A number of electric vehicle, battery factories are being canceled

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/04/03/ev-factories-canceled/

by elsewhen • 1 year ago

94 207 1 year ago

washingtonpost.com

bpodgursky• 1 year ago

They aren't being cancelled in China.

What an absurd own-goal. BYD will eat the world.

kristopolous6• 1 year ago

“China is at 50 percent EV penetration already,” Ricardo C. Rodriguez, the chief financial officer and treasurer of Aspen Aerogels, said on the call, saying the shift to China was a “no-brainer.” “In North America and Europe, we continue to dabble in this 10 percent to 15 percent level. So, you do start wondering, right, is that progress?”

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?

coliveira4• 1 year ago

The USA had a great opportunity to recognize the competition with China and invest more to win the competition (as it did with USSR). Instead, they decided that, as the top dog, the "best" option was to play protectionism and try to block China. This is the path of economic destruction for the US.

kristopolous6• 1 year ago

There's this weird idea many Americans have, as if they're 80% of the world and nobody can live without them.

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

namirez• 1 year ago

That was the point of TPP which the US withdrew from in 2018.

lossolo• 1 year ago

Just got back from China, it's insane. EVs with green plates literally everywhere, not just in T1 cities like Shenzhen but even in smaller ones. The infrastructure’s on another level compared to the US.

brabel3• 1 year ago

Here in Sweden, 63% of new cars sold are electrical or PHEV. Still, unfortunately we still see a lot of fossil fueled cars on the roads... you immediately notice them because they're so damn noisy - and when you get used to the silence of EVs , it's hard to not notice them and be a bit disgusted.

kristopolous6• 1 year ago

The adoption of electric scooters is phenomenal. It's like Vietnam but all electric.

AtlasBarfed2• 1 year ago

It's just self-imposed sanctions in addition to severing ties with American allies.

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.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF• 1 year ago

[flagged]

cmrdporcupine7• 1 year ago

That was the Chevy Volt. And it was a glorious piece of amazing engineering.

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...)

glitchc• 1 year ago

Please stop with the hyperbole. It's unproductive. Switching everyone to BEVs would require a massive investment in infrastructure. Given the speeds at which EVs charge, at least every other parking spot at the stop would need a charger to make it viable for the average consumer.

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.

Thorrez2• 1 year ago

Well we have Tesla.

bryanlarsen10• 1 year ago

In North America and Europe, we continue to dabble in this 10 percent to 15 percent level.

Europe was 20% in 2023 and 25% in 2024. I think they're past the dabble phase.

feikinius• 1 year ago

quick query in google says only 400k out of the 38 million vehicles in Spain are electric

EVs are expensive and unreliable for the time being

rapsey5• 1 year ago

Unreliable what? How?

speedgoose• 1 year ago

Unreliable ?

InsideOutSanta6• 1 year ago

My Californian Fiat 500e is the most reliable car I've ever owned.

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).

Gud• 1 year ago

Electric cars are a new phenomenon. You don’t need to be a genius to figure that the old stock will be gasoline and diesel.

kieranmaine• 1 year ago

UK BEV + PHEV cars make up 28.9% registrations for March 2025.

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.

1. https://www.smmt.co.uk/vehicle-data/car-registrations/

rapsey5• 1 year ago

I just got my first EV in Europe and seriously contemplating changing my second car to an EV as well. Driving an EV is goddamn fantastic.

Arnt• 1 year ago

I live in Munich, where the main BMW factory is. That factory's currently being reconstructed to only produce EVs.

Dabbling it's not.

Night_Thastus• 1 year ago

This situation has little-to-nothing to do with the current US administration.

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.

philipwhiuk• 1 year ago

* Gas isn't expensive enough right now to be a strong incentive to switch

This is easily fixable.

Telemakhos• 1 year ago

Is artificially changing a price to make something less affordable "fixing" a problem or creating one that didn't exist yet?

wolfi1• 1 year ago

I can see now why Russia hasn't been taxed (because of the oil)

nottorp• 1 year ago

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...

neogodless5• 1 year ago

I have a Polestar 2 Performance, which is far from the paragon of efficiency, and it's still just $0.05 / mile in electricity to drive it.

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.)

sepositus2• 1 year ago

Does the total cost of ownership include battery maintenance? My Toyota 4Runner has 180k miles, still runs great, and is worth several thousands of dollars in Bluebook value. My biggest fear with EVs is that I've never heard a single positive story about what happens when the batteries fault.

samcheng2• 1 year ago

A 40 MPG car, with gas at $3.29 / gallon is still $0.83 / mile.

That math doesn't work out.

(And I say that as an ardent EV enthusiast for the past decade.)

bawana• 1 year ago

I just paid $3.45 at a chargepoint charger for enough electricity for 22 miles. My plugin hybrid car gets 27 mi/ gallon. Gas is a cheaper source of energy for me

floxy4• 1 year ago

A 40 MPG car, with gas at $3.29 / gallon is still $0.83 / mile.

