A number of electric vehicle, battery factories are being canceled
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Just a measure to take a step back and assess the whole picture I'm assuming.
In the past it didn't matter so much economically because slaving in your farm was still one of the most important jobs. In 1900, ~40% of the American workforce was employed in agriculture. Yet even then the (ex) slave states were poor compared to northern states because they didn’t know how to invest in their population (still don’t).
You could invest at the whims of the current administration and then invest further in supporting the autocracy.
That's how they do it in Russia.
> But even before President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on imports, many of those projects were being canceled — leaving thousands of jobs and the shift to clean energy in doubt.
Sure, his energy policy was predictable too, but you'd have needed to predict the election results too to act on them. Who knows that'll happen in 4 years, will it be more of this or will we see EV subsidies returned? That's the part that's hardest to predict.
Further, he won't be in power long enough to ensure nothing changes for 40 years – US trade policy isn't read-only form here on out. Painful tariffs might not even survive until the midterms next year, if Congresspeople start fretting about keeping their jobs.
Which is to say you have to invest for something knowing things will change and not knowing how. As always. This might even be a good time to invest if you have cash - prices are down and interest rates are up.
Ordinarily, I'd say you're right about investment. Long term, the market goes up. Trying to time the market isn't very effective; you might as well invest cash now.
These circumstances aren't ordinary. This is potentially a decade-long depression. I really hate saying that; "this time it's different" always sound stupid. But every nation on earth has just looked at the US and said, "Maybe not", and that's really unprecedented.
I'm not pulling out of the market myself, so you have to take everything with a grain of salt. Without more information, I don't know what to do, so I'm sticking with inertia, and hoping I'm wrong about the magnitude of the potential cataclysm.
They bought this one, and now they are crying about it.
So the answer to your question is: go invest in a congress person. Buy stability. Or else remain flexible, don't invest, go out of business, whatever.
Stephan Miran, Trumps top economic advisor, laid out exactly what they are doing in an essay he wrote back in November[1]. For better or worse, this is what they seem to be moving forward with, and the document spells out things like unilateral tariffs and expecting a lot of potential market volatility, before offering trade terms that seek to devalue the USD in return for protection and favorable trade agreements.
In short, they are trying to force a global trade restructuring that will increase US manufacturing strength and weaken US financial strength - all while trying to keep reserve currency status.
[1]https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/rese...
Many people online are saying (or trying to convince themselves) that the tariffs are part of some smart negotiating strategy, and that they will be rescinded once other countries feel the pain (or when citizens revolt). So large companies will hold out on doing any major investment, lest they be holding the bag.
The administration's general instability and flip-floppiness makes it impossible to make any long-term business decisions. Having a leader who can't be trusted to change their mind on a moment's notice does damage regardless of the policies.
Only if the long term decision depends on high tariffs. There are lots of business decisions that don't.
Although all those nvidia racks apparently use more power than any datacenter in the world has ever deployed in the past... so i hope you know how to run your own power plant onsite too
Oops you also need to install prison level security around all your buildings and homes because the entire population wants your blood, thats ok its an excuse to diversify into weaponized drone manufacturing and local deployment which is another big business opportunity. Wow so many opportunities for rich people!
Europe was 20% in 2023 and 25% in 2024. I think they're past the dabble phase.
EVs are expensive and unreliable for the time being
On the other hand, my friend's Model 3 has some recall or problem roughly every six months.
So, I guess it depends on which EV you buy, but I'm pretty sure the most reliable EVs are more reliable than the most reliable ICEs, simply because they have fewer moving parts (quite literally).
At one point, they had to replace the brakes, then the whole chassis suspension (or something like that, I'm not sure if I understood exactly what he said), then one of the cameras didn't work anymore, and then the windshield wipers didn't come on automatically. Something breaks or needs to be replaced due to a recall at oddly regular intervals.
Even so, they love the vehicle, underscoring that the EV drivetrain is such a step up from ICE that if everything around it is mediocre, it doesn't matter.
> Even so, they love the vehicle
I.e. if Tesla owners are constantly having maintenance issues but manage to still love their vehicles despite that, then their satisfaction is still high.
For March:
BEV registrations up from 48,388 in 2024, to 69,313 in 2025.
