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Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance
- tahoeskibum 7mo agoWeird headline: Japanese carmakers are doing the same error, while Tesla (an American company) is the one of the leading electric carmakers... I'd just replace it with Legacy Carmakers (e.g. Ford, GM, Toyota and so on).
- impossiblefork 7mo agoI feel that Renault is also standing out as a company that's going in the opposite direction.
- a-saleh 7mo agoI thought Totyota is still one of the EV leaders. Alongside Kia and Hyundai?
- tpm 7mo agoNot at all, they were a hybrid leader long time ago but they never had a good pure EV and are only starting last few years.
- vel0city 7mo agoToyota barely makes any fully EV cars, and their bZ series hasn't been very great. They have a number of hybrids, but even those are often based on dated battery technology. They're still selling new cars with NiMH batteries. They have some incredibly reliable hybrid drivetrains, but have weak EVs and ancient battery technology throughout.
- ljlolel 7mo agoHormuz might change their mind
- Ifkaluva 7mo agolol no. They have been dragged kicking and screaming into offering just one model, the bz4x. They also spend a lot of money lobbying against electrification regulation, because they really don’t want to make EVs.
- seabrookmx 7mo agoThey were late to the game but are definitely investing more now. They have three full EV's, in rough order of size: CH-R, BZ (previously called BZ4x), and BZ Woodland (basically a long station wagon version of the former). Subaru is also selling a tweaked and rebadged version of each. I believe these are all made in Subaru factories with Toyota power-train components. They're also priced pretty competitively.
- jfengel 7mo agoToyota pioneered hybrids, but they remain committed to the idea that a fossil fuel component is necessary. They continue to push for hydrogen, which is generated primarily from natural gas. With a hand-wave that maybe it'll be renewable some day. But the hydrogen infrastructure doesn't exist, and they haven't solved any of the real problems with it. So they're stuck flacking technology that was amazing in the 90s.
- chii 7mo agoIt's because japan can't really compete with china in the EV battery space (nor can anyone else really). By betting on hydrogen, it's possible to take the lead in a smaller pond as a bigger fish. Tho i'm not a believer in hydrogen - it's too difficult, and costs just as much to transition to that as it would electric. It'd be easier to synthesize carbon-based fuels, and that leverages the existing infrastructure for petrol in place for use.
- bastawhiz 7mo agoToyota has a magical vaporware battery that they announce is just a couple years away every couple years. We're likely to see general quantum computing and an operational fusion plant before Toyota productionizes their first "real" EV with said battery.
- kube-system 7mo agoToyota’s leadership is staunchly anti-EV
- breve 7mo agoToyota sells EVs. They sell the bZ3, bZ4, bZ5, bZ7, bZ3X, bZ Woodland, C-HR+, Lexus RZ, Lexus ES, and soon the Hilux EV. The Lexus ES: https://electrek.co/2026/03/19/lexus-launches-es-ev-with-300-mi-range-undercuts-rival-prices/ https://electrek.co/2026/03/19/lexus-launches-es-ev-with-300...
- kube-system 7mo agoThey do, however they have been very vocal in their reluctance to invest in that strategy.
- breve 7mo agoToyota's strategy is working. They have been the best selling automaker for the last six years straight. Last year they had record sales: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/toyota-retains-top-auto-crown-2025-with-record-sales-2026-01-29/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/toyota... As time goes on BEVs will make up a greater percentage of their sales. As BEVs get cheaper and more practical demand will keep going up. Toyota will follow BEV demand.
- kube-system 7mo agoWhat I said wasn’t a criticism, simply a fact. I’m personally a huge fan of hybrids
- fullshark 7mo agoTesla is also retreating from the being a car company, at least they don't see being a company that sells electric cars to consumers being a great business to be in long term.
- jacquesm 7mo agoIt's on the way to be merged with SpaceX.
- DennisP 7mo agoThere are a couple good reasons for Tesla to do that, which don't apply to most carmakers. One is that their stock is priced for extreme growth, so they need to be in businesses that can justify that. Cars are not that kind of business. They were for a while when Tesla was much smaller and the only decent EV maker, but not anymore. For any carmaker with a typical carmaker PE, cars can be a fine business. Tesla's other problem is that Elon did serious damage to their brand, and they're not even getting the growth that other EV makers are getting.