$0.083 / mile

JSR_FDED• 1 year ago

A 40 MPG car, with gas at $3.29 / gallon is still $0.83 / mile.

That would be $0.08 / mile.

Jcampuzano26• 1 year ago

"The situation has nothing to do with the current US administration" - who for the past decade has ran on keeping oil fields drilling, romanticizing gas/oil money, and before Elon actively campaigned against EV adoption and claimed climate change doesn't exist so keep burning that oil.

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.

bluGill19• 1 year ago

China didn't have massive gas adoption. It was starting to come, but they were starting from a different place where gas didn't already exist.

weweersdfsd• 1 year ago

I think the switch will happen sooner rather than later, considering the progress BYD is making in China (and many of their export markets).

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.

cosmic_cheese3• 1 year ago

It’s at least partially creditable to the nature of the models manufacturers chose to make, usually being midrange to luxury crossovers, SUVs, and performance cars. Yes the first two of those are popular categories and have no shortage of highly priced hybrid and ICE models, but EVs are too much of an unknown for too much of the population for those prices to be palatable.

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.

bryanlarsen10• 1 year ago

The market for $25K cars is served by used cars. Most people I know would rather buy a used SUV than a new hatchback.

commandlinefan• 1 year ago

Gas isn't expensive enough

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.

Jcampuzano26• 1 year ago

I have road tripped across the entire country multiple times with my Tesla and practically never had an issue charging. Also I've never had to wait more than 20-30 minutes to charge and keep going.

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.

floxy4• 1 year ago

waiting a minimum two hours before I can keep going.

??? What model and year? Do you have one of the CHAdeMO Teslas?

jillesvangurp2• 1 year ago

This situation has little-to-nothing to do with the current US administration.

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.

coliveira4• 1 year ago

If the target, set by the government, is to be protectionist, then EVERYTHING in terms of investment needs to be canceled, because it does't make sense to invest when the internal market is going to be controlled by means of tariffs.

jklinger4102• 1 year ago

I don't understand what you are saying here at all.

hypeatei• 1 year ago

I think what they mean is: these plans were made in another time so they might harm the company financially (or be extremely lopsided) given the "new mandate" (may change again too) from the Trump admin.

Just a measure to take a step back and assess the whole picture I'm assuming.

0cf8612b2e1e• 1 year ago

Given the chaos, how does any industry make long term investments any more? All financial plans could be flipped upside down for any reason at any time.

Thorrez2• 1 year ago

I've heard the most prosperous times for the US are when the president's party is different from the congressional majority. Few laws get passed, so things stay stable for businesses.

onlyrealcuzzo4• 1 year ago

Given the chaos, how does any industry make long term investments any more?

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.

Tiktaalik• 1 year ago

they don't

kleton• 1 year ago

Donald Trump has advocated for tariffs for 40 years. Agree with them or not, they were quite predictable, not chaos.

bluGill19• 1 year ago

You can make investments if you have a long term outlook. Odds are the president will be different in 4 years. Odds are the democrats take the house in 2 years (there is a small chance they take the senate too, though that seems unlikely). There is a 25% change Trump isn't even alive in 4 years just because of age, and the farther beyond that you look the less likely it is he lives.

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.

russdill3• 1 year ago

What's worse is lets say it takes you 3-4 years to get your factory online. A new admin comes in and rescinds all the tariffs. Now your new factory and all it's debt need to compete with the pre-tariff prices.

brabel3• 1 year ago

That's quite likely to happen given how American politics tend to go left to right then back almost every election. I suppose some companies (but not all) will prefer to lose some money now rather than to take the risk of investing in large factories in the USA and lose whole factories, along with all money they invested into it, later.

jklinger4102• 1 year ago

Sorry, but let's be clear about something. Capital has an overwhelming say in the direction of the American government. If they want to push us in a direction, they can simply buy that direction.

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.

Workaccount24• 1 year ago

The tariffs are going to be used as leverage in negotiations in the following months. If countries sign on to trump's new trade agreements, it likely won't make sense to rescind them.

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...

jerlam3• 1 year ago

Doesn't even need to be a new administration.

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.

jms703• 1 year ago

Charging is an issue for almost everyone I know. If I could get my utility company PG&E to upgrade my power, I could consider it, but we're told we have to wait years. So we have no way to charge, and there are not enough chargers around here are.

bryanlarsen10• 1 year ago

I know a bunch of people who charge on standard 120V/15A. That'll let you add 40 miles of range overnight. It's not as good as 240V/50A that'll fully charge your car in 4 hours, but it is enough that they only rarely have to visit local fast chargers.

pdabbadabba• 1 year ago

That's what I do. And I still don't even bother to charge most nights. If you live in a relatively urban area and don't do a lot of driving that is more than adequate.

jhenkens• 1 year ago

Or, if we are getting fancy, 240V/20A, which can be run with just a single 12/2 Romex, provides around 3x the "range" per hour, since there is some fixed overhead losses to heat the battery pack, turn electronics on, etc.

