There's a huge difference between the adaption of a hand-held technology that only costs a few hundred dollars vs. something that costs tens of $1000s, and relies on others to make that tech more viable for the user. For EVs to become mainstream, the govt will need to give out incentives to owners of shopping centers, apartment buildings and offices to invest to retrofit their properties to add charging stations. Not just a handful per property, but dozens. That costs a lot of $$; it's not like just adding wifi at the mall. Private property owners won't shell out that investment without incentives unless they see that they will lose customers/tenants/revenue without it, which means that customer demand for EVs must be high. Which is less likely to take off without a large network of charging stations.

 

Not to get too deeply into politics here, but government regulations don't always take customer demand (or lack of demand) into consideration. Businesses are often forced to do (or not do) things that customers don't always agree with. The only way around it may be to elect different officials...or judges.

 

Yep- that and lots of people flat don’t want them. And here in the USA, pushback is real. We don’t just blindly go along with things we don’t like. Administrations come and go, it’s not one sided.

 

I've linked this article before because I think it does a good job of putting it into perspective. The gist of the article is that we WILL make the change to electric, but not nearly as fast as many think. Below is a link and some snippets of my choosing. I recommend reading the entire article.https://www.caranddriver.com/feature...vs-are-coming/

 

Fast charging, and access to charging as conveniently as you have access to gas stations would negate the need for shopping centers and apartment complexes to put in chargers. Apartment complexes and shopping centers don't need to have gas pumps, and when you have 400+ miles of range you don't need to be charging the car every time you park.

When charging is really quick, you also don't need as many chargers because they turn over much faster.

 

EV adoption rates will increase once incentives actually make sense across each state. Then it would be up to gov policy to enforce some sort sales ban on combustion motors. Once they reach 50%, incentives will fall back, prices will normalize. What that new normal will be is anybodys guess.

 

I get a bit confused by these EV vs gasoline power discussions some times. Electricity doesn't just fall from the sky (well in large usable quantities anyway). So fuel is usually burned to produce electricity. And worldwide, that fuel is predominantly coal, followed by some type of petroleum product. So please explain how we're cleaning everything up by switching to EVs?

 

Friends don't let friends buy Cadillac.

 

Speaking from Iowa at least there were more Cadillac dealers in the 80s. Smaller towns had dealers that sold and serviced Cadillac and now it's more of the bigger communities only. Not sure that is any different than other brands but it's all changed over the years.

 

EV tech is the now, not the future. GM is 10+ years behind on innovation. However, I don’t think it’s smart for them to thin the network- they penetrate well in rural, geographically diverse areas and have the most market share there. Lincoln, who I do national marketing work for, is very similar. It’s also an older demographic. They really can’t parallel Lexus or MB, and trying to do that is unproductive.

All of that said, I think it was a great move for the dealers to take the buyout, since they’re probably multi-line stores anyway for which Cadillac sales account for <20% of new sales.

 

Yeah. Just like I wasn't going to let my kids use a cell phone while in high school.....that lasted for about 15 minutes :^).

 

A lot of interesting discussion. The luxury market is clearly moving the most quickly to EV, and I'd say mostly in response to Tesla and emissions requirements. Whether or not they are true luxury vehicles, people with the money to buy Teslas are choosing them over traditional vehicles at a high enough rate that other luxury makers cannot ignore it. I live in the northeast in an upper middle class neighborhood. I'd estimate 10% of homes in my development have a Tesla now, including my wife's which replaced a Lexus. For multi-vehicle households that can garage charge it is very appealing because an EV commuter car has so many benefits over ICE. From a regulation perspective it is an uphill battle to maintain performance in an ICE while meeting ever stricter emissions standards. If you don't diversify you run the risk of being shut out of markets that choose to incentivize EVs. Markets like Norway are already moving quickly to electric, and given the unpredictable nature of political sentiment another Norway could emerge at any time. China is clearly focused on reducing emissions in the long and short term, and no maker can afford to become marginalized there.
All that said, I would have probably taken the buyout if I was a Caddy dealer here in the northeast. To me, the brand lacks direction. I would worry that a big push to EVs will lose steam as sales fall short, and investment is never recouped.

 

They don’t have to make money to reinvest. They just issue another $5,000,000,000 in stock to the public.

 

EV is the future, and there is no stopping that. Let me first start out by saying, I was one of those skeptical about EV's, until I finally leased one. Let me explain. My wife drives a 2013 Toyota Sienna. With 2 kids, it served us well with tons of family trips, hauling stuff and so forth. Now my kids are grown. My daughter is now in college and my son will be in college next year. So now my wife mainly drives it 99 percent of the time to work and doing errands by herself, putting on it easily 50 miles a day. With the cost of gasoline in California at $3 plus, it's costing us over $200 a month just on gas. With maintenance and wear & tear, add on an additional $20 or $30 a month. So I looked for several options such as downsizing to a more fuel vehicle, and the cheapest option came to leasing an EV.

We ended up leasing a Hyundai Ioniq EV. With rebates from the state of California as well as Federal rebates, it came out to $190 a month for a 36 month lease. Electricity costs me .04 a mile, or $1.33 a gallon equivalent. It has a 178 mile range, and with over 40,000 chargers in the Bay Area (including my wife's work), a charger is never more than 5 minutes away in an extreme emergency. By parking our van and only using it for long trips, we are in positive territory from a monetary standpoint. And having to never go to another gas station is such a plus.

Right now EV's are more a utility. But once they become more adopted by the public and battery efficiency and range is increased, their prices will come down. As an owner of an IS350 and lover of NA engines, I will say that those who criticize them have mostly never driven one. A lot of EV owners would tell me that once you drive one you can't go back, I now know what they mean. They drive amazing. Today's modern EV motor is smooth, quiet and the torque is instant. At 70 to 80 miles an hour, you feel like your drifting. It's almost eerie.

I love gasoline engines and have loved them all my life, but once EV's get cheaper, battery technology gets better (and it will), I will have one as my primary car and my Lexus as a weekend car

 

What if you hate leasing?