I figure Earth tones will make a comeback at some point, but it will need a different style than the cream and travertine tan colors of the late 90s and 2000s. In 2025, new homes in my area are still built with the white/grey/black palette.
Is this true? Are you suggesting that manufacturers are adding the packets for psychological reasons? Even if they are used up by the time a consumer sees them, are we sure they had no benefit at an earlier time?
Seems your average semiconductor foundry needs around 100MW[1] to 200MW[2] of electrical power to operate. The main consumption is down to refrigeration chillers[3].
Average US house uses about 12600kWh per year[4], or 1.44kW average across a year. So that means one foundry takes about what 70k to 140k houses would take.
Yes, the used EV market is still young. The oldest Model Ys are from 2020, and Model 3s go back to 2017. Consumers do not have much experience with used EVs, so they are cautious and prices are low. As time goes by, if older EVs prove to be reliable, used prices will go up. There is already evidence that battery replacement is rare:
> As time goes by, if older EVs prove to be reliable, used prices will go up.
I’m not sure they will - if there remains a cohort of people who keep buying a new car every x years regardless of the mechanical reliability of their old car, and there aren’t many old cars getting taken off the roads (because they’re highly reliable), it’s plausible that the value of old cars gets pushed down from the oversupply.
It could be that the price of used cars goes down due to oversupply, but the price of used EV's relative to the price of used ICE vehicles goes up.
I'm fairly confident the price of used cars is going to go down. Who's going to buy a 5 year old Camry for $20k if the price of a brand new equivalent EV is $20K?
> It could be that the price of used cars goes down due to oversupply, but the price of used EV's relative to the price of used ICE vehicles goes up.
Maybe? I think the best driver of that would be regulation that internalizes the externalities of gas cars, but that doesn't seem to be workable politically.
> Who's going to buy a 5 year old Camry for $20k if the price of a brand new equivalent EV is $20K?
That's a bit of a funny example, because a lot of the value in a $20k used Camry is in the fact that it says "Toyota Camry"... so really, the only "equivalent" EV for $20k is going to be a $20k mid-size Toyota EV. I think we desperately need cheaper EVs, but I don't see a short-to-mid-term reality where Toyota starts selling an EV Camry for 30% less than the current hybrid Camry MSRP.
For used pricing to come down, EV vs ICE is nearly irrelevant - we just need cheaper new cars of whatever people are buying, and I don't see anything especially promising to bring down the cost of new cars.
I had an Accord hybrid and it did not have a transmission at all. There was a clutch and a single gear, which engaged over about 45 mph. Otherwise, the vehicle was propelled by an electric motor. The design, as far as I know, is significantly different than what Toyota uses. Having no transmission plus very little brake wear due to regen breaking felt like a good tradeoff.
Even when you find a good review, there are complexities of manufacturing (and some intentional obfuscation) that make it hard to compare products or know that you are buying the exact same thing that was reviewed.
If you buy the same item a year after the review, it may have changed. This could change performance but be something totally innocent, like the factory changing suppliers for a key component.
Another pattern is this: Large retailers buying in volume are able to customize what they buy, so the "same" product can differ depending on where you buy it. Differences can range from harmless things like "exclusive" colors all the up to changes in functionality, cheaper internal components, and so on. Sometimes the model numbers are not changed.
Another approach manufacturers use is to use slightly different model numbers everywhere which makes it hard to make exact comparisons. This is common with mattresses and appliances.