PHEV registrations up from 24,517 in 2024, to 33,815 in 2025.
Dabbling it's not.
Like apartment buildings with parking. Why the hell aren't there funding projects to provide recharging for these highly concentrated housing where electrifying/reducing emissions has compounded benefits, where you need far less wiring to provide recharging for a far larger number of cars than an equivalent amount of suburban housing?
It speaks to how money is directed for infrastructure and utilities by the government.
It's basically madness.
Um, not really. Almost all houses have 240V lines. It's non-trivial to add a ton of 240V connections into some basement that's barely wired for power.
If it was as non-trivial to do in apartment complexes as it is in houses, this wouldn't be an issue.
This isn't some grand scheme of mismanagement to screw over New Yorkers.
No, it is an indication of good management for lower prices for all. Maybe an indication of lack of foresight, but electronics don't last forever, planning for EVs in 1960 would have been stupid - the fuse boxes (probably not modern breakers) would be worn out and replaced without every charging a single EV. Even today there have been a number of EV charger fires because outlets we thought were safe for EV currents for decades turn out to be marginal when put to that use and so again planning ahead would have put in the wrong thing.
Suburban houses have plenty of power because you might use the dryer, stove and AC at the same time and so need that much power - but in fact nobody every uses all their power so there is enough spare power to every house for an EV. An apartment can better rely on not everyone does all that at the same time and so they can build with much less extra power and in turn save costs for everyone.
Even in suburban locations, any one house has enough power, but the whole neighborhood might not and power companies are doing expensive upgrades to fix that. Not to mention power plants may not have enough spare capacity. (there are also commonly incentives to charge off peak thus using power when there is spare capacity in the system)
The big, heavy carbon users need to switch. But they have needs that are difficult to serve by electric
That was true decades ago, but now it's gone far too long without any real action, and things have gotten far enough out of control that everyone really does kinda have to do it at the same time if we want a shred of hope to turn this flaming bus ride over the cliff-edge around (or even slow it down at all). It could have all been a relatively painless transition, but now there will be suffering involved, and the longer it's delayed, the worse the suffering will be.
I would say that the transition we are currently witnessing is real action: while the pandemic made it difficult to be certain, the extremely rapid growth of renewables — even though electricity is far from the only concern — seems to have resulted in emissions either peaking or being very close to peaking.
I'm not sure if we really could have gone much faster. 20 years ago I would have bet on nuclear energy and hydrogen cars, not because they were cheap, but because nuclear was already at the right scale and hydrogen can obviously be scaled up quickly whenever the energy is cheap. Instead, we got PV so cheap I'm planning on getting a balcony system with a pay-back period of less than a year because it makes sense to get that immediately while my partner and I plan how to do a full-power system, and batteries are so cheap they're not only used in cars but also for grid power time shifting.
But to expand on what I said before, electricity is far from the only concern: we need to reduce emissions by 99.9% to be sustainable. If you look at this graph, https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector, the remaining 0.1% is the smallest line in the pie chart — "grassland". Switching all road transport to electric helps a lot (11.9%), it's not something to be dismissed simply because other things also need to be fixed.
Yes making a car uses a lot of carbon, but the car lasts a long time and generally in a ICE car the carbon emissions from using it are greater the manufacturing.
Seriously, that is a great feature of EVs...
Not to mention the massively reduced cost/mile. I expect my used Nissan Leaf to pay for itself in ~5years...
Not to mention the AMAZING acceleration of even a non-performance oriented EV...
In new-ish (but not new enough to have EV charger prewiring) construction, garages sometimes have a dedicated 20A receptacle circuit for a garage freezer. If its a dedicated circuit with one outlet, you can rewire the 120V/20A to 240V/20A to get 3.8kW vs 1.4kW on a 120V/15A. The cost to do this (to code) would be about $150, or $50 if you don't care about GFCI. Could also buy a used, cheap, hardwired EVSE rather than making it an outlet.
Dryer is next to garage, still need to make a "fancy" hole in the wall, but definitely like the idea of the faster, more efficient charging option.
In the meantime, slow-ass 120V/15A charging is plenty for my needs.
The people who are doing the most driving are the suburban folks living in houses with big yards and driving 30 miles into work every day.
And that's a larger chunk of the total population in the US than the apartment dwellers who own cars.
