On 28 Dec 2020 at 4:01, brucedp5 via EV wrote: > Electric Car Turmoil Will Make Brexit A Comparative Breeze For Auto Makers
Bog-standard oily handwringing. "Unless the price of electric cars falls drastically, Europeans on average salaries are unlikely to be able to afford new cars ..." Yeah, about that price differential: an electric drivetrain is fundamentally vastly simpler, and potentially cheaper to produce at full scale, than a thermal one. "The market is now moving much faster than the industry wanted, faster than regulators and politicians anticipated." The automakers are all for "free trade" when it supports what they're already doing, but when the market requires them to actually look forward, suddenly they want regulation. "We want free trade, just not THAT free trade." Screw 'em. If EU and China stick to their goals and don't allow the big automakers' wailing and gnashing of teeth to sway them, in the long run (10-20 years), EV development costs will be getting closer to amortization. Economies of scale will improve further. I think that eventually EVs will become more profitable and more affordable than ICEVs have been. China and most EU nations see EVs as the way forward. The EU already has considerable momentum in that direction. It may slow a little with the 2022 French election, if Le Pen defeats Macron, but I think that it would take more than that to really slow it significantly. And China is likely to pull hard for EVs. By 2028 China will surpass the US as the world's largest economy. Much as I abhor China's regressive dictatorship and dystopian surveillance society, their blunderbuss economy and authoritarian approach to EVs may be the toggles that EVs have needed for half a century. The article's author thinks that UK and EU automakers will, or should, shift toward producing EVs at lower volumes and higher prices. That's one possible outcome. They *could* develop economies of scale for affordable EVs, but I think it's more likely that they'll be lazy and just switch production of their lower cost EVs to China and possibly India. Tesla is already shipping 3s to the EU from China. Renault's Chinese made Dacia Spring will be the EU's cheapest EV when it goes on sale in a few months. They haven't announced prices but I've seen estimates as low as 11- 12k euros after incentives. I think they'll sell a lot of them. The winners 20 years from now will be the automakers that acted and invested, not the ones that lobbied and whined. As for the UK, they've regrettably chosen to be isolated little-league players. (But hey, their Scrooge McDucks get to keep their tax evasion schemes going.) They have no voice in the EU's future direction, transportation or otherwise. Their next choice is whether they follow the EU and China into an advancing electric transportation future, or stick with the oily past along with the US and other declining nations. David Roden, EVDL moderator & general lackey To reach me, don't reply to this message; I won't get it. Use my offlist address here : http://evdl.org/help/index.html#supt = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Nature's way is to take away from those who have too much, and give to those to have too little. Man's way is to take away from those who have too little, to give more to those who already have too much. -- Lao Tsu (around 500BCE) = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub ARCHIVE: http://www.evdl.org/archive/index.html INFO: http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
