2017: A New Era of Electric Cars begins?

I got interested in the Electric Cars concepts, admiring one of the India cars, Reva Electric as it hit the newspapers few decades ago. I always used to wonder why one has to go through such a cumbersome process of burning fossil fuels to run a car engine motor and why can't we all just simply adopt the strategy of Reva Electric cars. The only reason I could make out that time was that Electric cars are expensive and undergo significant maintenance. So instead of investing in new technologies for high-performance fuel cars shouldn't someone invest on helping the ones like Reva. Slowly my questions took some backstage, as alongwith most people, I too got busy with my career. 

Little did I know that there was a Strategic plan unearthing somewhere in California that could possibly change the history and that's what we are going to talk today :)

For some unfamiliar audience, an electric car is an automobile that is propelled by one or more electric motors, using electrical energy stored in rechargeable batteries or another energy storage device. Electric motors give electric cars instant torque, creating strong and smooth acceleration. They are also around three times as efficient as cars with an internal combustion engine.

So here we start our discussion with Tesla Motors, whose journey began with Elon Musk joining as the Chairman of the company in 2004. Tesla's strategy has been to emulate typical technological-product life cycles and initially enter the automotive market with an expensive, high-end product targeted at affluent buyers. 

Tesla Roadster Sport 2.5

As the company, its products, and consumer acceptance matured, it is moving into larger, more competitive markets at lower price points.Tesla has a three step strategy, where the battery and electric drivetrain technology for each new type would be developed and paid for through sales of the former types, starting with Tesla Roadster and moving on to the Tesla Model S, Model X and Model 3 vehicles.


Till the advent of Tesla, most of the Electric cars coming to market looked more like a gizmo or Techno variant but Tesla had plans to bring it to the mainstream commercial market with all or in-fact much better features than a high class fuel based commercial vehicle. 

Nissan Leaf 2013

Well, to be true, Tesla was not the only one thinking in this manner. We had Nissan with all the previous experience of commercial fuel based cars working with several prototypes and then entering the market with its flagship product - Nissan Leaf. In-fact Nissan Leaf is the world's top selling highway-capable electric car currently. It was released in December 2010 and sold in 46 countries. Global Leaf sales passed the 200,000 unit milestone in December 2015, and the Tesla Model S, released in June 2012, ranks second with over 107,000 units sold worldwide.

With the success stories of Tesla and Nissan, several other companies have taken course and have started the EV race globally.

The details can also be found in the wikipedia link as below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car

So what's next and why do we say that a New Era of Electric Cars begins in 2017. 
Well there are 2 main reasons for it:

• The advanced economies have already tasted the benefits for the EVs in terms of carbon emissions reduction, non-reliance on the fluctuating fuel prices, lower maintenance needs and last but not the least an excellent opportunity to market a so called revolutionary technology to market (and people obviously like technology revolutions :)

Chevrolet Bolt 2017

• The second reason is the economies of scale. The argument that the Electric vehicles are supposed to be expensive mainly because of the higher battery prices seems to die down. Mass commercial production of batteries is on the cards and with new technology usage, the cars are getting more and more performant.

On the performance and commercially viable part, the most anticipated cars with over 200 miles in a single charge are Tesla 3 (2018 model), Chevrolet Bolt (2017 model) and Nissan Leaf (2018 model) all priced around $35,000 with some govt. incentives as well.

While the launch of the first 2 has been announced, Nissan Leaf next-generation may be announced soon. Some hints for the same have already been made.

http://gas2.org/2015/11/03/2018-nissan-leaf-will-have-200-mile-range/

With these coming launches, its going to be a very interesting competition in the EV space and that's really good for the common buyer. There may still be questions that how will we get more charging stations or that the price of $35,000 is still too high for many buyers. 

Well for that, I can put up an analogy that when credit cards were introduced, people said how will we get space for so many ATM machines and another analogy that when IPhone was introduced, smartphones looked so very expensive for a common man. But we know where we are today. 

So, for this very reason, I believe that while the EV industry may have been a decade old by now, come 2017 and the new Era of Electric cars begins :) so stay tuned...