Saturation of The Electric Vehicle (EV) Market

First off, I want to make a sincere apology to my Turbo-Nerdz for the radio silence over the past few weeks. I took a break because of my examinations which I have completed and I still did not post anything on here, please forgive me. I wouldn't say I have been experiencing writers block, it is more like I do not know the next step or move to take for TurboNerdz and it has been weighing down on me. On this note, I am very open to suggestions on how to take TurboNerdz to the next level. You can message me personally on any of my social media platforms in my profile or make these suggestions in the comments section, thank you my Turbo-Nerdz.

A Xiaomi Vehicle?

According to the Oxford dictionary, saturation means "to a very full extent, especially beyond the point regarded as necessary or desirable". I love this particular definition of saturation because that is exactly what is happening to the electric vehicle scene. Every company, automobile or not, now has or is working on a version of their own electric vehicle. The topic of discussion for today is, "the saturation of the electric vehicle market" and what better describes saturation than a telecommunication company joining the electric vehicle market? These companies all want a piece of the automobile market pie and it is infuriating.

My father sent a link to the article concerning the Xiaomi vehicle about a month ago and I was completely taken aback. What shocked me the most was that Xiaomi already has prototypes and plans to roll out actual functioning cars before the end of the year. Prior to Xiaomi, I was aware of Apple and Sony planning to make their own cars. Apple and Sony are very large companies, basically the big dogs of the telecommunication business and they have been very much involved in the infotainment systems of some vehicles, so I did not make a fuss. After reading the Xiaomi article, I decided to probe further, only to realize that other telecommunication companies like Oppo and Huawei were also looking for a way into the automobile market.

The question is, why is this happening?

EV's Simple Formula

1. The formula for Electric Vehicles (EV's) is not as difficult as that of Combustion Engines
Most of us have heard the origin story of Mercedes and how difficult it was to make one of the first vehicle combustion engines. Compared to the combustion engine that needed numerous engineers to figure out how best to make optimum horsepower and torque, EV's have a very simple recipe which consists of a set of batteries and some motors to spin the wheels, literally like a toy car. Of course, it is not as simple as I make it sound, as a bunch of engineers are still needed to make things work, nonetheless batteries and motors are easier to put together as seen in the image above. This is exactly why we have electric car companies springing up from nothing in a matter of months and competing with the big dogs of the automobile world as in the case of Rimac and Lucid EV's. 

EV's of 2023

2. These telecommunication companies have the technology needed to run a car
After establishing that EV's require just batteries and motors, these car companies invest much more resources into the software that operates and runs their electric vehicles. If you come to think about it, you would realize that these telecommunication companies already have the needed technology and experience needed to make software capable of handling these EV's and this brings me to the third reason which is collaboration.

3. Collaboration

With automobile companies having the vehicle chassis, motors and batteries taken care of, while the telecommunication companies having the needed software to operate these vehicles, it makes common sense for collaborations to occur. For example Honda and Sony have teamed up to produce an EV called Afeela, seen in the image above. It is not rocket science to realize that Honda definitely produced the physical car (hardware) and Sony was behind the non-physical part of the car (software). Volkswagen has also announced that they have a car chassis waiting to be taken up by a worthy collaborator and just any of these telecommunication companies, maybe even Infinix can take them up on their offer and next thing you know, we have a fully functioning Infinix vehicle. I will not be buying that tho!

The only advantage the saturation of the electric vehicle market has, is that of pricing. The more common electric vehicles are, the cheaper they will become. We should also bear in mind that the cheaper these electric vehicles become, the less durable and luxurious they will also become. Manufacturers will begin to cheap out on build quality and then we are back to square-one. I still do not buy the idea of telecommunication companies producing cars, but is the future of the automobile world and it is already happening. Thank you for reading and always remember to Turbo that engine!