The infrastructure isn't there yet, and most blue collar families cannot afford an EV, nor the home electrical modifications needed. One-car households cannot abide the inflexibility. Oh, and forget about renters, they were never part of the equation. The EV mandate was one of the biggest ivory tower initiatives ever enacted by the government and it was objectively a failure.
No one said EVs are bad. But they are one small part of a larger picture that includes ICE and hybrid for many years to come. Purists will be upset, but they will never be satisfied with any reasonable compromise.
I guess most building in US don't have electricity yet.
The best part is it doesn't matter what the US does: China will transform global light vehicle mobility for us as they continue to scale manufacturing both domestically and internationally. As this piece mentions, US vehicles are stagnant because new vehicles prices are near ~$50k; US automakers have no incentives to innovate or increase supply to push prices down when tariffs make imports of cheaper cars economically unviable. US consumers are trapped in an extraction box. You want a car? You must buy it from the oligopoly. It's not "EVs are too expensive" but instead "the US system is structured to extract dollars and profits from consumers for fossil fuel and auto industry interests" while China ruthlessly innovates and scales.
TLDR Short term profits will be taken from this arrangement, old people in power in the US will keep aging out, and China will keep scaling up. Observe trajectories and rate of change, think in systems.
Side quest: What happens to US automakers when their export market demand is diminished, perhaps entirely, by Chinese exports?
Citations:
https://restofworld.org/2025/china-us-ev-race/
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2025/executive...
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/electric-vehicle-sales-i...
https://cleantechnica.com/2025/07/21/53-ev-share-in-china-ju...
https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle_industry_in_C...
https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3334300...
https://insidechinaauto.com/2025/11/01/live-blog-china-octob...
https://www.byd.com/us/news-list/First-BYD-Electric-Vehicle-...
https://rhomotion.com/news/byd-announces-further-global-expa...
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-where-tesla-and-byd-...
(tangentially, China is 1/3rd of total global manufacturing capacity, as of this comment)
If Cars Are Too Expensive, Just Pump More Gas. What? - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-12-04/new-fu... | https://archive.today/ELhbL - December 4th, 2025
toomuchtodo•2mo ago