Not in America they’re not.
Which fucking sucks! The selection of electric cars on sale in America is terrible!
As sad as this is, this is all the fault of the current automakers. The EV1 showed great promise but it was killed off despite the pleas of their drivers. It was just too cheap and convenient to keep making ICE cars and ripping off their customer base. When the innovations of Chinese manufacturers started looming over the horizon, the US did what it always does and wall off the domestic market with tariffs. Content with their captive market, they did token efforts for EVs but kept pumping out $80k+ gas powered behemoths. I’m aware of Tesla being the exception but frankly fuck that company, Elon Musk’s Nazi shit ruined it and I wish it’ll go under.
I wish he would just sell it and let it actually become a worthwhile company. If he would just fuck himself out of the equation I think Tesla would be a lot better.
It is known as the Nazi car brand now which is wild when Volkswagen still exists.
And the oil industry. Also, nobody wanted to spend the money to build EV infrastructure.
Yes. ‘EV infrastructure’ is just “reliable power” and successive conservatives in the administration and judicial interrupted only by shackled progressives for brief periods hasn’t done anything to maintain or grow any infrastructure in America, including a reliable power grid.
For example, I support a tiny company who happens to produce an additive required to make 75% of American water safe and palatable since the distro pipes are such shit.
(Honestly, I know why they posted feds at the gate, now, since if hillbillies or qanon took the plant out - they hate vaccines and fluoride, so it’s not a stretch - America would be super-fucked generationally)
Ironically, expansion and maintenance of infrastructure like the power grid become a voting issue only when it’s past breaking, and US car makers have staved off that crisis of Obvious proportions by their very meddling.
I’m just glad we’ve decided to keep feeding America their power … for the time being. Because in addition to being in a flood risk area, the only plant producing the chemical required for American drinking water happens to be powered redundantly from a Canadian feed.
And China’s moat is the ecosystem that they are building around EVs. The mining and refining tech for lithium, battery tech, motors, drivers and manufacturing that will be impossible for any other country to replicate.
Not impossible, just expensive.
Easier to buy the products China already makes than to insource industry and control your own (marginally inferior) production chain.
The US is demolishing the tools to compete with China, entirely because the current leadership has an ideological aversion to “Woke” modern technologies. There’s no reason the BRICS states would need to follow this path
News about global trade deficits isn’t mildly interesting. It’s mildly boring.
Yeah this is the wrong comm, should be /c/actually_infuriating@lemmy.world
There just aren’t that many domestic automakers actually attempting the market the way China is. I think part of the reason for that is the adoption rate of American drivers of EV’s. Especially without the tax credits to subsidize the cost. The US is struggling to sell new cars and EV’s make up only 10% of new cars sold.
There just aren’t that many domestic automakers actually attempting the market the way China is.
I don’t want to nor think we should try to compete with a country that employs slave labour.
Exploitative labour practices in China may have paid dividends for us westerners, but I don’t want to work the way they work.
The State of California uses slaves to fight forest fires.
Okay, but here’s what I mean. Ford decided at the end of 2025 to cut back on manufacturing and far scale back it’s plans for producing more electric versions of their vehicles. They did that because the demand for their EV’s isn’t there because the price point for them is ridiculous.
There’s a lot of EV’s sitting on dealer lots, so much so they were last I checked giving incentive programs to get employees to buy them.
That hasn’t got anything to do with China or BYD and everything to do with the fact that their cars arent selling because potential buyers don’t have money.
My comments had nothing at all to do with the labor practices of China.
There’s a lot of EV’s sitting on dealer lots….
And there’s one of the major problems; using the stealership model. Buying from Tesla or Rivian or Slate is/will be a breeze because it’s all online. No haggling with a stack of shit in a suit about cost or going somewhere to be told “we don’t sell the EV models here”.
Bitch, you’re a dealership. You sell cars.
Tesla’s sales are in the dumps too. Last I checked they were down 9%. Rivian’s sales were down to something like a 3 year low as of the beginning of this year. The fact is, the vehicles cost to much for the average American.
Especially without the tax credits to subsidize the cost.
Too bad the US doesn’t have access to cheaper non-US made EVs.
They’re not cheaper. They’re just being sold below cost for the express purpose of putting their competitors out of business.
My side does it: necessary and just subsidies in the national interest.
