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Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

theguardian.com

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

#71

Post by bastawhiz »

a-saleh wrote: post #10
tahoeskibum wrote: post #2

Weird headline: Japanese carmakers are doing the same error, while Tesla (an American company) is the one of the leading electric carmakers... I'd just replace it with Legacy Carmakers (e.g. Ford, GM, Toyota and so on).

I thought Totyota is still one of the EV leaders. Alongside Kia and Hyundai?

Toyota has a magical vaporware battery that they announce is just a couple years away every couple years. We're likely to see general quantum computing and an operational fusion plant before Toyota productionizes their first "real" EV with said battery.

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

#72

Post by ericmay »

epolanski wrote: post #51
hyperionultra wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I really struggle with this model of protectionism. It has rarely worked in history, and when it did, it only did so for very short specific time frames intended to kickstart a sector, never to protect it in its mature state. Examples are south korean and japanese post ww2 protectionism of key sectors, but again, only to kickstart them. Those very sectors had to compete globally quickly to survive. We're in capitalis…

> And I don't buy the "but China fuels money into their EV industry" either.

Well, you’re wrong. There’s not much else to say bout that.

> And why would I care if Chinese taxpayers subsidize my car? I really don't.

Because it prices the vehicles below points where others can compete. Then they go out of business, and then the remaining winner raises prices. If you are Germany, Japan, or the United States that means lots of bad things for jobs, and starting a new automaker to bring down high prices later is very difficult.

It’s like, who cares if Amazon or Walmart comes in to your country, subsidizes the prices, and then runs all the competition and small mom and pop stores out of town until you have nothing left but Amazon or Walmart. Right?

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

#74

Post by xp84 »

youknownothing wrote: post #24
joe_mamba wrote: post #5

I think Ferrari, Lambo, Rolls Royce, Bugatti, Zonda etc. will do just fine with selling luxury ICEs with many cylinders that go vroom to rich people. In fact they'll probably do better as global wealth gap increases. It's the Audis, BMWs, Mercedes, etc of Europe they'll probably end up the way of Philips, Blaupunkt, Alcatel, Grundig, Nokia, Thomson, Gigaset, SAgem, etc. meaning selling off their consumer civilian ope…

the question is where they'll be able to sell them: Europe is going to ban the sale of ICE cars from 2035 so, unless someone finds a loophole, that's a whole market gone.

Europe will change their mind when protests start that many people can’t buy a car that they can charge because their home doesn’t have the capacity and public charging scarcity and congestion makes the 1970s gas rationing look convenient.

Nearly all these carmakers already do make plenty of EVs. If I’m very wrong and people there wish to buy EVs exclusively, that’s what will sell and what will get made.

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

#75

Post by maxerickson »

ericmay wrote: post #61
orange_joe wrote: post #23

America clearly has an EV industry (Tesla, Rivian) but its adoption is pretty limited by infrastructure.

And Lucid. I’m not sure it’s the infrastructure so much as the cost for these vehicles. Well, Tesla has political problems but Rivian and Lucid don’t - but they are priced quite high.

It's kind of a yes both. A base Model 3 is in the same price range as decent hybrids that will be more convenient for many owners given current highway adjacent charging infrastructure.

Of course there are also new vehicles that cost quite a bit less than a base Model 3, but they invite a discussion of not being all that comparable.

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

#76

Post by varjag »

quickthrowman wrote: post #63
Forgeties79 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norway is hardly alone. More and more countries are increasing EV purchases and decreasing ice purchases. We are clearly headed in that direction

I agree, I’m just saying it’s easier for a country with a sovereign wealth fund and ridiculous oil royalties to handle upgrading their infra to handle EVs for 6M is much easier than doing it in the US which has extremely low average population density, 250M+ vehicles and 400M people, and a mess of separate but inter-tied grids and varying levels of infrastructure investment depending on which state you are in.

We have the wealth fund precisely because we don't discretionally spend oil royalties.

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

#77

Post by 4ndrewl »

galangalalgol wrote: post #57
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US American car marques are nearly completely irrelevant outside the US.

Ive seen plenty of fords in Europe but they have evs

Right, but Ford Europe is, and always had been, a different beast to Ford America.

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

#78

Post by delta_p_delta_x »

galangalalgol wrote: post #57
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US American car marques are nearly completely irrelevant outside the US.

Ive seen plenty of fords in Europe but they have evs

Ford of Europe has succeeded because its direction and leadership are completely different to its American outfit, and has released models targeting European sensibilities. You will probably not find Mondeos or Focuses in the North American market. Nor will you (easily) find an F-150 in Europe. A Ranger, perhaps, but not the F-150.

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

#79

Post by yardie »

orange_joe wrote: post #23

America clearly has an EV industry (Tesla, Rivian) but its adoption is pretty limited by infrastructure.

It's not even the infrastructure. It's generally a lot of FUD. Everyone fears they have to buy a 800-mile range SUV for the frequent roadtrips they take apparently. I commute 1000 miles every month. That is 4x DCFC every month vs 2.5 petrol fillups for the same period.

I also know a lot of drivers who plan to get an EV when their current car stops working. A lot of people are feeling economically anxious right now. They know gas is a dead end so they are squeezing every last mile out of the cars they currently own. Car companies can't exist on the wishes of their customers. Everyone is doing a lot of hoping that its the right time. The EV rebates were a great tool in getting to that tipping point but they were cancelled too son in my estimation.

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

#80

Post by wasabi991011 »

quickthrowman wrote: post #38
applfanboysbgon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

> 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 is plenty wealthy per capita, around the same or more than Norway. It has plenty of money to upgrade it's infrastructure, it just chooses to spend it on other goals such as bombing Iran.

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