In Netherlands you could also get paid for charging your car. There is such thing called ERE Certificates - emission reduction unit certificate is generated by offsetting emissions. Pollutters have to buy them to offset the harm. It's up to 0.1 euro per KWh (electricity costs 0.28 euro per KWh), depending on the demand.
There is still no widespread charging infra. Oh sure, there are chargers. If you're lucky and your town is on a state highway there might be one or two chargers in the entire town — their purpose being so visitors don't become stranded.
Outside of cities, they are not there in sufficient quantity for widespread adoption.
The apartment problem has not been solved either, and people do not have the time in their lives to dedicate to charging at a shared public charger.
Europe still loves its compact manual transmission cars; but what we may see is a transition away from diesel to petrol vehicles strictly for cost reasons.
I’m not claiming this to be an entirely solved issue, but the situations in which EVs make sense are already very broad and keep expanding. The city I live in has lantern chargers (admittedly not everywhere), some others are building them into curbs. Apartment parking spaces and garages are getting chargers installed. If you live rurally, chances are high you can install your own.
I’m in the US but I’m basically charging the same way. 16A 240v. I’ve accidentally stepped it down to 13A and didn’t really notice. If you sleep, and can plug your car in while you do so, you can charge.
Strangely I’d expect urban centers with apartments and street parking to be the problem.
In the US Electric vehicles are easier for those who can park a car next to an outlet they own. We have a lot more suburbia with people owning their own charging.
that's fine; the issues that electric cars are trying to solve in congested urban areas aren't as prevalent in rural areas, where diesel engines are still going to be doing most of the work anyway
ideally an apartment would have underground parking with chargers where needed. but i don't get to design cities irl :)
the distances traveled in rural areas, along with the power you need to get through that terrain, makes combustion a decision made from a different dimension. excited for solar tractors however!
My apartment was built before EVs were common and doesn't have charging in our underground parking. And it's apparently difficult to add (some neighbours looked into it).
And do people in rural areas frequently need to drive 1000 km per day? EVs have had a pretty decent range these days. Not enough for long haul trucking, but good enough for most things short of that.
But urban traffic is absolutely a perfect fit for electric micromobility vehicles. Less so for cars in general.
You are complaining about an article just talking about how sales are increasing as being too black and white while posting repeatedly trying to think of edge cases where EVs aren't a great option. It's like it's awesome your thinking experiment managed to come up with a situation where 0.001% of people can't use an EV but why do you think that is relevant or important to the actual article?
"compact manual transmission cars" means cheapest cars you can get. Nobody loves them, but they were cheap. They aren't cheap anymore and if TCO points to a small EV, people will buy that one.
If my memory servers right, in 2008 you could buy a new Dacia Sandero for under 6000 euro in our country (EU). It's over 13600 right now for the current generation.
Sadly, it is—I recently moved to Ireland from the US, and it's annoyingly difficult to find an automatic transmission here. (Fortunately, I'm not currently in the market for a car; I live and work in Dublin, where the public transport is fantastic by American standards, and passable by European.)
>The apartment problem has not been solved either, and people do not have the time in their lives to dedicate to charging at a shared public charger.
this looms much larger in the imagination than in reality given that the average urban European drives about 9-15km per day. If you're living in a space where charging space is in short supply you in all likelihood drive so little you maybe need to charge 3 times per month.
The problem is not the chargers, for example in my country, we would need to double our energy production, transport capacity, to phase out fossil fuels. The costs would be enormous, double the infra work in the last 70 years.
The Jeffrey Epstein Memorial War is the worst thing to ever hit the American auto industry and workers, since that industry is so far behind on EV adoption they'll never catch up to the Asian manufacturers.
It'll kill them, the Big 3 should be losing their everloving minds over it.
not really, Germans do hate electric cars as they don't go vroom vroom, there are no emotions transported while driving them and you are doing something for the environment.
A lot of germans hate EVs because the greens said they were good.
EVs plus charging with a grid powered by solar when the sun shines bright at midday is one of the most powerful forces in averting anthropogenic climate change.
I would say removing the need for personal vehicles were possible would be a much more powerful force, but yours is much more practical at least short term (decade's time frame).
I do find it funny that the idea of removing cars (not all of them mind you) is somehow seen as the equivalent of teleportation. In our modern society, I get it, it is practically the same mentally and yet objectively they are very different.
Complete aside, I wish that we had things like that, like doorways to other parts of the world.
Let's go to lunch in Tbilisi walks through door to there. Once done, just walk back through to home.
Who would have imagined that Vladimir Putin would oversee a sizeable NATO expansion, the reduction of European gas usage, and, in combination with Trump, the increased adoption of electric vehicles?
History may look back on them as having done rather a lot to move the world off of fossil fuels.
Or that Donald Trump would bring about less meat consumption, less oil consumption - twice!, internet decentralisation and end the global reliance on the dollar.
I mean, I feel like even if petrol wasn't as expensive as it is, the sales would be booming anyway, maybe a sliver slower - for the simple reason that affordable EVs are now here and they are pretty damn good now. After years and years of lamenting "where are the EVs for your average Joe Smith" - they are now here. Funnily enough, they aren't made by Volkswagen or Peugeot, but they are here anyway.
And Europe's cheapest new car - Dacia Spring - is an EV.
You're delusional if you think an EV is affordable for an average person. The average person barely makes enough to cover rent, food, bills and save a little money - 15-30k EUR for an entry level EV is out of question. Meanwhile most people can afford to get a late 90s/early 00s used car that will actually get the job done.
In the uk, there can be good deals on used EVs. My Hyundai Kona EV (64kWh) (2022 plate) was £18K for a 18 month old car with 9K miles on the clock and lots of options. It does about 280 miles on a charge and I do have the advantage of cheap home charging (8p per kWh) so it’s under a £5 for my weekly commute.
A big step up from my old Ford fiesta, just look for the deals
Even going off your £18k price, a car loan search shows it would be under £200 per month. Not sure where they pulled £600 from.
But filling up my wife's compact Peugeot 208 (I think?) was £75 over the weekend. Filling up twice is almost the same monthly cost as buying a larger electric SUV.
It definitely seems like it would be worth investigating your options.
It did seem odd, I usually buy used cars around 10K and 18 months old. But after getting friends and recommendations for EVs and a decent trade in to offset the 18K a little and some savings and finance, I went for the Kona. Won’t go back.
I used to have a diesel Renault Clio, thankfully I don’t have it anymore at the current £2 per litre for diesel.
On the commute into Edinburgh today, there’s plenty of newer cars than mine and quite a few EVs, so some people are buying them.
