To be fair, there's always been a lot of niche 'technologies' in vehicle propulsion - hydrogen, fuel cells, LPG, that may or may not have been the future. It's taken a leap in battery technology and worries about climate change at the same time to make EV's the 'right choice'.
It's very hard for large companies to change direction (car companies have a 100 years of momentum behind them). They tend to do so by buying niche players - small car and technology companies that have proven (or nearly proven) themselves.
I don't think Tesla is going to be bought up but I wouldn't discount the legacy car and oil companies from surviving.
If gas station companies start installing charging stations at every one of their stations the market may look very different.
Hydrogen fuel cells were a stupid option paraded out repeatedly (usually by legacy companies using it to say EVs were bad) and Tesla said as much at the time.
The predictions about battery tech improvements were reasonable ones and publicly made (arguably easy to accept).
Legacy companies could fix this in theory, but in practice they wasted ten years and aren’t making the moves necessary today. I’d bet against them.
> Hydrogen fuel cells were a stupid option paraded out repeatedly (usually by legacy companies using it to say EVs were bad) and Tesla said as much at the time.
Hydrogen fuel cells are not a stupid option.
Charging is here the stupid option. When 50000 houses need each 20KWh each night at almost the same time they will destroy the local power lines which were not designed for this.
> The predictions about battery tech improvements were reasonable ones and publicly made (arguably easy to accept).
Well battery improvements shall have come earlier (in 100 years there was almost no improvement). Even now the dream of having your battery to save your solar power is still mostly a dream.
> Legacy companies could fix this in theory, but in practice they wasted ten years and aren’t making the moves necessary today. I’d bet against them.
Legacy companies want profits which are rising, to please the stakeholders.
It's very hard for large companies to change direction (car companies have a 100 years of momentum behind them). They tend to do so by buying niche players - small car and technology companies that have proven (or nearly proven) themselves.
I don't think Tesla is going to be bought up but I wouldn't discount the legacy car and oil companies from surviving. If gas station companies start installing charging stations at every one of their stations the market may look very different.