sell out to China completely

Sell what each region is best at. Mutual benefits. Crazy idea right?

We Europeans have sold tens of millions of cars in China for decades. The string attached was that you had to make a joint venture with a local company (which, by the way, shared the risks and increased the margins).

Why can't they do so the same here?

And I don't want to hear no "because Chinese EV industry got help by government, it's unfair", so what? In Italy alone we've given more than 200B euros to Fiat, which milks governments from Serbia to Poland out of taxpayer money. Tesla has received 16B+ in direct funding from taxpayers in US alone, got more in foreign countries to open plants there.

European and American auto industries shouldn't rely on artificially gatekeeping foreign automakers.

We've tried with Japan in the 80s forcing them to produce here, now it's China.

I don't like any of this, it's against taxpayers, it's against consumers. Free market goes both ways.

Convert public fleets. It's much more reasonable to mandate that local councils and public servant staff cars should be EV-only first; these tend to have short turnover periods of three to five years anyway. That forces the public bodies to actually address the details of adoption.

Not to mention buses and public works vehicles like refuse lorries. Expensive, but if the transition has to happen it has to happen.

But I think the momentum is there on its own:

> In August alone, 154,582 EVs were snapped up, accounting for 20% of all new car sales. Analysts note that a 20–25% share is enough to meet the EU’s emissions targets for 2025–2027 and Europe has just reached that milestone.

There's a self-reinforcing circle that as more people have EVs, they become more "normal", and the more car-centric policy caters to their needs. People who are irrationally scared speak to friends who own one or ride in EV taxis (actually, taxis are nearly always hybrids at the moment?)

Making cars in Europe is getting near impossible, "draconian" measures mean that indeed no European Automaker will make ICE cars any more, because they will all be bankrupt.

The real problem regulators can't regulate away is that people are not buying EVs, even when manufacturers are selling them at prices where they barely break even.

- First they went "camera only", alienating people who knows the tech.

- Then they mocked car industry for so long. It was a necessary poke at first, but they didn't get prepared, and the elephant proved that it can run.

- Then Elon's Trump affair and all the shebang happened.

The broken FSD promises, using non-auto rated parts (and related failures), being negligent of their own errors and acting like they are deaf to the criticism is the cement between the layers.

How so? Tesla doesn't produce a compact car by any european standard. Their smallest car, the Model 3, is the same size of a VW Caddy, an utilitary/7s seat Family VAN, bigger than a more refined VW Touran, another 7 seater family van or the popular VW Tiguan, a large (by euro standards) SUV.

In France, there is a wide anti-electric campaign. From the "leftist-green" media such as Reporterre, to the right wing ones.

Same for political parties, from the left PCF to the right RN.

It's a battle.

You have to start somewhere.

26% growth on 20% pace is incredible market share gains in one year for virtually any market or company.

There are no ICE manufacturers reading this news and genuinely saying, "oh wow, who cares, this is nothing, only started at 20%, next."

Continuing the trend only BEVs would be sold by 2032 which is in line with goals to phase out production of new ICEs.

But yes, also, the naive hope of many politicians was that the huge, thorny issue that is traffic emissions would just resolve itself by everybody magically switching to EVs, because actually effective measures to curb emissions are rather unpopular.

That's why they were anti-EV for so long, since that threatened their lucrative ICE dominance.

There are a few electric-only brands but for smaller vehicles.

He needed the car to tide him over to a work based EV scheme.

A year later the dealer said he'd be lucky to get £8kfor private sale and that the dealership didn't want the car as had 5 on forecourt already.

He's kept the car and loved it, but 2nd hand EV prices here can be great (or bad if you are a seller) - I saw a 10year old Nissan Note EV for £1K the other day - if I already had a charger I would have snapped it up, even if the range was less than 50 miles now.

It wasn't (just?) a compliance car. It was a testbed for EV development by VW. The ID Models have had serious software problems, the ID.7 is the newest and best one. An even smaller car than the ID.3 was announced some weeks ago.