EV only household with 13 kW of solar and 60kWh of whole home backup! We're good and haven't thought about driving range or gas or energy prices in years.
Canadian Solar Panels (I live in Colorado), Iron Ridge racking, local electrical supply store wiring, EG4 DC String Inverter plus some hired-out install labor to help me get the panels placed - $15,000. EG4 Batteries $8,000. All hardware UL listed. Based King Joseph Robinette Biden and the Democratic Party got me a 30% discount on that via the IRA, so net price was ~$16,000. Payback period of 4-6 years given our electric usage ($3-6,000 per year between our EVs, AC, heat pump, oven, and clothes dryer). I also got the benefit of experiencing the world's lowest observed post-pandemic inflation rate thanks to Joe Biden. Even then the price and payback period makes sense.
Tesla Model Y also had a tax credit, and we picked up a Chevy Bolt EUV for the second EV. Both have been absolutely flawless. We regularly drive across the country in the Tesla and doing so is a completely thoughtless process. EVs just work no matter where you live. I would recommend Mr. Technology Connection's recent video, to all the many doubters in the comments, because you're all just plain wrong even after reading Noah's data. "You are being misled about renewable energy technology" https://youtu.be/KtQ9nt2ZeGM?si=tlMJZ2GC9cnawQiY
The crazy part of all of this is: everything I bought above could be 4-6 times cheaper today (not kidding) if only we dropped the abominably stupid tariffs that we have in the USA. Nuts!
Your post and the comments that follow confirm my mantra: If you own an EV, you ought to install a solar array. if you own a solar system, you bought to buy an EV.
We did that several years ago with similar capacity (17 kW), powering in full our home, garage, workshop, heated/cooled garden shed and battery powered tools of all kinds. 50,000 miles on our Chevy Bolt now at zero cost for running it. Plus, the payback period on our solar system has been nearly halved thanks to climate change (more sunny days and fewer foggy mornings here in Oregon) and the rapid rise of electricity rates (double what was estimated in the payback calculations five years ago).
Want affordability? Move to solar (renting a system if need be) and EVs (leasing if you can't afford to buy).
That's a lot of capacity and power, which is great, and thus it cost a lot of money to build. The problem for many people is that they can't get their investment back or lack the capital. We finally got a used EV because the rebates were expiring but still in force. It bothers me on a daily basis that I don't have solar and a battery bank in my urban home. It's just stupid, but most neighbors don't, either.
This. We put up a system a bit more modest than your own in HI, and estimate a six year ROI. We pay $30/month to maintain a hookup for emergencies...but otherwise pay zero in gas and electricity.
Macroeconomically, Electro beats Petro by almost every metric. But Republican politicians are paid big bucks by their Petro constituents, and are leading us hard into a past that is not only financially hurting themselves and their families, but the rest of the country.
$16,000 for my system. We use $3,000 to $4,000 of electricity each year (easy to do this with 2 EVs, electric oven and dryer, and AC plus heat pump). I will let you finish the math!
I actually would happily argue that it paid for itself day one, given the existing value of my house vs comps in the neighborhood - it's a statistically proven fact that solar materially increases the value of a home. And in my case it increased it more that $16,000.
OK, 60kwh storage, 13 Kw solar array, inverter etc all installed by someone for 16k. I'll let you have a commission if your guy comes and does that for me, and he can start tomorrow.
It was not installed for 16k - that includes the tax credit. I hired out the on-roof install which took 8 hours, about $500 paid to two workers. I did the on the ground install myself, an admittedly overcomplicated install because I wanted whole home backup. Would have been plug and play if I didn't go the whole-home backup route.
You can do what I did, and do zero work, for maybe $5-8,000 more by hiring a master electrician.
I got solar panels put on a few years ago and ended up doing the 'lease' option. There was no upfront cost and the monthly cost is literally one third of what my monthly electricity bills were before. My electricity bill itself has dropped by 80%-90%.
How did you get your solar installed for just over $1 per watt? I thought avg price in US was more like $3/watt.
Same with 60kwh battery for $8k. That's just $133/kwh. I don't know of any US vendor selling a new UL listed battery for less than ~$300-500/kwh all in (Powerwall is over $600 I think).
