The underlying tension in the American car market is a general belief among automakers/regulators/media that electric cars are going to happen and consumers/dealers asking: Ok, but how? A mid-year survey of dealers shows that most of them will sell you an electric car or hybrid if you ask for it, but few are actually prioritizing the sale of electric vehicles over gas-powered cars.
Does this mean EVs are toast? Nah, the CEO behind the survey has the correct take, which is that “They are simply growing at a normal tech adoption curve, instead of following the absurd expectations from manufacturers and the hype from the media.” Another analysis this week from S&P Global Mobility shows electric vehicle production will also continue to grow, just perhaps a bit delayed in the United States.
Not that electric cars are perfect. Tesla is having to recall 1.8 million cars in the United States for an issue with the car not telling drivers that the hood/frunk isn’t latched. This is a quick fix, thankfully.
And, finally, Fuyao Glass America’s Ohio plant is back in the news after being raided by G-Men.
Why Aren’t Dealers Pushing Electric Cars?
It’s a big question, and the heterogeneous nature of the pool of dealers in the United States makes it impossible to produce one answer, as a Toyota dealer in San Diego has a very different experience from a GMC/Buick dealer in Topeka.
This information comes from a Kaiser Associates (a big consulting company) dealership survey conducted for the Dave Cantin Group (an M&A advisory firm). The survey can be downloaded here if you give them some info and you can make your own judgment about the insights, but the data isn’t surprising to me. The company says they interviewed 180 new car dealers.
As you can see in the chart above, only 5% of dealers are prioritizing BEV (battery electric vehicle) sales over gas-powered/hybrid cars. That number rises a bit to 6% for hybrids. About a third of dealers are happy to sell a hybrid or BEV if that’s what a consumer wants. When it comes to BEVs, 23% of dealers say they’ll only sell them if a consumer has a “strong” preference for such a vehicle and a full 38% don’t sell or rarely sell BEVs.
On its face, these are not great numbers for EV enthusiasts, but also this makes sense. There are many dealers for brands like Buick, GMC, Infiniti, Alfa Romeo, et cetera that simply do not have BEVs to sell. Then there are brands like Honda and Toyota which are, after a long wait, just starting to get electric vehicles in stock. So this will likely shift.
I’m glad that the survey includes the top two reasons why some dealers would prioritize BEV or HEV sales, which are: to diversify offerings or to get access to incentives. This is logical and, if the shift to EVs is going to happen eventually, then it makes sense for dealers to start building up that business. In the interim, some automakers are offering big incentives to move electric cars and why not take advantage of that?
The reasons why some dealers are not pushing EVs I find to be a little more interesting. The number one reason is that these dealers think their customers don’t care about the environment. The second reason is pricing is unattractive. I’d have assumed this would be reversed.
We’re now back to a bit more of a chicken-and-egg argument. Unless you are personally bought in on the idea of owning an electric vehicle, it’s hard to imagine someone buying one without having at least a little experience with an EV. The best place to give people an experience with an EV is probably at a dealer. If your local dealer doesn’t believe you care about electric cars there’s no incentive to push them, which means you never learn about them, which means the adoption curve slows down.
Ford tried to fix this by essentially forcing dealers to spend a ton of money upgrading their stores to support electric cars. Dealers revolted and Ford dramatically walked back these requirements as it saw the EV adoption curve slowing down.
I personally think we’re going to see a second wave of EV adoption as automakers build more battery plants/EV plants in the United States and come up with second/third-generation products that are more affordable and right-sized for the consumer. My guess is this will happen around 2026/2027.
Until then, it’s hard to fault dealers in certain markets for not being enthused about selling a heavily discounted car that won’t move off their lot or investing a ton of effort into selling EVs to a community that’s less familiar with them. But that’s short-term thinking. Over the longer term, the dealers in tipping point markets (mid-size cities and suburbs) will likely benefit from building up an EV competency and consumer base.
2028 Is Going To Be A Super Weird Year For Car Production
The graphic below, from S&P Global Mobility, is the latest revision from the consulting firm and it shows what everyone already kind of knows: Hybrids of some sort are where it’s at for the interim period.
Just look at the weird 2028-2029 period where xEVs (anything that has an electric motor but isn’t a full EV) overtake both regular ICE vehicles and BEVs. Even as recently as 2022, the sense from car companies and much of the media (but not us — hybrids always seemed an obvious next step) was that BEVs would lead the transition away from pure ICE vehicles.
