Quote:
Originally Posted by Martinjlm
Best selling passenger vehicle in THE WORLD in 2023? Tesla Model Y.
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And apparently, it's going to stay that way for the time being.
From the looks of the GM dealerships, unless it's a pickup truck, I haven't seen ANY of them with any parking issues on the lot for ANYTHING around here. A few more SUVs trickling in here and there, but on one side of the Chevy dealership uptown for new cars/trucks, it's literally a bare lot. Pre-Covid they were jammed full.
First it was Covid, then chip issues, then supply chain issues (still, which dates back to Covid) and now the strikes. None of that helps.
This all has nothing to do with EVs specifically, but with UAW workers demanding (and probably getting) huge pay raises and concessions from the OEMs, pretty soon the government may have to subsidize the sales of many more vehicles than just EVs. And it will definitely raise the prices of vehicles even further. Inflation is sticking. Which sucks.
But now some of the OEMs are discussing doing a pause or cutbacks on several projects on their quest to go electric. Along with NOT building vehicles of nearly any kind, having the strike stuff to deal with along with supply chain issues that still persist, not as bad, but still, where is all this money needed going to materialize to keep things afloat? Oh, wait, while I get out my crystal ball...layoffs. Sure, I'll give you a fat raise, then lay you off. Problem solved. I know that's not the intent, but that's going to be the outcome. GM can't just print money and hand it out like other entities. So they have to tighten their belts. All the OEMs will being doing something like that. When? I don't know, but I'll bet it happens inside of 18 months if things stay the same. It may not, but I'm giving it a 60% chance it does.
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Some people on the forum are lucky to have extra vehicles to drive and suck money out of your wallets while waiting to get driven. Ourselves included. But then you hear the talk about "Well, if my EV dies, or I need to take a trip from Georgia to Arizona, I'll just drive my other car" like everyone already owns more than one vehicle as spares. More power to you if you can afford a spare car or more. There's a lot of not well-off people I know of that if they're lucky they have two well-used cars, but that's so dad can go to his work, and mom can go to her work, and hope like hell one of them don't get laid off or one of the cars breaks on them. I can assure you that EVs aren't discussed around their kitchen tables except maybe as a pipe dream.
Until the economy can get back on its feet, I'm betting the word "slowdown" is going to be used a whole lot more than "robust growth" in the coming year. With mortgage rates already pushing 8% (if you were beamed here from 1982 you would take that deal in a heartbeat) people aren't ready or perhaps able, to risk taking the plunge. Keeping their jobs is job 1.
My major complaint isn't the vroom vroom of a hotrod. I do love it, but that's not a big deal. It's how everything is a camel nose under the tent right now. More of a trust issue.
More and more is coming out in the open when the alphabet organizations make up rules and regs that fly in the face of individual freedoms. There's different ways to force people to do things without actually looking like your forcing them to do it. Demonizing the oil companies is one way that the EV zealots try to sway people away from oil. Policies and regulations that reversed the U.S. oil/gas production processes is totally whacked in my opinion. Which helped fuel one of the greatest economic times we ever had.
Of course, they never thought that all that plastic on their EV comes from somewhere, whether natural gas or oil for the most part. Oil is all bad, green energy is all good. When it's enough, it will be enough and eventually people will end up doing what they need to do to stop the insanity. We can have it all. It doesn't have to be just one or the other.