Too Many EVs? -- February 3, 2019

Updates

February 9, 2019: profit margins on EVs incredibly small; if it weren't for government mandates, auto manufacturers would not be making them.

Original Post 

Over at oilprice: Are automakers overestimating EV demand?

Electric cars were the stars of the Detroit Auto Show this year and they have been garnering a lot of attention from the media generally amid increasingly urgent talk about climate change and how the world is failing in the fight against it. Every self-respecting automaker has at least one EV in the pipeline. The biggest ones have several. And all of these new EVs are scheduled to hit the market in the next few years. A pileup may be coming.

The pileup could be “of epic proportions” as AlixPartners warned in a study.

By the end of this year alone analysts expect almost a dozen new EVs to make their appearance in showrooms across the United States. Some of these will be direct competitors of Tesla, which currently boasts an impressive 83 percent of the U.S. battery electric car market.

The “threat for Tesla” angle in EV reporting is a popular one and indeed a 83-percent market share is an unsustainable one in any industry. But with Tesla’s brand loyalty, concerns about the company’s future sales may be premature. What is not premature is a worry about that pileup AlixPartners warned about.

The world’s biggest carmakers are pouring billions into electric vehicles motivated by government incentives and strategies envisaging the phasing out of ICE vehicles in some markets. From the pro-EV perspective, the time is just right to launch as many electric cars as one can design and manufacture. All the big carmakers have developed EV manufacturing platforms and are preparing to put them to good use. Millions of EVs are coming to the market. There is just one problem with that: actual sales statistics.

The other side of the coin: if you have a home, a 220-volt outlet in the garage, at least two other ICE vehicles, and are in the market for a new (additional) car this may be the year to consider an EV. Prices could plummet if millions of EVs come to the market, and American only "need" hundreds of thousands.

Total number of EVs sold in the US in 2018: 360,000.

Worldwide: 2 million.