Welcome to episode 290 of the Energy Talks podcast. I'm energy and climate journalist, Markham Hislop. Regular listeners know there is nothing, and I mean nothing I like better than a rousing discussion about technology adoption theory. Today, it's s curves and inflection points for electric vehicles with Corey Kanter, a senior associate with Bloomberg NEF, and he joins us from New York. So welcome back, welcome to the interview, Corey, but welcome back Energy Talks.
I think I've had you on at least once before.
Thanks, Mark. I'm great to be here. Thanks for having me back.
Well, I hope I know what's gonna be great because who doesn't like talking tech adoption theory? In fact, I had your boss, Colin McCarragher, on the, let me see, October, November, and we talked about this very thing. And you've presented, in the in the press release that I got, there's a bunch of information that I didn't talk about with Colin that I'm very interested in, and we'll start at the what happened at the end of 2023. 31 countries passed 5 percent of new car sales, you know, they were purely electric. Signals the start of mass adoption is and this is battery this is battery only.
Right? You didn't include plug in hybrid.
Yeah. Yeah. For for this, this is basically battery only, and I think at the top, I wanna give credit to the main person who works on this, which is Tom Randell. Even though it's a lot of b and f data, he is the the journalist playing out there. So encourage listeners to go check out the article.
But we've talked to him around the piece and around the kind of research, and it's looking at the fully electric vehicle space. If you have PHEV, a lot of these folks would hit 5% sooner. Or, you know, some and and we'll get into it, but sometimes people say 10% is the magic number, and it's really, this overall idea of leaving the early adopter phase and heading towards the mass, consumer.
Right. I'm actually gonna take you to task on a on a a minor technological or a theoretical point. The whole idea of the, the bell curve for adoption comes from Everett Rogers, who was a professor of sociology back in the forties, fifties, and sixties at one of your American universities. I can't remember which one it was. And if you look at his his bell curve, it's actually innovators are the first category. 2 a half percent, then you get
into early adopters,
then early majority, and on and on and on. So, but, yes, in in common parallels, the it's, early we think of early adopters, don't we?
Yeah. We do. But, no, it's good to know. I it takes you back to grad school and and probably a chart I should remember on the the kind of, bell curve of adoption.
Yeah. That's where I ran into it too. In fact, I was, doing my grad work 40 years ago, and about tractors and the the switch from, horses and steam to tractors and combines. Doesn't that sound exciting? But there's actually a little anecdote that goes along with that.
After I I was, I had done my classes, I was doing my research for my thesis, and I got a 6 month gig at the Western Development Museum in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. And part of my job was to crawl around on old steam tractors and figure out it was a called a rationalization study. So, you know, the Western Development Museum got, I don't know how many, you know, old steam tractors, but not all of them are are worth saving. You know? It would be nice if we had the money to to restore all of them.
We don't. And so the question was to go through, determine what exactly what you had, and it's a lot of fun because you get to measure steam grates and steam tubes, fire grates and steam tubes, and all sorts of things to determine their horsepower. And then is this an unusual specimen that should be, you know, preserved, or is it just a run of the mill and you can put it you know, sell it out to collectors, that kind of thing? Anyway anyway, just a little. So we 31 countries is a lot.
And it Yep. And one of the reasons why I find this fascinating is because OPEC released world its world oil outlook 2045 last year, and it said that only the OECD countries were going to electrify, especially transportation, and that the emerging economies, would largely stick with, hydrocarbons and fossil fuel well, you know, so hydrocarbon, oil and gas. And it doesn't look that way. I I I don't it doesn't look like that's actually gonna be the case because this is the lower cost, technology, and that's generally what people go for. What what's your take on that?
I I think in the the latest kind of research that in the the most recent piece that Tom said, you had interesting countries in there like Turkey, which was even off my radar in terms of, you know, major EV penetration. Thailand, which we've been following for a while at BNEF. We put out a report every June that we're working on currently called the long term electric vehicle outlook. And it's something, you know, for BNEF subscribers, but there is a public facing website. And that will have, you know, many of the regions that you're kinda referring to, maybe some of the lagger regions.
