Jaguar Land Rover’s strategists expressed caution over the take-up of EVs in a presentation with banking analysts last year. The firm’s own estimate was for 20% of new cars being electric by 2025. BMW and Volkswagen hedged their bets at 15-25%. 

Bloomberg and Bank of America were at 26% and 24%. Analysts at Bernstein offered a ‘rapid adoption’ estimate of 57% by 2030 and low adoption rate of just 19% by the end of the next decade. 

In short, nobody knows. It won’t have steadied the nerves of any automotive planners to see that Tesla has decided to cut more than 3000 jobs from its 45,000-strong workforce, admitting its cars were still too expensive for the mainstream and profits too low. 

Model3

Tesla boss Elon Musk said the only answer for the company was a global roll-out of the Model 3, higher volumes and lower showroom prices. 

Which is a good summary of where the ‘EV revolution’ stands today. Will EVs remain expensive niche cars for high-earners with an environmental mindset? Or will, for example, VW’s wildly ambitious ID family really take EVs mainstream? 

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