These prices must be for used gear or for AliExpress or Ebay gear and also a fully DIY install.
No shade, but your cost numbers aren't even close to what a normal person would have to pay for a similar setup.
Definitely zero alibaba/ebay crap. Canadian Solar 400W modules plus Tigo DC optimizers, Iron Ridge racking, EG4 Inverter plus EG4 batteries - high quality and extremely affordable. Don't forget that the net price includes the 30% IRA tax credit.
Bought it myself, installed it by hiring out the solar panel install labor and monitoring the install myself. On the ground, I performed the electrical myself. I pulled the permit and walked the inspection with the inspectors.
The solar and its wiring was extremely easy - went up on a 8 hour day like legos. The on the ground electrical took me 2 full weekends, probably 40 hours total but I did it right and very carefully. It's really so close to a plug and play setup, aside from some oddities in my instance related to the fact I wanted whole home backup. It would have been a plug and play type deal, 8 hours to install the electrical on the ground, instead of 40, if I didn't do that.
Seems like you got a smoking deal on the gear (signature solar?) and thanks to your expertise you probably saved at least $10-20k on labor and middleman costs.
Unfortunately most people would pay something closer to $50-70k for your setup I think.
I agree on your last point, definitely that most people would.
I would say though that for most people in a position to buy a home, what I did is absolutely doable. It's really so close to a plug and play setup, aside from some oddities in my instance related to the fact I wanted whole home backup. It would have been a plug and play type deal if I didn't do that.
You could pay maybe $8,000 more than what I did, to have an electrician come on site in my area and get the work done with you doing zero. I'm in a HCOL State, Colorado, so might be less than 8 grand elsewhere.
idk, I still think you are under-valuing what you accomplished, both in terms of what percent of the population could do it and also how much it'd cost to sub out all the work in most places. A friend called 5 electricians, eventually got 2 quotes after repeat follow ups and nagging, and ended up paying $2500 just to have an EVSE installed 10 feet from his main panel.
I've followed Will Prowse and the DIY solar world for years and while it's really cool and interesting stuff, imo it isn't for weekend warrior DIY types. Sure, some percentage of people can self-teach using the great online resources available, but we're probably talking about less than 5% of homeowners.
Magellan is right - this is not something that one can extrapolate to en masse as most population won't have either the expertise or the capital.
In end it is on total cost basis much more rational to have industrial scale projects as labor, etc cost is spread over more asset spend and economies scale are economies of scale
It's cheaper than a single tesla powerwall. Those cost $10,000 before you install them. Tesla Powerwalls have 1/6th the capacity of my batteries. I'm a little lost on what you mean?
We went with a Powerwall3 because near Hilo they're the cheapest battery carried by the sole reputable solar installer in the area. My cousin and a few other friends had older, smaller batteries that they said were constantly at risk of being stolen here in rural Hawaii. They all had these crude rebar cages built on pads inside small sheds to hold their batteries. Crazy.
The PW3 weighs something like 330 lbs, and can be bolted to a concrete pad.
There's something uniquely American about having the solution sitting right there and actively choosing not to use it.
The price volatility chart says it all. One line bounces around like a heart monitor, the other one barely moves. And we picked the heart monitor. I say this as someone who drives a gas car because the only real EV option for a while was Tesla, and I don't want a Tesla.
What does it actually take to get people to switch when the alternatives still feel limited?
If Jesus returned tomorrow on clouds of glory, and called to the multitudes to buy EV's or hybrid plugins, the needle would definitely move.
When Elon donated $300 million and put Trump and the GOP over the top in '24, it seems he was hoping for just such an opening. To sell Tesla's to the untapped MAGA market. But irrational hostility to Green tech is such a deep part of the conservative mindset, it'd take a war that closes the Straits of Hormuz for an extended period to make a mark. Oh, wait...
Feeding the poor. Looking after the less fortunate. Welcoming the Stranger. Turning the other cheek to forgive transgressions. MAGA Christian Nationalism proudly does the opposite...
Ken Wilbur has written extensively on the conflict between "Churchianity" and Christianity. The former being low-brow human impulses like greed and hate dressed up as religiousity. Another way of saying church leadership follow Satan, not Jesus. Repent, oh ye sinners!
