The EV transition trips over its own cord
The EV transition trips over its own cord
Batteries are too big, and our politics are too polarized.
There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The news lately is full of production delays, factories postponed, models canceled, and, of course, the ever-present low-grade anxiety buzzing around a charging infrastructure that is both constantly broken and lacking in prevalence.
Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of different trend lines — price fluctuations, new incentives, the autoworkers strike, to name a few — that are colliding to make a mess of any attempt to get a solid temperature read on the EV transition.
Buying an EV isn’t just about bigger screens, faux grilles, or light bars; it’s an entirely new lifestyle, full of range considerations and charging anxieties and home equipment installations.
GM especially was guilty of this, leading with the Hummer EV truck and SUV, while letting the small, utilitarian Chevy Bolt languish for many years before being recalled and then discontinued.
And that rate of increase is expected to accelerate as more big, heavy trucks hit the market, from the Chevy Silverado EV to the Ram 1500 Rev to the Tesla Cybertruck.
For better or worse, EVs are now political, and automakers are left to grapple with the challenges that arise when a significant chunk of the population refuses to buy your product based on ideology.
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