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This doesn't change much. If you want to buy an EV from Audi, you can do it. Electric cars are so dumbed down, it's really simple. If people would read the art

This doesn't change much. If you want to buy an EV from Audi, you can do it. Electric cars are so dumbed down, it's really simple. If people would read the article to know why: taking pressure off supplies, and likely dropping demand. There has been a big crash in electric car demand this year, you can see this everywhere, from lithium prices to Tesla having to drop it's prices multiple times. It hurts my eyes to see people in HN saying that it's really important to invest in R&D, those companies have been always investing in R&D. But creating a new electric car model is literally day-to-day business.

thebruce87m 3y ago
Everything I read says that sales are up this year for EVs, so you have a source for the “big crash” in demand?
- addicted 3y ago
  Sales are marginally up despite significant price drops and the phasing in of additional govt subsidies. That being said I don’t understand the doom and gloom around EVs. The spike in gas prices with the attacks on ships in the Red Sea has reinforced the importance of EVs even further if any reinforcement was indeed needed after the Russian war. The industry isn’t growing as massively as expected. But the entire concept has been completely proven at this point.
  - addicted 3y ago
    On second thoughts I think I know why the industry is scared. The future is Chinese. The Chinese are absolutely destroying every other country in EVs. It seems to me the Western automakers’s response is to ostrich up and hope their governments protect them.
matthewdgreen 3y ago
The R&D here is finding ways to lower manufacturing cost (mostly battery pack costs) to the point where European cars can be cost competitive with what’s starting to come out of China. This is both R&D and “day to day” manufacturing, because a lot of these cost improvements are only achieved by growing the scale of manufacturing. EVs are the future, particularly in Europe. Chinese companies (subsidized by the government) seem to be working through the scale and knowledge improvements needed to win that market. European makers are behind, and seem determined not to catch up.

thebruce87m 3y ago

Everything I read says that sales are up this year for EVs, so you have a source for the “big crash” in demand?

addicted 3y ago
Sales are marginally up despite significant price drops and the phasing in of additional govt subsidies. That being said I don’t understand the doom and gloom around EVs. The spike in gas prices with the attacks on ships in the Red Sea has reinforced the importance of EVs even further if any reinforcement was indeed needed after the Russian war. The industry isn’t growing as massively as expected. But the entire concept has been completely proven at this point.
- addicted 3y ago
  On second thoughts I think I know why the industry is scared. The future is Chinese. The Chinese are absolutely destroying every other country in EVs. It seems to me the Western automakers’s response is to ostrich up and hope their governments protect them.

matthewdgreen 3y ago

The R&D here is finding ways to lower manufacturing cost (mostly battery pack costs) to the point where European cars can be cost competitive with what’s starting to come out of China. This is both R&D and “day to day” manufacturing, because a lot of these cost improvements are only achieved by growing the scale of manufacturing. EVs are the future, particularly in Europe. Chinese companies (subsidized by the government) seem to be working through the scale and knowledge improvements needed to win that market. European makers are behind, and seem determined not to catch up.