Volvo Says It Will Stop Selling Gasoline-Powered Cars by 2030

Someone asked

> So all Volvo dealers are done?

I said no, because they'll still need to do lots of things they already do, like handing the car over, servicing, things like that.

If I had said no private automaker will exit the ICE market over the next 9 years, then your response would have been on topic. It would also have been a strange thing to say since we know private firms exit markets all the time. That Chrysler is still in business stuns me every day, they should sell off their truck business and shut down the rest. Trucks and SUVs are the main things that US firms compete in now, as the personal auto market is so thoroughly dominated by Japan and Korea.

For example, Ford announced it was exiting the personal auto market (https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/ford-stops-making-cars/). Yet that market remains. Volvo, always a niche player in the personal auto market but one of the most successful truck manufacturers in the world, split off the personal auto division and sold them to various foreign firms, none of which could make volvo cars turn a profit, and ultimately they ended up owned by a Chinese holding company. I wish them well, maybe they can turn things around and this new focus is what they need. The much larger and industry leading Volvo truck business, OTOH, was not sold off, and has made no announcements to exit the ICE market. That's how markets work. We want entry and exit to be as free as possible.

As it stands, you are responding to something I didn't say and trying to debate points no one is making. I said no major government will ban sales of ICE vehicles in the next 9 years and any promises to do so should be viewed with the same credibility as all their other promises on CO2. In fact, has even a single promise been kept? So now we are back on the topic of governments keeping promises, not market actors responding to market incentives.

But if you really believe promises by governments to take action in 9 years when all the previous promises were ignored, then go ahead and believe.

In some sense these promises work if they make you feel better now and help win elections today - it is politics-as-therapy - and they do no harm to the economy in that they will be ignored. Which is not to say that ICE is here to stay -- but it will be economic concerns that dominate the discussion -- how much cheaper/faster/more convenient is the replacement not because of government promises to overrule the market. Those should be viewed purely as therapy.