The Mexican has some interesting expressions to say that a product seems expensive. One of them is to exclaim “And what does it do, does it fly or what?”. Another common one is when, upon hearing the price of a product, one questions “Don’t they lose him?”. I wonder what they would say if they knew that, by selling a Mustang Mach-E for $1,699,000 (in Mexico) or an F-150 Lightning Platinum for $91,995 (in the United States), Ford lost, in the third quarter of this year, 36 thousand dollars for each vehicle it sold.
Losses from its electric vehicle division are forcing the brand to reduce production of both models, due to low demand, as well as to stop a planned investment of 12 billion dollars in the sector. And she is not alone. General Motors is going to delay production of the electric Silverado for at least a year, because demand is lower than expected.
Is it the end of the fever for electric cars? Not necessarily, but the market appetite, at least in this part of the planet, is no longer as great, for several reasons.
Although the prices of electric vehicles have fallen, they are still more expensive than gasoline or diesel vehicles and people are less willing to pay for it every day. The so-called “early adopters” (those who like to always have the latest), have already shown off their cars and are also tired of looking for the still scarce fast chargers. They also realized that, when they have to pay for electricity on the street (in the US), the cost is similar to that of using a car that runs on gasoline. Not everyone can have a house with a garage and install a solar system to charge the car.so that the cost of moving is one third vs one of internal combustion.
The American shows signs that he prefers gasoline. Buick dealers, for example, asked whether they preferred to sell the franchise or invest in adapting their dealerships to electric vehicles, about half decided to sell them, at least according to Automotive News.
Listen to Akio
The used electric market is also complicated. Few dealers accept an electric as a hitch. Part of this is due to two brands: Tesla and BYD.
The brand led by Elon Musk had for itself, for a long time, practically the entire universe of electric cars in the world.. It had the luxury of selling them at the price it wanted and reaching a profit margin close to 30%, something that other brands could barely dream of. Its price caused many to confuse the brand as a premium vehicle manufacturer. But when China began to work in the direction of electric vehicles – with BYD at the helm – and began to threaten Tesla’s leadership, it was forced to cut prices..
I could do it, so much so that Models 3 and Y dropped their price by around 20% to the public. The other brands, which had made (and are still making) heavy investments in electric cars thinking about prices similar to those of Tesla in 2022, are either cutting those investments, like Ford and GM, or will do so sooner rather than later, because there are fewer clients and those that exist, are not willing to pay what they thought.
Yeah, In China the electric market grew 29% from January to Septemberdespite the fact that the government withdrew incentives for electric vehicles. In Europe, some predict an expansion that would lead to sales of just under 10 million electric vehicles in 2030. However, China is real, that is, it is what is happening now, thanks to the arrival on the market of less expensive electric cars, mainly from BYD, which did not surpass Tesla this year, as imagined, due to the lower prices than the American company, but it will probably be number one in 2024.
The reality is that electric ones are still expensive – more than internal combustion ones -, inconvenient – due to the difficulty of finding and installing chargers and the time it takes to charge them -, they still generate anxiety about running out of battery and not being able to go and return to distant places due to autonomy and charging time.
The current Chairman and former CEO of Toyota, Akio Toyoda, is absolutely right: electric vehicles are not the only path to the future of zero, or lower emissions.
2024-01-01 15:05:38
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