- fullshark 7mo agoIt's priced for extreme growth cause that's the way the CEO and board want it to be. They don't want to make cars and sell them to consumers for a small profit cause that's not an extreme growth opportunity so the focus is elsewhere.
- dangus 7mo agoIt is a great business to be in, they just aren't run by a sane person who is good at business. If it weren't for massive conflicts of interest their CEO would have been fired years ago. They're getting leapfrogged by Chinese companies despite being extremely early to the Chinese market along with a factory in China. They've somehow squandered their technology lead despite being profitable and scaled unlike some of the companies leapfrogging them. They botched the Cybertruck so badly. Imagine an American company failing to make a popular pickup truck. They could have been selling pickup trucks at F-150-like volume and profitability. Their brand image of tech futurism is outdated and they're squandering the most profitable segments of the automotive market. Just look at stuff that's succeeding and pulling in big money like the Bronco and Toyota TRD lineup. Tesla is retreating to robots because their CEO gets bored of running scaled companies that aren't startups, and they're also doing a whole bunch of financial manipulation to prevent Tesla stock from crashing due to its fundamentals. Without a future moonshot business, the valuation of the stock makes no sense, and would naturally decline to that of a normal automobile company otherwise. That event would destroy Elon's net worth and probably make him default on a bunch of personal loans. By combining other moonshots like xAI and robotics, it lessens the impact of the reality of the automotive business: a profitable but generally low-margin high-maturity type of business.
- siim_osur 7mo agoTesla is a hype company more than a car company. Also, me personally, I consider them all rolling coffins.
- qwerpy 7mo agoThey’re some of the safest cars ever made, unless you drive them into a tree at 110mph.
- whamlastxmas 7mo ago[flagged]
- archagon 7mo agoI fully concur with the parent comment.
- kuschku 7mo agoUnless you need to leave the rear seats when the electronic door openers don't work anymore. It's possible the parent was referring to that, which is to be fair not just a Tesla issue, but Tesla is probably the most extreme example.
- xp84 7mo agoGM has a ton of EV models and has been doing a ton of EV investment, R&D, etc. How can you say they’re somehow not EV enough? I think this article’s author is an absolutist and believes any company that doesn’t go 100% EV regardless of market demand is stupid. I think that’s irrational. And I love my EV. But it’s going to take 20 years or more for the entire country to even get to a place where all your suburbanites can afford the $5,000-$10,000 for the panel upgrade and wiring to charge at home. And they are the easiest to win over. Urban is tougher (and I assure you, many people drive in cities!) due to lack of residential garages, and parking garage facilities don’t have sufficient capacity to “just” add 500 level 2 chargers. Typical 500-car garages today have about 5. And of course rural has longer range needs which raises cost. Or if you’re one who thinks home charging isn’t a necessary prerequisite to make EVs attractive, it’ll take that long for fast charging tech to improve even more, and for those public fast chargers, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and need tremendous amounts of power which needs to be brought in, are gonna get built. And you might argue either is a roadblock that can simply be blown up by strategically placed money bombs, but no Western government has that much money just lying around. The $7,500 handout (that mostly padded EV margins) was the best they’re gonna do. The government isn’t going to bankroll every shopping center in America to put in 10 350kw fast chargers at a cost of $5,000,000 per site, or pay $7,000 for every home to get a service upgrade. And even if they did this, it would take a decade just to build and install all that to get to 90% EV adoption. My point is gas cars are going to be popular and sell well for 1-2 decades more at least. “Retreating” from those would be the real bonehead move.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- freshpots 7mo ago"But it’s going to take 20 years or more for the entire country to even get to a place where all your suburbanites can afford the $5,000-$10,000 for the panel upgrade and wiring to charge at home.." I'm charging just fine with a decent commute, using only a 120V 12A circuit. You don't need a 240V 50A circuit to charge your car in 4 hours. Technology Connections does an excellent video on this: https://youtu.be/W96a8svXo14 https://youtu.be/W96a8svXo14 It will help update your knowledge on this topic. Cheers
- rsynnott 7mo agoThe third-biggest BEV maker is VW AG, a legacy car brand. Likely soon the second, given their hefty (33% last year) growth vs Tesla’s modest shrinkage; unless something changes they’ll overtake in a year or so.
