this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2026
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Electric Vehicles
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It’s simple. The old guard of car manufacturers in Germany, USA, and Japan know how to build high profit cars that are differentiated. If they market electric cars, they could lose that advantage, because their electric cars don’t a lot differently than the Chinese ones. If they build great electric cars, they’ll lose that advantage because they’re behind the Chinese in r&d, and their manufacturing an R&D costs are much higher.
Then Trump comes along and eliminates all reason to build EVs for the USA market.
So they spend a lot of effort marketing conventional vehicles. Surprised? Not really.
Many Canadians and USAians also travel hundreds of km on road trips as part of their vacations, driving kids to college, family reunions, thanksgiving, etc., and the charging infrastructure isn’t there even if charge times come way down. Sure, it’s occasional but it’s an oversized consideration in the American mind.
Hank Green made an interesting point in this video.
Essentially, because it's illegal for car manufacturers in the US to sell their own products, it's left to franchises, who make a large portion of their income from ongoing service plans; oil changes and the like. EVs obviously have far fewer of those, so the folks in sales are more likely to push regular petrol models instead.
Until places that are losing customers install electric chargers to charge while you eat. Then they charge for the electricity for profit and become a must stop destination. Range anxiety is an issue, but it gets less so with each iteration and each charger install.