How the Us Got Left Behind in the Electric Car Race

music

movies

microcode (software)

high-speed pizza delivery”

Pretty much every one of these is a boring example. Abortion access is a debatable topic, most people who want public transit want it so they can get OTHER people off the road, lots of major cities have both public transit and walkability, many states and cities have significantly higher minimum wages, etc.

None of these are things most Americans are absolutely clamoring for - you just want to live in Europe without moving there.

Well, maybe the concept of free healthcare.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

edit: anyone downvoting me really needs to use one of their 5 llm subs and ask what america is ahead on atm

Europe is going bed, have your fun with the karma

The future is now: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/08/18/the-number

I get that there are some real (or perceived) issues that are trying to be solved with these tariffs, but that doesn't magically make the realities of what tariffs do to a market go away. "Just do something" is a good way to get a "solution" that makes you worse off.

So...China. They have zero standards for anything. The cars probably do poorly in crashes. The industries making the batteries pollute the shit out of everything. The batteries probably don't last as long as indicated, probably half as many cells as was advertised. The tires are thinner, the glass is thinner, the paint is barely applied. Is this really what we want?

There has to be some middle way.

But our problems started before tariffs. If you look at the graph in the article, things started diverging around 2018. You can see all other countries taking off, leaving the US in the dust.

And the (small) US increase dropped even more around 2023.

But we were already behind.

EV infrastructure is terrible. I've been hoping to trade our second vehicle (that is ICE) in for an EV, so that both our vehicles are EV.

But until the infrastructure improves, we have no choice but to hold onto at least one ICE vehicle for anything longer than a daily commute.

And US makers can't sell EVs when most Americans are still dealing with range anxiety due to lack of infrastructure.

Taking a mature industry and adding protectionism because of underperformance is a disaster on all fronts.

We were in the middle of a huge industrial investment buildout, absolutely untold of in modern history, for solar and batteries. But with the goal of undoing anything the prior administration has done, we are abandoning the good that a little protectionism could have for a growing battery and solar industry in the US.

We are toast without big changes. The world is leapfrogging us, and with every dozen GW of solar and batteries that China exports, it is permanently lowering demand for US natural gas and oil, which will eventually torpedo the industry, or leave the US with far higher energy prices than the rest of the world, both of which are disastrous for industry.

I’d not mind something akin to a modernized take on the Crown Vic, or something that has a decidedly American shape and non-luxury price tag to it.

... I mean, Europe _has_ its own Tesla, in VW AG, Stellantis, BMW, Mercedes, etc; their combined global BEV sales are similar to or slightly greater than Tesla's global sales. Why are you expecting one pseudo-monopoly manufacturer? While that _is_ kinda the case in the US, that's more a function of the US car market being pretty broken than anything else.

(It's not even the case in China; while BYD is big, and gets a lot of press, China does have other significant manufacturers.)

In the US? Not a chance.

Even with the US being big, most people aren't doing those kind of trips. They need a car for city use. Those people should be driving the % of total sales up but they aren't.

It is true that if I was in Europe and wanted to go somewhere 400 miles away I'd take a train. But I don't think that road trips explains everything.