The world’s second- and fourth-largest vehicle manufacturers, Volkswagen and GM respectively, have announced they will stop manufacturing hybrids to focus on electric cars, joining more and more manufacturers, some of which are entering into joint ventures, boosting competition in this sub-sector.
There will also be competition along the supply chain. Tesla, the leading manufacturer of electric vehicles and the one driving the transition, foresees difficulties in obtaining nickel, copper, lithium and other metals, while the United States is introducing legislation to streamline regulation and permitting requirements to mine electric-vehicle supply chain minerals to offset China’s dominance. Anything that ends the internal combustion engine’s days and that uses material that can be recycled is positive for the environment.
Hybrid vehicles were a short-term hoax, a marketing operation aimed at making some poorly informed consumers feel better. The electric motors in most hybrid vehicles are there merely to improve fuel consumption and tend to circulate most of the time using their internal combustion engine.
The automotive lobby focused for a long time on convincing legislators that hybrid vehicles were supposedly greener in order to offer their buyers advantages that should be reserved solely for electric vehicles, but the reality has always…