Your metro may vary.
Rome wasn't built in a day.
Charging will come to newer apartments, and then older apartments.
But there's still a lot of single-family homes, yes? Like, the majority of people living in those areas are in single-family homes? So probably the majority of car owners?
Easily 50%+ of households around you could probably have an EV. And yet people act like it's only some tiny miniscule slice of the population which could easily change to an EV.
But large chunks of some of the largest metro areas are made up of massive suburbs largely built from the 2000s onwards. I'm talking Houston, Phoenix, DFW, Austin, Atlanta, Denver, San Antonio, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Tucson, Knoxville, and similar areas. And that's just areas I've visited.
Sure, there are 100+ year old neighborhoods in Dallas. But around me, some homes were made in the 50s, a big spurt were made in the late 70s and early 80s, then a massive amount were built in the 00's to literally still being constructed. Massive neighborhoods, apartment complexes, shopping centers, and more exist where there was farmland just five years ago. This makes up a large percentage of the growth of this city. It's not like they're building 100 year old houses for the 30% of growth over the last 25 years.
Go take a look at satellite images of Prosper TX. Of Princeton TX. McKinney TX. Allen TX. Rockwall TX. Dickinson TX.
Where I grew up in Houston in the late 80s/early 90s, you practically couldn't find a house that was built before 1975 other than the derelict remains of old farm houses. The house I grew up in was built in '93 and was kind of out there at the time (had to take a dirt road to get to the neighborhood!) And there's been a ton of construction since then, going further and further into the swamps. Woods where I grew up playing in are now full of single family homes.
So no, the sprawl of suburbs continuously marching more and more into the country side isn't a new thing and it isn't something rare in the slightest. It's happening practically everywhere that's growing in the US and has been for 30+ years.
But that doesn't put money into oil profits and hurts their bottom line.
It only makes more sense if you want to make the grid greener & have price arbitrage based on the time of day.
I’m sure there are problems with this (feel free to point them out).
Putting them there makes the necessary grid upgrades much smaller than they otherwise would be.
Now a semi truck might actually get significant added range.
EV efficiency is around 24-30 kWh/100 miles[2], so that's around 8-10 kWh/day.
200 W is what I expect as a 24h average; that's 4.8 kWh/day, 48%-60% of average usage.
I'd expect a semi to be a much smaller percentage because of getting driven further each day — drivers get in the news for spending longer than they're supposed to behind the wheel.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-drivers-log-328-trillion...
[1] https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/united-states/number-o...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car_EPA_fuel_economy
I pointed out a semi because for long distance shipping they don't use much power (they get as much as 10mpg - but I don't know how to turn that into watts) and because of that long trailer they could potentially be close to energy neutral around mid-day (though only for a couple hours during ideal conditions).
Most cars are around 2m wide, 4-6m long, less windows. Off noon, the side pannels become relevant.
Capacity factor for sensible systems are around 10-15%, which encompasses both weather and night.
I guess we don't know where you live, but on the surface of planet Earth, you only get 12 hours of daylight, averaged over the course of a year. Plus dusk and dawn aren't really good for solar power. And then clouds are also a factor for many locations.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1kW%2Fm%5E2%2A8m%5E2%2A...
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1kW%2Fm%5E2%2A10m%5E2%2...
It would be nice if somehow we could move to lighter cars where the same range would require half the battery capacity, therefore half the charging resources to go from low to full.
Charging it from low to high generally uses the same energy as five charges of 1/5th the capacity.
It has 240v AC, which I use to charge.
I seriously doubt you need to "upgrade" anything, just plug in the car.
Unless you're trying to have the highest grade fast charging at home, your existing electrical connection is almost certainly adequate. But since a car at home can charge overnight, you almost certainly don't need any kind of fast charging...
What an absurd own-goal. BYD will eat the world.
All this "trade war" stuff to "combat" china would be like some kind of battle where your soldiers all do seppuku and call it victory.
Like the 49% tariff in south east asia to "combat" china influence. Really? You jack up the price by almost 50% and they'll like you more and not look elsewhere? How does this work?
They don't travel abroad, can't point to other countries on a map... The level of international awareness is staggeringly low.