According to this data an average Brit would be able to save about 600 GBP monthly if they never had any extra expenses outside of rent and living costs. I don't think even a "good deal" 18k vehicle is affordable for that person.
If they are driving then they are currently potentially spending a couple of hundred pounds a month on fuel for a subcompact car. We are breaching the monthly cost of a car loan to move to electric purely in the cost of petrol.
£18k is something like 60% of the median income in the UK after taxes. And that doesn’t even include the other associated costs. Average people would view that as a major expense.
Many people don’t have the elasticity in their month-to-month expenses that is assumed here.
Average fleet age in EU looks to be around 13 years so when you say "most people", you're likely off by 10-15 years in terms of second hand purchases. Greece might be the only EU country that gets close to what you said. I get the point about affordability but it's good to base discussion on facts.
Also, EVs have been around for quite a few years now so it is no longer necessary to buy them new.
Thanks. Too late to edit. If anybody wants the actual link, Google can figure it out from my download path. :) The only PII in the link is also in my username. It also leaked that I'm probably a Linux user.
If you worry about such failure modes, you shouldn't drive a car at all.
And especially not one with an ICE.
The main batteries most often have a 8y/160,000km guarantee. (Some even more.)
There a enough affordable, used BEVs that are only a quarter through that milages and age.
ICE engines eat themselves in many more different kinds of weird ways: timing chains and belts, coolant leaks, any number of problems with valves and actuators. They're extraordinarily complex devices and it's a testament to engineering genius (and persistence) that we've made them this reliable. But they fail much more often than batteries or motors. They have many more moving parts. It's just the devil we know.
I've got two EVs. Basically zero problems. I've known one or two people who have had issues, but never with the drive train. Always something dumb like the "infotainment system" or (for a Tesla owning friend) stupid buzzing and vibration they couldn't make go away and stupid problems with door handles.
The Tesla weirdness is part of why I went with Nissans. They're 100% normal cars except for the electric drive train. All the other parts can be purchased at AutoZone and everything else can be worked on by a normal mechanic.
There's some mechanics in my area that have been learning how to do stuff with EVs like aftermarket battery upgrades on older models, but it's a bit expensive. Mine are 5 and 13 years old respectively and both batteries are fine. The 5yo one is the same as the day it was bought. The latter's lost some capacity but still very usable as a city car.
We picked up a used 2022 Leaf S+ a while back and it's been amazing.
Also just about the only shade tree mechanic EV. Even swapping a battery is doable by the typical car guy. Rebuilding one isn't much harder due to no cooling.
At least in Europe people still buy cheap new cars.
In the US the people who can afford new cars generally want massive SUV's. Meanwhile a lot of the people buying used cars often would prefer a bare bones small vehicle with fewer years and lower miles than something fancier or larger but with more miles. But of course those aren't available since nobody buys those things new. Which leads to the ridiculous outcome that a lightly used Honda Civic is basically the same price as a new one.
I mean, I'll be honest - I feel like you knew exactly what I meant but then twisted it to make a point you wanted to make.
Yes, obviously your average person buys a second hand car and new car prices(all of them, not just EVs) are out of reach.
But the article is about sales(as in - new car sales) - and your average Joe Smith buying a new car is increasingly likely to buy an EV because among other new cars, EVs have actually became affordable.
In the US that would be many parts of the Mountain West, for example, though it is not the only region where it applies.
Unpredictable closures of highways can happen in the middle of nowhere after you’ve already been driving for 3 hours. I’ve had unplanned detours of up to 150 miles more than once. It is more common than people expect.
There are stretches of highway where it is 100+ miles between gas stations, never mind chargers, so it becomes a range risk even for ICE cars. I’m not the OP but when I’m driving in that part of North America I try to keep my range above 200 miles for this reason. It has saved me from being stranded more than once.
Alternatively, a backup plan for people with experience in those areas is to use ranch and forestry trails to route around the highway closures if feasible. This requires a vehicle suitable for that terrain. Few if any EVs are.
That said, most Americans rarely do long-haul driving in the backwaters of the American West. But if you do it enough, high ground clearance and reliable 400+ miles range in all weather conditions is a safety requirement.
The only reason I don’t have an EV is that most of my driving miles are like that. I don’t drive in the city where I live. No EV currently made credibly delivers that kind of performance but a lot of cheap ICE vehicles do.
Eventually EVs will get there but they aren’t there today.
Yeah, the US is harder on EVs. In Europe, finding a place 160km from the next gas station is going to be essentially impossible. Maybe in the part of Russia that is technically Europe, or far north Finland/Norway/Scotland, but even that's doubtful. (Those places do have recommendations for survival gear if you get stuck in winter. But look at EVs in Norway...)
The only EVs that offer this range are going to be very expensive. They'll either be from pricey companies like Lucid or they'll be extended-range vehicles from other makers. Are there any under $50k? Most are probably over $60k, and some will be double that.
I'm actually impressed that GM managed to get the base model price down, If I recall they originally launched closer to 75K.
Although, I don't think the base model will do 492 miles, I'm guessing it's more like 250-300.
I'm still not sure whether GM just completely mis-managed the thing (which GM is known to do) or not. I say that because it is full-size-ish, but that creates the problem of it being a heavier unibody, and when we talk about EVs, 'weight of base vehicle and the batteries to move it' can become a Delta-V-ish problem.
As a sort of example, I'll point to the Cybertruck; it's honestly probably even more 'brick-ish' aerodynamically than the Silverado EV, but it weighs 1000 pounds less (or so) and thus gets 20-60 miles more range than the Silverado EV base despite the battery being not much larger as far as capacity.
Possibly also worth noting though, that Delta-V-ish problem means the Silverado EV in some configurations has a curb weight high enough it can't go on some residential streets.
IDK. GM got kinda-smart with how they handled EVification of their CUVs (i.e. start with midsize, move down, be aggressive on pricing) but the Silverado EV still strikes me as classic GM WTFery
It's better for the body to keep driving sessions to 3-4 hours max before you get up walk around and charge a bit. 330 mile range is more than enough. If you only use 60% of the battery to maximize its lifespan you can drive for 3.5 hours roughly before you deplete a battery from 80% -> 20%.
There are a number of plausible rural drives in north america which do not have fast chargers for over 400 miles. EV infrastructure in the US is primarily concentrated on high-volume highways.
We're talking about people taking long rural trips -- stopping at a 50kw charger adds 50% of time to an 8 hour trip -- nobody driving a gasoline car would stop for that long. You'd need a 250kw charger to do what a person would normally do on a trip like that -- stop, piss, stretch your legs and get some fast food. Nobody who drives that route wants a 4 hour layover at the Speedee Mart gas station in Ainsworth, Nebraska -- if they can get the charger to work.
