The market always wins, and the market for EVs is about to be massive. A beautiful thing about capitalism is that when a large market exists, smart people and resources flow toward solving every discrete problem standing in the way of tapping into that opportunity. Yes, some of these challenges exist, but none of them are insurmountable.
The fact that they are simply better than the alternative in multiple dimensions has rapidly accelerated the transition.
It's kick started an arms race in battery production that's already delivered cheap batteries suitable for bikes, busses, large trucks and now flight, which will in turn be a leap forward for cars.
Meanwhile, the amount of batteries available for integrating renewables is turning into a surge, which lets us roll out more and cheaper renewables.
It's multiple, positive, reinforcing cycles even before you get to the reduction in local pollution, less brake dust, the ability to produce smaller cars, solar roofs, longer lasting vehicles, and a bunch of other good stuff.
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.
I've long been of the opinion that the real winner in the EV market will be personal vehicles (such as eBikes) and electric mass transit, not larger EVs such as cars in most urban environments.
That's a good point, could it be that in the last couple of years enthusiasm, and potential of EVs have grown so much that the market is okay with the large valuation of EV manufacturers ?
Plus we're witnessing more and more of the consequences of our carbon emissions that most people believe EVs are the future ?
On a side note, I think EVs are merely a small piece of the puzzle for solving the climate crisis, wholistic solutions must include public transport, walkable neighborhoods, mixed use zoning and a whole lot more, but that's neither here nor there.
What happened to letting the free market sort it out? /s
Electric vehicles are so great, so cheap, so universally loved - it’s inconceivable why one would ever buy anything else. And environmentally friendly too? Sign me up!
I suspect that electric vehicles are just a much better product, and will end up dominant regardless as long as the technical challenges keep being solved.
It's astonishing really the confident stubbornness.
There's a reason that every company that has tried this has gone bankrupt or soon will.
The path to mass market EVs is having good charging accessibility and low prices. Adding more cost and telling owners to remember to park in the sun is not it.
Consumer demand -- or lack thereof -- drives the market. There have been massive product flops in the past... no level of supply or price cuts could get consumers to buy items they didn't want. I'm not saying that's the case with electric cars, only that consumers have to want them before it can succeed.
It's a deceptively seductive industry. How hard could it be, especially with EVs? I think it's relatively easy to design a single car with some cool batteries and engines. It's another thing to build them in quantity, maintain quality, sell them, support them with spare parts so that repairs don't take forever.
The better tech always wins in the end. It's a no-brainer.
The problem with resistance of the existing auto industry is that if everyone buys EVs the big American carmakers go out of business. GM, Ford, etc have nothing, no technology to compete, their EVs are still crap, they are unable to catch up. So are many Japanese carmakers also BTW.
I was recently in Hong Kong - a good 50% of cars there are EVs thanks to tax breaks - no taxes on EVs while other cars are heavily taxed, so that makes even high end EVs cheaper than mid range gas cars. I think I tried every single model EV using Uber, Mercedes, BMW, and Tesla primarily, they're all really great EVs, great cars, great range, great comfort, obviously insane acceleration. Just better cars.
There's also a range of Chinese EVs coming up - didn't test I guess they are too rare to show up on Uber.
American carmakers then spread all sorts of FUD about EVs such that my facebook feed is full of people who really believe EVs are worse for the environment than their exploding mineral oil machines. They hold back all development through propaganda, lawmaking, political influence, anything and everything they can do - because they can easily act like a mafia. They can't easily compete with the good EVs of the world. Or at all.
EV's certainly haven't already won, but I do think there are many cases where they're (almost) perfect.
For the person/business who doesn't drive far and can plug it in at home/work, they've now saved a detour to the petrol station. I'd love that. I suspect many businesses that have delivery cars within a city could make that work, assuming all the other costs lined up.
I think making batteries portable is very possible, but it'll take a generation or three to get that right, assuming the above market segments are saturated and Tesla sales are limited by this issue.
What remains a problem for me are the lifetime of batteries, and the need to drive outside of coverage areas. I like to drive cars for a while rather than replace them often, so don't like the idea of replacing a large part of the cost. And I don't want to worry about charging stations when going on holiday. But again, for a city-based business that replaces cars more quickly than the batteries would last, those issues might not be relevant.
One strong driver for innovation is that battery technology would become important to (at least) both the IT and auto industries. Research and innovation would accelerate and be useful to both industries via cross-pollination.
I get you're being sarcastic here but it's clear that the market hasn't been a total success with EVs. They require much more charging infrastructure before many will consider buying, but the EV infrastructure won't be built until there is demand for it. This is a classic example of where a government can step in to tip the scales and force a desirable outcome.
The major automakers can of course make 100K luxury automobiles, electric or not. They don't replace the 17 million normally-priced cars the rest of us buy each year.
Studies and predictions are nice, but to build it and make it work takes decades. We have a massive infrastructure in the country. And of course, it won't work the way we planned. Everything changes and pivots, not just SV startups.
"The market" doesn't want EVs and EV infrastructure because the majority of equity holders financially benefit more on a margin basis from the petro-dollar based system that ubiquitous EVs would threaten.
However because a subset of rich (and debt insensitive) individuals want a sexy new thing that has marginal ecological benefits at small scale, we had a boom period where excess capital (and unsustainable debt) was being spent to try and push EVs into the market.
When cleaning ladies and burnouts are using EVs because it's as trivial as using a petro-car then I'll grant that the market is working, but as it stands 'The Market" is only given token nod to electric and it's a fashionable thing to do in the US, it's not sustainable the way it is happening.
I have to say, that is a lot of cars. Hope they succeed. I want evs to start to be seriously pursued by 'existing' ;-) auto makers but it's been a slow slog.
You need to employ a statistically significant number of people too though. A significant portion of the EV supply chain is heavily automated making it harder.
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