But the the overall kind of point is it's a it may be more of a 20 30 2030 story than a 2020 story, but we are starting to see signs of growth in places like India, like, South America, where EV adoption is just beginning. I think the challenge there and and what we're watching as researchers is that because these other major markets, your Germany, your China, your US have so much room to climb. They haven't been the first priority of the automakers. Now the world is gonna look a lot different in 2030, and I think stories like BYD, you know, opening up a facility in Brazil or India, you know, trying to encourage more electrification, will push that theory and and probably end up resulting in higher EV penetration than we've even forecast, but that's the kind of push and pull in it. I don't think that we've seen besides seeing, you know, some impressive, I think, early stage India related EV penetration, I think there's still a bit of a ways to go.
But that being said, seeing some of the countries on this list, we're no longer looking at UK, Germany, France, US, Canada. Right? There it's expanding into Eastern Europe, and and kinda beyond that.
Yeah. I the, Asian markets and Latin American markets seem to me that they're poised to go electric, And it won't be just electric. It'll be part of a, a combination with renewables and and store battery storage. And part of that and this is a story that generally gets missed in Canada, less so in the US, I find, because China has emerged as the new Russia. Right?
We're gonna have cold war 2 point o. China's gonna be the bogeyman and the big competitor. And in this case, the US is actually starting from behind. The US
is not leading the clean energy revolution. That's China. And by a by
a country mile, followed by you by Europe, and then arguably the US is in 3rd place in this in this race. But where I'm going with this, Corey, is that China has got a ton of extra capacity excess capacity. Like, their, solar panel, factories that were operating at, like, 38% capacity. Their battery factories are not at a 100%. And I would think that a country like China would look at that and go, okay.
EU is one market. We're not going into North America so much right now because, you know, we're mad at Biden. But, boy, Southeast Asia, Latin America, India, let's make make it part of
the belt and road
initiative, and let's take you take that unused capacity and keep people at work, keep generating revenue, and and at the same time develop markets. That's it's such a rational strategy, and you see the beginnings of it already.
Yeah. I mean, I even saw a newspaper article, news or news online article saying that the the number one selling EV in Israel was a BYD for, I think the quarter. So it it is everywhere. I I think the there will inevitably be a a push and pull here. I'll give you some examples.
There, you know, BYD was aiming to go into India. There was some pushback due to kind of national policy reasons. BYD has been attempting to, encourage Brazil to adopt stronger, you know, standards that lead towards bevs, while the incumbent automakers want PHEVs based on ethanol in their market. So I I don't think it's necessarily kind of a straight line to the top for market dominance. But, yeah, if you're a player the the way I've kind of phrased it in other it's as big as the arrival as the the Japanese automakers on the global stage.
It's gonna shake up, you know, who the players are. Think also within China, there is a bit of a competition for who are gonna be the dominant automakers because they've all been cutting prices quite a bit, and it's unsustainable. So I think even the Chinese market's gonna look a lot different in a couple years. But those who survive, will end up being in a pretty strong position as you you mentioned far out ahead. And I would say between CATL, the battery manufacturer, and BYD, the battery slash, automaker, you know, there's a lot of, let's say, great learning that they've done to not only be ahead now, but developing better LFP, lithium iron phosphate, developing new battery chemistries.
So it's not to say that Europe, US, others can't make up some ground, but the the challenge is when you're behind, then you're also behind on innovating. And I think some folks think they could just grab go into solid state and leapfrog, but solid state in practice has not been, you know, where it needs to be in order to kind of take over the battery market and the same way the LFP kind of has in China from NMC Nickel based batteries.
Let's go back to the the theory for a little bit. Now lately, I lucked out and found a bunch of old US Department of Agriculture, farm bulletins from the twenties and thirties. And it was all about the adoption of tractors in the corn belt, in, in the the weak the, that sort of the weak plains that start in Texas and go up into the Dakotas. And one of the things that became really clear in the twenties is how confusing everything was. You know, it's all it's very clear in hindsight, but when you're in the middle of it
like, let's say that you're a farmer,
and I'll use Western Canada because I know that that the best. So you're you're sitting there with a 160 acres. That's a quarter section. And you think, okay, man. You know, that forts and tractor, I really like that. That's 7 or $800. That's a big purchase for me in 1925. Right?
Right.
And and I may wanna get it I may wanna get a combine on top of it so I don't have to use a threshing machine. And that's a whole I don't know what those would have cost, but they would have been pretty expensive. And so the problem become where do I get that information? I don't have Google. There's no Internet.
So do I get it from the farm implement salesman? Do I get it from the a farm bulletin? Do I get it from gossip around the coffee shop? You know, how do I make how do I make a decision about what's right for me? So the confusion we have today about which direction the market's going, which technology's going to exactly the same thing on a different scale a 100 years ago when farmers were looking at adopting, you know, tractors and combines.