You’d need about 135 kwh total energy at 15kwh/100km efficiency. Assuming you leave with full battery - thats about 60kwh or a bit over an hour of charge at 50kw.
There are stretches of highway in the continental US that are >100 miles between exits, never mind chargers. That is almost a defining feature of the American West.
More importantly, these highways can be closed at unpredictable times for an unpredictable duration. It is not guaranteed that the route you planned is the route will take.
Aside from the routes the sibling comments mention, you also need to factor in the very real possibility that the chargers won't be functioning. It has gotten better but breakdowns still happen.
It's not necessarily 'normal', but it did happen to me last year.
Vacation in St Ignace Michigan. Stayed at an AirBnB rental.
No proper EV charger on-site at the rental, admittedly maybe the owner had an extension cord or something. Still, Then we'd be charging at a fairly low rate of mileage gain.
One day trip was 100 miles each way for optimum route. (Only charging stations known are near the AirBnB)
Another day trip was 76 miles each way for optimum route. (Only charging stations known are near the AirBnB)
The shortest day trip was 50-ish miles each way, but a whole thing happened where my wife left her phone at the restaurant so it was a total of 200 miles driven that day. (There are charging stations at both points for this one, but none in between.)
BTW, when I say 'optimum route' for the first two, I mean that for at least one of those the trip wound up being longer because of road construction.
I know one could say 'Well plan out charging in the morning'. But at the end of the day that just messes with the rest of the itinerary for a vacation where one could instead be exploring what you actually went on a trip for.
So in your worst case you were 100 miles from a charger? Not counting the fact you could have charged at the Airbnb if you'd made some prior arrangements? That doesn't sound bad and you were always well within range.
Maybe not during a summer vacation, but in the winter, the only bridge connecting St Ignace to lower Michigan can often close in inclement weather, along with parts of i75. Having plenty of charge can be literally a life-or-death situation in the winter there. It's not uncommon for people to spend the night in a snow drift. And if not that, you need to plan for overnight contingencies and detours.
I'd rather be in an EV in a snowbank where there is almost certainly more than enough power to run a heater for 24 hours. Bonus since I don't have to worry about snow accumulation blocking the exhaust and killing me.
If you are stuck in a snowbank your fuel doesn't matter. Staying warm until help arrives is the issue. Like above you are shifting goalposts.
You are raising issues in this post that I would guess impact less than a hundredth of a percent of the driving population of North America. These are really not issues we need to be concerned about and they are very easily solved by installing more chargers. It's a solved problem without demand.
So bluntly I don't understand the points of your comments at all. Is there places where it will take longer to drive an EV currently yes. Is there are two points in the mainland us where you cannot reach because of a lack of chargers no. Do 99.99% of people find themselves in these areas in a given lifetime? Also no.
This attitude of dictating others' car needs for them is one of the biggest hindrances to EV adoption and is also why rolling back CAFE regulations is going to be more popular than you think it is.
The general public doesn't like being told what to do.
The real cause of people's frustration with the US car market isn't CAFE, but the fact that the car market in the US is bifurcated by class and heavily financially engineered. The reason you can't get a cheap car in the US is entirely because US manufacturers are dictating what people can buy -- why give the middle class affordable options when you can make more money by squeezing them for cash for 84 months? What are they going to do, ride the non-existent bus?
The average car that CARS took in was a 1996 model year with 138,000 miles in 2009. Even if we never did that program they'd be long gone by now.
The current crazy pricing is mostly due to supply that was cut off during covid -- those would all be prime used cars today -- but many were never made, so used car pricing is crazy -- and manufacturers have no incentive to create cheap new cars if buyers don't have other options.
I don’t think people understand how convenient it is to be able to go 1000+ KM without thinking about filling up or charging, even if it isn’t in one trip.
I could do it in a 2002 Jetta. Why can’t I do it in a vehicle 25 years newer?
That’s a normal run for long-distance driving in the US. You stop for only a few minutes when you run out of fuel to fill the tank, which may coincide with a concurrent bathroom break. I don’t know anyone that regularly makes 20-30 minute stops on these kinds of trips even once. That adds up to a lot of unnecessary lost time.
Human endurance is more about the end-to-end time. Breaks barely help at all.
I've done a few road trips (2023, 2024, 2025) where It was 10 or more hours of driving without even factoring stops in.
Fuel-ups can be as fast as 5 minutes, if you have a co-pilot to run in and grab whatever else you need from inside while you travel. Might have one or two longer breaks in there for a proper lunch.
> Human endurance is more about the end-to-end time.
Yep. You also optimize for the drive itself; i.e. metering your overall methods and timing of hydration etc to avoid needing extra bathroom stops, making sure any food eaten can either be eaten quickly, or safely eaten while driving on a long boring highway (i.e. Tacos bad, simple burgers or sandwiches good.)
For an 800-ish mile drive in one day, longer stops make a huge difference from being able to make it all the way through with reasonable daylight.
> Breaks barely help at all.
Yep, too long of a break winds up having a negative effect where you get too relaxed.
Heck, in 2020 I did a shorter drive to a different region, but instead of a Ford Maverick that got 35-40MPG and 400+ miles to a tank, I was in my WRX which got maybe 330-ish miles per tank, and the extra stops definitely had me much more drained by the end of the trip.
(Although, it's also worth noting that the Maverick is a lot more 'comfy' than my WRX from a posture standpoint, which may have been a factor.)
to each his own but tbh that sounds like a really terrible travel experience.
I suppose I get wanting to get somewhere faster, but I honestly don't think Id want to put myself through it vs taking longer and enjoying the journey a bit more.
if you are putting yourself through that regularly you probably do need an ice car (for now, high speed charging and battery size is making progress too).
I've driven that long without an extended break beyond running to the bathroom and grabbing a snack. Even a fast charger won't get you much in 3 minutes or so.
I've also been on 24+ hour trips where we switched off drivers every 6 hours or so. Stopping too long for too many times on a trip like that adds up.
I can get about that on a tank of gas in my cmax. I wouldn't drive it non stop, but it means I can fill up before a long (for me) trip, drive a few hours, stop for food and restrooms, and drive on to my destination without stopping for gas. If it's not that long, I may be able to drive back too, without filling up.
If there's a charger close enough to a restaurant you'll eat at, that sounds convenient, and I've seen a lot more chargers on my long distance drives... but usually not at the restaurants I want to go to.
Exactly. Maybe it is just me, but with a range around 450km I feel like I’m planning trips around filling up. It’s something I never thought about before.
