Today’s going to be a big electric car day around these parts, though we’ll make sure to temper that with some good ol’ gas-powered weirdness. We’ve just posted a review of the Mustang Mach-E Rally and have the Equinox EV review coming out at noon. There’s a lot of news as well.
Right off the tip, there’s some interesting data out there about where electric cars are distributed. You won’t be surprised to find out that California is the key EV market, but maybe you wouldn’t expect Florida and Texas to be increasing their EV and hybrid fleets.
This switch towards electrification isn’t going to be evenly distributed geographically or over time, and that’s going to screw with some suppliers according to site favorite Carlos Tavares. This uneven market is having a huge impact on Fisker, which just unloaded another huge chunk of its staff in a mass layoff.
The delayed rollout of the Volkswagen ID.7 in the United States doesn’t seem to bother most dealers, who didn’t seem to think it was going to be a success in the first place. Aight, let’s Dump.
All EVs Are Belong To California (And Florida And Texas)
I’m going to link to The Detroit News version of this Bloomberg story because there’s no subscription required to read it, but shoutout Kyle Stock for his hard work pulling out some fun numbers:
Almost one-third of new electric vehicles are going to one of three states: California, Florida or Texas, according to CarGurus data. To some degree, that makes sense — they are the most populous states. If a third of drivers are interested in buying an EV, that third represents more potential buyers in California than Montana.
But the byproduct is a dearth of options for drivers elsewhere. At the end of the first quarter, some 23 states had fewer than 1,000 electric vehicles on offer, excluding automakers like Tesla Inc. that do an end-run around traditional dealerships. Nine states had fewer than 400.
Did you catch that?
- Nearly 1/3rd of new EVs are going to CA/FL/TX
- About half of states have fewer than 1,000 new EVs listed
- Nine have fewer than 400
The big caveat in this data is that it excludes automakers who sell directly to customers, so no Rivian, Polestar, and, more importantly, no Tesla in here. But on a relative basis, it shows that EVs are not a universal phenomenon everywhere in the United States.
If you look at CarGurus’ quarterly report you can also see that this gap is growing as California, Texas, and Florida continue to grab more and more inventory relative to other states.
This means that if you want an EV in some of the states with few EVs for sale (Wyoming, The Dakotas, Maine, et cetera) you’re likely to lack a lot of options. From the same Bloomberg article:
[I]f you want an ID.4 in South Dakota, you better act fast — only three in the state are unspoken for. The same is true in Arkansas and Mississippi, according to the latest data from CarGurus Inc., a listing platform that captures most US new car inventory.
If you live in South Dakota and drive an ID.4 please reach out!
Guy Being Sued By Suppliers Is Suddenly Worried About Suppliers
As CEO of Stellantis, Carlos Taveras (pictured above), has found himself in frequent conflict with his own suppliers, resulting in multiple lawsuits.
And, yet, Tavares sort of sounds worried about suppliers in a conversation with the Bernstein Strategic Decisions conference, via Reuters:
Tavares said the challenge for automakers was to sell EVs, whose production costs are 40% to 50% higher, at the same price as equivalent petrol models. This forces them to cut costs at every level of their operations, including supply chains and logistics.
“You are going to see a huge shift of the supplier base. The sourcing will move from the Western world to the best cost countries,” he said during the Bernstein Strategic Decisions conference.
“The EV race has become a cost cutting race,” he added.
Lol, ok, maybe it’s not so much a concern for his suppliers but a warning. The other way to read this is Tavares saying to governments and suppliers: Hey, we’re going to have to ship your jobs to Malaysia if you don’t help us out on costs.
Bloodbath At Fisker
Fisker, the automaker, is in trouble. Its founder/CEO is selling his house, reporters and investigators are looking into the company, and the company’s one car is not selling well.
The company owes a lot of money to an unnamed investor and is possibly headed for bankruptcy. According to this report from TechCrunch, that investor insisted on more layoffs than the hundreds that occurred:
Founder and CEO Henrik Fisker told employees that the large investor his company owes money to — and the chief restructuring officer working on the investor’s behalf — wanted to let more people go, according to employees who attended. Fisker has never disclosed who is ultimately behind the convertible debt investment in question, though Henrik Fisker did reference Heights Capital Management during Wednesday’s meeting when discussing the layoffs, according to the two employees. Heights Capital Management is an affiliate of financial services giant Susquehanna International Group.
Not good.
Dealers Don’t Seem To Care About Losing The ID.7
Here’s a quote from Automotive News that could literally be about almost any new expensive electric car:
“We brought up a little bit of caution behind it,” Luciano said. “Are we sure this is a good idea? We didn’t know an exact pricing, but [it’s] definitely a $50,000 to $60,000 car, without incentives. Is there any chance of it being competitive? And we felt like [it’s] not.”
That’s John Luciano, owner of Street Volkswagen in Amarillo, Texas, who said that most dealers are cool with VW’s decision to delay the Volkswagen ID.7 sedan, a car we apparently drove. Thomas has a good take on this you should read, but it’s nice to see automakers starting to accept that there’s not a huge demand for $60,000 EVs from mainstream, nonluxury brands.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Since we’re talking about Florida I had to do it. I don’t know that I love this album, though I’ve been required to listen to it a bunch. I do love Florence + The Machine and it’s a fun song.
