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Economy
EV Market Is Not Looking Good
2023-10-28
[Hot Air] The first obstacle for any product is building a customer base. Getting their product into the hands of enough satisfied people who help drive demand for more of your widget, whatever it may be. If your widget has a practical application to everyday life, and does some aspect of it in, say, more comfort, or faster, or more efficiently, then you have a leg up on the competition as well, and you can milk that puppy all the way to like bank.

Past examples would be restaurant chain Chipotle’s bouts with food poisoning scares. What did sammich, soup, and muffin competitor Panera do?

Business is a brutal sport when you already have a product a majority of your customers want and you are only trying to lure them to choosing yours.

Where business turns into a death match is when you’ve bought into manufacturing a product which already had limited appeal, but, even as your competition and costs increase, it’s losing what little appeal it had to begin with. This is the conundrum now facing the electric vehicle industry. As the buying public becomes more familiar with EVs — their manufacturing process, pluses and drawbacks — electrics seem to be losing even their shiny luster of new and cool. As it stands now, EVs are at risk of becoming a niche market instead of dominating the roads as envisioned.

People aren’t buying the hype or the vehicles, as EV truck makers are discovering.
Posted by:Besoeker

#6  @#3^
Well, Ford employees make enough to afford one.
IIRC, for years Colt tied the price of 45's to the wages they paid for master gunsmiths. (Those days are long gone.)
Posted by: ed in texas   2023-10-28 16:28  

#5  Without Govt. stepping on the scale (subsidies, tax breaks), they wouldn't sell any
Posted by: Frank G   2023-10-28 14:29  

#4  It's becoming apparent that EVs are a relatively small niche product. They appeal to rich greenies who want to feel good about themselves. Apparently no one else. And that market appears to be getting close to saturation, if it's not there already.
Posted by: Tom   2023-10-28 11:48  

#3  When Henry Ford build the Model T, he priced it so his factory workers could afford to buy one (along with most of the rest of the world.)

Now who can afford a Ford? What happens to the 'affordable' car?

Posted by: Seeking Cure For Ignorance   2023-10-28 08:42  

#2  Hybrids like the Prius had some promise. Tesla was always going to be a niche that survived of subsidies. These new mandates are a Wylie Coyote scheme.
Posted by: Super Hose   2023-10-28 08:41  

#1  Shows you that the authoritorians can do to a good idea.
Posted by: Grom the Reflective   2023-10-28 04:49  

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