Subject: Re: More BYD sold
He's wrong. People want more EVs, not less

He's not wrong at the moment. EV demand is strong. But supply is stronger--demand at the moment is less than supply, resulting in discounting, falling sales volumes, way more days sitting on the dealer's lot. This sort of things doesn't tend to last all that long. It will change, one way or another, and probably fairly soon. Among other factors, some shakeouts and consolidation among suppliers are probably coming.

Longer term? Within a few years it seems reasonably likely that the demand for lithium batteries will exceed supply at a given price, keeping prices high and volumes capped.

My crazy policy idea of the day:

For someone caring about minimizing passenger vehicle pollution (CO2 and other) in the next 5-10-15 years, the answer is obvious: a massive tax on lithium batteries!
Sound counterintuitive? Consider:
Almost no vehicles go over 60 miles in a typical day. The range anxiety and virtue signalling have created battery hoarders, resulting in too small a fraction of cars without tailpipes. It is not socially responsible this decade to own a car with a 300 mile electric range. A huge tax on the battery capacity over 60 miles, used to subsidize the batteries for cars with (say) 20 kWh capacity or less, would give the best environmental outcome in the medium term. Over that range? Hybrid, of course. There are no particular capacity constraints on engine manufacturing. The subsidies would go only to a class of hybrid car that can't start its engine unless the batteries were 90%+ charged in the prior 48 hours and are now empty.

In the near term there are only so many batteries. Environmentally, it would be better to have five "priority electric" hybrids with 60 mile electric range on the road rather than four diesel cars and one purely electric car with 300 mile range--a range that almost certainly isn't getting used on a median day.

Jim