The future of the auto industry is the electric car. The administration says it wants most of the cars sold at the start of the next decade to be electric vehicles (EVs). Over a dozen major car companies are spending over $100 billion in aggregate to catch industry leader Tesla. Tesla continues to grow and sold 400,000 cars last month. The industry just hit a new challenge. Most Americans are not interested in an EV when they buy a new car. That saps a huge amount of demand out of the market. (These are the 13 biggest electric vehicle business failures in American history.)
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According to CNBC “Only 19% of respondents to the poll, by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, said it’s ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ likely they would buy an EV as their next car.” Most car companies assume that the figure is astronomically higher, or they would not make their current level of investment.
The primary objection to EV purchase is not the cars themselves but the number of charging stations. The concern is real. Charging stations are in short supply, at least in comparison to gas stations. Once people get outside cities, chargers are relatively rare. And there is the question of waiting time. Charging a Tesla battery can take as little as 15 minutes and as long as several hours, depending on whether people have their battery fully charged. Filling a gas tank takes five minutes, and there are 145,000 gas stations in the United States.
It will take years before there are tens of thousands of charging stations in America. However, some people will charge their cars at home. People on trips over 300 miles will need to charge their cars. They often have to drive more than a short distance to find a charging station. The inconvenience and time involved are significant.
Millions of Americans will buy a new car in the next year. In the next two years, that figure will be over 20 million. EV car makers need to recalibrate the size of the market and how much money they can make, turning the new age of engines into profits.
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