- cosmic_cheese 7mo agoNissan at least seems to be somewhat leaning into EVs. The Ariya was released to little fanfare but has seen sales pick up over time (though it’s on pause in the US for 2026 due to tariffs), and they just released a freshly redesigned proper modern EV version of the Leaf at a surprisingly affordable pricepoint. They’re also working with Mitsubishi to sell a Leaf rebadge (which I’d speculate will come at a lower price point with a more stripped down feature set). In Japan Nissan also had a pure electric kei car they sell.
- fullshark 7mo agoIsn't it over and China owns this market anyway? How can any other country possibly compete?
- breakyerself 7mo agoTarrifs mostly
- p-e-w 7mo agoThe same way Chinese tech companies “compete” with Western ones: By not permitting them to do business in China.
- yardie 7mo agoThey are permitted to do business there. You just have to make a bargain with the devil. 50% of your domestically incorporated branch is Chinese owned. Then you have the requisite technology and IP transfer. Most sensible companies would not accept such a bargain, but you have quite a few investors only interested in the next quarterly profit going up to the right. And they've made that bargain repeatedly.
- tpm 7mo agoOn long-term support and parts availability perhaps - I seriously doubt most of Chinese models bought now will have parts readily available in 5+ years. VW (and their other brands) and BMW have good new EVs coming to market now, while Toyota is waking up too. They will survive I think. Stellantis though, not sure about them. And many Chinese carmakers will be gone too.
- xp84 7mo agoIf Stellantis dies it won’t be because of insufficient EV zeal. It’ll be because they mostly make garbage cars no one wants. Saw this funny video about the top 10 cars with the most still-unsold inventory of their 2024(!) MY: https://youtu.be/R20QEyrQ2FE?si=cou6HgknYQOc8zbt https://youtu.be/R20QEyrQ2FE?si=cou6HgknYQOc8zbt
- joe_mamba 7mo agoI think Ferrari, Lambo, Rolls Royce, Bugatti, Zonda etc. will do just fine with selling luxury ICEs with many cylinders that go vroom to rich people. In fact they'll probably do better as global wealth gap increases. It's the Audis, BMWs, Mercedes, etc of Europe they'll probably end up the way of Philips, Blaupunkt, Alcatel, Grundig, Nokia, Thomson, Gigaset, SAgem, etc. meaning selling off their consumer civilian operations to chinese OEMs and all that remain will be the recognizable name badge put on imported Chinese components assembled in EU, while the small remaining European operations focus on vehicles and powertrains for defense/naval/aerospace/etc.
- youknownothing 7mo agothe question is where they'll be able to sell them: Europe is going to ban the sale of ICE cars from 2035 so, unless someone finds a loophole, that's a whole market gone.
- xp84 7mo agoEurope will change their mind when protests start that many people can’t buy a car that they can charge because their home doesn’t have the capacity and public charging scarcity and congestion makes the 1970s gas rationing look convenient. Nearly all these carmakers already do make plenty of EVs. If I’m very wrong and people there wish to buy EVs exclusively, that’s what will sell and what will get made.
- bakies 7mo agoTheir homes don't have electricity?
- seabrookmx 7mo agoA standard wall socket doesn't provide enough amperage to charge an EV at reasonable rate if you use your car more than once or twice a week. Maybe this is less of a problem in the EU where people generally have shorter commutes, but I could definitely still see it being an issue. I know multiple people that have had to upgrade the main electrical panel in their home to support an EV charger, because their older building did not have enough capacity.
- froh 7mo agoI see two things discussed too little: * in the ICE world, California and EU norms created a tight barrier to entry. the patent portfolio protected the old automotive industry. they only built their patent protected ICEs, and they bought everything else from suppliers. electric circumvents that barrier and that enabled dozens of new automotive OEMs: the first big disruptor * automotive has created amazing r&d processes for the mechanical vehicle design. they are centered around early decomposition, isolated component engineering and then composition. integration in that world men's: screwing and plugging the pets together. if the hinges and flanges are to spec things integrate nicely. too bad the hard part for software instead is system integration. consistency cross all components. all the great hardware engineering processes are completely ND utterly misguided for software system engineering.. integrate rely, often, continuously vs clearly specified interfaces and isolated component engineering with expensive and thus relatively rare integration. that's IMHO the second disruption for automotive.
