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> The problem is that large swathes of the population are outside of that and you're making their lives miserable by punishing ICE car ownership I think that's

> The problem is that large swathes of the population are outside of that and you're making their lives miserable by punishing ICE car ownership I think that's the plan - force adoption and double down on the misery so that people forcefully invest into building infrastructure that otherwise wouldn't have. In other words, you're synthesizing demand. It would be extremely interesting to see how it works out! In my limited experience, these synthetic initiatives explode in costs because it lets grifters, scammers and arbitragers defraud the synthetic demand side (due to the lack of a real free market system which is naturally self calibrating and managing). One thing that I wonder about - unlike in the U.S. where gas is cheap, my understanding is that it's around $10/gal around most of the E.U. right now? If so, what's stopping people from running towards EVs naturally? - Is it just the lack of charging infrastructure? - Is it because most people in the E.U. live in dense areas where it's hard to setup charging infrastructure? - Is it because most people in the E.U. live in dense areas where public transportation is cheap on a unit "per head" basis making local governments hesitate to invest in charging infrastructure directly? - Is it that over-regulation in the E.U. make it extremely difficult to build charging infrastructure in the first place? From a U.S. perspective, I would imagine that most of the U.S. (especially rural and suburban US) would switch to EVs overnight if Chinese EVs were allowed to flood the market. A lot of cities in the U.S. are accommodating literally golf carts on their streets so a $10k brand new Chinese EV that you could plugin is likely to sell like hotcakes.

muyuu 6mo ago
we're not in the EU anymore but yep, our petrol and diesel prices are not far off those of France or the Netherlands right now, petrol goes for ~£1.5 per litre and diesel for £1.90 that is converted to US gallons and US currency, $7.67 for petrol (gasoline) and $8.99 for diesel > From a U.S. perspective, I would imagine that most of the U.S. (especially rural and suburban US) would switch to EVs overnight if Chinese EVs were allowed to flood the market. A lot of cities in the U.S. are accommodating literally golf carts on their streets so a $10k brand new Chinese EV that you could plugin is likely to sell like hotcakes. Suburban, sure. I'm not sure about rural, esp in the colder areas, because it takes significant investment to deploy the amount of energy you would need to heat vehicles and still have range, so it would take a bit longer. The main reason the market is not being taken over by cheap Chinese EVs, is that despite the best efforts from our government to destroy the ICE car industry, it still is a MUCH better product for certain niches of the market that are quite significant. So you keep punishing those people for no good reason, while the people who are a perfect fit for EVs already have them. Meanwhile policy is all over the place with new taxes for EVs specifically paid by the mile because they are heavy and they don't pay enough road tax, and they also don't pay petrol tax which is a massive cash cow and the exchequer is broke. Over time, councils will make it easier for people to charge at home getting some extra % of natural growth. But until the energy cost situation is sorted - our electricity is EXPENSIVE, especially in public chargers - and this could take a very long time, then for a lot of people EVs will remain a bad fit. Without the current wave of punitive measures, EVs would have a very similar adoption rate regardless, and I'm convinced that it will surely climb, just more slowly than they would hope. It's also okay that some people keep driving ICEs long into the future.

muyuu 6mo ago

we're not in the EU anymore but yep, our petrol and diesel prices are not far off those of France or the Netherlands right now, petrol goes for ~£1.5 per litre and diesel for £1.90 that is converted to US gallons and US currency, $7.67 for petrol (gasoline) and $8.99 for diesel > From a U.S. perspective, I would imagine that most of the U.S. (especially rural and suburban US) would switch to EVs overnight if Chinese EVs were allowed to flood the market. A lot of cities in the U.S. are accommodating literally golf carts on their streets so a $10k brand new Chinese EV that you could plugin is likely to sell like hotcakes. Suburban, sure. I'm not sure about rural, esp in the colder areas, because it takes significant investment to deploy the amount of energy you would need to heat vehicles and still have range, so it would take a bit longer. The main reason the market is not being taken over by cheap Chinese EVs, is that despite the best efforts from our government to destroy the ICE car industry, it still is a MUCH better product for certain niches of the market that are quite significant. So you keep punishing those people for no good reason, while the people who are a perfect fit for EVs already have them. Meanwhile policy is all over the place with new taxes for EVs specifically paid by the mile because they are heavy and they don't pay enough road tax, and they also don't pay petrol tax which is a massive cash cow and the exchequer is broke. Over time, councils will make it easier for people to charge at home getting some extra % of natural growth. But until the energy cost situation is sorted - our electricity is EXPENSIVE, especially in public chargers - and this could take a very long time, then for a lot of people EVs will remain a bad fit. Without the current wave of punitive measures, EVs would have a very similar adoption rate regardless, and I'm convinced that it will surely climb, just more slowly than they would hope. It's also okay that some people keep driving ICEs long into the future.