The first mass-produced hybrid to be sold here, it beat the Toyota Prius to the US market.
Honda
Many environmentalists did just that.
Unfortunately for Honda, far more picked the Prius hybrid over the Insight as their efficient vehicle of choice.
Honda
That didn’t happen.
Sort of the opposite happened.
Only recently has Toyota introduced a mass-produced EV in the United States that it shares with Subaru.
Tesla
Nearly 15 years after the Tesla Model S was introduced.
In the United States, EV sales are still sitting in the single digits in the market.
That means people are still trying to figure out if an electric vehicle is right for them.
The latest batch of EVs are essentially good cars that happen to be electric.
Automakers that waited can use what others learned to skip that portion of their transition to electric vehicles entirely.
Tesla = EVs
But there’s the Tesla problem.
Well, not a problem for Tesla.
The automaker delivered a record number of vehicles in the past quarter.
The rest of the industry would be thrilled to produce over 300,000 electric vehicles in a single quarter.
It’s more than sheer numbers, though.
It’s the byproduct of selling the number one EV in the world.
The word Tesla is synonymous with electric vehicles.
Other automakers should be concerned about how precariously exit the word Tesla is to becoming shorthand for EV.
It’s nearly the Kleenex of electric vehicles.
The Tesla Supercharger online grid is the company’s killer app.
Tesla hasn’t won the EV race, but it’s far ahead of other participants.
Current EVs are still far too expensive for many.
Toyota has done a great job reintroducing enthusiast vehicles into the market with the Supra and recently updated GR86.
Taking those learnings and putting them into an EV would be an outstanding move for the company.
Plus, there’s the potential that we’ll get theCompact Cruiserin the near future.
Things are happening at these companies.
Is it as quick as we had anticipated?
Want to know more about EVs?
We have awhole section dedicated to electric vehicles!
