Global Sales of Electric Cars Accelerate Fast In 2020 Despite Pandemic (theguardian.com) 97
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Global sales of electric cars accelerated fast in 2020, rising by 43% to more than 3 million, despite overall car sales slumping by a fifth during the coronavirus pandemic. Tesla was the brand selling the most electric cars, delivering almost 500,000, followed by Volkswagen. Sales of electric cars more than doubled in Europe, pushing the region past China as the world's biggest market for them, according to data published on Tuesday by EV-volumes.com, a Sweden-based consultancy.
Sales of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) made up 4.2% of the global car market, up from 2.5% in 2019. The rising sales are being driven by government policies to reduce carbon emissions, but a key factor is that electric cars are simply a better technology, said Viktor Irle, sales and marketing analyst at EV-volumes.com. Sales of electric cars did fall below 2019's levels from March to June, at the height of the Covid-19 lockdowns, but recovered strongly after that and by December were at double the level in December 2019.
There are about 150 new BEV and PHEV models expected on the market in 2021. This indicates that 2021 will see continued growth, said Irle, who estimates sales of about 4.6m electric cars by the end of the year. The EV-volumes.com data showed the five highest national sales were in China (1.3m), Germany (0.4m), the US (0.3m), France and the UK (both 0.2m). However, growth in the US was only 4% in 2020, due to few new models being available.
Sales of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) made up 4.2% of the global car market, up from 2.5% in 2019. The rising sales are being driven by government policies to reduce carbon emissions, but a key factor is that electric cars are simply a better technology, said Viktor Irle, sales and marketing analyst at EV-volumes.com. Sales of electric cars did fall below 2019's levels from March to June, at the height of the Covid-19 lockdowns, but recovered strongly after that and by December were at double the level in December 2019.
There are about 150 new BEV and PHEV models expected on the market in 2021. This indicates that 2021 will see continued growth, said Irle, who estimates sales of about 4.6m electric cars by the end of the year. The EV-volumes.com data showed the five highest national sales were in China (1.3m), Germany (0.4m), the US (0.3m), France and the UK (both 0.2m). However, growth in the US was only 4% in 2020, due to few new models being available.
"global Sales of Electric Cars Accelerate Fast" (Score:2)
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You mean going 'fast' is the goal of accelerating?
Re: "global Sales of Electric Cars Accelerate Fast (Score:2)
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Actually, the goal of acceleration is faster, and to be fair, fast is merely a relative term. A fast human is a slow af compared to a cheetah... [google.com], or even a fracking bear [southcoasttoday.com].
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Screw Newton!
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Heisenberg says that speed can be measured with great accuracy as long as you don't care where you are.
https://xkcd.com/1473/ [xkcd.com]
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So to use a car analogy, no car can accelerate faster than another car?
Question for the audience (Score:2)
Does anyone have any driving experience with any non-Tesla electric vehicle, particularly in America?
I'm seeing all sorts of varying classes of electric vehicles trying to find a market, from residential vehicles that seem to get around 30-50 miles on a charge w/ top speeds of 25-30mph, to short-mileage mini sedans like the Fiat 500e, to tricycle sedans like the Electra Meccanica, to full-range non-Tesla sedans. Is anything really finding success?
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For what it's worth, I own a Chevy Bolt, and I love it. The range on a full charge is 239 miles (mine is a 2017 --- the last two model years have bumped it up to 259). It looks more or less like a Honda Fit but has incredible acceleration and it charges overnight at home so I basically never have to go to a public charger. The vast majority of the time, it doesn't feel like a compromise at all -- it just feels like a car. A really fun-to-drive car. The only tradeoff I've found so far is that if you *d
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To many people, that's not a positive. The Fit is the prototypical "nerd car" look, and that's something that's not helping to sell EVs.
