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At least half of those companies have been working on their own EVs for longer than Tesla has been designing and building cars but are choosing not to make the switch yet. I'd like to understand why.
Yep. My theory (and I know nothing about this, so happy to be corrected) is threefold:
First, most of a car is outsourced - car companies “only” build and design engines and design and assemble the parts. Senior management, decision makers, top engineers at all these companies got to their positions through their expertises in engines. There is a huge organisational inertia to move away from ice.
Someone senior at VW was on the radio a few months back saying that “diesel is part of the solution to a low carbon economy”. It reminded me of the music industry in the post-Napster days when “there are only two kinds of online music company - those we’ve sued and those we’re going to sue”
Second - a proportion of a car company’s revenue comes from service and maintenance of the engine. And that all but disappears with electric cars. They can’t move wholesale until they can workout how to extract the same revenue from the life of the vehicle that they can today.
Third - what do you do with the factory and workforce? Bolting a battery into a chassis must be a fraction of complexity of designing, building and installing an engine.
I can imagine that those sitting at the top of VW or Ford are in no hurry to see hugely successful electric cars.
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cookiemonster
Stonehedge
At least half of those companies have been working on their own EVs for longer than Tesla has been designing and building cars but are choosing not to make the switch yet. I'd like to understand why.
From a personal perspective, I still heavily favour the experienced car manufacturers when it comes to designing and building cars that people will want to own. Clearly just a guess though.
Last time I checked, Tesla still bought their battery tech from Panasonic and one other company I can't remember. Have they made the switch to something of their own design yet?