The other side does it: flooding the market with unfair subsidies!
Bad strawman. What situation are you even describing here and who is “my side” exactly, every automaker in the world that isn’t based in China?
Yep. Politics is part of the reason too. But only part of it. Most Americans can’t afford a new car even if it’s cheap. That’s why new car sales are so low. The tax credits helped a lot of people buy EV’s. Now that the current Admin has gotten rid of the credit people aren’t buying or leasing them but people can’t afford the pre-owned vehicles either.
So what I’m saying is, people can’t afford to buy used EV’s either.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a70020914/why-2026-will-be-a-great-time-to-buy-a-used-ev/
Don’t forget all the infrastructure that goes with EVs and an additional cost to add charging to your home or even having your own house to plug them in.
This is largely an out of proportion concern. As long as you’re like most people and park your car at home overnight for 8+ hours a standard extension cord and outlet is sufficient. If you need rapid charging then your life follows an irregular schedule or you got the absolute largest battery for the largest SUV/truck available.
Totally.
I’m in a rental townhouse and only have a 110v standard outlet and it absolutely is enough is most cases.
I was determined to drive at least mostly electric even if it cost somewhat more and the best I could afford was an Outlander PHEV. So if I do have to do more in a day than the battery it just swaps to engine. Daily job commute and other household driving and we are still floating between 75-90% electric drive.
My wife wasn’t convinced in talking through it with her. However she had never driven either an EV or PHEV. I got her to drive a Kia EV9 and she loved how it felt but it was just too expensive and she still at that point felt like it was only a pure EV thing to drive like that.
Then we test drove the Outlander and she immediately wanted it. It is an electric first design and you can feel it.
In my opinion we should have been doing traditional hybrid and/or PHEV back in the late 80s. Built up the battery manufacturing and quality and be on full electric for basically all home use vehicles by now.
For heavy load and construction it should be bio diesel hybrids. Not that those are ideal either but still the best we can do in short term tech swap.
And then of course trains. More trains.
The outlanderss are nice. They use Nissan chassis with Mitsubishi drivtrain. They are well equipped. I drove an ionic5 which I think the ev6 is and they are awesome. I would like to have an ionic5 or 6 n.
If you have a parking space with a nearby power outlet, you can make do with that just fine.
If you don’t, yeah, that’s rough.
Just saying, but people not being able to afford a new vehicle is because of politics. Not Republican vs Democrat politics, but capitalist vs worker politics.
Yeah. I wasn’t clear. I meant like. Not due to car manufacturers lobbying against EV’s or tax credits etc to encourage people to by them/make them more affordable. That kind of thing. I wasn’t thinking about the socioeconomics of why people can’t afford cars.
The US is struggling to sell new cars and EV’s make up only 10% of new cars sold.
I would love to buy an EV but a brand new car is too expensive and there’s not much in the way of reasonably priced, used EVs available so I’m currently sticking with the internal combustion engine.
I’m sticking with my ICE cars because they have buttons and switches and only a tiny screen and won’t be selling my data to my insurance company and aren’t SUVs.
Though I did put a deposit down on a Slate truck.
I have bad news for you about modern cars.
There’s a reason I don’t mind dumping thousands into two decade-plus-old cars.
Well, two. The other is that it’s still probably cheaper than buying something.
And what are the bad news?
Both China and EU are making certain physical switches a requirement; Due to the safety risk of ‘all is computer’
I put a deposit down too. Living somewhere kind of remote, I do worry about how far away a trained service shop will be. They’ll have less maintenance requirements for sure, but there will still be maintenance required.
FWIW, my local shop claim they can handle state Inspection, brakes, tires, and suspension work on my Tesla. The most likely to wear items are also more generic.
Of course an accident or some other breakdown is an entirely different story
One of the main reason a country’s government will subsidize or otherwise encourage green energy and EV adoption is as a geopolitical strategy to reduce dependence on oil, due to the fact that most oil-producing nations are deeply unstable for one reason or another. The USA’s problem is that it is one of those deeply unstable oil-producing nations, and so it wants to keep the renewables market suppressed and the oil and oil derivatives market boosted.
Here in Ireland we don’t have one jot of domestic oil production, so renewables are seen as a way to not be held hostage by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (and idiotically unnecessary wars in the Middle East, and idiotically random tariff wars) because we do have our own water, wind and sunshine. America doesn’t have that natural incentive to the same extent that we do.
