Jaguar Land Rover’s strategists expressed caution over the take-up of EVs in a presentation with banking analysts last year. The firm’s own estimate was for 20% of new cars being electric by 2025. BMW and Volkswagen hedged their bets at 15-25%.
Bloomberg and Bank of America were at 26% and 24%. Analysts at Bernstein offered a ‘rapid adoption’ estimate of 57% by 2030 and low adoption rate of just 19% by the end of the next decade.
In short, nobody knows. It won’t have steadied the nerves of any automotive planners to see that Tesla has decided to cut more than 3000 jobs from its 45,000-strong workforce, admitting its cars were still too expensive for the mainstream and profits too low.
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Vertigo
Strategy
Tesla's doing that, by investing heavily upfront in a proprietary charging network and a locked-in supply chain stretching right to the raw materials for cells.
As a result they've made half a billion dollars' profit in the last six months, and the Model 3 is the best-selling premium car in North America - around twice as many as all Jaguar's saloons (worldwide!) combined.
To be clear, I don't think being 100% electric is the right move for Jaguar, as they have a sizeable base of traditionalists. The V8s need to stay. And for the love of god add some mild hybrids to make the petrol engines more enticing, that should have happened years ago.
But yeah, the market for electric cars is out demonstrably out there and only one manufacturer is properly tapping into it. If they want a piece of that new customer base, they need to take the bull by the horns and invest properly. Customers won't be happy if they're shopping for EVs and find that theirs has a six-month waiting list due to cell supplier shortages, and that it can't be charged reliably on long trips because Ecotricity is making a dog's breakfast of the non-Tesla public charging network.
Antony Riley
EV,s
It seems to me that Toyota saw the light years ago well befor other car manufactures. Their hybrid system having sold millions world wide and selling even better in the current malaise to do with diesel engines and theri pollution problems.
hackjo
Toyota
Absolutely, Antony Riley.
Toyota were 15 years ahead of the market, quietly developing and refining hybrid technology while being criticised for lack of diesel models and suddenly, they are the manufacturer best equipped to deal with the demise of diesel.
They are stating that they believe hydrogen fuel cells are the future instead of lithium batteries and I wouldn't bet against them.
BANG!!!
TStag
Depends on how quickly you
Depends on how quickly you think electric cars will take off. If car makers perfect solid state batteries (see Dyson for example) within the next 2 years, then personally I think that kills of the hybrid as well. Toyota have spent big on hybrids. But the truth is that solid state batteries could kill all ICE cars inside 5-8 years.
dorsetevs
Totally agree. Battery and
Totally agree. Battery and other technologies are progressing rapidly, and there are varieties of solid state and supercapacitors and combinations thereof that will make EVs fast to charge and last almost indefinately. I give ICE cars 10 years, the only ones around after that will be second hand to vintage examples. And whatever happens I am never going to be able to fuel my ICE car at home, even less likely to make my own fuel which at the moment I do with solar panels.
jason_recliner
What Utter Tosh
Aruman 9000
12 years t avoid runaway global warming
eseaton
VW have already invested
VW have already invested £90bn already?
Ah yes. Of course they have.
CarNut170
Quick!! Everyone buy diesel!!!
Vertigo and Aruman both making excellent points! We really need to focus on getting everyone off petrols and onto diesels ASAP to get CO2 down!!
NOx is a public health issue, and has zero effect on climate change - Diesel demonstrably reduces CO2 output .........
Or is it not really about reducing CO2...
BEVs remain unsistainable for the planet - due to the use of rare earth metals - "RARE EARTH" as in, there's not much of the stuff (maybe a decade at relatively low volume, but some huge holes in the planet resulting).
Diesel PHEVs are the true way forward - CO2 reduction, and no NOx in the inner cities.
Vertigo
Rare earth
There aren't any rare earth metals in a lithium-ion battery cell.
Lithium is currently obtained from underground brine, but it's also present in geothermal wells and even seawater. Cobalt is being phased out of modern chemistries, manganese is already absent in Tesla's NCA cells, and the other materials (nickel, graphite, sometimes aluminium and silicon) are used vastly more in other industries than batteries.
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