The Big Question
How many people do you know who own an EV?
How many people do you know who own an EV?
It was just a couple when I got my BEV and now it’s over half the people I know but I live in California. It’s a pretty good variety of brands as well with Mercedes, Rivian, BMW, Tesla, Ford. Now driving around and at the office it’s a growing number. We even have someone commuting in a Chevrolet Spark which for such a small car are a lot of fun to throw around.
The Big Question
They are becoming more common in my world each year over the past two years. My daughter and SIL use their Model Y every day and even for long road trips. It;s really their only car as my daughter’s 2010 Focus sits in the driveway with a constant dead battery that I need to keep jump-starting for her.
> How many people do you know who own an EV?
Former neighbor had a Leaf. Other neighbor ditched her Lexus for a Tesla model S. There’s an electric BMW next to them, a Ioniq a couple doors down, and another EV down the block. I don’t actually know any of them 😀 But they hopefully make up for my gas guzzling old MBs.
As for friends and acquaintances, one owns a Model X. Everyone else drives an ICE car.
It’s not only the EVs heading to the coast but the PHEV’s as well. I’m in WI and wanted to cross shop the new Lexus TX 550 PHEV. My dealer told me they send them all to the coast and they will be lucky to get one allocated by the end of the summer, maybe. Ended up buying a XC90 T8 in Seattle and having it shipped to WI.
My neighbor had a Tesla but sold it a few months back. But he’s always getting something new. Lots of Teslas in the physician parking lot at our local hospital.
I was randomly the meat in a Cybertruck and Rivian R1T sandwich today driving around town. Which is pretty wild for northeast WI.
“How many people do you know who own an EV?”
So far… one person at my work (Hyundai Ioniq 5) and one of my neighbors has a Nissan Leaf and a Tesla Model S.
Didn’t Stellantis already cut costs by deleting the oil dip stick on the new Ram 1500?
Don’t even get me started on cars with no oil dipstick. I’m still getting over my frustration of an issue I had just last week. Deleting a regular engine oil dipstick is the dumbest idea in automotive history.
You are so right!
Almost like some places have different levels of infrastructure for EVs and owners have different needs for there cars depending on where they live…madness….
Until they can figure a way around the vast cold weather range loss, I don’t expect to see them selling a poopload in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the like. PS, the infrastructure issues in a less populated state are legion so I’m not holding my breath. Add in the expected leapfrogging technology and the depreciation curve looks as scary as a mountain road without Armco. (I’m looking at you Puerto Rico in an epic rainstorm with no lighting and roads as wide as a sidewalk in LA)
The current crop just coming out largely have heat pumps (except the Mach E which is a laggard). The heat pump really does a good job minimizing range loss. I have a Bolt in Ohio where winters can get real cold. If you preheat, the range loss isn’t a huge deal. I imagine the heat pumps will improve that even more
I know a couple of EV owners quite well. They can charge at home, and are fairly well off. There are several more EVs in my neighborhood, but I can’t say I know them well.
I bet they’re nice, you should try to get to know them.
Bleah! Too much work.
I live in Texas, so I know about a dozen or so folks with PHEVs or BEVs. At the relatively small office building I work at, I regularly see multiple Teslas, an R1S, a 4XE, a BZ4X, a PHEV X5. On my commute this morning, I saw a Fisker Ocean for the second time, and I frequently see several different Lucids. In addition, my neighbor has an EV riding mower, does that count?
Here in Seattle I know lot’s of people with EVs, my family included. With $5/gal gas and $0.13/kwh electric and lots of money floating around it just makes sense. Lots of families do the ev/ice split but our new neighbors are double ev with a rivian and an egolf. We have a camp trailer I pull with my pilot and only 1 off street parking spot so not sure about replacing the pilot with a second ev but I could see adding a longer range ev and just keeping the leaf so we burn less gas.
right? I think I easily know a dozen people with an EV here in Seattle proper.
I have a Bolt. My best friend has a Model 3. My other best friend has a Taycan.
That’s it.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/170/143/dbd.png
Where I worked until 3 months ago there were almost a dozen teslas and 2 Rivians. We have 2 Teslas. I don’t see ever going back to an internal combustion vehicle. We travel all over the west with 0 issues and no range anxiety. I used to worry a bit about charging on trips but we found it is no problem with the Supercharger network. I’d like to pick up a Silverado EV used in a few years for the enormous range and easier camping.
I own 1.5 EVs (BEV + PHEV), living in semi-rural TN. Ironically, EVs make a ton of sense for people who drive a lot of daily miles to town & back (we average ~70/day), but the political landscape here villainizes EVs, so they remain few & far between (but growing!). The state legislature has also chosen to penalize EVs by sticking a flat rate $200/yr fee on all BEVs and $100/yr for PHEVs, so the difference between that disincentive and states with additional incentives for buying EVs is a pretty big driver of the lagging rate of adoption in red states. Y’all should really write about that when you get a chance!