An important thing to note with this graphic is that it’s global and therefore includes China and Europe, where both BEVs and plug-in hybrids/range-extended EVs are becoming increasingly popular. Government intervention is strong in both places as well, with China massively subsidizing these types of vehicles and the EU making it harder and harder to sell pure-ICE cars and trucks.
As S&P’s Stephanie Brinley points out:
By 2036, we see global BEV production at just 59% of all light-vehicle production. However, we also see the potential for Germany with 97% of its light-vehicle production having shifted to BEVs by then.
In Mainland China, which will continue to be the highest-volume producer of BEVs, only about 64% of light-vehicle production is forecast to be BEVs by 2036. Mainland China’s drive toward new energy vehicles (NEV) as opposed to a laser-focus on BEVs leaves more room for solutions like plug-in hybrid (PHEV) and range-extended electric (REX) vehicle solutions; those are forecast to see, roughly, respective 17% and 7% of mainland China light-vehicle production in 2036.
The US is expected to be the third-highest BEV producer in 2036; we forecast that 75% of light-vehicle production could be BEVs by that year. Indonesia and Thailand are long-standing vehicle-producing countries, with opportunity for both the home market and for exports. Still, a BEV transition is expected to take a little longer there; in 2036, we forecast Thailand BEV production at about 50% of the country’s output. In Indonesia we see BEV output reaching 26% of production.
The next decade is going to be so much fun for analysts, dealers, marketers, and everyone else. This is the most important/uncertain period in automotive history since the end of WWII. Well, it’ll be fun for me at least.
Tesla Has To Recall 1.8 Million Cars For Hood Latching Issues
I feel like we need a better name for a recall that can be fixed with an over-the-air update. If you don’t have to stop driving the car or bring your vehicle to a dealer, it’s just not the same thing.
This is all to say that Tesla has to recall about 1.8 million cars because the hood latch might not work.
[T]esla said in March that it began to look into reports from drivers in China about what it called “unintended hood opening events.”
Subsequent company investigations revealed the presence of deformed hood latch switches, an issue that it said “could prevent the customer from being notified of an open hood state.”
Further studies led the company to issue a voluntary recall of affected vehicles “out of an abundance of caution.” No injuries or deaths have been reported as a result of the issue, Tesla said, and only 1% of vehicles are likely to suffer from the defect.
An “unintended hood opening event” is great. I need to remember that one.
If you have an affected vehicle you don’t have to do anything because an OTA update is fixing your car right now.
WTF Is Up With Fuyao Glass America?
Chinese supplier Fuyao Glass opened a plant in Ohio in 2016 with the hopes of expanding its footprint in the United States. For politicians it also seemed like a win, bringing back a factory from China after losing a lot of jobs to the country during the “China shock” period.
The plant was a success, I guess, but the documentary “American Factory” (trailer above) showed how difficult it was to merge the different work cultures of the two groups and the various travails of globalization.
Now, the facility is back in the news after being raided by Homeland Security, the FBI, the IRS, and local authorities. From the AP:
The investigation was focused on money laundering, potential human smuggling, labor exploitation and financial crimes, Homeland Security agent Jared Murphey said Friday.
Fuyao Glass America said it was told by authorities that a third-party employment company was at the center of the criminal investigation, according to a filing with the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
That’s not great.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
I sometimes think that The Sundays are the most slept-on alternative rock band of the 1990s. Please enjoy “Here’s Where The Story Ends” because here’s where TMD ends.
The Big Question
Does your local dealer seem to care about EVs or Hybrids?
Could we have past charts from S&P to see how accurate those were?
Last week I found a 1994 chart from NASA about future average global temperature, out of sheer curiosity I looked up the current data. It was 25% off of the correct value.
This chart only goes 12 years into the future but I bet it’s off by more than that. Predicting the future is hard.
I am surprised where I bought my latest Chevy EV the support and knowledge they had. They have huge inventory and their loaners for EV customers are Cadillac Lyriqs. Very interesting since its a small town type of city heavier on the republican side.
I’m in Oklahoma. So that’s a big “no” from everyone but the Tesla dealership. You can’t buy a new Hyundai/Kia PHEV in this state.
I’m in Pennsylvania. I asked a Toyota dealership if they had a bZ4X I could test-drive. They said they don’t get them and that the only way I could would be if I ordered one through them with the intent to buy.