- izacus 7mo agoVAG group has EVs (and pretty good ones) across the board: VW with ID series, Škoda with Enyaq/Elroq/Epiq, Audi with eTron series (SUV, sedan and estate), SEAT with Cupra Born and others. BMW just launched Neue Klasse, with iX3 selling like hot cakesa nd i3 looking amazing, with i7 in pipeline. Mercedes also launched a great new platform with CLA which is coming to other sizes as well. Meanwhile, Renault 5 is selling very well with Renault 4 in the pipeline. Zoes have been selling well too. Peugeot also has good EV models (208 is really fun to drive). There pretty much isn't a single European car manufacturer that wouldn't have a compact car or an SUV in EV market and most of them have good range, decent pricing and are moving to 800V platforms as well. Sooo... where's the retreat?
- ceejayoz 7mo ago> Sooo... where's the retreat? As the article says; "In the US"
- delta_p_delta_x 7mo ago> In the US American car marques are nearly completely irrelevant outside the US.
- galangalalgol 7mo agoIve seen plenty of fords in Europe but they have evs
- 4ndrewl 7mo agoRight, but Ford Europe is, and always had been, a different beast to Ford America.
- delta_p_delta_x 7mo agoFord of Europe has succeeded because its direction and leadership are completely different to its American outfit, and has released models targeting European sensibilities. You will probably not find Mondeos or Focuses in the North American market. Nor will you (easily) find an F-150 in Europe. A Ranger, perhaps, but not the F-150.
- PreciousH 7mo agono one is willing to admit the EV tech isn't just there yet to fully replace gas powered cars?
- ceejayoz 7mo agoStrawman, basically no one argues "fully". Yet.
- jillesvangurp 7mo ago> no one is willing to admit the EV tech isn't just there yet The easy explanation is that it's because it is there. The article is about the rapid decline of companies that believe otherwise. They aren't doing to great.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- applfanboysbgon 7mo ago98% of new car sales in Norway are EV at this point. How do you admit something that is not true?
- quickthrowman 7mo agoA wealthy nation with a small population that has plenty of money to update their infrastructure is not comparable to upgrading the grid and converting the fleet of 250M cars in the US, which is a mess of 50 states who spend varying amounts of money on their infrastructure. The US grid is already stressed by all these new data centers, where is the power to send 10kW of power minimum to tens to hundreds of millions of vehicles every day going to come from? 100M vehicles times 10kW divided by one million is One Million Megawatts. One Thousand Gigawatts. That’s five hundred 2GW power plants. Four thousand solar panels make 1MW, four million solar panels make 1GW, four billion solar panels make 1000 GW. And that’s 40% of the fleet converted to EVs, and does not account for diesel semi-tractors being converted to EV.
- applfanboysbgon 7mo ago
- orange_joe 7mo agoAmerica clearly has an EV industry (Tesla, Rivian) but its adoption is pretty limited by infrastructure.
- cyanydeez 7mo agoAlSo by goverment lobby, tHe mosT equal branch of modern USA
- Forgeties79 7mo agoASHT?
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- ericmay 7mo agoAnd Lucid. I’m not sure it’s the infrastructure so much as the cost for these vehicles. Well, Tesla has political problems but Rivian and Lucid don’t - but they are priced quite high.
- maxerickson 7mo agoIt's kind of a yes both. A base Model 3 is in the same price range as decent hybrids that will be more convenient for many owners given current highway adjacent charging infrastructure. Of course there are also new vehicles that cost quite a bit less than a base Model 3, but they invite a discussion of not being all that comparable.
- ericmay 7mo agoMy post was poorly worded I meant to say Tesla wasn’t too high of a price but it has political problems (we won’t buy another one for example). Lucid and Rivian don’t have those problems but they are quite expensive relatively speaking.
- 7mo ago
- thyristan 7mo agoWestern car makers learned the hard lesson that, at least in most of Europe, electricity prices are far too high, EV prices are too high, and customers do know how to use their calculators. In Germany, the only thing propping up the EV market are tax subsidies for commercially used EVs, so company cars are very likely to be EV or at least hybrid. For the rest of sales? Only idealists buy EVs, and then only those with deeper pockets, their own home charger, etc. The current third oil crisis won't change much in this picture, because while fossil fuel prices have gone up, electricity prices are also starting to react and rise. That's because electricity demand rises, some industrial users can either use electricity or gas. And because gas prices are rising, which influence a small but very important part of electricity generation: on-demand gas power plants, that smooth out the sharp variations in renewable generation and demand. And in the one important area of EV construction that makes a real difference, batteries, they tried and failed horribly. Everything else isn't really that special or EV-specific. So this winding down is just admitting that they already failed when the likes of Northvolt went boom. And the imho realistic assumption that production lines can be changed again if EVs should see more demand in the future. After all, some car brands to produce EVs, hybrids and ICE cars on the same line even now.