And I take your analogy and say we're even replaying the early auto industry in the US where you had different fueling types. I remember reading that kerosene was an option. Propane was more of an option on type on top of the kind of gasoline we know today. And so it it is a bit crazy with different EV connectors, different charging speeds, different location of those connectors, and it it will sort itself out. But I think there's an opportunity there.
You know, I I think a lot of the conversations we have around electric vehicles, particularly in North America, has been geared towards almost this begrudging of, like, why do we have to do this? Why are consumers so difficult? As opposed to you have an opportunity if you can make charging work, which, you know, you've seen Tesla do on its charging side, or if you can, you know, produce a better EV product than your competitors. So I I think in the same way to to your example, like, there's going to be a technology, I think, premium. I think we've seen that consumers will pay a small premium maybe for EVs, but on an upfront basis, but not a massive one.
You know, certain automakers here have been really surprised where it's like, oh, you don't wanna pay 10 to $15,000 more for a vehicle that's comparable. Understandable when people only have so much money to spend. But, as time goes on, I think you'll see more innovation because there'll be more pressure to innovate or you'll fall further behind.
I want I'd like to address that actually, because, in my work, when I look at a new technology, and a consumer's gonna buy that. Every consumer, you and I included, when we go to buy a new television, a new vehicle, a new appliance, we consider 4 variables. The purchase price, the the opex, the operating cost, the sorry. CAPEX and OPEX.
That's exactly right.
The risk and the value. So Right. For a lot of these early like, the innovators of first, you know, and early adopters, the first 10, 15% of the market, they're they're willing to pay a a a a premium, a purchase premium. The operating cost is, you know, they like that, but that's not big deal. The big deal is value. You know, they they really they get to see a lot of value in adopting early technology. It's a status thing. It's a gadget thing.
Right.
You know, it's some for some people, it's an environmental thing. And in terms of risk, they tend to downplay the risk. You know? That's okay. That's just you know, I I don't mind that. It's like an early you know, buying an early smartphone. You know? Yeah. Sure. My battery might, you know, catch on fire and burn my house down, but that
that's alright. I mean,
look at how cool this gadget is. And and so I think what happens is everybody makes that calculation differently. Like, my wife and I, when we do the calculation, we are not innovators and early adopters. We are way up the curve in late we're not quite at the middle, where we tip into the late majority, but we're in early majority adopter status. We we still don't have enough you know, as journalists, Hugh, you'd know this, you know, you don't have enough income.
You've got other priorities, and so you tend to wait until the technology has matured, so your risk is lower, and your value is is is increased, and you can afford it. And so that's it's our calculation and others make but you make a good point about the American market, which is that when you when you you're not looking at, you know, like, you're not a European driver. You're not driving a small to, you know, compact car. You need an SUV or you need an f 150 lightning, that's a different calculation because now with the costs are higher and maybe your range isn't quite you know, you wanted to tow your your your boat to the lake. And so it's a different calculation here in North America than it is in Europe or China.
Yeah. I think that's true. And and I think there was a great survey by Edmunds put out this week or in the last week or so showing that even what consumers want in EVs is a bit different than the traditional US market. So consumers want more sedans and SUVs, and automakers, I think, just assume that you would copy paste the breakdown, of s u, of the existing market and just say, well, 20% of the existing market is pickups. Therefore, 20% must want pickups and, you know, 40% on SUVs and whatever percent want sedans.
But but, ultimately, I think it's about making compelling products, and you can get consumers to to try it or to, you know, be willing to take a bit more of that risk. Too many and this is not this next point I'm gonna make is in database or more, I'd say, almost vibes based. With the exception of maybe the r two unveiling a month ago, it felt like there was a and and for those who like it, the cyber truck unveiling in November, it felt like there was a good 3 to 4 or maybe a 3 year period in the US where there wasn't, like, a launch since maybe the lightning originally came out that felt like a compelling product that you had to get. Right? The the from a value standpoint, the model y is probably the best bang for your buck in terms of upfront cost and the Tesla charging cost.
