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Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

You’re part of the problem, not the solution. There’s an entire political backlash against EVs because of mandates. The Trump Administration actually prevented California from having EV quotas.

Simply let in EVs from China and let American car companies go out of business.

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There's a political backlash because Fox News and some Russian propaganda social media accounts told people to get angry and they did.

We have mandates against leaded fuel and excessively tinted windows and for child seats. We have mandates for airbags and seatbelts and bumper heights and crumple zones and turn signals.

EVs are better than gas cars in every way - less noise, less pollution, less dependency buying oil from the Middle East. Our policies, regulations and incentive structures should mirror that.

If they’re better, you don’t need mandates.

Sad to say, the best does not always win. There are countless examples in technology, products, politics, etc etc.

Fortunately EVs are also cheaper. Unfortunately, the US has a 100% tariff on the less expensive Chinese EVs and batteries.

Better and cheaper does win.

EVs became cheaper because of a variety of mandates from Governments in California and China, amongst other places.

If this statement was generically true, nobody would smoke, nobody would play lotteries*, we'd all eat plenty of fruit and vegetables, everyone who was able to would exercise.

And some of the issues for EVs, like availability of chargers, go away by automatic action of the market when there's a good reason (e.g. government mandate for more EVs) to expect more demand for EVs.

* except on the occasions where the rollover boosted the expected value above the ticket price, but this would never happen if nobody ever played lotteries.

There's a political backlash against vaccines because of mandates too, and I think we shouldn't listen to them either.

No, there really isn’t.

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