The neighborhoods where I see this are low to mid price inside the city of Seattle. I guess they aren't stolen too much because they have been doing it a long time. My niece has been charging her car this way for four years or so. She hasn't mentioned stolen cords.
She just lays her cord on the sidewalk, others I know lay a rubber doormat over the cable, that seems better.
Lots of totally justified criticism of Seattle for high house prices and homelessness, but at least in the neighborhoods I frequent people aren't fussy. They don't mind a charging cord over the sidewalk.
Yeah, I live in an older apartment complex, so I wouldn't have access to overnight chargers even if I had an EV.
If I were in the market for a vehicle to replace my current one, it would probably be a plug-in hybrid. Of course, by the time that I am in that market, the infrastructure situation may have changed.
Same there. My options are paying a bit more during once-a-week fill-up, or convincing condo trust to allow EV charger installation and then paying for this installation. It will take quite a price shock to make the latter option preferable.
What’s a $7500 handout divided by say 100,000 miles, on a per mile basis?
And that doesn’t include the electricity subsidy some states offer EV owners or the handouts given to the Chinese battery companies.
As a tax payer, I feel better off that the subsidies have been scaled back. Paying rich people to buy cars is insane. If the car is good and the tech is good people will buy it. Used Teslas are very cheap in Elon-hating blue states and most used EVs are pretty cheap everywhere. People should go buy them
The battery companies are chinese because the usa allowed A123 to fail, the original developer of the LFP battery chemistry that China is winning with. If the US had chosen to subsidize early demand then, pushing the industry along the industrial learning curve, america would be in a far better industrial position now.
Exactly! We were practicing positive industrial policy, just like we did in the early days of the aviation industry, the automotive industry (Eisenhower Interstate road construction), and the home building industry, with cheap mortgages funded by GSEs Freddie and Fannie.
There are schemes to give the rebates to people who can prove they’re high mileage drivers. This is a more demographically representative group than the typical new EV buyer.
We tried carbon taxes in the US. Look up the 2009 ACESA bill, which passed the House and got 50+ votes in the Senate but died due to the filibuster and unprecedented fossil fuel lobbying. This was the moment that carbon taxation was taken off the table in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Clean_Energy_and_Security_Act
I’m pointing this out not to win Internet points, but because 2009 was genuinely a long time ago and many people on the Internet don’t remember the saga. They think that all these subsidy schemes were the first choice, and criticize them on the grounds of being less efficient than carbon taxation. But oh boy, that’s not how things went down. Pro-climate groups (and politicians) tried the economically optimal routes first — and found them barred. Everything we do today is built around the philosophy of “what’s the most efficient thing we can do, given that carbon taxation is politically infeasible due to fossil fuel lobbying.” That these less-efficient policies still led to the global success of EV, battery and renewable tech is a testament to how beneficial these technologies are, and the folks that engineered the subsidy regimes that produced them.
You think the existence of carbon taxes (as with gasoline taxes) would cause pols to hesitate in coming up with new schemes to provide handouts to donors and activists? Too bad we can’t fuel the nation on gullibility.
Oh, I was posting just on the off chance you were discussing carbon taxes based on a serious policy/economics interest. But I guess you just have political feelings you wanted to share.
Time for some scary looking dude doing a channel on long deer huntin' trips, deep into the sticks, in an EV pick-up with a very long range. Then replenishing back at the ranch while the meat's in the cooler. This may not be far off or already possible.
Those were likely the sorts of sugar-plums dancing around in Elon's head when he was ponying up $300 million to put the GOP in power in '24. But crush a man's dreams at your peril. When all US taxis are Robo Teslas in a few years, Elon will have his revenge!
Smug AND angry at the same time? Sounds like an impressive feat! 😂
"Most Americas cannot afford to buy new cars." <-- When we talk about shares of new vehicle sales, we're only talking about people who CAN afford to buy new cars.
"You are preaching in an echo chamber to a narrow audience." <-- Then help me grow my audience by 10 million!
"Being an EV owner is a personal consumer market decision, not a badge of honor." <-- That's no excuse for spreading nonsense and FUD about a technology for political reasons.
