Jan 30, 2023 By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
⚡ EV Competition Finally Produces Results: Ford Cuts Prices on Mustang Mach-E, after Tesla, Kia, Hyundai, Chevrolet, Nissan Cut Prices on their EVs 
EVs now start at $27,000, about $20,000 below the average new-vehicle transaction price. That’s a good thing all around. Except for stock prices.
SNIPPETS:
China is the most vibrant, largest, and competitive EV market in the world, with hundreds of EV makers. Tesla’s China-made vehicles are among the dominant models. In January, Tesla cut prices in China for the second time in three months in order to remain competitive.
The EV dynamics are shaking up the self-satisfied legacy-automakers in the US and their oligopolistic behavior. And they’re now shaking up automakers in Japan. ... ...
For the auto industry overall,
EVs are the only area where sales are growing in leaps and bounds. Sales of vehicles with 🦖
internal combustion engines have been sagging.
The legacy auto industry needed to be shaken up. And to Musk’s credit, he shook them up. But now they’re waking up, and they’re giants, and they got religion as their lunch is being eaten. In Ford’s case, it was the threat of the Tesla’s Cybertruck that did it. If Ford loses its pickup sales, it’s done as an automaker.
The irony is that the Ford F-150 Lightning is out there now, with real people driving them, while the Cybertruck still doesn’t exist, and may not enter mass production until 2024, if ever.
The EV startups in the US – despite consuming many billions of dollars of investment – still haven’t made much inroads in mass-producing EVs. Even Rivian, the most successful of the startups, is still only cranking out relatively small numbers.
But Rivian does have a pickup. And Tesla doesn’t. And GM doesn’t either and is instead hobbling from vacuous announcement to vacuous announcement. Toyota isn’t even thinking about thinking about making an electric pickup. Stellantis is finally thinking about it and unveiled earlier in January an electric Ram model that is supposed to go into production in 2024 maybe. In the US, ICE pickups have for years been huge sellers and money-makers with massive profit margins. So that should be interesting.
The large-scale arrival of EVs shaking up the self-satisfied oligopolistic legacy-automakers is a great thing for the US economy. The hundreds of billions of dollars that are being invested in the US in EV production is a great thing. For consumers, more choices, more competition, and price cuts are a great thing.
Full article:
https://wolfstreet.com/2023/01/30/ev-competition-finally-produces-results-ford-cuts-prices-on-mustang-mach-e-after-tesla-kia-hyundai-chevrolet-nissan-cut-prices-on-their-evs/Stephen Hren 👍 Jan 30, 2023 at 8:29 pm
Wolf, great article, can’t believe folks are having so much trouble understanding that
this transition is already a fait accompli. ⚡ EVs are 4-6 times as efficient AND they accelerate faster with more power. All they have against them is slower to recharge and higher upfront costs, both of which are slowly going away. One quibble – GM lowered the cost on the Bolt before Tesla did and I think should get more props for starting this new era of affordable EVs. Tesla was reacting to lower cost Chinese made EVs and the Bolt.
John Townley Jan 30, 2023 at 9:32 pm
Car manufacturers resemble home builders in the way they have pushed us all into way more vehicle/home than we want or need! Both markets are screaming for a utilitarian basic model / Entry level home. If Chevrolet were to produce a sport coupe / sedan with just basic equipment ( yes roll down windows) but designed to be an aftermarket paradise like a striped Subaru STI, it would be hard to resist. Most economy boxes have zero style and are fairly loaded down with equipment. This market is growing. Anyone who owns an older car and has tried to get the thing fixed lately will tell you the repair shops are so expensive that a lot of repairs just far exceed the value of the vehicle. Not to long ago keeping an older vehicle going was thrifty. Here in Nevada there was an option for a vehicle that would not smog when tested. You could obtain a ” classic car plate”. this plate did not need the yearly smog but the draw back was a 5000mi per year limit. This gave a young person or family a shot at affordability if there car just couldn’t pass smog but now Nevada DMV “Fixed It” so you can only register this type of plate if you carry ” classic Vehicle Insurance” effectively putting lots of people on foot. Where am I going with this? If the auto manufactures built basic transportation again perhaps young people could afford a new car EV or otherwise. Imagine a street legal Polaris Side by Side variant complete with a soft top and side windows expressly prohibited on the freeways hovering around $20,000? How about a REAL retro K5 Blazer with vinyl seats, roll down windows, one computer for the engine, and soft top and sides? Does everyone really need rear heated seats? Don’t get me started on the home builders.
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could account 
for a progressive loss of independence. The endosymbiotic hypothesis might be called a theory, but experimental evidence can't be provided to test it. Only circumstantial evidence is available in support of the 🐵 
for the origin of mitochondria. The evidence needed to change the model from hypothesis to theory is likely forever lost in antiquity."
RE is RIGHT to claim we don't DO separate biospheres well.
They formed cliques and began increasingly hostile exchanges and hate filled and 
hysterical arguments 
and 
accusations. To avoid violence the experiment had to be aborted for a brief period. 
I can take every single person here and have them ready to go to war with anybody else over imagined paranoia by simply lowering the oxygen from the normal (about 21%) to 18% or lower (without telling them about it, OF COURSE 😈. They won't notice! They'll just turn into savages and eventually start murdering each other! 
It's also a GREAT BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY! 
, the 21% we are used to isn't "holding", 
SOMEBODY is going to make a LOT OF MONEY selling bottled oxygen...