Of course, this was just while I was stopping by for a different reason, because I am definitely not in the market for EVs (apartment dweller).
Electrified vehicles are interesting and many of them are cool, but they’re decades from being ICE replacements for a ton of people. People in places like the Bay would do well to drive any one of a number of stretches in the country–Dallas to Houston is one, 240 miles of largely undeveloped semi-rural land–between the megasprawls and appreciate the scale of the country. Paris is closer to Rome than the drive from Minneapolis west to any big city; Denver is nearly a thousand mile drive. (Sorry Omaha.) For the people in between, most of their daily trips could be made with an EV, but they’d still need a second ICE vehicle for their other trips. EVs, for tons of people, will remain a luxury.
FYI, regarding Houston-Dallas, there is a Bucee’s in Madisonville at about the halfway point. Bucee’s has a deal with Tesla and this particular location appears to have about 30 superchargers. EVs are surprisingly popular in the big metro regions of TX.
As Bucee’s expands across the US, and competitors like Love’s try to keep up, there will be more and more charging infrastructure along interstate routes. The it-doesn’t-exist-today-so-it-will-never-exist attitude is ridiculous.
Nothing surprising about EV popularity in the metro areas. I live in DFW, less than five minutes from a Supercharger at a Shell station; it is really cool! My next car will probably be an EV.
My point is I’m far from typical. There’s a lot of people not in those metros, and not on the Interstate just to get to the next one. For them, it’ll be a while. Policy and business plans assuming otherwise are silly.
As to Buc-ee’s “expand[ing] across the US,” from your post to God’s ears my friend.
I don’t think the attitude is “it doesn’t exist today so it never will”. Of course, they can build out the DCFC on interstate corridors. Nobody is questioning that can happen. The issue is that utilizing a DCFC charger means it’s going to cost pretty close to the same as filling up with gas, take at least 3 times longer to get to maybe 80% charge (~240 miles), and at the end of the experience you know you’re going to have to do it all again in 2 hours. It is still objectively worse than ICE for trips out of town. So you’re asking people to spend more money for a car with worse performance. You can’t mandate that people buy into a technology that’s objectively worse than what you have now and just expect to gaslight them into it. They might buy one once, but when they realize it’s not as flexible and convenient as their old car, they’re going to switch back while they still can.
Saskatchewan is spread out, mostly rural, and mildly conservative. I could easily travel the entire province without worrying about finding a charger.
These aren’t insurmountable problems. They’re entirely surmountable. Many places have surmounted them already.
Even narrowing things to just CCS1 and >100KW charge rate (and ignoring the suburbs – only counting places meaningfully far from downtown) , there’s 5 charging locations between Dallas and Houston and a 6th one under construction. A number of BEVs can make that 240 miles without a charging stop, but the ones that do need to stop have multiple options.
That stretch isn’t some rare exception, either. The longest stretch of any interstate I see is across a chunk of North Dakota at ~195 miles, which is generally doable but iffy in subzero temperatures. Second place is I-80 across Wyoming at 149 miles.
There’s still some non-interstate drives that look non-feasible. US-50 across Nevada can’t be done (well, maybe in an EQS or Lucid, but that’s it), and Moab to Flagstaff would be sketchy. Bend to Boise would also be a risky trip. So, for the dozens of people who make those drives BEVs are just not feasible, but a normal roadtrip is absolutely possible.
“Why Aren’t Dealers Pushing Electric Cars?”
Most likely because there is less in it for them and the up-front price is lower which can make for an easier sale to uninformed buyers who don’t look at TCO.
Plus, many people out there (dealer staff and owners included) like to stick with what they are familiar with.
A lot of people don’t like change.
“Does your local dealer seem to care about EVs or Hybrids?”
They seem to care about steering people away from EVs if they’re a dealer for an OEM that doesn’t have any decent BEVs to sell.
Are there really people who have no opinion on EVs to the point where they could be convinced to buy one by the Drakkar Noir and Marlboro Light scented sales guy they are forced to deal with to buy a car?
I’d imagine people come in and say “I want to test drive an EV” or they have zero interest in an EV. Maybe you could point out a hybrid/PHEV and get them to consider it, but not a full EV. Maybe if they were super cheap, people would just buy what was cheap. But they aren’t cheap.
I’m not “anti-EV”, but for my next car purchase it is just not a feasible option.
