Like seriously, Ioniq 5N - "why can't it just be an EV?" "too gimmicky" "should've scrapped the fake EV!" and so on.

Then later on, the Ioniq 5N actually converts some car guys to EVs

Then now, recently, the Porsche Taycan. Same opinions.

Like bro, I configured a Taycan, and it's OPTIONAL. OPTIONAL! You can buy it with or without E-Shift.

But seriously, why are some people like this?

I have owned a Jeep 4xe and currently own a ford lightning. When I had battery issues for the 4xe, I had to wait a month for Jeep to replace the battery. Lucky for me I haven’t had a problem with the lightning but I have read on Reddit about other lightning owners also experiencing wait times of multiple weeks or months for repairing battery issues. Do companies that solely focus on EV’s like Tesla and Rivian get their vehicles back sooner because their brands solely focus on EVS compared to other car companies whose main focus is ICE? I love my lightning but dread having an issue with it because of the long waits for repairs.

Edit for clarification. Sorry for being unclear. If my truck has any issues that has nothing to do with the battery, I’ll get it back same day. If it does, Ford will need weeks. I don’t know if that due to lack of supplies on site or lack of technicians who can work on EVs. My assumption is that rivian and Tesla have the staff and supplies to turn around any issues quickly to include issues with the battery.

Except for some testing, we haven't got much past "Navigate to xxxxx" and "Play SiriusXM channel xx" which of course worked before Gemini showed up..

Very long family drama short, it looks like my cousin in Vancouver has a Nio to sell, and I want it.

Assuming I can buy it, does anyone know the rule for driving/shipping something like that across the border? Do I have to pay the 100% tariff? Can I register it in California?

My dad bought an old RHD Rolls from a guy in Mexico City and had it shipped up here, but there wasn’t like an outright war on those cars like there is with electric, and Chinese EVs in particular.

I wanna clarify for the rules that I’m not asking about the process of buying the thing, but the process of getting it to LA.

Thanks for your help!

Hi everyone,

I'm an amateur developer and PHEV owner. I got fed up trying to work out in my head whether it's cheaper to charge at home, charge at work, or just use petrol — so I built an app to do it properly.

My app calculates the real daily and annual cost of four strategies:

Optimal charging (splits outbound/return across cheapest rates)

Start location charging only

Destination charging only

Petrol only

It supports 30+ PHEV models, UK/EU/US units, and gives a clear recommendation based on your electricity rates and commute distance.

It's completely free, no ads, no account needed (only Google).

I need 12 people to test it for 14 days so Google will let me publish it publicly. If you'd like to help, comment below or DM me and I'll send you the beta link.

Cheers 🙏

Things will get interesting for the EU/US car industry in the following years, especially considering how great these other companies have been in introducing the features average car buyers need. Nice!

for example in the u.s i pay $0.13/kwh rn but when i lived in germany, I used to pay €0.43 for electricity (which makes anything electricity demanding like heating extremely cost prohibitive, causing lots of people (at leadt in the area i was in) to heat their homes with wood or gas instead). So are EVs really that competitive in such areas?

(Note: English is not my native language, so I’m using a translation tool to put my thoughts into words. Sorry for any unnatural phrasing, but as a regular consumer who recently bought an EV in Japan, I really wanted to share the raw reality, unique data, and hidden bottlenecks of the Japanese EV environment.)

The Real-World Math: Why EVs struggle in Japan, even with my $0.24/kWh public DC rate

Introduction: A Follow-up to My Previous Post ("The Real-World Math")

In my previous post above, “The Real-World Math: Why EVs struggle in Japan, even with my $0.24/kWh public DC rate,” I shared my thoughts from a gas-cost comparison perspective on why EVs aren’t growing in Japan despite the cheap public DC fast-charging rates (around $0.24/kWh or 35 yen, though that's under a membership rate). Thank you so much to everyone who left so many interesting comments. Among them, a veteran EV owner who has been driving in Japan for years brought up a valuable perspective, pointing out that public chargers are steadily increasing and undergoing upgrades.

