Not just Tesla, all established brands we know are left behind. I never understood Volkswagen's pivot from 'wait and See's to 'were inversing billions' to 'we were too late, abort'. Largest brands n terms of units, completely left behind in an emerging segment that's already dominating it's largest market (China). So many executives in the industry just didn't see the writing on the wall. I don't what GM was thinking, trying a truck as their first platform for EVs, but it's another indicator. This industry has the worst executives. Just don't see the writing on the wall.
This is what makes the innovator's dilemma repeat itself so many times in so many industries. It's not that the incumbent companies don't see the new technology; it's that they're so entrenched in what they know how to do that pivoting to the new technology is basically a Hail Mary no matter how you do it. Do it too early and your shareholders are going to think you're crazy. Do it too late, and you're risking entering a new market as the chaser with a bad hand of company, employees, and board that don't have any idea of what they're doing.
Exactly, usually the companies know what's coming up, like you said. But, properly shifting gears to play a new game requires that you act like a startup again. It likely requires foregoing the fat margins you were used to. And it likely requires going back to the drawing board and actually learning from the market.
And this is what companies find it hard to do. To be fair, I think that is not so bad a things. Companies should rise and die naturally. A few companies monopolizing markets forever does not seem good.
Kodak knew digital cameras were coming, my first digital camera was a Kodak from the late 90's. I guess it wasn't in their DNA to innovate and compete in this new medium.
I feel like being a publicly traded company prevents pivoting because of the focus on short term results.
Kodak didn't really have the option to compete. Their business was largely film, which just disappeared completely, and even digital cameras got replaced pretty quickly with phones. There was nothing to pivot too for Kodak.
I think it’s less “pivoting is hard” and more “we know what’s right and we’re not going to pivot”.
It’s not hard to have smaller R&D teams work on these problems to keep the innovation going, but most executives are out there prioritizing cost cuttings so that the shareholders get the quarterly dopamine boosts on the earnings calls.
car manufacturers can afford to experiment - it's not like they don't have room in the budget. and they did experiment.
if you don't know GM's history with electric cars: they were positioned to execute a successful transition about thirty years ago, but they simply chose not to.
As someone with a lot of family working in GM corporate, it seems like they were never really confident in it in the first place. So many of them scoffed at the entire idea of electric cars and most still do, even with their own lineup and having driven them themselves. They expected them to fail and never put in the actual effort to support it. It seemed like 80% of corporate were against it completely and without reason because they themselves were doing fine and could afford the gas on their free corporate car and massive discounted family purchased cars. And everyone below them fed their egos by spewing garbage about how well they are all doing with their high margin luxury trimmed cars without considering how they are pricing more and more people out of their entire brand each year.
Although Ford's CEO now gets it, Ford's product line doesn't reflect it yet.
Farley has been bringing a few sample BYD cars to the US, for Ford people to drive around and to take apart. Farley dragged his executive team to China to see a BYD plant. They came back scared. But what Ford actually sells is 1) an F-150 converted to electric, 2) a Ford Mustang converted to electric, and 3) a Ford Transit converted to electric. They're all more expensive, and heavier, than their gasoline-powered versions.
BYD shows that electric cars are cheaper if designed properly from the ground up.
The problem is that the US no longer makes many cars. Mostly giant trucks and SUVs.
Hauling all that mass around requires a huge battery, resulting in 3-ton vehicles.
"Americans only want trucks and SUVs." (I hear people say.)
Cool. Then allow BYD non-trucks, non-SUVs into the U.S. then.
The Japanese back in the 70's showed U.S. automakers that price and mileage (in that decade anyway) were important to Americans. I suspect price is still important.
The statement is likely to be justification propaganda from those companies that have focused on trucks and SUVs. There is still a car market in the U.S., and for that matter, in South America and Canada.
Something else that is not being told in the mainstream media, is the U.S. bias and negative attitude towards South American countries has left the door wide open to China. And China is firmly establishing itself there, where it is unlikely that the U.S. can compete for at least a decade, if not a generation.
A jobs subsidy program that focused on more productive industries would be better than subsidizing an auto industry that never aimed for international competitiveness.
We have exceptionally productive fields in the US tumor are the envy of the world. If we can't be productive in auto manufacturing, devoting a ton of our workforce too it is a misallocation of our limited resources.
If we are going to be subsidizing unprofitable industry fro national security purposes, we need to either 1) ruthlessly cut the least productive manufacturers from access to subsidies, or 2) nationalize it. Any other choices would be very inefficient.
The historical track record of that kind of thing is terrible. You end up with a bloated, inefficient industry that produces bad products. Britain, pre-EU, did a lot of that. British Steel, British Rail, British Overseas Airways Corporation, British Petroleum, English Electric computers, etc. Then they needed bailouts. This resulted in what's called "lemon socialism" - the state owns all the dud industries.
Dolphins don't sell for $10k outside of China. Dolphins in South/Central America are ~$22k. Even if there weren't tariffs on them I wouldn't expect to see them out the door for less than $25k in the US.
Different government subsidies, different manufacturing costs, different regulatory requirements, and different markets have different market competition.
Think about this concept. It costs you $1 to make a widget. It costs your competitors $1.25 to make a similar widget. They sell theirs for $5. Do you sell yours for $1.50 or $4.75? Obviously, other things could be in play for the market for widgets, but if you could sell all your widgets for $4.75 wouldn't you do that?
If the cheapest car in the US is about $20k and is a complete POS, why would you sell your better car for $10k when you could still sell it for $22k and still sell just about all the ones you build?
Your post is so muddled. The cheapest new EV on the US market is a Nissan Leaf at ~30k MSRP new, but I found a used 2025 model with 1341 miles for $17,899 in a cursory search. Nissan has a dealership in my city so I know it can be serviced here or at worst the next largest city near here while a Chinese brand would be a crapshoot until it spreads to my medium-small city. I can only imagine the stink people will put on Chinese cars, even hybrids and American made EVs get poo-poo'd.
I imagine that a Chinese automaker such as BYD would price itself low, something like an EV at ICE prices, to get a foothold in the American market. I really wish BYD was around here so I could drive one and look at the build quality myself, it's almost like the domestic Automakers and the CIA are putting out hit pieces about the brand.
> The cheapest new EV on the US market is a Nissan Leaf
I said the cheapest car not the cheapest EV. And of that I meant new car. That would be the Nissan Versa, which has an MSRP of $18,385. After TTL, depending on your market you're probably looking at something around $20k out the door.
A lot of this makes sense. But why would South America's consumer market be less competitive than China? If China's low prices are caused by, say, 3 Chinese brands competing with each other, why can't those 3 Chinese brands also compete with each other in South America?
Chinese brands are in a horrible price war ATM in China, with many cars being sold at losses (and tricks to get around government imposed price controls, like selling a new car as used!). In a less competitive market where they have more pricing power, they simply aren’t going to do that. And even if 3 brands have enough resources to go abroad, they left 10+ brands behind that couldn’t (every 3rd or greater tier city has their own brand, so even saying 10 is probably an underestimate, heck you have cities like Liuzhou that aren’t even 3rd tier!).
They will also sell higher end configurations abroad to make it worth their time. They won’t sell the absolute bare bones option that comes with almost no profit (if not a loss).
I've got a Lightning and I think I like the 'converted to electric' aspect. Everything that fits on a regular ICE F-150 fits on my truck. The interior is the same (okay, some trims have a big screen, but not all do). It would be nice if it had a bit more range, but when I look at the efficiency of an R1T or a CT, I don't see that being purpose-built would automatically be a win for Ford. Pickups are not ever going to be competitive with sedans and CUVs for efficiency.
I've never seen a good number on this. Is it money losing per vehicle, or because of the amortized R&D included in the cost? The problem from my perspective is that it hasn't turned out as popular as they hoped -- truck buyers are a hard to convert bunch of people. Which is too bad, because my Lightning is my favorite of all the pickups I've owned over the years. It's a fantastic truck.
Ford is a bad example because they’ve pretty much abandoned all their non truck and transit van segments for years. Even if EVs weren’t a thing, they do not compete in any of the segments and haven’t for almost a decade. First it was Japanese and German companies eating their lunch, now it’s the Chinese.
Also, F150 lightening is such a failure. There was a recent video of it trying to haul very minimal load and it pretty much drained the battery in less than 100 miles.
> Also, F150 lightening is such a failure. There was a recent video of it trying to haul very minimal load and it pretty much drained the battery in less than 100 miles.
Was that due to something specific with the Lightning, or was it just due to the intrinsic energy requirements of hauling loads? (Or in other words, does an EV even exist that's notably better at hauling loads?)
TBH, those tests are mostly marketing failures. EV trucks aren't really good at hauling trailers over large distances, as the aerodynamics produce a massive impact on range.
Multiple tests have shown this by showing 50% or more range reduction from pulling lightweight, non-aerodynamic loads.
The marketing failure is that the companies have allowed consumers to incorrectly extrapolate from this to thinking that heavy loads in the bed have the same issue. They actually don't as weight is a minimal impact on range.
Unfortunately, every thread about carrying sheetrock, rocks, mulch, etc shows how misinformed the average consumer has become in this space. It has to be a significant impact on sales, given that in the US these are the only heavy loads carried by >50% of the half ton pickups sold here.
> EV trucks aren't really good at hauling trailers over large distances, as the aerodynamics produce a massive impact on range.
Maybe I'm being stupid, but how could that possibly just be a problem for EVs? The aerodynamic physics don't care what's powering the car so the impact on range should be roughly the same.
Or is the problem that even if EV range impact is similar to fossil fuel range impact, the extra time required to recharge vs refuel makes that range impact more, uh, impactful for drivers?
Yep, so many people think hauling weight kills your gas mileage, but it doesn't really have that big of an effect unless you are hauling a massive load through stop and go traffic while in a hurry. The vast majority of people do most of their hauling of things down the highway, not through the middle of cities, and 90% of the losses from hauling load is just wind resistance against the poorly aerodynamic trailer which is a lot while at highway speeds. If someone is traveling down the highway at 70 MPH in their SUV with 1500 lbs in the back hatch, the only extra fuel it takes over the same SUV being empty is a tiny amount of extra friction in the tires that comes out to a fraction of a MPG.
Not to be nitpicky, but that's only really true if you're driving down a perfectly flat, straight highway at a constant speed. Any hills or traffic slowdowns and your car or truck is doing more work the more it weighs.
It’s an intrinsic issue with hauling loads, combined with the relatively low range of F150L.
By comparison the the Chevy Silverado EV gets ~450mi of range unloaded and testing seems to have it able to tow ~250mi of range at 70mph, which seems plenty between stops: https://www.hotcars.com/chevrolet-silverado-ev-towing/
Some hybrid cars almost work this way. I know at least Honda's hybrids basically do what you're suggesting but at constant highway speeds will directly couple the engine to the drive wheels. They presumably could use electric motors powered by the engine in all driving scenarios, but I believe direct engine drive at highway speeds is more energy efficient.
This is probably why most hybrid systems I'm aware of don't only use electric motors to power the drive wheels. The idea sounds cool and I've also wondered why you can't buy something like that in the US (I think it exists elsewhere), but the math doesn't really work out. Even in terms of engineering complexity, because the engine is only directly driving the wheels at certain speeds, you can get by without a lot of the mechanical drivetrain components like transmissions.
