All pure-play BEV companies are dying or are rapidly heading in that direction.
I keep on saying that this is not a viable business. BEVs are not the future and won't be anything but a tiny niche. It's entirely a false market created by subsidies, cheap loans and delusions by enthusiasts and investors. Things will inevitable come to an end.
Rivian is not going to live much longer. It only survives due to free cash from investors and subsidies. It will end once that cash runs out. Which is happening very fast...
The BEV industry is more or less a creation of the commerce division of the Chinese government. I will be curious to know the eventual outcome of all this.
The cheapest cars to own are all hybrids. No surprise that hybrid sales are surging. It is merely the market following the cost curve. The cheapest idea usually wins, all things being equal. Meanwhile, BEVs are extremely expensive to own. Demand is dropping dramatically, which will become apparently once subsidies and huge discounts go away.
This should come as no surprise. The most expensive cars to own are the ones that depreciate the fastest. Cost of fuel is nearly irrelevant for most people. As a result, expensive BEVs with rapid depreciation are the most expensive cars to own on a per mile basis.
Some thoughts on Tesla: Most of the rhetoric seems to be about blaming Musk for everything. While he is the source of many of the problems, it ignores the fundamental reality of the BEV market: Almost no one makes money in BEVs. And the ones that do, like BYD, have been revealed to be subsidized out the wazoo.
In reality, desperate cutting of everything expensive has been the only real option. A “sane” CEO would do the same, or run up huge losses otherwise.
Tesla is a one-trick pony in the best of times. A walking-dead company when facing adversity. It is nothing more than a stock pumping exercise with no real business strategy behind it. In reality, this is all the BEV market is about. Just a gimmicky way of looking green, and something that will inevitable fail.
People are making a lot of excuses for what the reason for this could be. But the obvious explanation is that building the charging network is devastatingly expensive. For a desperate company, this is a thing that has to be cut.
No shit. Jeep is not going all-BEV. If anything, Jeep will move away from BEVs for their serious off-road vehicles. They might still sell a few for the emission credits, but those won't be "real" Jeeps.
Ford is yet another company scaling back BEV investments and putting more into hybrids. Pretty soon, there will be very few companies pushing BEVs with much effort. Some will effective abandon BEVs, only making the absolute minimum they can get away with.
People who are excessively pro-BEV really need to look at what they're promoting. They are an old idea (older than internal combustion), and so much of the supply chain goes through China.
All signs point to this being an expensive mistake. The closest analogy I can think is the obsession with ethanol powered cars about 15-20 years back. It was really about the subsidies, not about being green.
This is why announcements about future BEV plans are meaningless. They can always making conventional cars at an "EV-only" plant. Also, governments are basically just subsidizing car factories with no assurances that they stay BEV-only.
Hyundai was a cheerleader for BEVs, but even they had to scale back BEV production in favor of more hybrids. Ironically proving Toyota right the entire time.
Hint: Very few people want cheap BEVs. If they did, they'd buy the Nissan Leaf in droves. In reality, a BEV is a compromise in physics and it is not possible to build a good & cheap BEV.
In fact, by the time you made all of the needed compromises, a PHEV would be a more cost effective solution. As a result, we already know beforehand that a cheap BEV will fail.
Reminder that BEV sales are propped up by huge subsidies. Take them away and the market for them shrinks dramatically. The drop in private buyers is really telling, as it suggests nearly all sales of BEVs are driven by sales to businesses. So very few individuals are buying.
Reminder that BEV boosters have gaslighted us into thinking that the grid can handle all of the BEVs they are imagining everyone will buy. In reality, there will have to be a massive amounts of infrastructure build-out. Both in terms of charging stations and grid upgrades. We will not save money by going with BEVs. We must look at alternatives if we want to be serious about green transportation.
Ford lost $1.32B from its Model E program in Q12024. However, Ford sold enough trucks and commercial vehicles to make up for that.
But of course, it is proving that BEVs are a nonsensical money-loser, and they only exist due to government support and desire to look green. In reality, it is a dead-end idea that pre-dates internal combustion.