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Originally Posted by chassis
Car companies are bleeding their way (profit-wise) into a hoped-for EV future. Ford last quarter lost $1.3b in the EV division which works out to approx $33k per vehicle loss. EV pricing and sales volumes are softening.
A question is whether car companies have enough blood in the body to continue bleeding before the bloodmobile arrives, which is the hoped-for EV age. Or will they staunch their own bleeding and embrace either a dual-fuel world or retrench back to an ICE landscape?
https://shareholder.ford.com/Investo...rterly-results |
An interesting business discussion would be, what would have happened if all seven major automobile manufacturers set off to build the modern large-battery electric car 15 years ago and took a piece of the capital investment dollars that propped up Tesla for the last 13 years. The reason Ford Model E division loses $1.3B a quarter is the company is self-investing in its EV development. Tesla lost billions too, 10 years ago, but made-up carbon tax credits and over-enthusiastic capital investment of the single EV company kept it afloat. The investment was such because the Government is forcing the adoption of EV, so it was a safe bet. Tesla's advantage was building out its own (subsidized) charging infrastructure keyed to its architecture. Had all the other manufacturers followed the Tesla implementation model and had the investment backing, Tesla would not have prospered and survived to what it is today. How world seven proprietary EV charging infrastructures have worked? One worked, multiples wouldn't, there is no business case for it. There is barely a business case for the non-Tesla (CCS) public charging infrastructure now, it's going to get propped up by taxpayer funds on the order of 100 billion dollars.
Tesla makes just four (4) models off of two EV platforms. All of Tesla's Models are visually outdated. The legacy manufacturers are developing EV while still developing and supporting a vast legacy ICE vehicle fleet including light-duty trucks, delivery vehicles, heavy-duty trucks, and a highly diversified light-duty passenger vehicles.
Making it sound like Ford (and the others) lose $33K per EV (as compared to Tesla) is not framing the business situation from the correct view. Of course Tesla can make a profitable EV, that's all it does. It has no legacy costs to cover and has not re-platformed any of it's vehicles in the past six years. Tesla does not make a 4x4 ORV (Jeep, Bronco, Land Cruiser), does not make a sedan-based convertible, does not make a work truck, does not make a work van, does not have a heavy-duty line of cab/chassis trucks. It makes just two outdated platforms.