Sunday EV Watch

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Fisker Looking to Sell More Oceans

CarScoops is reporting that Fisker is looking to produce 58,000 Oceans based on demand for the value priced SUV.

THE ANDY ANALYSIS-You need to also read about ‘The Fisker Art Car’ that was shown off at the Fisker Welcome event held at Magna in Graz Austria and you can see Fisker is looking to position the Ocean to a cross section of buyers. The SUV falls into the “value” priced category, much like the KIA and Huyndai SUVs vs. more up-market brands, but like KIA and Huyndai there’s lots of value baked in the vehicles and styling is something they’re not leaving out.

Are The Battery Makers The Problem?

CNBC has a story today on the rising cost of batteries possibly being a contributing factor to the rising costs of EVs around the world.

THE ANDY ANALYSIS-It’s more than batteries that are part of the supply chain challenges facing all automakers, not only those in the EV space. The cost to manufacture, secure component parts, ship and then deliver the vehicles have all gone up, in part due to the Covid Pandemic related shifts in how the money flows, and to where it’s going. But another part is the rapid entry into the sector by the established automakers who are also tossing money into the market to help secure future availability. This is by far more of an economic battle and not just a budgetary accounting issue for all.

Sun, Correction Some, Say No to EVs in the UK

According to the Sun, one of the UK’s larger newspapers, some 43 percent of UK folks surveyed are saying no to EVs. At least today.

THE ANDY ANALYSIS-I don’t know. While 2,000 is a useful sample size, as one reads the article the headline is not as accurate as the story reveals. The two big issues, range anxiety and access to charging stations, with the latter being a very big reality not only in the UK but around the world, does give some people pause. That all said by the time you get to the article’s end you’ll see a more upbeat tone. That number will only increase as younger, more eco-conscious buyers enter the survey group demographic and become EV Natives.

Charging Point Anxiety is Range Anxiety

The Independent, another widely read UK news outlet, has a very thoughtful article about charging point anxiety, and the challenges that EV owners face under the current scheme of charging station rollouts.

THE ANDY ANALYSIS- On all points I agree with the writer. The current ecosystem is not there. And when you balkanize a market—divide it up- and segregate it the way the likes of TESLA has with its own OS, and up until very recently, its own charging plug configuration, problems like this come about. I can compare this to the battle between mobile standards, GSM vs. CDMA vs. TDMA and the land grabs that Nokia, Ericsson, Qualcomm which 5G basically solved along with a lot of back and forth between the giants surrounding patents and rights, and not much different that others fought or the battle between H.323 and SIP in the VOIP era. Those battles-often based upon profits-and some anti-greed mongering. too, all kept things from progressing faster. In the USA CDMA was king while in the rest of the world GSM was, and then of course China had its own flavor or TDMA to throw yet another monkey wrench in (or spanner as the British call one.) Those divisions lead to these issue. It’s also why Apple is playing so deeply into the automotive space and why their interest is not seriously about building and selling cars. It’s about being in the heart of every car’s operating system. Sure they sell a phone and a tablet, but they make lots more money off of the app store and do a lot less to make it than they do on the hardware that is expensive to produce.

These divisions surrounding electric vehicle charging are going to get solved. Standards will come into play and it will become a question of picking the right ones and being part of that ecosystem from the start. Until then, what we’re reading in the Independent will remain the problem.