Pretty good article relevant to some of the debate/discussion that led to the starting of this thread:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-12/even-tesla-can-t-overcome-australian-hostility-to-electric-cars
Even Tesla Can't Overcome Australian Hostility to Electric Cars
22 hours ago —
What I got from that article is lack of government subsidies... New tech should stand on its own n my opinion. Sink or swim on the consumer market. AU also has the same long distance driving issues the USA has... and limited charging out in rural areas.
The article came on strong as to assuming that subsidies should be in place. Strong policy action like subsidies is something that some of us see as justified, within free market economics principles, in severe property damaging pollution situations, and/or if the situation is actually life and death. I do see this as one of those situations, but I'd personally prefer to see additional or other alternative policy actions like introductory and then escalating taxes on the polluting activity and then ultimately bans. In any event, I can see how, if a person doesn't think there are completely serious property- and even life-harming matters at stake, then a person might well see demands for subsidies as wildly out of place. There seem to be substantial numbers of people in Australia and other countries who do not see property- or life-harming matters as being at stake, and many of them see the subsidies as out of place.
For purposes of this thread (an attempt to predict the future sales of an innovative product), it doesn't matter whether if we agree or disagree that there is a massively-property-damaging and even life-taking development in play. It just matters that we make a prediction and see what comes of it. Of course, we each have the right to use any and all reasoning we think appropriate, especially if we are considering putting money on the line, and mine is that the pollution problem will become sufficiently apparent to so many people on the globe within the last few and next few years that such strong policies will be put in place that the sales numbers will necessarily reflect this, and that by December 28, 2037, we will be well beyond the bet threshold of 20% of global vehicle production. In other words, the bet is not just on the economics and competitiveness of a product in the marketplace, and on whether industry participants will shift production fast or slow, but it is a bet on the direction of the natural environment, and on humans and whether they will establish policies that incent the shift.
The bet description did not say if the bet includes PHEVs. We did have a fairly hostile-to-EVs-seeming (sorry, but he did seem that way to me) Australian weigh in awhile back insisting that it must be for just BEVs. But he's not the one who spelled out the bet originally. So, as far as I know, that is just a talking point and not the original/official bet proposition. To my knowledge, nobody has actually taken the author up on the bet, but it still functions as a useful discussion point and "gentleperson's wager" so I'll say that my bet is that, even counting only BEV, we will be there by 2037. Perhaps if others here wish to state how they would bet if it is just a gentleperson's wager with no money on the line, then it might be fun.
With all that said, I want to spell out that there is an under-discussed (in my view) way that the internal combustion engine could hang on. Even given my personal views as to the consequences of pollution issues, for the bet, there is at least one scenario where many of the existing ICE's could remain on the road for longer than some EV advocates now realize, and even where the race to create BEVs and PHEVs could (maybe, I'm not sure) slow down. The scenario is if someone further develops a zero-carbon drop-in-replacement for gasoline and one for diesel. I do think this is do-able, but the question is what is the cost of production now, per gallon, and how fast would that cost of production come down with higher scale production and more development of innovative production approaches. Here is a link to a project by some credible players, where this is being done in small scale:
https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/2020/company/porsche-siemens-energy-pilot-project-chile-research-development-synthetic-fuels-efuels-23021.htmlPorsche and Siemens Energy, with partners, advance climate-neutral eFuels development
12/02/2020
Such a scenario discussion is over-simplified - I'm not sure how the differences in miles per Megajoule efficiencies would impact things, for example. But I'm just saying that it is within the realm of possibility. Heck, it might even be, technically, the quickest way to low-carbon and low-pollution, if it would allow a lot of existing vehicles to stay on the road and delay the need to recycle them or create replacements for them.
There is still the matter of determining how things would go if this were purely a market and technology question. How quickly would the new technology take over? Many consumers do seem to think EVs are in some ways better (especially if they've had access to driving one of the better ones), irrespective of environmental issues. Heck, my own license plate reads some variant of "Better Car" because if anyone asks why I bought it, that reason is near or at the top of my list (it's also a "better car" than the insulting short-range EVS that were offered by the competitors). I don't know what I would predict if we take the pollution and property and health issues out of the equation - if it were more of an everyday new technology question. I think the answers would be in part dependent not only on manufacturing costs and consumer preferences, but on manufacturer decision making. Many of the manufacturers, in my opinion, are caught in some sort of "Innovator's Dilemma" , or similar, and have been wringing their hands trying not to get into the business very quickly (even if they knew their customers wanted the product, in my view).