They exist, but I don't think there's currently any new models for sale in the US. I think they're generally called "series hybrid," or sometimes it's marketed as an electric vehicle with range extender.
I believe the Chevy Volt worked this way - you can see used ones for sale for around $15k.
Highway towing range hit is largely an aerodynamic drag issue. Any EV truck (or any car really, even gas cars have a big range hit) is going to get a massive ding in its range towing anything increasing it's aero drag even if it's an empty box. It's just with a gas truck you're starting with 300+mi often for a well equipped truck so you lose 100mi of range you're still over 200mi per tank.
But an EV, on a long range road trip you're rarely charging to 100%, you're often going like 5%->80% because the charging speeds fall off a cliff after a certain percentage. So you start off with maybe 300mi, but not really because after the first leg you're only using 75% of it, but now you're also using like 25% more energy because of the massively increased drag. So what was 300mi on a full charge became maybe 150mi on a full charge once you're on that second leg. Coupled with the fact what used to be free energy (heating the cabin with waste engine heat) if you're towing in cold weather you're not even going to get that 150mi.
The Lightning really isn’t meant for towing a horse trailer cross country. It’s meant for hauling a new vanity or a couple sheets of drywall from Home Depot. It does that suburban warrior stuff quite competently.
> Ford is a bad example because they’ve pretty much abandoned all their non truck and transit van segments for years.
Perhaps in the US. Here in the UK you see a lot of Focuses and Fiestas, especially the ST models, and the "ST Line" models, which have ST trim but boring engines.
Quite often you see the latter on their side a surprisingly long way from the tarmac, surrounded by bits of obliterated cattle fence, with a very patient farmer rolling it back onto its wheels with the Manitou to make the recovery guy's day easier.
I agree with your comment, but I'll be a little pedantic for a minute:
As a Charger Daytona owner, I'd love to call the Mach-E a mustang, but it's really just borrowing the brand. Ford has said unequivocally that they'll never make an all-electric muscle car, which is a real shame. The Mach-E is a great car if you're turned off by a Model Y, but you wouldn't choose it over a mustang GT or a charger Daytona or a Camaro.
> Ford has said unequivocally that they'll never make an all-electric muscle car
What’s the thinking here? Pandering to some market segment? It sounds like they are organising the deck chairs in the titanic.
Edit: I tried looking into the comment. It seems he was referring to Mustangs specifically, which is weird as they do make an electric one (assuming you agree it’s a ‘real’ mustang).
The Mach-E isn't a muscle car. The comment was specifically around the Mustang sedan, which they do not have an electric version of.
Honestly, it's befuddling to me. There's a lot of folks who could get talked into an electric muscle car, they just have to know how to sell it. I own a Charger Daytona and literally every car guy I show it to has interest; I genuinely think Dodge just doesn't know how to market and sell it. I'm 100% confident that the right marketing agency could sell 100k of these, but the cohort of "it'll never be a Mustang" is far louder than the "wow that thing rips" crowd.
You’re mischaracterizing the Mustang Mach-E which never should have been named that because it has nothing to do with the ICE Mustang at all aside from the horsey badge.
The small part in me understands that, they are banking on three things 1) oil will be cheap because of EV boom and hence EV dominance will be slow and could take couple of decades 2) electric Energy cost will rise significantly because so much charging and energy infrastructure required. 3) Battery will reach at par with gasoline and matured standardised comodity, that will be the perfect time to enter.
I think #1 will probably play out to a certain extent. Perhaps as an oscillation between low and high as each wave knocks more gas stations out of business and refinery capacity offline. But I have to say, even low prices on gas won't make me go back -- I prefer my EVs in all regards to the ICE equivalents, with the sole exception of marathon (>450 miles per day) road trips, which is not my use case.
I hope #2 won't be the future. It's not as easy to just jack up electric prices because EVs are charging, because they are regulated, and electricity is used for way more than cars (if my napkin math is right, on average people will use around 30% more electricity if they go full electric).
I expect that as a practical matter #3 is here now, it just hasn't filtered down to retail car sales in the US yet.
> with the sole exception of marathon (>450 miles per day) road trips
I've done 4 3000km road trips and intentionally took the EV leaving the ICE vehicle at home. It's a better car, and we need to stop to bathroom anyways, so charging isn't inconvenient. Saving a few hundred dollars in fuel is nice, too.
Long EV trips are possible amd convenient if there are enough chargers along the route. Sadly, this isn't the case on many routes in the US, at least. Europe is doing much better. I have no experience in other places.
Like what route? Everytime I've talked to someone who claimed they couldn't buy an EV because of a certain route, abetterrouteplanner.com showed it was covered.
Different people optimize for different things. I have a 450 mile trip (each way) next weekend. I can do it in 1 full tank of gas, but realistically I’ll stop once to fill up halfway. I don’t plan any other stops. If I had an EV, I’d probably have to stop twice, for 30+ minutes each, extending my already long trip by an hour each way.
Honestly, even my Lightning could do 450 with one stop, and it’s not the poster child for high range. My model 3 would do that no problem and the stop would be half as long.
My back and butt beg me to stop every couple hundred miles anyway, so on a long road trip I plan for a lunch stop. Longer than 450 and I stop for the night or fly. But I don’t love road tripping no matter how big the has tank.
For a while maybe, but cheap EVs are being manufactured in Europe as well, and while this could reduce petrol prices, it's also going to reduce the need for petrol stations, and I think makes petrol basically dead even in a cheap-petrol scenario.
A Renault Twingo is going to cost something like 20,000 euros. That's twice the price of a Dacia Sandero, but a Dacia Spring is 16,900. The difference is only 4000, which could easily be a year's petrol.
A modern small and medium-sized car in Europe consumes like 4-6 liters/100 km. Even if one drives 15 thousands km/year (way above average) that gives like 900 liters of gasoline per year or like 1500-1700 euros with typical European prices.
And electricity is not free especially when using fast chargers. So at the end the savings is about 500-1000 euros per year. Which still is a good deal, but explains why people prefer to buy small gasoline cars. I think electric car premium must be below 2 thousand euros plus infrastructure must improve before gasoline car sales in Europe start to collapse.
Ah. I hadn't realised that modern petrol cars had gotten that efficient.
When I had a petrol car it was like at least 12 L/100 km, probably more. I remember 100 km drives (Stockholm-Uppsala and back) costing hundreds of Swedish crowns in petrol.
> When I had a petrol car it was like at least 12 L/100 km, probably more
What was it? That's approximately what my late-90s Range Rover does, although it's converted to run on LPG which is much cheaper and much much much cleaner.
WV seems to do amazingly in Europe so not sure what you are talking about. It is Tesla thaumt seems to be leaving the EV market with no new exciting models and making the European market hate the brand.
That's related to one relatively minor subsidiary brand (Porsche accounts for about 3% of VW AG's sales), and it's a _weird_ brand for them, in that, whereas in a given size category the relevant SEAT, Skoda, VW, Audi etc are all pretty much the same, Porsches are quite distinct. VW as a whole is fairly committed to electric. Like, that article notes that their European EV sales are good.
That article says nothing about VW EV sales being poor in Europe. In fact it calls VW’s EVs increasingly popular.
The losses seem to be due to a tariff hit in the U.S. and due to Porsche change in strategy to focus more on hybrids and ICEs (0possibky because they’re focusing on EVs through VW?).
Seems to me like they largely agree. VW has issues caused by US tariffs and problems with Porsche but EV sales in Europe are growing and carries the rest of the company.
Let’s not forget the Japanese who decided they didn’t want to compete in EVs because they couldn’t use that platform in some of their heavy machinery so decided to get the Japanese government to push hard on hydrogen, at a time Nissan was making a nice push in EVs, which led to Nissan having to back out of EVs as well.
I thought Toyota is doing quite well in emerging markets? However they skipped a lot of EV craziness and just do cheap-and-reliable ICE cars.
I also never understood why established brands lobbied for EVs, and not against them. They clearly had no edge over Tesla and Chinese brands, why compete on rival's field?
What do you mean, the ID series for the main VW brand have 7 upcoming models over the next two years (4 for the Chinese market, 3 for everywhere).
> all established brands we know are left behind
I wouldn't go that far. The Renault 5 is one of the best selling EVs in Europe, and all the reviews are extremely positive (it's a fun and good looking car overall, and accessible). They have the 4 rolling out, and the small Twingo coming next year. They've also managed to narrow down the time from concept car to production at scale to less than 2 years (which according to the article on the topic I read is very fast).
>I never understood Volkswagen's pivot from 'wait and See's to 'were inversing billions' to 'we were too late, abort'.
How is VW aborting in any way? They do not have a new ICE Platform, they are totally all in on EVs.
Whether that will work out is of course another question, but it is bizarre to bring up EV when there is also Stellantis, who do not even have a dedicated EV Platform for their cars.
When I grew up in Germany it always made me proud that 100% of taxis were Mercedes Benz. If a car can withstand the rough demands of taxi service, it has to be good. And even in South America back then German cares were ubiquitous, especially Volkswagen.
When I was in Brazil this spring[*] I rode a lot of Uber and they were 100% BYD - 100%, no exception. It's not that my head hadn't known that German auto was dead but seeing it playing out like this hit hard.
BYD recently went live with a highly automated, large scale manufacturing facility in Brazil. The BYD Dolphin Mini sells for ~$22,500, and the manufacturer already has 200 showrooms open across the country.
You have to consider that South America is the most dangerous continent.
You can't just leave your car charging unattended in a public space. It has to be done at home or somewhere closed (which would make it expensive) or you would have to watch over your car (which would take a lot of your time).
Mercedes and BMW serves a wider band of value than they do in the USA, where they have purposefully cultivated themselves as a pure luxury brand. For example, the 1 and 2 series from BMW or Mercedes A class will never go the USA, even though I’m sure there is a market for them.
They used to make them with quality construction. Now it's all engineered with plastic bits that will only last for the first 5 years the rich owner will be using it before tossing it out.
I remember being in a Mercedes in France in the 80's and noticing it had manual crank windows. My dad in the US (even then!) hated added electronics in cars so he went to a Mercedes dealer and they explained that in the US we could only get fully loaded models.
1. Batteries - BYD has them beat
2. Self Driving tech - other players are better
3. Luxury brands already provide the luxury aspect & even better built cars
4. in the US they're being saved by US protectionism. in Europe etc - we already see the chinese brands making inroads for EV sales
I mostly agree on all points, but what self driving tech is better? I've periodically looked at the options, and nothing really seems to compare in North America. Maybe BYD and others have great tech, but stuff like Blue Cruise works hardly anywhere in Canada, and to me, that makes it virtually useless.
He’s probably thinking of robo taxi self driving. So that would be e.g. Waymo.
I don’t think anyone has better self driving for consumers out atm, but you could argue that’s because other companies are not using their customers as beta testers. I’ve seen demos that may indicate Mobileye has tech that’s just as good if not better. But they don’t release it to end users until it’s fully ready.
I don’t think Tesla has any special sauce, and that when the tech is actually ready for unattended full self driving in a consumer car, other car makers will come out with solutions around the same Tesla. One difference is maaaybe Tesla will be able to update old cars (probably with a hardware update). While I think others will only support it on new cars.
> Tesla will solve self-driving and everyone will be left unable to compete. Also, AI is advancing rapidly and will solve all kinds of problems for society.
