03 November 2022

Electric Car Paradigm Shift Redux

If anyone is unclear on the fact that the electric vehicle paradigm shift is ALREADY well underway and that legacy automakers, especially Nissan, Toyota and the Stellantis (Fiat/Peugeot/Chrysler) group, which have failed to prepare to make all EVs very soon are going to lose out hugely or even go out of business, consider these facts. 

1.  Only BYD (China) and Tesla are currently able to make EVs at a profit. But battery costs are decreasing according to something akin to Moore's law, so EVs will be the only profitable products for automakers in the near future. Everyone knows this, except for those auto executives suffering from paradigm blindness, who seem to be in charge at Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Stellantis, and a few other companies (although not so much Ford and GM, anymore, to their credit). 
2.  Only EVs are able to backlog hundreds of thousands of orders for cars before they even go on sale. Many ICE cars' sales are anemic at best. 
3.  Tesla can make $10-15,000 on a car, where Toyota or VW, when you factor in warranty and recall costs, barely break even. 
4.  Nissan has posted a loss 2 years running and Toyota, hanging on to the title as the world's biggest automaker by the slenderest of threads, just posted a 2022 3Q LOSS in North America. In both cases, it is largely because they are continuing to produce cars no one wants to buy. 

Companies that have not already prepared to manufacture mostly or entirely EVs within 5 years are going to lose market share massively, and some of them will not survive. It's like the Wild West, like the early 1920s, a total paradigm shift. In 2030 the largest automaker in the world will likely be either BYD or Tesla, companies that did not even exist 20 years ago. 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Gyromantic Informicon. Comments are not moderated. If you encounter a problem, please go to home page and follow directions to send me an e-mail.