As car manufacturers cut capacity for new electric vehicles, a Tennessee Tech researcher said companies may have overestimated the consumer demand.
Dr. Mohan Rao said that demand for new electric vehicles can be extremely volatile and particularly reliant on fossil fuel prices.
“The range has been the challenge, they’re working on that now,” Rao said. “The range is one, and the charging station is another one.”
Rao said China can serve as a motivating blueprint for EV production, with government subsidies allowing for a more innovative, higher-quality selection of electric vehicles on the car market.
The TTU Vehicle Engineering program owns a fleet of Electric Vehicles, according to Rao, including a full-sized electric pickup Ford F-150. Rao said the recent moves to scrap iconic EV projects like Ram’s fully-electric 1500 or Dodge’s electric muscle car, are mainly driven by economics.
“Nissan as well and even Volkswagen, they were at one point fully Gung Go on Electric Vehicles,” Rao said. “They realized that, you know, the range was still an issue and the costs were an issue. And then, they were not initially selling as much and they had to scale back.”
While he does not believe traditional gas-powered vehicles are in any jeopardy of going instinct, Rao said electric vehicles have their obvious advantages: autonomy, noise reduction, less mechanical wear-and-tear and better safety features.
As companies work toward solutions for EV’s most common issues and with self-driving taxis and even airplanes in the works, Rao said he sees a path forward for EV owners and consumers.
“As a society, human beings as we know, we always want to progress and move forward,” Rao said. “And if you look at it, there’s obviously a ton of advantages to electric vehicle, especially if you make it semi-autonomous or fully-autonomous.”
“All it takes is one huge, big innovation and then make it cost effective for people embrace to the technology. I’m pretty positive that one day we’ll all be driving electric vehicles.”
