Seems to me that VW and BMW are not really pushing for EVs as much as they should – at least, I don't know anyone who is buying them instead of a VW or BMW with an internal combustion engine. Then again, I live in Finland, where nobody has an EV anyway.
Once EV have reached a certain saturation amongst new car buyers, the second hand market might take some very interesting turns when that generation of cars is about to change ownership from original buyers with a high rate of home charging availability to second hand buyers with a low rate. If you are one of the comparatively rare second hand buyers with available home charging, you might see a very favorable market.
There's a lot of social conventions and what not to work out there, but I doubt any of it would be insurmountable. For overnight charging, a cord that you activate with your phone, with the activation locked to one vehicle, solves many of them.
Basically the cars are paid for by the minute and come with free street parking. You can unlock/lock through the app or a smartcard. This feels like BMW is trying to both figure out EVs and a possible post car ownership society.
Tesla will be similarly doomed when most people don't own their own cars (Tesla's most valuable asset is its brand and that means nothing when you aren't buying the car!).
2. Teslas driving around right now are doing what they call fleet learning for self-driving purposes.
3. Tesla is absolutely getting ready for post ownership era of motorization, in fact the autopilot effort and announcements regarding for-profit car sharing only being available through Tesla network directly confirm that.
This is why I chuckle when everyone says "Look how few Tesla vehicles are produced!". They don't have to replace every vehicle purchased, just the vehicle miles driven. Cars sit idle 90-95% of the time, which means if you increase utilization with the Tesla Network, they need only 20-30% of total worldwide manufacturing capacity to replace all cars.
Total cars sold in the US this year? Just shy of 18 million. How many does Tesla need to build to replace that capacity if they're self driving? 4-6 million cars/year to start, decreasing rapidly depending on rideshare uptake. Easily doable with their automated manufacturing efforts.
Gonna be a bitch when Tesla manufacturing curve hits vehicle miles demand, and existing automaker sales plummet.
I expect local governments to enact per mile taxes, replacing gas taxes, which at some point makes this unaffordable to constantly have your vehicle on the move for you (but still affordable if its part of a rideshare fleet generating revenue).
So in a hypothetical wherein Robotaxis have acheived full penetration, maybe we'll need 1/3 of the vehicles we use today.
There would likely be a lot less steel in those vehicles as well, since they'd largely be optimized for single commuters, and would need less of the redundancies built into current cars for safety.
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000
https://i.imgur.com/5YFhBpx.png
As well as the labor force declining in general:
http://www.factcheck.org/2015/03/declining-labor-participati...
"Still, Priebus’ comment, tying the entirety of the drop in the labor force participation rate to “the Obama economy,” ignores some of the demographic and structural forces that have been driving the participation rate down for more than a decade, and that are expected to continue to drive the rate down for decades to come."
Creative bookkeeping by selling to their own rental subsidies is nothing new in the car industry. The BMW carsharing fleets improve on that by not only creating favorable numbers, but also making them take part in a new market that might well be a significant part in future of car usage.
that being said, Volkswagen certainly is pushing electric vehicles now, all internal talk, newsletters are about the MEB (modular electric "toolbox", same as the current MQB for our conventional vehicles). The next investment meeting for the following 5 years is this november, a lot of money will certainly go for investments in electric vehicles.
Because very few people buy $75,000 cars, period. I don't know a single person either, and I'm in Canada. I know people here act like Tesla has already built and sold all these $35,000 Model 3s, but the truth is nobody has built an EV for the mainstream yet. Because it's hard.
In the US with our low gas taxes, neither the Bolt nor Model 3 make a great deal of financial sense, even after the swell $7500 tax credit.
Meanwhile US auto sales are 1 million+ per month. The larger automakers are all working on electric platforms, they aren't ignoring the market that is there, or more importantly, the market that will exist as costs come down. But the point is that they don't really have much to gain from getting way out in front of the battery costs.
Cost of ownership wise nothing will be cheaper. Check your facts.
I also wonder about the math. Edmunds puts a Civic at about $5000 a year (for 15,000 miles):
http://www.edmunds.com/honda/civic/2016/cost-to-own/
To save $2000 a year over that, a Model 3 has to go ~10 years with minimal costs beyond electricity.
So far, I haven't seen anything from VW or BMW that meets the performance, range, and cool factors anything like the Tesla does. I will not buy a hybrid, it seems like the worst of both worlds to me.
All three companies have several brands (VW has Porsche, Audi, Skoda etc.) and each of their brands have several models. They are also produced in several factories in different countries.
4-5-6 years ago, when Tesla demonstrated to the world that an EV can have longish range and look attractive, the traditional car companies could have allocated resources and production lines to develop and produce competitive EVs. They would have been in a much better place to compete than tiny Tesla 5 years ago. But now, they are late in the game.
It's more a symptom of failed management than some function of a business law.
Everybody else pays the market price, which explains either vehicles at higher cost (BMW i8) than Tesla or vehicles with severely reduced range (VW eGolf).
It's not difficult for them to build EV. But it is nearly impossible for them to do so earning money, when they are essentially repackaging third party batteries into shells consisting of all the other stuff they are buying from their existing suppliers.
They buy on design, price, prestige, history and possibly other 'soft' aspects.
We're already starting to see BYD aiming to have 34GWH battery manufacturing capacity in 2020, same as Tesla.
I am no expert at history, however, during the 1930's Henry Ford did something similar to introduce the Flathead V8. Factories were closed, hundreds of thousands made unemployed, then, in secret, Ford worked on the V8 and the factory to make the new cars. When he was ready the gates opened and new hires were made.
They're still treating EVs as another "market segment" and that's a problem - for them.
Even though you don't like it, EVs are still a market segment. There are still lots of use cases where EVs don't make sense.
But those are huge companies. They cannot say "let's only sell EVs". They can't even say "let's downplay gas-driven cars and emphasize EVs".
What do you want them to do? Fire 95% of employees and sell 1% of the cars they are selling today?
Of course Tesla looks forward-looking. They are all-EV, they are fighting for profitability, they don't have existing business to protect.
And protect you must your existing business. "Pivoting" is one of the favourite words in VC and startup circles, but it's also fairy-land, not a plausible economic decision in this situation.