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> For every Tesla there's a thousand little diesel trucks driving around on the african continent Nah, this isn't accurate. Tesla has sold over 1.5 million veh

> For every Tesla there's a thousand little diesel trucks driving around on the african continent Nah, this isn't accurate. Tesla has sold over 1.5 million vehicles (probably will get over 2 million by the end of this year)[0]. There's only approximately 30-40 million cars in the entire continent of Africa[1]. (And expand this to "little diesel trucks" isn't going to change the math much, and probably there's fewer of those.) Tesla is also scaling up, producing almost a million vehicles per year right now... over 180,000 last quarter, and they have 1 new factory in China that is expanding and 2 totally new factories (in Texas and Germany). So Tesla will soon be producing about as many new vehicles as all the new car sales in Africa (which has ~1 million new car sales per year [1]). And Tesla is just one provider. More cost-optimized electric vehicles, like are super popular in China (the Hong Guang Mini EV is $4500 [2]), are likely to be the big sellers in Africa. [0] https://insideevs.com/news/499678/tesla-model-3y-million-sales/ https://insideevs.com/news/499678/tesla-model-3y-million-sal... [1] https://lmc-auto.com/news-and-insights/african-auto-market-maturity/ https://lmc-auto.com/news-and-insights/african-auto-market-m... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56178802 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56178802

tinco 5y ago
Alright, so you're right there's a good chance Africa will have a largely electrified car fleet by the end of this decade. It doesn't ease my heart on the entire oil industry though, as personal transport / commute is just one piece of the pie. We still have transportation of goods and materials, which is something that's hardly electrified at all (I suppose rail is? though I'm pretty sure the big heavy ones are still diesel powered). And they still need to generate that power, and if oil really does become cheap enough for them, wouldn't they still buy it to turn it into electricity?
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  For countries without actual oil reserves, fossil fuels are pretty expensive. So I think it will really depend on where in Africa you’re talking about.

tinco 5y ago

Alright, so you're right there's a good chance Africa will have a largely electrified car fleet by the end of this decade. It doesn't ease my heart on the entire oil industry though, as personal transport / commute is just one piece of the pie. We still have transportation of goods and materials, which is something that's hardly electrified at all (I suppose rail is? though I'm pretty sure the big heavy ones are still diesel powered). And they still need to generate that power, and if oil really does become cheap enough for them, wouldn't they still buy it to turn it into electricity?

Robotbeat 5y ago
For countries without actual oil reserves, fossil fuels are pretty expensive. So I think it will really depend on where in Africa you’re talking about.