Quoted from DCFAN:I am more curious to see what the big four of Ford, GM, Toyota, and Honda end up doing in the EV marketplace in the next 5 to 10 years. I don't believe european brands will ever dominate the US market
In the 70s nobody ever thought Japanese brands would dominate the US market, either.
The strengths of the big four: dealer network, traditional advertising, brand loyalty, global supply chain of third parties manufacturing parts. The first is a detriment, the second adds cost that their primary competitor doesn’t have. Brand loyalty didn’t help Nokia or Blackberry defeat Apple. Perhaps their suppliers will help them.
The real issue is that none of the big four have meaningful experience in batteries, software (particularly user interface), direct distribution or charging networks - four cornerstones of EV success.
I don’t see how they’ll make batteries cheaper than Tesla, so their cars will either cost more or have lesser range - as we’ve seen.
They won’t suddenly get great at doing software. Awesome software developers and user interface designers do not want to have Ford, GM, Toyota or Honda on their resumes.
Dealers don’t want to sell EVs because they don’t generate anywhere near the service revenue as ICE cars.
Because of this I think Ford and GM will play the role of Nokia and Blackberry in the Apple iPhone disruption. In two years Ford plans to release /one/ ‘ground-up’ EV. They have released no meaningful details, so I’m guessing that it will actually be a 2021 model that starts trickling out Q4 2020 at best.
Toyota won’t be competing in the USA in EV’s for years after that. They’re going after China and India first.
Honda brought a cool concept car that got some buzz and they claim they’ll sell it next year in Europe, but since they don’t have any stats at all on it, it’ll probably be 2020/21. I hope it isn’t the usual disappointing watered-down production car that barely resembles the concept.
Quoted from DCFAN:With Tesla discontinuing the free charging I would guess all manufacturers will use the same pay chargers at service stations/areas as the infastructure gets built up.
This infrastructure you’re talking about is not shaping up very well. You know the vaunted 2 billion dollars that VW was forced to cough up to build a massive super fast charging network? Look at the fine print - the states get to decide what to do with the money, and a lot of it is being used to buy government EVs and install very, very slow chargers.*
Still, there are others. I think Chargepoint raised $200 million recently to build out a fast charger network. The problem is that there is insufficient demand for a non-Tesla fast charger network because almost no EVs are being sold outside of Tesla and there likely won’t be for years. So Chargepoint builds out a big network that nobody needs for years, runs out of money and dies. This has already happened with the Blink network.
Long term gas stations may end up taking up the slack though I don’t know where they get the money. It costs at least $150k to install a fast charger per station and service stations are barely making it as it is; they’re not owned by the oil companies, you know.
*There’s also a dirty secret with those non-Tesla “fast chargers.” The overwhelming vast majority of them are 24kw, not 150kw. Audi, Mercedes and Jag are touting charging times based on a network of 150kw chargers that there is no guarantee will be built.
Allyn, WA
Vancouver, BC