Now I am stuck in line ups for gas because I can’t decide I don’t need it. This is true even just around town.
Maybe it’s a first world issue. It gets better all the time though. Maybe next car.
I don't think people understand how incredibly convenient it is to wake up to a vehicle with a full "tank" every single morning. I'll take that over a Jetta that can do 1000 miles on a tank without any hesitation.
Gotta admit, Trump, with operation Epstein's Fury, probably did more for ecology and the fight against climate change than any other politician before him.
Gasoline would be $0.99 if EV platforms (build your own whatever) and low cost China Auto imports were available in America. But Elon has a hold on congress.
Being blunt, I don't think Elon is the only factor in that.
That protectionism is just as much in place for the sake of GM, Ford, and Stellantis, and their suppliers. In 2008 it was estimated that if the big three (Well, back then it was Chrysler instead of Stellantis) went under without a bailout [0], that up to 3 million jobs across the country were at risk. Michigan alone would have possibly lost over 8% of it's jobs.
We do see similar-ish protectionism in other countries as well, FWIW. Part of Toyota and Honda's lack of aggressive shifting to EVs is that a 'full shift' would remove millions of jobs from the workforce. Toyota has even published what could be considered propaganda in their home country about it [1].
It's an elephant in the room. European automakers are all struggling with it too, with various degrees of failure.
If there is one irony I will point out, it's that if they had all been more aggressive about hybrid technology for at least the last 15 years, they could have at least kicked the can down the road. Which honestly may have helped; part of the problem is that when things like engine or transmission plants are built, the amortization of the costs between the factory itself, training workers, expected retooling etc is measured and planned in the 10-30ish year range. The complacency means they have a bunch of assets that would be unpaletable write-offs.
Cause, Let's face it; every carmaker could have at least been doing even basic hybrids for most of their non-truck models for over a decade, which aren't perfect but would have raised the bar for MPG and improved the economies of scale faster [2].
[0] - For whatever it's worth, Ford at the time did not need a bailout, but did ask for a line of credit that it never had to use in case the others totally collapsed, because if that had happened it would have been a huge impact to their suppliers.
[2] - I'll point to the Ford Maverick, which initially launched at ~22K and got 35-40MPG in base configuration despite being a very large compact truck. IMO if the automakers got serious about the tech in 2010, we could have seen something at that price point at least 5 years sooner.
Those would hurt legacy auto much more than Tesla, which is why the last admin who had a lot of legacy auto union donations banned them. If anything Tesla will benefit from the charging infrastructure created due to a lot more EVs on the roads.
https://archive.is/dRArj
It's a shame the archive links don't display the graphs, Bloomberg's are usually quite informative.
https://htmlhoster.com/p/7WV9ZKCH/EV%20Sales%20Are%20Booming...
In Netherlands you could also get paid for charging your car. There is such thing called ERE Certificates - emission reduction unit certificate is generated by offsetting emissions. Pollutters have to buy them to offset the harm. It's up to 0.1 euro per KWh (electricity costs 0.28 euro per KWh), depending on the demand.
Serious question.
Can you get this money if you instead choose a much better option, like riding the bike or going with public transport?
Or is this only for people who choose cars?
should there be? bikes use a fraction of the energy from EVs, aren’t their owners benefitting from lower cost-of-ownership either way?
Not in rural Europe it isn't.
There is still no widespread charging infra. Oh sure, there are chargers. If you're lucky and your town is on a state highway there might be one or two chargers in the entire town — their purpose being so visitors don't become stranded.
Outside of cities, they are not there in sufficient quantity for widespread adoption.
The apartment problem has not been solved either, and people do not have the time in their lives to dedicate to charging at a shared public charger.
Europe still loves its compact manual transmission cars; but what we may see is a transition away from diesel to petrol vehicles strictly for cost reasons.
I’m not claiming this to be an entirely solved issue, but the situations in which EVs make sense are already very broad and keep expanding. The city I live in has lantern chargers (admittedly not everywhere), some others are building them into curbs. Apartment parking spaces and garages are getting chargers installed. If you live rurally, chances are high you can install your own.
> Not in rural Europe it isn't. > There is still no widespread charging infra.
You can charge your car at home on a simple reinforced 230V socket. Even city car which should be bad for this purpose have at least 200km of range.
I charge mine on a 120 V 20 amp outlet in the US that was already in my garage… And it works fine for me
Now imagine you have double the charging power yet have to drive less due to Europe's more compact nature
Except in certain European countries you actually have 400V tri-phase to the door.
This then gets split into constituent phases of 240V each at the panel.
Or if you call your electrician, then in modern garages, you can take it straight.
Don’t forget about the public transit system continent-wide is vastly better than the US as well.
I’m in the US but I’m basically charging the same way. 16A 240v. I’ve accidentally stepped it down to 13A and didn’t really notice. If you sleep, and can plug your car in while you do so, you can charge.
Strangely I’d expect urban centers with apartments and street parking to be the problem.
In the US Electric vehicles are easier for those who can park a car next to an outlet they own. We have a lot more suburbia with people owning their own charging.
This was probably what people used to say about petrol stations.
And it would have been a legitimate issue at that time too.
that's fine; the issues that electric cars are trying to solve in congested urban areas aren't as prevalent in rural areas, where diesel engines are still going to be doing most of the work anyway
I would expect that in rural areas, it's much easier to simply charge at home. It's harder when you live in an apartment and park on the street.
ideally an apartment would have underground parking with chargers where needed. but i don't get to design cities irl :)
the distances traveled in rural areas, along with the power you need to get through that terrain, makes combustion a decision made from a different dimension. excited for solar tractors however!
My apartment was built before EVs were common and doesn't have charging in our underground parking. And it's apparently difficult to add (some neighbours looked into it).
And do people in rural areas frequently need to drive 1000 km per day? EVs have had a pretty decent range these days. Not enough for long haul trucking, but good enough for most things short of that.
But urban traffic is absolutely a perfect fit for electric micromobility vehicles. Less so for cars in general.
[dead]
That's fair; but articles like this tend to view reality as black or white, rather than the grey area it is.
You are complaining about an article just talking about how sales are increasing as being too black and white while posting repeatedly trying to think of edge cases where EVs aren't a great option. It's like it's awesome your thinking experiment managed to come up with a situation where 0.001% of people can't use an EV but why do you think that is relevant or important to the actual article?
> manual transmission
I thought this was a German (D/A/CH) fetish, is it all of Europe?
It's a complete non-issue.
"compact manual transmission cars" means cheapest cars you can get. Nobody loves them, but they were cheap. They aren't cheap anymore and if TCO points to a small EV, people will buy that one.
