Pages

June 07, 2021

Electric cars are coming! Except to Merika, probably

The Beeb has a great story about how more and more car companies are planning to sell electric only vehicles, generally no more than 15 years in the future. It also notes that the cost of "juice" vs. "fuel" continues to drop and tilt the economic equation toward electrics, and adds that if you include maintenance costs specific to an internal combustion engine, the tipping has probably already gone electric-favorable.

So, everybody's rushing to buy, right?

Not quite, per this:

Shocked? 

Note also that Ford, unlike GM, at least for the story, mentions a Europe-only all-electric time frame. Chrysler-Fiat-Who Will Rescue Us Next? isn't even mentioned.

I am not sure of all the reasons behind that flat-to-slumping purple line, but I can think of a few.

Wingnuts being refusniks as part of "owning the libs." (I wondered last week if this attitude on COVID vaccines would stand up to free Budweiser.).

EVs in the U.S. associated too much with Tesla.

Fear of driving range. (This one is nonsense, as any new electric right now will go 250 miles without a charge. Of course, if you're Tesla and insist on your own charging system, this may be a problem, and were I a local government, contra Sulphur Springs, Texas, I wouldn't help build out a Tesla-specific charging site.

Interestingly missing from the story are the two pioneers of hybrid drives: Toyota and Honda.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Your comments are appreciated, as is at least a modicum of politeness.
Comments are moderated, so yours may not appear immediately.
Due to various forms of spamming, comments with professional websites, not your personal website or blog, may be rejected.