I'm curious whether there will be a sea change in the auto industry. This seams similar to the situation 100 or so years ago with the carriage manufacturers vs the start up auto companies.
That depends what you mean. Most of the major auto manufacturers have an electric vehicle available already (i3, Leaf, Bolt, Soul EV, etc.) or in the works for release in the next few years. The issue is that their entire production line, supplier relationships, sales models, etc. have been optimized for ICE vehicles for decades, so converting to all-electric vehicles while still producing and supporting ICE vehicles is organizationally very challenging.
However, as evidenced by Google's recently stated exit from building its own vehicle, actually bringing a new consumer car to market in any kind of decent volume is really, really, hard. I'd put my money on a slow conversion from ICE to EV with the existing manufacturers over the next 20 years, and smaller entrants popping up and going bust every couple years. Remember the Fisker Karma? And also remember how Tesla almost went broke multiple times? Long-term success for startups in the auto industry is rare.
> actually bringing a new consumer car to market in any kind of decent volume is really, really, hard.
Or they just figure that making battery cars is not going to be a high-margin business (Apart from waymo, they dont seem to have plans for a bigger car), unlike self-driving software which is what Google is doing well.
Good point. But to be fair, regular mass market cars are a very low margin (percentage-wise) business today as well, at least on the sales side. EVs just cut down on the long-tail profits to be had from ongoing maintenance and parts replacement.
It turned out that rumour about Google's car wasn't true. Instead, they spun their self-driving car business into its own company under Alphabet. It's now called Waymo.
