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Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

theguardian.com

31–40 of 370 posts

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#31
Western car makers learned the hard lesson that, at least in most of Europe, electricity prices are far too high, EV prices are too high, and customers do know how to use their calculators. In Germany, the only thing propping up the EV market are tax subsidies for commercially used EVs, so company cars are very likely to be EV or at least hybrid. For the rest of sales? Only idealists buy EVs, and then only those with deeper pockets, their own home charger, etc.

The current third oil crisis won't change much in this picture, because while fossil fuel prices have gone up, electricity prices are also starting to react and rise. That's because electricity demand rises, some industrial users can either use electricity or gas. And because gas prices are rising, which influence a small but very important part of electricity generation: on-demand gas power plants, that smooth out the sharp variations in renewable generation and demand.

And in the one important area of EV construction that makes a real difference, batteries, they tried and failed horribly. Everything else isn't really that special or EV-specific. So this winding down is just admitting that they already failed when the likes of Northvolt went boom. And the imho realistic assumption that production lines can be changed again if EVs should see more demand in the future. After all, some car brands to produce EVs, hybrids and ICE cars on the same line even now.

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#32

no one is willing to admit the EV tech isn't just there yet to fully replace gas powered cars?

I think 80 or 90% of new cars in northern Europe are electric.

Saying EV tech isn’t there to replace gas is like saying gas tech isn’t there to replace diesel.

Gas powered cars are niche or legacy.

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#33

no one is willing to admit the EV tech isn't just there yet to fully replace gas powered cars?

> Fully

Everyone's willing to admit that.

EV tech is there to replace the vast majority of gas powered cars.

We don't need to get to "fully" to have a replacement event. Horses can travel down trails that cars cannot, that didn't save them.

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#34
post #17

VAG group has EVs (and pretty good ones) across the board: VW with ID series, Škoda with Enyaq/Elroq/Epiq, Audi with eTron series (SUV, sedan and estate), SEAT with Cupra Born and others. BMW just launched Neue Klasse, with iX3 selling like hot cakesa nd i3 looking amazing, with i7 in pipeline. Mercedes also launched a great new platform with CLA which is coming to other sizes as well. Meanwhile, Renault 5 is selling…

Porsche... Eye roll

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By limiting imports and offering alternatives in home. Also, the myths about reliability ads a lot.

> By limiting imports and offering alternatives in home. Yeah, that's kinda how Cuba winds up with everyone (well, the small portion of society who can obtain one) driving 1950s cars around. It's not a good approach.

AFAIK, they're not limiting imports. They are heavily embargoed since 1960s, which also affects other countries' abilities to trade with them, under the threat of themselves being sanctioned.

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#36

no one is willing to admit the EV tech isn't just there yet to fully replace gas powered cars?

Everybody knows it won't fully replace it.

It's impossible to go on a long off-road travel with the EV equivalent of 50L of gas in a jerrycan.

But some are twisting the narrative to say that because of that reason EV will fail.

Millions of people could use an EV in their daily life, just like I can go without a pickup in my daily life and rent one whenever I need one.

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#37
post #17

VAG group has EVs (and pretty good ones) across the board: VW with ID series, Škoda with Enyaq/Elroq/Epiq, Audi with eTron series (SUV, sedan and estate), SEAT with Cupra Born and others. BMW just launched Neue Klasse, with iX3 selling like hot cakesa nd i3 looking amazing, with i7 in pipeline. Mercedes also launched a great new platform with CLA which is coming to other sizes as well. Meanwhile, Renault 5 is selling…

> Sooo... where's the retreat? As the article says; "In the US"

Why talk about “western” then, not about “US”? Because clickbait?

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#38

no one is willing to admit the EV tech isn't just there yet to fully replace gas powered cars?

98% of new car sales in Norway are EV at this point. How do you admit something that is not true?

A wealthy nation with a small population that has plenty of money to update their infrastructure is not comparable to upgrading the grid and converting the fleet of 250M cars in the US, which is a mess of 50 states who spend varying amounts of money on their infrastructure.

The US grid is already stressed by all these new data centers, where is the power to send 10kW of power minimum to tens to hundreds of millions of vehicles every day going to come from?

100M vehicles times 10kW divided by one million is One Million Megawatts.

One Thousand Gigawatts. That’s five hundred 2GW power plants. Four thousand solar panels make 1MW, four million solar panels make 1GW, four billion solar panels make 1000 GW.

And that’s 40% of the fleet converted to EVs, and does not account for diesel semi-tractors being converted to EV.

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