I remember this being explained as a bad buyer problem. Dealerships keep ordering full trim models and have trouble selling them but aren’t stocking entry-level models that everyone has advertised to them.
When no one buys the model 15k more than they budgeted for in a bad economy, the dealerships throw their hands up and say no one is interested in EVs.
It’s a shame that the traditional US (and japanese) auto industry decided that they needed to make every EV they could a truck or suv becuse that’s what they get the best margin on. Like there’s a reason that EV adoption isn’t a problem in europe or asia, and that’s becuse most of thier models are small enough to be affordable. While you may pay at the pump for a large suv or truck, with electric that cost comes up front in the form of the battery and motor needing to be far larger than they would otherwise be. Combine with the fascination with longer ranges than most people need even for cross country trips and the cost for most of these cars is far higher than it should be even before artificial scarcity and dealer shananagans come into play.
Why are they not Making more plug in hybrids? Look at Toyota with the rav4 prime and the new Prius prime, they are both almost impossible to get and regularly sell above MSRP. They are cheaper to make, cost less for the consumer, don’t have the range and infrastructure issues of pure electric, and take much smaller batteries.
Less kickback from a group I’d guess?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
With signs of growing inventory and slowing sales, auto industry executives admitted this week that their ambitious electric vehicle plans are in jeopardy, at least in the near term.
Several C-Suite leaders at some of the biggest carmakers voiced fresh unease about the electric car market’s growth as concerns over the viability of these vehicles put their multi-billion-dollar electrification strategies at risk.
Even Tesla’s Elon Musk warned on a recent earnings call that economic concerns would lead to waning vehicle demand, even for the long-time EV market leader.
These cars are taking dealers longer to sell compared with their gas counterparts as the next wave of buyers focus on cost, infrastructure challenges, and lifestyle barriers to adopting.
In July, the company extended its self-imposed deadline to hit annual electric vehicle production of 600,000 by a year, and abandoned a 2026 target to build 2 million EVs.
“People are finally seeing reality,” Toyota Motor Chairman Akio Toyoda said at the Japan Mobility Show, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The original article contains 566 words, the summary contains 167 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
