I think part of the reason EV sales have slowed is because manufacturers still don’t get it.
I’m on my 2nd EV, hopefully soon to be 3rd, (plus an electric ATV) I live in a suburban part of rural Washington state and am from the middle of nowhere Montana, doesn’t get much more rural than that. I still love driving an EV.
The reason sales have slowed is America doesn’t trust the manufacturers.
EV owner frustrations are killing sales more than manufactures understand. EV purchasers are more “online” than the public as a whole. This means current and prospective owners are perhaps likely to purchased or recommend a brand that has let us down. More likely to be brutally honest about our frustrations online where everyone can see it. This highly informs others decisions.
VW has informally but publicly committed to software updates. Years in to their ID line, still have not really delivered. My FIL purchased my first EV, a 2021 ID.4. It has been at the dealership for 2 months waiting for the software update after it left him stranded on the side of the road.
Promising EV’s at 1 price and then raising it 50% before they hit the market even for those who reserved one, instant lost of trust. (Looking at you Ford and GM)
They are willing to throw billions at new manufacturing but won’t spend millions to keep promises. This is costing sales in way’s they don’t seem to understand.
Stop offering vehicles with crap range and then being disappointed when owners roast you for it on youtube. You have 2 choices, offer a kick ass charging network or great range. If you don’t do either, expect your sales to suck once you’ve burned through the enthusiastic early adopters.
Charging sucks! NACS will help a lot, but where are the MFG commitments to offer a reasonably priced modification of current vehicles to NACS? I realize its a process but these are the largest companies in the world and you’re trying to tell me they just can’t figure it out? So many people are now waiting to purchase because of that one feature. And we have no faith that mfg will offer us a pathway to it with current vehicles.
Electrify America is unreliable (looking at you VW) Almost every time I’m at an EA station at least one of the chargers doesn’t work. Hell I’ve been at 4+ bay stations where only 1 charger worked. They could put way more effort into making the charging network reliable at way less cost than the manufacturing changes for the vehicles themselves. You want assurance your manufacturing investments will pay off, get your shit together and fix your charging networks.
Honestly this list could go on.
The worst part is Tesla showed them all exactly what to do to succeed before most of them even dipped their foot into the EV world, and none of them bothered to pay attention well enough to win from the valuable takeaways. The things Tesla does right + the quality control experience of legacy manufactures could have been a big win for them, and they flopped.
Rant paused for now…
1·1 year ago- All cars in the price range of EVs (whether their EV or ICE) will slow down because of the current interest rates - that’s the point of raising rates , to slow down the economy.
- Legacy auto did neglect charging, that’s part of the plan to pretend there’s soft demand (they also claimed demand was soft in the 90s to fight California’s ZEV requirements ). Bad charging and resulting consumer hesitation is the plan working as they intended it and so is pricing EVs a LOT higher - it chills demand so they can pressure politicians to relax EV mandates and emissions rules.
- unfortunately, it’s a bit late to catch-up, they’re a decade behind and don’t have the capital to invest like newcomers did.