talkin' about electric cars, while not buying them

Mar 07, 2021 16:07

Last year fewer than 2% of the cars sold in the US were electric.  There's been a lot of talk on the Left about switching over to electric cars, a lot of hype in the stock market about Tesla, and several strategic announcements by other car companies that by a certain future date (usually > 10 years from now) they'll fully switch over to electric cars.

Yet this reminds me of non-alcoholic beer, which has a similarly tiny market share, although without any of the hype.

And low-fat potato chips, holding another similarly tiny market share.

When are people actually going to buy electric cars?  If you've bought one, great, but you're still < 2%.

There are some practical problems with electric cars, compared to gasoline cars.  They are generally more expensive and manufactured with top-of-the-line options packages -- aimed at the upper end of the market.  They have limited range of a couple hundred miles (assuming you don't run the onboard HVAC, heating and cooling reduce range substantially).  Charging stations are definitely not as ubiquitous as gasoline stations.  And over time car batteries become less efficient, just like the batteries in your laptop computers, requiring an expensive replacement.

GM can say now it will go all-electric by 2035, but if its customers don't follow them, they'll definitely renege on that promise.  You can't abandon 98% of your customers if you want to avoid bankruptcy.

green communism, econ

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