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Sure, but then you get a tesla! Or a ford mach-e, or a Hyundai Kona or... :)
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There's a popular myth the US doesn't have a well developed rail network, which just isn't true. It's just prioritized for freight. Most Americans just don't want to take a train (myself included). If you own a car, do you really want to take a train? I don't, anymore than I want to take a Greyhound bus.
In someplace like New York, sure, the train is the better choice, but 99% of the US doesn't look like New York.
The way to change t
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The way to change this perception/habit is coast-to-coast high speed rail. That's not going to happen in my lifetime and there's no political will to bring this to fruition.
It's not a matter of politics. It's simple economics.
Google tells me that a flight from NYC to LAX will be about 6 hours, differing as much as an hour plus/minus because of weather and prevailing winds. To get people from one city to the other means a strip of concrete at the departure and destination cities and nothing in the middle required but air. The vehicle required to make this trip will be very large, heavy, complex, and therefore expensive. The fuel burned to move this vehicle, the passengers,
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That's really it. The security checks are going to kill it.
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It's not just the cost of the equipment. It's also the time and food cost (and perhaps space needed for sleeping) required for travelling at slower speeds.
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Most Americans just don't want to take a train
When there is a train available to take me from my front door to the grocery store, I'll take it.
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implementation (Score:2)
There's a light rail project as well, supposed to be mostly automated, trains every 3 minutes. Should help with traffic from the suburbs, we'll see once it's done.
In the US I think status and safety come into it. The New York subway is safe now, I think, but it has not always been. Then you have places like Atlanta. I took public tran
USA is the worst market for electric. $4K car best (Score:2)
> Does anyone have any driving experience with any non-Tesla electric vehicle, particularly in America?
Most electric cars aren't designed for the USA market.
The big, fast, expensive cars that Americans like in the relatively sparsely populated US are very different from what works well in most of the world. Most places have smaller cars, and shorter trips that involve slower speeds and shorter range. The US median income is also about 6X the median income globally, meaning Americans buy expensive cars.
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And yet the US leads in EV sales by far. Slashdot guys are clueless about reality.
The summary says "EV-volumes.com data showed the five highest national sales were in China (1.3m), Germany (0.4m), the US (0.3m), France and the UK (both 0.2m)."
Did you have different data to reference?
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You might want to note that Tesla's Shanghai factory is now shipping to the tune of 1,200 cars per day. Much of it for domestic consumption.
Yes there is a market for sub-$10K sub$20K EVs. That doesn't mean there is no market for Tesla's higher-priced/higher-margin products.
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> That doesn't mean there is no market for Tesla's higher-priced/higher-margin products.
Certainly there is a market. Heck there's a market for Rolls Royce and Bentley. Tesla's market - higher end electric cars designed for US tastes, is significantly larger than Bentley's market.
Also, the top 10 car companies, which produce almost all of the cars in the world, have a combined value of $800 billion. That would be these companies:
Toyota 207.82
Volkswagen 96.98
BYD 93.23
NIO 91.10
General Motors
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The current share price of Telsa assumes that they absolutely without a doubt will be bigger than all of car companies combined, that there's no chance that anyone else will be selling any cars 10 years from now. Which is funny, since other companies are already selling more *electric* cars than Tesla.
I think people assume that Tesla is also working on other magic and will dominate other markets too. For example most of the world seems convinced that Tesla has magic grid scale batteries before anyone else a
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The main reason why Tesla stock is so over-priced is speculation that their self driving tech will reach market soon. As we have seen from the beta testing they are doing it's still many years away.
Chances are Waymo or MobileEye will beat them to it and the price will collapse.
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Literally no analyst ranks self-driving as the primary valuation element in their price targets.
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So what is it then?
They have a decent brand but it's not ever going to be 20% of world-wide car sales, which is what the valuation suggests. Their battery tech is meh, and they use Panasonic and LG Chem cells in it anyway. Their drivetrain is good but not exceptional, and aimed more at the high end. Solar business isn't worth that much and isn't exceptional either. Charging network is good some places, others it's just one of many.