But, again, automakers need to kinda make a compelling project, product overall, because it while it is a kind of, I'd say, theory of, like, the the s curve, This is also a consumer, you know, story in terms of emotions and psychology. That's what makes working in the EV kind of subdivision of the energy transition so interesting because you have clean energy, but you also have cars, but you also have this kinda consumer angle. On the commercial vehicle side, you know, maybe that's a little bit more like traditional clean tech where it's, like, function and kind of giving it to a a certain business. And you can say the same thing, SolarWinds. Right?
Ultimately, they are products being offered to a utility, or in some cases to a resident. A long way of saying that, essentially, there's a lot that goes into these decisions here, and I think that automakers are continuing to work hard to adjust to it, but we haven't seen a ton of success in terms of individual models. One to watch this year is maybe the Kia e v 9.
There was, about, 20 episodes ago, I interviewed Flavio Volpe, who is the president of the Automotive Manufacturers Parts Association in Canada. So, basically, the folks like Magna International that are making the parts for the OEMs. And I said, flop and and I read him, a quote from Carlos Tavares, the the CEO of Stellantis. And Tavares, you probably know the one I'm talking about where he said, look. The Chinese are coming for us, the Chinese EV makers.
If you are not well positioned today to to pivot into EVs, you're toast. You're literally not gonna make the the transition. And so I there are more than a few c CEOs, who are getting nervous over that. But my my point here is, what do you think
of the
Chinese the the onslaught from China? It just BYD and all of the other companies that we don't talk about, like Nio and, Keely and all of these brands, MG, you know, that are not known here. But they're known in Europe, and they're known in Latin America and plenty of other places. So what what's your take on that?
Yeah. I mean, they're high quality cars. Right? I think that's the there was a good FTP that I read yesterday where, basically arguing that the scariest thing for automakers isn't that China makes more affordable vehicles, and so they make affordable vehicles that are better. And so, you know, Seagull has been making a lot of news on the, in the Northern Hemisphere, be you know, as the car to watch for.
I've had it, you know, described as a really nice Chevy Volt, essentially. And so, listen, it's something that I think, Tavares is right to be playing to the global market, which this is. I think there are some that think you can just kinda corner off a North American market. But the way I kind of phrase it is if you think about, like, some will some will say, oh, 20% we're gonna of the US market is pickups, you know, and we're just gonna do pickups at 80% of the US market that you're succeeding. And then all of these global markets, in LATAM is big.
It's been big for 4 historically, and and, you know, Hyundai Kia had played down there as well or wanna play down there. And so just saying, let the other automakers take it, then you're gonna lose a lot of market share. Europeans are trying things. Ultimately, I think there's gonna be, I'm I'm sure, a mismatch or there's gonna be a mismatch of reactions and responses. It'll also be interesting to see if the western automakers essentially don't do as well in China, what happens then?
Right? Because I think some of the fear has to be that most of these guys have what are called joint ventures in China, right, and offer EV offerings there. So if it's to be a continued story, I think that the concern is valid. But I think as I I stated China market is unsettled. So I think the best thing and I it it's still early too early to say who gets it or who has made moves to kinda counteract it is, you know, ticking shoring up your own EV, adoption strategy.
And not to say that you don't worry about your competitors, but I I think we see the right amount of concern if you're these guys who are competing against the UID. Now you need to see the response or if there's a response, and we'll have to stay tuned on that.
One of the things that's interesting about the the Chinese manufacturers is that they have figured out how to build cars in the low to mid range of the market. And I was talking to another e interviewing another EV analyst, and he pointed out that the strongest growth over the last 2 years has been in the mid range market. And that's not where, North American and European, e manufacturers, are playing right now. They they're mostly trying to get into the premium end of the market. And not only that, but but China, the consumers there are very different.
They live out of their they live out of their their cell phone, and everything has to be done through an app, and they're very connected. And they see their their phone their car is an extension of their of their digital native culture, as their phone is, and all of it has to work together. And, the only company that apparently gets it is Tesla. Tesla's got good technology and can compete with the Chinese brands. Many of the others haven't, and the OEMs, you know, have lost a lot of market share over the last year or 2.
So I wonder Yeah. That what role that, you know, the, being a technology leader plays in terms of getting market share.
Yeah. No. I I think that basically it is I've put it put it before, but what makes EV so challenging for the the legacy automakers is it's really almost a 4 part product. Really, you you could think of it as the car plus the battery plus the software, and plus the charging experience, which I know is tied into the battery. But and I think for too long, legacy automakers said, we make really nice cars.
