Not a big surprise that some of the european big players have not joined this. They overslept the EV transition in favour of their ICE circlejerk and now they are slowly paying the price for this shit.
You mean they’re whining for the taxpayer to pay the price for their complacency.
Yes, as they do usually. It’s concerning that this seems to be the new normal for “too big to fail” companies.
Remember how Schäuble and other Germans acted towards the Greece population. As a german, I expect either the same treatment towards this very German economic failure or reparations to Greece.
It’s certainly not just a German failure, though. Stellantis (i.e. at the time, PSA and especially the Marchionne-led FCA) fucked up too, as did Renault-Nissan (despite their head start with Zoe/Leaf)
EVs just need to be monumentally cheaper. There’s no chance I would be able to afford one myself. I’m still driving cars that cost between £500 and £1000.
Didn’t see that one coming
Why not? Car producers are begging for years for clear guidelines so they can develop solid plans instead of having to speculate how long they need to keep ICEs in parallel.
It’s politicians bought by oil lobbyists (and a few bad apples in the industry refusing to acknowledge reality - often not even cas manufacturers themselves but people in their supply chain) that lie to us 24/7 allegedly protecting the very same producers.
Car producers are begging for years for clear guidelines so they can develop solid plans instead of having to speculate how long they need to keep ICEs in parallel.
I don’t quite understand this. Nobody’s forcing manufacturers to keep producing ICE cars. They could just say ‘screw it’ and decide on their own to only build BEV.
They could just say ‘screw it’ and decide on their own to only build BEV.
And then they would go bankrupt pretty fast. EVs are more expensive and don’t have a massive infrastructure to refuel them, build over decades (also still heavily subsidised indirectly).
The company saying “screw it” today just cut their available market down to a fraction of its former size, down to the small amount of “we have money to spare anyway and already have our own home and garage to refuel”-people. The majority can’t afford to buy a car for twice the price because it’s better for the environment. And they don’t even have a spot to park them other than on the side of the street (maybe some countries are better than others in that regard but here having to charge at the few publically available chargers doubles the cost compoared to just plugging it in over night at home).
So yes, the companies actually need guidelines. They are no startup that can produce a few EVs and then scale up over the next decade. They are full fledged businesses with massive production facilities and tens of thousands of workers. They indeed need to know when to reach 100% EV production as they are depending on gradually changing over production. We will kill our ICE production today and only produce EVs isn’t an option when 80% of the people either can’t afford one or have no valid charging option yet.
