Quote Originally Posted by denkimi View Post
The main problem with EV's is that nobody buys them unless, like in norway, the government seriously fucks the market up with taxes and subsidies.

Manufacturers only build EV's and hybrids for PR reasons, and to comply with things like the stupid EU regulations. There is not much profit to be made with them since, as i said, nobody want them.

Even with huge subsidies in many countries, for every new electric car that is sold, 35 ordinary cars are being sold. So it's not going to take a long time before ev's have a significant global market share, it's just not going to happen. At least not before all the oil and gas in the world is consumed.
There is grain of thruth there. BUT - governments are fucking up different goods markets all the time, companies adapt and use this. Many things that we today consider normal public services could be outsourced as paid servises from public sector (use of roads for example - there is no reason why all roads couldnt be privat toll-roads, but we are used to have governments fucking up that market). So, governements are pushing out ICs by supporting EVs. And manufacturers use this. Which means - their marketing strategies follow this. BTW, this is not just EU thing. Globally biggest EV market is China, they yearly sales of "new energy vehicles" (EVs biggest subgroup there) exceeded 1 million units mark last year. In US EV sales dramatically increased last year and are estimated to be close to 0,5 M this year. India is somewhat lagging behind, but has just announces their goal to reach 30% level in 10 years through also fucking up market.
So - even though currently maybe small percentage of cars are electric, companies are adapting to market opportunities and currently it seems that opportunities lie in the direction where EVs share will continuously and rapidly increase. And thus this is where their long-term strategy is pointing, including marketing strategy