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Comment by qubax | Hacker News Reader

Why? We lead the world in software by a long margin. It's one of the reasons english is the lingua franca of software development. As for electric cars, it's only the US and the chinese who are heavily invested in it. The japanese have a presence in EVs but they are more heavily invested in hydrogen cars.

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European manufacturers are heavily investing in electric cars. You're perhaps blinded by local news -- then again I'm surely too, as I don't know of US companies other than Tesla that are doing something with electric.

GM has been shipping the Chevy Bolt for a while though sales are down. Of course there are lots of hybrids.

GM has the Bolt and Volt, and a Cadillac hybrid. Ford has the C-Max plug-in and a few other hybrids, and is going to build a hybrid F-150 and Mustang in the next few years. And for some reason Chrysler managed to beat Toyota and Honda to market with the first hybrid minivan.

Given that the F-150 is the bestselling vehicle in the United States, Ford might become one of the world's top sellers of hybrid cars when they release it. And the hybrid Mustang is supposed to be one of the fastest Mustang models.

I'm skeptical that a hybrid F150 would be much of a success, outside of people that probably don't need to have a full-size truck anyway.

It might be mildly interesting if any batteries were stashed in the rear - in the winter I have to put about 1000 pounds of sandbags to make it safe to drive on snow and ice.

The hybrid F150 will sell well based on one feature alone: using the vehicle’s engine and electric motors to function as a powerful worksite generator. Of course most people won’t use it for that but it gives them the excuse to buy it.

That and fleet sales are huge for f150 iirc. A more efficient, even if more boring to drive option exists, they will procure it en masse.

>for some reason Chrysler managed to beat Toyota and Honda to market with the first hybrid minivan

Chrysler pretty much invented the minivan and is actually very competitive in the minivan market. Here's[0] a review of Chrysler vs Honda & Toyota.

[0]https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2017-chrysler-pacifica-...

The Nissan Leaf seems more than "a presence".

In what way other than wages does the US lead the world at all, never mind "by a large margin"?

off the top of my head, the three most valuable tech companies in the world are based in the US.

who do you think is the world leader in tech?

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