Three years ago, the global auto industry was gripped by a collective hallucination. CEOs promised us that the internal combustion engine would be dead by 2035 and that legacy automakers were just one battery factory away from a trillion-dollar valuation.
That narrative has now collided with economic reality.
In this video, we analyze the collapse of the “inevitability” narrative. We look at why Ford has been forced to take a staggering $19.5 billion write-down, why the European Union is quietly dismantling its own petrol ban, and why—despite billions in subsidies—automakers are still losing $6,000 on every electric vehicle they sell.
We examine how the industry confused a political project with consumer demand, leading to a market where the cars are too expensive for the middle class and too unprofitable for the manufacturers.
EVs in the US were introduced by Musk. He convinced his disciples EVs should be expensive and full of bullshit gadgetry. Various virgins moved from lining up for iPhones to lining up for Teslas. Then, he killed the brand with his Nazi beliefs. But the EV market in the US was saturated anyway. These are not practical vehicles for a second world country with poor infrastructure and governments corrupt with gas and oil.
With petrol subsidized so heavily, and the poor reliability of EVs, people will stick with gas cars.
Chinese EVs would just flood the market with poorly made cheaper vehicles, much like the 60s and 70s where cheap gas cars lasted 5 years, if you were lucky.
I mean cars are a bit of an impractical transportation method in general but I don’t think EVs are much less practical in the US than any other vehicle nowadays. They’re just too expensive for our crumbling middle class.
Even in parts of the country that are more receptive to future tech, the reality of range and lack of working charging infrastructure keeps coming back. Not range anxiety but range limitation. I have some friends that gave it a good college try and I mean real hard. It has complicated their lives too much. Having to get hotel rooms or waste time stopping to recharge and add hours onto trips. They try to look at it like pretend 1950s traveling and try to find places to go and things to do while the car recharges, but it wears on them. They don’t plan on buying another EV, whenever they can afford to buy another car.