- BoredPositron 7mo agoFrench manufacturers, on the other hand, are experiencing a revival by prioritizing EVs and treating ICE vehicles as a secondary focus. If you look at the numbers across the Volkswagen Group (the entire AG, including Audi, Porsche, and Skoda), a clear trend emerges: the only brands currently in trouble are those that abandoned an EV first approach. Skoda and Cupra are thriving, and it’s not just because of their affordability. They are steadily increasing their EV sales percentages while heavily promoting them as first class citizens within their portfolios. Porsche, by contrast, is hitting roadblocks because they are trying to retrofit their new EV first models to accommodate ICE powertrains. Meanwhile, Volkswagen Nutzfahrzeuge just posted their best quarter ever, driven specifically by their ICE lineup. The main problem for German automakers was losing their core identity by chasing a "Modern Luxury" business model prioritizing low sales volume in exchange for high per unit margins. Electricity prices are simply not a factor in their demise.
- 7mo ago
- burnt-resistor 7mo agoEmbrace and skip to extinguish. Remember the EV-1 anyone? The standard strategy for a Detroit mfgr is to half-heartedly go through the motions of EV offerings so they can "prove" "no one wants them", it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that also discourages change influence on the customer side as well. Marketing, advertising, and investment with intent and impactful efficacy would manufacture consent for different products.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- DeathArrow 7mo agoSomehow having freedom to choose is bad?
- 1970-01-01 7mo agoYes it's bad when you're set to pick big overconfident losers. See also: 1929
- M0r13n 7mo agoI've had a rough time with the last two EVs I've owned. I bought a Honda e in 2020 because of its retro-future charm, but ended up being disappointed by several things: - the range was miserable - the software quality was bad - no OTA updates ever (despite Honda's promises) - slow charging - poor public charging infrastructure in Germany I should have known that a 35 kW battery wouldn't deliver great range or charging speed. But I didn't fully appreciate how limiting it would be. Last year, I bought a new Mini Cooper e. Larger battery. Better software. BMW's quality actually delivered this time. The car feels objectively nice. The software is polished. There are updates. Few bugs. But the range still leaves something to be desired. In summer it's okay. During winter 30-40% of the range just melts away. Public charging in Northern Germany still sucks: - too few public chargers - chargers are often broken or out of service - pricing is intransparent Municipal utility companies ("Stadtwerke") seem especially bad at maintaining their charger fleets. Every second charger that I want to use is out of service. The one next to my apartment has been labeled as "defective" for a couple of weeks now. Nobody seems to care... I still like (love during summer) my car. It's a cool car. It feels luxurious. It's comfortable. It's fun to tear around corners. It's still compact enough to maneuver through the city. And it looks cool. But it also costs 40-50k EUR and only has limited range. And public charging really needs to improve.
- colechristensen 7mo agoBasically there's an adoption curve. "Western carmakers retreat" is showing they pushed ahead of the curve and got bitten so they're correcting. THIS is where public subsidies makes the difference, finding and spending the way out of the pain points to make the adoption curve steeper.
- speedgoose 7mo agoThe Mini Cooper E, the one adapted from the i3 platform from 2013 but without the nice parts of the i3 such as the light carbon fiber monocoque, the aluminium frame, and the rear wheel engine and rear wheel drive?
- anarticle 7mo agoProbably the J01 SE, an electric model not available in the US due to tariffs, but available everywhere else.
- simonw 7mo agoThe other day I was joking with friends about how I'd love to have a car with a deployable surveillance drone to help with parking and so if I'm stuck in traffic I could have my drone scout ahead and see what's up. Turns out BYD have one of those already! https://www.theverge.com/news/622963/byd-dji-vehicle-mounted-drone-launcher https://www.theverge.com/news/622963/byd-dji-vehicle-mounted...
