Quote:
Originally Posted by swagon
Current success of PHEVs & BEVs is mostly driven by huge government incentives in the form of lower taxes and/or straight up 'cash on the hood.' And Western governments are pushing their local legacy car manufacturers into BEV production because of their sustainable politics. Further, they don't want China to keep producing the vast majority of EV components (i.e., batteries), but shhh. And, lastly, the biggest secret of all is that in the long-term, BEVs are just going to be cheaper to produce than ICE cars, so there are huge financial savings to be had under the premise that they're all doing it to be more sustainable and eco-friendly. 
There's a huge inequality in EV take rate across the globe and across the automotive industry. So far, they (passenger EVs) are just toys for the very wealthy part of the population.
People and companies will want BEVs a lot more once they see that the overall ownership costs are equal to or better than of their ICE counterpart. Cars are just a form of transportation for most; they couldn't care less that their new EV Ford Fiesta or Transit van does 0-60 three seconds faster or whatever. |
Ding ding ding - winner winner chicken dinner.
In regards to the statement on savings, it will be a while before companies are able to operate in the black on these first generations of BEVs. All the major OEMs are making huge (risky) investments in order to fast track everything to production NOW. It has to pay off (i.e people will be have to buy the new BEVs: hence the afore mentioned government regulation that is just around the corner) or many companies simply will not recover.