If luxury & exotic & sports cars were only dragsters and their value was measured in quarter mile times at the drag strip, then this might be a real problem. Luckily there are many other dimensions that these cars are sold on, and that’s not new.

I mean, go back to the 1980s when Ferraris and Lambos were nerfed (in the USA at least) by emissions regs and had no power, but people still bought them.

Likewise, the best selling sports car in history is the Mazda MX-5, which is not known for being super powerful.

The question is more about volume than about time, IMHO. What I mean is. . . Bringing any new automotive platform to production, electric or otherwise, costs several billion dollars. Then you need to sell about 50,000 units per year of that platform. So how long will it take to ramp up to that level of production-and-sales?

This is where GM (and several other companies) are having it rough. With Tesla already holding a big chunk of the EV market, and the remaining portion sliced really thinly between different car makers and multiple models and platforms, it’s proving hard for any new automotive platform to reach the scale where it becomes economically viable.

And when I hear about car makers delaying their plans, I have to just shake my head. That means extending their pain.

I don’t have an easy answer for them, though. They can either tough it out for even longer while the electric car market grows, or else they can make a Tesla-like leap of faith: Throw intense effort into designing an amazing vehicle, set up the production lines to produce it on massive scale, and trust that the masses of people will be eager to buy your amazing vehicle. And then die by the sword if you got the product wrong, Edsel style. But I don’t see GM or most other “legacy” auto makers attempting that. It’s too far outside the modern auto industry corporate culture (to include officers, board and shareholders too).

Because compact SUVs have replaced the average midsize sedan.

I think you mean CUVs or crossovers. Not that many people are buying SUVs.

Am I fighting a lost battle here? Have we got to the point where we’re just going to call every damn thing a SUV now, and then have to invent some new word for actual SUVs-as-such? I dunno. . . Off-roader? Or just go back to calling them all a “jeep” regardless of make and model?

In a nutshell. . .
Owner: My car doesn’t work! I take to dealer. . .
Dealer: We check car carefully. Your battery bad. That’ll be $50,000 please.
Owner: No way! I ask Hyundai Canada about this.
Hyundai Canada: Not our problem. Dealer handles this.
Owner: FML! I scrap car and blab to press.
Press: No way! I ask Hyundai Canada about this.
Hyundai Canada: Car was never checked carefully, nobody knows what was wrong with it. Too bad it was scrapped. We’ll pay to make the story go away.

It’s a short article, but it does nicely sum up a couple of points.

Sales are up and up, but what’s putting the hurt on car makers is the number of new models they’re launch into the market. Those sales are being sliced thinly, which means each model (or shared platform, even) is having difficulty racking up enough sales to get economies-of-scale and bring costs down. And if the models your company puts out aren’t attractive and don’t compete well against (let’s be honest) Tesla, then. . . Yeah. That’s a rough spot to be in.

Agree with the outcome, disagree somewhat on the reasons.

I think you are putting too much emphasis on new technology to fix the limitations that you imagine are holding back electric cars. From where I sit, the limiting factors on adoption rate aren’t, for the most part, things like range or charging speed. I’m sure there will continue to be some improvements on those fronts, and that’s all good, but the EV technology we have on the road today is already fit-for-purpose.

What’s holding things back more right now are under-developed charging networks (moreso in some parts of the world) and economics.

It took many decades of scaling up production and iterative cost reduction to make gasoline engine vehicles affordable. This is happening a lot quicker with EVs, but it’s still got a few more years to run its course.

Then there’s the whole dynamic of the used car market to consider. A lot of people simply don’t buy new cars. Even after production of electric cars is ramped up and they become dominant in new-car sales, it’ll take a while for them to filter throughout the used market.

The economic “tipping point” that I’m looking for will happen when more people are switching away from gas cars than want to buy new gas cars. Then we may start to see the used market glutted with unwanted gas cars at peanuts prices. That’s what happened to film cameras, and it became almost impossible for companies to keep producing and selling brand new film cameras, even though quite a few people were still shooting film. I could see something like that happening with combustion vehicles.

You can gripe if you want, but I found this article one of the best analysis of the subject that I’ve seen.

As somebody who’s been watching this scene for many years, it’s been funny to see how it has developed.

In the early days of Tesla, Roadster and Model S, they would get mentioned in the press with sort of gee-whiz “here’s the latest tech” tones. Then, if the story was featured anywhere that allowed user comments, the internet peanut gallery would pile on with every reason why they imagined EVs don’t/can’t work. There was nothing organized, just the natural reaction that we always see against any new idea whatsoever.

And then, as the numbers of cars on the road increased, and they became more familiar, we saw them on the road, we saw them on YouTube, the Model 3 ramped up, etc. . . The internet peanut gallery simmered down. They never shut off completely, but we got to a point where an article about an EV could come out, and the comment section would no longer be dominated by fiery debate about whether EVs can even function as cars.

I thought that would be the end of it. But no. . . Now we’re seeing the (seemingly) organized pushback in the media, in the press, etc. Now we’re getting the actual anti-EV propaganda with backing from. . . . somewhere. And it’s hilarious to me, because it’s so obviously too late to matter. The horse has left the barn. There are literally millions of electric cars on the road now, and people know what they are and what they can do. There is no more real mystery about range, charging, etc. It’s hard to explain to people why an EV can’t work when they’ve already got one, or their neighbors have got one, or their cousin has got one, etc.

