Special good morning to for making the least popular but most important argument about fleet electrification: EV-only extremism makes for good propaganda, but it's not a pragmatic approach to the problem.
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We've been on a ten-year sugar high from Elon Musk's alluring promise that electric cars are a "solved problem." And for the wealthy elite who buy Teslas, the "throw more batteries at it" approach really does work.
It only fails at the system level.
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For the next couple of years, the seemingly infinite promise of these big-battery EVs is going to turn into a premium segment knife fight. There are only so many buyers for the $70k average transaction price of these EVs, and that number ain't growing even as OEMs multiply.
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Tesla didn't just make a popular product back in 2012, it did so under the assumption it could scale forever, and Tesla floated past every problem on a rising tide of zero interest rate cash. Now it's time to get real, and the picture looks very, very different.
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So yes, Tesla created a popular premium vehicle segment. What it hasn't proven, despite its "secret master plan," is that EVs are a scalable solution. If batteries are the bottleneck, we need to follow Toyota's logic here and approach the problem with pragmatism, not propaganda.
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The problem is that Tesla has erased distinctions between perception and reality, as far as Wall Street is concerned. Propaganda has been enough for investors, and it still is based on Tesla's valuation. Getting real going forward requires re-unifying theory and practice.
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There is also the very real question of 'Who gets to help' with climate change.
Weather is very egalitarian; it doesn't care how much money you have. But EVs, because of their dependence on finite mined minerals for batteries, preclude broader societal participation. 1/
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2/ By first democratizing who gets to participate in reducing carbon emissions, the shared goal gets spread more broadly.
EVs as end-solution are fine; but the transitional period is arguably more important. And the fact that most EV owners also own ICE vehicles is telling.
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