British auto companies have a long history of supremely reliable engineering, especially in electrical systems. I’m certain that a Jaguar EV will be the pinnacle of reliability and longevity. It might even rival the quality of the old British Leyland cars.
In my experience there are more Matt’s out there than jerks, but the jerks are pretty loud.
Should be no surprise to anyone who has looked at EV prices lately. I can walk into a EV Jag for the price of a RAV4. And given the lack of issues EV’s tend to have, I can see why people might spring for that.
It’s becoming a meme, but I think solid state batteries are the hold up when it comes to fun EV’s. The current battery tech is just too weak and too heavy.
What surprises me is the lack of hybrid sports cars. We an EV Mustang thing and the regular Mustang but no Hybrid option. It all just seems odd to me when supercar manufacturers are very much embracing Hybrids to make fast cars.
It didn’t seem like any manufacturers really anticipated it to slow down. I expected EV’s to rocket to maybe 20% market share before slowing, but that’s also why I question if this is a real downturn or just a temporary dip.
As for Hybrids, I think it’s notable because of how many get sold. Crunching the math in the article, Toyota alone sold about 1.5 Million hybrids, but that shouldn’t be a big surprise. I think the real takeaway here is that manufacturers should be making some hybrids rather than allocating so many batteries to half-baked or overpriced EVs. Making an EV just to say you have an EV is probably not worth it at this point.
I really cannot find any data whatsoever that suggests EV demand is slowing down
This horse has been beaten to the bone. YoY growth is still positive, but it is rapidly dropping off as 2022 had 65% YoY growth and 2021 had 89%. That’s not what you want to see when EV’s are only holding a single digit market share and just barely broke 1 million vehicles sold.
Combined with the fact that they are piling up at dealers, it tells you that supply has totally outpaced demand. We can’t hit 100% EV sales by 203X if it’s only growing 50% YoY at 7% market share with a downwards growth trend. Meanwhile, Toyota is hitting record profits partly with increased Hybrid sales (https://www.carscoops.com/2023/11/toyota-sales-profits-and-production-hit-record-levels/).
All this really means is that things are slow for whatever reason, and you probably shouldn’t pay a markup for an EV. The manufacturers are postponing production expansion until it makes sense.
Boomer Ragebait TBH
A lot of used EV’s in my area are Insurance Loss and Lemon Law vehicles lol. The battery is easily the most expensive component to repair. If the insurance costs have lowered them its likely because manufacturers are just eating some repair costs for them. The components haven’t gotten much cheaper.
When I was kid, a lot of dream cars debuted with silver as a press color: McLaren F1, Porsche 996 911, Aston Martin Db7, Benz CLK GTR, BMW Nazca C2, etc. Gordon Murray says its good for showing off technical designs and I agree.
Grey is dull, but Silver is high on my list.
just for the sake of being different. It reeks of “I need to feel special”.
Depends on the car for me. I like color, but usually the less shout ones: British Racing Green, Dark reds, metallic blues, etc. Neon green or bright red is fine, but I don’t want that much attention.
No one should be surprised that BYD is dominating. Doug Demuro did a review of the Han and its nice. A $43k EV with stitched leather interior and is intended to compete with vehicles that are priced above $60k.
Also, China is where the US probably should be with EV adoption, but to say that we aren’t committed is an understatement.
ISA technology relies on a car’s GPS location and matches it to a database of posted speed limits and onboard cameras to come up with the legal speed limit. Passive ISA systems warn a driver when the vehicle exceeds the speed limit through sound, visuals or haptic alerts, leaving the driver responsible for slowing the car. Active systems might make it more difficult to increase the speed of a vehicle, or even fully limit it from going, above a posted speed limit.
Privacy nightmare. We still haven’t done anything about cars getting hacked and now you want a system that can override my inputs? HELL NAW.
Interior quality sells the car for most people. If they get inside and it’s got all the bells and whistles, it’ll feel like a nice car. Most people don’t care how the car drives because they’ll spend most of their time cruising or sitting in traffic on poor roads.
Assuming you formed a legitimate company that sold fully assembled vehicles, I’d guess a minimum of $1 Billion USD in starting capital is necessary.
For starters, you will need a proper place to manufacture the cars. That’s going to cost at least 3 or 4 million before you buy equipment, which is probably around $1 million. Most of the money will go to wages for the employees. You’ll need enough to cover the first 3 or 4 years of expenses while you develop the first car. Then you’ll also need enough leftover for materials and production costs of the first car.
The startup cost is one of the big hurdles and most companies have a line of investors who help cover it.
This is determined by a lot of variables, but the main one being how many cars you can sell. GMA and Pagani are smart and try to secure buyers before the car even enters production. But they can do that because they are lead by legendary car designers who are trusted and have fans.
The easiest way to start a car company is to work up to it. Start by manufacturing and engineering specific parts and then eventually grow the network and talent pool until building a whole car from scratch is feasible. You also wouldn’t jump to stand-alone models, but do conversion kits and kit cars first. Those don’t require as many resources and are less of a financial risk.