To me, that graph of car production isn’t worth the pixels it’s printed on. We’ve already seen targets for manufacturers walked back significantly.
This, as you said, is an unprecedented time and nothing will be consistent. So I predict this graph will age poorly, possibly ending up in that Nickelback photograph meme.
My local VW dealership went from being all in on the ID.4 to giving up on them. Once the ID.4 was readily available, they always had 10+ on the lot. Now it’s been zero for months. My guess is that they weren’t selling well. I keep checking their new inventory because I really want to get a close look at the ID.Buzz. It’s anyone’s guess when those start showing up at dealers.
Have they even announced pricing for the buzz yet? Or range on the US test cycle? I think it’s still going to be a while because I haven’t seen any of those details, but I may have missed it. I am also very intrigued by that one. If it’s priced well it will likely replace our Sienna in a couple years.
I haven’t seen much official but the guesses are between $50k and $60k. Range is guessed to be ~250 miles.
With the growth of my family, a minivan or a three row SUV will be our next car. We don’t need one right away though. When the children are older and make friends, it would be nice to transport 2-3 more people in that third row. I turned in my man card decades ago so I’m OK driving a minivan.
Yeah I have seen all the estimates but am waiting to see official numbers before deciding anything.
I already have 3 kids, and am on the second minivan. There will be at least one more (minivan, NOT kid) before we go back to a wagon or possibly even sedan. We usually cram into the front 2 rows and use the back for stuff, with camping and the like it’s necessary to have the obscene amount of space. Very intrigued, but I think based on the lack of info currently that it’ll be at least next year before it makes it to dealers.
The dealers near me, like most dealers, want to sell what they have. I had a Kia dealer try to push me into an EV6 GT they were clearly struggling to sell, a Chevy dealer push a gas Equinox or a Blazer EV with equal insistence, and a Lexus dealer really push a CPO hybrid. They almost all get a lot less interested if you tell them you are looking at ordering a specific configuration. Ford was a counterexample to that, as those dealers are more than happy to put in your order. I think it’s a difference in how the order process and allocations work.
But what they stock says a lot. One Kia dealer has stopped bringing EV6 in any volume, while the other keeps plenty on the lot. Being Idaho, they don’t sell super fast, but they keep cycling through inventory. The Chevy and Ford dealers sell pickups, along with a few crossovers. Not a lot of EVs on the lot, but they push them if they think you might take one off their hands.
The easiest way to get dealerships to push EVs is to tie total allocations to EV sales. If a manufacturer did that, they’d likely see a massive boost in EV sales. Which is kind of too bad, because that goes hand-in-hand with the reduction in car colors: a lot of buyers will simply take what the dealers offer.
Yay Sundays! “Slept-on ’90s alt-rock band” could arguably apply to about a thousand bands, so I can’t say “most,” but it’s definitely valid. Thanks for the reminder!
Yeah, that song was pretty friggin’ popular. I’m not saying they were The Cranberries or anything, but they were better received than, say, Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise.
You would know! Also now I’m totally looking up RBBS.
Which I assume was slightly better received than Tyrion Lannister’s Blackwater surprise.
Citation needed. Are they really just taking 2035 EV mandates at face value?
That said, these numbers seem a lot more plausible than the last time we saw a similar graph. At least they’re not banking on a highly improbable near-term spike in EV sales to make the numbers work. Nor are they suggesting that ICE will be dead and BEV will have completely taken over by 2036. I suspect they’re still underestimating the impact of hybridization, but we’ll see.
I have to wonder if the dealers actually think their customers don’t care about the environment, or it is that the environment isn’t as high of a priority as other aspects of life? I can see someone flippantly stating “I don’t care enough about the environment to pay the extra premium for a BEV”, but that doesn’t automatically mean they don’t care at all. I know many folks, especially in my area where the cost of living is verging on ridiculous, care about the environment as much as they can, but other things like paying for housing and simply affording ANY car to get to and from work take priority.
Perhaps it was a RAM dealership with a customer base of coal rollers.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Can’t worry about big picture items if you don’t know how you are eating next week.
“I have to wonder if the dealers actually think their customers don’t care about the environment, “
I think dealers don’t care about whether the customers care. The dealers just want to move product and make money.