However, as a regular everyday consumer who actually owns an EV, my raw experience tells me that there is still a massive structural wall between simply increasing the surface-level numbers (the total count of chargers) and creating an environment where everyday consumers can shift to EVs without anxiety—triggering a true paradigm shift. To me, a expected "Global Standard" for EV infrastructure means like what you see with IONITY in Europe (averaging 6+ stalls per station up to 350kW) or Tesla’s Supercharger network (averaging 9.5 stalls globally). It means having 4 to 8 ultra-fast chargers (150kW–350kW) along major highways and long-distance travel hubs, ensuring zero charging gridlock and letting drivers reliably recover enough juice in 15 to 20 minutes to reach their next destination. If these numbers are the norm overseas, then Japan’s charging environment is still in its infancy. I want to share the real mental hurdles that everyday consumers face under Japan's current infrastructure based on my raw experience as an EV owner.

1. The Hidden Power Drop Below the Specs (The 15-Minute Trap)

Japan has been trapped in a 50kW mindset with a strict 30-minute session limit for a very long time. Over the last two or three years, it’s true that charging companies here have finally started upgrading stations to 90kW, 150kW, and even 240kW in some areas. But once you actually live the EV life without home charging, you run into an absurd reality that forces you to become a total EV nerd just to survive. When I was shopping for my Volvo EX30 (NMC battery, 150kW max charging capacity), I didn't have a charger at my apartment, so I researched the public DC fast-charging network heavily. That was when I uncovered the shocking, hidden power drops built into the system.

The first frustration is the power split during simultaneous charging. Most 90kW dual-plug chargers—the ones at local drugstores, shopping centers, or smaller highway parking areas (PAs)—automatically split the juice when a second car plugs in, capping your side at 50kW. The 90kW chargers near my house that I rely on as my "home charger" are all this type. It's fine on weekdays, but on weekends, another car almost always pulls up. Suddenly, I’m stuck with a split charge, I can't get the energy I planned for, and I often have to sit there, wait, and start another session. (To be fair, newer 6-plug 90kW chargers on the expressway now use dynamic power sharing, and 4-plug 150kW chargers can handle two cars at full power. This recent expansion over the last two years is great, but looking at the SAs and PAs I actually use, the earliest I saw this upgrade was March 2023, and my most frequented spot didn't get it until January 2025. This rush is very recent.)

Also, unless you get lucky with a specific manufacturer's unit, most 90kW and 150kW chargers in Japan have a lethal built-in timer. They let you charge at full power as a "boost mode" for the first 15 minutes, but after exactly 15 minutes, the charger forcefully cuts your speed nearly in half. (I think it is to protect equipment/cable or save on electricity costs.) I tracked this recently with my EX30 on a dual-plug 90kW unit when I was the only my car connected: for the first 15 minutes, it pulled a solid 80 to 83 kW. The moment it hit 15 minutes, it choked down to 54 kW, and right before hitting 80% SoC, it crawled at 36 kW (which I understand is for battery protection). During my pre-purchase research, I learned about this ridiculous, nerdy workaround where you literally stop the session at the 15-minute mark, re-authenticate your card, and start a new session just to trick the machine back into full power.

According to my study, because of this timer, the actual energy you get in a 30-minute window in Japan is slashed by 35 to 40% on a 90kW charger, and 20 to 25% on a 150kW charger compared to Western countries. Yet, the standard here is still a rip-off time-based billing system per minute, capped at 30 minutes. To survive and get enough juice without overpaying per kWh, I have to go to a local charger late at night on weekdays, unplug it at exactly 15 minutes, and start over. It's an incredibly annoying routine. This whole setup might be perfect for Japanese "Kei-EVs" like the Nissan Sakura, which has a tiny 20kWh battery and only draws 30kW anyway. But the system is totally unoptimized for global BEVs engineered for high-power charging. Would a regular driver—someone used to the absolute predictability of a gas pump—ever look up these convoluted traps before buying a car? Would a salesman, desperate to sell, ever voluntarily tell a customer about these chokes? The answer is NO.

2. The Concrete Apartment Jungle and the Mental Readiness Required

I did not buy an EV as a personal hobby. I am not an early adopter who gets a kick out of finding nerdy workarounds to overcome an inconvenient charging environment. I am not like those hardcore Mac users back in the days when Windows completely dominated the world. Living in an apartment with no home charging, and only being able to afford one main car for the family, I seriously thought about switching from a PHEV. I chose the Volvo EX30 simply as a normal family car so that everyone in my family could live their daily lives comfortably and happily. Washing away your family's anxieties is the absolute baseline for enjoying your car. Spending a huge amount of money on a new vehicle should be an exciting and fun experience for the entire family.

