As battery charging bills skyrocket, or Tesla owners are urged not to charge their cars in California, the US auto industry is beginning to embrace the virtues of electrification. “Electric cars are going to end up being the only option,” recognizes Tim Stokes, a visitor to the Detroit auto show which ends this Sunday, to AFP, before acknowledging “wait as long as possible” before abandoning the thermal vehicle.
Already, US President Joe Biden, visiting the show last week, has estimated that the “the great American road trip will become completely electric”. In the meantime, visitors to this major international show continue to wonder: are the higher prices justified? Will battery production follow suit and at what cost to the environment? Will the network of charging stations be sufficient? The US administration has released a budget of 7.5 billion dollars to encourage the construction of terminals across the country.
The abundance of the offer at the show clearly shows that the electric car is no longer a niche product in the United States. Encouraged by the public authorities, manufacturers have multiplied the electric versions of their most popular d models. Chevrolet has thus highlighted an electric pickup (the Silverado) and two SUVs (the Blazer and the Equinoxe), available to order, for deliveries scheduled for 2023. Ford has unveiled an electric version of its successful pick-up, the F-150, baptized Lightning, and launched a new SUV, the Mustang Mach-E. Earlier this month, Jeep also announced the launch of four electric SUVs.
200,000 orders for the electric version of the Ford F-150
Faced with the influx of reservations for the Lightning, which has accumulated around 200,000 orders since May 2021, Ford has quadrupled its initial production target. Will the group end up selling more F-150 Litghning than with a combustion engine? This is the question on the minds of all the major automotive groups, which are investing billions of dollars in electric vehicles, while continuing to produce millions of traditional vehicles each year. “The industry is changing so fast that no one can really predict what will happen”explains Chris Skaggs, in charge of the expansion of the F-150 factory, to AFP.
However, industry experts believe that a real transformation of the American fleet will take years, in particular because of prices: an electric car costs on average nearly 67,000 dollars, according to the firm Cox Automotive. Manufacturers are also experiencing difficulties in the supply chain and are worried about the future availability of certain materials, such as lithium or cobalt.
(with AFP)