this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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[Dormant] Electric Vehicles
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You want to move electric vehicles, cover segments that need them. While for me the perfect vehicle would be an electric Mazda5 (microvan), something around a Transit Connect would sell like hot cakes at the right price to commercial customers, just look at home many of those are running around as service vehicles And how many electric minivans could you sell? I see a lot of people saying we need inexpensive electric cars, which is true, but there are whole segments getting ignored, not just what I mentioned, but what about full sized vans? Sure, Ford offers one... With a 127 mile range, which might work in some industries, but there's a lot of potential customers where that's just an automatic fail.
There's also the brightdrop van, although GM just shut down the plant for a retooling.
However, I disagree with you and believing that the van segment is all that big of a market.
I was surprised to see how right you are, at least in the more commercial side like the Transit Connect. Out here in STL you can't swing a dead cat without hitting 10 of them, and yet Ford only sold about 25K this year... Did STL buy them all? That said, I do think that skipping an entire market segment is not helping things, especially a very visible market, contractors. Whether they need a van or a pickup, large or small, there's a ton of contractors out there, people interact with them every day, and yet there's been no attempt to make a vehicle for them. The Brightdrop you mentioned is a step van, far larger than most contractors need, that's a fleet type vehicle. Ford Lightning is pricey, and it seems like GM is trying to top that with the upcoming Silverado EV, and as to vans, there's zero, VW is bringing one here, but they won't be bringing the cargo version in.
Yeah that sucks.
Although, talking to my regular contractors every single one of them thinks that EVs are bullshit and would never drive one. So, maybe these manufacturers know their market...
I'm not surprised to hear that, but I think at least some would change their minds if'n there was the oppurtunity