If my memory servers right, in 2008 you could buy a new Dacia Sandero for under 6000 euro in our country (EU). It's over 13600 right now for the current generation.
No.
Sadly, it is—I recently moved to Ireland from the US, and it's annoyingly difficult to find an automatic transmission here. (Fortunately, I'm not currently in the market for a car; I live and work in Dublin, where the public transport is fantastic by American standards, and passable by European.)
It's difficult to find used cars with automatic transmission, I assume? Because most new cars being hybrids or EVs already come with one.
>The apartment problem has not been solved either, and people do not have the time in their lives to dedicate to charging at a shared public charger.
this looms much larger in the imagination than in reality given that the average urban European drives about 9-15km per day. If you're living in a space where charging space is in short supply you in all likelihood drive so little you maybe need to charge 3 times per month.
And this doesn’t even have to mean having to idly wait 20-30 minutes at a fast charger: Lots of shopping and work places have chargers now.
The problem is not the chargers, for example in my country, we would need to double our energy production, transport capacity, to phase out fossil fuels. The costs would be enormous, double the infra work in the last 70 years.
> double our energy production
Electrification generally reduces energy use, while increasing electricity use, due to much higher efficiency.
So if you are correct it will only be because you don't produce the energy used in ICE but instead import it after buying it on the global market.
That’s for the whole economy.
Transport is generally put at - 15-25% increase. Due to both needing less refinement and transport, and just how efficient BEVs are.
The Jeffrey Epstein Memorial War is the worst thing to ever hit the American auto industry and workers, since that industry is so far behind on EV adoption they'll never catch up to the Asian manufacturers.
It'll kill them, the Big 3 should be losing their everloving minds over it.
> the American auto industry
Have you seen the state of the German auto industry? You can point and laugh.
And they have been warned about this, in 2019, by vice chancellor Robert Habeck (Greens). Too bad nobody cared to listen.
The writing was on the wall when Tesla started rolling out the Model S, in 2012. BYD followed shortly after.
The Germans hate electric cars for some weird reason.
> The Germans hate electric cars for some weird reason.
German car executives hate electric cars for some weird reason.
Actual Germans don't care and buy them like everybody else, depending on fit, availability and price.
Germany is slightly ahead (a few percentage points) of the EU plus EFTA plus UK market average according to data:
https://robbieandrew.github.io/carsales/?lang=en&freq=monthl...
Note the German data goes back further so you can't directly eyeball them without accounting for that.
Currently just trailing France and further behind Sweden, Denmark, Norway.
not really, Germans do hate electric cars as they don't go vroom vroom, there are no emotions transported while driving them and you are doing something for the environment.
A lot of germans hate EVs because the greens said they were good.
> not really, Germans do hate electric cars as they don't go vroom vroom, there are no emotions transported while driving them
I genuinely don't know a single German that thinks like that. But that might be because I live in BW.
EVs plus charging with a grid powered by solar when the sun shines bright at midday is one of the most powerful forces in averting anthropogenic climate change.
I would say removing the need for personal vehicles were possible would be a much more powerful force, but yours is much more practical at least short term (decade's time frame).
Ah yeah. I love the idea of no cars at all. But if we do have to have cars then cars powered solely by the sun is the way to go.
Yeah I’d prefer teleportation, time travel and world peace too.
I do find it funny that the idea of removing cars (not all of them mind you) is somehow seen as the equivalent of teleportation. In our modern society, I get it, it is practically the same mentally and yet objectively they are very different.
Complete aside, I wish that we had things like that, like doorways to other parts of the world.
Let's go to lunch in Tbilisi walks through door to there. Once done, just walk back through to home.
Funny you would say that, considering there ARE other choices, they even existed in the US until your car lobbied to dismantle it.
I am of course talking about public transportation. Bike + tram + train keeps the citizens fit and healthy.
Going from car parking to car parking must suck, what a way to live
Have you ever visited europe
We have teleportation, at least in as far as it relates to doing your job if that is white collar work. We just won’t use it as much as we could.
Europe doesn’t use dollars.
Or gallons
This is an American website
Who would have imagined that Vladimir Putin would oversee a sizeable NATO expansion, the reduction of European gas usage, and, in combination with Trump, the increased adoption of electric vehicles?
History may look back on them as having done rather a lot to move the world off of fossil fuels.
Or that Donald Trump would bring about less meat consumption, less oil consumption - twice!, internet decentralisation and end the global reliance on the dollar.
Just like how Genghis Khan was responsible for a brief global cooling.
One empire stretching its muscles causes its neighbours to do the same. The same thing happened in the other direction with Russia in the late 90s.
Piggybacking, talking about me!now but the last 5 years have shown me i know nothing
I mean, I feel like even if petrol wasn't as expensive as it is, the sales would be booming anyway, maybe a sliver slower - for the simple reason that affordable EVs are now here and they are pretty damn good now. After years and years of lamenting "where are the EVs for your average Joe Smith" - they are now here. Funnily enough, they aren't made by Volkswagen or Peugeot, but they are here anyway. And Europe's cheapest new car - Dacia Spring - is an EV.
You're delusional if you think an EV is affordable for an average person. The average person barely makes enough to cover rent, food, bills and save a little money - 15-30k EUR for an entry level EV is out of question. Meanwhile most people can afford to get a late 90s/early 00s used car that will actually get the job done.
In the uk, there can be good deals on used EVs. My Hyundai Kona EV (64kWh) (2022 plate) was £18K for a 18 month old car with 9K miles on the clock and lots of options. It does about 280 miles on a charge and I do have the advantage of cheap home charging (8p per kWh) so it’s under a £5 for my weekly commute.
A big step up from my old Ford fiesta, just look for the deals
Its bizarre the hate your getting for this comment.
You can get a used Hyundai Kona EV from Hyundai for under £15k.
https://used.hyundai.co.uk/en/used-car-search/hyundai/kona/k...
Even going off your £18k price, a car loan search shows it would be under £200 per month. Not sure where they pulled £600 from.
But filling up my wife's compact Peugeot 208 (I think?) was £75 over the weekend. Filling up twice is almost the same monthly cost as buying a larger electric SUV.
It definitely seems like it would be worth investigating your options.
It did seem odd, I usually buy used cars around 10K and 18 months old. But after getting friends and recommendations for EVs and a decent trade in to offset the 18K a little and some savings and finance, I went for the Kona. Won’t go back.
I used to have a diesel Renault Clio, thankfully I don’t have it anymore at the current £2 per litre for diesel.
On the commute into Edinburgh today, there’s plenty of newer cars than mine and quite a few EVs, so some people are buying them.
