You’ve Formed Your Opinion on EVs. Now Let Me Change It.: Frozen Teslas, unsold inventory piling up at dealerships, production woes—yet sales of electric vehicles still continue to rise. Dan Neil is here to address all your EV fears and doubts. (Dan Neil, 1/19/24, WSJ)
If you think EVs are too expensive, just wait. The mother of price wars is coming consumers’ way, as Tesla continues to leverage its low production costs to undercut the competition. Tesla watchers also expect the company to unveil its long-awaited Model 2 later this year, with a similarly long-awaited $25,000 price tag.
Charging: After a decade of self-sabotage, most automakers decided last year to adopt Tesla’s NACS charging standard in the U.S., which will allow their customers to use Tesla’s robust Supercharging network, like civilized people. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is targeting a half-million public fast chargers in the field by 2030. Pretty soon range anxiety will be returned to neurotics.
Some FUD is simply out of date. For example, the prohibitively high cost of batteries. In 2023 alone, lithium battery pack prices fell 14%, according to BloombergNEF’s Zero Emissions Vehicle Factbook—a tenth of where it stood a decade ago. The race to the bottom on cost will also eliminate the use of battery tech’s most problematic material: cobalt. Advanced lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) batteries use no cobalt and have a lot of other agreeable properties, too, including being more durable, less flammable and cheaper.
The most pernicious FUD may be the idea that EVs can’t move the needle on carbon emissions. They already are. EV adoption cut demand for oil by 1.8 million barrels in 2023, according to BloombergNEF, thereby avoiding 122 megatons of carbon-dioxide emissions.