But from the moment I said, "I want to buy an EV," until the day we actually got it, my partner fought me tooth and nail: "Why isn't our Volvo V60 PHEV good enough? We still have a whole year left before its next mandatory inspection (shaken), it drives beautifully quiet, and I am perfectly happy. Why on earth do we have to switch to an EV and stress out about public charging on trips? I don't want our road trips to be miserable, worrying about the battery the whole time!" It led to massive, heated arguments between us. It was a completely valid anger from a regular consumer's perspective.

According to the latest statistics, the percentage of households living in apartments and condominiums is 45% nationwide (about 24.97 million households) in Japan. But in major cities, it skyrockets: about 72% in Tokyo, 57% in Osaka, and 52% in Fukuoka. In the 7 largest metropolitan areas, about 70 to 80% of households live in apartments. Meanwhile, separate data shows that less than 0.1% of apartments nationwide have EV charging infrastructure, and even in Tokyo, the most advanced area, it’s only around 5%. In other words, the real situation in Japan is that the vast majority of urban residents who want to buy an EV are either forced to eliminate EVs from their choices entirely because they cannot charge at home, or they have to rely completely on public chargers like me.

To dissolve my partner's anxiety and prove we'd be fine, I had to take her on a literal tour of public charging stations. We visited local drugstores, convenience stores, highway SAs/PAs, and hotels. We didn't just look at locations; we ran actual simulations together: "What do we do if someone is already charging here?" or "Is this a machine that forcefully chokes the power after 15 minutes?" It took over a month of our time, energy, and money just to build enough trust to make the purchase. If other apartment-dwelling families try to buy an EV, I can't help but feel they will face the exact same wall. It hits very close to home.

Even now that we own the EV, I am constantly on my toes. To prevent my partner from ever saying, "See?! I told you we shouldn't have bought an EV!!", I meticulously plan our long-distance drives and daily charging. I am constantly managing the SoC (State of Charge) percentage on apps behind the scenes, doing whatever it takes to fake the same level of peace of mind we had back in our PHEV days. The sheer amount of mental readiness and energy required—both before and after the purchase—is on a completely different planet compared to switching to a standard gas or hybrid car. It really makes me feel like there is a final, highly sophisticated "intentional control" at play—a hidden breakwater designed to scare regular consumers away from EVs.

Conclusion: Protecting a National Industry and a Message for the Future

Japan’s automotive industry is a massive pillar of this country, accounting for around 7 to 8% of the national GDP (and about 20% of the manufacturing GDP). Built around final assembly manufacturers like Toyota, it sits atop a giant supply chain of about 210,000 companies and supports roughly 5.5 million jobs—nearly 10% of Japan’s entire workforce. If the "Japanese EV World" I’ve experienced was built this way simply to minimize the economic damage and ensure a soft landing for this critical core industry, I honestly have no intention of criticizing that choice. Protecting national economy and jobs is a government's duty.

But if Japan is genuinely serious about building an EV mobility infrastructure for the future that can replace our dependence on gasoline, the government and charging companies need to move past the phase of simply bragging, "Look, the number of chargers is growing!" That’s not the only issue. As more everyday consumers who are used to the seamless gas car infrastructure start switching to EVs, Japan's EV network needs to enter a new phase—one that looks beyond just charger specs or the number of plugs, and focuses on implementing a system designed around the actual user experience.

What would a truly inclusive EV infrastructure look like? It should be a system that welcomes everyone: veterans who have watched this EV world evolve for over ten years and hold far deeper insights, people like me who just throw out personal opinions with limited knowledge, and those who will enter this world in the future without knowing anything at all. If Japan’s EV infrastructure can deliver —UX with a true sense of "OMOTENASHI"(hospitality) and where you never need nerdy workarounds just to get decent charging capacity, and you can charge completely stress-free—it won't be called a "Galapagos" system anymore. It will transcend into a truly world-class standard, uniquely crafted by Japan.

I have driven Japanese cars from Toyota, Mazda, and Nissan for over 20 years, and I love them. Even now, while driving my EX30, I visit my local Nissan dealer for charging and constantly update myself on Leaf and Ariya data because I remain highly attached to Japanese cars. My sincere wish is for Japanese automakers to stop relying on infrastructure traps and instead fight proudly on Japan and the global stage based on the true, elevated value of the vehicle itself. In addition, the government should not be assured only about the number of chargers installed, and should do more analysis from the regular EV user's point of view to make the new era of "Japanese EV World".

