The electric car industry was, for a little while there, the new gold rush. It was relatively easy to get public or private funding for promising battery-powered vehicles like the Fisker Ocean, infrastructure support was growing, and investors were terrified of being left out of the next big thing.
In retrospect, it’s obvious that this was an economic bubble. Of course, it was obvious five years ago, too (and it was especially obvious to Toyota). Fast, easy money is never sustainable, and the scrapyard is full of electric cars that were supposed to lead the industry into a new era. Whether through mismanagement or just plain bad timing, these once-promising EV companies simply failed to go the distance.