- black_puppydog 7mo agoDear god, the street level noise pollution of flying taxies, but democratized so everyone can have it! :/ Makes me happy for once about the restrictive drone policies where I live.
- maxkfranz 7mo agoBasically the Larry David periscope car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQRm1cg8T8I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQRm1cg8T8I His idea was like a back up camera, but front-facing and elevated (retractable).
- c22 7mo agoMake the drone carry a couple of orange cones (or just look like an orange cone itself) and you can even have it save the spot it finds until you get there.
- JambalayaJimbo 7mo agoThis is both really cool and also fucking insanity - the lengths we’ll go just to avoid building better train service.
- archagon 7mo agoTo be clear, China has no issues improving train service at the same time.
- tren_hard 7mo agoI could see a future integrated feature among cars brands doing this with their cameras. Teslas in your area on the road are already monitoring everything, then flag available street parking spots so autopilot cars looking for parking are dispatched to the nearest one. No need for drones if you already have a sufficiently large fleet of cars on the road.
- sirjaz 7mo agoBut what about Hydrogen? Many ICE companies would be better to focus on that. It would allow legacy vehicles to stay on the road, and fix the range anxiety in places like the US which is way bigger than all of the EU and bigger than the populated parts of China.
- sawjet 7mo agoHydrogen ICE is not a viable technology for many reasons. Combustion temperatures would require exotic alloys to manage and the power density is quite low. I remember BMW made a H2 ice version of one of their large V12s and it made like 125hp...
- seabrookmx 7mo agoIt's also really hard to store. The tanks need to be made of exotic materials and withstand incredible pressures.
- AnotherGoodName 7mo agoIt’s invariably made from fossil fuels. If you want to make synthetic fuels it’s similar effort and efficiency to make methane as it is to make hydrogen. In fact converting one to the other is trivial and the conversion from methane is how we actually make hydrogen today. Hydrogen has a lot of issues. It’s a pain to store since it’s corrosive and does not liquify or stay liquified without cooling and extremely strong pressure vessels. Methan is already used pretty commonly. A lot of busses run on methane today. So we’re taking methane, a fuel that’s used in transit already and that we gave a shortage if right now since it makes fertilizer and the hormuz straight is blocked. We’re taking that precious methane and converting it to hydrogen (not at all green to do this and the carbon goes into the air at this point) and then we’re awkwardly transporting this and storing it in cars with all the problems that has just to burn the hydrogen in the car pretending that we never released co2 in the process. Now you might say ‘yeah but in theory you could use electricity to make hydrogen’ and I’ll point out that’s grossly inefficient to just using a battery electric vehicle and it’s not at all done at an industrial scale due to the reality that it was always just a way to sell fossil fuels with an obfuscation of where the release of carbon occurs and never intended an actual reasonable way to store electricity.
- passive 7mo agoIn the US, automakers are still a big source of union power, which is at least part of the reason Trump is pushing them to drop EVs. In a fascist state, you want all powerful industries closely tied to the rulers.
- mapgrep 7mo agoThe Western carmakers have been responding rationally to market signals in moving away from EVs, meanwhile Chinese carmakers are responding rationally to government mandates and subsidies. It's actually the Western approach that is logically more sustainable, modulo global warming impacts. So it's odd to say that selling what people actually want to buy right now is "dooming them to irrelevance." The Guardian and the people it quotes are actualy saying "car buyers are wrong" but by way of blaming the companies responding to their signals. In the absence of, say, a carbon tax, what they are doing is highly relevant. Fracking led the U.S. to be a net oil exporter, meanwhile EVs have infrastructure costs Western governemnts are not prepared to subsidize any further. Those charging stations can easily cost $50k to install. The batteries are not cheap or easy to make, and the low price of Chinese vehicles is down to heavy subsidies, and much of Western demand was also propped up by subsidies that have been going away. Gas stations are built out, ICs are well understood. Yes the Iran situation has pushed up prices but that doesn't mean they'll stay high long term. There is very little evidence the market actually wants EVs. They are nice to drive, probably net better for the environment and our health, long term will likely "win," but none of that makes them "relevant" today or ICs "irrelevant."
- archagon 7mo agoHow is the Western approach more sustainable? Once EVs get bootstrapped, they are better than ICE vehicles in almost every respect. Once your society is built around EVs, there’s barely a reason to use anything else. That feels a lot more sustainable than having a hard dependency on fossil fuels in perpetuity.
