Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “This year will be huge for electric cars. Here’s why.”.
We hear a lot about electric vehicles these days, but evs are still just a tiny fraction of the overall car market. According the international energy agency, plug-in cars account for about one percent of u.s car sales and about 2.6 percent of global auto sales, but experts are predicting that 2021 will be a crucial year for ev adoption, thanks to more options and growing interest from car buyers. So we thought we’d zero in on seven different evs that are coming out this year and talk about what they tell us about where things are headed in the future, because this wouldn’t be a verge video. If we weren’t talking about the future, there’s probably no more polarizing electric vehicle coming this year than tesla’s cyber truck the stark steel body and blade runner inspired design are, unlike anything else, on the market right now, gas or electric something tesla has been really good at Over the years is pushing legacy automakers out of their comfort zones without tesla. We probably wouldn’t see wide adoption of touchscreen displays in cars or have so much hype around self-driving tech and without tesla.
It’S hard to imagine any of these big oems seriously. Investing billions of dollars into electric vehicles will the cyber truck inspire similar changes? Probably not, but it is refreshing to see something so different come to market. So if the cyber truck is successful, maybe it’ll give some of these automakers just a little bit more wiggle room to try something new in their designs. The cyber truck will also just help prove out the market for large electric suvs and trucks, which is a potential gold mine just based on the popularity of their gas counterparts. More will come later, like the electric f-150 or the hummer ev, but tesla says it’s already collected more than half a million hundred dollar deposits for the cyber truck, so that market’s already off to a pretty good start. I couldn’t believe it when i first heard that gm was resurrecting the hummer brand as an ev.
The gas guzzling symbol of pre-recession xs as an electric pickup truck forget about it, but gm did it and the hummer ev is expected to crab walk into dealerships by the end of this year. It will come with a 24 module, double stacked, ultim propulsion system. Ultim is gm’s modular battery platform and that is expected to deliver at least 350 miles of range. With three motors and two drive units, the hummer ev is expected to get up to a thousand horsepower and an estimated 11 500 pound pound-feet of torque. But it won’t be cheap, starting at 80 000 for the base model and over 110 000 for the highest spec trim. Gm went overboard with the tech in this thing. Adaptive air suspension that can raise the vehicle, 6 inches 18 cameras, including front and rear underbody cameras to spy any rocky obstacles, the ability to charge 100 miles in 10 minutes and, of course, crab walk mode which enables all four wheels to turn in the same direction. And move the vehicle sideways.
Look at that hummer scuttle. After more than a decade of working in the shadows, evie’s startup rivian is finally ready to release its r1t pickup and its r1s suv later this year. The r1t is an ultra modern rethink of what a pickup truck should look and feel like without going outside the box, like the cyber truck, the r1s is a land roverish suv, that’s a little more familiar. Both start at around 70 thousand dollars, offer at least 300 miles of range and are decked out in fun.
Outdoorsy features like an optional pop-out, camping, kitchen delivery, start later this year, a few years ago, there were ev startups, popping up, left and right all claiming to be the next tesla and one of the reasons they never accomplished. That is just money. It takes a lot of money to design test and build cars at scale.
Rivien, meanwhile, has raised more than eight billion dollars to date, including from really big backers like amazon and ford. It’S applied that money. Well, so far, it’s developed new battery technology that it thinks is going to help set it apart from other entries on the market. It’S also gone all out in developing this very particular branding of affluent off-roading adventure that appeals to buyers with deep pockets, ribbian’s also making a delivery truck for amazon as part of that investment, that’s already being tested on public roads right now and while that’s, maybe not As alluring as the pickup truck it just might be the first electric vehicle driving through your neighborhood we’ve seen the porsche tycoon and we’ve seen the audi e-tron in e-tron gt. But the id4 is arguably the most important ev for the volkswagen group, which is the second largest automaker in the world first introduced in 2020.
The id4 is vw’s first long-range ev for the us bw expects to deliver over a hundred thousand id4s in 2021. A third of which to us customers and it’s the second car to use vw’s modular meb platform for evs after the id3, which is only available in europe and china. The id4 is interesting because it has all the suv dna that car buyers really crave these days.