Where is all this value coming from?
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Link [slashdot.org]
Most analysts forecasts for Tesla's 2030 percentage of global sales are in the single digits, sometimes the low single digits, even though they're at 26% of BEV sales and growing.
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So the implicit assumption is that quite soon Telsa will be selling more than the entire global auto industry combined.
Not necessarily. Market cap is based on expectations of profit, not revenue. So Telsa could have lower sales but much better margins.
Tesla is perceived as being way ahead on both battery tech and self-driving tech.
A car with full self-driving capability will sell at a premium, but the software's marginal cost is $0.
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Ah, once again we play a game of "let's confuse market cap with enterprise value" ;)
FYI: market cap is only the value of a company held by stockholders, after everyone else that the company has obligations to gets their cut; stockholders are last on the pecking list. The majority of old-school automakers' value is not held by stockhold
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Price targets don't work by "let's look at one what one company sold many widgets last year and compare it to another widget company sold and the adjust the other widget company's stock price by the ratio". If you invest based on that sort of ignorance, you're going to get badly burned. You have to build up models going at least 5 years out into the future, ideally 10 years.
Ah so that's why Signal medical devices stock jumped by 50x and is still 10x about the value.
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Signal is a tiny company, so it's easy for a small number of idiot retail investors to spike its value. I personally have spiked the value of some small ventures without even trying (you need to really spread out purchases / sales). Small companies aren't very liquid.
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Hey, I drive a Zagato Zele, you insensitive clod!
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It's not that Americans don't want a $4.2k electric car or even a $15k electric car. It's that such an EV would be too limited in range to use as anything other than a secondary vehicle. Most people who are in an income bracket where only low-end cars are within their budget, are seeking something that meets their needs as a primary vehicle. Low-end ICE vehicles typically compromise on features, comfort, and engine power, but are generally more fuel efficient than higher priced models of non-hybrid ICE v
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The average American commute is about 16 miles so something with a 50-mile range would absolutely be enough for a primary, everyday vehicle. Cross-country road trip vacations are not a primary use, and conflating such a rare use case into the requirements of a primary vehicle is entirely a cultural phenomenon. It's just like how people drive pickup trucks and maybe use the cargo bed once a year, instead of spending third the money on a small car and renting a U-haul that one time they need to move something
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> The average American commute is about 16 miles so something with a 50-mile range would absolutely be enough for a primary, everyday vehicle
If I was driving the average commute of 16 miles each way (not including running errands after work), I wouldn't be at all comfortable with an advertised range of 50 miles.
That would mean that any time the plug comes loose or I forget to charge or whatever, I can't go to work in the morning. It would mean that if we need to go to the hospital (or wherever), too bad
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The average American commute is about 16 miles so something with a 50-mile range would absolutely be enough for a primary, everyday vehicle.
One thing I learned in statistics is that an average means very little, there needs to be more information to gain any meaning from those two numbers of 16 miles and 50 miles. I also learned from my course on statistics that statistics will tell you any thing you want if you torture them enough. Though maybe that was not statistics but words of wisdom paraphrased and often attributed to Mark Twain.
Cross-country road trip vacations are not a primary use, and conflating such a rare use case into the requirements of a primary vehicle is entirely a cultural phenomenon.
An annual trip across the country is not the only thing that can make people reluctant to buy an electric car
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It's just like how people drive pickup trucks and maybe use the cargo bed once a year, instead of spending third the money on a small car and renting a U-haul that one time they need to move something. It's all about a feeling of "what if I need it", programmed into people by advertising rather than an actual need.
What also "programs" people is a once in a decade snowstorm, windstorm, or flood that reminds them that not having a 4WD truck or ICE car could mean being stuck at home for days at a time. Things like that happen out here where I live in the American Midwest.
The GP wasn't asking for an example of that sort of programming, but we're all glad you're here to help.
