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The End of Gas Cars Is Coming as Tesla Continues to Produce More EVs

The end of gas cars is being seen as Stellantis is indefinitely idling a Jeep plant and laying off workers in Illinois to cut costs for EVs, as written in an article by CNBC. The pace of EVs is accelerating and other companies are going to feel the effect.
The End of Gas Cars Is Coming as Tesla Continues to Produce More EVs

The End of Gas Cars

In an article written today by CNBC, Stellantis has said that it is closing a plant in Illinois that is producing the Jeep Cherokee SUV and it will cease production as of February 28th.

This will affect more than 1,200 workers at the plant who will be placed on indefinite layoffs the company stated. The company is describing this idling as a difficult but necessary option.

The end of the gas car is accelerating and this makes me think of a couple things. First, existing Jeep Cherokees are going to be harder to find maintenance on, but might become more valuable due to them not getting produced - or not getting produced as much. Second, I feel for the workers affected by this layoff and hope that they can find jobs in the EV space.

I would expect to hear more news of this from all gas car auto makers over the next few years as EV adoption continues to soar and the economics of EVs are just that much better than gas cars. In the end, it will be money and economics that determines this. For instance, the Tesla Semi is about 80% cheaper to operate than a standard diesel truck. This is staggering.

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How Big Will Tesla Get?

Tesla was early to the cycle of EV adoption and took the most risk of any of the current auto makers. Elon Musk believed in electric vehicles (EVs) and stuck with them despite many of the hardships that Tesla faces in the early days. Elon Musk has even said that multiple times he thought Tesla would go bankrupt and that he thought Tesla had a less than 10% chance of succeeding.

Things are fortunately different these days for Tesla and Elon Musk and their early risk in EVs has paid off. Tesla has made the original Tesla Roadster, the Model S, the Model X, the Model 3, and the Model Y. Tesla also has future vehicles coming in the form of the Cybertruck, the new Tesla Roadster, an eventual Tesla van, and a Robotaxi vehicle that may end up being the $30,000 hatchback as well.

In order for other gas producing car companies to succeed they are, unfortunately, going to have to make the hard choices to transition off gas cars, which will mean that those workers who understand how to build those cars will be out of a job. However, I believe those workers should quickly transition their knowledge to EVs in order to work on them.

It's very clear to me - there will be continued headlines about gas car companies having layoffs and struggling to make the transition to EVs because they did not start soon enough.

What do you think about Stellantis doing layoffs? Does Tesla have the biggest advantage in EVs because they started so early?

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Jeremy Johnson is a Tesla investor and supporter. He first invested in Tesla in 2017 after years of following Elon Musk and admiring his work ethic and intelligence. Since then, he's become a Tesla bull, covering anything about Tesla he can find, while also dabbling in other electric vehicle companies. Jeremy covers Tesla developments at Torque News. You can follow him on Twitter or LinkedIn to stay in touch and follow his Tesla news coverage on Torque News.

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