According to this data an average Brit would be able to save about 600 GBP monthly if they never had any extra expenses outside of rent and living costs. I don't think even a "good deal" 18k vehicle is affordable for that person.
https://movingtotheuk.co.uk/cost-of-living-in-the-uk/average...
https://movingtotheuk.co.uk/cost-of-living-in-the-uk
https://www.livingcost.net/united-kingdom
What are you talking about?
If they are driving then they are currently potentially spending a couple of hundred pounds a month on fuel for a subcompact car. We are breaching the monthly cost of a car loan to move to electric purely in the cost of petrol.
>> 15-30k EUR for an entry level EV is out of question
> My Hyundai Kona EV (64kWh) (2022 plate) was £18K
Completely fkn tone deaf.
£18k is something like 60% of the median income in the UK after taxes. And that doesn’t even include the other associated costs. Average people would view that as a major expense.
Many people don’t have the elasticity in their month-to-month expenses that is assumed here.
Average fleet age in EU looks to be around 13 years so when you say "most people", you're likely off by 10-15 years in terms of second hand purchases. Greece might be the only EU country that gets close to what you said. I get the point about affordability but it's good to base discussion on facts.
Also, EVs have been around for quite a few years now so it is no longer necessary to buy them new.
https://www.acea.auto/publication/report-vehicles-on-europea...
Buying an EV outside of the factory warranty period is not an experiment I’d be interested in participating.
What do you do when, say, the insulation on the motor’s windings disintegrates over night on a whole production run of thousands of cars.
Or the batteries turn out to a fail at some yet to be revealed number of charge cycles.
It's not an experiment anymore. Long term data is in, and high mileage EV's are far more reliable than high mileage petrol cars.
file:///home/blarsen/Downloads/How-durable-are-electric-vehicles-BVRLA-report-by-New-Automotive-September-2026.pdf
> file:///home/blarsen/Downloads/How-durable-are-electric-vehicles-BVRLA-report-by-New-Automotive-September-2026.pdf
Your download folder path is leaking : D
Thanks. Too late to edit. If anybody wants the actual link, Google can figure it out from my download path. :) The only PII in the link is also in my username. It also leaked that I'm probably a Linux user.
If you worry about such failure modes, you shouldn't drive a car at all. And especially not one with an ICE.
The main batteries most often have a 8y/160,000km guarantee. (Some even more.) There a enough affordable, used BEVs that are only a quarter through that milages and age.
These are pretty rare failure modes.
ICE engines eat themselves in many more different kinds of weird ways: timing chains and belts, coolant leaks, any number of problems with valves and actuators. They're extraordinarily complex devices and it's a testament to engineering genius (and persistence) that we've made them this reliable. But they fail much more often than batteries or motors. They have many more moving parts. It's just the devil we know.
I've got two EVs. Basically zero problems. I've known one or two people who have had issues, but never with the drive train. Always something dumb like the "infotainment system" or (for a Tesla owning friend) stupid buzzing and vibration they couldn't make go away and stupid problems with door handles.
The Tesla weirdness is part of why I went with Nissans. They're 100% normal cars except for the electric drive train. All the other parts can be purchased at AutoZone and everything else can be worked on by a normal mechanic.
There's some mechanics in my area that have been learning how to do stuff with EVs like aftermarket battery upgrades on older models, but it's a bit expensive. Mine are 5 and 13 years old respectively and both batteries are fine. The 5yo one is the same as the day it was bought. The latter's lost some capacity but still very usable as a city car.
We picked up a used 2022 Leaf S+ a while back and it's been amazing.
Also just about the only shade tree mechanic EV. Even swapping a battery is doable by the typical car guy. Rebuilding one isn't much harder due to no cooling.
Tesla’s motors are like $200 or 1k for rare ones
At least in Europe people still buy cheap new cars.
In the US the people who can afford new cars generally want massive SUV's. Meanwhile a lot of the people buying used cars often would prefer a bare bones small vehicle with fewer years and lower miles than something fancier or larger but with more miles. But of course those aren't available since nobody buys those things new. Which leads to the ridiculous outcome that a lightly used Honda Civic is basically the same price as a new one.
I mean, I'll be honest - I feel like you knew exactly what I meant but then twisted it to make a point you wanted to make.
Yes, obviously your average person buys a second hand car and new car prices(all of them, not just EVs) are out of reach.
But the article is about sales(as in - new car sales) - and your average Joe Smith buying a new car is increasingly likely to buy an EV because among other new cars, EVs have actually became affordable.
Im on the verge of switching from PHEV to full EV. I just need a reasonably affordable EV with 450+ mile of range.
Im curious - why do you need 450 miles of range?
My tesla goes 3 hours at 80mph. I can get to any charger I need. There are considerably more than I ever imagined.
In the US that would be many parts of the Mountain West, for example, though it is not the only region where it applies.
Unpredictable closures of highways can happen in the middle of nowhere after you’ve already been driving for 3 hours. I’ve had unplanned detours of up to 150 miles more than once. It is more common than people expect.
There are stretches of highway where it is 100+ miles between gas stations, never mind chargers, so it becomes a range risk even for ICE cars. I’m not the OP but when I’m driving in that part of North America I try to keep my range above 200 miles for this reason. It has saved me from being stranded more than once.
Alternatively, a backup plan for people with experience in those areas is to use ranch and forestry trails to route around the highway closures if feasible. This requires a vehicle suitable for that terrain. Few if any EVs are.
That said, most Americans rarely do long-haul driving in the backwaters of the American West. But if you do it enough, high ground clearance and reliable 400+ miles range in all weather conditions is a safety requirement.
The only reason I don’t have an EV is that most of my driving miles are like that. I don’t drive in the city where I live. No EV currently made credibly delivers that kind of performance but a lot of cheap ICE vehicles do.
Eventually EVs will get there but they aren’t there today.
Yeah, the US is harder on EVs. In Europe, finding a place 160km from the next gas station is going to be essentially impossible. Maybe in the part of Russia that is technically Europe, or far north Finland/Norway/Scotland, but even that's doubtful. (Those places do have recommendations for survival gear if you get stuck in winter. But look at EVs in Norway...)
> most of my driving miles are like that
Makes a lot of sense
The only EVs that offer this range are going to be very expensive. They'll either be from pricey companies like Lucid or they'll be extended-range vehicles from other makers. Are there any under $50k? Most are probably over $60k, and some will be double that.
The Chevy Silverado EV will go 492 miles.
With a 30 year mortgage the $56K base model payments could be doable.
I'm actually impressed that GM managed to get the base model price down, If I recall they originally launched closer to 75K.
Although, I don't think the base model will do 492 miles, I'm guessing it's more like 250-300.
