I'm still skeptical. Let's wait for a few years and see how the quality, after market and customer support really is. In my experience, that's not a strong-suit of chinese brands.
Around 50% of people in the EU live in apartments. Most apartments were built decades ago and lack EV chargers - and, in many cases, enough dedicated parking spots for each unit, but that's a different story.
If people in the states think that charging a Model 3 or Model Y is too time consuming, when close to 90% of Americans live in single family houses, why would the majority of European car buyers be willing to switch to EVs, when they don't even have the option to install an EV charger?
A lot of them are being told this, and they just believe it without running the numbers for their use case. For some it would be longer until infrastructure improves, but for others it would actually be less time “waiting” on their EV than their ICE car. I’m in the UK and I’ve spent 0 mins waiting on my EV charging in the last 4 months. Plug in at night and unplug in the morning. I’ve also spent 0 minutes visiting gas stations.
America has bigger distances and there are other factors of course.
That's the issue.
This simply isn't possible if you live in an older apartment complex or rely on street parking.
ICE wins - at the moment - simply because it takes less than five minutes to refuel.
This is like arguing that nobody anywhere can buy anything but a large 4WD SUV because some day somebody somewhere might want to take a dog to a beach.
> This simply isn't possible if you live in an older apartment complex or rely on street parking.
This falls under the “running the numbers for their use-case” section. If you can’t charge at home it probably will be more hassle (but might not be).
> ICE wins - at the moment - simply because it takes less than five minutes to refuel.
So does this, because for my use-case EV wins because I don’t need to spend any minutes refuelling.
EVs have a place. I'm a fan of them. However, until recharging an EV becomes as quick and convenient as filling up a fuel tank at a station, ICE will continue to be the preferred option.
That said, government incentives (China, northern EU states) and potential ICE bans (EU) may allow EVs to win out in some markets.
However, at least in the west, this depends on the EU going against the best interests of central European automakers and everyone else in the automotive supply chain. It's - very - hard to see this happening over the next decade or two.
Long term EV will likely win. We're still a ways away from this happening.
If their goal is to be world-class automakers then they will quickly learn from local markets and adapt accordingly.
For instance, I used to have a Huawei phone and the quality was on par with Apple and better than Samsung (taking Apple on was their goal and they executed accordingly).
Tesla has been quite successful despite a few hickups along the way, including regarding quality. My guess is that Chinese brands can follow at least the same trajectory, if not better.
Consider also that BYD supplies batteries to Tesla, at least in Europe. So at least on that front they seem to be world-class if not leaders.
Especially since EVs are not cheap and I'm planning to keep them for a while.
Are you implying that Tesla is good quality? They are successful yes, but the hardware quality is just awful. Leaking roofs and stuff like that is not hard to get right.
I rode in a BYD and it was considerably more uncomfortable than my Land Rover Defender Td5, imagine that! My truck was more comfortable as a taller person than the BYD.
I don't know, I think that's still a very one-sided view. China can manufacture good stuff, but in my view only with good external QA. It's just a different culture around quality in my limited experience. Japan and Germany still lead imho.
> China can manufacture good stuff, but in my view only with good external QA
That's borderline offensive, IMO, and proved wrong by many examples.
There are a lot of chinese ICE manufacturers. Even before that, there were a number of Euro/American brands that were manufacturering in China for the domestic market. In the beginning these brands were not seen as high quality or reliable. You would pay a premium for a vehicle that was not manufactured domestically, regardless if it was a domestic or foreign brand. Things have changes significantly over the last 10 years. Quality has greatly improved and there is a significant sense of national pride for these brands, which I think only helps if further the desire for these brands to build better products.
The timing of quality improvements and the new global market demand for EV makes it a great time to expand. If they were to expand into the US market with an ICE platform, they would have had to fight the long uphill battle like Hyundai did to make a name for themselves.
So yeah, the made ICEs but also in the home market that was not a convincing product.