It’s also an availability thing. We have multiple friends here in DC that are early 30s professionals who specifically wanted hybrids but couldn’t get them because they needed a car urgently. The same is true of my in laws. My mother in law wanted a CRV hybrid but she needed a new car quickly after her order for a Forrester fell through and she was going to have to wait 6-12 months for one…and they had multiple ICE ones on the lot so she just took the nicest one they had.
I live in a dark blue area so my sample is definitely not representative of what things are like everywhere, but literally everyone I know who’s bought a car in the last 2ish years wanted a hybrid at minimum. Two went with full BEVs because they were actually available and cheap to lease. The rest just settled for regular ICE.
The only person I know who managed to get their hands on a hybrid is my dad. He’s an architect and has extremely firm and specific opinions on design, interior layout, etc. We searched for weeks to try to find the specific BMW X5 he wanted but it didn’t exist. Rather than make him settle for something that wasn’t what he wanted and have to listen to him complain for the next 5+ years I just told him to order one.
When we were filling out the order form he had a moment of limousine liberal panic and said “isn’t everyone buying EVs now? Isn’t that what I should do?” so I talked him into the PHEV. It’s cool as hell and I really like it. He does too, although he’s absolutely not using it to its fullest potential because he will literally only charge it at home. It’s averaged 40 MPG and I’d imagine that someone who’s more consistent with plugging it in could eke out 50-60 no problem.
I think that is certainly part of it, as hybrids, especially plug-ins, are nearly impossible to find in my area though demand is high (I live in a purple area). Again, that is a cost thing, both in time and money, as it either means long waitlists or stupidly high markups. Since the bulk of my area is blue-collar, most don’t have the luxury of multiple vehicles or waiting 6-8 months for their vehicle (assuming they can even afford to buy new, which most cannot).
Time to get rid of stealerships. Cars are in part being designed to appease them over consumers so that the stealerships are enticed buy them from the manufacturer. It’s obvious why stealerships hate EVs, because there isn’t much of anything they can count on to be recurring revenue streams, other than to sell more cars. And modern EVs ARE built to be mostly unrepairable landfill fodder, wasting the resources/energy that go into building them as well as negating their environmental benefits, but it is testament to their potential for longevity that EVs from Tesla are getting 300,000+ miles out of a battery pack and the drive systems can last millions of miles with zero servicing.
I like that Tesla cut stealerships out completely. Now, if only they’d make the things easily repaired using basic tools with accessible/serviceable battery packs, and get rid of all the touch screen/spyware nonsense, and I will start to take their products seriously as an option.
With current tech, we should be building cars to last a human lifetime with minimal repairs along the way that all use plug and play components that can be replaced with basic tools by local indie mechanics. EVs open that possibility up, but it is currently going unrealized due to deliberate design decisions intended to nickel and dime vehicle owners.
If that’s what you want I know where you can get a post war Plymouth cheap.
Already working on a Triumph GT6 EV conversion, swapping out as many unreliable British components as possible in favor of higher-quality components from the USA and Japan.
It will eventually get a modern motor/controller swapped into it. Not sure if I will change out the CALB LiFPO4 battery though in favor of something more dense, because it is rock-solid reliable and doesn’t even need a BMS due being a single series string of high AH cells of a chemistry that isn’t very volatile. All individual 3.2V 100AH batteries read within 0.001V of each other, about 10 years after installation.
With an EV conversion I don’t imagine there will be many British parts left at all aside from the glass, body and interior.
I wish there was a maverick sized version of the lightning, it’s probably a he closest thing to an easily maintained EV from a reputable manufacturer, though the various hacker communities have done great things to keep the olde leafs and volts modable
Remember, the first rule of sales is: ‘Sell them what you have’ not ‘Sell them what they want’.
The first rule is superceeded by the zeroth rule:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z0UdKbGJs0o
The only experience my family has had within the last few years has been service visits, so no contact with the sales staff. However, I will note, that when my mother was driven home, then picked up later to retrieve her car, the dealer (Volvo) sent an EV on both trips and she said the driver talked about the car (C40 Recharge) the whole time. It got her attention.
Having BEV and HEV together seems misleading. I don’t think Toyota, Hyundai, Kia, Ford, whoever dealers care that much about if a car is a hybrid or not on the models that offer both ICE vs. HEV. It’s simply a unit, and they generally have more of the regular ICE versions to sell based on the model mix they receive.