Like, I I was at the car show here in New York last week, and you go into a GM Equinox EV, and it's really nice for what the price point is going to be, and it's spacious. So the it's not the car that's the issue. It's are you building batteries in that that will charge fast enough, to essentially, you know, keep the consumer happy and have long enough range. Is the software not going to break down? And, also, on the charging network side, I think a bunch of these folks in the US in Europe, it's a little bit different because I think they smartly got together and said, we'll create the IoT network and work together to kinda build out charging.
In the US, I think they didn't wanna deal with it and said let's outsource it to everyone else. And now you've got Ionia, which is the joint venture of 7 automakers that could have been created 4, 5 years ago, right, and would be hitting the ground running. Now they've got they're just hiring it up, and Tesla's gaining market share there. So I think to you I I was sure your original question, but I I think it's the point that Tesla has all four of those things. What Tesla doesn't have, ironically, and this is what I've heard from, I'd say, more car enthusiasts than, you know, the the sales data to date, but, you know, plays into the kind of delivery drop yesterday is that the Tesla interior is they're they're more of almost like a a Toyota Camry, Corolla competitor, and that's a very simplistic car when you're inside of it.
So the s, while it once kind of a leader, is now just one amongst many different, premium vehicles. And so you might want a Lucid. You might want a Mercedes. You might want a Porsche. Right?
So Tesla maybe the the way for the other automakers to to catch up is the interior and the kind of special feeling in a car, particularly for those more expensive models. It's gonna be hard to beat the the mass volume where Tesla's at today, without kind of getting that economies to scale up. So there's a lot of lessons for these other guys to take from Tesla, and there is ways for them to eventually have a competitive advantage. But if you're trailing so far behind on charging and batteries and software, it's gonna be hard to, you know, show off that we have nicer vehicles. One bright spot for GM, I'll say, is the Cadillac Lyric finally had sales.
I think that were trending in the right direction last quarter. But, yeah, now GM can say, assuming that there are no safety issues, why go to Model x when you can get a slightly cheaper Cadillac Lyriq and you have the nice interior for the cost that you're paying? But, again, you have to build up your volume to where you can say that. Otherwise, people are gonna be waiting for yours and just won't stick around.
One of the points that you made in your report is, that EVs, once they pass the inflection point, can go from 5%, well, sorry, in a the market share of battery electric vehicles in a country can go from 5% to 25% of new car sales in, like, under 4 years.
And one
of the the reason that resonated for me is the, you know, the last quarter of 2023, suddenly there was this flood of stories about, oh my god. The bloom is off the road the EV rose, and, you know, we're gonna see, maybe it's gonna go in the other direction and maybe it's the end of it I couldn't help but think that maybe the American Automotive association was behind it or, you know, there was there was a strategy there because it was just way too orchestrated. But, nevertheless, there is a bit of a slowdown in some areas. So what's your take? Are we seeing a slowdown, or are we seeing a rejigging of market share in different regions based on what's going on in the industry?
I think, globally, you have seen a decline in sales growth. We're still processing through the q one numbers, so I gotta see where we end up, for the US, for Canada. And so, you know, maybe there's an element of when you talk about something enough, right, it becomes destiny in a sense. But, you know, we're very data oriented here. So like I was saying to reporters in the at the end of last year, our data wasn't showing a slowdown, so we won't report as such.
I think q one, you will see, quite a bit of sales growth slowdown. And at least for US and likely Canada, what I can say is if you take 2 high volume models, like the Bolt and the model 3 and really reduce them or phase them out, and you're not replacing them with another high volume model, that that hurts growth. So GM was no longer building the bolts. You can look at the data and see this time last year, you know, GM had about 19,000 bolts sold this year in the US. This year, they did 7,000.
So that's 12,000 EVs that just, poof, are gone. With the model 3, you know, with the Highland Refresh or potentially the y could be cannibalizing some of the 3, sales because they're so close, you know, that's a bunch of models that, again, let's say, you know, it's 5 or 10,000. Then taken together, you're taking 22,000 doll 22,000 model units off of the the shelves before you're even getting into well, Honda and Kia did better this year year on year. Rivian did slightly better year on year. BMW continues to do well.
But all of these folks are still relatively low volume. So the whole market doesn't look better if you're removing high volume models for low even if individual automakers may be making strides. So I I think that's where we're at. I think the the key question is going to be, you know, how does Tesla respond to, you know, one bad quarter? I think there's often, like, a narrative of we wanna build up, we wanna pile down.
