With oil prices rising, are you seeing increased adoption of electric vehicles (EVs)?
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A key factor that’s impeding wider adoption is that electricity costs are increasing. It varies by country, but in the UK we've seen it double and we're expecting another rise. If you're using an EV, you still have to charge your car and it's suddenly going to be more expensive. With electricity getting more expensive, there will be ripple effects. And as a startup, we are hearing through the grapevine that it's affecting valuations as well. VCs are starting to look at discounting what their typical markup would be because there's more risk and they want to be a lot more cautious.
It surprised me to see EV companies crashing in the stock market when oil prices are rising. Why isn't everybody turning to electric vehicles instead?
It could be because of the supply chain impacts from the Russia/Ukraine conflict, because a lot of the raw material comes from China and Russia.
In one sense, that's true, but the other aspect is that all the other electric vehicles (EVs) are not able to come up to speed and deliver. You see it in nearly all the companies making EVs; they did all their showcasing and marketing, and now that it's time to deliver, they're all falling short. You would think Tesla stock would be flying, but they're not because they're the only ones that are delivering at this point, apart from Volkswagen.
I don't think there has been an increased adoption across the states. I would say that there has been a larger adoption on the east and west coasts. The US infrastructure isn't setup to support a mass EV adoption. We've seen this happen in California in the past several weeks where charging your vehicle was discouraged due to over-taxing the electrical grid.