I'm still not sure whether GM just completely mis-managed the thing (which GM is known to do) or not. I say that because it is full-size-ish, but that creates the problem of it being a heavier unibody, and when we talk about EVs, 'weight of base vehicle and the batteries to move it' can become a Delta-V-ish problem.
As a sort of example, I'll point to the Cybertruck; it's honestly probably even more 'brick-ish' aerodynamically than the Silverado EV, but it weighs 1000 pounds less (or so) and thus gets 20-60 miles more range than the Silverado EV base despite the battery being not much larger as far as capacity.
Possibly also worth noting though, that Delta-V-ish problem means the Silverado EV in some configurations has a curb weight high enough it can't go on some residential streets.
IDK. GM got kinda-smart with how they handled EVification of their CUVs (i.e. start with midsize, move down, be aggressive on pricing) but the Silverado EV still strikes me as classic GM WTFery
Why do you need that much range and what are you looking at that is anywhere near that?
It's better for the body to keep driving sessions to 3-4 hours max before you get up walk around and charge a bit. 330 mile range is more than enough. If you only use 60% of the battery to maximize its lifespan you can drive for 3.5 hours roughly before you deplete a battery from 80% -> 20%.
There are a number of plausible rural drives in north america which do not have fast chargers for over 400 miles. EV infrastructure in the US is primarily concentrated on high-volume highways.
Can you actually name some? Last time I looked the highest I could find was like 100 miles.
Sioux City IA to Lusk WY -- 471 miles between chargers
Kalispell MT to Minot ND -- 688 miles between chargers
Anything in Alaska that isn't along the route from Anchorage to Fairbanks
Much of Ontario 11
All of Newfoundland
Of course, they're not high traffic routes, but these are places you can still easily find gasoline.
Not to mention all of those places are cold, which affects your range.
Maybe go try chargefinder because I just put your first route in and there are several along the way.
Furthest I can see on 11 is 250km.
Newfoundland has a ton of chargers.
Did you even check before posting?
The context in the above discussion was fast chargers
Yes and that's what I'm looking at. What is your source?
Chargefinder.
We're talking about people taking long rural trips -- stopping at a 50kw charger adds 50% of time to an 8 hour trip -- nobody driving a gasoline car would stop for that long. You'd need a 250kw charger to do what a person would normally do on a trip like that -- stop, piss, stretch your legs and get some fast food. Nobody who drives that route wants a 4 hour layover at the Speedee Mart gas station in Ainsworth, Nebraska -- if they can get the charger to work.
You're shifting goal posts now.
But yeah those 10 people that regularly drive those routes should probably stick with their ice vehicles.
Nah, at no point above did I mean "fast charger" as in "sit at a gas station for 4 hours at a 50kw charger"
8 hours. That’s about 900km right?
You’d need about 135 kwh total energy at 15kwh/100km efficiency. Assuming you leave with full battery - thats about 60kwh or a bit over an hour of charge at 50kw.
There are stretches of highway in the continental US that are >100 miles between exits, never mind chargers. That is almost a defining feature of the American West.
More importantly, these highways can be closed at unpredictable times for an unpredictable duration. It is not guaranteed that the route you planned is the route will take.
Well 100 miles would be 300 miles less than what op claimed and well within the range of just about every EV.
Go check one of the charger maps and get back to me with a distance of 400 miles between charges.
Aside from the routes the sibling comments mention, you also need to factor in the very real possibility that the chargers won't be functioning. It has gotten better but breakdowns still happen.
I'll give you a scenario.
It's not necessarily 'normal', but it did happen to me last year.
Vacation in St Ignace Michigan. Stayed at an AirBnB rental.
No proper EV charger on-site at the rental, admittedly maybe the owner had an extension cord or something. Still, Then we'd be charging at a fairly low rate of mileage gain.
One day trip was 100 miles each way for optimum route. (Only charging stations known are near the AirBnB)
Another day trip was 76 miles each way for optimum route. (Only charging stations known are near the AirBnB)
The shortest day trip was 50-ish miles each way, but a whole thing happened where my wife left her phone at the restaurant so it was a total of 200 miles driven that day. (There are charging stations at both points for this one, but none in between.)
BTW, when I say 'optimum route' for the first two, I mean that for at least one of those the trip wound up being longer because of road construction.
I know one could say 'Well plan out charging in the morning'. But at the end of the day that just messes with the rest of the itinerary for a vacation where one could instead be exploring what you actually went on a trip for.
So in your worst case you were 100 miles from a charger? Not counting the fact you could have charged at the Airbnb if you'd made some prior arrangements? That doesn't sound bad and you were always well within range.
Maybe not during a summer vacation, but in the winter, the only bridge connecting St Ignace to lower Michigan can often close in inclement weather, along with parts of i75. Having plenty of charge can be literally a life-or-death situation in the winter there. It's not uncommon for people to spend the night in a snow drift. And if not that, you need to plan for overnight contingencies and detours.
I'd rather be in an EV in a snowbank where there is almost certainly more than enough power to run a heater for 24 hours. Bonus since I don't have to worry about snow accumulation blocking the exhaust and killing me.
Most of the people in these regions would rather have a vehicle they can keep full of fuel because stations are plentiful and carry a shovel.
I'm not saying this because I don't like EVs -- I do -- but I'm saying it because we have to address these problems to get higher adoption.
If you are stuck in a snowbank your fuel doesn't matter. Staying warm until help arrives is the issue. Like above you are shifting goalposts.
You are raising issues in this post that I would guess impact less than a hundredth of a percent of the driving population of North America. These are really not issues we need to be concerned about and they are very easily solved by installing more chargers. It's a solved problem without demand.
So bluntly I don't understand the points of your comments at all. Is there places where it will take longer to drive an EV currently yes. Is there are two points in the mainland us where you cannot reach because of a lack of chargers no. Do 99.99% of people find themselves in these areas in a given lifetime? Also no.
Taking an EV on US Forest roads sounds like a creative way to get stranded and die.
> is more than enough
This attitude of dictating others' car needs for them is one of the biggest hindrances to EV adoption and is also why rolling back CAFE regulations is going to be more popular than you think it is.
The general public doesn't like being told what to do.
The real cause of people's frustration with the US car market isn't CAFE, but the fact that the car market in the US is bifurcated by class and heavily financially engineered. The reason you can't get a cheap car in the US is entirely because US manufacturers are dictating what people can buy -- why give the middle class affordable options when you can make more money by squeezing them for cash for 84 months? What are they going to do, ride the non-existent bus?
Well also as part of the 08 recovery we scrapped a lot of the used car market to create demand for new vehicles.
