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This trend has always been wild to me. The USA feels like a solid home of automaking since the inception of the ICE. They don't necessarily make the best cars b

by Festro 1y ago

This trend has always been wild to me. The USA feels like a solid home of automaking since the inception of the ICE. They don't necessarily make the best cars but they have the infrastructure, knowledge & experience, and culture to innovate and drive the industry forward. The next big generational change in car design matures to commercial viability - the electric motor for cars - and the USA turns it into a bogeyman? Why? This is the next big economic win to take advantage of and the US has the factory and industrial workforce and infrastructure to nail it. Companies vying to be the Ford of the electric era. Instead it gets warped into some political litmus test for communities and people start 'rolling coal' to prove a point. Does it feel good for impoverished industrial communities in the States to see China and BYD leading the way on something they could be doing? There's still time to get back on track but it's running out. China will be pushing viable affordable models in the next few years for first time buyers, the secondhand market is maturing, lease electric cars are competitive in Europe, charge points are not hard to find, gas is only getting more expensive, and most governments have ICE phase out deadlines in place.

arcane23 1y ago
My guess is ICE cars sell more energy which is packaged as gas, which benefits certain industries. More control over price. Not as much control over electric with solar and other sources. I don't think it's much more than that, it just has a political package.
strawhatguy 1y ago
There’s too much regulation here to compete. Drones are all Chinese too because of all the FAA restrictions on the technology. For EVs, there were the EV mandates, and there are several restrictions on mining the rare earth metals here like lithium and cobalt that China does not do. Also, the US is physically very large and spread out, with more long distance driving, which plays more into an ice vehicle’s advantages. Sometimes even cheaper and definitely quicker than fast charging on a road trip. Personally I think plug in hybrids could work better, especially EREVs. My concern is governments leaping to the conclusions that full EVs, mandate them, and in so doing lock out promising technologies from improving
- SR2Z 1y ago
  The US is big - but these GM EVs under threat all had 200kWh+ batteries and 500mi ranges. The reason why EVs suck in the US comes down to high electric prices, scarce charging points, and the level to which EVs tend to be locked down and unrepairable.
altairprime 1y ago
There’s no profit in converting to electric vehicles: a trillion dollars of electrical infrastructure upgrade costs would come due from corporate apartment holding companies, small-scale landlords, and parking garage owners having to deploy electric outlets of any wattage to every parking spot currently offered to renters (the majority of car owners) today. Just as with COVID and HVAC air exchange rates, the benefits of doing the work are outweighed by the inability to generate recurring corporate revenue from it. Rivian and Tesla have likely reached saturation with the wealthy homeowner market and none of their profits are being forcibly redirected to the unpaid infrastructure costs, so of course the U.S. is stalled on EVs: the U.S. is stalled on at-home EV charging.
- cherry_tree 1y ago
  You say “there’s no profit” and then describe the most tremendous business opportunity in a hundred years. There’s no profit for the current oligarchy; but to say there is no profit to be made from electrifying a billion plus parking spots; to install and manage infrastructure for millions of small business partners, to build new power plants with ever increasing demand — it sounds like a free markets entrepreneurs wet dream. Of course to admit such would be to admit we are in a oligarchic structure that is antithetical to a supposed “free market” and so the capitalists must conjure stories about how electricity just is impossible to produce and electrical lines literally cannot be added to the American infrastructure or it will all suddenly topple over. Differentiating this narrative from the expansion of high speed internet is difficult. Woe is me the oligarchic natural monopoly subsidized or wholly compensated by the taxpayer but unable to advance at all; change is impossible.
  - altairprime 1y ago
    > it sounds like a free markets entrepreneurs wet dream Landlords would either have to give up profit to pay for these installations, and/or raise rent on their tenants to afford them. Many tenants can neither inflation increases in rent, nor increases covering the capital expenditure of electrical outlets in rental parking spots. This share of tenants grows each year that inflation outpaces wages, independent of whether landlords bother with that capital expenditure (which, to date, they largely do not). As this business opportunity is associated primarily with the worker class rather than any wealthy class, the opportunity only becomes profitable when those businesses that employ 'worker class' personnel — think Starbucks barista rather than SFBay A.I. engineer — are distributing profits to those personnel in the form of wage increases to a sufficient degree that the household's renting power is not decreasing. Any wage gap chart will show that, since the 1980s, non-wealthy households — including the former 'middle' class — have experienced a continuous reduction in purchasing power for several decades. One can reasonable assume this will continue barring non-free interventions in the market. Given that any reasonable business would never voluntarily give up profits as wages unless compelled, we can assume that those footing the bill for the 'entrepreneur's wet dream' you describe would be landlords — there is, quite literally, no one else left to pay that bill. The state can't impose regulations requiring such upgrades and let the free market work it out because landlords will simply dump that cost into rent, sharply worsening the nationwide poverty and housing epidemic, which would reduce the total amount of revenue available from the rental market. Neither the state nor the landlords would benefit from that outcome. If you have a different theory of free market that involves business voluntarily sharing revenue with workers without raising price, or landlords investing revenue in enhancements without raising rental costs — and especially without imposing 'non-free' regulatory or union pressures — then I'd love to hear more about that.

