The ongoing discussions about profit margins on the “first” [mass scale] generation of EVs from the Big Three supposedly being razor thin or even leading to loses has left me wondering if anyone be it the US DOT or a NGO has attempted to estimate how much the total cost for retooling the US automotive industry towards BEVs might look like in the end.
Obviously, I understand a lot of factors -from funding streams at every level of government, to international relations, to even just timing- can play an immense role in the calculation of such an estimate but I’m curious if there’s even a ballpark estimate. Have any analysts attempted to come up with with a “realistic” estimate of, say, when GM will have fully absorbed the setup cost for Ultium and vehicle unit cost will just be determined by the opex overhead of a given production line rather than having to also account for the upfront capex of the whole platform and production chain buildup?
They do that anyway, so no difference.
Already, auto plants get minor retoolings every model year during the summer shutdown (that being a tradition that went back to when it was too expensive to air condition a factory and too damn hot to work in the summer). And then every 4-12 years they do a total retooling from scratch, when they go to the next generation of car. E.g. going from the 5th generation Camaro to the 6th generation Camaro is not really a different exercise than going to an e-Camaro.
And that’s about how things are going, they are changing gas models to electric at about the interval they would be doing generation changes anyway.
Auto buyers already pay for the cost of these retoolings, and will continue to do so.