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.

brabel3• 1 year ago

I did that for years, just using an average power plug (now I moved to a house that already had a fast charger installed). The car, a PHEV, came with the recharger and charged fully overnight. The car only goes around 40km on EV alone, but that's more than enough for my daily needs. And it's almost "free", we did not notice any change in the electric bill after buying the car!

tonmoy2• 1 year ago

I don’t know where you live, but I charge my EV using two phase 240V outlet (same as the ones used by washing machine) and it takes about 8 hours to charge from 30% to full, which is more than enough for 99% of my use cases

mitthrowaway2• 1 year ago

Unfortunately, a lot of people here who live in apartments have to wait for any electricity to be added to the parking lot at all, even 120V is generally unavailable. It's definitely restricting adoption.

vel0city7• 1 year ago

Technically not two-phase, it is just both sides of the single phase.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMmUoZh3Hq4

Jcampuzano26• 1 year ago

This is a problem that an administration could easily solve given enough motivation, so it is fundamentally a problem with US administrations. Provide high incentives to provide easy access to charging infrastructure from federal funding. This is simply not an issue in many other countries that actually place value on modern infrastructure, or an issue that is quickly rectifying itself, except in the US.

But that doesn't put money into oil profits and hurts their bottom line.

bluGill19• 1 year ago

IT need not be federal. Your state can do more than the federal government - some of the most effective changes are things the constitution doesn't give the federal government power over. Require 50 amp capability to every parking spot for example is something only the states can do (possibly you can limit this to residential). For that matter states could just build good transit systems, while there are federal subsidies most states are big enough to go alone and pay for it out of the savings from their road budget.

armarr• 1 year ago

Unlike what some people think you really don't need a 7kW charger at home. A dryer outlet will charge a car fully overnight.

bluGill19• 1 year ago

Depends on range. My PEHV only has 30 miles of range, sometimes my morning errands use that and it would be nice for a 1 hour charge over lunch for the afternoon errands. (most days 30 miles is plenty). Or better yet just mandate 70 miles minimum range which will get most daily errands.

grapesodaaaaa• 1 year ago

I can foresee a lot of places using battery “reservoirs” as batteries become cheaper. Gas stations don’t have pipelines straight to the pump.

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).

pornel• 1 year ago

On-site battery storage is the standard for DC fast charging installations. It's already cheaper.

ben_w7• 1 year ago

This is why I keep saying it's good to put PV cells onto cars *despite* that being a suboptimal place for the cells and the car bodies not being big enough to generate 100% of what they need.

Putting them there makes the necessary grid upgrades much smaller than they otherwise would be.

bluGill19• 1 year ago

A car and get maybe 200 watts in the best conditions - not enough to be significant. Even if parked in the sun all day you won't get much range from that.

Now a semi truck might actually get significant added range.

JKCalhoun• 1 year ago

I briefly owned a Smart EV, a decade ago or so, and handily recharged it from 110 overnight. But obviously with a larger vehicle, longer range, larger battery capacity, charging it from low to full must be quite the consumption of energy.

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.

bluGill19• 1 year ago

Compromise. I love driving tiny cars, but once in a while I need to haul a large load (you can't rent a truck for this in many cases - I've tried: normally it isn't allowed in the contract even when it is there are restrictions. All that assumes you can find something for rent when you need it. So I drive a large truck. (well once a week I drive a large truck, most of the time I bike)

vel0city7• 1 year ago

charging it from low to full must be quite the consumption of energy

Charging it from low to high generally uses the same energy as five charges of 1/5th the capacity.

subpixel• 1 year ago

I charge every night on standard power. I only ever charge using fast chargers when I’m over 100 miles away from home and want to drive back same day - this barely ever happens.

johnea2• 1 year ago

I live in a house in San Diego, built in 1920.

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...

Tepix• 1 year ago

https://archive.is/qPILX

jmclnx• 1 year ago

Trump pretty much cancelled subsidies, so at least in the US this is the largest reason.

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.

EcommerceFlow3• 1 year ago

Your ideology is demonizing and burning the company most effectively fighting climate change.