These policies only make sense under that common delusion
I wish it didnt have to come to this, but here we are, direction is clear. No point waiting that next election cycle will be much different, it won't be.
Let's say this was SomewhereElsistan and they elected someone who just cancelled contracts, backed out of treaties, refused to pay balances, fired entire departments and maybe even arrest your international colleague working there and sent them to a foreign concentration camp.
Afterwards they elect Johnny Reasonable who doesn't do this.
Would you go back with any kind of assurance it wouldn't happen again? Nobody stopped the first guy.
The US reputation in international markets is hosed for decades unless some dramatic reversal and patching comes in, by both Congress and the courts or some wild thing where the states override the federal government somehow.
Otherwise the trust is gone for decades, perhaps forever.
Once oil starts trading in parallel in RMB, the only thing going for US will be waning momentum and its military, while China will be in reverse situation.
Just like putin being arrogant and aggressive about Ukraine wanting to join NATO, causing Finland and Sweden to join (which they wouldn't do otherwise), he is causing what he is causing. I am fixing my floating mortgage on monday, we have currently 0.2% SNB rate but the risk of it shooting up is massive.
The savvy international graduate student can't vote. We're talking about people who fill in ballots.
Voters are more likely to speak only English, not have a passport and live in less ethnically diverse neighborhoods. No reputable numerical survey disputes this.
There's substantial empirical evidence here. Maybe it disagrees with your optimism and vibes but sorry, that's not how the world works
I personally think if you claim to be a global superpower than even people in other countries are a stakeholder and should be allowed to vote in your elections but that's another topic
This is actually untrue. 2024 was one of those elections where both candidates were so bad, that the winner didn't even need 50% of the cast votes. More and more of those lately, but there it is.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/elections/2024
You'll not that Trump and Vance got 49.1% of the popular vote, and Kamala and Walz got 48.3% of the popular vote. They, none of them, could even muster 50%.
Yeah..
it was that bad.
"Not All Americans" is looking like a pretty shit response at this point. Especially when major chunk of that 50% still underscores some of the major talking points of the Trump people even when they oppose Trump.
On the surface this actually isn't too terrible. But the problem is that Trump is an idiot and he is the one who has to navigate this.
There is no point in making a deal with someone who will not respect any deals. Remember the deal with Mexico and Canada in the first Trump mandate? They made a new agreement and that's what they received as payment. Any country or block that deals with this administration is basically lunatic or in deep despair.
I mean I totally agree here. The goal however will be a deal that lasts decades and hopefully trump will be a rekoning and we will see a return to more stability in the future.
It seems we are boarding this bus no matter what, and Trump is driver. If he flies off a cliff, then we can all say "told you so" to the right on the way down, for whatever that is worth.
If you could travel to 2075 you're likely to find places like Vietnam and Nigeria rising economic stars.
People will be traveling around Africa in an HSR network https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_high-speed_rail_by_... to bustling metropolises in places like Kenya and Ethiopia.
South East Asian countries like Thailand and Malaysia will have valuable international companies.
The customers in Columbus Ohio won't really be relevant.
The rest of the countries carried on without the USA and to add to the irony, China applied to join it in 2021.
His claimed anti-China stance is one of his most effective lies.
On top of this, Russia has no sanctions, and we know that the US will cancel Russian sanctions too.
Again, it doesn't matter if Trump is some manchurian candidate. His behavior is 100% in line with him, and the behavior and policies are what do the damage to the USA.
Thanks to Trump and to a lesser extent all other presidents of the US, 4C here we come my 2100 :( If not for Trump we would probably still hit 3.5C. 1.5 is a forlorn dream, and probably was a dream when it was decided upon.
The electricity grid is going emissions free faster than the transportation infrastructure. So the emissions from the production of both gasoline & electric vehicles are going down quickly.
- millions of miles of electrical lines - millions of sq ft of parking lots - wastewater management infrastructure - sewage infrastructure - high municipal debt to service all of the above
Based off the downvotes I receive on here I think I'm too much of a collapsenik for the average HN poster, but one benefit of being neurotic is that by the time people finally start reckoning with the current state of collapse, I have already made peace with it. The downside is that I become miserable to talk to.
And we need a diverse set of baseline estimates — yours and worse, not just mine and better — so some of us survive whatever nonsense the next 75 years brings.
