath the consideration and sightline and possibly wheels of traffic.

Not to mention not everyone has a garage or nearby charging spot to charge an ev.

Perhaps dealing with infrastructure first would be interesting...

Electric cars don't normally need a battery replacement during the car's lifetime. If the battery needs to be replaced, the car has usually already been running longer than most ICE cars ever would. The used market for EVs used to be pretty dire, with little supply and awful pricing. But it's slowly getting better. But of course the fact remains, that there is currently a lot of demand for cheap EVs and little supply. The Chinese are gearing up to eat up that part of the market.

I hope to see more cheap cars by 2025 when VW starts doing their id1 and id2. The rest of the manufacturers need to follow suit or lose out of the massive market for mini and micros.

Personally I did get a used EV. It had driven less than 200km in total, but I got it at about 70% of the normal price. The battery is fine. The used market isn't just for worn out cars. People sell almost new cars for a variety of reasons, so it's worth looking at the used market already. The batteries in modern cars are generally better than their reputation. I wouldn't want to get a 7-10 year old EV, but anything newer is just fine.

20-30K?! Holy crap. I've never spent more than 10K on a car. But then I've never bought a new car...

Why does it have to be new? Whats wrong with a nearly new car that is only a couple of years old? Warranty, at least in Europe covers the major components like body shell and battery for 7 to 10 years now.

Part of reducing the impact of cars to the environment is making them last longer and EVs have the opportunity to be fully refurbished at what would have been the end of their normal lifespan to better than new. Replacing the battery pack for a more modern and denser version, replacing the motor for a more efficient and powerful one, even replace the entertainment unit with a more modern one. Sure, this is expensive but you are basically getting a new car for considerably less than a new car.

While I personally think Musk can eat a bag of dicks, the ability to upcycle early Teslas using Tesla parts is very welcome. It needs to be legally mandated that manufacturers have to offer this and end the cycle of scrapping cars.

Last I looked into it, Toyota was still supposed to have some of the most efficient combustion engines out there, with something crazy like 40%(?) thermal efficiency.

They’re saying they don’t care about the cheaper segments and are just going to sell expensive vehicles. I don’t know what those of us who can’t afford 60k vehicles are expected to do for transit though… I suspect this is a ploy to get the American government to subsidize an affordable car range.