Think Tesla is in trouble? Pity even more its wannabe EV rivals
The Economist’s parent company), for $1.6bn. The pair will team up to make EVs. To succeed, these efforts must still produce a competitive product with unique features.
Tesla pulled it off by putting technology first. The result was a desirable EV that wasn’t cheap but offered a svelte look and decent range; the legacy industry’s earlier attempts, such as the Nissan Leaf, were expensive but also ugly and short of juice. Despite a strong tech focus like Tesla, most startups have failed to deliver unique products at competitive cost, as they continue to lack scale, says Patrick Hummel of UBS, a bank.
Now the novelty of clever EV technology “has worn off", adds Becrom Basu of LEK, another consultancy. Good range and other once-cutting-edge tech is considered table stakes, including for incumbent carmakers with considerably beefier manufacturing chops. As a result, many of the EV entrants lack unique selling features.
The cars made by Rivian and Lucid are technologically unremarkable. Their good looks alone do not justify the hefty price tag. Rivian’s cheapest electric pickup costs around $70,000, half as much again as Ford’s F-150 Lightning without offering one-and-a-half as much car.
In Europe the Lucid Air, a luxury saloon, is significantly pricier than comparable electric BMWs or Mercedes. Fisker’s mass-market EVs are also well designed but still cost more than Chinese rivals with similar features, partly because its asset-light outsourcing strategy does not work well for cheaper cars. Why anyone would buy a VinFast remains a mystery; reviews of its VF8 SUV were damning, to put it charitably.
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