I don’t know what FUD is. I think people’s actual car buying preferences, limited by there constraints, are expressed by what they buy rather than their politics.
Americans can easily afford to purchase EVs at the same rate as other countries. The difference is cultural, and (like healthcare) the US culture around EVs is one of ignorant self-harm.
Is any of that different in Pakistan or Thailand? Are people in those countries so much richer than Americans that they are buying more new cars than Americans?
Your arguments fall over when looking at other countries. Used cars are cheaper in other countries too. And most people in those other countries aren’t as wealthy as Americans.
You guys seem allergic to doing any basic research involving numbers. Or maybe you are not numerically inclined. Which is fine. Lots of people have trouble with ratios and percentages and proportionality and still live perfectly good lives.
You are clearly missing cause and effect. Used EVs are not selling because people are not buying them. The resale market is there. The prices actually drop quicker than gas guzzlers.
You don't know what you're talking about. EVs share in European countries (except a few tiny very rich ones in which huge subsidies were given) is small-to-abysmal as well.
Interesting how you accuse others of being ignorant.
The chart is real but it doesn't tell the whole story, since PHEVs are included there, and they make more than 1/3 of so-called "EV" sales. PHEVs are far from not needing fuel, in fact there are a lot of studies showing that in the real-world they often consume more than full-hybrid cars due to how users end up using them.
It is also misleading in some sense because the US, despite a population of around 350 millions compared to Europe's 450 millions (more or less), in recent years buys far more cars each year than Europeans, and they have a country that is just huge compared to Europe, in which the commutes and trips usually take much longer.
In terms of pure numbers you have about 1.88M BEVs in EU for 2025 and 1.02M PHEVs, while for the US the number about 1.25M BEVs and 0.27M PHEVs.
If you consider the population numbers, the numbers are very similar, with the difference being that there are much less PHEVs due to not making very much sense in the US: on average, excluded very recent high-end PHEVs, you can make 50-70 km with full battery, while many commutes can be longer than that. Here in Europe a commute of 70km is extremely less common.
The share doesn't tell the full story because 1) Americans buy much more cars due to how large the US and how sparse some areas are, 2) being a more car-centric country.
There's also another factor that inflates a lot the share of BEVs. There was a gigantic tank in car sales in Europe, from like 15-16 million in 2017 to 10.5 millions in 2025, due to economic problems, slow growth and inflation.
Almost all those cars that are not sold anymore are ICE cars.
And this is not for environmental reasons, is due to not being able to afford them.
That’s a lot of handwaving to disguise the statistics. If Europeans buy fewer cars in general and yet the share of EVs being bought is higher then the chart in the post still stands. It’s also higher in China and other Asian countries. More importantly the trend is heading towards EV dominance.
Handwaving is dismiss all the other data points I brought. It's not that 25% of market share is because people replaced a ton of ICE car purchases, it's because the purchase of cars plummeted while the share of EVs started from about 0% a few years ago. If Europeans bought at the same trend as pre-covid/inflation/whatever, we would see a market share similar to the US.
Everyone is buying a lot of used cars here (don't have data but wouldn't be surprised to see a big increase in purchase price for used cars).
China too is not a good case in point. The cars/population ratio is a fraction of that of Europe and US, and in many places you're basically forced to buy an EV because buying an ICE car is prohibitive, or just unallowed.
Germany and France are the two largest economies in the European Union, together accounting for roughly 40% of the total EU GDP.
In 2025, around 20% of passenger vehicles sold in that 40% were BEVs.
The German subsidy program provided an unintentional experiment to determine how influential subsidies were in supporting the BEV market: when subsidies were paused in 2024, there was a 27% decline in BEV sales, so it’s reasonable to conclude that, absent subsidies, new German EV sales in 2025 would still have been around 15% of the new car market.
I'm through doing your research for you - you are going to see what you want to see - but what you are seeing is just not what is actully happening.
If you really did some research on the matter you would also find out that car sales in Germany and France (like in the rest of Europe too) absolutely tanked compared to before covid without bouncing back, or marginally bouncing back, (something that hasn't happened in the US), at the same time as EVs were given huge subsidies.