Heck even oil producing European countries such as Scotland and Norway, considers renewable the future
China has subsidized the shit out of their car industry. Dumping trillions of renminbi across every vertical and then ramping up production to flood every market with a deluge of cheap EVs will do that.To their credit they are also willing to let bad car companies die and the good ones take their place.
Not that we couldn’t have done the same but the people elected a party which has a walking orange disaster of a president into power and they are doing their very best to hand the future to the Chinese.
So basically China is winning this particular war because they’re doing it smartly.
China tends to take a 1000 year perspective on things…
In the west we can hardly think 3 months ahead of the present moment.
.
Good. They are overpriced and full of shit that supports the fascists.
supports the fascists.
Isn’t that true for the Chinese EVs as well? The billionaire owners of the EV industry are all tied, willingly or unwillingly, to the authoritarian regime of Xi Jinping
That was a blatant choice to back old fossil fuel money against alternative forms of energy. Nobody made trouble for them. They made trouble for themselves. It’ll always happen when you pray at the temple of capitalism.
US vehicles are huge, Earth killing dinosaurs. And like the dinosaurs, they will be extinct someday.
The auto industry collapsed a long time ago and they stopped listening to consumers about the same time. Now only foreign cars are manufactured in the US.
It’s sad watching the U.S. and Japanese auto industry self-destruct in slow motion. There are a lot of smart and capable people in the auto industry, but the management are stuck in an 80s design and manufacturing process.
I don’t think it’s done them any good to have trade restrictions trying to protect US sales. The increased pressure of better foreign car sales in the US would force more rapid adaptations.
Is the Japanese auto industry in as bad shape as the US? Where I live Nissan Leaf is everywhere, but that model might be an exception?
Toyota CEO: “Unless things change, we will not survive.”
This is Toyota though. So by, “unless things change” he just means, “unless the world turns their backs on EV and switches to hydrogen fuel on a traditional ICE package.” Toyota refuses to accept that people want EVs.
Yeah fuck Toyota, they have been actively steering consumers away from BEVs to their hybrids for decades so that they can keep that sweet replacement parts cash rolling in. Here in Australia when they finally launched an EV, they gave it a ridiculous alphanumeric name that nobody remembers (and I refuse to look out up) - almost like they wanted it to fail. I’ll never own a Toyota again.
The oil lobby has been actively encouraging this for decades. Automakers are lock step with the oil lobby. This is so people have to stay reliant on petrol.
There’s no EV infrastructure here where I live. The amount of scam solar is like 10:1 here as well.
What is scam solar?
Once or twice a month we get people crawling the neighborhood, 5 or 6 of them just walking down the road, no credentials and they wanna get me free state funded solar and all the need is a picture of my electric bill to prove I’m not already receiving the payment blah blah blah. Eventually a cop comes by a day later and asks about it because one of the old people got scammed.
So how does the actual scam work?
Sometimes it’s that picture of the bill; they use it it switch you to a more expensive energy provider.
Pretty straight forward, put them on as many rooftops as you can regardless of suitability or quality components. Collect government rebate +/- co contribution.
Does it really matter? Won’t the government just block all Chinese vehicles from being sold here so carmakers in this country don’t have to compete?
There are more US auto workers working for foreign-owned companies than there are for American-owned companies. Eventually the Chinese EV companies will follow the path of Honda, Totota, etc. and just start opening factories in the US. Tariffs don’t apply to US-built cars.
american ones are pretty crappy, and alot of them are built in mexico anyways.
True but nobody can afford to buy American vehicles so it’s hurting the companies since they can’t sell anything
40-60k for a new EV, that may have some kinks as well.
Still doesn’t help with the fact that not a single person outside the US will buy a Tesla or a Ford.
Sooner or later Americans will stumble onto TikToks and see how cool BYDs or Beijings are, and they’ll wonder why their Chevrolet is a piece of shit.
The iron curtain only gets you so far when the internet exists. And when a government is too incompetent to even try to censor it.
Tesla stores are pretty common in China. They still buy the Tony Stark tech genius businessman schtick.
Tesla sales have been falling pretty badly in China for a few years now, ever since Chinese companies improved their cars. However, it looks like it had a good couple months at the beginning of 2026. I’d still expect Tesla China to go out of business in a few years.
