Republicans have long opposed Democratic-led incentives like the EV tax credit in part because they’re seen as a threat to the oil and gas industry. But in the context of Trump’s trade war with China, the logic of retreating from EVs is harder to square because the Biden-era incentives were, in large part, about China, too, with provisions to incentivize American battery factories and penalties for companies that didn’t build enough in the US.

The US is retreating on EVs just as China, its No. 1 economic rival, is going full steam ahead, cementing its dominance over not only global EV sales but also the supply chains for batteries and critical rare-earth minerals used in their production. The current US administration has yanked the $7,500 tax incentives that helped entice car buyers, freezing funding for charging infrastructure development and eliminating fuel-efficiency targets for automakers.

American carmakers haven’t completely abandoned building EVs, but the enthusiasm has waned as sales are expected to fall off a cliff.

General Motors on Tuesday said its earnings next week would include a $1.6 billion loss related to its pullback on EV production — a “strategic realignment” in response to government policy changes.

Ford has scrapped or delayed some electric models, and its EV division has lost more than $2 billion in the first half of this year, according to the New York Times.

Stellantis, the conglomerate that owns Jeep, Ram Chrysler and Dodge, has also scaled back its EV ambitions in the US market.

Honda recently ended US production of the Acura ZDX electric crossover.

Even Tesla, the American EV pioneer, has a rapidly aging lineup and a CEO who said earlier this year that the company is now more focused on AI and robotics than cars.

Meanwhile, as China moves towards eliminating IC cars and Europe pushes towards EV, Chinese EV makers like BYD and Geely are making a huge push into overseas markets. Those brands may not mean much to Americans because of longstanding trade barriers, but they are popular (and notably affordable) options in markets from East Asia to Europe and South America. Their market entries are a move parallel to the entry of Japanese brands like Datsun (Nissan) and Toyota into the US market during the 1960's. Japanese product had the reputation of being shoddy, both in design and manufacturing. After a while, people realized that there product had better quality control and reliability than the US-built cars they were competing against. Chinese cars are no longer the crash magnets of two decades ago, but are now well-built, attractively and pragmatically designed, including the latest of technology a well as very competitively priced.

While we pride ourselves on competing with China in all things, we have a abandoned the global EV market - as well as any benefit (environmental and otherwise) of converting to personal electric transportation.

Jeff