But apparently it will not solve self-driving for anyone else but Tesla.
I gave up trying to argue with Tesla fans years ago. They are immune to logic which invalidates their priors.
http://comma.ai isn't self-driving, just really good cruise control (better than Blue cruise, imo), but most importantly, you can get it today. (And for less than $8k.)
Protectionism on inputs kills manufacturing. Imagine having to pay 15% more for all inputs and trying to compete with someone who doesn't have pay that.
Well, at least domestically you don’t have to compete with someone who doesn’t have to pay that because their product is probably tariffed directly.
Internationally, yes if you manufacture the international product in the home country, but AFAIK in auto at least there are usually satellite factories and have been for some time, and those wouldn’t be subject to home country tariffs would they?
Precisely, you need to set up plants overseas to dodge the input tariffs instead of onshoring manufacturing for export. That causes reductions in manufacturing investment compared to the alternative.
Not only that, Teslas nowadays look like they belong in a museum - so fucking old and outdated. I own 2014 Tesla S, my neighbour has 2025 Tesla S, same fucking car - literally. My car was THE shit back in the day, lots of broken necks looking at it … now, 12 years later, someone (fewer and fewer) is paying $90k for exactly the same car. Tesla X was great looking - circa 2016… Tesla 3 is like a Kia and Model Y is just 3 that is blown up a bit.
> My car was THE shit back in the day, lots of broken necks looking at it … now, 12 years later, someone (fewer and fewer) is paying $90k for exactly the same car
That's what Porsche also discovered, the hard way.
Tesla also has a big Elon problem in that the blue cities where self-driving Taxis will be most profitable may opt for Waymo or boycott Tesla over politics.
I think the issue is to create an ICE is a very complicated process requiring lots of specialist knowledge, skills and technologies. An EV is just much simpler, comes down to who has the cheapest batteries. Europe and Japan are great at the former, the latter no chance.
Im sure some of it is personal bias from experience with them but I don't think ICE are as complicated as some people think. 90% of the extra shit on them are unnecessary for it to work but what those things are and what they do and why it broke or failed or how important they are is essentially obfuscated from the general public so they seem like overly complicated magic. The vast majority of cars I see do not fail or get trashed due to engine failure from design flaws or anything, most get trashed because people stop caring about them and treat them like trash and don't replace that $15 sensor, others think they can't afford the maintenance because car manufacturers don't give a fuck about having to take 3 hours disassembling other unnecessary shit to replace a 30 cent sensor that they know will eventually need replaced, but the only number the customer seems to look at is the total cost of the mechanic quote. They think because something is a $1,000+ repair that something seriously is worn or old and that the car is on its last legs, instead of the reality of that one part being a huge pain in the ass to replace but it is otherwise a good reliable motor for another 100,000+ miles. And of the cars that do get trashed because they have actual major mechanical problems, the vast majority of the problems have to do with the body work rusting out and/or suspension components needing replaced after being used for 3x their expected lifetime, which an EV is not going to improve in any way.
Like ive seen people junkyard perfectly working and good cars because it is over 150,000 miles and some service guy who is looking for work/money told them they need to do scheduled maintenance some time soon and they thought the car was too old and was junk. And yet very few cars ive seen would not make it over 300,000 miles if they spent even 1/10th the money of their new car for maintenance on their old.
Thought the comment was somewhat helpful. Sparked considering the various anti-patterns in automobile design and searches came back with several others that have been vaguely thought about, just never really identified very clearly for me.
- Inaccessible Components (Poor Physical Layout): One of the main ones you're talking about. Take out the engine to repair a light on the dashboard.
- Integrated, Non-Modular Systems: Minor damage or failure ruins an entire assembly. You dinged the bumper, replace the entire front.
- Lack of Standardization: Even from year-to-year, designs change and mechanics have to learn yet another system.
- Forced Replacement over Repair: Object is "black box", thou shalt replace, not repair.
- Dead/Onion/Boat Anchor Components: No longer used, maybe need it, build stuff on top of it, layer after layer, "can we even remove it"?
- Spaghetti Wiring/Code and System Coupling: Single modules that route all over the car, another "can we even remove it"?
- Proprietary Diagnostics and Restricted Data Access: Don't have the special tools, you can't repair, or even find out what's wrong.
EVs are very complicated cars anyway. They need maintenance in service as well as ICE cars. Yes, not so often you need to change liquids, but service is required. Also good luck with water/rodent damage to 400v parts.
Optimizing costs while producing a safe, reliable, durable vehicle isn't exactly simple and requires an entire supply chain to be in place, not just a single company. Look at how many auto mfgs there are in the world that turn out terrible cars. EVs dramatically lower the parts count which helps but you still a lot of expertise to make a safe, reliable car.
My grandfather was a mechanic and told me how replacing a dashboard light in some models required removing large portions of the engine to access the socket.
I've been riding a German electric motorbike for a couple of years, and before that, German electric mopeds.
I think there is a lot of innovation in the German electric vehicle industry. I am quite excited for BTM, my bikes manufacturer, to design and release new versions of their platform. This model is distinctly German.
Note the Mercedes as taxis in Germany are not the high end luxury car imports we are accustomed to seeing in the US. Mercedes makes a lot of more affordable cars for their domestic market we never see here!
To be fair taxis have unique requirements. Taxis in the UK were like 80% Prius for a long time because they drive very long distances and hybrids are very cost effective for city driving where you're doing a lot of low speed driving and don't have convenient recharging opportunities. But most people aren't in that situation.
Unless you have a really cheap electricity at home (not like in EU) the best price per km has old Prius with LNG fuel. Also reliable, there are tons of them with 500k+ km on the clock.
Sadly the German car industry has lost its way in the EV transition and is now vainly trying to get the EU to rollback the sun setting of ICE car sales in 3035.
In the UK, for a very long time they were Skoda Octavias.
I know of two ex-taxis that were scrapped at about five or six years old - one was taken off the road because of a deep paint scratch down to bare metal from about half way along the front wing to the rear door, rendering it beyond economic repair - with over half a million miles on the clock each.
Neither had been outside the Greater Glasgow area since they were dropped off on the transporter.
It was announced a few days ago some models of Tesla are coming to Colombia at cheaper prices than BYD and the like and people here seems to be crazy about Tesla now. Time will tell how reliable they are on our poor roads.
And that's one thing about EVs here in general - they are coming with no spare tire but a flat tire repair kit, which it's fine for small issues but may not be enough for the problems said tough roads can give to your tires.
I'm in Medellin Colombia, and frequently see BYD cars on the road. I recently had an Uber which drove a BYD car - I was seriously impressed. For those who don't know, Medellin is extremely hilly, and somewhat of a mountainous bowl. I live pretty high up, and can feel the gasoline-powered taxis seriously strain & struggle. Meanwhile, in the BYD electric vehicle, it ascended the hill so easily. Truly felt effortless.
Recently saw a Tesla setup in the mall - so it does seem like they are kicking off a marketing campaign.
> It was announced a few days ago some models of Tesla are coming to Colombia at cheaper prices than BYD
How could that be?
At least Renault's low cost models (like the Dacia Spring, sold as Kwid in Latin America) are sold for cheap in various markets, and are competitive to BYD pricing in the EU and Latin America (enough that they're seeing serious growth there). Tesla doesn't have anything close, price wise, so how could they be competing on price with BYD?
Colombians are asking that question too. My guess is that Tesla is selling them at a loss to compete against BYD. They may be sending unsold inventory from the US/Mexico market as well.
Tesla was dead in the water when it became obvious that they couldn't make a sub-$30K car happen. They will still probably do well as a luxury brand, but China is going to fill in the demand for affordable EVs in the rest of the world outside USA/EU.
I have an electric cargo bike. During a kids party yesterday I ran 5 different errands with it while someone with a car managed to get stuck in traffic, not find a parking spot, and miss the whole thing.
The only reason why cars are the size and shape they are is because ICE engines couldn't be made smaller. Electric engines on the other hand are small enough that I can have the chassis of a fully functioning car be light enough to lift by one man.
I think we will see small, light weight and intrinsically pedestrian safe cars made of tubes and canvas replace the heavy monstrosities we have now.
> The only reason why cars are the size and shape they are is because ICE engines couldn't be made smaller. Electric engines on the other hand are small enough that I can have the chassis of a fully functioning car be light enough to lift by one man.
You have seen a motorbikes/mopeds, scooters and micro-cars surely?
An electric bike is essentially a moped which have existed for like 70-80 years now? A small cars have been around since the 1950s.
Cars are the shape they are because normally you want the option of carrying 1-5 people. 5 people is 2 adults and 3 children. BTW cars in the past were much smaller. Compare the size of any car from the 1930-40s in the UK to a modern European car and you will notice it is much smaller they are.
I own three electric motorcycles and respectfully disagree. You can't make tube and canvas that let a passenger survive getting t-boned by a Yukon Denali or an F-250. One high-profile accident with a mother and her child getting peeled off the road with a coal shovel are all it'll take to kill such a form factor forever.
The problem isn't the form factor you're describing, it's that you can't put those on the road with 1000+ horsepower machines that are 50 times heavier. And on top of that, a lot of people just don't want to give up their heated massage seats and connected infotainment and removable third row or whatever crap they pack in minivans these days.
This isn't correct. There were ICE mini and micro cars. It's just not popular in some countries like the US or Canada, but wildly popular in some (mainly Asia).
Nowadays there are electric micro cars too, like Citroën Ami. I believe Renault has sth too, and the Chinese brands too. They are cheap, often cheaper than an electric cargo bike!
But surely the problem with the final paragraph is the transition? Assuming the old style of vehicle remains on the road, then my lightweight one is at risk of being crushed. Only a niche minority would choose that (as a cargo bike owner, I'm also one, but I recognise most are not, with good reason.)
Unless we built a whole separate infrastructure.... We already see a lot of electric scooters using cycle lanes.
> The only reason why cars are the size and shape they are is because ICE engines couldn't be made smaller. Electric engines on the other hand are small enough that I can have the chassis of a fully functioning car be light enough to lift by one man.
Nope, the Smart existed for quite a while. Safety standards made cars slightly bigger (e.g. the new Renault Twingo is bigger than the original), but modern American "cars" are massive because that's what marketing has convinced Americans it's what they need. American vehicle manufacturers are pretty terrible at everything, and efficiency standards nudge them that way anyways, so making massive cars with high margins is a good deal for them.
In Europe there are SUVs, but the average car is a VW Golf or a Renault Clio sized. They are pretty decently sized, good visibility, can fit a family of 4, etc. Yeah, you can't haul a 50 ton campervan offroading up to Kilimanjaro, sure, but that's not what 99% of car trips are for.
> I think we will see small, light weight and intrinsically pedestrian safe cars made of tubes and canvas replace the heavy monstrosities we have now.
> that's what marketing has convinced Americans it's what they need
Is there some kind of objective analysis which supports this claim? It seems more likely that people vote with their wallet, and bigger wins out a lot of the time. It's hardly an American manufacturer thing, either, Japanese cars have reliably gotten bigger year after year as well.
> Is there some kind of objective analysis which supports this claim
It's a bit hard to have objective research on marketing and public perceptions. But how else do you explain all the marketing in that regard, and the fact that Americans, on average, even urbanites, keep buying massive pickup trucks, the majority of which are never used for anything more than a commuter vehicle for 1, maybe 2 occupants? Even in rich countries with very outdoorsy people (Switzerland, Nordics, hell, the Netherlands has camping as a national sport, and during summertime they do mass migrations in towed campers and campervans towards the south of France, Italy, Spain), very few people buy trucks.
