Electric cars, too much talk and little manufacture

Everybody talks about electric cars and for some time car manufacturers have also talked about it, but they still do not make them in the necessary quantities.

If we look at the announcements and statements by the leaders of the large car manufacturers, they all announce that all their models will be electric by 2030, 2040, etc … but they still hardly make electric models today. These announcements have been made by GM, Toyota, etc….

And meanwhile, Tesla takes advantage of the situation and sells almost two-thirds of the electric cars that are sold in the world, with the exception of China, although there it also makes and sells electric cars.

Politicians also make statements in this regard and promise to promote the installation of charging stations, and subsidies for the purchase of electric cars (today they are more expensive than gasoline ones), but users have very few models to choose from at the time to buy, and few places to recharge when driving on the road.

Photo by Ernest Ojeh on Unsplash

The automotive industry is a century-old business, in which manufacturers based their know-how on engines and transmission systems, and suddenly they find that they have changed their pace. Now electric cars are based on a battery, an electric motor (which is much simpler than gasoline ones), a computer (with hardware + software), and sensors.

For them it is a “new world” in which they have to enter, and now that they have been mentalized to enter they must change almost everything except the chassis. They need a new supply-chain and have something to control the car, such as the battery and the software of the system.

Perhaps that is why all the large manufacturers announce large investments in the manufacture of batteries for their cars, because without batteries they would not have cars; and they also announce solid state batteries with higher capacities and shorter recharging times, so that their electric cars have greater autonomy, which is one of the weak points of current electric cars.

In short, all the big car manufacturers are making a lot of noise announcing new electric models, but all of them are for a few years from now. And at the moment they offer almost nothing real in the market.

There are about 1 billion gasoline cars and trucks rolling around the world (almost 300 million in the US alone), and with current manufacturing levels I don’t think we’ll change them for 30 years.

By then the temperature of our planet will have risen to around 2 degrees and nobody knows what will happen, but I’m sure nothing good.

I admit that today I am a bit pessimistic, but seeing what is happening around us (we talk a lot and do very little) every day it is harder for me not to be.