Quote:
Originally Posted by bayarea328xit
a massive battery in their vehicle all the time can't be the optimal solution if the majority of vehicles need a range of 300 mi with 0-60 times in the 6-9 sec range.
It seems very surprising to me that the answer to the above optimization problem would be overwhelmingly pure-EV
|
Great points ... I'd offer the formula is: infrastructure -> costs -> vehicle design
That is, gas is cheap because infrastructure to support its looonnnggg fragile supply lines is high use: oil/coal/ng mining/refining, shipping/trucking, storage, distribution, outlets, etc. Those are some damn expensive supply lines - cut consumption by 30%+ permanently and what happens?
And power outages / supply shortages are becoming more common in more states ... nobody's happy about that, so there's going to a big desire for energy generation & distribution security (that doesn't start forest fires).
Combining our points, the notion of "a car" will transform over the next 15 years due to:
* Energy security desire (growing)
* EV costs (dropping),
* Lyft/Uber/MyDriver personal mobility crowdsourcing (growing)
* Autonomous vehicles, delivery infrastructure (growing)
* Work-from-home (growing)
Mobility problems will breakdown into short vs long trips & and frequency. (As an investor, I'd put it as: invest in the home, disinvest in HQ - meaning anything delivery or home related booms, anything commuting or headquarters related busts.)
For mobility/"cars" solutions break out into a few buckets:
(1.) No car
Lyft, Uber, autonomous public vehicles?
(2.) Short hop city car
Limited-range EV for around town frequent trips primarily charged at home or via induction at the grocery store. low range, small batteries, slow charge, and relatively cheap (even <$10k would be possible)
(3.) Long range / work vehicles / sports cars
The family truckster, pickup truck, or track monster with a large battery, high-speed DC charging, relatively expensive. We already see this starting with Taycan 800V vs Tesla
Right now, EVs as a product necessarily have to do it all to prove viability, but once enough consumers get used to owning/operating one you'll get much larger product portfolios and they'll sell a LOT of EVs (another topic: subscription revenue)
As infrastructure and bureaucracy shift to electric, (and energy generation shifts to distributed vs centralized?) gasoline will become more inconvenient and expensive in cities and suburbs - it'll still be available (esp rural), but more of a speciality item like horse feed, stables, and saddle makers. I still see horses all the time in Rancho San Antonio, you just don't see them on I280 except on a trailer.
And, from a human behavior perspective, people won't want to worry about charging AND a special trip for gasoline ... which, as I said, will KILL the convenience store business model likely to be replaced by Nuro-like autonomous neighborhood delivery vehicles. If you live near Mountain View you've seen them all over.
Net-net: today's EV product portfolio is not tomorrow's; once people get used to charging they'll want speciality vehicles optimize for their use-cases.