by Festro 1y ago

arcane23 1y ago

My guess is ICE cars sell more energy which is packaged as gas, which benefits certain industries. More control over price. Not as much control over electric with solar and other sources. I don't think it's much more than that, it just has a political package.

strawhatguy 1y ago

There’s too much regulation here to compete. Drones are all Chinese too because of all the FAA restrictions on the technology. For EVs, there were the EV mandates, and there are several restrictions on mining the rare earth metals here like lithium and cobalt that China does not do. Also, the US is physically very large and spread out, with more long distance driving, which plays more into an ice vehicle’s advantages. Sometimes even cheaper and definitely quicker than fast charging on a road trip. Personally I think plug in hybrids could work better, especially EREVs. My concern is governments leaping to the conclusions that full EVs, mandate them, and in so doing lock out promising technologies from improving

SR2Z 1y ago
The US is big - but these GM EVs under threat all had 200kWh+ batteries and 500mi ranges. The reason why EVs suck in the US comes down to high electric prices, scarce charging points, and the level to which EVs tend to be locked down and unrepairable.

altairprime 1y ago

There’s no profit in converting to electric vehicles: a trillion dollars of electrical infrastructure upgrade costs would come due from corporate apartment holding companies, small-scale landlords, and parking garage owners having to deploy electric outlets of any wattage to every parking spot currently offered to renters (the majority of car owners) today. Just as with COVID and HVAC air exchange rates, the benefits of doing the work are outweighed by the inability to generate recurring corporate revenue from it. Rivian and Tesla have likely reached saturation with the wealthy homeowner market and none of their profits are being forcibly redirected to the unpaid infrastructure costs, so of course the U.S. is stalled on EVs: the U.S. is stalled on at-home EV charging.

cherry_tree 1y ago
You say “there’s no profit” and then describe the most tremendous business opportunity in a hundred years. There’s no profit for the current oligarchy; but to say there is no profit to be made from electrifying a billion plus parking spots; to install and manage infrastructure for millions of small business partners, to build new power plants with ever increasing demand — it sounds like a free markets entrepreneurs wet dream. Of course to admit such would be to admit we are in a oligarchic structure that is antithetical to a supposed “free market” and so the capitalists must conjure stories about how electricity just is impossible to produce and electrical lines literally cannot be added to the American infrastructure or it will all suddenly topple over. Differentiating this narrative from the expansion of high speed internet is difficult. Woe is me the oligarchic natural monopoly subsidized or wholly compensated by the taxpayer but unable to advance at all; change is impossible.
- altairprime 1y ago
  > it sounds like a free markets entrepreneurs wet dream Landlords would either have to give up profit to pay for these installations, and/or raise rent on their tenants to afford them. Many tenants can neither inflation increases in rent, nor increases covering the capital expenditure of electrical outlets in rental parking spots. This share of tenants grows each year that inflation outpaces wages, independent of whether landlords bother with that capital expenditure (which, to date, they largely do not). As this business opportunity is associated primarily with the worker class rather than any wealthy class, the opportunity only becomes profitable when those businesses that employ 'worker class' personnel — think Starbucks barista rather than SFBay A.I. engineer — are distributing profits to those personnel in the form of wage increases to a sufficient degree that the household's renting power is not decreasing. Any wage gap chart will show that, since the 1980s, non-wealthy households — including the former 'middle' class — have experienced a continuous reduction in purchasing power for several decades. One can reasonable assume this will continue barring non-free interventions in the market. Given that any reasonable business would never voluntarily give up profits as wages unless compelled, we can assume that those footing the bill for the 'entrepreneur's wet dream' you describe would be landlords — there is, quite literally, no one else left to pay that bill. The state can't impose regulations requiring such upgrades and let the free market work it out because landlords will simply dump that cost into rent, sharply worsening the nationwide poverty and housing epidemic, which would reduce the total amount of revenue available from the rental market. Neither the state nor the landlords would benefit from that outcome. If you have a different theory of free market that involves business voluntarily sharing revenue with workers without raising price, or landlords investing revenue in enhancements without raising rental costs — and especially without imposing 'non-free' regulatory or union pressures — then I'd love to hear more about that.