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by Avshalom
3156 days ago
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Well no, companies have been trying on EV every decade since the invention of the car. The Prius normalizing an electric drive train pushed full electric further into the mainstream then Tesla has. Granted Tesla's investment into batteries bumped Panasonics time line up a bit and bumped full BEV up a bit but a compelling mass market electric car on the market has been clearly inevitable since 2000. Edit: I changed it from "Tesla ... may have". To "Granted Tesla " to more accurately reflect my evaluation of Tesla's contribution to the time line. |
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But I would say it is more a case of "necessary, but not sufficient."
Toyota unarguably pushed electric into the unsexy, mass production, mass consumption mainstream. This was a necessary step.
But Tesla showed that electric COULD be luxury, performance, etc - not necessary for mass market - but the related headlines generated arguably were.
But also that _pure electric_ could be delivered with _more than enough_ range to eliminate range anxiety, even with "notably better than a Prius" levels of performance. And it could at least appear to be "mass manufactured" (even if, on Toyota/Chevy/Nissan scale, or if you will, BMW/Mercedes/Lexus/etc they really weren't). This WAS necessary, and did cause a tipping point that, IMHO led to the Chevy Bolt.
The Prius led to the Bolt evolutionarily.
The Model 3 led to the Bolt "by Marketing force."
And now we have a Bolt.. and basically no Model 3.
We'll see what happens in the next couple of years.