Detroit went all in on big, expensive EVs nobody wants

1) Tesla executed a remarkable 0->1 strategy, working from the Roadster (high-end luxury price, low volume) to the S (high-end luxury price, moderate volume) to the Y and 3 (low-end luxury price, high volume), creating an apparently-successful car company that only sold luxury-price vehicles. Detroit interpreted that as "everybody is ready to spend low-end luxury money for electric cars." In fact, there's still a limited number of people who can spend luxury money for cars, and Detroit is winning those back from Tesla. That's not the same thing as "building cars for people who can only spend 25K or less for a car."

2) Detroit really only builds huge cars, leading Americans who don't want huge cars to buy imports or (recently) Teslas. These buyers have greater than random overlap with the set of likely electric car buyers. Detroit tries to build huge electric cars, but those buyers tend not to want huge cars, creating bad market fit.

For example the Bolt is solid and GM should have done everything in their power to put one in every EV buyer’s driveway.

The bolt could have had a cabriolet version, a little higher range version, offroad, cut the price harder, etc. It is a shame to lose those years of market building. Imagine throwing that away while Toyota was gifting you that time.

The Mach-E was a decent placement, and you’d think the Cadillac could have taken a lot of Y sales away.

Rivian was smart to go toward the R3.

These EV have spotty rural and exurban charging capabilities so would rely heavily on home charging, and as another poster points out — take forever to charge.

It's like they look at premium EV brands, like Tesla, Polestar, Lucid, etc, of the world and say "it must be the electric engine" without actually considering why people are paying a premium for those vehicles.

They literally just stuck electric batteries in vehicles and tried to charge twice the price without delivering the rest of the experience.

The interiors are still largely plastic. The infotainment systems largely used crappy displays with laggy inputs. Vanity components wear extremely quickly. Technology/features are almost always behind comparably priced foreign-designed cars.

Ford is doing the right thing with the F150 lightning but they really missed with the Mustang Mach-E. All they had to do was make an electric Escape or Edge with decent range and it would compete with the Model Y.

My family is in the market for an AWD electric SUV with reasonable cargo space and actual buttons for major controls. These don’t really exist and if a manufacturer cared enough to push this they’d make a killing. The Mach-E, Ariya, Model Y, EV6, Ioniq5 don’t have much cargo space. The Honda Prologue/Chevy Blazer EV are closer to the RAV4 CR-V so we’ll see. The VW ID4 is also bigger but the touchscreen has gotten terrible reviews.

Model Ys are catching up to the RAV4 because they were the only option with decent range and charging infra while looking decent and being a reasonable size. Good for Tesla but Detroit still hasn’t learned the right lessons.

Can’t wait for more competition in this space where regular vehicles are available in electric versions. The old guard could easily build a nicer interior than a Tesla and lean into tactile controls and their dealer network. Instead they co-opt the tablet and focus on the wrong things like autopilot, sportbacks, and “futuristic” designs.

That said, in some places it seems to be the case: https://hongkongfp.com/2024/02/24/how-cheap-mini-electric-ve...

I guess they are just too incompatible with an existing fleet of trucks and SUV's.