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Comment by Xixi | Hacker News Reader

Expected top 10 electric car makers in 2019 (in no particular order): Tesla, Nissan, Renault, Hyundai, and 6 Chinese brands that I don't know [1]. Where are the German carmakers?

The latest EU elections have seen an unprecedented rise of the Greens at the European level, so I expect regulation against greenhouse gases to go only one way: more taxes on gas, more regulations, more choking of the ICE car market. German carmakers need to get their act together or they will die of irrelevance.

[1] https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/18/top-10-best-selling-ful...

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This mayu or may not portend the end of Germany's auto industry, but what exactly is the marketshare of electric vehicles globally, and would BMW or Mercedes really notice what Hyundai or Nissan are doing?

The market share is small, but my point is that it will converge to 100% within one to two decades, with increasing pressure to move that deadline to the left. Maybe not globally, but at least in some markets (China, India, EU).

In the transition some will win and some will lose. So far the German automakers have not looked at this drastic market shift seriously... It needs to change if they want to stay relevant.

Did anyone in the Western hemisphere make any similar commitments?

But my point is that anyone's electric marketshare in 2019 is pretty meaningless as a predictor of 2040 or even 2030 results. And the 2019 rankings very much remind me of a certain (quite bad) scifi novel I've read, where in the furure everyone drives electric cars, except for the really rich who zoom around in extremely expensive ICE vehicles.

Also, governments might want to push for electric vehicles, but it is not obvious that the public will go along with it -- so far the only way to make electric cars outsell traditional ones is a severe distortion of the pricing as in Norway.

Not completely sure why you are being downvoted.

But many countries in the EU have made similar commitments, with EOL between 2025 (Norway) and 2040 (France).

Hence why I specifically said India, China and the EU. I don’t think the Anglo Saxon world is taking this issue at heart much yet (besides UK).

If the regulator ban something automakers will adapt. And so will the population.

AFAIK the climate change issue is way less politicized in continental Europe than in the US, which makes action so much more easy. Lobby and corruption are still an issue though...

Indeed, there's too much political BS about climate change in the US (although I also haven't heard of any ICE bans in the South America either).

China is very much a separate market (aren't most well-selling German luxury brands there also made in China, and not necessarily exact same models as available elsewhere?), and US population might adapt... or we may end up with more trumps and regulations explicitly favoring ICE vehicles. People usually aren't too happy about paying more for an inferior product.

Right now? Single digits. But right now does not matter.

The marketshare of electric vehicles globally will be > 90% in the future. And not "the future" like some Star Trek utopia.

Ireland has committed to no new petrol/diesel cars from 2030 onwards. UK has committed to 2040 but is likely moving that to 2030. Other countries in the EU will follow with similar timelines.

This is in just over 10 years. If your cars all need to be electric by 2030, you need to have already put in place the strategy to do that and be already implementing your manufacturing chain. If it's 2040 you have a bit more time, but you would still want to be doing it within the next 5 years.

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