The infotainment system, charging network and charging experience of a Tesla are still far ahead of the competition but I can’t tell why. There is literally a playbook to follow and they are all failing at it.
- Investing capital for new manufacturing lines, retraining employees, hiring new employees, etc. means reduced profits and reduced short term returns for shareholders. The top level execs probably feel like their heads would be on the chopping block if investor returns were to be reduced in the short term for accelerating long term growth.
- A lot of entrenched mid-level and senior executives are simply protecting their turf. Similar to how Nadella completely turned around the mindset at Microsoft once Ballmer was ousted, I'd guess there are a lot of executives with fat paychecks that don't want to see their little empires diminished.
- Holding taxpayers hostage for government subsidies (to be fair, many electric startups did get the benefit). BMWs "threat" about reliance on the Chinese supply chain feels like a kind of strawman to get more subsidies.
Fascinating to see the comments on EV threads where they are claimed to be expensive, but also that the second hand values are really low. Surely buying a second hand one solves the absolute “expensive” bit?
Even then I’d question the “more expensive than ICE” claims for new models. In the UK the average cost of a new vehicle is £40k: https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/opinion/363624/average-new-car...
A model 3 is £40k
I am not rich. You can count me in the 50% of people who can charge at home, which saves me £100/month in fuel.
Which is really silly because these new lines are relatively cheap to setup. EVs are easier to manufacturer than ICE vehicles with fewer parts and inspection points needed.
That is why so many small time EV manufactures were capable of spawning out of nowhere.
Can you quantify this? Most times when people say things like this they are just repeating headlines of articles. The articles themselves will loosely be based on some truth, but are mostly just EV hit pieces. It would be good to see similar ICE models compared %age wise. “Freefall” sounds dramatic, but if it’s an extra 5% depreciation from the expected 50% over 3 years I think it’s a bit of an exaggeration, especially if fuel savings would fill the gap.
