Every few months it’s fun to write a piece that asks, “what if most of the smart people are wrong?”
I just read a fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal discussing the $50 billion bet Volkswagen has placed on developing an electric car that is better than a Tesla. Should we be surprised that the best German Engineers, who built the diesel that nobody bought (at least in America) and then lied about its numbers, would build an electric car that wouldn’t work?
VW has now brought in new people, shoved the boss aside except for window dressing, and started over.
This was all predictable. It takes a crazy lone wolf like Elon Musk to pull off a viable electric car that can sell a half a million vehicles and satisfy a fairly high percentage of them. Musk has shown he can make an Electric, but to me he has not shown that there is a real mass demand for it, at least he did not in the year 2020.
I do think quite a few Electrics will sell in China because Chairman Xi is going to force them down people’s throats, but excuse me for being heretical, I don’t think most folks care whether a car has a plug or a gas cap, or floats on hydrogen. They want to get from one place to another, safely and comfortably. They either do not care or accept the concept that an electric car, which is really fueled by coal, natural gas, or God forbid a nuclear power plant, will save the planet from the climate change that “smart people” tell them is happening.
Another surprise for you, fewer and fewer people care about cars and driving these days. I suggest you discuss this with your kids and grandchildren who are supposedly aching for these software engineering masterpieces. When I was 16, everybody begged to get a driver’s license on their birthday. Today many young people would rather ride their bikes.
I think Elon Musk already knows this. This is why he is hedging his bets by focusing on his batteries, spaceships, and tunnels to Las Vegas and Austin.
He has built a car for people to brag about, and he has become the richest person in the world by doing it, which may enable him to live on Mars until he is 140. Vehicle companies will sell 90 to 100 million things you use for transportation. Musk’s 500,000 electric cars along with what everybody else is producing have a puny 1% of the market. Now Google, Apple, and possibly the Vatican are working on Electrics because everybody knows they are the next big thing. Except, maybe they aren’t.
I watched a lot of football over the weekend. One insipid car and pickup truck commercial after another was followed by 797 car insurance advertisements. Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty. Please free me from them or I will Progressively lose 15% of my cerebral cortex.
There is a reason for the proliferation of GEICOs–the reduction in real driving. COVID and Zoom have diminished driving for almost a year. As a result, fewer accidents. State Farm has crushed it. Post-vaccine, people will still be working more remotely. Driving will shrivel. You can finish the story.
I will place my bet that Earth will survive despite the “Existential Threat” of sweat.
Enjoy your self-driving electric Volkswagen. I think I’ll walk.
Question: Does a Hybrid car make more sense?