Marketing, an arms race, manufacturers not offering much else because their marketing works, Americans being very aspirational about what they'll do with their vehicles, idk.
> It's hardly an American manufacturer thing, either, Japanese cars have reliably gotten bigger year after year as well.
Japanese vehicles in the US or everywhere? Cars in general have been getting bigger because of safety features, but American monstrosities with lower visibility than literal tanks are an almost uniquely American phenomenon (slowly invading the rest of the world too).
Most cars on this list, and the ones I see while living in one big European city, and regularly visiting lots of others, are not SUVs. There are plenty of them, but even then it's on the smaller side (e.g. a Renault Captur, not a Escalade 8 wheeled 65ton)
This is a bit out of touch with reality, presumably you don't have a car and seemingly are against any normal sized cars or bigger. A very narrow use case should change the world we all live in?
Tiny cars can't do longer distances (aka higher speeds) safely, physics of car collisions won't let you. They have been around for quite some time and popularity is as it is. If you are hit by 50kmh car as a cyclist (seems like frustration/fear of yours thats behind your words), whether car weights 600kg or 1300kg doesn't make much difference to your resulting state. Personal cars have specced brakes according to their weight so breaking distance is cca same regardless of weight.
Where I live (also went through kids birthday party today back & forth few times) - somebody with ebike would freeze their ass in windchill of fast moving bicycle would be below -10C (situation 5 months of a year), slip on partially frozen road could be fatal, moving around on rather narrow roads that have very little room for anybody but cars (Switzerland here but no high altitude) would be literal playing russian roulette with rest of traffic, triple that with wide cargo ebike. Alas, all parents came to the party in forest hut just above our village in their ICE or hybrid cars.
Tesla got far enough for Musk to have the power he wanted and then gave up innovating and expanding. China will win the race, they have a third of global manufacturing capacity and already sell as many NEVs (battery electric and plug in hybrids) domestically as are sold in the US every year, while continuing to scale.
What, has it been a decade of HN’ers calling for imminent demise of Tesla. Meanwhile I’ve been laughing and buying all the way to the bank. Keep on doubting.
Tesla will report a very bad 2025 and my prediction is that the stock will go up anyway. The valuation is totally detached from the fundamentals. Tesla is a company which is falling behind in technology and there is not much indication that they will br able to fix that. But stock will likely stay high for a long time anyway.
Tariffs might keep Chinese EVs out of the US, but they don't stop US influence from fading everywhere else. South America is voting with their wallets, and 'buy American' doesn't work when the price is double and the tech is the same.
Unless the US intends to sanction every country that prioritizes value over US geopolitics, this battle is already lost.
In South America there's also no anxiety over China becoming a superpower, which may be an argument against Chinese products in the US.
In fact, China has pretty good relations with most South American countries. Likely better than the US. I wouldn't be surprised if many people view China more favorably.
The average person in the west isn't losing sleep over China either. That anxiety is mostly manufactured by the media pushing the narrative that they are an existential threat. Maybe they are, I don't know. But what I do know is that western companies love it when they can sell you overpriced products made in China, but panic the moment chinese companies sell the exact same product at a fair price.
Hmm, I wonder if that might have anything to do with the decades of state sponsored terrorism the US has inflicted on the entire region since the 70s? Maybe it wasn't the best idea to make that "we will coup whoever we want" crashout tweet in between begging for crumbs of latam market share?
I wonder how many clicks Reuters get on "Electric vehicle sales are booming in South America - without Tesla" vs "Electric vehicle sales are booming in South America"
Nop, not fake, being Brazilian I hardly see any Teslas, BYD on the other hand are everywhere. Brazil is not the whole South America, but it is the biggest consumer of EVs so far, also the largest market
was just at the mall down here in bogota colombia. they had a bunchof BYDs on display and honestly, they look much more compelling than what tesla is offerring these days.
I feel like a lot of readers are missing the main point. US and European manufactures do not want to enter this low volume zero margin market. The total sales in Latin America (that includes Mexico and South America is around five million units - that is less than half of what is sold in the US each year. And at a price point of 20K it just does not make sense for American and European manufacturers given that their R&as costs are higher than Asian manufacturers and their North American models are too large and expensive for South America markets.
In addition they know that the US is a captive market as the government will not allow Chinese companies to sell their cars here due to data and security concerns.
There is far more to the logistics and adoption of this outside of "Tesla failed to capture the region" as the article's title eludes to.
Bribery, government corruption, risky loans, undercutting. It is well documented in the case of large infrastructure projects and the same playbook will be revealed in time.
than it's not that different than american brands. In brazil, ford was heavily subsidized by the government for more than a decade. They bribed the politians and received back in subsidies. Their cars are also expensive and their engines known for being a weak and poor version of their US counterparts.
>> "Chinese brands gain legitimacy, challenging Western carmakers"
Musk has been shaking around his political penis at just the same moment as the Chinese manufacturers came of age and are on course, now, to supplant Tesla completely.
And the Tesla shareholders / BoD waived through $1t pay package as a reward.
In Europe didn’t basically all brands take a hit? It was framed as Tesla falling behind but it’s more that Chinese EVs are so cheap, nothing can compete. Even within China the competition is insane, with over 100 car companies fighting to survive and giving out big discounts.
I confused Jae-woo (a Korean name) with Jaecoo. I think I must have mis-spelled the name when googling them after seeing the Dealership near me. However I do remember Daewoo, I don't think there many left on UK roads.
That is about VW AG losing money due to one-off disruption relating to the Trump tariffs plus an issue with one of their minor brands. However, VW AG sales of electric cars in Europe are healthily up.
I'd struggle to see how you got the idea that they were struggling from a sales PoV from that article; it says the opposite. This website has a serious reading comprehension problem.
This is a result of over regulation in the auto industry. I always shake my head at the group of people that wants cheaper prices on goods and services, but propose regulating large companies to death.
China is winning because they don't have to work around pesky labor or IP laws. Then we have people pointing to how much better they are at business and also want all these protections.
Naw. US labor cost per car is about $880 to $1250, from various sources.[1] China EV labor cost is around $550. That difference is less than what heated seats add in price.
While i don't doubt the chinese market is incredibly regulated, this car handle is a terrible trend started by tesla. Many cases were people couldn't open their cars because because it's eletronic was damaged. There is open investigations open in the US about the same thing too.
If frozen, the thing becomes impossible to open too. And the manual handle inside is also known for being easily forgotten in cases of panic.
Not just Tesla, all established brands we know are left behind. I never understood Volkswagen's pivot from 'wait and See's to 'were inversing billions' to 'we were too late, abort'. Largest brands n terms of units, completely left behind in an emerging segment that's already dominating it's largest market (China). So many executives in the industry just didn't see the writing on the wall. I don't what GM was thinking, trying a truck as their first platform for EVs, but it's another indicator. This industry has the worst executives. Just don't see the writing on the wall.
This is what makes the innovator's dilemma repeat itself so many times in so many industries. It's not that the incumbent companies don't see the new technology; it's that they're so entrenched in what they know how to do that pivoting to the new technology is basically a Hail Mary no matter how you do it. Do it too early and your shareholders are going to think you're crazy. Do it too late, and you're risking entering a new market as the chaser with a bad hand of company, employees, and board that don't have any idea of what they're doing.
Exactly, usually the companies know what's coming up, like you said. But, properly shifting gears to play a new game requires that you act like a startup again. It likely requires foregoing the fat margins you were used to. And it likely requires going back to the drawing board and actually learning from the market.
And this is what companies find it hard to do. To be fair, I think that is not so bad a things. Companies should rise and die naturally. A few companies monopolizing markets forever does not seem good.
Kodak knew digital cameras were coming, my first digital camera was a Kodak from the late 90's. I guess it wasn't in their DNA to innovate and compete in this new medium.
I feel like being a publicly traded company prevents pivoting because of the focus on short term results.
Kodak didn't really have the option to compete. Their business was largely film, which just disappeared completely, and even digital cameras got replaced pretty quickly with phones. There was nothing to pivot too for Kodak.
What company does the digital camera sensor inside your phone come from? Why couldn't have that been Kodak?
Kodak had digital cameras but it would 10-15 years before digital sensors would be good enough.
But the film market collapsed in like 5-7 years.
I think it’s less “pivoting is hard” and more “we know what’s right and we’re not going to pivot”.
It’s not hard to have smaller R&D teams work on these problems to keep the innovation going, but most executives are out there prioritizing cost cuttings so that the shareholders get the quarterly dopamine boosts on the earnings calls.
car manufacturers can afford to experiment - it's not like they don't have room in the budget. and they did experiment.
if you don't know GM's history with electric cars: they were positioned to execute a successful transition about thirty years ago, but they simply chose not to.
As someone with a lot of family working in GM corporate, it seems like they were never really confident in it in the first place. So many of them scoffed at the entire idea of electric cars and most still do, even with their own lineup and having driven them themselves. They expected them to fail and never put in the actual effort to support it. It seemed like 80% of corporate were against it completely and without reason because they themselves were doing fine and could afford the gas on their free corporate car and massive discounted family purchased cars. And everyone below them fed their egos by spewing garbage about how well they are all doing with their high margin luxury trimmed cars without considering how they are pricing more and more people out of their entire brand each year.
Although Ford's CEO now gets it, Ford's product line doesn't reflect it yet. Farley has been bringing a few sample BYD cars to the US, for Ford people to drive around and to take apart. Farley dragged his executive team to China to see a BYD plant. They came back scared. But what Ford actually sells is 1) an F-150 converted to electric, 2) a Ford Mustang converted to electric, and 3) a Ford Transit converted to electric. They're all more expensive, and heavier, than their gasoline-powered versions.
BYD shows that electric cars are cheaper if designed properly from the ground up. The problem is that the US no longer makes many cars. Mostly giant trucks and SUVs. Hauling all that mass around requires a huge battery, resulting in 3-ton vehicles.
"Americans only want trucks and SUVs." (I hear people say.)
Cool. Then allow BYD non-trucks, non-SUVs into the U.S. then.
The Japanese back in the 70's showed U.S. automakers that price and mileage (in that decade anyway) were important to Americans. I suspect price is still important.
The statement is likely to be justification propaganda from those companies that have focused on trucks and SUVs. There is still a car market in the U.S., and for that matter, in South America and Canada.
Something else that is not being told in the mainstream media, is the U.S. bias and negative attitude towards South American countries has left the door wide open to China. And China is firmly establishing itself there, where it is unlikely that the U.S. can compete for at least a decade, if not a generation.
Why would they allow it? It would destroy the remaining car industry in the US. Better to at least maintain a car industry, even if it’s inefficient.
A jobs subsidy program that focused on more productive industries would be better than subsidizing an auto industry that never aimed for international competitiveness.
We have exceptionally productive fields in the US tumor are the envy of the world. If we can't be productive in auto manufacturing, devoting a ton of our workforce too it is a misallocation of our limited resources.
If we are going to be subsidizing unprofitable industry fro national security purposes, we need to either 1) ruthlessly cut the least productive manufacturers from access to subsidies, or 2) nationalize it. Any other choices would be very inefficient.
Why is that better?
