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TOWNSHIP OF PLYMOUTH, Mich. (AP) – In an old renovated cash register plant in the suburbs of Detroit, 300 engineers are working on a 100% electric pickup truck and an SUV that they hope to ship.
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All work for Rivian who, on November 26, unveiled the two vehicles in front of the
Los Angeles Auto Show
. It is part of a growing number of established startups and automakers looking to enter the fully electric vehicle market.
The influx of battery-only vehicles will almost certainly attract buyers from the current leader, Tesla, who will probably deliver more than 300,000 vehicles worldwide this year.
Established car manufacturers such as Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Jaguar-Land Rover, Volkswagen, Hyundai, General Motors, Ford and even the Dyson vacuum cleaner manufacturer have promised to roll out new electrical appliances in the coming years. Luxury car manufacturers are in direct competition with Tesla's high-margin vehicles, the X and S models.
Michael Ramsey, senior analyst at Gartner, said Tesla "will undoubtedly lose market share as new competitors arrive."
However, it is unclear whether the demand for electric vehicles will increase enough so that there is room for everyone. Currently, the market is tiny. In the United States, electric vehicles accounted for only 0.8% of new vehicle registrations until August of this year, according to IHS Markit data. But this is significantly more than the 0.5% recorded at the same time in 2017. US automakers sold just over 155,000 all-electric vehicles in October, about 1% of total sales, according to Edmunds.com.
Globally, Navigant Research expects tremendous growth over the next seven years, from just over one million sales this year to 6.5 million by 2025.
As competition intensifies, prices are gradually falling and getting closer to internal combustion engine cars. At the same time, the electrical reach is on the rise.
For example, Rivian promises that the state-of-the-art version of its R1T pickup will have more than 400 km of range-by-load when it will go on sale at the end of 2020. The five-seat pickup is intended for a market that Tesla has not yet reached. an off-road capable truck with outdoor features.
Rivian, headquartered in Plymouth Township, Michigan, says the R1T can go fast on the road with one electric motor per wheel from zero to 100 km / h in three seconds. It also has a foldaway bed cover and storage space across the width of the truck behind the rear seats that can carry surfboards, snowboards or skis. It features a unique white horizontal light bar at the front provided with oval headlights.
CEO RJM Scaringe, 35, holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, announced that her exact price would be announced later, but that a basic truck with a longer battery 230 km will start at less than $ 70,000. A truck with the long-range battery will cost about $ 90,000, he said.
The small start-up still has a long way to go to sell vehicles, even though it claims to have $ 500 million in funding. She needs to develop a sales and service network, advertise a battery cell provider, and start producing vehicles at a former Mitsubishi Motors plant she owns in Normal, Illinois.
Stephanie Brinley, an analyst at IHS, believes that Tesla could lose sales for a while, as competitors enter a slowly growing market. But ultimately, she thinks electric vehicle sales will take off and Tesla's sales will increase.
At least publicly, Tesla CEO
Elon Musk
repeatedly stated that competition was good, contributing to the company's goal of sustainable transportation.
"It's impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to deal with the carbon crisis," Musk wrote in a 2014 blog. "Our real competition is not the thin net of electric cars other than Tesla, but the huge stream of gas cars coming out of the world's factories every day. "
Joe McDonald in Beijing contributed to this report.
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