Massive amounts of anti-fossil fuel powered car legislation being passed, or being talked about, and Tesla being the clear market leader in the electric vehicle space.
But alas I think most major automakers are massively dropping the ball on EVs. I'm particularly disappointed in Toyota and Honda - I really expected better from them.
Where's the Corolla EV or the Civic EV? How about a nice little hatchback? Nope. Everyone's building crossovers, compact SUVs, fuckin' pickup trucks - it's a complete clownshow.
* 2021 is the last year for which Wikipedia has estimates for both vehicles. The Model 3 sold over 1m, the Model Y around 400k.
https://cleantechnica.com/2024/02/05/world-ev-sales-report-t...
Also, the number of boneheaded moves by the legacy car companies is astounding.
Ford just pushed their roadmap out a few years. Stellantis has nothing(?). Chevy dropped the ball by discontinuing their best model and then deciding not to pursue the “people that own cell phones” market segment.
I think the list of top ten global automakers will be very different in ten years. These companies seem likely to be on it (no particular order), based on current lineups of native EV platforms:
Tesla, Rivian, Volvo (polestar), Kia, Mercedes, BMW, Hyundai, and probably Ford, despite the delays.
I’m leaving Genesis and Vinfast off my US-centric list, but they’re certainly contenders.
How would one even do that?
Toyota’s gas hybrid tech has decades of track record that they will hold their value.
The market for electric vehicles that cost quite a bit more than similar size vehicles exists, but it's not like people that are shopping on a budget are going to choose based on performance and prestige, they are going to choose based on price, and conventional vehicles can still be built for lower costs.
Rav 4 gas starts at 28k, and Rav 4 prime is 43k,so 15k more
If your going to buy a 37k electric sedan, with that budget your probably not looking at a corolla anymore?
Think about who's buying Civics and Corollas. It's apartment dwellers mostly, and they don't have chargers, nor can they. Maybe their parking lot has chargers, and those will be expensive, and they could use public chargers, which are also expensive, but you're talking basically making the cost 1:1 with a gas car at that point, but less convenient, less range, heavier, and all that assumes you can even sell it in that price bracket. It simply makes no sense for the majority of consumers. You'd have to invert the gas/electric pricing, which, given current trends, isn't likely to happen.
Now will that always be the case? Very likely not, eventually we'll have cheap power, eventually enough people will be driving EV's that gasoline loses its scale advantage. Until then, the EV market will stay mid-high end, and that means crossovers/suv's/trucks/etc.
Some people view that as dreadfully bad, myself, I'm happy that EV's are being developed and sold. By the time the world is ready for them, they're going to be very, very good, and that's the point which I'll be buying one. That is assuming I don't nab myself a late 90's ford ranger with a blown motor and build my own EV first.
I drove a Volvo after that, until landing in a very dangerous accident recently (the Volvo literally saved my life). Now I'm driving a rental Honda (which was my starter car on which I learnt to drive). Both beat Tesla by a mile.
Pray what's that mean?
So much better than my Skoda where half the dashboard fell apart and the gearbox suddenly just "crashed"
If I ever own a car again it'll be a Volvo :) won't be an EV for sure because I always buy old cars, i just hate spending a lot on a car. It's not important in my life and the past 6 years I haven't even owned one and rented one only once.
Ps totally anecdotal evidence obviously