Most of the legacy car manufacturers won't make it.

Here’s an extreme, but not irrational prediction: Most of the legacy car manufacturers won’t make it. They will not survive this EV wildfire that’s taken over the industry. Some will go belly-up in the next few years & become part of automotive history (or get bailed out). Others will live-on in some synthetic way. Meaning – the legacy manufactures that do survive will merge, share chassis & technology, and lose their once unique identities & intricacies.

Hell I’m not even ‘predicting anything’ anymore. It’s already happened. Manufacturers are sharing chassis, combining forces, becoming more & more incestuous, Apple CarPlay is trying to run the electronics across brands, etc. Critical errors are being made in a frenzy to try & catch Tesla and/or to rush EVs to market. That’s the trajectory that we’re already deep into.

It’s a lot like Amazon… ^^^^^^

Where you see one generic product stamped with 8 different rebranded names… and it’s clearly all the same sh¡t. Or like in the movie Demolition Man, where every restaurant became Taco Bell lol. That’s where this is headed. The iconic automotive brands of our past, if they survive, will be a thin/brittle shell of the passion that created them. And that will open the door to their demise.

Just like it was impossible for Blockbuster to adapt & survive the streaming era…

And like it was impossible for the hair-metal bands of the 80s to adapt to grunge…. it will be a nearly insurmountable task for legacy auto manufacturers to successfully adapt to this this EV era. And do it with any semblance of their ‘legacy’ intact.

In the midst of this self-created EV tidal wave, half of their fanbase will follow the fads & flow-over to the new start-up EV brands (the Nirvanas & Pearl Jams & Teslas & Rivians). The other half will stay loyal & stick around. BUT – the auto manufacturers will abandon the loyal fans… trying in vein to chase the half that left. And in that, they will lose it all.

What crazy in retrospect here… is that they did it to themselves.

For decades now, vehicles have become more generic, more appliance-like, more numb, less pure, less expressive, less soulful, less attractive, and less engaging. And as such, the automakers groomed a modern society that’s no longer passionate about the automobile. Non-passionate customers are not fans. They’re less discerning, less informed… and therefore less loyal. In other words, they’re more likely to go the way the trends point them without much thought or introspection. So by diluting their brands & making generic vehicles for decades, car manufacturers were letting cracks into their fort. And now there’s an invasion. Specifically that invasion is: 1) Electrification, 2) Tech companies building/funding EVs, 3) Social media manipulation, and 4) Current political manipulation. And here’s the killer – we’ve got a mass consumer-base who’s not interested enough… to be informed enough… to care. There should be a moral/lesson here somewhere.