(I'm also a pessimist about many other things besides carbon).
I'm more ambivalent about CO2 than just about anybody, but I'd go to war over that concentration.
> but I'd go to war over that concentration
I think this is why the US is trying to annex greenland.
UK: Brexit
USA: Donald Trump
Not marketed. Barely sold. Dealers hated it (too reliable, too "weird"). Technology never transferred into a larger vehicle that "normal" Americans would want to drive. GM couldn't be convinced to make an Equinox or a Silverado with that kind of drivetrain, or even try. They decided that pure electric made more sense, but they also are incapable of marketing and selling that, either.
My cynical take is: Combustion engines and highways made North America as it is. The Baby Boomer "American Grafitti" generation that holds power lives and breathes gas burning auto culture as the apex of and very definition of progress.
ICE from their cold dead hands.
Our continent will go down literally burning because of it.
(Well, Trump is currently killing off what remains of the North American auto industry, so I guess we'll see...)
Assuming at least a quarter of those are actually charging at the same time, supplying that amount of power requires a massive upgrade to wiring and delivery to all road stops. We would need high voltage lines and a mini substation running to every stop along the road. Not to mention the massive upgrade in power generation capacity.
That's what they do in China. Go to any random underground parking, and you'll find charging stations everywhere. Even the bikes are all electric and have chargers everywhere.
It's absolutely wild to me that the argument against BEVs is, "But we don't have the infrastructure right now, and we definitely won't be able to build it!"
This is such a sad capitulation.
Like, let's just be fine with the "half-measure." If all drivers switched to a (strong) plugin hybrid tomorrow, emissions would be down significantly without any real need for this supposedly-blocking-progress infrastructure.
That we couldn't even get there underscores my point above. There are forces working against that. We should identify what they are and fight them.
Unless we're just still being climate change deniers. I guess we are.
So I'm driving a Polestar2 now. Which is fine, it's fun. But road trips suck.
And with the tariffs against Chinese vehicles it's been removed from sale in North America (for new vehicles, only available used) and it's questionable about how well I'll be able to get it serviced in the future. The local Volvo dealers apparently have a chip on their shoulders about Polestar and won't touch it, either.
This is not based in reality.
My car visits many dozens of parking spots in an average week. Only one of them needs a charger.
When I leave the house, its fully charged with >200mi of range. I drop the kids off at school, I don't need to charge. I go to the office, I don't need to charge (although there are chargers available). I go to a restaurant for lunch, I don't need to charge. I go to the pharmacy, I don't need to charge (although there are chargers available). I go to hardware store, I don't need to charge. I go to grocer, I don't need to charge (although there are chargers available). I pick up the kids from school, I don't need to charge. We go to the city park, I don't need to charge (although there are chargers available). I get home, and plug in. Finally, it charges, even though it didn't use 25% of its capacity. It can charge slowly over several hours, imparting about the same load on the grid than my air conditioner or pool pump.
I am absolutely an average American car consumer. Maybe only slightly less, as I don't own a pickup truck.
I do agree, an EV today probably isn't for everyone. People who routinely do very long road trips might not have a great experience depending on where they are. People who absolutely can't charge at home and there aren't many chargers around their grocery stores or office probably shouldn't get an EV. Currently EV pickup trucks are stupid expensive and aren't great for towing, so if you're the kind of person putting his boat in the lake every weekend its probably not right for you today.
But most Americans live in single-family homes, which generally speaking can easily get a several kW charger installed pretty cheap. And it wouldn't put much more load on the grid as any other appliance in their house.
Granted, that observation applies mostly only to single family home owners who can run an L2 EVSE. It is naturally different for people who cannot charge at home.
But I think there's also often an assumption that an EVSE is some elaborate expensive thing. I charged for years at 3kW, and drove 100+km a day on that. It was fine. Even an L1 120v charge could just fine for people who are going like 30-40km a day, which is a lot of people.
God forbid? Why is this phrased like a bad thing. We should be investing in infrastructure. Any country with a modicum of common sense invests in the basic functioning of that country going forward?
You cannot get, for example, a new Focus in the US market. When you could, they were much higher quality.
The only Chevrolet you can buy in the UK is the Corvette. Chevrolet makes nine SUVs, four trucks (with however many infinite variations), and exactly one shitbox non-Corvette car.
