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Is Tesla’s corporate strategy now, in part, to get ahead of the West canceling the “ban all the good cars by 203x” initiatives? Does it look like that will happen?
California, Washington state, Massachusetts, the EU, Canada, etc are banning the sale of ICE cars in 203x. Hypothetically it is happening. Maybe they'll push back the deadlines as we approach them.
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Given how foolishly and self-destructively governments acted in the face of 2020? I'm not holding my breath, though the governments that are about to replace the most foolish of them might punt (at least on a federal level; the Biden administration delaying the nastier EPA mandate until '28 makes sense for a couple of reasons and I suspect the other car-manufacturing countries are going to follow suit with punting- I question whether or not Japan ever will since the only thing less useful than a BEV compact car is a BEV kei car).
This is all just armchair speculation; but I think it lines up considering just how awful battery technology is at the moment. Either the mandates aren't reversed, in which case they never bother with a cheaper car and still manage to undercut every other automaker (who are still doing the "build a normal car, except with a battery" thing); or they are, and they need to drop the price dramatically in order to have half a chance competing with cars that are still objectively better (and having very few parts will help them significantly with that) and sandbag until better batteries come out.
Which... I'm not holding my breath about that either; electrochemistry is a harsh mistress.
Oh, just wait for AI! It'll recursively self-improve until it's mega-ultra-super-god tier genius level, then it will crack all the mysteries of all the laws of physics and pull inexhaustible limitless clean energy out of the cornucopia! Just because your puny human brain can't see an easy solution doesn't mean there isn't one, the AI will solve it all along with overcoming aging, death, and the end of the universe. Simples!
(You see why I'm a teeny bit sceptical about the fairy godmother future AI?)
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