OTOH Honda dedicated roughly half the product mix of the Accord and CR-V to hybrids, which Toyota is taking a step further with the hybrid-only Camry. A buyer may not be seeking it out, but the hybrid isn’t so hard to sell, if the bottom line numbers still work for the customer.
BEVs from the legacy brands face different issues – they may not be reviewed well (bZ4x for example), or too expensive and/or too confusing to figure out the pricing with tax credits, or they don’t want to lease which is where they make more sense. It’s not like a BEV is a given brand’s volume sales leader either. The dealer has a sales number to hit, and there’s a lot more hand raisers for a Hyundai Tucson than the Ioniqs.
I understand the hesitation of dealers to push EVs heavily on an uninformed consumer. There’s so many things different about it that take getting used to, home/public charging, weird/different UX and Driving experiences, coupled with a higher cost of entry and steep depreciation.
I think the reality is traditional cars salesmen don’t know HOW to sell an EV to a consumer that just wants to buy *something* but is uninformed. The odds a customer is going to be happy with the dealer in 2.5 years time when they want to trade in for the next shiny object, but see an insultingly low trade-in offer, and realize they ate an extra 10k in depreciation over their previous ICE car, and you’ve got a scene on the sales floor, and a dealer that will want to avoid EVs.
Not to mention maintaining an EV inventory is more expensive, and on site infrastructure investment is a lot to ask for independent, small dealers. Couple all that with the higher average time on dealer lots, and senseless politicization of EVs in general, and I understand why dealers don’t want to deal with EVs as often.
Don’t forget about the folks who believe that the whole EV thing is just a government plot to replace our beloved ICEs because of non-existent “climate change”: And maybe to turn us into docile robots completely under their control. Or something like that, my friend who believes this stuff is not real clear on exactly what the government is “really” trying to do.
When I’ve encountered this thought process it’s usually about short-range EVs limiting freedom to travel.
It’s possible to think EV mandates are a bad idea without becoming conspiratorial. I don’t think the politicians, lobbyists, NGOs, think tanks etc who write these mandates are malevolent, I simply think they don’t know how the other half lives or why giving up gas would be so tough for those who tow, road trip, or don’t have chargers on every street corner.
Get outta here with your reasonable and rational takes!
I 100% agree, the people who write EV mandates generally are totally uninformed about how roughly half of their constituents live and why mandatory EVs are incompatible with that life. Similar story to statewide transit taxes in the PNW- politicians are always “surprised and taken aback” at how much resistance they get from the rural parts of the states. The fact that they are proposing substantial tax increases that will do nothing for the rural areas (few of the proposed transit lines run there, and if they do the service is so intermittent as to be worthless) has somehow escaped their notice.
To be 100% clear, this type of problem goes both ways.
I can’t tell you how many rural people literally expect to have to lethally defend themselves if they go into downtown Chicago in broad daylight.
There are two Americas that don’t speak each others’ language anymore. It’s a problem.
Definitely. I think it’s always been true though, and the solution is simple- keep political power local. As political power centralizes, it always creates geographical friction, because what’s a good idea for Chicago isn’t going to be the same thing as a good idea for West Tinyville, and that is perfectly okay. If a city wants to say only EVs can be sold there, or even more extreme, only EVs can be driven there, then frankly I’m perfectly fine with that. In fact, I think it should happen, and car-free cities are probably the future. But when politicos who live in *Big City* and really only give a damn about the money and voters in *Big City* use that political clout to pass laws that effect a whole bunch of people not in *Big City*, then we have a problem.
I ran into this recently in northern NY. Our server was asking us all sorts of questions about crime in the midsized city in western NY I live near. There are a few areas but everywhere else is fine. She didn’t believe us at first.
The lack of EV knowledge is similar. When out camping, there were a good number of people who had no idea that some EV’s could tow.
Absolutely. There are rational reasons to be against such mandates and irrational reasons. Personally, I’m against the whole “sell only EV’s after 20xx, just because you can’t make people buy what they don’t want to buy. The folks who believe it’s some sort of conspiracy to turn us into robots pretty much believe that this is the reason government does anything.
“what the government is “really” trying to do.”
Turn all the men effeminately gay and women into genderfluid worker drones as a means of population control obviously.
Also use aborted fetuses and blood drawn from child trafficking victims to create potions that bestow devil magic.
Stem cell research but basically the same idea.
“The number one reason is that these dealers think their customers don’t care about the environment.”