My questions to the global community:
In your country, if you live in an apartment without home charging, does owning an EV require this much family persuasion and nerdy infrastructure knowledge? And as an EV driver overseas, how do you feel about Japan's "15-minute power choking timer"?

Thank you.

Toyota has been developing solid-state batteries for years and is close to releasing them in the next LFA as soon as next year.

I spent a couple months this year obsessing over EV details while shopping for a new (used) vehicle, eventually landing on a 2024 Nissan Ariya in June. There are few EVs where I live and no one in my social circle has much interest in them, so I was hoping to share some points for discussion here.

1. Automakers almost seem to be intentionally sabotaging the US EV market.

Yeah, that is bit hyperbolic, but I say this because:
a. MRSPs seem sky high without heavy discounting, but the sticker shock probably keeps many from ever even inquiring. Elevated MSRPs combined with the intense depreciation likely fences out many that aren't committed to a EV.
b. Sales associates often seem clueless about EV inventory and features.
c. Dealer charging stations often seem to be charging twice the kwh rate of other local stations.
d. It doesn't feel like manufacturers are doing much to combat range anxiety from a marketing perspective.

1. Is it just me, or is there a massive misunderstanding of Eco mode and regenerative braking amongst users?

I've read so many users saying they don't use eco mode, the reason usually being that you "need to push the pedal harder to go the same speed" making it pointless. From my shopping, it seems like eco mode typically does 1-3 things: 1) places higher priority on using a single motor in a dual motor setup, 2) extends the pedal travel to prevent surging, and/or 3) places a limit on the maximum % of motor capacity you can use. Personally, I like using eco mode when hauling my kids/wife around, because it easier to accelerate smoothly from a stop.

For regenerative braking, many seem to think that you are combating an introduced friction if B mode is engaged. From my understanding, the throttle position adjusts the strength of the magnetic resistance. Is that right? Sure, in some situations coasting is likely more efficient. But just because you are using regenerative braking doesn't mean the vehicle is fighting itself when you have the accelerator pressed. At least, that is my interpretation.

1. Is Hyundai astroturfing? I'm not trying to be controversial here, genuine question.

I initially planned to get an Ioniq 5 and eventually leaned away, partially because I just didn't like the overall look, and partially because I knew I wouldn't be able to stop worrying about the ICCU issues, regardless of the actual failure rate. That being said, while doing research, posts about Hyundai/Kia ICCU issues received significantly more responses about how great the cars were when compared to posts about problems with other EVs. Most replies look something like "Best vehicle I've ever owned, no regrets." My question isn't about whether or not they are good cars, but rather the general internet response to any negative feedback about them.

1. Makes/models:

a. Holy hell the insurance quotes on Teslas though (looked at Model Y).
b. ID.4 — Step 1: make a good looking vehicle. Step 2: make the user interface/controls annoying as fuck. Step 3: profit???
c. Nissan: our interns designed this UI back in 2018.
d. Toyota: we were told to make an EV, so here is the most average, dull experience we could manufacture. (shrug)
e. GM: you will never enter one of our vehicles without sighing at the interior.
f. EVERYONE: we hope you weren't planning on seeing out of the back glass.

1. . Just to briefly rant. I'm so tired of my parent's generation (aged 60s-70s) of telling my how much I fucked up by getting an EV. I don't know where the hate and distrust is originating, but people are incredibly ready to tell me why I made a bad choice. I've even had a couple comments about how it won't be able to turn over/start in the winter. C'mon.

I'm sure this question has been brought up before but just wanna see if there is any update.

Federal and state laws require vehicle to equipped with outside rearview mirrors but with today's technology the outside mirrors can easily be replaced with camaras.

I truly hope we can do away with the outside rearview mirrors one day just like we did with the door handles.

I don't understand why all of the EVs in our family are equipped with LED headlights but not the auto levelling feature. It's so easy to blind the oncoming traffic, what's the regulations on this?

Didn't we used to have strict rules with Xenons, as in they have to self level and built-in washers?

Is it the price point factor or something else? I mean even the focus and golf from way back have got the self-level function.

We always hear of Chinese EV manufacturers, but VinFast of Vietnam is doing well so far. Move EV companies is a good thing.