It’S the right size, it has the right styling and when you factor in federal state and local tax credits, the price drops that mid 30 000 range, that’s generally considered to be the sweet spot for most american car buyers. That’S cheaper than the tesla model y, which vw will be competing with, but it’s important to remember how the id4 got here: dieselgate in addition to nearly 35 billion dollars in settlements and fines, vw vowed to spend billions more on a whole new lineup of electric vehicles. In the hopes of rescuing its damaged reputation now, the automaker has promised to sell over a million battery electric vehicles by 2025 to make up for illegally concealing how much pollution its diesel vehicles were creating, and it’s also pumping millions more into an ev charging station expansion Through its subsidiary electrify america, better charging infrastructure will go a long way towards speeding up the adoption of evs, but only if vw can actually meet its goals. Now, there’s a good argument that could be made that if vw had not got caught cheating on its emissions test, that the id4 would not be rolling out to dealerships this year, if ever and those ev charging stations could still be on the drawing board. It’S funny how culpability works like that, what are you driving an electric mustang that is so sweet ford made a huge bet with the mustang maki and while it’s still early, it looks like that bet could pay off the mustang. Maki is a really good electric car and will be one of the best for a while until the market really fills out. It has the kind of tech that early adopter customers tend to love, but without the obvious problems that usually surface when old, automakers test new waters, we got really into the details with the mustang making my review, which you should definitely go watch if you want to Learn more but best of all for ford they’ve really excited a whole bunch of different conversations with this car.
Is it a mustang? Should a mustang be electric? Should a mustang be an suv? There are more people asking those questions than ever really paid attention to ford’s fairly weak early electric vehicle efforts. So that’s exciting cars like the mustang maki, don’t come around. Often one ev, that’s flown under the radar. So far is the nissan aria. Another compact suv, with a little less than 300 miles of range. The aria is expected to go on sale in japan in mid-2021, followed by the us and europe later in the year. Everyone gives tesla credit for making evs popular and tesla certainly deserves it, but nissan has long been an unsung leader in ev sales, despite really only having one ev the highly functional, mostly uninspiring, nissan leaf, and don’t forget renault, the french car maker, that’s allied with nissan And mitsubishi has been pumping out miniature zoes for years now with a high degree of success. But now nissan is readying, its sequel, the arya’s drivetrain, is what really differentiates it from the leaf, rather than opt for a simple front-wheel drive arrangement. The aria will come in multiple configurations, including a two-wheel drive version and a twin electric motor setup that will enable all-wheel drive performance, which nissan is calling the e-force with a 4 instead of an f, because everything needs a ridiculous brand name. This is not an over designed car if anything, it’s exceedingly normal, looking which, for an ev can be a relief.
The aria’s wheels certainly stand out, but nothing else about this vehicle screams electric, which can help lure potential buyers who are weighing whether to make the switch from gas-powered vehicles like the id4. The aria is expected to retail for around thirty to thirty five thousand dollars. After factoring in tax credits, now nissan is claiming this is the most technologically advanced car that it’s ever made and the tax credit is sure to soften the blow for some customers. But nissan is quickly approaching the threshold of 200 000 evs sold in the us and after that the credit begins to phase out and then the value proposition on a 40 000 ev that can’t travel as far as a tesla on a single charge starts to dwindle. Not every electric vehicle coming to market this year is a truck or an suv believe it or not. Some companies are still making sedans one ev startup, that’s releasing a luxury sedan.
This year is lucid motors, which will finally start selling the air. The interior of the air is inspired by a private jet according to lucid, but the car doesn’t skip on specs, either with up to a thousand horsepower and over 500 miles of range. Lucid motors has a long history for an ev startup having been founded in 2007 as a battery company, and it’s currently held by a former tesla executive who helped bring the model s to life. But the path to now hasn’t been easy.
The company almost went under a few years ago because it pretty much ran out of money. Lucid motors ultimately turned to ironically oil-rich saudi arabia. Now the startup is looking at building another factory in saudi arabia and its future is sort of indefinitely tied to the kingdom.
Lucid motors may not be around today without that money, but if it had been able to hang on for just a little while longer, it might have had another option merging with a special purpose acquisition, company or spac. These types of mergers have become really popular over the last year as interest swelled in electric vehicles. As a result, a few billion dollars has been directed at previously struggling or underfunded, startups like faraday, future canoe, nikola and fisker.
It’S the kind of development that could really change the course of the budding electric vehicle market, but right now it’s just a little too early to say how of these vehicles have been on their horizon for years and all of them are expected to go on sale. This year, notwithstanding any more delays, but while these evs help us understand where things are headed, the automotive industry is still lumbering through a gigantic sea change. Right now, like tesla’s, existing vehicles, which are growing ever popular and the company even just went back and did a big redesign of its model. S, sedan and model x, suv or then there’s china, which is the biggest market for electric vehicles in the world and is really driving a lot of the things that we’re seeing happening here in the u.s. There are some really interesting cars being made there like the pulstar ii, and there are just a lot of really interesting startups there, like neo and xpung we’d, actually love to talk more about that. So if that’s something you want to see us make a video about, let us know in the comments below and if you haven’t already definitely watch our review of the ford mustang maki check that out.
We had a lot of fun, making that video and be sure to like and subscribe .