Comment by Danox
1 day ago
One state makes up over a third of all EV sold in the country EV’s have a way to go in the United States. Hybrids seem to be doing a lot better in recent times.
California accounts for roughly 35% of all U.S. EV sales, though some estimates put its share near 40%.
That's certainly a way to view the data, but it's a way that ignores the trajectory of the technology and sets up The Big Three for complete failure.
The Big Three have not figured out how to make compelling EVs, without a doubt, but it's not the technology that's the problem, it's the leadership's product choices and failure of implementation.
Meaning that the entire industry will be pushed farther and farther behind in the race, only to be completely disrupted.
This will happen far slower than the transition from Palm to iOS-style phones, because the lifetime of cars is far longer than phones and are far larger investments, but the trend is inevitable. EVs are superior on so many different fronts that there's ~0 chance that gas and diesel engines persist except for a tiny fraction of future market share.
US manufacturers are trying to delay the transition as long as possible, which only ensures their own doom.
It's not just US manufacturers. Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mazda, etc. are also falling behind on the technology, expertise, and platform development.
Koreans look competitive. It's interesting that the later the entrant to the market, the faster they are to adapt.
Vinyl is still doing great, better than CDs actually. Technical supremacy is useless, if the customer base wants nostalgia
Great against CDs because those were obsoleted by streaming. Streaming takes over 80% of the revenue and probably far more of the volume.
Your comment would be like if 85% of the market was EVs and you said that cars with manual transmission are still doing great, better than autos.
It's not just the Big Three, it's a boat anchor of the Big Three + Tier 1/2/3 suppliers. Tesla probably most vertically integrated of any, therefor most likely able to survive a major pivot.
Well, there's that one US manufacturer that bucks the trend, so it's not _all_ of them.
California is the world’s fourth largest economy, so this tracks. Whether or not flyover country gets EVs is immaterial to the overall US situation. They can pay forward curve petrol prices if they so choose (“freedom!”), or find a suitable EV if that is a more suitable choice for their needs, unless federal policy returns to assist with purchasing. I am hopeful, concerning recent regime change, that federal EV incentives come back to enable folks to buy affordable EVs (because we should be optimizing for affordable zero emission mobility for all, imho), but only time will tell.
Wyoming‘s population of 600k people is less than one percent of total US population, for example. Californians buy about half that number of EVs per year (~300k-400k).
Flyover country has several times the population of California. It’s vital to the success of American manufacturers that their products sell well there too.
Nah. You go where the purchasing power is, and that is not poor rural America that is evaporating [1]. K Shaped economy. That’s related, but distinct from the fact that American auto makers are already dead. They collectively wrote off $50B in EV investment to turn away from EVs, and GM just created a $20B multi year stock buyback plan while not investing more in electrification. That is an active choice to allocate that capital to profits instead of investment to build EVs.
The future is affordable, well built Chinese EVs. They already have the capacity to build 50M EVs per year, more than half of global total light vehicle demand. They are currently exporting ~12M/year, and constrained only by there not being enough marine car carriers available to ship more. They are building more car carriers to ramp exports to the world. How long would it take the US to learn how to build 10-20M EVs per year? A decade, probably more, on current trajectories, during which Chinese automakers will continue to ramp. “Build the machine that builds the machine.”
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48586250
(the US sold out its future in this context for globalization and shareholder returns, unfortunately)
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>because we should be optimizing for affordable zero emission mobility for all, imho
Cool, build rail and solar.
That’s just what we need: more subsidies to Elon Musk via federal EV tax credits.
Limit subsidies to vehicles that are no more expensive than $25k after subsidies. Make them build cars like BYD, with sub 4% margins. No subsidies for Tesla, they had their chance. He can find a new grift. It’s time to focus on people who actually build, not those who use theatrics to inflate silly capital market numbers for power and status.
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