For anyone interested:
Sadly Tesla is still 6% of the EV market in Europe (apparently because of inclusion in Uber Black and UberXL)
Ugh ffs why would anyone use Uber anyway when we have Bolt and I’m assuming some other services (but Bolt is the main one here since it’s an Estonian company and I’m Estonian)
I’m pretty sure there are even more Teslas in Bolt than in Uber. In my country most Tesla taxis are actually Bolts. Bolt in general seems to have more expensive cars than Uber, from what I’ve seen.
A lot of drivers had the idea of taking a loan for a Tesla, then paying it from driving for Uber/Bolt. Not sure how it’s going for the Uber ones with Uber’s declining driver rates.
Oh no! Is it time for the auto industry to collapse, get 81 billion dollars, change nothing, and berate the American consumer for being too poor to buy their cars that now cost twice as much for no specific reason other than capitalism again?
After getting that $88 billion bailout They’ll bring back sedans and start researching EVs…for about 4 years and switch back to gas guzzling jacked up overcompensating trucks for the men and big suburbans/yukons for the moms who pay more attention to their phones than the road.
Rinse repeat
they’ll bring back sedans
Dodge: here’s your Dart
Chevy: here’s another Cobalt clone that uses a worse motor
Ford: We’ll make any Sedan you want as long as it’s a Mustang and not a sedan
“th-thanks…” 😕
It sure as hell isn’t time to ride the bus or build a train. So I guess we’re doing your thing.
public transportation is pretty lacking in teh us, even “funded blue area” they are usually neglected too.
Noice. Schedule another for 2041?
That’s optimistic, better pencil in 2029
I’ll hold the date, thank you.
Don’t forget union busting and a general failure to pay workers enough to afford their products. Billionaires’ greed always fucks us over.
End of the day, I can’t afford a new car no matter who makes it. $30,000 for a DRM’ed shitbox that will shut itself down if I’m 30 minutes late on a payment? No, thanks.
Seriously. I keep telling my dudes to hold onto their 2005-15 models. Good safety tech, maybe a Bluetooth audio connection and no fucking microphones or cameras.
As it stands I’ll just keep my 2012 bmw 128 running forever. It’s paid off, fun, and has never given me a problem.
I love my 2011 Honda CRZ. It’s like a Prius if driving a Prius didn’t make you want to harm yourself or others.
Some of those are even manual, which always seemed so bizarre yet cool!
Mine is like semi-manual or something? I can change from automatic to manual basically.
…I still havent learned how to actually use the manual driving BUT I COULD SOMEDAY
Have they tried CLOSING more EV Plants and DISCONTINUING More EV Models? That MIGHT help!
-CEOS!
Nah. When reelecting Trump, America acknowledged that our country will collapse with the oil industry. We’ll fight a war to preserve our hegemony over oil, and the resultant oil crisis will be the final straw that gets everybody else in the rest of the world that have money to buy a new vehicle committed to electrification.
It is the Iron Law of Institutions in macro scale. The oil industry and American car companies would rather see America suffer and lose its position in the world, than to help facilitate a transition to some other energy source that would threaten their own entrenched power.
When reelecting Trump, America acknowledged that our country will collapse with the oil industry.
If you look where Trump (really, any Republicans) win big, it’s inevitably an area with a big O&G footprint.
Of late, that’s shifted slightly to Tech Data Centers. But the nature of lucrative extractionary industry is that it gives you a ton of money to pay one half of the working class to restrain and abuse the other half.
It is the Iron Law of Institutions in macro scale. The oil industry and American car companies would rather see America suffer and lose its position in the world, than to help facilitate a transition to some other energy source that would threaten their own entrenched power.
My dad worked for Exxon. He used to joke that they had a big switch in the back of the HQ that read “Green Energy”. And as soon as fossil fuels stopped being profitable, they’d flip it and become a solar/wind giant overnight.
He died back in the 90s, so he never got to see the big milestones. But if you ever look up T. Boone Pickens, this oil billionaire was saying very much the same thing in the late '00s. Natural gas is temporary. Wind is where the real infinite money machine lives.
And now my own state of Texas leads the county in wind production and runs a tight second to California on solar.
So much of this is absolutely already happening. And it’s being financed by the same folks who said it was impossible twenty years ago.
