Volt's Non-Binding MOUs - Part 1, page-47

Electric Vehicles, Recall Dawn of Auto Age

Jon Markman | Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 7:30 am

http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/elec...ampaign=MAM3664&campid=77535&utm_medium=email

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The car business is about to take us all on a wild ride. Autonomous vehicles will challenge industry business models. Electric propulsion will challenge the global economy.
I talked last week about how the current investment and political environment is starting to resemble the Gilded Age of the 1880s-1910s. There is so much innovation going on, and fortunes being made, that it’s like the dawn of mass transportation and information all over again.
This move to electric power trains in cars, buses and trucks is going to be unstoppable as it makes so much sense, just like the development of the first automobiles. Electric vehicles (EVs) are better for the environment, safer, better for the U.S. trade deficit and EVs are a blast to drive.
Back at the turn of the last century, the growth of the automobile market — against the entrenched interests of the horse and buggy industry — was also front and center. Looking back, we can see that General Motors (GM) and Ford (F) were ultimately big winners due in part to their innovation of new factory, business and financing practices. But there were originally more than 50 competing auto manufacturers who presented propulsion schemes ranging from steam and electricity to gasoline and diesel. None were a lock. And now electric is coming back, and I suspect the transition will deliver gains now similar to what industrialists and investors in the Gilded Age enjoyed.
Toyota this month joined Daimler, Volkswagen, General Motors (GM) and Ford (F) in making a major longer-term commitment to electric vehicles. Big automakers are being pushed toward EVs faster than the public realizes. Business-model dynamics and clean energy regulators demand the course change. An unknown is the unintended consequences of removing even a small portion of energy demand from a crude oil market in equilibrium.
Right now, EVs represent just 1% of the market. Even in China where demand is growing fastest, EVs account for just 337,000 units in a market of 22 million. And despite the bevy of shiny Teslas roaming Silicon Valley streets, EVs make up just a tiny fraction of the 17.5 million-unit U.S market.