So yeah, the higher market share is not due to germans/French understanding how amazing EVs are, it's more like poor people that cannot afford to buy new cars anymore at the same time EVs were starting to being sold en mass and given huge subsidies.
The Netherlands has a population of 18 million, and Belgium has 12 million, which would make the #5 and #6 as US states, in the top 1/3 of countries in the world.
They're still very small compared to Germany or France or Italy. And of course are irrelevant when comparing it with something like the US. They're tiny-to-small (Norway too here for example) very rich countries that does not make sense to compare to the US or other larger European countries in general.
Smug/angry is a subjective viewer opinion, so, fine. Like for me: I'd say that your comment comes across as smug and angry, but only because I've spent enough time in the corporate world to know that an email structured like your post, would send off warning alarm bells that "this person is irrationally angry at me and wants to threaten me personally." But regardless, ill-informed makes no sense. Isn't a big part of what Noah's talking about, that gas cars will be unaffordable in a crisis scenario like we are facing today?
A larger part of what he's arguing for, is a much larger support for EVs among American consumers, and wider development and infrastructure for EVs. It feels like you're intentionally just arguing against the title rather than the content?
EVs are a small part of used car sales because they're a small part of new car sales in the US! This is the problem that Noah is concerned about.
The failure to acknowledge that most car sales are used and that most Americans c cannot afford new cars is a failure to step outside the bubble.
And the failure to account for consumer preferences, even if they are not your preferences or the preferences that you wish consumers had, is a failure of economics.
This post struck me as the type of thinking that continues to give MAGA a political life.
Culture was implicit in not recognizing that only a small proportion of Americans can afford to buy new cars. It’s that type of cultural ignorance that gives coastal elites a bad name. I’m a coastal elite so I can say that.
And we had just passed and begun to implement excellent legislation designed to boost adoption of EVs, solar, more efficient appliances, and batteries, that Trump and Co decided to overturn.
There's something funny about so-called urbanism experts that only want to walk and/or take transit that have been auto-proclamated "car experts" after a brief 30-min conversation with their friend in San Francisco who invested 150k in a battery company (or whatever).
There are tens of millions of people in western countries (not only in US) where EVs cost a good 5/10k more of equivalente ICE cars (and often these basic EVs have ridiculously slow charging times and tiny batteries), and that's the first biggest problem, but most importantly, you just don't have a place where to charge them, here in Europe the majority of people park on the street because they don't have a box making the purchase basically impossible.
Noah renegaded a lot of progressive bs he said in the past and even denounced the crazy smugness of progs in a lot of cases, yet he still remains smug and condescending in this particular case for no reason at all. He really thinks he's a huge expert of the car world now because he discovered that electric engines are more efficient than combustion engines lol. The same with solar panels.
Please stop behaving like this on this topic.
p.s. EV sales tanked basically everywhere in the world, including in china, so it's not that everyone in the world didn't understand how magnificent EVs are and you and a bunch of guys on twitter have to lecture everybody.
I have no idea why you're saying EV sales have tanked. In China, you have 2.2M sold in the first 2 months of 2026, while in 2025 they set records at the time with with over 5M EVs sold. In Norway, 2025 had a record 95.9% of all new car sales being electric.
Back in the aughts, I had a hybrid and commuted 50+ miles a day. I'm retired now and drive about 10 miles per week as a baseline, with perhaps another 1500 miles of longer trips, for a total of 2000 miles per year. We'd buy an electric, but we have a perfectly serviceable 4 year old Subaru and burn an average of < 2 gallons per week, so it's hard to justify a new car at all.
The sales are down 20-40% in china YoY in china so far, you can find the data by searching "China Feb NEV sales drop 32% as broader auto market weakens, CPCA data shows" from cnevpost. They're even lower than in 2024 in some cases or about the same.
Norway is the exact kind of example when I said "except a few tiny very rich ones in which huge subsidies were given", in the comment above.