And so we'll just go where the data tells us. They had a bad quarter. What's going to be done to correct it? I think that their challenge is the vehicle lineup and how quickly you're gonna bring in a new vehicle, or if the cyber truck really is in demand, you know, have you scaled that up and got it up to consumers? So so that's the the story on growth.
We'll see where the data comes in. I think, ultimately, the the question for automakers is, can you make EVs that are profitable that people will buy, and can you begin to build up to EV economies of scale? Because if not, to our earlier points, then that's where you run into some issues. And to kinda close on this, I think we're still really early in the kinda grand close on the question, really early on the the grand scheme of this that the choice that automakers make now are really important for not just now, but whether you're investing in and scaling up to. So you can for example, Rivian can take a step back in q 2 if it's really gonna benefit in the, back half of the year, or Tesla can have a bad quarter if they're addressing it and making changes.
Tesla has more wiggle room than others, but the the overall point is you have to be showing progress at this point. I think we're past well, we're gonna have 30 models out by 2028, and that's all we can say. Because it winners and losers, I think, will begin to to to clarify themselves by next year.
Yeah. I I would agree with that. And, it's a little bit of frothiness in the marketplace, as we go up the s curve is to be expected. I mean, you know, last year, there was some, inflation still in the economy last year. Interest rates were still high at that point.
There are plenty of other reasons. Oh, and in the US, in the the public charging infrastructure, you know, the lack of investment in it has become a kind of an impediment, especially given that, you know, consumers like to to go on longer, longer trips with bigger vehicles. So looking ahead between now and 2030, Corey, you said that 2030 would look a lot different. I agree with that. So what what would you expect between now and then in this in the EV market globally and in North America?
Hey. How are you doing? Yeah.
And, I mean, that's start part of what we're not to to punt the question, but that's what goes into our work around our long term media outlook that will be out in June. We do continue to see scale up in the, impact of things like the inflation reduction act, you know, policies from Europe, new EV platforms, new battery chemistries, and, of course, you know, the impact of automakers like BYD globally. But, yeah, in terms of specific kind of penetration numbers, we put in the hard work now, so I won't I won't get ahead of, you know, what we end up, sharing later on.
Well, that's okay because I will. I I'm not I'm not a bunch. I'll I'll take a crack at this. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I I really I I think in the last 2023 was, in particular, was the year that that China's coming out party. You know, where it it not that they hadn't been doing it before, you know, on wind and solar and batteries and and EVs, but we finally clued in just how big a lead China has got and how much excess, manufacturing capacity they have in all of these key technologies. And given the the International Energy Agency is expecting that we're that China is going to continue to invest at the same level. I saw just the other day, that, one of the big battery companies was investing in a 56 gigawatt,
you
know, battery plant. So Yeah. If everybody keeps investing in capacity, there's gonna be a lot of competition in the market, and prices are gonna fall, and I think that you'll see as I mentioned earlier, China will push into new markets. The I think between now and and 2030, you're the, the s curve, you know, we're on the hockey stick part of the curve, and I think it's gonna steepen. That's that's my prediction, and
No. No. That's your prediction. So I what I will say, the the way we thought of the US this year is it is a transition year in that just when you look at the models and the way that automakers position themselves, it's a lot of gearing up for 25 and 26. There's a few models that I'm keeping an eye on, the Kia EV 9 that I mentioned before and the Volvo EX 30 and the Chevrolet Equinox EV, assuming that it's able to sell without any software issues.
So I think those three models could could help, you know, push these markets in North America in the right direction, But I think we've learned to be a bit conservative with the automakers over here just because rhetoric hasn't met the production volume yet. So we'll see. You gotta have products to buy. Right? It's one thing the the consumers are getting more and more interested.
I saw a stat yesterday that I think around 50% of BMW customers are willing to consider a bev, and that's a a pretty high number. You know? And BMW's actually EV share sale in the US last year. That plus we have was 20%. So, again, there are consumers willing to buy these EVs. I think it's gonna be a question of which consumers are they and how cheap does that upfront cost get as well as the other concerns you talked about earlier.
Well, one of the things I think we can say and the theory would support this is that, buckle up because it's gonna be a pretty wild ride. Corey, oh, a pleasure as always. Thank you very much for this, and we'll have you back after the long range EV outlook, which I which I comb through, as you can imagine, with, looking for details. And I so I look forward to that interview. Talk to you then.
Thanks. Thanks, Mark. I really appreciate it.