The historical track record of that kind of thing is terrible. You end up with a bloated, inefficient industry that produces bad products. Britain, pre-EU, did a lot of that. British Steel, British Rail, British Overseas Airways Corporation, British Petroleum, English Electric computers, etc. Then they needed bailouts. This resulted in what's called "lemon socialism" - the state owns all the dud industries.
I wish I could get a BYD Dolphin hatch for ~10k USD. Somehow my 12 year old Prius is worth 9k on KBB and that's insane.
Dolphins don't sell for $10k outside of China. Dolphins in South/Central America are ~$22k. Even if there weren't tariffs on them I wouldn't expect to see them out the door for less than $25k in the US.
Why the 120% price difference between China and South America?
Different government subsidies, different manufacturing costs, different regulatory requirements, and different markets have different market competition.
Think about this concept. It costs you $1 to make a widget. It costs your competitors $1.25 to make a similar widget. They sell theirs for $5. Do you sell yours for $1.50 or $4.75? Obviously, other things could be in play for the market for widgets, but if you could sell all your widgets for $4.75 wouldn't you do that?
If the cheapest car in the US is about $20k and is a complete POS, why would you sell your better car for $10k when you could still sell it for $22k and still sell just about all the ones you build?
Your post is so muddled. The cheapest new EV on the US market is a Nissan Leaf at ~30k MSRP new, but I found a used 2025 model with 1341 miles for $17,899 in a cursory search. Nissan has a dealership in my city so I know it can be serviced here or at worst the next largest city near here while a Chinese brand would be a crapshoot until it spreads to my medium-small city. I can only imagine the stink people will put on Chinese cars, even hybrids and American made EVs get poo-poo'd.
I imagine that a Chinese automaker such as BYD would price itself low, something like an EV at ICE prices, to get a foothold in the American market. I really wish BYD was around here so I could drive one and look at the build quality myself, it's almost like the domestic Automakers and the CIA are putting out hit pieces about the brand.
> The cheapest new EV on the US market is a Nissan Leaf
I said the cheapest car not the cheapest EV. And of that I meant new car. That would be the Nissan Versa, which has an MSRP of $18,385. After TTL, depending on your market you're probably looking at something around $20k out the door.
A lot of this makes sense. But why would South America's consumer market be less competitive than China? If China's low prices are caused by, say, 3 Chinese brands competing with each other, why can't those 3 Chinese brands also compete with each other in South America?
Chinese brands are in a horrible price war ATM in China, with many cars being sold at losses (and tricks to get around government imposed price controls, like selling a new car as used!). In a less competitive market where they have more pricing power, they simply aren’t going to do that. And even if 3 brands have enough resources to go abroad, they left 10+ brands behind that couldn’t (every 3rd or greater tier city has their own brand, so even saying 10 is probably an underestimate, heck you have cities like Liuzhou that aren’t even 3rd tier!).
They will also sell higher end configurations abroad to make it worth their time. They won’t sell the absolute bare bones option that comes with almost no profit (if not a loss).
When BYD makes an affordable clone of the Crown Vic that doesn’t phone home to the PRC, I’ll look at them.
Why the Crown Vic? Even Ford doesn't make them anymore!
I've got a Lightning and I think I like the 'converted to electric' aspect. Everything that fits on a regular ICE F-150 fits on my truck. The interior is the same (okay, some trims have a big screen, but not all do). It would be nice if it had a bit more range, but when I look at the efficiency of an R1T or a CT, I don't see that being purpose-built would automatically be a win for Ford. Pickups are not ever going to be competitive with sedans and CUVs for efficiency.
The problem with the Lightning is mostly that it's a money-loser for Ford.
I've never seen a good number on this. Is it money losing per vehicle, or because of the amortized R&D included in the cost? The problem from my perspective is that it hasn't turned out as popular as they hoped -- truck buyers are a hard to convert bunch of people. Which is too bad, because my Lightning is my favorite of all the pickups I've owned over the years. It's a fantastic truck.
Ford is a bad example because they’ve pretty much abandoned all their non truck and transit van segments for years. Even if EVs weren’t a thing, they do not compete in any of the segments and haven’t for almost a decade. First it was Japanese and German companies eating their lunch, now it’s the Chinese.
Also, F150 lightening is such a failure. There was a recent video of it trying to haul very minimal load and it pretty much drained the battery in less than 100 miles.
> Also, F150 lightening is such a failure. There was a recent video of it trying to haul very minimal load and it pretty much drained the battery in less than 100 miles.
Was that due to something specific with the Lightning, or was it just due to the intrinsic energy requirements of hauling loads? (Or in other words, does an EV even exist that's notably better at hauling loads?)
TBH, those tests are mostly marketing failures. EV trucks aren't really good at hauling trailers over large distances, as the aerodynamics produce a massive impact on range.
Multiple tests have shown this by showing 50% or more range reduction from pulling lightweight, non-aerodynamic loads.
The marketing failure is that the companies have allowed consumers to incorrectly extrapolate from this to thinking that heavy loads in the bed have the same issue. They actually don't as weight is a minimal impact on range.
Unfortunately, every thread about carrying sheetrock, rocks, mulch, etc shows how misinformed the average consumer has become in this space. It has to be a significant impact on sales, given that in the US these are the only heavy loads carried by >50% of the half ton pickups sold here.
> EV trucks aren't really good at hauling trailers over large distances, as the aerodynamics produce a massive impact on range.
Maybe I'm being stupid, but how could that possibly just be a problem for EVs? The aerodynamic physics don't care what's powering the car so the impact on range should be roughly the same.
Or is the problem that even if EV range impact is similar to fossil fuel range impact, the extra time required to recharge vs refuel makes that range impact more, uh, impactful for drivers?
Yep, so many people think hauling weight kills your gas mileage, but it doesn't really have that big of an effect unless you are hauling a massive load through stop and go traffic while in a hurry. The vast majority of people do most of their hauling of things down the highway, not through the middle of cities, and 90% of the losses from hauling load is just wind resistance against the poorly aerodynamic trailer which is a lot while at highway speeds. If someone is traveling down the highway at 70 MPH in their SUV with 1500 lbs in the back hatch, the only extra fuel it takes over the same SUV being empty is a tiny amount of extra friction in the tires that comes out to a fraction of a MPG.
Not to be nitpicky, but that's only really true if you're driving down a perfectly flat, straight highway at a constant speed. Any hills or traffic slowdowns and your car or truck is doing more work the more it weighs.
It’s an intrinsic issue with hauling loads, combined with the relatively low range of F150L.
By comparison the the Chevy Silverado EV gets ~450mi of range unloaded and testing seems to have it able to tow ~250mi of range at 70mph, which seems plenty between stops: https://www.hotcars.com/chevrolet-silverado-ev-towing/
I want an electric drive train with the engine that works like a generator at a fixed speed. Don't think anyone offers something like this.
Some hybrid cars almost work this way. I know at least Honda's hybrids basically do what you're suggesting but at constant highway speeds will directly couple the engine to the drive wheels. They presumably could use electric motors powered by the engine in all driving scenarios, but I believe direct engine drive at highway speeds is more energy efficient.
This is probably why most hybrid systems I'm aware of don't only use electric motors to power the drive wheels. The idea sounds cool and I've also wondered why you can't buy something like that in the US (I think it exists elsewhere), but the math doesn't really work out. Even in terms of engineering complexity, because the engine is only directly driving the wheels at certain speeds, you can get by without a lot of the mechanical drivetrain components like transmissions.
That's the BMW i3 with range extender. It works pretty good for long trips. Probably 95% of my miles are electric though.
I think Dodge is planning a serial hybrid truck called RAM charger.
They exist, but I don't think there's currently any new models for sale in the US. I think they're generally called "series hybrid," or sometimes it's marketed as an electric vehicle with range extender.
I believe the Chevy Volt worked this way - you can see used ones for sale for around $15k.
Probably both. It was a consumer review, so hard to say from an engineering perspective.
Highway towing range hit is largely an aerodynamic drag issue. Any EV truck (or any car really, even gas cars have a big range hit) is going to get a massive ding in its range towing anything increasing it's aero drag even if it's an empty box. It's just with a gas truck you're starting with 300+mi often for a well equipped truck so you lose 100mi of range you're still over 200mi per tank.
But an EV, on a long range road trip you're rarely charging to 100%, you're often going like 5%->80% because the charging speeds fall off a cliff after a certain percentage. So you start off with maybe 300mi, but not really because after the first leg you're only using 75% of it, but now you're also using like 25% more energy because of the massively increased drag. So what was 300mi on a full charge became maybe 150mi on a full charge once you're on that second leg. Coupled with the fact what used to be free energy (heating the cabin with waste engine heat) if you're towing in cold weather you're not even going to get that 150mi.
The Lightning really isn’t meant for towing a horse trailer cross country. It’s meant for hauling a new vanity or a couple sheets of drywall from Home Depot. It does that suburban warrior stuff quite competently.
> Ford is a bad example because they’ve pretty much abandoned all their non truck and transit van segments for years.
Perhaps in the US. Here in the UK you see a lot of Focuses and Fiestas, especially the ST models, and the "ST Line" models, which have ST trim but boring engines.
Quite often you see the latter on their side a surprisingly long way from the tarmac, surrounded by bits of obliterated cattle fence, with a very patient farmer rolling it back onto its wheels with the Manitou to make the recovery guy's day easier.
> a Ford Mustang converted to electric
I agree with your comment, but I'll be a little pedantic for a minute:
As a Charger Daytona owner, I'd love to call the Mach-E a mustang, but it's really just borrowing the brand. Ford has said unequivocally that they'll never make an all-electric muscle car, which is a real shame. The Mach-E is a great car if you're turned off by a Model Y, but you wouldn't choose it over a mustang GT or a charger Daytona or a Camaro.
> Ford has said unequivocally that they'll never make an all-electric muscle car
What’s the thinking here? Pandering to some market segment? It sounds like they are organising the deck chairs in the titanic.
Edit: I tried looking into the comment. It seems he was referring to Mustangs specifically, which is weird as they do make an electric one (assuming you agree it’s a ‘real’ mustang).
I’m confused.
The Mach-E isn't a muscle car. The comment was specifically around the Mustang sedan, which they do not have an electric version of.
Honestly, it's befuddling to me. There's a lot of folks who could get talked into an electric muscle car, they just have to know how to sell it. I own a Charger Daytona and literally every car guy I show it to has interest; I genuinely think Dodge just doesn't know how to market and sell it. I'm 100% confident that the right marketing agency could sell 100k of these, but the cohort of "it'll never be a Mustang" is far louder than the "wow that thing rips" crowd.
It’s not though. Just borrowing the name as they said.
That’s just it though. If the name doesn’t make it a Mustang, what does?
Nothing, thats the problem. The Ship of Theseus can't have all of its parts replaced at the same time in order to still be called the Ship of Theseus.
> a Ford Mustang converted to electric
The Mustang Mach-e isn't like any other Mustang. It just has the Mustang branding.
the mustang mach e is a purpose built EV. not a mustang with a battery back stuck in.
You’re mischaracterizing the Mustang Mach-E which never should have been named that because it has nothing to do with the ICE Mustang at all aside from the horsey badge.
> resulting in 3-ton vehicles
And a surge in road deaths.
The lightning isn’t selling, almost at all.