If you have the means to buy an EV and maintain it, in a way that is not less convenient for you than a hybrid-ICE car, then good for you, if I could I would buy one as well, the problem is that I, and this is true for a huge share of Europeans as well (just to make clear that this is not a problem limited to Americans), do not have the means to do the switch. Namely, the EVs I could afford to buy are terrible (small cars with small batteries and painfully slow charging times), and I would spend more to maintain it since re-charging it at public chargers means spending like 2-3x what I would spend by charging it at home, likely spending more per mile than a combustion car.
If I could spend 50-60k on a car and if I had a single home with solar panels with a 7k charger at the wall, then I would switch too, but this is not the case.
If you google "month by month ev sales in china" you'll see that February was a one off due to holidays and tax changes. March sales are expected to double February's.
Anyway, this is a silly argument. EVs will clearly become dominant in non-protected markets: they're already more reliable and cheaper to operate. They are improving in range as battery technology improves. And we're still pretty early on in the technology curve for magnets, batteries, and everything else that goes into an EV.
Also, you don't need solar panels to charge an EV at home -- a 220V plug will do. And the IONIQ 5 is $36K list price, not $50-60K. There are decent options available for lots of people, even if they don't work for you.
The US can set tariffs to keep better cars out, and subsidize oil and coal production, but eventually cheaper EVs from outside the US will arrive here, and when that happens, unfortunately, our auto makers will probably get destroyed.
No because January was much lower YoY too. The main reason is a cut in subsidies in China.
"Anyway, this is a silly argument. EVs will clearly become dominant in non-protected markets: they're already more reliable and cheaper to operate.".
This is patently untrue. It can be true in some cases, it's not in many others. Right now, march 26, the cheapest ones in my country (that are not micro-cars) are for EVs the dacia spring and Citroen e-C3. The range is 225 km for the spring and around 300 for the e-C3. In US standards, it's about 10-15% less IIRC. These ranges are ridicolous if that's the only car you purchase. The second huge problem is charging times. For the spring is max 7 kw of charging power (so it takes hours), for the eC3 is 100kw but they say 20-80% is 30 mins. 60% of real-world 250-300km is not great at all.
The price is 19.700 euros for the spring and 20.490 for the e-C3.
In the meantime you can find real cars (not microcars) for around 14k new, like the dacia Sandero or the fiat Panda.
No range problems, no huge charging waiting times and so on.
"Also, you don't need solar panels to charge an EV at home -- a 220V plug will do."
Man, I don't know how to tell you this, but again, yes, maybe in America there are hundreds of millions of people with a box and parking outside the house, but here the vast majority of people live in dense apartments of like 5-10 stories, and only a fraction of those have a box, and even fewer a box in which electricity arrives.
Electricity here is also fairly expensive. Even if you don't have panels, maybe you would still save, the problem is that as soon as you charge at public chargers, it starts to not make sense anymore.
So they cost more/much more and the performance for base models is a shit. Also, a ton of people just can't charge at home.
"And the IONIQ 5 is $36K list price, not $50-60K.". Here the base model is almost 45k euros, that is almost 52k US dollars.
Also, I wouldn't buy that car as my sole car even if I had the money.
"The US can set tariffs to keep better cars out, and subsidize oil and coal production". Good EVs are already there (see the Korean brands), it's just that EVs, maybe, don't work for everyone.
Well, I apologize for my US centric response. Certainly here in Pittsburgh, arranging for charging at home isn't a big deal. Many apartments have chargers, and adding one to your home is straightforward, even if you don't have a garage. Walking around my neighborhood, I see lots of charging cables to cars parked on the street.
I still think that EVs will be more reliable, if they aren't already. Fundamentally, maintaining an electric motor is just a lot simpler than maintaining an engine that needs to operate many controlled gas vapor explosions per second, and then transform that energy into rotational energy.
As for China, all I know is what Google is reporting -- that March is expected to bring in 900K cars in EV sales. Given the price competition in China I keep hearing about, I'd be surprised if EV sales volumes go into reverse there, but I certainly bring no expertise to this area.
Cars are far more reliable than they were 20 years ago, so replacing an older car has become more of a luxury than a necessity. My old rule was 3 car repairs in a few months, meant it was time to get a new (newer) one. My Model 3 has had zero maintenance. In the US, 79.5% of Americans owned a car; the UK and Germany aren't too far behind. If you subtract out kids, and adults who can't drive due to age or disability, folks who live in NYC who don't want to, the number is over 90%.
