This page (and the video) look at key questions on the future of cars & EVs: Will robotaxis mean really no one will want to own a car anymore? Even if people do still want cars, will EVs just die out or eventually take over? What about hydrogen, e-fuels, or the countries like the USA dropping any climate agenda? EV have improved a lot, but need to do more before they are fully suitable for _most_ people. If EVs & infrastructure are just not yet ready for most people, what's the next step?
Depending on who you ask, EV sales could be either booming or grinding to a halt. Even AI answered: "The web results are contradictory and show different perspectives", and Ford on same day the same company reported record EV sales and a plan to cut back on EV plans due to lack of buyer interest. So, what is really happening? Can biases be sidestepped to uncover a real answer? As is often the case, reality is a mix of both answers. Globally, EV sales are still growing, but growing slower, and in some places, sales are stalling.
This page began as a 'Should you buy an EV or not?' written from experience, but as it is impossible to cover every possible perspective, the example is an Atto 3 in Australia, so the more similar the vehicle being considered is to the Atto 3, and the more similar the country to Australia the more of this content that will be of interest. For comparison with other vehicles, I have a separate page soon to be published comparing the Atto 3 to both other EVs as well as traditional internal combustion or hybrid vehicles.
In April 2024, following a disappointing below expectations Q1 sales result, Tesla began layoffs to up to 20% of its workforce, announced a focus on "Robotaxi" in priority over a new more mass-market entry-level model sometimes referred by the press as the "model 2", and saw the departure of many Tesla senior personnel who had previously shared the stage with Musk at media events. Can the EV world really afford see this move positioning the company key to having brought EVs this far as a "not a car company". What is happening? Are the layoffs etc. just Elon Musk having a dummy spit, a period of turmoil, or does the shadow of Twitter mean the dream of Tesla becoming a leading carmaker over?
This is the lead webpaper for all content related to personal vehicles, cars and trucks and their future. While most content is on the EVs and hybrids that I see as the future of transition of personal vehicles, the overall focus is on the future of car ownership. Many, even including Elon Musk, claim that in the future, people won't need to own a car. I suggest that sentiment misses that cars don't get gets us from A to B, but instead are places we spend the part of our lives while getting from A to B, and sometimes are even our home base when simply at B instead of A. In fact, a future where only the wealthy can own their own vehicles is heading towards the direction of reducing personal living space and "caged humans" where it could also be suggested "people won't need their own home". While site embraces moving to EVs, but no the agenda that EVs most be only ever smaller city cars, or better still just electric bicycles. EVs should allow the vehicles we want to own to be sustainable, that is provided we don't also succumb to living in cities that seek ever denser population densities.
