this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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"Struggling" implies the American Auto industry is at least trying to keep pace. But really, they aren't trying at all. They are content to sit back thinking their current flock of geese will lay golden eggs forever even as more and more of those geese drop dead from old age.
GM's biggest sales increases are with Cadillac EVs last year.
Detroit followed the Tesla model, with the highest profit margins in the industry because their CEO convinced simps EVs should be expensive. So they jumped in early with poorly designed and expensive vehicles, thinking Tesla stans were everywhere.
There was a time, worldwide, if you just wanted a reliable and low cost sedan, you bought a Ford or Chevy, and they sold millions. But round 2016, Detroit lost interest in lower cost vehicles, and by 2020, they got addicted to price gouging cheap vehicles to make them expensive, and why not, people were paying $70,000+ for a Jeep and just taking it up the ass.
Given Detroit abandoned that part of the market, they shouldn't care if Chinese EVs arrive, right? Because their $60,000 EVs are a better product, right?
That‘s the main problem in Europe as well. I don‘t mind tariffs on heavily subsidized cars that are designed not to make profit but to destroy our industries. However, even then our manufacturers are in a constant crisis mode and unable to adapt. It‘s really pathetic.
But hey, when the car lobby is dead maybe that means more trains and cycling paths in the long run? Perhaps there‘s an opportunity here.
It’s all thanks to Germany though. They are the ones who have succeeded in scrapping the bill to ban new ICE vehicle sales after 2035
Canada did the same thing. We also got rid of the carbon levy.
If it has to be forced, then it probably isn't a good idea.
We're only just now. Like this year just now, seeing batteries that can be made much cheaper and last much longer (sodium ion) and batteries that will last the actual lifetime of a vehicle (solid state lithiums, allegedly). The cars the past 5 years that have had LifePO4 batts will last decently long. Up until now you've been looking at EV's that cost more, with batteries that will go bad in them that cost huge amounts of money to replace. A 10 year old Tesla with 200,000 miles on it is essentially garbage. No one will pay much for it because it's about to need a $15,000 battery, and when it fails it's going to the junk yard. My little ice car has nearly 300,000 miles on it and is old enough to vote. If the engine blows up I could buy a working used one for like $500 and install it myself, or pay somebody else a couple grand to deal with it all for me.
Passenger cars aren't the end all be all to global warming or the environment, either. They aren't the main cause. Most countries grid systems couldn't handle a complete EV swap by 2035. Look at the issues these stupid ai server farms are causing grid systems.
My point is, no one should need to force ev. At this point it will become the better and obvious choice over ice on its own. It isn't there yet for tons of people or countries.
It’s not like people want to do that for shits and giggles.
A different perspective is the market shift is inevitable. We can work with it to make the transition smooth, to help existing manufacturers retool, to more quickly build out the necessary infrastructure, ensuring least disruption and existing manufacturers are still in business. Or we can let the market be disrupted by new companies predominantly in other countries. The transition will be longer and rougher as jobs are lost, infrastructure lags, existing manufacturers cling to old technology, until eventually that entire industrial base collapses
Or of course there’s the perspective of acknowledging long term climate trends and understand the responsibility to our children, our society, our descendants, to make small steps to mitigate the harm we do them
While we’re so stagnant it would be a challenge, do you not see the difference between
You can plan for a well known and couple decades timeframe, or the failure is yours. It’s harder to plan for surprises
That's pretty rare though. Less than 5% of EVs need a battery replacement after 10 years (including those with defective batteries), and modern EV batteries should last at least 20 years, after which they're still estimated to have around 65-70% capacity.
That's not pretty rare, and with lithium batteries it's also a guaranteed capacity loss, even if there's not many power cycles to them. Age is a huge determinate factor in capacity and power loss in lithium batteries. The capacity loss also isn't on a straight line scale. It increases with time. One or two percent a year loss for the first 5 years and then it will get bigger and bigger. Unlike an ice vehicle that's kept in a garage and taken care of that can got well over 200,000 miles almost regardless of age, an EV currently can't do that. They're terrible in the 2nd and third hand market. A 20 year old EV will be useless.
While battery degradation is real, one thing people often overlook is that most of these mandates include PHEVs under the umbrella of electric vehicles. PHEVs have way smaller batteries which make them lighter, cheaper, and they aren't subject to range anxiety. The only downside is the extra cost and the continued maintenance required of an ICE (but ICE buyers are used to it and don't care about that).
That's quite false, buddy. In fact it's an outright lie. For Europe and for the US, so I don't know where you're talking about this "most of" is at.
The EU bill was for a complete ICE ban by 2035, and the reversal that Germany was pushing for in removing that ban was for it to be a 90% emissions reduction instead of a ban. This was wanted by Germany for the sole purpose of still allowing hybrids after 2035.
In shorter fashion: It didn't include hybrids. Now it's going to.
The ban for ICE vehicles was only for new registrations. ICE cars registered before 2035 were still allowed to be driven after 2035.
Never understood why EVs aren't made with standardized hot swappable cells. Would solve the range problem and the wear problem.
