Today is pretty much the wild west for EVs now that Tesla has shown that you can actually sell them to the masses. Because of this, everybody else wants to get in on the ground floor knowing that EV ownership is only going to rise and ICE car sales drop. Because of this, there are also a lot of money out there wanting to invest in companies that they hope will be one of the big automakers in the future.
It’s a combination of rising oil prices and Tesla showing you can get decent horsepower out of an EV. Since it’s cheaper to charge an EV off household electricty than fill up a car with gas you see more and more people switching to electric or hybrid electric vehicles.
Speaking subjectively, I bought a plug-in hybrid because I was angry at getting ripped off at the pump.
Yes, there are some key differences in electric motors vs. internal combustion engines/transmission powertrain that make the power source simpler to implement within a vehicle. Also, there is legacy company inertia against moving into something so new/different quickly enough… just look at how companies like Sears faded away while Amazon grow into a giant as internet shopping grew. Sears relied on catalogs/mail order yet didn’t see how to translate that knowledge into dominating the web. Same for many legacy ICE car makers, who already had so many vehicles to sell and keep in development, existing plants, existing supplier networks, existing dealer networks, etc. to consider when making a radical shift.
They were a little bit harder because they’re a new tech. There is always a good bit of learning to be had. A few years ago, a few companies have broken the ice, and proven that it’s a desirable and feasible tech, and learned the hard way about their issues. Many manufacturers took that info and started their own endeavors into EV’s, and we’re now seeing those products come to market.
Some of that is also fueled by countries and, within the US, particularly California promising to ban pure ICE cars. That change within each company can’t happen overnight, or within a year; it’s like 5 years minimum to swap over. So companies are gearing up to have a viable EV and Hybrid lineup for when that happens.
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