This is Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality—my attempt to make myself, and all of you out there in SubStackLand, smarter by writing where I have Value Above Replacement and shutting up where I do not… Might We Replace Our Ten Year-Old Prius with a Chevy Bolt Next Year?If continued battery-cost savings are passed on to purchasers, fast charging blooms, rules tighten, and EV tax credits emerge that provide preference for EVs over PHEVs, then the Bolt wins; if not...
If continued battery-cost savings are passed on to purchasers, fast charging blooms, rules tighten, and EV tax credits emerge that provide preference for EVs over PHEVs, then the Bolt wins; if not, PHEVs do, as they will still be in the sweet spot. Battery costs, networks, and politics—not horsepower—decide the speed of the EV transition over the next decade…
Perhaps a straw in the wind that the EV transition will continue, at at least a moderate pace:
On the one hand, very nice to see them trying this. On the other hand the Toyota Prius Prime and the Kia Niro PHEVs start at $35,000, and are somewhat nicer inside. The Bolt’s value proposition is price and simplicity: Expect simpler EV maintenance, more hard plastics, a functional but less premium design, infrastructure range anxiety, plus GM’s no‑phone‑mirroring stance hat makes your infotainment spartan as well. In a world with substantial tax credits for an EV but not for a PHEV, it seems to me that the Chevy Bolt would have a very good chance of becoming an American standard over the next decade. But we are not in that world, are we? Looking forward over the next five years, it seems to me that PHEV are likely to remain the sweet spot. To bet that the Bolt will become the sweet spot requires that you believe:
The Bolt wins if you expect to see, quickly: cheaper, denser batteries, ubiquitous fast charging, and stricter emissions rules. The Prius Prime and company win if you expect charging to stay patchy and gas engines to remain convenient and cheap. Reference:
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