Instead, the opportunity comes from the disruption being wreaked on the auto industry by electrification. Mainstream carmakers have been slow to bring their own electric examples to market and haven’t always fully exploited the opportunities offered by EVs when they do. Customers are more open-minded, and we’re prepared to break old buying habits alongside our addiction to gas.
But while upstarts can make EVs, should we be buying them? As a consumer, you don’t want to be stuck with an automotive orphan whose parent company has died and taken with it the parts and ability to have your vehicle serviced in the future. You want your new car from a new maker to be the start of a fresh chapter in the history of motoring, not a footnote.
It’s tough. We once thought up-and-comer premium brands needed to offer quality and a customer experience to match that ofor Mercedes, which any start-up would struggle to do from the outset. But Tesla appears to be disproving that. Its riotous success is seemingly unaffected by its well-publicized quality woes. And I recently collected a Tesla from one of its delivery centers in the UK: a cheap white tent erected in a vast, otherwise deserted parking lot and heated by a noisy diesel generator.