Trump Returns to Gasoline as Fuel of Choice for Cars | Hacker News Reader

Trump Returns to Gasoline as Fuel of Choice for Cars

nytimes.com

20 pointsthelastgallon13 comments

Unironically giving the people what they want. EVs are still well within the realm of enthusiasts and rich people.

The infrastructure isn't there yet, and most blue collar families cannot afford an EV, nor the home electrical modifications needed. One-car households cannot abide the inflexibility. Oh, and forget about renters, they were never part of the equation. The EV mandate was one of the biggest ivory tower initiatives ever enacted by the government and it was objectively a failure.

No one said EVs are bad. But they are one small part of a larger picture that includes ICE and hybrid for many years to come. Purists will be upset, but they will never be satisfied with any reasonable compromise.

> The infrastructure isn't there yet

I guess most building in US don't have electricity yet.

The arguments against EVs in the U.S. are both weird and funny. Meanwhile, many other countries have figured out that promoting the switch from ICE to EVs, is the better option for the future of humanity. Not to mention, China will use America's temporary insanity against it, to become the dominate force in EVs for the next decade or more.

I'm not sure how it is in other countries, but here the US, gas cars and EVs are political statements.

The city I'm in (Central Europe) has EV chargers every few street lights. What more infrastructure do you need?

Maybe we should let China sell into the US? Their EV’s are pretty cheap.

I'm not from the US, but here in Australia, the 2026 BYD atto EV is priced at 24k AUD. That's 16k USD. Also the infrastructure is there as most homes are connected to the electricity grid

At current run rates, China sells more NEVs (EVs and plug in hybrids) domestically every year than total US light vehicle sales, while also exporting 6M NEV units globally. As of 2025, EVs are 1/4 (~20M units) of all light vehicles sold globally annually. EVs are expensive in the US because the US prioritizes profits for incumbents, not because it is expensive or we cannot do it. They would just rather fossil fuels, SUVs, and light pickup trucks be sold.

The best part is it doesn't matter what the US does: China will transform global light vehicle mobility for us as they continue to scale manufacturing both domestically and internationally. As this piece mentions, US vehicles are stagnant because new vehicles prices are near ~$50k; US automakers have no incentives to innovate or increase supply to push prices down when tariffs make imports of cheaper cars economically unviable. US consumers are trapped in an extraction box. You want a car? You must buy it from the oligopoly. It's not "EVs are too expensive" but instead "the US system is structured to extract dollars and profits from consumers for fossil fuel and auto industry interests" while China ruthlessly innovates and scales.

TLDR Short term profits will be taken from this arrangement, old people in power in the US will keep aging out, and China will keep scaling up. Observe trajectories and rate of change, think in systems.

Side quest: What happens to US automakers when their export market demand is diminished, perhaps entirely, by Chinese exports?

Citations:

https://restofworld.org/2025/china-us-ev-race/

https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2025/executive...

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/electric-vehicle-sales-i...

https://cleantechnica.com/2025/07/21/53-ev-share-in-china-ju...

https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle_industry_in_C...

https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3334300...

https://insidechinaauto.com/2025/11/01/live-blog-china-octob...

https://www.byd.com/us/news-list/First-BYD-Electric-Vehicle-...

https://rhomotion.com/news/byd-announces-further-global-expa...

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-where-tesla-and-byd-...

(tangentially, China is 1/3rd of total global manufacturing capacity, as of this comment)

Citation of my thesis confirmed in this piece by Bloomberg:

If Cars Are Too Expensive, Just Pump More Gas. What? - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-12-04/new-fu... | https://archive.today/ELhbL - December 4th, 2025

"Used electric vehicle (EV) prices are currently lower than those of internal combustion engine (ICE) cars, with used EVs averaging about 8.3% cheaper than used gas-powered cars." Late model used EVs can be good bargains.

The 3-body problem (a sci-fi) book articulates how critical a stable environment is for long term survival and growth. The oil + auto lobby managed to change the rules back and forth, so there won't be any investment or growth in the EV sector. US will lose the entire auto segment because it is so far behind and the gap will accelerate. Its a shame an entire sector with millions of jobs and lots of additional opportunities (the battery sector) is gone. EV batteries would have bootstrapped and made utility scale batteries feasible with economies of scale.

https://archive.today/uySI3

https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/statement... When Biden increased the tariff on Chinese EVs from 25% to 100%, and doubled the rate of tariffs on Chinese solar cells it seemed clear to me what was going on. It's not about cheap electronic vehicles with these people. They don't want poor people to drive. Let them eat cake has become let them drive Tesla's. If the cheapest GM or Ford EV is $60,0000 and the cheapest Chinese EV is $30,000 well that 100% tariff solves that problem. It's coastal elites who want more prestige.

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