> By 2030 (8 years from now) at least six manufacturers will have stopped making ICE vehicles entirely.
Do you believe this? I know its a stated goal, but is there anything to hold the company's accountable or is this just a promise? I can't imagine them giving up a cash cow and something they've been doing for decades. EV sales in the USU are 5.6% of the market. I just find the claim that these companies will just seamlessly switch over to electric when they can't even get a decent touch screen in a car a decade after the first iPad.
There are a lot of built-in incentives for manufacturers to switch to electric once the market demand exists.
Less moving parts to warranty means potentially less long-tail costs for parts as well as less capital allocation for potential warranty service claims paid to dealerships. Less moving parts that can fail. Less parts in general. AWD in electrics is typically done with a front and rear motor configuration versus using moving parts to transfer power from the front to the rear.
More opportunities to upsell with lower capital costs. Model stratification by power output in ICE typically means more complex engineering (forced induction) or larger engine; both of which require significantly more R&D, testing, and validation. Once you sink capital investments into an ICE engine and manufacturing line, you need to reuse it over many years across a large range of vehicles to recoup the cost.
Model stratification in electrics is via bigger battery packs (stuff more of the same cells in there) and multiple motors.
Basically, electric cars are fiscally better for manufacturers in every way -- so long as consumers are willing to pay the premium AND willing to live with the inconveniences (less infrastructure for refueling, longer refueling, range anxiety).
What Tesla did was de-risk the market by showing that consumers will buy the product despite its flaws.
The demand exists. Tesla's order books are full. Ford's Mustang Mach-E is sold out with a waiting list. Ford's F-150 lightning have a waiting list as well as mechanisms to prevent scalping (voiding warranties) because there is so much demand.
Problem right now with EVs isn't demand (not saying that demand won't be an issue, but right now it seems like we haven't reached the inflection point for demand vs supply), it's so supply constrained to the extent that dealerships can mark up F-150 Lightnings with exorbitant costs.
Granted: we're still not really talking affordable econo-movers yet, but the market of $40-90k electric vehicles is still being restricted on the supply side. There are still people who want to buy a $40-90k EV who can't.
I couldn't find anything on Ford warranties being void if someone resold. The only thing I could find is a statement from Ford saying warranties do transfer to other parties. Any relevant links?
Edit: I saw GM announced they'll strip Hummer warranties, pretty crazy. I doubt the people that will buy a scalped Hummer EV will care much though.
> What Tesla did was de-risk the market by showing that consumers will buy the product despite its flaws.
Tesla is sexy, sure. But I don't think they proved that people want electric cars. Tesla still sells very few cars (~3%). The giants sell a lot more cars
I agree electric cars are better, but nothing stopped the car giants from making them decades ago. Tesla didn't come around at the right time, even Musk admits as much. The car giants could have worked on electric cars in the past, but for whatever reason didn't. It would have even been easier for them considering their expertise in manufacturing and distribution. Not to mention that politicians don't really like Tesla for whatever reason. If you listen to Biden talk about electric cars he often suspiciously leaves out Tesla, which is weird considering their cars are made in US and dominate 75% of the electric market in the US.
Tesla sells every car they can make. Their backlog is about a year long. We won't know how much demand there is until they can actually meet it.
Batteries cost a lot more decades ago. Car giants could have built electrics but they would have been expensive and short range.
If the trend in battery prices continues, electric cars will have lower sticker prices than ICE cars in a couple years, and then anyone who just wants a good price for a new car will change from an ICE customer to an electric customer.
> Tesla is sexy, sure. But I don't think they proved that people want electric cars.
I'm not sure if this is the right way to frame this. It would probably be better to say something like Tesla proved that EVs are practical and people will buy them.
> Tesla still sells very few cars (~3%). The giants sell a lot more cars
Sure, at the moment. But now you're conflating manufacturer market share with fuel type market share. A better way to think about this in the context of ICE vs EV is to look at the efforts underway by all manufacturers to ramp up EV production. It takes time to do. New companies (Lucid, Rivian, Tesa, etc.) take time to ramp up production. And then if you want to just compare manufacturers against each other with all fuel types combined, you can do that separately, to which I'd say this is not at all surprising given EV makers are new and take time to get market penetration.
> but nothing stopped the car giants from making them decades ago
All of the profit incentives in the world stopped them basically. Everyone was fat and happy with oil for cars, why bother changing anything or doing anything different?
I believe it. There's a stark difference in comparing the available EV models from mainstream manufactures between 2018 and 2022. Hyundai/KIA in particular are nailing it when it comes to EVs.
Manufactures are already quietly sunseting ICEs. It just doesn't read as significant right now, because the models which are going away are not the big, important ones. But manufactures are setting the stage for the transition of popular nameplates to EVs (see: Mustang, F150)
They are public companies; it will be kinda obvious from their annual reports if they aren't investing/devesting enough to hit those goals, and if they dont announce it to the public that will cause them bigger problems.
They anticipate increased costs for ICE vehicles and increased profit from EV which is why they're moving forward. They don't control the segments of the market they need to make it happen, so it's a risky bet. However, the manufacturers that are switching first are largely luxury brands, so they make a healthy enough profit that even if they stumble they wont be under water.
All you have to do is look at press releases from 8 years ago and see how many of those plans actually happened. You should expect the plans from today to work out similarly.
Do you believe this? I know its a stated goal, but is there anything to hold the company's accountable or is this just a promise? I can't imagine them giving up a cash cow and something they've been doing for decades. EV sales in the USU are 5.6% of the market. I just find the claim that these companies will just seamlessly switch over to electric when they can't even get a decent touch screen in a car a decade after the first iPad.