While car shoppers can be forgiven for missing it, 2018 was an astonishing year in the world of electric transportation.
It was a time when major automakers nervously shifted billions of dollars in future budgets from gas-powered cars toward the engineering of electric drivetrains. This was the year when trailblazers stuck electric motors on scooters and 18-wheelers, and when utility commissions grabbed the thorny rose of EV regulation. In a sign EVs have arrived, the industry also attracted new enemies.
“I think this is all happening much faster than any of us predicted it would come,” said Jeff Allen, executive director of Forth, a Portland, Ore.-based organization that promotes EVs.
Although EVs are still mostly absent from showrooms, signs of progress were everywhere. In the U.S., the 1 millionth EV was sold, and battery prices continued to plunge. Here are some of the most important events.
The most gripping storylines of 2018 were the production drama surrounding Tesla Inc.’s first mass-market car, the Model 3, and
the self-inflicted drama of the company’s CEO, Elon Musk.
Tesla entered the year already behind on its goal of manufacturing 5,000 Model 3s a week. Doing so would signal that Tesla could live up to its promise to mass-produce cars and meet consumer and investor expectations.
In 2018, that deadline slipped twice more. The “production hell”
that Musk had predicted dragged on into the fall. Robotic production lines fell short; suppliers were purged; employees were fired; a
squad of executives fled. Tesla was burning billions of dollars in
cash without the sales to make up for it. Some of the hundreds of thousands of drivers who had placed reservations for the Model 3s began to cancel.
Meanwhile, Musk, whose showmanship and engineering vision
make the company what it is, seemed at times to be losing his grip.
He chastised an equity analyst for asking a boring question. He smoked marijuana on a webcast. He offered to build a mini-sub to save children trapped in a cave in Thailand, and when a diver snubbed him, he called the rescuer a pedophile.
But nothing compared to August, when he tweeted that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private. The notion sent investors into a tizzy. When it turned out that Musk did not, in fact, have funding secured, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued
him for securities fraud, leading to a settlement that removed Musk as chairman (though he remains CEO).
In September, despite all the strife, Tesla finally hit its 5,000-a-week goal and has been cranking them out at somewhat lower numbers ever since.
Tesla’s stock is back to riding high, and most importantly, the Model 3 has become by far the top-selling pure-electric car. And according to an Inside EVs scorecard, the No. 3 and No. 4 are Tesla’s other rides, the Model S and Model X.
But there’s trouble on the horizon, namely …
The Rivian R1T, a new electric truck. Rivian
At the Los Angeles Auto Show in November, the cameramen and auto bloggers couldn’t get enough of the display by Rivian, an auto technology startup with a factory in Illinois that’s producing an all-electric pickup truck and SUV.
A self-billed “electric adventure vehicle,” the truck has a startling set of specs. It aims for 400 miles on a charge (almost 100 miles more than Tesla’s SUV, the Model X), could tow 11,000 pounds (more than twice a Model X) and has a 180-kilowatt-hour battery, almost twice that of a Model X. It has a $69,000 base price and would accelerate zero to 60 mph in three seconds, faster than a Porsche 911.
The company’s founder, R.J. Scaringe, is clean-cut and 35 years
old — 12 years younger than Musk. His out-of-nowhere story, plus the company’s plan to build at a retired Mitsubishi plant in Normal, Ill., prompted Crain’s Chicago Business to ask, “Is R.J. Scaringe
the Elon Musk of Illinois?”
Although Rivian’s vehicles won’t arrive until 2020 at the earliest,
the fanfare points to a larger trend: Tesla’s days as the only exciting electric carmaker are coming to an end. This year saw the debut
of the Jaguar I-PACE and the Audi e-tron, both luxury electric sedans that will take direct aim at the Tesla Model S when they arrive in showrooms in 2019.
At the same time, nearly every large global automaker is laying the foundation for every kind of electric car.
In January, Ford Motor Co. said it would spend $11 billion on EVs
by 2022, more than doubling its prior estimate, and have 40 full- or partially electric models (Energywire, Nov. 8). Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV said in June that it would spend $10 billion on electric or hybrid cars by 2022. And at Volkswagen AG, the
company chairman, Herbert Diess, said that its “electric offensive” would dedicate $50 billion toward EVs. VW estimates it will launch
its last gas-powered model in 2026.
Starting in 2019, Tesla’s Model 3 will face inexpensive alternatives, namely the all-electric Hyundai Kona and two Kia models, the Soul and the Niro.
Of all of them, the media darling Rivian seems to have gotten under Musk’s skin.
