I don’t know why this is surprising. Dozens of startup internal-combustion car companies went belly up 100 years ago eventually to create just the big 3 in the US. The dot-bomb was only a little over a score ago.
But you can still drive your Studabaker.
Will an EV from a long gone company still work after charging anpps and proprietary control systems get out of date?
Just because I can do something, doesn’t mean I want to. 
I also can get out my buggy whip and ready the horse stall. What’s yer point?
And I know more people who can’t fix that Studebaker than can fix it when it breaks down. Just because you can’t fix an outdated tech, doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed.
Point being the 50 year old old ICE car is drivable. A 5 year old EV might be bricked.
Or, it might not. And while you have out yer crystal ball, help a brother out with some lotto numbers.
And why in the world would you think there is unlimited petrol?
Key words are “might be”.
You seriously don’t think more tech and software that needs updates is less reliably future-proof?
I have a rotary bell phone from 1950s I can still use (if I had a landline), but an iPhone from 2007 doesn’t work because the network and software is out of date.
My comment was nothing to do with fuel.
In any case, I hope Polestar makes it. I like the direction they are going even if to me it never made sense to try to be separate from Volvo on a design language basis.
I think Geely has enough money, I don’t know if they are at any risk, though the numbers and news don’t seem to be good.
Somewhat related, I just saw that JD Power says cars made after 2020 have more problems than before. 4 more problems reported per 100 cars than before. Also, EVs have more problems than combustion engine cars (although are those problems more expensive, I don’t know).
https://driving.ca/auto-news/awards-surveys/vehicles-problematic-ev-worst-j-d-power-dependability
I think it is a concern that it’s now acceptable to dump poorly developed cars on the road and say, “but we’ll fix it by an update, someday”. Sadly, I see this trend almost everywhere in manufacturing.
Interesting. But not surprising.
I wonder what total life cycle of new vs. old cars and EVs look like.
Tesla Roadsters are now up to 16 years old and Model S are up to 12 years old. That’s about the age that traditional cars get squashed. It would be interesting to get data on how many are still registered for the road and how the recycling has gone. Any journalists out there want to hop on this story?
You mean new tech is more complicated? Wow, I never knew. And if you really want to make a point about longevity, you really to consider the big picture, like fuel, like landlines, in your examples. Being narrow-minded isn’t the best trait for a designer.
Now let me get back to designing that buggy whip …
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A lot of it seems like more business-led decision-making than anything to do with branding. If I were to hazard a guess, it could be similar to why Ram was spun off: being a separate business entity makes the division more valuable in the situation that the parent company goes under, a real possibility for Chrysler at the time.
Polestar could be in a similar, albeit inverted situation. If Polestar’s EV-only strategy doesn’t work, then Polestar can be folded without devaluing Volvo in customers’ and shareholder’s minds. The association between the two allows Geely to hedge its bets because by all accounts, Volvo as a brand should be doing what Polestar is and going EV-only.