Reality Sucks -- EV Vehicles Still Account For Only Four Percent Of All Sales -- January 24, 2021

From the Taipei Times. How did we end up with this chip shortage? 

From India to China to the US, automakers cannot make vehicles — not that no one wants any, but because a more than US$450 billion industry for semiconductors got blindsided. 

How did both sides end up here? 

Over the past two weeks, automakers across the world have bemoaned the shortage of chips. 

Germany’s Audi, owned by Volkswagen AG, would delay making some of its high-end vehicles because of what chief executive officer Markus Duesmann called a “massive” shortfall in an interview with the Financial Times. 

The firm has furloughed more than 10,000 workers and reined in production. 

Companies appear to have been off in their calculations that traditional auto production was all but coming to a halt, and that new-era vehicles were almost here. 

In reality, talk of the death of the conventional auto industry has been premature. So were prospects around the technology upgrade that has been under way. 

Yes, demand has been down and slowing, but we have been hovering around “peak auto” for a while, with global sales of 70 million to 80 million a year. They fell 15 percent to 66.8 million last year. 

However, the expected onslaught of new-technology vehicles has not been as severe as the hype. Announcements of billions of dollars of investment covering electric to hydrogen and autonomous systems would have you believe that we have entered a new era of driving — or of being driven around. Yet electric and autonomous vehicles still account for only about 4 percent of all sales.