Legacy Automakers’ Historical past of Sluggish-Strolling, Their “Me Too” Second, & What Subsequent?

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We’ve numerous nice feedback on articles right here on CleanTechnica on daily basis. Nonetheless, generally a remark jumps out to me as one which must be an article itself. The following remark below an article I wrote on Friday is a kind of:

“For years, legacy automakers actively tried to place the kibosh on EVs, and so they practically succeeded. As an alternative of embracing EVs, they did all the pieces they might to make sure that ICE automobiles remained the dominant type of transportation. It’s not a coincidence that in August of 2018, the brief stability on TSLA was simply over $13bn, one of many largest brief positions in historical past. By the tip of 2018, TSLA was on a skyward trajectory and gaining steam. It took a full yr for automakers like gm to appreciate that they’d squandered alternatives to be leaders within the EV market, so that they did the one factor they might on the time… leap on the ‘Me Too’ wagon. The picture of Arnold Horshack franticly waving his hand in Mr. Kotter’s class involves thoughts. In 2020, gm had promised 20 new electrical automobiles by 2023, backed by press releases, which is one thing that many readers on this web site give her and gm a cross on.”

Certainly — there are some excellent factors right here. That is mainly the sequence of key factors we heard from legacy automakers within the US over the previous 15 years:

• Electrical automobiles are impractical and can by no means be greater than a sliver of the auto market. (In the meantime, visionaries — a few of our readers included — and early EV leaders like Tesla lengthy predicted EVs would take over the market.)
• Electrical automobiles are too costly and the batteries should not ok for the mass market. We’ll want a breakthrough in solid-state batteries for EVs to grow to be common.
• EV charging isn’t enough, so individuals can’t depend on EVs. (Tesla, in fact, constructed out the Supercharging community, fixing this concern for the small proportion of journeys which are lengthy distance and for consumers who don’t have dwelling or office charging.)
• EVs are getting longer vary and extra common, however they’re nonetheless too costly.
• Oh, Tesla’s gross sales soared and its inventory priced shot via the higher environment? Oh, yeah, we’re 100% going to prepared the ground on EVs, too!
• We’re so going to destroy Norway relating to EVs. [Side note: Still don’t understand what that was supposed to mean.]
• (Oh, crap, our inventory value didn’t jack up from these bulletins.)
• (Tesla’s gross sales surge is lastly dying off and so they’re stagnating or dropping?! Sure, now could be our second!)
• Effectively, sadly, individuals simply don’t need EVs as a lot as we thought and we’re going to cut back our electrical automobile plans (and advertising).

And don’t even get me began concerning the hydrogen hype.

The purpose is that there are numerous within the auto trade, the oil trade, and the laggard trade who’ve by no means needed a fast transition to electrical automobiles (or any transition to electrical automobiles), who felt dragged alongside by the passion for EVs and progress in EV gross sales for some time, and who now need to gradual us down and drag us again once more.

I believe that Tesla remains to be crucial to driving the trade ahead and pushing different automakers to affect sooner, particularly so long as Chinese language EVs are all however banned within the US. It’s due to this fact all of the extra annoying and distressing that Elon Musk has been throwing the Tesla model within the mud as a lot as he has, whereas additionally spreading nonsensical misinformation about local weather change. The one plus aspect I see right here is that if lots of people who would have purchased Teslas as a substitute select to purchase different manufacturers’ EVs, that might encourage them to supply and promote extra EVs. Possibly.

Returning to that bullet record, what’s subsequent? What are legacy automakers’ subsequent strikes going to be? I, one way or the other, haven’t truly thought of this an excessive amount of, and I don’t know. Will they revive a “we’re EV leaders!” perspective and advertising marketing campaign once more? Will they largely ignore EVs and produce and promote comparatively few fashions for the following a number of months or years? Will any of them attempt to stand effectively above the gang and go 100% electrical by the following Olympics? Will they watch their total gross sales shrink increasingly as they grow to be much less aggressive in additional markets around the globe (as has been taking place in China)? What are your ideas on this?