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Wrong. In 2020, up through the the last quarter that we have full global data for (Q3), Tesla sold 316820 BEVs, followed by VW group (120793), followed by Renault-Nissan (109095), then SAIC (97086) (including the MINI), then Hyundai-Kia (85829). The MINI did increase its sales in Q4 to 35388 units but Tesla sold 180570 in Q4. Tesla
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ED: Ugh, copied the wrong number. Q4 MINI sales were 89113. 35388 was December.
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American here. I have a Nissan Leaf. My neighbor is driving his second Leaf. At the other end of the small close in which I live, someone has a Bolt.
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Last week I was driving my Model Y in Palo Alto and saw my first Rivian. Matte black paint job. Gave and received thumbs-up to the driver and he looked happy as hell to be driving it. And showing it off.
The specs and looks of the Rivian is awesome, and it looks like it has serious manufacturing capability behind it.
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It has no manufacturing capacity behind it. They're trying to develop manufacturing capacity for the first time (they've been around since 2009). Many, many, many startup auto companies have tried to get past the hand-building / low-volume stage. In the US, only 4 have succeeded. Economic mass-manufacturing of cars is devilishly difficult, even if you have partnerships with and hire talent from established automakers. Automakers build up their "manufacturing OSs" and their factory designs and their suppl
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This article [wglt.org] from last April indicates a commitment at least as big as what Tesla had when they started shipping Model S. Granted, Elon himself allocated 95% of the effort in the company to the manufacturing and only 5% of it to actually designing the car, but I see Rivian at least as good as Tesla circa 2013 in that regard. Today I would expect them to be as good as Tesla 2019.
But I don't see any call to be so dismissive of where they are. They have massive backing from Ford who certainly knows what
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Tesla seem to be the only ones really pushing it hard although I believe other big manufacturers are working on their slate.
But the idea is slowly catching on. My father has spent the last decade grumping on about how its a terrible idea, and he only wants a car with "guts".
Then the other day he was given a drive in one of his friends ones and now he cant shut up about his plans to buy one.
I suspect a lot of the skepticism dries up once people have actually driven one and felt the power of the whole electri
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I live in London, UK. Drive a Renault Zoe. A great little car, not available in the US. I'm on my third, I've used PCP deals essentially for 3 year finance deals to be able to move to newer models as the tech improves, which it has dramatically -- from 90mile summer range when I started in 2015 to 250 mile summer range today.
This review gives you a good sense of what it's like, why it's so popular in Europe (best-selling EV here in 2020, selling just under 100k) and why it would never be marketed in the US
Duh ... electric cars accelerate fast ... (Score:2)
Wait...
You mean sales of electric cars is accelerating fast. Oh, thats good news, I guess.
Excellent (Score:5, Interesting)
You know what this decade finally feels like by 2030 the future may be similar to the future I grew up thinking the 2000s might be like.
Self driving cars -- it's happening.
Mars trips and Lunar holidays -- finally seems like it might have a chance of being thing at least for the super wealthy at first
Flying cars -- although not really anti-gravity based, roadable flying cars may finally become a thing
Cancer -- many interesting and novel approaches to cure it are in the pipeline
Infectious disease -- war against it is ramping up again and we're improving. We may be able to prevent or cure all the major ones.
Diabetes -- cure is in sight with encapsulated beta cell technology.
Parkinson's -- cure finally appears feasible.
VR - realistic VR headsets may actually be a thing.
Fusion energy -- ITER (designed in the early 1980s) is getting built finally.
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Fusion energy -- ITER (designed in the early 1980s) is getting built finally.
Man.... that's depressing. Imagine where we'd be if fusion research had the kind of funding that got things built when they were designed. 40 years is a looong iteration cycle.
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Flying cars -- although not really anti-gravity based, roadable flying cars may finally become a thing
Where are you seeing this? Cars light enough to fly are not likely to meet any collision safety margins in any Western nation.