The average car that CARS took in was a 1996 model year with 138,000 miles in 2009. Even if we never did that program they'd be long gone by now.
The current crazy pricing is mostly due to supply that was cut off during covid -- those would all be prime used cars today -- but many were never made, so used car pricing is crazy -- and manufacturers have no incentive to create cheap new cars if buyers don't have other options.
There’s cars upwards of 20 years still on the road …
But also the waves overlap so we’d still have about 700k cars in additional supply.
That happened so long ago that an entire new wave of used cars exist by now.
I don’t think people understand how convenient it is to be able to go 1000+ KM without thinking about filling up or charging, even if it isn’t in one trip.
I could do it in a 2002 Jetta. Why can’t I do it in a vehicle 25 years newer?
That’s about 9 hours of driving. Don’t you need to stop at least once to take a leak?
That’s a normal run for long-distance driving in the US. You stop for only a few minutes when you run out of fuel to fill the tank, which may coincide with a concurrent bathroom break. I don’t know anyone that regularly makes 20-30 minute stops on these kinds of trips even once. That adds up to a lot of unnecessary lost time.
Human endurance is more about the end-to-end time. Breaks barely help at all.
More or less agree with this;
I've done a few road trips (2023, 2024, 2025) where It was 10 or more hours of driving without even factoring stops in.
Fuel-ups can be as fast as 5 minutes, if you have a co-pilot to run in and grab whatever else you need from inside while you travel. Might have one or two longer breaks in there for a proper lunch.
> Human endurance is more about the end-to-end time.
Yep. You also optimize for the drive itself; i.e. metering your overall methods and timing of hydration etc to avoid needing extra bathroom stops, making sure any food eaten can either be eaten quickly, or safely eaten while driving on a long boring highway (i.e. Tacos bad, simple burgers or sandwiches good.)
For an 800-ish mile drive in one day, longer stops make a huge difference from being able to make it all the way through with reasonable daylight.
> Breaks barely help at all.
Yep, too long of a break winds up having a negative effect where you get too relaxed.
Heck, in 2020 I did a shorter drive to a different region, but instead of a Ford Maverick that got 35-40MPG and 400+ miles to a tank, I was in my WRX which got maybe 330-ish miles per tank, and the extra stops definitely had me much more drained by the end of the trip.
(Although, it's also worth noting that the Maverick is a lot more 'comfy' than my WRX from a posture standpoint, which may have been a factor.)
to each his own but tbh that sounds like a really terrible travel experience.
I suppose I get wanting to get somewhere faster, but I honestly don't think Id want to put myself through it vs taking longer and enjoying the journey a bit more.
if you are putting yourself through that regularly you probably do need an ice car (for now, high speed charging and battery size is making progress too).
I've driven that long without an extended break beyond running to the bathroom and grabbing a snack. Even a fast charger won't get you much in 3 minutes or so.
I've also been on 24+ hour trips where we switched off drivers every 6 hours or so. Stopping too long for too many times on a trip like that adds up.
I can get about that on a tank of gas in my cmax. I wouldn't drive it non stop, but it means I can fill up before a long (for me) trip, drive a few hours, stop for food and restrooms, and drive on to my destination without stopping for gas. If it's not that long, I may be able to drive back too, without filling up.
If there's a charger close enough to a restaurant you'll eat at, that sounds convenient, and I've seen a lot more chargers on my long distance drives... but usually not at the restaurants I want to go to.
Exactly. Maybe it is just me, but with a range around 450km I feel like I’m planning trips around filling up. It’s something I never thought about before.
Now I am stuck in line ups for gas because I can’t decide I don’t need it. This is true even just around town.
Maybe it’s a first world issue. It gets better all the time though. Maybe next car.
I used to do a ~700KM trip fairly regularly without stopping.
Like I said though, the whole convenience isn’t just single trip range.
> Don’t you need to stop at least once to take a leak?
Not if you have the right plumbing and a bottle with you.
I don't think people understand how incredibly convenient it is to wake up to a vehicle with a full "tank" every single morning. I'll take that over a Jetta that can do 1000 miles on a tank without any hesitation.
The “gas station” being my driveway is an idea I have come around to.
For the average commuter and vehicle, it would be more convenient.
My family’s closest family is 750km away. Making that a longer trip sounds like torture, but range is getting better all the time.
I also rent, so I’m stuck at 120v charging at home. Does that limit the convenience?
Gotta admit, Trump, with operation Epstein's Fury, probably did more for ecology and the fight against climate change than any other politician before him.
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Gasoline would be $0.99 if EV platforms (build your own whatever) and low cost China Auto imports were available in America. But Elon has a hold on congress.
Being blunt, I don't think Elon is the only factor in that.
That protectionism is just as much in place for the sake of GM, Ford, and Stellantis, and their suppliers. In 2008 it was estimated that if the big three (Well, back then it was Chrysler instead of Stellantis) went under without a bailout [0], that up to 3 million jobs across the country were at risk. Michigan alone would have possibly lost over 8% of it's jobs.
We do see similar-ish protectionism in other countries as well, FWIW. Part of Toyota and Honda's lack of aggressive shifting to EVs is that a 'full shift' would remove millions of jobs from the workforce. Toyota has even published what could be considered propaganda in their home country about it [1].
It's an elephant in the room. European automakers are all struggling with it too, with various degrees of failure.
If there is one irony I will point out, it's that if they had all been more aggressive about hybrid technology for at least the last 15 years, they could have at least kicked the can down the road. Which honestly may have helped; part of the problem is that when things like engine or transmission plants are built, the amortization of the costs between the factory itself, training workers, expected retooling etc is measured and planned in the 10-30ish year range. The complacency means they have a bunch of assets that would be unpaletable write-offs.
Cause, Let's face it; every carmaker could have at least been doing even basic hybrids for most of their non-truck models for over a decade, which aren't perfect but would have raised the bar for MPG and improved the economies of scale faster [2].
[0] - For whatever it's worth, Ford at the time did not need a bailout, but did ask for a line of credit that it never had to use in case the others totally collapsed, because if that had happened it would have been a huge impact to their suppliers.
[1] - https://electrek.co/2021/11/11/how-toyota-sneakily-spreads-a...
[2] - I'll point to the Ford Maverick, which initially launched at ~22K and got 35-40MPG in base configuration despite being a very large compact truck. IMO if the automakers got serious about the tech in 2010, we could have seen something at that price point at least 5 years sooner.
Those would hurt legacy auto much more than Tesla, which is why the last admin who had a lot of legacy auto union donations banned them. If anything Tesla will benefit from the charging infrastructure created due to a lot more EVs on the roads.