The small part in me understands that, they are banking on three things 1) oil will be cheap because of EV boom and hence EV dominance will be slow and could take couple of decades 2) electric Energy cost will rise significantly because so much charging and energy infrastructure required. 3) Battery will reach at par with gasoline and matured standardised comodity, that will be the perfect time to enter.
I think #1 will probably play out to a certain extent. Perhaps as an oscillation between low and high as each wave knocks more gas stations out of business and refinery capacity offline. But I have to say, even low prices on gas won't make me go back -- I prefer my EVs in all regards to the ICE equivalents, with the sole exception of marathon (>450 miles per day) road trips, which is not my use case.
I hope #2 won't be the future. It's not as easy to just jack up electric prices because EVs are charging, because they are regulated, and electricity is used for way more than cars (if my napkin math is right, on average people will use around 30% more electricity if they go full electric).
I expect that as a practical matter #3 is here now, it just hasn't filtered down to retail car sales in the US yet.
> with the sole exception of marathon (>450 miles per day) road trips
I've done 4 3000km road trips and intentionally took the EV leaving the ICE vehicle at home. It's a better car, and we need to stop to bathroom anyways, so charging isn't inconvenient. Saving a few hundred dollars in fuel is nice, too.
Long EV trips are possible amd convenient if there are enough chargers along the route. Sadly, this isn't the case on many routes in the US, at least. Europe is doing much better. I have no experience in other places.
Like what route? Everytime I've talked to someone who claimed they couldn't buy an EV because of a certain route, abetterrouteplanner.com showed it was covered.
Different people optimize for different things. I have a 450 mile trip (each way) next weekend. I can do it in 1 full tank of gas, but realistically I’ll stop once to fill up halfway. I don’t plan any other stops. If I had an EV, I’d probably have to stop twice, for 30+ minutes each, extending my already long trip by an hour each way.
1. if you are driving 450 miles you should stop at least twice
2. unless you have an old or low mileage battery you won’t have to stop more than once
3. if you do stop twice (which you should) you should not need more than 15-20 minute stop
Why would you do that when you can easily make that trip in a typical 320 mile range EV with a single 20 minute charge?
Honestly, even my Lightning could do 450 with one stop, and it’s not the poster child for high range. My model 3 would do that no problem and the stop would be half as long.
My back and butt beg me to stop every couple hundred miles anyway, so on a long road trip I plan for a lunch stop. Longer than 450 and I stop for the night or fly. But I don’t love road tripping no matter how big the has tank.
> If I had an EV, I’d probably have to stop twice, for 30+ minutes each
You probably wouldn't for a 450mi trip, so long as you're driving an EV that's even halfway decent for road trips.
For a while maybe, but cheap EVs are being manufactured in Europe as well, and while this could reduce petrol prices, it's also going to reduce the need for petrol stations, and I think makes petrol basically dead even in a cheap-petrol scenario.
A Renault Twingo is going to cost something like 20,000 euros. That's twice the price of a Dacia Sandero, but a Dacia Spring is 16,900. The difference is only 4000, which could easily be a year's petrol.
A modern small and medium-sized car in Europe consumes like 4-6 liters/100 km. Even if one drives 15 thousands km/year (way above average) that gives like 900 liters of gasoline per year or like 1500-1700 euros with typical European prices.
And electricity is not free especially when using fast chargers. So at the end the savings is about 500-1000 euros per year. Which still is a good deal, but explains why people prefer to buy small gasoline cars. I think electric car premium must be below 2 thousand euros plus infrastructure must improve before gasoline car sales in Europe start to collapse.
Ah. I hadn't realised that modern petrol cars had gotten that efficient.
When I had a petrol car it was like at least 12 L/100 km, probably more. I remember 100 km drives (Stockholm-Uppsala and back) costing hundreds of Swedish crowns in petrol.
> When I had a petrol car it was like at least 12 L/100 km, probably more
What was it? That's approximately what my late-90s Range Rover does, although it's converted to run on LPG which is much cheaper and much much much cleaner.
WV seems to do amazingly in Europe so not sure what you are talking about. It is Tesla thaumt seems to be leaving the EV market with no new exciting models and making the European market hate the brand.
https://www.best-selling-cars.com/electric/2025-half-year-eu...
Reuters disagrees
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...
That's related to one relatively minor subsidiary brand (Porsche accounts for about 3% of VW AG's sales), and it's a _weird_ brand for them, in that, whereas in a given size category the relevant SEAT, Skoda, VW, Audi etc are all pretty much the same, Porsches are quite distinct. VW as a whole is fairly committed to electric. Like, that article notes that their European EV sales are good.
That article says nothing about VW EV sales being poor in Europe. In fact it calls VW’s EVs increasingly popular.
The losses seem to be due to a tariff hit in the U.S. and due to Porsche change in strategy to focus more on hybrids and ICEs (0possibky because they’re focusing on EVs through VW?).
Seems to me like they largely agree. VW has issues caused by US tariffs and problems with Porsche but EV sales in Europe are growing and carries the rest of the company.
Let’s not forget the Japanese who decided they didn’t want to compete in EVs because they couldn’t use that platform in some of their heavy machinery so decided to get the Japanese government to push hard on hydrogen, at a time Nissan was making a nice push in EVs, which led to Nissan having to back out of EVs as well.
I thought Toyota is doing quite well in emerging markets? However they skipped a lot of EV craziness and just do cheap-and-reliable ICE cars.
I also never understood why established brands lobbied for EVs, and not against them. They clearly had no edge over Tesla and Chinese brands, why compete on rival's field?
Toyota hasn’t offered pure electric where I am, just hybrids. And they have only just started offering plug in models I can charge.
I’d love a Corolla or Camri EV - I’m not sure what ‘the Corolla of EVs’ is considered to be.
It’s the Model 3, or maybe one of the Hyundai/Kia small EVs.
Dieselgate put VW on the back foot at almost exactly the wrong time in automotive history.
Huh? VW is the largest seller of electric cars in Europe. I'm not sure what makes you think they've given up.
> 'we were too late, abort'
What do you mean, the ID series for the main VW brand have 7 upcoming models over the next two years (4 for the Chinese market, 3 for everywhere).
> all established brands we know are left behind
I wouldn't go that far. The Renault 5 is one of the best selling EVs in Europe, and all the reviews are extremely positive (it's a fun and good looking car overall, and accessible). They have the 4 rolling out, and the small Twingo coming next year. They've also managed to narrow down the time from concept car to production at scale to less than 2 years (which according to the article on the topic I read is very fast).
>I never understood Volkswagen's pivot from 'wait and See's to 'were inversing billions' to 'we were too late, abort'.
How is VW aborting in any way? They do not have a new ICE Platform, they are totally all in on EVs. Whether that will work out is of course another question, but it is bizarre to bring up EV when there is also Stellantis, who do not even have a dedicated EV Platform for their cars.
When I grew up in Germany it always made me proud that 100% of taxis were Mercedes Benz. If a car can withstand the rough demands of taxi service, it has to be good. And even in South America back then German cares were ubiquitous, especially Volkswagen.
When I was in Brazil this spring[*] I rode a lot of Uber and they were 100% BYD - 100%, no exception. It's not that my head hadn't known that German auto was dead but seeing it playing out like this hit hard.
[*] northern hemisphere
BYD recently went live with a highly automated, large scale manufacturing facility in Brazil. The BYD Dolphin Mini sells for ~$22,500, and the manufacturer already has 200 showrooms open across the country.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/11/22/cop-brazil...
https://www.byd.com/us/news-list/First-BYD-Electric-Vehicle-...
They are everywhere. The only limit to adoption is that many people live in buildings where chargers can't easily be installed.
The limit to adoption is non existent or slow public charging infrastructure.
Both limit adoption. Public charging infrastructure would solve the problem of nit being able to charge at home.
You have to consider that South America is the most dangerous continent.
You can't just leave your car charging unattended in a public space. It has to be done at home or somewhere closed (which would make it expensive) or you would have to watch over your car (which would take a lot of your time).
I'm surprised Mercedes was ever price competitive for taxis even in Germany, I mean the average VW would do the job just as well at half the cost.
These days they're both priced like they're selling Ferraris anyway so yeah. The ID Buzz starting at 70k EUR is such a joke.
Mercedes and BMW serves a wider band of value than they do in the USA, where they have purposefully cultivated themselves as a pure luxury brand. For example, the 1 and 2 series from BMW or Mercedes A class will never go the USA, even though I’m sure there is a market for them.
They used to make them with quality construction. Now it's all engineered with plastic bits that will only last for the first 5 years the rich owner will be using it before tossing it out.
I can't wait for BYD to enter the European market with a true minibus like VW's ID Buzz. There is a rumor that the M9 is coming in 2026.
I remember all taxis in Portugal being beige Mercedes in the 80s,when Portugal wasn't well off. I guess their durability is what made them worthwhile.
Mercedes taxis in Europe are not appointed like the cars they sell in North America. They are just normal cars there.
I remember being in a Mercedes in France in the 80's and noticing it had manual crank windows. My dad in the US (even then!) hated added electronics in cars so he went to a Mercedes dealer and they explained that in the US we could only get fully loaded models.
Tesla has no moat
1. Batteries - BYD has them beat 2. Self Driving tech - other players are better 3. Luxury brands already provide the luxury aspect & even better built cars 4. in the US they're being saved by US protectionism. in Europe etc - we already see the chinese brands making inroads for EV sales
I mostly agree on all points, but what self driving tech is better? I've periodically looked at the options, and nothing really seems to compare in North America. Maybe BYD and others have great tech, but stuff like Blue Cruise works hardly anywhere in Canada, and to me, that makes it virtually useless.
He’s probably thinking of robo taxi self driving. So that would be e.g. Waymo.
I don’t think anyone has better self driving for consumers out atm, but you could argue that’s because other companies are not using their customers as beta testers. I’ve seen demos that may indicate Mobileye has tech that’s just as good if not better. But they don’t release it to end users until it’s fully ready.
I don’t think Tesla has any special sauce, and that when the tech is actually ready for unattended full self driving in a consumer car, other car makers will come out with solutions around the same Tesla. One difference is maaaybe Tesla will be able to update old cars (probably with a hardware update). While I think others will only support it on new cars.
Yeah this.
The argument for years has been something like:
> Tesla will solve self-driving and everyone will be left unable to compete. Also, AI is advancing rapidly and will solve all kinds of problems for society.
But apparently it will not solve self-driving for anyone else but Tesla.
I gave up trying to argue with Tesla fans years ago. They are immune to logic which invalidates their priors.
Certainly waymo is better, but you can't buy it. Yet, anyway.
http://comma.ai isn't self-driving, just really good cruise control (better than Blue cruise, imo), but most importantly, you can get it today. (And for less than $8k.)
TBF all I really want is highway driving. I probably even prefer signalling lane changes manually. Comma looks pretty neat.
That’s just Tesla auto pilot and smart cruise control on most new models. It’s definitely nice, but not full self driving.
"I've tried all the options I have here in the country that banned the major players and I don't think any are better."
“I like to be snarky and mean to people on the internet who aren’t as lucky as me to have diverse consumer choices.”
Protectionism on inputs kills manufacturing. Imagine having to pay 15% more for all inputs and trying to compete with someone who doesn't have pay that.
Well, at least domestically you don’t have to compete with someone who doesn’t have to pay that because their product is probably tariffed directly.