If US automakers started turning their eyes towards smaller more efficient cars, where hauling Brayden to and from their soccer games didn't require multiple tons of steel, then they could compete in the EU market.
Lots of people are begging to get access to Chinese EV's, and guess what they were subsidized by their government for research and development.
We subsidize farmers but don't trash them. If EV's are the future why not provide assistance?
The modern EV was born from Californian regulation but that early lead has been squandered.
Seems more like a problem of US companies being allowed to continue to stall for too long, often due to lobbying and political points, without measurable improvement than the subsidies.
Meanwhile China subsidizes much of their R&D and everyone is astounded at how fast they've improved. Sounds like they're just better at doing it.
The US government isn't going to exert that level of influence on a private enterprise without being a majority shareholder, which is what happened with GM in the 2008 bailout.
The government also can't be in a position where pulling billions in funding based on targets it sets leads to mass layoffs, that would be a political minefield come election time. Subsidies are about creating jobs as much as they are about enabling technology development.
Speaking only for myself, I see Musk's wealth as a contributing factor to a serious, credible risk to democracies in the US and EU.
So I consider destroying Tesla to be preferable to letting Musk remain wealthy / influential.
I accept that others may see it differently.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_incentives_for_plug...
Tesla is literally one of the most heavily subsidized auto companies in American history.
The reality is a lot more simple:
* The cars are expensive
* Gas isn't expensive enough right now to be a strong incentive to switch
* A lot of consumers are poorly informed and hung up on non-issues
The whole auto industry flew off the deep end thinking that EV demand would be enormous, that they'd basically STOP selling ICE cars almost completely.
As it turns out, consumers were not that eager to swap.
EV R&D is expensive. EV manufacturing is expensive. Modern car manufacturing uses a lot of common parts and frameworks to save money, but EVs required a lot of not-sharable tooling and parts with their ICE counterparts - driving up costs.
Some day all of this will be resolved, but it's not going to happen overnight. It'll be a slow burn over many decades.
This is easily fixable.
Gas is a lot more expensive ("fixed" with taxes) in the EU and the electric cars are losing steam here too.
You need to drive a lot (by EU urban standards at least) to justify the price premium and hassle of an all electric. Especially since we've been in a recession longer than the US which is just starting.
From TFA:
> But even before President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on imports, many of those projects were being canceled — leaving thousands of jobs and the shift to clean energy in doubt.
Might have something to do with the end of free financing too...
A 40 MPG car, with gas at $3.29 / gallon is still $0.0823 / mile.
(EDIT I missed a zero and rounded wrong; number updated. Was not trying to argue it was an order of magnitude more expensive.)
Between fuel and maintenance, the EV has a much lower total cost of ownership. (And in some cases, has been approaching ICE levels for purchase, though it has a ways to go in the U.S. My example car was only an option as a 2 year old used vehicle... $40K off MSRP.)
Here's a recent synopsis that suggests 50% of the car value on average back in 2020 [1].
[1]: https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/costs-ev-battery-repl...
https://insideevs.com/news/717187/ev-battery-replacements-du...
A battery failure and a timing chain break or other types of complete engine failure before that mileage are comparable concerns -- similar rate of occurrence and similar cost to fix.
Battery costs are continually declining. If you buy an EV today, and then if you need to replace the battery in 15 years, because you put 300,000 miles on it, it won't break the bank.
https://insideevs.com/news/754979/hyundai-ioniq-5-400000-mil...
That's because you might not be as well informed as you think probably.
180K miles is nothing for a decent EV. LFP batteries are good for 3000-5000 charging cycles. At around 250 miles per full charge that translates into 750K miles to 1.25M miles. NMC batteries last a bit less long. Their batteries might dip below 80% of the original capacity around the 750 cycle mark (190K miles). Most of the newer ones would do better than that at 1000-1500 cycles. Below 80% they don't suddenly fail. They just drive a bit less far than they used to.
Battery failures are pretty rare with EVs. Most manufacturers give 8 year warranties. That's because they are unlikely to fail before the warranty expires. So, it's a cheap promise to make. The model 3 has only been on the market for about 8 years now. Most of them are still under warranty. Most other EVs are newer than that.
That math doesn't work out.
