Sure I like EVs but range (for now), lack of control, the sound of them are many things that ruin the art of driving. Pretty soon mechanical cars will be like expensive mechanical watches, rare.
“Drivers cars” are already rarities. Look at yearly sales figures for something like the Mazda Miata. Look at the overall sales numbers for manual transmission vehicles. They are not increasing and non-SUV vehicles are dying out (see Ford and GM).
Cars are an expensive, depreciating liability. That’s why buying a fun car makes no sense from a financial perspective. An SUV is essentially the type of car that is least likely to be unusable for a particular task, which is why (now that the gas mileage is acceptable) it is the most popular form of vehicle.
If I buy a Miata or even a Camry, one trip to the Home Depot can leave me wishing I bought a big, slow-ish SUV.
This is a long-winded way of saying that the majority of the public won’t miss internal combustion engines. Electric cars are quiet and require less maintenance by far. Battery technology and pricing doesn’t have far to go before buying a gas car makes no sense.
There will always be enthusiast cars of some kind, for the foreseeable future, but most people have no business buying them. In my view, any emotional attachment to them has been curated over decades by car advertisements. Sure, feeling some G-forces and the wind in your hair is fun, but I can do that at an amusement park for far less money, too.
If you’re looking to argue just for the sake of arguing about something, that wasn’t the purpose of my comment and that’s not what you’ll get out of me.
For what reason?
But I also neglected the other reason people like SUVs: driving position and ease of entry, especially with child seats.
If an SUV is priced equivalently to a car in terms of fuel costs and MSRP, it’s essentially a better choice for most people.
Have you driven a Tesla Model S?
I drove a friend's P90D, and I have to say it's one of the best "driving" cars I've ever driven. The steering is extremely precise, the throttle response literally demolishes any petrol vehicle, among other things.
They didn't go into this saying "We're going to design a new vehicle, but it has to be built using the same factories and tooling and processes we've poured a few hundred billion dollars into."
Also remember the large auto manufacturers have hundreds of millions of R&D sunk into internal combustion engines they still need decades to re-coup.
I got a tour of a massive OEM assembly line in the US this summer, and it was utterly jaw-dropping to see how many people are paid to do the most menial tasks possibly imaginable, that could easily be replaced by a robot. I was told the Union forces those jobs to stay, and they're actually the highest paid in the entire factory.
edit: Canadian dollars and taxes. No we don't have EV rebates in my province.
1. Joy ride; going for a drive to clear my mind, possibly in a motorcycle or jeep, or just your car
2. Human transport; personal bus/taxi
95% of the time spent in your personal vehicle is use case #2. Nobody is arguing (yet) to take away motorcycles, corvettes, jeeps etc