Internationally, yes if you manufacture the international product in the home country, but AFAIK in auto at least there are usually satellite factories and have been for some time, and those wouldn’t be subject to home country tariffs would they?
Precisely, you need to set up plants overseas to dodge the input tariffs instead of onshoring manufacturing for export. That causes reductions in manufacturing investment compared to the alternative.
Compared to the alternative where the domestic plants don’t exist at all because they are competing domestically with low cost foreign products?
Not only that, Teslas nowadays look like they belong in a museum - so fucking old and outdated. I own 2014 Tesla S, my neighbour has 2025 Tesla S, same fucking car - literally. My car was THE shit back in the day, lots of broken necks looking at it … now, 12 years later, someone (fewer and fewer) is paying $90k for exactly the same car. Tesla X was great looking - circa 2016… Tesla 3 is like a Kia and Model Y is just 3 that is blown up a bit.
> My car was THE shit back in the day, lots of broken necks looking at it … now, 12 years later, someone (fewer and fewer) is paying $90k for exactly the same car
That's what Porsche also discovered, the hard way.
Tesla also has a big Elon problem in that the blue cities where self-driving Taxis will be most profitable may opt for Waymo or boycott Tesla over politics.
I just value my life enough that Waymo seems to be the better route. Tesla hasn’t shown that they’ve solved the problem while waymo definitely has.
I’m not going to allow “Nazi salutes” to be downgraded to “politics”. It’s still too soon to be a Nazi. Hopefully it will always be.
I live in the US and I would happily buy a Chinese EV if the price was right. However, there is no price for which I will buy a Tesla, ever.
I think the issue is to create an ICE is a very complicated process requiring lots of specialist knowledge, skills and technologies. An EV is just much simpler, comes down to who has the cheapest batteries. Europe and Japan are great at the former, the latter no chance.
Im sure some of it is personal bias from experience with them but I don't think ICE are as complicated as some people think. 90% of the extra shit on them are unnecessary for it to work but what those things are and what they do and why it broke or failed or how important they are is essentially obfuscated from the general public so they seem like overly complicated magic. The vast majority of cars I see do not fail or get trashed due to engine failure from design flaws or anything, most get trashed because people stop caring about them and treat them like trash and don't replace that $15 sensor, others think they can't afford the maintenance because car manufacturers don't give a fuck about having to take 3 hours disassembling other unnecessary shit to replace a 30 cent sensor that they know will eventually need replaced, but the only number the customer seems to look at is the total cost of the mechanic quote. They think because something is a $1,000+ repair that something seriously is worn or old and that the car is on its last legs, instead of the reality of that one part being a huge pain in the ass to replace but it is otherwise a good reliable motor for another 100,000+ miles. And of the cars that do get trashed because they have actual major mechanical problems, the vast majority of the problems have to do with the body work rusting out and/or suspension components needing replaced after being used for 3x their expected lifetime, which an EV is not going to improve in any way.
Like ive seen people junkyard perfectly working and good cars because it is over 150,000 miles and some service guy who is looking for work/money told them they need to do scheduled maintenance some time soon and they thought the car was too old and was junk. And yet very few cars ive seen would not make it over 300,000 miles if they spent even 1/10th the money of their new car for maintenance on their old.
Thought the comment was somewhat helpful. Sparked considering the various anti-patterns in automobile design and searches came back with several others that have been vaguely thought about, just never really identified very clearly for me.
Ok fine, take that as a baseline for "not very complicated". EVs are less complicated, and take less maintenance.
EVs are very complicated cars anyway. They need maintenance in service as well as ICE cars. Yes, not so often you need to change liquids, but service is required. Also good luck with water/rodent damage to 400v parts.
Optimizing costs while producing a safe, reliable, durable vehicle isn't exactly simple and requires an entire supply chain to be in place, not just a single company. Look at how many auto mfgs there are in the world that turn out terrible cars. EVs dramatically lower the parts count which helps but you still a lot of expertise to make a safe, reliable car.
My grandfather was a mechanic and told me how replacing a dashboard light in some models required removing large portions of the engine to access the socket.
Europe and Japan are great at the former, the latter no chance.
Europe and Japan should be totally capable of producing super inexpensive batteries. They just don't, at the moment.
How? By building entirely automated factories, they way they do for medicine production?
I've been riding a German electric motorbike for a couple of years, and before that, German electric mopeds.
I think there is a lot of innovation in the German electric vehicle industry. I am quite excited for BTM, my bikes manufacturer, to design and release new versions of their platform. This model is distinctly German.
Note the Mercedes as taxis in Germany are not the high end luxury car imports we are accustomed to seeing in the US. Mercedes makes a lot of more affordable cars for their domestic market we never see here!
To be fair taxis have unique requirements. Taxis in the UK were like 80% Prius for a long time because they drive very long distances and hybrids are very cost effective for city driving where you're doing a lot of low speed driving and don't have convenient recharging opportunities. But most people aren't in that situation.
Still, I think BYD are kind of killing it.
> But most people aren't in that situation.
Those who commute from the suburbs actually save even more as hybrids achieve their lowest consumption going a steady 50-70km/h.
Of course the same people could just get an EV and charge at home, but in terms of cost-effectiveness hybrids still win in this use case.
Unless you have a really cheap electricity at home (not like in EU) the best price per km has old Prius with LNG fuel. Also reliable, there are tons of them with 500k+ km on the clock.
Over here LPG is the gas of choice and indeed taxi drivers regularly have that installed in their hybrids.
Sadly the German car industry has lost its way in the EV transition and is now vainly trying to get the EU to rollback the sun setting of ICE car sales in 3035.
Meanwhile the Chinese are eating their lunch.
3035? :)
Even 1010 years isn't enough time.
In the UK, for a very long time they were Skoda Octavias.
I know of two ex-taxis that were scrapped at about five or six years old - one was taken off the road because of a deep paint scratch down to bare metal from about half way along the front wing to the rear door, rendering it beyond economic repair - with over half a million miles on the clock each.
Neither had been outside the Greater Glasgow area since they were dropped off on the transporter.
It was announced a few days ago some models of Tesla are coming to Colombia at cheaper prices than BYD and the like and people here seems to be crazy about Tesla now. Time will tell how reliable they are on our poor roads.
And that's one thing about EVs here in general - they are coming with no spare tire but a flat tire repair kit, which it's fine for small issues but may not be enough for the problems said tough roads can give to your tires.
I'm in Medellin Colombia, and frequently see BYD cars on the road. I recently had an Uber which drove a BYD car - I was seriously impressed. For those who don't know, Medellin is extremely hilly, and somewhat of a mountainous bowl. I live pretty high up, and can feel the gasoline-powered taxis seriously strain & struggle. Meanwhile, in the BYD electric vehicle, it ascended the hill so easily. Truly felt effortless.
Recently saw a Tesla setup in the mall - so it does seem like they are kicking off a marketing campaign.
> And that's one thing about EVs here in general - they are coming with no spare tire but a flat tire repair kit
That seems to be the standard for all new cars, both ICE and EV; sometimes a spare is available as a paid option.
Which seems insane. But it is what it is.
Yep. My Lightning is the first vehicle I've had with a spare in a number of years. Even donut spares are getting much less common, not just on EVs.
> It was announced a few days ago some models of Tesla are coming to Colombia at cheaper prices than BYD
How could that be?
At least Renault's low cost models (like the Dacia Spring, sold as Kwid in Latin America) are sold for cheap in various markets, and are competitive to BYD pricing in the EU and Latin America (enough that they're seeing serious growth there). Tesla doesn't have anything close, price wise, so how could they be competing on price with BYD?
Colombians are asking that question too. My guess is that Tesla is selling them at a loss to compete against BYD. They may be sending unsold inventory from the US/Mexico market as well.
Does that mean there's an arbitrage to be made by re-importing them?
Wouldn't import tax make that nonviable?
They're made in the USA.
Are they? Pretty sure they are coming from China.
Do you not pay to reimport the (e.g.) Colombian market cars back into the USA?
Tesla was dead in the water when it became obvious that they couldn't make a sub-$30K car happen. They will still probably do well as a luxury brand, but China is going to fill in the demand for affordable EVs in the rest of the world outside USA/EU.
I don't think we've seen the end game yet.
I have an electric cargo bike. During a kids party yesterday I ran 5 different errands with it while someone with a car managed to get stuck in traffic, not find a parking spot, and miss the whole thing.
The only reason why cars are the size and shape they are is because ICE engines couldn't be made smaller. Electric engines on the other hand are small enough that I can have the chassis of a fully functioning car be light enough to lift by one man.
I think we will see small, light weight and intrinsically pedestrian safe cars made of tubes and canvas replace the heavy monstrosities we have now.
> The only reason why cars are the size and shape they are is because ICE engines couldn't be made smaller. Electric engines on the other hand are small enough that I can have the chassis of a fully functioning car be light enough to lift by one man.
You have seen a motorbikes/mopeds, scooters and micro-cars surely?
An electric bike is essentially a moped which have existed for like 70-80 years now? A small cars have been around since the 1950s.
Cars are the shape they are because normally you want the option of carrying 1-5 people. 5 people is 2 adults and 3 children. BTW cars in the past were much smaller. Compare the size of any car from the 1930-40s in the UK to a modern European car and you will notice it is much smaller they are.
I own three electric motorcycles and respectfully disagree. You can't make tube and canvas that let a passenger survive getting t-boned by a Yukon Denali or an F-250. One high-profile accident with a mother and her child getting peeled off the road with a coal shovel are all it'll take to kill such a form factor forever.
The problem isn't the form factor you're describing, it's that you can't put those on the road with 1000+ horsepower machines that are 50 times heavier. And on top of that, a lot of people just don't want to give up their heated massage seats and connected infotainment and removable third row or whatever crap they pack in minivans these days.
>> The only reason why cars are the size and shape they are is because ICE engines couldn't be made smaller
Is it? Microcars are real, with ICE as well.
Kei cars from Japan is another example.
Small cars like mini cooper and Smart are also out there for decades.
Typical EV is a large car/SUV, because that is what people would like to buy.
This isn't correct. There were ICE mini and micro cars. It's just not popular in some countries like the US or Canada, but wildly popular in some (mainly Asia).
Nowadays there are electric micro cars too, like Citroën Ami. I believe Renault has sth too, and the Chinese brands too. They are cheap, often cheaper than an electric cargo bike!
The Smart for Two existed with an internal combustion engine.
Your first three paragraphs are sound.
But surely the problem with the final paragraph is the transition? Assuming the old style of vehicle remains on the road, then my lightweight one is at risk of being crushed. Only a niche minority would choose that (as a cargo bike owner, I'm also one, but I recognise most are not, with good reason.)
Unless we built a whole separate infrastructure.... We already see a lot of electric scooters using cycle lanes.
Yes. More separated lanes leads to increased usage. We need to do this anyway.
Of course ICEs can be tiny. Look at motorcycles, rollers and motorbikes. The demand for small cars is just not there anymore
Have fun hauling a spouse, three kids, a dog and a Costco load a couple hours up the interstate in February in the Lego Technics car.
> The only reason why cars are the size and shape they are is because ICE engines couldn't be made smaller. Electric engines on the other hand are small enough that I can have the chassis of a fully functioning car be light enough to lift by one man.
