But what about Hydrogen? Many ICE companies would be better to focus on that. It would allow legacy vehicles to stay on the road, and fix the range anxiety in places like the US which is way bigger than all of the EU and bigger than the populated parts of China.
Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance
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Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance
#92no 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.
In 2024[1]:
- 37.2% in Sweeden
- 51.6% in Denmark
- 30.4% in Finland
of newly registered cars were BEV. Only Norway reaches 89% you are talking about. The total average of newly registered BEV cars in European Union was 13.6%.
The EV tech is here,but the grid in most EU countries is certainly not. The proliferation of heat pumps in the local area caused 3 blackouts caused by a failure of a local transformer - something that hasn't happened before or at least not as frequently. And in most countries you are looking at doubling the electricity consumption if all road transport was to switch to electricity.
[1]: https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/indicators/new-registr...
Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance
#93Western 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…
Oh please, it hit two euros a liter thanks to the orange turd
Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance
#94America clearly has an EV industry (Tesla, Rivian) but its adoption is pretty limited by infrastructure.
I don't think this is true, at least for Tesla, which has a very mature and wide range of chargers almost everywhere. AFAIK, Rivian can also use Tesla chargers now.
Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance
#95Earlier 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
Here in the Netherlands ford sales seem to have completely consumed by Kia sales. Around me houses that typically had Fords now have Kia’s, Toyota, Tesla or small Volvo like EX30/40.
After the huge hits of the focus and to some extend Mondeo, the Kuga has sold subpar. There were only a few new ones around here. Now you see some new EV Ford Explorer SUV and just a tiny account of the big old Explorer. (Yes, the traditional Explorer suv counts as big here.)
In the mean time there is an explosion of BYD, Volvo, Skoda Enyaq, etc happening. Mostly driven by which model has the most beneficial tax package for lease.
Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance
#96In the US, automakers are still a big source of union power, which is at least part of the reason Trump is pushing them to drop EVs.
In a fascist state, you want all powerful industries closely tied to the rulers.
Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance
#97Weird 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’s leadership is staunchly anti-EV
Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
My post was poorly worded I meant to say Tesla wasn’t too high of a price but it has political problems (we won’t buy another one for example).
Lucid and Rivian don’t have those problems but they are quite expensive relatively speaking.
Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance
#99Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance
#100VAG 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…
Renault Mégane and Scenic EVs are also great.