I have to wonder what the adoption would be like if EVs were considered just another option of transport instead of a personal posture.
I’m not sure how the majority isn’t the category of “They will gladly sell them if a customer indicates interest” for that survey. Admittedly I’m neither a salesman or work for a dealer but it would seem to me you’d get the best results selling whatever product the customer was interested in.
Yeah, I was confused by the “will only sell them if the customer has a strong preference.” Like if someone walks into a Hyundai dealer and says they’re interested in an Ioniq 5 the response will be, “Now, unless you really, I MEAN REALLY, want that Ioniq 5, I’m going to have to insist you come look at this Santa Cruz.”
Change takes time. Major change will take a generation. This is all just human nature. No one should be faulted.
G-Men coming down on Fuyao has nothing to do specifically with labour exploitation or financial crimes, it’s that the proceeds of these, what basically amount to “standard business practices” these days are lining the pockets of a Chinese billionaire, instead of a proper, homegrown American billionaire who knows where to apply ‘grease’ to the political system
Are you saying the government is lying?
The US is expected to be the third-highest BEV producer in 2036; we forecast that 75% of light-vehicle production could be BEVs by that year.
I could be a billionaire in 2036 too, but I wouldn’t bet much on either of these predictions coming to pass.
I will be fatter and have less hair. Book it.
I’d put about as much stock in that 2036 prediction coming true as even half of the “All EVs by 2030” pledges coming true, which is to say, marginally above 0%
I would sooner believe Tesla will be selling a car with a gas engine by 2030 than any legacy automaker being EV only by then.
The only way I see a single legacy manufacturer becoming EV only is if it’s a single brand of a larger conglomerate, such as a Cadillac within GM sort of deal, and even that is extremely far fetched. I can see one brand being used as the EV test bed where a large enough company can absorb the loss for a half decade and up to win shareholder and regulatory favor, but the odds a Honda or Toyota go EV only by 2030, or even 2035 is zero.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/43394/worlds-first-v8-swapped-tesla-model-s-is-officially-on-the-road
We’re only talking 12 years here. 3 presidential terms!
Adding up the predictions for the US, China, Germany etc, do we even have access to enough rare earth metals and other materials to make that happen in any semblance of this time frame?
Maybe if we invaded all of central Africa I guess.
Cars being engineered today will still be on sale in 2036! It’s just not that far away in an automotive development sense.
Even if we had the materials (I’m skeptical like you), consumer demand just isn’t going to be there in that short a time unless there’s an absolute paradigm shift in range or recharge time (plus probably cost).
As Matt would say, it’s another chicken and egg scenario.
We need some big-ish leap in tech to make these more viable day-to-day. We also need more and better infrastructure to handle the transition.
It’s good that auto manufacturers are pushing the tech forward but I wonder how much they’re trying new things really. New things cost a lot of R&D dollars. There is a need to figure it out before your competitor but it seems that real advancement and infrastructure is waiting for demand to be there first while people like me aren’t jumping in without clear signs those are coming, if not already here.
“Maybe if we invaded all of central Africa I guess.”
Do..do they need freedom and democracy? Because we are certainly eager to bring it!!
Fire up the B52s and C130s boys, we’re got a delivery!
Ugh, it’s one area of the world we probably couldn’t make worse I guess.
Probably…
Well it’s not TOO radioactive…yet.
I’m not sure why you WOULD prioritize EV. I also don’t see the correlation between that study and caring about a dealers caring about a product. They will sell what will sell and prioritize what is most profitable. I don’t think they should care about “pushing” EV.
I can’t imagine what it’s like to be “sold” a car by a salesperson. What an insane way to live.
This is just how many people operate. Their research consists of going to the store and getting talked into a product. My FIL wanted to buy a new TV, he asked me what he should get because I’m a techy, so I gave him options from Sony, LG and Samsung. He ended up just going to Best Buy and letting them sell him the most expensive TV there.
With an extended warranty!
TBH as far as extended warranties go Geeksquad protection is top-notch. They even cover burn-in on OLED’s, which is a rare occurrence these days, but still.
Oof. Why wouldn’t you tell him to get a Hisense? The name is essentially meaningless as basically everyone uses LG OLEDs (although Hisense’s ULED is propitiatory and is class-leading in brightness and power consumption), and the value is off the charts.
Also, never buy a Sony. It’s just a rebranded LG or Samsung (depending on the model) at almost double the price.