Investing in Fleet Electrification-as-a-Service

At least in ‘Murica, buying a manual transmission car acts as a theft deterrent. Violent car jackings recently doubled in Chiraq, a city in the State of Illinois that buys the least number of manual cars as a percentage – about 1.39% of all cars sold are manual. Since less than 18% of Americans can drive a stick these days, odds are whatever waste of oxygen decides to jack your ride won’t know how to drive it. And they probably won’t stick around long enough to figure it out.

While manual transmissions are quickly becoming a thing of the past, gas-powered automobiles will be around for a lot longer. That’s because outside the U.S., there are 193 other countries where gas-powered vehicles will be around for a very long time. Roam the streets of any large East-Asian metropolis to see why. Vehicles are absolutely run into the ground before they’re retired. It will take decades to replace all the gas-powered vehicles with electric vehicles. And that’s where the electrification thesis starts.

Electrification-as-a-Service

We’ve written a lot about electric vehicles, but we haven’t looked at the electrification-as-a-service thesis which proposes a turnkey method for making gas-powered vehicles either partially or fully electric, along with the servicing infrastructure to support them. If you’re the sort of person who can drive a manual, you probably smell a rat. It’s a lot more difficult a problem to solve than it sounds.

If you’re going to buy an electric vehicle, just buy one. Why would you buy a gas-powered vehicle and then sink $10,000 into enabling it with some electric capabilities? That’s the going cost these days according to