I do agree that if you don't own your home and can't add solar, the case for buying and EV is far less compelling.
EV sales have grown 30% yoy in Europe, surpassing petrol in Dec 25. Because of Chinese competition and Korean imports EVs are dropping in price, battery technology is growing year on year. So not much going for you there, fact wise.
The fact that you mentioned “progressive” in the argument shows I think why you believe what you believe. Particularly in the US, and people tuned into American cultures wars, the whole EV vs petrol debate is a culture war, not a debate ok facts.
I’m not progressive, I’m driving an EV. I do it to save money.
There are still 15 million new vehicles sold in the US every year. At that rate there could be an EV for every US household within 8 years. Now of course we'd have to take into account that some of those are utility vehicles, a whole bunch are vanity pick-up trucks that will never see a load heavier than a week's worth of groceries, etc. but even if we'd only consider suburb-SUVs and other 'ordinary' cars that's still millions of new cars each year, which all go for prices similar to what buys you a decent electrical car. You can add to that the millions of 2nd hand cars that still sell for 30-50k (or more), and you'd have plenty of additional EV buying power. Money is not the limiting factor here.
As a former EV owner here in. California, it’s not quite so simple Noah. Full solar and battery here at home, but this state can barely sustain its current electricity demand. And millions of people don’t have access to at-home chargers in their garages and/or driveways (if they have one). Are you honestly suggesting we could just flip overnight to all-EV? I don’t think so. Bur should we be striving to be less reliant on fossil fuels? Yes, and had we focused on hybrids rather than just BEVs, we d be so much better off for it.
But it’s not really a national security issue. This country is the new Saudi Arabia. Our oil reserves are staggering, and we produce more oil than anyone. So the national security trope is a little thin. But just like the manner in which we’ve shot ourselves in the foot over EVs, we’ve also had stupid oil production policies. Time to be smart about both.
No, of course not. It was rhetorical, and why I wrote “I don’t think so.” But the notion that we could have had enough EVs by now to avoid some fuel sticker shock—even with all the dumba$& public policy—is almost as fanciful.
He’s saying a lot more individuals could have avoided fuel sticker shock, even if no set of policies would have gotten 100% of individuals to avoid it.
Once the EV penetration reaches a tipping point where we see gasoline demand start falling the USA will lose market share pretty quickly - Fracking ain’t easy or cheap. Our actions in Venezuela and the Middle East are reflective of this long term reality. If you are going to stay on oil it better be cheap.
Right. When I owned my EV, I honestly thought for a while we had hit that tipping/saturation point. And there were a fair number of articles published asserting we had or were about to hit it. But it’s a complicated thing trying to deplatform entire industries and introduce new ones. I still think we got it wrong by not encouraging and policy-incentivizing hybrids. Your *average* driver rarely drives more than a few miles a day. That load could have shifted quickly to PHEVs. They’re easier to charge everywhere and don’t take nearly as long. And on the highway, range anxiety isn’t an issue because the fuel infrastructure is there. PHEVs would/could/should have made the platform transition so much smoother. And PHEV technology was much readier to fill that gap than BEV and infrastructure. Wholesale adoption, or even just 3x more than BEVs could have achieved significant reductions in gasoline use.
I loved my EV. Home solar/battery made home charging nearly free. And for the first three years, charging at Electrify America was free. I did two cross-continent trips in that car. It was a lot of fun, but it was also stressful. I would never (not yet anyway) put my wife or my daughters in a BEV alone for an extended trip. Not convenient or safe. But a PHEV is a different story.
P.S. On fracking, I differ a bit. We’ve proven it can be done reliably at a market-sustaining price; easy and cheap are no longer relevant negative criteria.
Noah: maybe you're right about EV's - but let the market handle it; I cannot stand the Govt telling me what to drive, eat, live etc. If EV's are so fantastic and they are cheaper to operate, then people will buy them and we do not need the govt involved. It is climate activists/extremists that have made EV's unpopular.
"So you want the government telling you what to do"
In general no.
But when there are national security issues, sometimes other considerations are more important.