Not practical, no one wants it.
People are already bitching and moaning about how hard it is to build out charging, when it’s based on existing electric system that’s is already everywhere. You really think it’s at all practical to build out everywhere a network of station with a large inventory of one ton batteries to fit every age of every vehicle in every location no matter how rural and heavy automated equipment to maneuver them? You want to hold battery technology stagnant to support this? You want to lose the efficiency and reliability benefits of structural batteries.
The reality is current batteries already last longer than the first owner keeps a vehicle and newer ones easily exceed lifespan of ice vehicles. The reality is charging is already more convenient that battery swapping. The reality is building out chargers is much easier than any other infrastructure
There was at least one company several years ago that was trying. Go to a place and pay a fee, kind of like how you'd swap out a propane gas bbq grill tank. They'd forklift out the empty batt and forklift in the charged one, was their game plan.
The tech is all too knew for standardization. Too many chemistries and voltages and places to figure out where to stick batteries.
If what catl is producing right now is correct and true, we should be all set in the coming future. Supposed sodium batteries at 175wh per kilogram and over 10,000 charge cycles and very fast charging. Great for sub 300 mile range small econo vehicles. Then the solid state lithiums they're working on are also supposed to have a high amount of charge cycles and energy densities close to 500wh\kg, which will give plenty of range and make the cars lighter, which is really needed to ease up on suspension and efficiency and tread wear.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_battery_station
China has the battery production technologies and capabilities, the electric motor production, an unbelievable economy of scale, and insane levels of automation in their EV Factories, those are the main reasons behind their pricing and not "subsidies to destroy our industries". Most subsidies, AFAIK, were tax cuts to purchases in China.
Are the subsidies specifically for destroying foreign markets? (😈MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!)
Maybe, maybe not. I'm not a huge fan of the Chinese government, but I don't think their subsidies program are intended to directly destroy foreign markets so much as put the country at the forefront of development and production... which can be perceived as the above.
In depth study of the Chinese GreenTech subsidy system.
As the study goes into in depth, tax credits are just one part of the system. There's also direct subsidies(funding) for R&D, which is understandably very expensive, and below market value land sales among other things. In 2019 China put the equivalent of 1.73% of their GDP into industrial support, with below market land sales being a substantial portion of that. Next highest on the graphic is Korea at 0.67% GDP equivalent.
Moving away from the subsidies thing.
(Found this out awhile ago when I was watching a video on how actually ridiculous the whole US - Greenland thing was.)
China has ~90% of the rare earth refinement capacity. Even if Trump wants/wanted Greenland for it's resources, it would be over a decade to spin up enough refinement infrastructure to process whatever they would hypothetically extract.
China has invested HEAVILY in the entire supply chain from resource extraction to final product for a wide swath of GreenTech. When a lot of the rest of the world has switched from a majority production/export to majority consumption/import economy, or focused on soft products/research/etc of course they would see a country flooding their markets with products as adversarial. Regardless of if those foreign products are superior. Especially if the government of said foreign country is often interfering in political processes, intimidating other countries citizens, setting up extra judicial secret police networks in many countries, economic coercion....etc etc etc.
I'm not entirely convinced that the subsidy system is malicious, but the CCP isn't above playing dirty. So I can fully understand the common reaction being that it is.
While I’m positive they are playing dirty in many ways, the fundamental difference is they saw a long term transition, welcomed it, guided it. Whereas us sees a long term transition, pulls our head into our shell, holds on tighter to old ways of doing things, keeps focussing shorter and shorter term. Whatever China may be doing to “cheat”, it really seems like this is mostly self-inflicted
That's one of the advantages of having a single party in power for a very long time, I don't think China qualifies as a proper dictatorship, but it shares the advantage of the ability to plan decades in advance. The US is hobbled by the 4-8 year cycle of the next person totally erasing all the work of the previous. So there's an incentive for whoever is in power to keep the status quo and keep any changes small enough or "bipartisan" enough that the next person doesn't repeal it.
I wouldn't necessarily say that from what's visible outside the information confines of the CCP is cheating. They have a well defined goal, and no sight of the end of party rule means they can effectively do whatever they want to achieve it.
in 2023, Tesla released all the specs to move EVs to a 48V architecture to Detroit, saving a tremendous amount of wiring and eliminating the need for most sub systems and secondary computers. Detroit just ignored it, until 2026, and now Ford invented 48V architecture.
Isn't profit supposed to bring prices down?
Looks like crapitalists are scared to shit of free market competition.
Tesla was definitely trying...
Ah Tesla... I too attempt to accomplish tasks by being a leader and going completely insane.
Tesla was a tech leader before Musk showed up. As soon as he weasled his way in and declared himself a founder retroactively, the best engineers left and started Rivian and Lucid, both of which make better vehicles. On his watch, they made that stupid SUV with gullwing doors no one can open in a garage, then the Cybertruck.
People only prefer BYD to Cybertrucks because the government is not adding ketamine to drinking water.
Half of the Tesla vehicles are made in China, they are not competing with the Chinese EVs but they are the Chinese EVs themselves instead