By Eric Peters
For NMA
GM’s CEO, Mary Barra, predicted it would be producing (and presumably, selling) one meeeeeellion – cue Dr. Evil voice – battery powered devices by the end of next year. How many devices has GM emitted so far?
75,386 during all of last year.
Only about 925,000 devices to go!
Barra has scaled back her one meeeeeellion prediction somewhat. “We won’t get (there) just because the market’s not developing, but it will get there,” she explains. Or rather, doesn’t.
How does a market “get there”?
There either is – or there isn’t – a market.
It is clear there is very little market for battery powered devices as even Tesla is having trouble selling them. The reason for that also ought to be obvious. It is that the market for Tesla’s devices is close to tapped out. The “mainstream” press – as it likes to think of itself – touted how many Teslas were selling, while they were selling. Very much of a piece with the cases! the CASES! that the same “mainstream” press liked to tout. It was important to covey the impression – in both cases – that something was spreading.
In the case of Teslas, it was – for a time.
There was a certain demographic that liked the idea of owning – and paying for – a Tesla device. It was – and is – concentrated in affluent (and temperate, weather-wise) urban areas such as those in Southern California, where the lion’s share of Tesla’s devices have been sold. But it is a relatively small demographic, similar to the one – in terms of its ability to pay – that limits how many vehicles Mercedes-Benz or any other luxury-car brand can sell.
That market reached saturation sometime last year. The people who wanted – and could afford – one of Tesla’s devices already own one. They are no longer in the market for another one. That’s why unsold Teslas are piling up. There is now a disconnect between what the market wants – and Tesla is manufacturing.
GM entered the “market” for battery powered devices thinking it could sell them like Teslas, not grasping that Tesla had already hoovered up most of the “market” for devices. Other vehicle manufacturers did the same, not appreciating that they’d just embraced the EV tar baby until after they’d embraced it.
It wasn’t just the limited “market” for devices they’d embraced – in the old school sense of their being only so many buyers for expensive cars. Bad enough that GM actually thought it could sell the equivalent of one meeeeeellion devices that cost as much as Cadillacs. GM only sold about 147,000 of them last year. That’s all Cadillac models, of which there are eight. And GM has only managed to sell about half as many devices as that during the same time period.
It is unlikely to sell many more – ever – and not only because there are only so many people who are in a position, financially, to buy a Cadillac-priced device. The more serious impediment – for GM and Tesla and everyone else now trying to sell devices – is that people who can afford to buy a Cadillac-priced vehicle are people who do not like to be inconvenienced.
Much less to pay for the inconvenience.
It is why those who can afford to pay to fly first-class buy a first-class ticket. The seats are larger and the food is better, certainly. But the main reason for paying extra is for the convenience of boarding faster and sooner than the cattle in steerage, who board last and are allowed off last. What do you suppose would happen to sales of first-class tickets – which cost twice as much as steerage tickets – if those who paid extra for first got off the plane last? If they had to wait while the cattle in steerage got off first?
Sure, the seats are nicer. But who wants to sit in them any longer than necessary?
Now think of the person who bought a device – effectively, because the seats are nicer – who finds himself waiting for 30 minutes or longer at a Sheetz while proletarians in 13-year-old vehicles (the average age of a daily driver as of last year) come and go . . . .
No matter how much virtue a device may signal, virtue-signaling people do not like being inconvenienced. And there is no getting around the inconvenience of owning a battery-powered device. You wait – at home. Or you wait – at Sheetz. Or wherever the not-so-fast charger happens to be located, which is almost never in a place where people who can (and have) spent Cadillac money like to wait.
This includes the waiting room at Cadillac and other high-end brand dealerships. They are typically very nice; complimentary Keurig coffee and nice chairs to sit in. People still don’t like waiting there. They want to get out of there. Just the same as they want to get off the plane, sooner rather than later.
GM thus faces a kind of double-whammy in that Tesla already soaked up most of the market for devices and word has gotten out about the inconvenience of owning a device. So much so that about half of the people who bought a device say they don’t want another one and are going to get a vehicle instead.
Consider the implications of that.
Whatever market there was for EVs is even less than it was.
Ordinarily, there would be a scaling back of the production of devices – just as there was a scaling back of the production of vehicles like the Edsel. But GM – the industry – has committed to EVs and it’s hard to walk back on those commitments.
Eric Peters lives in Virginia and enjoys driving cars and motorcycles. In the past, Eric worked as a car journalist for many prominent mainstream media outlets. Currently, he focuses his time writing auto history books, reviewing cars, and blogging about cars+ for his website EricPetersAutos.com.
Editor’s Note: The thoughts and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the National Motorists Association.
