Tesla Motors a big company that will be overcoming the giants car companies?
Most electric and hybrid vehicles are sold in countries where government
incentives are the strongest. There aren't many countries where fully
electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids amounted to more than 1 percent of
new cars sold in 2016, and in most of them, government stimulus -- of
both the stick and the carrot variety -- is strong. As soon as the
stimulus drops off, so do electric car sales. That happened in Denmark
last year, where an attempt to phase out tax breaks resulted in a 71
percent drop in battery-powered vehicle sales and a 49 percent reduction
in hybrid sales in 2016, according
to the International Energy Agency. It happened in the Netherlands,
where tax breaks on hybrids (but not on battery-powered cars) were cut
and sales plummeted by 50 percent.
Because suppliers capture a bigger share of the profit from electric
vehicles than from traditional cars, large volumes are necessary for
production to make economic sense for companies even when each
individual car is sold at a profit (something that BMW says is true of
its electric models, but Tesla can't say of its pre-Model 3 range).
Automakers that produce electric cars in China and Europe are more
likely to achieve large volumes than Tesla, with its U.S.-based
production. In January through April 2017, 126,000 plug-in vehicles
(hybrid and battery-powered) were sold in China and Europe, compared with 41,000 in the U.S.