Reply To: Electric company car – Tesla – advice

[gs_mit]

The elephant in the room is battery manufacturing and software development, not just the car per se. Where Europe missed the bus and are struggling. It takes one person the same amount of effort to assemble an EV as it does 3 people to assemble an ICE. However, the reverse is true if you look at the end to end value chain (making battery packs, software development etc). Then it takes 3 people’s effort to build an EV compared for one person to build an ICE. Battery packs and related assemblies is notoriously labor-intensive (robots aren’t yet precise enough). This “total labor effort” difference between ICE/EV is well-known in the auto manufacturing industry, and several papers have examined the counter-intuitive cost structures. Therefore, for European automakers to be competitive in the EV value chain, need to build scale in batteries and software development. The European carmakers can say all kinds of things to circumvent this basics.