Pathways
Six executive questions
The main story follows events over time. These six pathways answer the decisions executives face now.
Each pathway can also be followed across the map. Open the map →
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Pathway 01 · The moving problem
What is stopping electric-vehicle growth now, and who can change it?
Find the current bottleneck and the organisation with the power to remove it.
Electric-vehicle growth has been blocked by different things at different times. Expensive batteries, missing chargers, scarce cells, weak lease economics and slow grid connections each became the bottleneck in a different market.
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Pathway 02 · The whole product
What must work outside the vehicle before the vehicle can deliver a usable journey?
The car is only part of the product. Charging access, reliable equipment and enough electrical capacity must work too.
An electric car can work perfectly and still be unusable. The driver may lack a place to charge, find broken equipment or wait for a depot grid connection.
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Pathway 03 · Where the money went
Who earned or lost money, and which claims remain unmeasured?
CATL made money. Ford's electric-vehicle business lost money. The promised profits from data, software and mobility services have not been demonstrated.
Important technology does not automatically produce profit. This pathway separates financial results companies reported from profit pools that analysts predicted but companies never demonstrated.
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Pathway 04 · What a rule changes
Which part of the industry is a rule changing?
A rule can change the vehicle price, decide which suppliers qualify, or change how a car is financed. Where it lands matters more than how large it is.
Vehicle sales show only part of what policy changes. Two governments on two continents put money into electric vehicles in different places in the system, and the placement changed the result. Norway subsidised public chargers alongside vehicles. The United States attached a credit to commercial vehicles, which lessors could use and buyers could not.
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Pathway 05 · Why software firms partnered
Why did software firms partner with carmakers instead of replacing them?
Carmakers remained liable for the vehicle. They also controlled manufacturing, integration and the release of safety-critical software.
Software firms knew how to build digital products quickly. They did not own factories, certify complete vehicles or carry liability for a crash. That made partnership more practical than replacement.
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Pathway 06 · Different bets
What were these carmakers betting on?
Each company bet on a different answer to one question: which constraint will decide this industry? Then most of them moved their boundaries the same way.
Tesla bet on charging and built a network. Rivian and Volkswagen shared platform engineering. CATL offered an integrated chassis. Established US carmakers built software teams. These companies acted on different views of what would constrain electric vehicles.
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