I’ve never ran out of gas or out of charge, but I’ve come really close a couple of times because dumb reasons. I’ve also had “range anxiety” with a gas car a couple of times, because dumb reasons.

A guy with towing service here locally told me they haul “a lot” of EVs that ran out of charge. I have no idea what he meant by that. Maybe he meant that it happened once or twice and, those stupid electric cars, you cain’t go nowheres in 'em, har har! Or. . . Maybe it does actually happen more often, and the folks who did it really don’t want to talk about it on Reddit, who knows? My little town being roughly 70-100 miles away (depending on your direction of travel) from any public charging stations might have been a factor too.

Mine has lousy speakers, awful click action on the touch pad, doesn’t close up neatly, runs warm, doesn’t have the greatest battery life. I installed Mint because Pop!_OS drives me up the wall too much.

The touch pad is the worst, as I fumble trying to find the exact spot to press for a click to be recognized, and try to operate it without making the pointer jump off the item I was trying to click on.

I’ve got to admit, it sounds like a strange question to me. When I went driving in the mountains, I used the one-pedal driving (the only way my Tesla is set up), and I went the speed that I wanted to go (not super fast), and the car recovered whatever energy it was going to recover, and it was all good.

When I was at the top of Pikes Peak (a very fun drive BTW), I had 16% battery charge. By the time I made it down to Colorado Springs, it was reading 28%.

I also went over Guanella Pass, another fun drive, and at the observation stop, at the highest point of the pass, I parked next to a Leaf. I was surprised to see it there, and the driver admitted that was about the end of its range, but he didn’t seem concerned at all about getting home. Well, no wonder. . . I mean, if it was all downhill, then no problem.

The turbine-like whine from my Roadster’s gearbox when it accelerates or decelerates (via regen), and the sounds of the tires loading up, and the suspension working, and the feeling through the wheel of that manual steering rack, these tell me what I need to know. I think electronic noises would only distract and detract.

You guys know some people actually like driving manual cars because of the experience? In the same way that some people still love writing with Fountain pens.

I am a fountain pen collector. I don’t love writing with fake fountain pens that somehow emulate a nib and feed through software. (Actually rollerball pens might be the better comparison. I went through a brief phase of interest in them when I was a noob, but. . . Nah.)

Why is it a choice of FWD or AWD? Wouldn’t RWD or AWD make more sense?

Why is charging speed only 150 kW?

Car buyers are no longer running out and paying above list price for any electric car they can get their hands on. We’ve reached the phase where competition is starting to bite, and the best EVs are selling well, but the second-rate EVs are not. For producers of second-rate EVs that must look like a disaster, and they are crying over it.

SpaceX is not Tesla, and SpaceX are not getting subsidies handed to them. They’re selling launch services, of which the US Govt is a major customer, and SpaceX are way less corrupt than the companies they’ve disrupted. SpaceX is just a pure success story.

Not sure what your gripe is about the EV tax break incentive either. It was supposed to promote production and sales of EVs, and I guess it accomplished that. (I don’t think it was the best or most efficient way to go about it, but Politics.)

Ford was bailed out. It was just done in a different way, without going through bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, Ford, GM and Stellantis can’t find a plan to save their ass. What is it about american oems that cause them to want to bankrupt their companies every 10 years?

Stellantis is not an American OEM. Tesla is.

You’re right. The auto industry generally, and EV community maybe even more so, is bonkers for acronyms and jargon, and then often don’t even use our own jargon accurately. I wish we could dial it back.

It’s a lot more detail than I have seen in other articles about this subject.

The systemm which has been in development for three years, will be a factory option buyers can select in models created on the new modular architecture being developed for launch in 2026. This will include a production version of the FT-Se sports car concept, which is being seen as a spiritual successor to the MR2. The system is likely to be standard in cars with this kind of performance focus.

Hmm. So it’s going to be “standard” on the sports car, but can we at least bypass it, switch it off? If we can’t, that’s a deal breaker to me.

The system is almost entirely software-operated, with hardware tweaks limited to a clutch pedal and gear shift borrowed from a Toyota GR86, and a rev counter and some new switchgear to select the mode. Paddle shifts are possible, too.

Man, I really have no use for paddles.

Toyota is also developing ‘On Demand’ software for BEVs that changes the performance of the car to mimic certain other models.

This is the part I hadn’t seen mentioned before.

Then there’s a secondary ‘Engine start’ button, which fires an engine sound up - and a familiar one at that: a Volkswagen Golf GTI.

Please no. Just no.

All the usual manual features are there: engine braking, coasting and most amusingly no torque when you suddenly try and accelerate in top gear, which then brings with it synthetic sound of parts of the cabin trim rattling. It sounds like a gimmick but it’s actually all rather believable.

This is all against my automotive religion. But okay Toyota, I’m no fanatic. Just let me switch off all the nonsense gimmicks, and I’ll consider your car. If it can’t all be turned off, or if the added switchgear looks like it’s going to get in my way at all, just remember that there will be other companies selling EV sports cars without this, and I can buy from them.