There are two big barriers to large-scale vehicle production that make disruption in the sector very difficult.
(1) huge capital investment required at scale — $billions
(2) regulation compliance — you have to follow the rules or you can’t sell in the US. You have to follow a different set of rules in Europe. This is expensive and time consuming.
The only way you could say that there will be dozens of whole-vehicle EV companies is if one or more of them are producing white label versions of the same vehicle for other companies.
The government, if it wanted to, could incentivize electric car production more directly than they have been so far, and with even more dollars. But it’s still going to be an easy business in which to lose vast sums of money.
The best case scenario is that VW, Toyota, etc get their shit together on software, whether separately or collectively.
(1) huge capital investment required at scale — $billions
(2) regulation compliance — you have to follow the rules or you can’t sell in the US. You have to follow a different set of rules in Europe. This is expensive and time consuming.
The only way you could say that there will be dozens of whole-vehicle EV companies is if one or more of them are producing white label versions of the same vehicle for other companies.
The government, if it wanted to, could incentivize electric car production more directly than they have been so far, and with even more dollars. But it’s still going to be an easy business in which to lose vast sums of money.
The best case scenario is that VW, Toyota, etc get their shit together on software, whether separately or collectively.
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