Carpet_pissr wrote:I don't think they have to be bleeding edge EV leaders to be successful going forward.
Bleeding edge, no--ready to produce something somewhat competitive, in volumes >100k/year/manufacturer? I think yes in the next couple of years or risk playing catch-up once the EV market starts maturing.
How quickly do you think we will see EV adoption in ROW? In developing countries? China?
Per
InsideEVs, last year saw over 777,000 plug-in vehicles sold worldwide. That was 41% growth from 2015. 2015 was 71% growth from 2014, and 2014 was over 300% growth from 2013. I think we're likely to see 2017 top 1M units for the first time, and 2018 be a giant jump since Model 3 and the new Leaf should both be shipping in volume, among a bunch of smaller sales target new EVs.
For me, it's 2019 and 2020 that are the big question marks. I'd be equally unsurprised with Tesla pulling in 200,000 sales on a 1.5M global sales # as I would with them topping 500,000 on 3M global. China is a big question mark, not only in how Tesla does there, but how their local EV manufacturers (eg BYD, Kandi) do.
It's extremely difficult to make any sort of confident guess since few manufacturers outside of Tesla provide reasonable guidance on their near-term EV sales goals. I *think* Nissan is going to push the new Leaf more than they did the old (cumulative worldwide sales of a bit over 250,000 units, peaking at 60k in a year). I know Tesla's going to shoot for > 120k units this year and > 200k units in 2018 (Actually, they've said they want 500k run rate by end of 2018, but I'll believe that when I see it--currently I'm running that through the Elon filter to arrive at a more realistic expectation). GM has been mum on Bolt targets but the rumor mill says around 30k/year and max capacity around 50k/year. Mary Barra has said GM plans to roll out a bunch more full EVs in the relatively near future, but it's tough to tell whether that's hot air or whether we'll see actual new model sales in 2018 along with expanded Bolt production.
But where I think you're going with this is to question whether expansion is likely to remain at such a small percentage of worldwide sales for the next few years to the point where it's something the Fords of the world can afford to sit on the sidelines for a few more years before making a true move to transition. And that's a fair question whose answer I believe is likely to be 'yes.' But it's certainly possible that I'm entirely off my rocker with the superiority of EVs, and the Bannons/Kochs of the world succeed in snuffing out Tesla et al, and we stagnate where we're at today for the foreseeable future.
But again, disruption is tough to put a timeline on. I really think that at some point we hit a stage where the Teslas of the world do have such a leg up that coming in late becomes problematic.
Take charging--the
Supercharger network is by far the most complete, fastest charging network available. It's already largely covered US interstate travel and similar highways in other markets where Tesla lives. And it's far better integrated to the vehicles than any other network, and is entirely under Tesla's control unlike every other network. Toss in the
destination charging program and Tesla's charging situation is worlds ahead of anyone else's. Let them continue expanding for another 3 years and what does the situation look like for a relative new entrant? I haven't seen any other entity put forth a similarly complete plan to address charging. Even
VW's government-mandated program is very hodgepodge. Ask Jeff V or stessier's wife what that's worth in terms of folks considering jumping into an EV--if they can get a Ford EV with similar range and price but no access to the Supercharger network, which will they choose? This is something that a deep-pocketed new entrant can duplicate, but not in a matter of months, and not without dumping large bundles of cash to do.
Similar but much more nebulous situation for autonomy. Tesla's collecting data today from a far larger fleet than anyone else. It's early days, but this could be an advantage.
LordMortis wrote: But those articles don't do much to convince me that Ford is on the cusp of leading the way on EV development.
That's goal post moving. The entire topic with regard to investing is "Will Ford survive disruption if it is taken for granted that they are
not on the cusp or leading the way on EV development but rather spend their resources being beholden to ICE technology with the supposition the EV will replace ICE in the near term." We then point to digitally driven markets as examples to suggest Ford will not survive the near term. I think that view (at the moment) is too simplistic. Which then goes back to one thing that could literally change every thing tomorrow. The better battery.
Yes, my comment about Ford leading the way was indeed goalpost moving--thanks for calling me on it. But the rest of my post was not. The question in my mind is not 'will Ford survive the near term' (of course they will). It's what we started with (or what I thought we started with, at least): 'is Ford a smart investment in 2017, given their lack of leadership in the electrification space?'
They'll survive. At least in the near-term. Even if they don't get on the bandwagon. But my [for-play, small potatoes] investing dollars are much more comfortable betting on Tesla than on Ford. One of these brands has effusive customers giving it world-leading satisfaction/re-buy numbers and potential future customers lining up by the hundreds of thousands to put down $1k deposits on a vehicle none of them has even seen in real-life yet, much less driven. The other is sitting on the status quo. One is developing and pushing world-changing tech. The other is talking up hybrids. It's not at all clear to me that a late-stage pivot a couple of years from now will be a winning strategy, and further it's entirely possible that the incumbents see a sharp stock price decline if Tesla does manage to ramp up as planned.
I can absolutely see a scenario where they die--even the Bolt is basically an LG drivetrain with some GM-collated parts around it. As part of following Tesla I also try to keep an eye on what the other OEMs are doing with electrics, and I just haven't seen much to suggest that they are planning for many hundreds of thousands of EVs in the next 2-3 years. We've even got Toyota and some others still pimping hydrogen, which just makes no sense at all to me. Take an EV, add a much more carbon-intensive process to fuel it (which also requires incredibly more-expensive infrastructure buildout than plain-jane EVs), then ..., and finally profit?
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