TomK32• 1 year ago

The best invention against climate change is the bicycle. Few resources to produce (often 10% of the weight of the user, a car easily weighs 2000% of it's 1.3 average passengers), low requirements for infrastructure and with a folding bike you can take it with you anywhere. Personal transport is the segment that fails to do its bit against climate change and electric cars are still cars that need wide road, parking, electric infrastructure etc.

wormlord4• 1 year ago

EVs are not the solution, they just shift the emissions elsewhere and perpetuate a car-based society which is a much larger issue. Policies like NYCs congestion pricing and light rail are infinitely more impactful.

gessha• 1 year ago

Which company? BYD, NIO or maybe Wuling?

wormlord4• 1 year ago

I have been using RCP 8.5 for all of my long-term decision making (where to move and buy a house, how sustainably I plan to live).

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.

ben_w7• 1 year ago

Although I'm fairly optimistic about carbon, I think we need pessemists to get any stuff like this done.

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).

VOIPThrowaway• 1 year ago

At that level of CO2, your brain is fucked even if you're otherwise ok.

I'm more ambivalent about CO2 than just about anybody, but I'd go to war over that concentration.

jjani• 1 year ago

“The Respected Comrade’s brilliant economic agenda is an all-encompassing plan to revive our economy by unleashing Chosun energy, implementing tariffs to level the playing field, and bringing trillions of won in historic investments to our country’s manufacturing sector,” minister Paek Sông-Ryông said.

EcommerceFlow3• 1 year ago

The real problem is that our auto companies (besides Tesla) are reliant and subsidized by the Government, making them highly inefficient, and unable to compete within a global market without giant subsidies.

numbsafari• 1 year ago

Besides Tesla?

mark2423• 1 year ago

The real problem is that American consumers are demanding these gigantic monstrosity SUVs and trucks which literally cannot fit on European streets. When Ford et al were making hot hatchbacks, they were incredibly popular overseas. The inefficiency is at the consumer level.

yoyohello13• 1 year ago

My town is filled with massive Ford pickups. Pristine and clean, nothing in the beds. These people are no 'utilizing' the thing, it's just a status symbol. Annoys me so much.

rapsey5• 1 year ago

Ford has plenty of cars that fit european roads. The problem is that their cars are garbage.

Tadpole91812• 1 year ago

European streets? My American city isn't even that old - much of the infrastructure is mid 90s - but modern vehicles just barely fit in the parking lots throughout it. It's common to see some asshole parking their pickup horizontally.

roboror2• 1 year ago

Tesla is the most heavily subsidized, what are you talking about?

thinkingtoilet• 1 year ago

Tesla is subsidized too. Honest question, do you think the care companies producing EVs in China are subsidized by the government?

Jcampuzano26• 1 year ago

I'm not a big fan of Tesla's owner, but I will say - what is the problem with subsidizing something that given enough research and development is considered a net good for our future or could be valuable on a global scale?

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?

EcommerceFlow3• 1 year ago

Because it allows the government to pick and choose winners. The big 3 were all losers and should have gone bankrupt back in 08, and now look, they're still highly inefficient and still heavily reliant on govt handouts 20 years later. They don't innovate, they can't compete globally, etc.

CoastalCoder• 1 year ago

In most cases I'd agree with your point.

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.

acc_297• 1 year ago

Others are pointing this out but for anyone curious Tesla has received a tonne of indirect subsidy via electric vehicle sales incentives on the consumer side of the equation which absolutely translates into increased corporate profits. Across the globe EV sales in developed nations are very boosted via government programs ((which is a good thing imo)). I'll just link a wikipedia page[1] since I don't want to find a solid source but this isn't really debated it's the real world effect of laws and bills passed by the US gov and dozens of other countries around the world and has been extensively studied.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_incentives_for_plug...

bilbo0s2• 1 year ago

I'm glad someone said it.

Tesla is literally one of the most heavily subsidized auto companies in American history.

roboror2• 1 year ago

I would love an EV but the charging infrastructure is absolutely abysmal if you live in an apartment in NYC like I do.

russdill3• 1 year ago

Yes, and it's something that can be fixed and absolutely should be fixed.

sowbug2• 1 year ago

I've only visited NYC, but I think if I lived there I wouldn't want to drive a car at all. The public transportation and walkability are excellent. Is my impression a common misunderstanding?

AtlasBarfed2• 1 year ago

It is an indication of US mismanagement that concentrated people can't be served with recharging infrastructure while distributed suburbanites in mcmansions can easily be served.

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.

onlyrealcuzzo4• 1 year ago

It is an indication of US mismanagement that concentrated people can't be served with recharging infrastructure while distributed suburbanites in mcmansions can easily be served.

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.

bluGill19• 1 year ago

It is an indication of US mismanagement that concentrated people can't be served with recharging infrastructure while distributed suburbanites in mcmansions can easily be served.

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)

itishappy2• 1 year ago

In NYC you can probably get by with the ~40 miles range of 120V charging, but this doesn't really negate your point about poor charging infrastructure.

LightBug1• 1 year ago

Biggest own goals of the 21st century ....

UK: Brexit

USA: Donald Trump

A number of electric vehicle, battery factories are being canceled

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