(And I say that as an ardent EV enthusiast for the past decade.)
Still, I think "gas being inexpensive" isn't exactly a winning argument when it can easily be 50% more expensive than electric.
My car performance would require a ~475 HP gasoline car (or arguably maybe 350-400 HP considering the weight differences), and would probably get 20 mpg, easily costing $0.16 / mile or more.
And there are EVs costing closer to $0.03 / mile on home electricity.
But if you're road-tripping or simply don't have home charging available, the calculus changes.
$0.083 / mile
That would be $0.08 / mile.
EDIT: Oh I see now you were more worried about the "0" I missed, fixed that now!
And lets say all of this is true - how does that explain China's massive adoption rate of EV's if its so prohibitively expensive and non-sharable. We suck at producing, place low value on auto research and development, and have an entire swath of people dedicated monetarily to keeping oil/gas around despite its adverse effects.
Most American cars are behind practically every other corner of the globe in reliability, safety, and cost.
It's true that electric vehicles remain a bit too expensive for many, but most of those people aren't buying brand new ICE vehicles either. Why spend lots of money to buy a brand new car of obsolete technology, when the alternative is to buy used and wait for electric ones to get cheaper? I know literally nobody in my age group (adults in their 30's) who has bought a brand new car in past few years. I live in rich EU country.
Traditional automakers keep trying to replay Tesla’s entry into the market, but I don’t think that’s going to work. They need to instead be focusing on value above all else, which is something they’re severely allergic to. They don’t want to sell $20-$25k practical cars, they want to sell $60k SUVs with fat margins, but the appetite for expensive EVs is already well-sated with interested buyers having a plethora of options. So in a way, they’re guaranteeing their own failure when it comes to EVs.
Even if it was, charging an EV just takes too long. I love my Tesla, but I can't drive it outside of town because there's nowhere to charge it. I can drive my gas-guzzling SUV anywhere in the US because when it runs out of gas, I pull into a gas station, spend two minutes gassing it up, and then keep going. The Tesla? Well, if I _can_ find a charging station that's actually working before I actually completely run out of charge, I'm going to be waiting a minimum two hours before I can keep going. AFAIK, there's no proposed solution for this; I can plug it in and home and keep it charged and it works great as long as I never drive it too far away to be plugged in and sit at home.
Yes its a little more inconvenient, but the US administration doesn't exactly place a value on making charging easy or providing incentives to develop/research unlike other developed countries. We don't innovate at all when it comes to infrastructure so no wonder EV adoption is lower here. Meanwhile many other developed countries are doing fine with their EV's.
Seems like most people would rather be stuck in the past hugging their gas vehicles than actually do something innovative because of some long foregone American Dream.
??? What model and year? Do you have one of the CHAdeMO Teslas?
This has everything to do with current policy in the US. Which is creating a lot of uncertainty, rolls back the clock on existing commitments, and creates huge disruption for existing manufacturers. This is a direct response to that and there will be more of it.
The notion that this is somehow going to save the US ICE car industry is misguided IMHO. I believe it will actually speed up it's demise. The domestic US market was already lagging behind international markets. GM and Ford are really struggling in those markets. Tariffs and counter tariffs are going to make that worse. Scaling back investments in technology that would allow them to catch up is not going to help either. It's a sign of weakness, not strength when companies stop investing in the future.
BYD is really crushing it in places like South America, Australia, all over Asia, etc. All markets where GM and Ford have to worry about keeping up. The Australian market is particularly interesting to watch because it's similar in tastes to the US but not crippled by tariffs (aka. taxes). It doesn't have a domestic car industry. Or an oil industry. So, they import what's good and affordable. And BYD and other Chinese manufacturers have a big presence there that is rapidly growing.
What happens inside the US is ultimately going to follow what is happening elsewhere. ICE cars are going the way of the dodo one way or another. It's process that's largely completed in China, well under way in Europe, and starting to happen all over the world now.
EVs aren't expensive anymore. That's a local problem in the US that has more to do with the US and how things (don't) work there than with the technology. You can get very decent ones below 20K now in many places. BYD will sell you EVs below 10K in China. The only thing keeping those off the market in the US is tariffs. The rest of the world is wide open to the Chinese and they are happy to grab market share wherever they can.