Nope, the Smart existed for quite a while. Safety standards made cars slightly bigger (e.g. the new Renault Twingo is bigger than the original), but modern American "cars" are massive because that's what marketing has convinced Americans it's what they need. American vehicle manufacturers are pretty terrible at everything, and efficiency standards nudge them that way anyways, so making massive cars with high margins is a good deal for them.
In Europe there are SUVs, but the average car is a VW Golf or a Renault Clio sized. They are pretty decently sized, good visibility, can fit a family of 4, etc. Yeah, you can't haul a 50 ton campervan offroading up to Kilimanjaro, sure, but that's not what 99% of car trips are for.
> I think we will see small, light weight and intrinsically pedestrian safe cars made of tubes and canvas replace the heavy monstrosities we have now.
Renault Twizy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy ) exists, but doesn't sell all that well (compared to "normal" cars).
The Citroen Ami ( https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_Ami_(2020) ) is pretty popular in certain places (saw a ton of them in Amsterdam and semi-rural areas in France).
> that's what marketing has convinced Americans it's what they need
Is there some kind of objective analysis which supports this claim? It seems more likely that people vote with their wallet, and bigger wins out a lot of the time. It's hardly an American manufacturer thing, either, Japanese cars have reliably gotten bigger year after year as well.
> Is there some kind of objective analysis which supports this claim
It's a bit hard to have objective research on marketing and public perceptions. But how else do you explain all the marketing in that regard, and the fact that Americans, on average, even urbanites, keep buying massive pickup trucks, the majority of which are never used for anything more than a commuter vehicle for 1, maybe 2 occupants? Even in rich countries with very outdoorsy people (Switzerland, Nordics, hell, the Netherlands has camping as a national sport, and during summertime they do mass migrations in towed campers and campervans towards the south of France, Italy, Spain), very few people buy trucks.
Marketing, an arms race, manufacturers not offering much else because their marketing works, Americans being very aspirational about what they'll do with their vehicles, idk.
> It's hardly an American manufacturer thing, either, Japanese cars have reliably gotten bigger year after year as well.
Japanese vehicles in the US or everywhere? Cars in general have been getting bigger because of safety features, but American monstrosities with lower visibility than literal tanks are an almost uniquely American phenomenon (slowly invading the rest of the world too).
>but the average car is a VW Golf or a Renault Clio sized
That hasn't been the case here in a long time. SUVs and crossovers are outselling all other categories.
Where is "here"?
Most cars on this list, and the ones I see while living in one big European city, and regularly visiting lots of others, are not SUVs. There are plenty of them, but even then it's on the smaller side (e.g. a Renault Captur, not a Escalade 8 wheeled 65ton)
https://bestsellingcarsblog.com/2025/11/europe-october-2025-...
>the ones I see while living in one big European city
Except that statistics don't give a damn about what you see in your city.
In 2024 54% of vehicles sold in EU are SUVs.[1] And indications point to 2025 being 57%.
>it's on the smaller side (e.g. a Renault Captur, not a Escalade 8 wheeled 65ton)
Now you're moving the goalposts to what a SUV is.
[1] https://www.jato.com/resources/media-and-press-releases/euro...
They’re called golf carts.
Episode n# 348 of hackers never having heard about motorcycles. There's almost a billion motorcycles in the world currently.
This is a bit out of touch with reality, presumably you don't have a car and seemingly are against any normal sized cars or bigger. A very narrow use case should change the world we all live in?
Tiny cars can't do longer distances (aka higher speeds) safely, physics of car collisions won't let you. They have been around for quite some time and popularity is as it is. If you are hit by 50kmh car as a cyclist (seems like frustration/fear of yours thats behind your words), whether car weights 600kg or 1300kg doesn't make much difference to your resulting state. Personal cars have specced brakes according to their weight so breaking distance is cca same regardless of weight.
Where I live (also went through kids birthday party today back & forth few times) - somebody with ebike would freeze their ass in windchill of fast moving bicycle would be below -10C (situation 5 months of a year), slip on partially frozen road could be fatal, moving around on rather narrow roads that have very little room for anybody but cars (Switzerland here but no high altitude) would be literal playing russian roulette with rest of traffic, triple that with wide cargo ebike. Alas, all parents came to the party in forest hut just above our village in their ICE or hybrid cars.
Tesla got far enough for Musk to have the power he wanted and then gave up innovating and expanding. China will win the race, they have a third of global manufacturing capacity and already sell as many NEVs (battery electric and plug in hybrids) domestically as are sold in the US every year, while continuing to scale.
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-...
What, has it been a decade of HN’ers calling for imminent demise of Tesla. Meanwhile I’ve been laughing and buying all the way to the bank. Keep on doubting.
Tesla will report a very bad 2025 and my prediction is that the stock will go up anyway. The valuation is totally detached from the fundamentals. Tesla is a company which is falling behind in technology and there is not much indication that they will br able to fix that. But stock will likely stay high for a long time anyway.
Assuming they just manufactured vehicles, then this would be the correct take.
Tariffs might keep Chinese EVs out of the US, but they don't stop US influence from fading everywhere else. South America is voting with their wallets, and 'buy American' doesn't work when the price is double and the tech is the same.
Unless the US intends to sanction every country that prioritizes value over US geopolitics, this battle is already lost.
In South America there's also no anxiety over China becoming a superpower, which may be an argument against Chinese products in the US.
In fact, China has pretty good relations with most South American countries. Likely better than the US. I wouldn't be surprised if many people view China more favorably.
The average person in the west isn't losing sleep over China either. That anxiety is mostly manufactured by the media pushing the narrative that they are an existential threat. Maybe they are, I don't know. But what I do know is that western companies love it when they can sell you overpriced products made in China, but panic the moment chinese companies sell the exact same product at a fair price.
Hmm, I wonder if that might have anything to do with the decades of state sponsored terrorism the US has inflicted on the entire region since the 70s? Maybe it wasn't the best idea to make that "we will coup whoever we want" crashout tweet in between begging for crumbs of latam market share?
That won’t stop the US from practicing Monroe Doctrine to limit Chinese influence.
Good luck. China is the most prominent trade partner for some South American companies.
It would be easier to drop the US instead.
Basically same story like with smartphones
I wonder how many clicks Reuters get on "Electric vehicle sales are booming in South America - without Tesla" vs "Electric vehicle sales are booming in South America"
I actually think that the fact that Tesla is not a factor in this growth newsworthy.
Well, as Tesla fans like to remind people, the MY is or has been the most popular model of EV.
So yeah, to see EVs in South America without Tesla is actually newsworthy.
Fake news? Seems like Tesla is doing just fine down there.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/byd-blows-past-rivals-tesla-1...
Nop, not fake, being Brazilian I hardly see any Teslas, BYD on the other hand are everywhere. Brazil is not the whole South America, but it is the biggest consumer of EVs so far, also the largest market
Is 152 out of 11,000 EV sales fine? It seems low.
was just at the mall down here in bogota colombia. they had a bunchof BYDs on display and honestly, they look much more compelling than what tesla is offerring these days.
And it couldn’t have happened to a worse company.
I feel like a lot of readers are missing the main point. US and European manufactures do not want to enter this low volume zero margin market. The total sales in Latin America (that includes Mexico and South America is around five million units - that is less than half of what is sold in the US each year. And at a price point of 20K it just does not make sense for American and European manufacturers given that their R&as costs are higher than Asian manufacturers and their North American models are too large and expensive for South America markets.
In addition they know that the US is a captive market as the government will not allow Chinese companies to sell their cars here due to data and security concerns.
So it does not make sense to chase tiny profits.
Recent Xpeng G6 purchaser: it's amazing.
> Chinese brands
There is far more to the logistics and adoption of this outside of "Tesla failed to capture the region" as the article's title eludes to.
Bribery, government corruption, risky loans, undercutting. It is well documented in the case of large infrastructure projects and the same playbook will be revealed in time.
than it's not that different than american brands. In brazil, ford was heavily subsidized by the government for more than a decade. They bribed the politians and received back in subsidies. Their cars are also expensive and their engines known for being a weak and poor version of their US counterparts.
>> "Chinese brands gain legitimacy, challenging Western carmakers"
Musk has been shaking around his political penis at just the same moment as the Chinese manufacturers came of age and are on course, now, to supplant Tesla completely.
And the Tesla shareholders / BoD waived through $1t pay package as a reward.
Dysfunctional Leadership writ large.
In Europe didn’t basically all brands take a hit? It was framed as Tesla falling behind but it’s more that Chinese EVs are so cheap, nothing can compete. Even within China the competition is insane, with over 100 car companies fighting to survive and giving out big discounts.
No. VW is up 78% and the market in general EV sales is up by 22%. It is actually just mostly Tesla doing poorly.
https://www.best-selling-cars.com/electric/2025-half-year-eu...
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...
What has their losses due to American tariffs have to do with their huge success in EV sales in Europe? Please stay on topic.
It isn't just Chinese EVs there are Korean brands on the road e.g. Jaewoo.
https://jaecoo.co.uk/
I'm in the UK and the only new Fords I see are these huge F250/F350 which make my 4x4 (which is relatively small compared to a modern 4x4) look tiny.
You managed to write the name wrong, Jaecoo not Jaewoo, and it's chinese not korean. On top of that it's a throwaway account.
Pretty sure they confused Daewoo with Jaecoo. But as far as I know Daewoo does not exist anymore.
I confused Jae-woo (a Korean name) with Jaecoo. I think I must have mis-spelled the name when googling them after seeing the Dealership near me. However I do remember Daewoo, I don't think there many left on UK roads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jae-woo
GM bought Daewoo. The factories still exist but what used to be Daewoo are sold under the Chevrolet brand nowadays.
I mixed these brands up. Thanks for the correction.
They (Jaecoo) opened a dealership 20 minutes from where I am.
Volkswagen is doing very well in Europe.
Even reuters disagrees.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...
The article isn't at all about how Volkswagen is doing in Europe.
That is about VW AG losing money due to one-off disruption relating to the Trump tariffs plus an issue with one of their minor brands. However, VW AG sales of electric cars in Europe are healthily up.
I'd struggle to see how you got the idea that they were struggling from a sales PoV from that article; it says the opposite. This website has a serious reading comprehension problem.
This is a result of over regulation in the auto industry. I always shake my head at the group of people that wants cheaper prices on goods and services, but propose regulating large companies to death.
China is winning because they don't have to work around pesky labor or IP laws. Then we have people pointing to how much better they are at business and also want all these protections.
Naw. US labor cost per car is about $880 to $1250, from various sources.[1] China EV labor cost is around $550. That difference is less than what heated seats add in price.
[1] https://www.oliverwyman.com/our-expertise/insights/2025/apr/...
You have no idea how regulated car business in China is... For example china is regulating the "innovative" Tesla style door handles..
https://carnewschina.com/2025/09/24/new-safety-requirements-...
While i don't doubt the chinese market is incredibly regulated, this car handle is a terrible trend started by tesla. Many cases were people couldn't open their cars because because it's eletronic was damaged. There is open investigations open in the US about the same thing too. If frozen, the thing becomes impossible to open too. And the manual handle inside is also known for being easily forgotten in cases of panic.
And in Europe and in Asia. Last time I was in the US, Tesla looked like a scam.
Trivially substitutable goods, at a much lower price, with a now-reduced ethical difference. Not hard to see why.
Ethical difference? This is South America we're talking about. The ethical difference has been working against the US this whole time.