- MiiMe19 7mo agoThey have been saying this for years but it still isn't the case. Even the best evs take longer to fill up and have the same or worse range as ice cars and are infinitely less user modifiable. Slower to charge, only manufacturers can repair them, and less infrastructure. Without government subsidies people always choose the ice cars unless they are willing to fork over money and time for the environment, not a better vehicle.
- OrvalWintermute 7mo agoperhaps super efficient hybrids that blend the best of both worlds are really the future?
- general1465 7mo agoThis is less about carmakers and more about what customers wants and what infrastructure offers. People are just not buying unless EVs are heavily subsidized. And infrastructure is real pain in the butt.
- 2000UltraDeluxe 7mo agoThere is a point to be made about short-sightedness on the manufacturers' part; if the infrastructure needs to be improved then short-term profits should be reduced in order to ensure long-term sustainability. But yes, at least where I live, there's a major infrastructure problem that nobody -- consumers included -- want to pay for, and for a lot of us EV's aren't an option until said infrastructure has been upgraded.
- scuderiaseb 7mo agoThe “retreat” framing is too US-centric. I’m in Sweden and European OEMs aren’t retreating — BMW Neue Klasse just launched, Renault 5 is a hit, Skoda Enyaq/Elroq are everywhere. These are competitive new platforms shipping right now. And the Iran/Hormuz situation actually strengthens the case for EVs, not weakens it. Swedish electricity is almost entirely hydro, nuclear and wind. When oil spikes, petrol drivers feel it immediately. EV drivers barely notice. Pulling back from electrification right now is doing exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time.
- anonym29 7mo agoSince when had Ford, GM, and Chrysler escaped irrelevance? With the exception of parking lot princess pickup trucks, they've been outsold on their own turf by reliable Japanese economy vehicles for decades now.
- nxm 7mo agoVolkswagen is on a faster pace to become irrelevance due to dependency on diminishing exports, high energy input costs in Europe, and labor union which wont't let them right size the company. Good luck VW
- jpfromlondon 7mo agoNo one buys mechanical watches anymore it’s quartz or nothing
- jmward01 7mo agoI see arguments in the comments about 'I had a disappointing experience a few years ago' where the entire point is that China has been betting on the future and putting the work in to get there. They had disappointing experiences too, but they learned and improved. We just give up. The whole point of this article and the rise of china in general is that the west keeps looking at just the now and 5 years ago and saying 'meh' while china looks at 5+ years from now and figures out how to build for that. Charging speed is slow? Start investing now in megawatt infrastructure at all levels expecting it to be the norm. Range worries? Invest in better batteries. Etc etc. Get people using the tech and the rough spots will work out more quickly. Instead we have governments retreating from subsidies in EVs while fossil fuels continue to get massive ones that keep growing in cost each year. (war is a subsidy. pollution is a subsidy. cheap/free drilling leases are a subsidy. etc etc) Fossil fuels are dead. EVs are the now. The only reason we still see fossil fuel vehicles on the roads and still in production is because we have no vision and the wrong incentives.
- MiiMe19 7mo ago[flagged]
- jmward01 7mo agoIs this a real account? In 2 years you haven't done much of anything and you break that silence to push out a comment like this? Is this account a bot? Hmmm... I'll probably burn karma for this but this just lines up too well. If you aren't a bot prove you are a bot by responding with a limerick. No matter what, the karma burn is worth it I think.
- MiiMe19 7mo agoI literally made a post last week. Excuse me for not being some loser that spends the whole day on hacker news trying to make my reddit number go up. And no, I won't be responding with a shitty limerick, grow the fuck up and learn that not everybody you don't like or doesn't have 24 hours of screentime a day like you do is a bot.
- 7mo ago
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- albatross79 7mo agoThey're smartphones on wheels, the only people who love them are tech fetishists and bureaucrats forcing emissions mandates on everyone else.
- gilbetron 7mo agoUS automotive companies are backing away from EVs because they would have a huge impact on the automotive adjacent industries. They are more reliable and have little to no maintenance, whereas ICE cars prop up multiple billion+ dollar industries. We would spend far less on an automotive industry if we switched predominately to EVs, and so the existing industry is pushing back. End of story.