Super Bowl ads should have ended them.
We already have Tesla, of course. And as reported here awhile back Ford is diving in with an electric F150 and an electric Mustang. The F150 will be coming out in 2021 and will look like a real truck, rather than the freakish offering Tesla came out with. And now we know that General Motors is introducing an electric truck under its now idle Hummer brand name. Porsche wanted the public to know that it offers an electric car as well, and there are in fact quite an assortment of electric vehicles now on the market, and not just from companies like Tesla.
Indeed, the entry of General Motors into the electric truck market would suggest that we're really near a tipping point in what is now an inevitable major technological evolution. Electric vehicles are about to replace gasoline ones. Up until now all electric vehicles have been light passenger cars with the limitation in the technology really restricting them to that. But that's about to change. Ford's 1/2 ton F150 is a real truck and Ford is obviously very serious about it as its introducing its electric truck under its primary brand name, Ford, rather than through Mercury, which it could do (and there have been Mercury trucks in the past). General Motors, on the other hand, is introducing its truck in one of its multiple brand names, an old GM approach to things. Indeed, General Motors for years had a separate truck line from that offered by Chevrolet, the GMC truck line. Hummer is a name that's under the GMC branch, so this is the use of an old strategy by General Motors.
Indeed, much of what we're presently seeing if very similar to the early history of automobiles at that. We have the big names, Chrysler, Ford and General Motors, but there are also a lot of start up contenders in the market right now. This year Atlis is introducing a full sized pickup truck that's a decent looking 4x4 truck with full towing capacity and a 500 mile range. Atlis advertises that it can be fully charged in just fifteen minutes. It's an expensive vehicle, but not much more expensive, if at all, than full sized pickups are now.
In order to invest in an Atlis, which is advertised as having a 1,000,000 mile lifespan, a person would have to be convinced that Atlis will be around in a decade, which is the real question with the big three now coming into electric vehicles full bore. If the example of the past plays out, a lot of the electric start ups, and Atlis and Tesla aren't the only ones, won't be around in ten years. Indeed, with Atlis launching its really good looking and promising electric truck right now, at the same time that Ford and GM are about to, I'd be skeptical of its prospects. I hate to say that, as the product they are introducing is a really good looking truck. I'd like it to succeed. But then, I'd like it if Studebaker still made trucks as well, or International. We'll see.
One thing I'm pretty confident that we are seeing is the end of gasoline and diesel fuel light vehicles.
All of which would make me really hesitant to buy a petroleum fueled vehicle now if I could avoid it. Their future doesn't look long.
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