This morning, I saw the news that Jim Lentz, CEO of Toyota Motor North America, will be retiring as of April 1, 2020. One of the auto industry’s iconic auto CEO’s will no longer be with us as of next year. He joins other auto executives around the world who … [continued]
The Tesla Model 3 continues to dominate the US premium-class car market. In fact, it has dominated this market to such an extent that it has more sales in 2019 than all of BMW’s small & midsize models combined, all of Mercedes-Benz’s small & midsized models combined, all of Audi’s small & midsized models combined, all of Lexus’s small & midsized models combined, etc.
The Dutch plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) market is back at year-end-rush mode, doubling sales in November to 7,205 registrations. That translates into a PEV share of 18% in November, and pulls the 2019 PEV share to a record 11%.
Chris Paine, director of the movie Who Killed The Electric Car, shared some thoughts on the EV revolution with Forbes recently. Many of our readers will agree with his views.
Tracking monthly US auto sales by company or brand is one of the oddest-feeling things I’ve done in my decade or so covering cleantech. Perhaps that’s because the focus is on tracking non-clean tech. The fact is, though, it shocks me every month to see how many people still buy gasoline cars. Gasoline cars are far worse than electric cars currently on the market for the same cost (or even less). Nonetheless, there are so many people buying clunky, noisy, slow, high-maintenance, low-tech, high-depreciation gasoline vehicles every single day. Objectively, it doesn’t make sense.
When it comes to electric vehicle adoption, Norway is king of the hill. Nearly 2 out of every 3 passenger vehicles sold in Norway come with a plug. In October, the plug-in vehicle share was 59%, a bit higher than the 56% plug-in vehicle hold for January–October.
Yes, the Tesla Cybertruck stole the thunder from Ford’s Mustang Mach-E, which was dominating electric transportation news for a few days, and it seems like ages ago that Volkswagen unveiled the ID.3. Nonetheless, as much as we want to know what the consumer demand will be for the Tesla Cybertruck, perhaps a bigger question is trying to figure out where Ford and Volkswagen are headed with electric vehicles. Tesla will be here, Tesla will sell EVs — a lot of them. What about Ford? What about Volkswagen? And which models and brands are their electric vehicle offerings really competing with?
Back in 2015, when we shopped EVs and then leased a Nissan Leaf, we were the primary EV educators up to the point of sale, not the salespeople. Even during the test drive, we had more knowledge. Our grasp on the function and reality of electric cars seemed to overwhelm the salesperson. We passionately emphasized why we wanted an electric car. Our sales person remained less than enthusiastic.
Dear Automakers,
You should support the environment. In fact, without it, we would not be able to buy your cars. I mean, we would be dead if we didn’t have clean air to breathe. Same problem if a climate disaster kills us, or ruins our livelihood.
Byton doesn’t do anything halfway. That much is obvious by now. The company never shied away from gigantic work and its gargantuan Nanjing production facility is a testament to its ambition. I met Mark Duchesne, who is the Vice President of Manufacturing Operations at Byton, at the Frankfurt Auto Show earlier this year. What he had to tell me was impressive.
