I enjoy watching John Cadogan’s material. I find him very entertaining, funny and witty. I think it’s important to keep an open mind which is why I subscribe to him. He makes me question my own mindset. We all have our bias. And John is no exception. I feel he is anti BEV and it runs through most of the EV material he produces in my opinion.
”Proper cars” referring to ICE, “Toyota was right about electrification all along”, “gutting every dear slayed plan for electrification, which is a pretty neat trick”, “by building the combustion cars that actual customers in actual societies actually want” etc etc…. he goes on and on with bias opinion and statements.
VW may have just had their own Nokia or Kodak moment winding back EV funding to further ICE development in my opinion. Time will tell if Oliver Blume got it right for the VW Group. Legacy auto is struggling with the BEV transition. I’m not surprised VW are heading this way… like Toyota.
In regard to BEV sales, the VW Group are at the higher end of the market, including Audi, Bentley, Porsche, Lamborghini and would be unaffordable for many. Their sales in general including ICE have not increased that much year on year or in the first quarter of 2024.
You can cherry pick BEV sales and BEV orders where they are out performing ICE by a huge margin.
BEV’s have no tail pipe emissions. John’s argument about EV’s taking over 100,000km to equal ICE Co2 emissions output if charged with average global electricity is short sighted and disengenuine. Electricity is going through a transition and more renewable energy is being added to the grid everyday, reducing BEV emissions, eventually to zero. This argument will eventually be redundant as ICE will never have zero emissions.
Lastly, I am more concerned, as John put it, if Orange Man was to be elected and the IRA was wound back then what VW are doing with their money.
https://www.volkswagen-group.com/en/press-releases/volkswagen-group-delivers-3-percent-more-vehicles-in-the-first-quarter-18318
