alt Hacker NewsFor the same reason it didn't matter whether coach makers were able to build carriages that went 5% faster when the automobile was introduced, and for the same reason it won't matter if VW and Mercedes are going to improve their EV lineup in the next 5, 10, 20 years time. Their window of opportunity will be long gone and the momentum elsewhere; most probably, the market will even have evolved further by then.
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> VW
VW EV sales are up in South America, Canada and Europe. It's true that their total global numbers are down, but that's mainly because they lost like 30% in China. Which obviously sucks considering how big the Chinese market is, but then, the Chinese market is it's own sort of thing.
Don't get me wrong, I think your point is valid for a lot of traditional European car brands. Mercedes is certainly one of them which has lost it's "our engines are nicer" brand, but I suspect VW is one of the brands that will do just fine. Especially with the id polo coming out next year.
maybe to have a global market share, but there are plenty of players that picked up pace when they “decided” to build cars (Japan? South Korea? and many more) or electronics. Having a good sovereign model in 10/20 years might not need having the absolute best there is, and perhaps future optimizations will make building one not as prohibitively expensive as it is today. Keeping some sort of homebrew capacity now is definitely better than having none
> it won't matter if VW and Mercedes are going to improve their EV lineup in the next 5, 10, 20 years time
I mean, given the fuel prices it would be very nice, alongside more charging infrastructure in the EU. :(
Not to detract from the overall point, though to be honest, it's probably worthwhile to do improvements and refinements with the current technology, even if the future holds something vastly different. Both cause of gaining expertise and also maybe an improvement or two along the way, that might carry forward.
Like I haven't seen many steam locomotives around and for me the difference between saturated steam engines and superheated ones isn't very material in regards to transportation, but the latter is used in modern turbines.
When you mention a window of opportunity, what do you mean by that? A window of opportunity for what?
Ford started mass producing cars in 1913, and yet there are plenty of car companies that started production 20+ years later and are still relevant.