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For a lot of people the infrastructure is an outlet in our garage. Going to the gas station is a novelty and just for snacks. Road trips are a few times a year

• saturn8601 19d ago
  >It's 2026 and we are still debating this? You can debate all you want. If I have learned anything this past decade, its the internet has little bearing on how real life turns out. Just look at the sales numbers. In the US they are now slightly declining after years of steady growth. I watch auto industry shows that talk about how executives who bet their reputations on the EV transition at places like Ford and GM now stand with destroyed careers because the demand was just not there and billions of wasted capital that had to be written down. A car company has to sell a product that the masses will buy. It turns out for the US (and I suspect Canda as well) that product is currently hybrids. It gets the fuel cost down for people while allowing them to not give up on what they come to expect.
  • bruce511 19d ago
    The market in the US may be growing less strongly than elsewhere, but there are somewhat unique circumstances involved in that. One is political - Energy in the US is highly political, and the oil and coal lobbies are both influential and regressive. This leads to EVs becoming a political statement rather than an active choice. Second is size. Americans tend to drive further so range does matter. More range means more cost. And even Americans who don't ever go further than 20 miles entertain at least the idea of a cross-country road trip. So I get where you are coming from. But I'd also say that the US is different to the world in general. In Europe I saw charging infrastructure everywhere. (Streetlight poles contained chargers, all the way down the street.) Electric busses were the norm. Electric cars everywhere. Like I said earlier, a tipping point is coming. Naturally it'll happen sooner in some places than others. The US will likely be towards the back. The problem for US automakers is that by the time they see a local market, they'll be well behind the curve in development. I don't think a GM will be able to compete in product (never mind price) to a BYD et al.
    • saturn8601 17d ago
      We are talking about the US and Canada here, thats why I referenced American car companies and their executives. Im not denying at all that other countries are in different scenarios and this will have different adoption trajectories. >The problem for US automakers is that by the time they see a local market, they'll be well behind the curve in development. I don't think a GM will be able to compete in product (never mind price) to a BYD et al. It's possible that GM and Ford are dead companies already. Although at the same time, I'd expected Tesla to decline a lot faster than they really did post MAGA Musk. They've had massive duds and a lot of money spent. Yet in terms of the U.S. they are still ahead of the pack in technology development and sales are not abysmal which is insane given there have not been any new platforms introduced. In fact they have discontinued models. Whether BYD overtakes the American market remains to be seen, and maybe even in Europe we might see eventual pushback as things get really dire with the local manufacturers. It's really too early to tell. China has an oversupply of EVs. They have over 100 car companies right now competing to the very death, and only a small handful will survive. Those companies will be very strong. But due to the oversupply and the 25% youth unemployment rate, China has to find a way to offload these vehicles overseas or else they'll suffer significantly as well. So it's going to be interesting times, and I'm not too sure how things are going to play out long term.