Fusion energy -- ITER (designed in the early 1980s) is getting built finally.
Building a nuclear fusion reactor is still a long way away from a fusion reactor with a net positive energy output.
The people working on ITER know it's too small to produce net power output. There's plans to big a bigger reactor, being called "DEMO", by 2050 but this will also be known to be too small for net power output. The plan is to build it to prove the technologies on extra
Yes (Score:2)
Which is why nobody can get parts to build anything else. @#$@#$
150 new BEV and PHEV models (Score:4, Insightful)
...and the vast majority of them are Chinese.
Fossil auto makers have largely been dragging their asses for decades. Now a whole new paradigm of automotive manufacturing has sprung up and companies that aren't heavily invested in the old tech - and who haven't been holding back advancements - are going to drink the major automotive brand's milkshakes.
And since the old guard auto makers are entrenched in Japan, Europe and the US, that pretty much leaves China as the only global industrial country that hasn't been avoiding the inevitable. They have the entire supply chain under their control, and they're gonna run away with it.
=Smidge=
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Enjoy your battery powered Chinese coffin.
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Re: 150 new BEV and PHEV models (Score:2)
They are great quality, and the nio has a replaceable battery. It's quite interesting to see the process done... It's all automatic, though an attendant drives it in and out for you.
Still, there are far more teslas on the roads of Beijing than any other single ev brand... Perhaps excepting the Beijing Motor Co that provide the ev taxis, that also have replaceable batteries. Yes, Tesla is doing very well in China. It seems no one is concerned about the US government decided they can no longer have software u
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That is an utter load of horseshit. An insanely large number of people have their own garages, and even remotely competent governments would offer services for building charging points. I've not seen a public building without dedicated EV chargers here. In Europe. Not in China. Why is that an excuse for EU car companies to drag their feet the way they are.
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The big boys aren't the most agile, but that is a lot of weight to throw around.
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> We can just embargo them
Do you actually believe this?
Like really, good luck buying anything that isn't made in China, has no parts/materials from China, or wasn't assembled in China.
You're not going to embargo the second largest economy in the world.
=Smidge=
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> We did it before and it worked great.
Did we, now? When did this happen? 'cause I don't think the event you have in mind is actually a good example of what you're advocating...
> Let's import their unsafe cars and deal with their "screw the customer" ethical stance
Wait wait, are we still talking about China? 'cause that describes US car makers to a tee.
Yes, China is the source for many cheap and dangerously negligent consumer products... but they absolutely can and do produce world class, industry lea
Re: 150 new BEV and PHEV models (Score:1)
Well, it's possible to work WITH the Chinese. They're not after the demise of the USA, unlike the reverse.
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Government mandates and subsidies will do that (Score:1)
When governments around the world are subsidizing BEVs and PHEVs there will be more sales. Also with the subsidies comes restrictions on where carbon burners are allowed to drive. People with EVs will be allowed in carpool lanes even if there is only one person in the vehicle. There will be preferential parking for EVs, and EVs might be allowed on streets where carbon burners are not allowed.
This will create an artificial demand, but can this be sustained? There's a lot of evidence that this growth cann
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What are you smoking? Most of what you're saying is flat out wrong. People are willing to pay extra for electric cars. Tesla costs a lot more than the average car, if nobody wanted it they would have to price it cheaper than a Hyundai. Instead the Model 3 is more expensive than most of BMWs line up. No government "subsidy" can't explain it. How about if we stopped the subsidy of internal combustion engine cars? Yeah, the fact that we are not making people pay for polluting the atmosting. And it was just a f
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What are you smoking? Most of what you're saying is flat out wrong. People are willing to pay extra for electric cars.
Are all the people willing to pay more? If so then why are governments subsidizing BEVs? The answer is to artificially inflate demand.
