this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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this statistic does not account for Tesla loyalists, as three-quarters of Tesla owners indicated that they would continue with EVs.

Some people just like Elon Musk

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[–] MJBrune@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

Hasn't S&P Global Mobility been known to favor oil companies or had ties with them? I did some light searching and didn't see a connection immediately but I thought they were tied to oil.

Either way, https://www.spglobal.com/mobility/en/research-analysis/does-the-auto-industry-have-an-ev-loyalty-problem.html is a direct link to the study. It turns out this is about luxury car loyalty and space issues.

The Bolt saw households that went for gas power mostly turning to Chevrolet SUVs and trucks.

That's understandable as there aren't many large cars for EVs. Something the VW ID Buzz will fix if everything they present about the car is true. I am super excited about it and I am typically not excited about cars.

In terms of range and infrastructure, I feel like one concept theory that was originally pushed around at the start of EVs almost a decade ago was replaceable batteries. Drive up to a station, swap the battery out with a full one, and drive off. That doesn't seem like the direction we are heading but it might be a way to solve it. That said 200-250 miles with 30-minute charge times to get up to 80% should be enough for typical day driving in the USA.

That said, I also feel these studies reflect somewhat, not on loyalty for Musk but on brand loyalty. For a lot of people, Teslas are truly great and fast cars. In other cases, they are terrible. Not all of their cars have terrible build quality and there seems to be a point where build quality dropped. Equally, there are some great EVs out there including the Chevy Bolt. You can see that most Bolt owners are only switching because they need something bigger and still 63% of them would stay with an EV.

The issue is not price, range, or infrastructure. It's a lack of choice and a lack of build quality.