... never buy an electric car ~

Boy that is a lot of money to spend to show off. Not to mention the additional current electric rates and the future hikes.

 

yeah, you wouldn't believe the money around here. stock market has made a lot of people wealthy just in the last decade, plus there's tons of blueblood family money, high number of professionals in science/medical/legal/accounting/management/high tech/etc.
metro boston real estate is among the highest in the country. multiple $100,000. cars is a drop in the bucket

 

Patience young grasshopper. There's plenty of us on PriusChat who will eventually be driving old beat up electric trucks far away from the city every day. But it's gonna take a while.

Also in case you haven't noticed, there's way more money and way more people living in the city and the rural folks who are poor and getting poorer as their topsoil and other natural resources are not getting renewed, it's pretty clear who's worth selling EV vehicles to in the future...

 

American pickups - Ford F150, Dodge RAM and Chevy Silverado - became widely available in RHD here a couple of years ago, and have proved inexplicably popular.

They do not work here. They are too big. Close to where I live, there's an area with lots of narrow streets and old houses. There's a mini-roundabout outside a pub. I have watched different people in a white RAM, a black RAM, and a black Silverado take seven or eight attempts to turn right at this roundabout: their trucks are simply too big to do it. They cause traffic jams while they move back and forth to try to get around.

They are also very expensive - around US$100,000. And they use around three times as much fuel as a typical SUV, when our petrol and diesel are around US$7 or 8 per US gallon.

The people who buy them - suburban accountants and lawyers and stuff, but also some property developers - say they need them for their capabilities. (The property developers do not ever use them for carrying building supplies, of course.) They are not as capable as the smaller trucks used by people who actually need trucks, like Toyota Hiluxes, Mitsubishi Tritons, Nissan Navaras and Ford Rangers. The smaller trucks have a rated tray payload of a tonne or more; the giant American ones take 750kg. They can also tow about the same.

But when they say they need these trucks for their capabilities..... they are always, like you say, pristine, with an unmarked tow bar. On an Australian car forum that I visit, there's a thread where people report having seen giant American trucks being used properly. I posted on there recently because my neighbour (Silverado Z71) put three small pot plants in the tray of his truck, and because a couple of weeks ago I saw a RAM with six small plastic storage tubs in the tray.

These are pretty silly vehicles even in North America and the Persian Gulf states. In the rest of the world, they're utterly absurd.

 

I look at the fancy shiny low profile wheels, and think that no one would dare take those decorative items off-pavement into the fields, pastures, woodlands and mudlots where dad's well-worn 1990s F-250s (same size or slightly smaller than today's F-150s have bloated to) do their primary work. Such work is best done with high profile tires on steel wheels that one expects to get well beaten up.

Dad's work trucks are seen in town very infrequently. Errands to town are usually done in a more efficient and comfortable car.

 

Sorta makes you wonder what all those city slickers plan to do for food, lumber, water, minerals, power and access to the web, huh?