Ford and VW Agree to Share Costs of Self-Driving and Electric Cars

Re:Ford and VW Agree to Share Costs of Self-Driving and Elec... by marvin on Friday July 12, 2019 @12:51PM (#20422145)

Teslas are selling like hotcakes. If the problem is that customers of the established manufacturers choose combustion over electric, it must be a deeper structural issue. Such as e.g. dealerships downselling EV models due to lower maintenance requirements, and hence future profits. Or some other reason, e.g. (just spitballing here) that most of their EV vehicles suck. Maybe because of an unwillingness to cannibalize their ICE lineup, inability to build a good enough EV at a profit and at scale, or something else.

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Re:Ford and VW Agree to Share Costs of Self-Driving and Elec... by dsfyu404ed on Friday July 12, 2019 @02:51PM (#20423317)

>Teslas are selling like hotcakes.

Because the Tesla sedans combine the driving experience and technological features of a nice German car with the green points of a Prius so white collar professionals buy them in droves (it's the best of both worlds so of course they do).

Basically all the other EVs are competing with economy cars and crossover mom mobiles where the competition is much stiffer and the buyers more frugal. Nobody buying a Tesla is saying "gee, I could buy an Accord and put all that money toward gas" whereas basically every Bolt and Leaf buyer is making that comparison to the Sonic and the Versa.

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Re:Ford and VW Agree to Share Costs of Self-Driving and Elec... by codeulike on Friday July 12, 2019 @05:53PM (#20424864)

So then the question is, why are all the other EVs competing with economy cars?

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Re:Ford and VW Agree to Share Costs of Self-Driving and Elec... by clouddrover on Saturday July 13, 2019 @12:22AM (#20426487)

They're not. The Audio e-Tron isn't, the Porsche Taycan isn't, the Volkswagen ID.3 isn't. The Porsche Macan won't be and the Audio e-Tron GT won't be.

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Re:Ford and VW Agree to Share Costs of Self-Driving and Elec... by clouddrover on Saturday July 13, 2019 @12:12AM (#20426452)

> Teslas are selling like hotcakes.

Tesla is hoping to sell 400,000 this year: https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/07/10/tesla-is-about-to-...

Toyota will sell over 10 million: https://www.jato.com/global-car-market-remains-stable-during...

> Or some other reason

ICE cars are a lot cheaper than EVs.

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Re:Ford and VW Agree to Share Costs of Self-Driving and Elec... by bluGill on Friday July 12, 2019 @03:07PM (#20423460)

Tesla selling well doesn't negate his point at all. Sure some people are buying EVs, but most are buying ICE. Part of it is lack of supply, but that doesn't mean increases in supply would mean more sales. It is possible the market is saturated with just the EVs for sale now.

You can refute that claim in many ways, but none of them refer to current sales.

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