alt Hacker NewsThe problem was that European manufacturers sought to market EVs as a "premium product" because they make no noise, accelerate quickly, produce no fumes and the lack of vibrations.
That idea almost sank the entire industry because the Chinese were undercutting them left and right. And unlike the U.S. Europe still hasn't closed off its markets to Chinese EVs.
What people want most of all is a cheap and reliable car.
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They marketed EVs as a premium product because of battery cost and availability.
You couldn't build a cheap EV with a decent amount of range and make a profit, and car companies literally couldn't give away EVs with only 50 miles of range. So they stuffed 2-300 miles worth of battery packs into a car, added a bunch of cheap electronics with huge margins and sold the cars for a lot of money to people with a lot of money. Then they realized they could just to that to ICE cars and make a lot more per car.
Meanwhile, China focused on building battery factories instead of cars and now has a lead in both cost and numbers of batteries produced, and can undercut everyone else on the most expensive part of an EV.
> The problem was that European manufacturers sought to market EVs as a "premium product" because they make no noise, accelerate quickly, produce no fumes and the lack of vibrations.
There’s a few lower-end EVs around here, from the Zoé to the Ami (it’s a funny one, but they are not that rare, probably what I would get if I really wanted a daily car). More recently, the Renault 4/5 seems to be doing ok.
There’s a bunch of mid-range hybrids as well, mostly Toyotas it seems.
EVs are marketed as premium because the cost much, much more than ICE vehicles. Or at least did/do today. The logic is this: you make a car with a very expensive battery in it. It now costs 1.5/2X the cost of the same size ICE vehicle. Nobody will buy it. But if you add some bells and whistles that have high margin, you can now make a luxury EV that only costs 1.2X as much as the equivalent ICE vehicle. Government tax incentives close the gap further.
> The problem was that European manufacturers sought to market EVs as a "premium product"
Tesla came up with that strategy, executed well on it, and is top of the European BEV market. Despite Musk's subsequent antics.
I don't think the European manufacturers really wanted to do BEVs in the first place, which is why so many were anemic until recently. This is finally changing even though VW are desperately lobbying against the competition. The VW EVs are adequate despite the mis-design reliance on screens (which they are correcting) and pricing (nobody ever bought German cars for their low prices, except the Beetle). Renault have a hit on their hands with the 5.
It's fine for EVs to exist on a market segment curve like regular cars. So long as they deliver value at each level. This is different in the US and Europe, yes, but the real problem has been a combination of lack of seriousness and the general malaise that forced all the legacy manufacturers into Stellantis in the first place. I wonder if there has been an equivalent of the Nokia "burning platform" memo which has made people in the industry realize that, yes, the transition away from petrol engines is now happening and they need to adapt properly.
(edit: I have just been reading up on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luca_de_Meo vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Ghosn and think the Renault turnaround can be attributed to the old CEO being arrested and replaced by someone actually trying to do a decent job)