There’s been a lot of negative news around EV’s lately. Hertz slowing down their Tesla purchase, Ford postponing its investment, GM just continuing to make the absolute dumbest decisions with their EV’s, Toyota well being Toyota. Maybe I am over reacting but it feels like we are reaching some critical mass here and it feels bleek.
I mean Hyundai and Kia’s sales continue to rise. I think I saw an article yesterday that they are not slowing down and instead are ramping up their Georgia plant here in the US. They’re going to be neck and neck with Tesla towards the end of this decade, if not earlier.
That sounds like wishful thinking. We’ve heard the same from many other OEMs before, even the very same American OEMs that are now backing away from that big talk.
We heard this before these companies started releasing cars. It’s been 6 years since the Bolt/Niro/Kona came out (first mass market 200+ mile range EVs) and Hyundai/Kia’s strategy has been to release a bunch of 33-50k cars with 250-350 miles of range (and their sales keep rising) while the other mfgers started moving towards 70k and up vehicles. Ford bumped up their Mach E prices too by essentially making you spend 60+k if you wanted AWD and close to 300 miles of range.
I think as Hyundai/Kia hit better scale, open their factory here in the US to unlock the rebates, gain access to NACS, they’ll be able to meet Tesla in pricing and infrastructure and beat them on design. Software is somewhere they’ll struggle to compete, but I prefer having tactile buttons for a bunch of things compared to everything locked behind menus on a touch screen.