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- Manlobbi
Personal Finance Topics / Macroeconomic Trends and Risks
No. of Recommendations: 19
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
No. of Recommendations: 1
The head of Toyota got it right a few years ago. The world will turn to hybrids. I do not know why exactly. There are theories, but most people are just driving around town so batteries are not the main reason as claimed.
No. of Recommendations: 7
It's an unfortunate sign that the American EV manufacturer Rivian didn't even make your list.
I bought a gently-used 2022 Rivian pickup a little over a year ago (rural property plus cabin plus two grown sons with houses nearby equals a family need for one pickup). It's overengineered, a pleasure to drive, and thus far trouble-free. And, while it's now being recharged by the solar array out back of the garage, when using residential electrical rates it's significantly cheaper than gas. Only two road trips this far - one 500 miles, the other 800 or so - and Tesla superchargers performed flawlessly en route (costing about the same as premium gas).
It was a calculated risk when I bought it that the company would be around for as long as the truck and I both were.
I have to admit that recent signs are consistent with Rivian being this generation's Hudson - an excellent car that never quite reached critical mass in terms of mass adoption, and faded from view.
They've pinned their hopes on the second generation models due I think next year. But while I'm hopeful, I'm not conspicuously optimistic.
-- sutton
No. of Recommendations: 0
"The world will turn to hybrids. I do not know why exactly."
Residual range fear. China now has a 62 battery mile range requirement on PHEVs sold in China.
No. of Recommendations: 6
The world will turn to hybrids. I do not know why exactly. There are theories, but most people are just driving around town so batteries are not the main reason as claimed.
Not that hard to fathom. Most trips by most people are short-ish trips. But if you're buying your own car, you need it to be able to handle every trip. Which means people get uncomfortable if it will be difficult to take the longest trip (or longest series of trips) that they'll take. But big batteries are expensive; HEV's and PHEV's have smaller batteries, which are cheaper, so they get you a lot of the economic savings of running on electrons for your daily trips without the expense of being able to power your longest trip.
No. of Recommendations: 0
Al,
How do you add up the idea that HEV, PHEV, and EV cause as much CO2 as gasoline-powered cars? I do not see it. I think it is a pure line of....
No. of Recommendations: 4
How do you add up the idea that HEV, PHEV, and EV cause as much CO2 as gasoline-powered cars? I do not see it. I think it is a pure line of....
They don't. Well, at least EV's don't. That's clearly a pure line of elipses.
The others have ICE's in them, so it really comes down to how they are used. Theoretically one could cause as much CO2 as an ICE car. If you have a PHEV and never charge it ever ever ever (to use an unlikely example), it will burn just as much gas as an ICE, so by definition it's the same effect. More, perhaps, because the battery is heavy and reduces fuel economy and generates emissions to build it, it might even burn more.
But as a general matter, that's kind of ridiculous. As a vehicle class, HEV's and PHEV's will generally generate fewer emissions over the course of average use by average users across electricity sources. In a very extreme case - a vehicle that's driven a lot on gas and not electrons, in a state where nearly all electrons come from fossil fuel, in an inefficient vehicle that generates a lot of CO2 to build, you might approach an instance where the CO2 was close. But not as a general matter.