Tesla costs a lot more than the average car, if nobody wanted it they would have to price it cheaper than a Hyundai. Instead the Model 3 is more expensive than most of BMWs line up. No government "subsidy" can't explain it.
Of course subsidies explain the inflated demand for BEVs. Even people deciding between a BMW or Tesla are going to lean to buying the Tesla if the government is writing checks to people that pick the Tesla.
How about if we stopped the subsidy of internal combustion engine cars?
That's a great idea. Lets not subsidize any new vehicles. If people can afford a new car then we shouldn't pay them to buy one.
The technology will soon be cheaper than internal combustion engine cars.
I'll believe that when I see it.
The newest batteries don't require any particularly rare minerals.
I didn't
Re: Government mandates and subsidies will do that (Score:2)
1. False. Tesla purchasers no longer receives a $7,500 credit. Reference: https://www.google.com/amp/s/w... [google.com] But that aside, you really think people were buying a $50,000 car (typical Model 3 purchase price) instead of a $30,000 car because they can get a $7,500 tax credit? Thatâ(TM)s your argument? People are spending $25,000 extra to save a few thousand bucks on taxes?
Anyway, THE TAX CREDIT IS NO LONGER APPLICABLE so how do you explain Teslaâ(TM)s rising sales now that there is NO TAX CREDIT?
2.
Re: Government mandates and subsidies will do that (Score:2)
Also, the Tesla Semi can charge to 80% of full charge within 30 minutes. That means you can get about 800 miles of range with a 30 minute lunch break. Given the fuel cost savings, that 30 minute break is easily justifiable.
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Who's paying you to look so ignorant on the internet? Because surely nobody does it to this extent for free!
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (Score:2)
The rising sales are being driven by government policies to reduce carbon emissions
When I went to school we were taught that the path to sustainability is Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, in_that_order. Nowhere did it say to create a whole new industry that forces millions of useful products onto the scrap heap.
...
It's almost as if this is more about theatre than results
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> Nowhere did it say to create a whole new industry that forces millions of useful products onto the scrap heap.
As far as I know, there are currently no incentives to scrap existing vehicles. EV sales are displacing the sales of traditional ICE vehicles. In other words, the total number of new vehicles sold is pretty much what it would have been with or without electric as an option.
Practically nobody is going to sell their existing ICE vehicle just because they can get a few grand worth of discounts on
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As far as I know, there are currently no incentives to scrap existing vehicles. EV sales are displacing the sales of traditional ICE vehicles
Like this you mean? https://www.intelligenttranspo... [intelligenttransport.com]
Too bad if you need a new car to tow your caravan or boat...
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> Like this you mean?
There's nothing about that policy that incentivizes you to scrap a vehicle you already own, prematurely, in favor of a new EV. That's a ban on the sale of new non-EVs, which doesn't mean jack shit if you decide to keep your current non-EV.
So no, nothing like that. Nice try, though.
> Too bad if you need a new car to tow your caravan or boat
You linked to an article about UK policies, but I strongly suspect you're applying North American concepts of boat/caravan ownership. Not only d
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There's nothing about that policy that incentivizes you to scrap a vehicle you already own, prematurely, in favor of a new EV. That's a ban on the sale of new non-EVs, which doesn't mean jack shit if you decide to keep your current non-EV.
And where do they all get charged? The policy effectively results in a massive energy infrastructure replacement. Replace is not reduce, reuse or recycle.
but you're never much farther than ~100 miles from the water anywhere in the UK
Because I only camp or fish at waterway nearest me and have no interest in ever going elsewhere lol...
I welcome you boys (Score:1)
Doesn't Tesla sell cars are a loss? (Score:2)
That's what some "auto expert dot com dot au" guy claims. Apparently they only make a profit off selling carbon credits to mainstream manufacturers and once they get their ev acts together, they won't need to buy those. I guess they can sell them to other non-ev companies though...
Or perhaps that's just bollocks.