Mercedes-Benz scales back electric ambitions as EV pessimism grows
Mercedes-Benz scales back electric ambitions as EV pessimism grows
Even Europe won't be ready for EV-only sales in 2030, says M-B CEO Ola Kaellenius.
It’s not EV’s I’m skeptical of hey.
It’s the cars they are making. The evs are all quite expensive and then all new cars seem to be taking the opportunity to tack on all these extra subscriptions and such.
I’m never buying a car where heated seats are bound to my car app account on a subscription like seriously…
"Gas is a little more convenient, so lets destroy our sole, shared, communal ecosystem we all rely on from one breath to the next so I don't have to wait for my car to charge."
Oh humans, don't ever change. For Earth's long-term sake, we need to make sure we commit to our species' mass suicide for short term profit and convenience. No half measures.
The only thing worse for adoption than only selling high priced EVs, is attempting to sell high priced EVs when interest rates are high.
Plus, no one ever talks about the switchover to NACS plugs in the US. Except for Tesla, most companies have announced they will switch plugs on a year or two. I hear “in a year or two these old ones will be difficult to charge and lose all its resale value”, so why would I buy?
Toyota say they can make 90 hybrids using the same raw materials as one BEV or six PHEVs, leading to a 37-fold reduction in lifetime carbon emissions .
There's the rub. 'The market' is demanding EVs with massive range-per-charge, leading to huuuge batteries (of which only 10% capacity is used, most of the time) and high prices. It's all a bit crazy.
Meanwhile BYD is absolutely exploding in popularity. The problem isn’t “EV pessimism” it’s that some governments are fighting it so hard that it’s difficult out for citizens (USA) to make it work. Didn’t Biden promise a network of EV chargers across the nation?
And instead he made it illegal to import affordable Chinese cars. I’m sick of seeing articles phrased like this
Wish they would take the hybrid model and flip it. I love my gas/EV hybrid but the EV side of things is only good for 50miles or so. Its much more a gas vehicle really than an EV. Why not a primarily EV vehicle with large battery and a small gas generator for those Oh crap, I need another 50-100 miles right now with no time to charge moments?
there's a lot of abbreviations in the article that I don't understand or know lol. what's a BEV? HPEV? etc.
Good article tho. From my limited view prices definitely are a huge limiting factor for electric vehicles, though they brought up a good point about the charge times. I guess if people treated it like their phones (charge every night) then it wouldn't be a problem?
Honestly not surprised that demand has dropped for them though. Anyone who was interested in it has either decided it's not worth it or already has one. Price puts them out of most people's budget, and with rising costs and stagnant wages, people can't really afford to take on monthly payments anymore. The environmental friendliness of them is heavily marketed, but won't bring into effect the large scale, immediate change we need to slow climate change. Plus there's the whole Tesla thing with delayed shipping and paywalling features built into software (admittedly not up to brush with Tesla tho).
For a while they were a new, impressive technology, and while I still think they're cool, until they become very, very cheap and accessible, I won't be getting one. The fad is starting to die out.
More market share for Volkswagen I guess. I just wish I knew which VW stocks to purchase, there are so many...
Someone more educated, please explain to me, why it’s impossible to just take the existing industry, take all the know how and engineering and direct efforts into electrifying (converting) existing cars instead of building new ones.
If the world was perfect and there was no nuance, no bad actors, no human factor involved - would it be a viable solution to cut back on the emissions without getting rid of the comfort that a car affords?
Mercedes Bends.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Today, Mercedes published its annual results for 2023, and it's clear that the company has little confidence that any region will be ready for EVs-only sales by that date.
Here in the US, established automakers like Ford and General Motors have already told investors that their EV plans were overambitious or focused on the wrong market segments, like full-size pickups, and this week saw startups Rivian and Lucid both forecast much-reduced production in 2024.
It's tempting to try to find a single reason for this growth in EV pessimism—unsympathetic actors like car dealers flush with record profits complaining about having to learn to sell something new make for easy villains in this story.
In part, BEVs remain a little too unfamiliar for a large swath of the general public to make them feel comfortable spending tens of thousands of dollars or euros.
Those gas station visits have also made drivers expect to be able to refuel in a few minutes, something that just isn't possible with even the fastest fast-charging BEVs.
Hybrid powertrains in particular provide a cost-effective, efficient alternative to just burning liquid hydrocarbons, and in terms of reducing fleet carbon emissions, OEMs like Toyota say they can make 90 HEVs using the same raw materials as one BEV or six PHEVs, leading to a 37-fold reduction in lifetime carbon emissions.
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