While this is mostly true, a big missing context is that europeans simply didnt want to buy electric cars for a long time.
Funny thing is, the rest of the industry has now caught up to this particular ugliness, so as it turns out it was futuristic. I really disliked the look of the Nissan Leaf ten years ago, but I now own one and whilst I don't love it's stylings, it's not stand-out-in-the-crowd ugly like it used to be - not because it's changed, but all the other cars have caught up (to the ugly, unfortunately).
I just wonder whether they made them look like 'normal' cars back then would they have sold better?
(VW kind of had the opposite problem; whereas BMW went "let's make the weirdest possible electric car", the eGolf and eUp were so normal-looking that I think people generally didn't realise they exist; a lot of people thought that the id.3/4 were their first electric cars.)
For some reason they made it ugly and expensive, but I guess that’s all BMWs over the past decade or so.
Also, on the topic of EU EV demand since you brought it up, a lot of Europeans are more urbanized, living in apartment buildings compared to US single family homes, so most don't have chargers at home to justify an EV purchase but still need cars to get to work, so of course that without matching charging infrastructure at home or at work, Europeans couldn't justify the purchase of an EV especially given the lower purchasing power compared to USaians. Not to mention that as a double whammy, EU city dwellers are also more likely to be tenants than owners which again, doesn't incentivize owners to invest in EV infrastructure.
I live in a supposedly rich EU country on paper, and public charging infrastructure is still severely lacking. Only newly built post-2018 apartments have power sockets in the garage so you can install a charger, the rest? God speed. Government action here has been lacking on public EV infrastructure front, they just gave subsidies for EVs which were ultimately just handouts to businesses and rich people who owned their own single family homes with chargers and solar panels, but now that market of house owners is saturated, since they already own EVs so of course sales have tanked, d'uh!
It was just another politically driven short sighted move, and now again, they're looking at fixing just the resulting effect and not the root cause. So in a Kafkaesque way, the huge amount of EU regulation, protectionism and interference had done more harm than good to the EU EV industry versus ripping the band aid during the good economic times and letting free market run its course, so now the industry is stuck with an economic recession to boot waiting for more regulations to save it, which might again, harm it more in the long term instead of making it competitive.
> but now that market of house owners is saturated, since they already own EVs so of course sales have tanked, d'uh!
How are you defining tanked? They stalled for about a year but have resumed growth.
> Europeans couldn't justify the purchase of an EV especially given the lower purchasing power compared to USaians.
And yet, somehow, Europe remains a larger market for electric cars than the US (of course, China is far larger than either).
> so now the industry is stuck with an economic recession to boot waiting for more regulations to save it
Again, VW etc seem fairly healthy. Stellantis not so much (though they are somehow still profitable), but their strategy of just owning all the brands that everyone thinks no longer exist and not doing much with them always seemed fairly incoherent.
All in all, this feels like you've come up with a narrative, and are just running with it regardless of reality, tbh.
You're putting words in my mouth that I never said. I never made such claims. Obviously it will not, since the auto industry gets more government protections than the likes of Nokia or Blackberry did, but a good indicator is to monitor sales in regions that don't have specialized tariffs on Chinese vehicles to protect western ones, like Australia maybe.
>pretty much everything you have claimed is dubious or flat-out incorrect.
YOU think they are incorrect. I don't think everything I said is incorrect, especially the parts about manufacturers outsourcing critical innovation causing them to fall behind, EV infrastructure in my EU country being deficient leading people not to buy EVs, and consumer purchasing power/habits. The only part where I am wrong is about current sales numbers, but spot sales and rarely an indicator of the general industry trend or future.