That's why in general my position is we should have free trade with other countries willing to do free trade with us. For example, I would support free trade agreements with Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia etc etc.
China, not so much. I think we should be trying to decouple from China as much as possible.
But there are security issues with needing domestic EV production - as seen in Ukraine drones are a huge part of war now. They in large part rely on batteries. The goal of the subsidies was to ensure the US had the manufacturing capability to switch those cells from EVs to drones if the need arose.
Thoughts on carbon taxes? The reality of climate change means we need them. The subsidies for renewable tech are just arguably a different form of a carbon tax, after all.
A national carbon tax would be self inflicted pain, just like tariffs. It would raise prices for gas and oil domestically, but since the market is global the carbon will just be emitted by the countries that use the increase in supply from our reduction. A global carbon tax is what we are getting right now from this mindless war, and we are seeing how painful and unpopular reduction in fossil fuel supplies actually is.
Trump2 has already been pushing anti-EV propaganda; as well illegally clawing back IRA disbursements for Green energy projects. The BBB has increased *subsidies* for Petro. Because Petro loses bad to Electro in the free market.
Anti-EV is now a MAGA honor badge, and will part of the Culture Wars until or unless the price of oil surges above $200/barrel, due to something like a war that closes of the Straits of Hormuz. Oh, wait...
How on earth is the USG telling you any of that? A subsidy for EVs is hardly a gun to your head forcing you to buy one. Government doesn't prevent you from buying whatever you want to for food, unless you're desperate to get food poisoning (and even then, you have options).
Well, a couple of things: first of all the government of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, tried to stop people from buying large sodas. I’m certainly not defending large sodas, but there you have the government trying to tell us what to consume. Secondly, the metaphorical gun to my head is EV subsidies, which are my taxes being used to help someone else buy a car and the MPG requirements for ICE vehicles. Again, let the market decide.
Seriously? Total EV subsidies in 2024 were $10B, out of a budget of $7,010 billion, or 0.014%. I'm sure I wouldn't have to look very hard to find more expensive things I find more offensive in the budget. This isn't some libertarian paradise -- we elect representatives who make judgements about what's most important useful to spend our tax money on.
As for Bloomberg, surely you jest. He got his board of health to ban large sodas in NYC, and a judge promptly tossed the order out for being arbitrary and capricious. I'm not sure it was ever enforced. At worst, in the alternative universe where it actually became law, you'd have had to buy two smaller sodas.
We were in Singapore for a week last year. The Chinese EVs were more comfortable than expected, but felt exceptionally light. The car doors felt akin to cabinet doors in a first apartment, so light, they seemed hollow.
While that didn't cause concern on a tiny island, where traffic never moved above 30 mph, the notion the same cars would ever pass US auto safety standards or people would be safe on a 6 lane US freeway with traffic moving at 75 mph, seems very unlikely.
If people want to purchase EVs, they should, but without subsidy. Handing $7500 checks to families earning 3X US median family income, when they purchase an $80K luxury EV, was simply welfare for the wealthy.
Let the market decide. No need for handouts to buy or make an EV,
They make sense in urban areas. Singapore in 100 pct urban, Norway 84 pct. There are only about 14 US states that are as urbanized as Norway.
Of course, nobody in urban areas should own an EV in 20 years. Ride shares, jitneys and self driving taxis will be the norm. Don’t need to waste money owning an overpriced toy whether ICE or EV to signal status, let alone worry about parking, charging or fueling it. Convenience will be at hand.
If people still gravitate to cars as a luxury possession for show, they could be RVs or sports cars or ICE vehicles for long trips, while using self driving vehicles to get around town.
Since China restricts the ability of some of the most successful US tech companies to operate in China, no- I don’t want free trade with China, but that has nothing to do with EVs.
If China were to open its markets and reduce its subsidies then absolutely the US market should be lousy with Chinese EVs.
What would be silly would be the Biden policy of spending billions subsidizing Chinese battery plants and EV manufacturing generally in the US.
The majority of the battery tech/IP and battery parts in IRA-subsidized EV and battery factories came from China.
Biden was happy to subsidize the Chinese so the US would get some low skill/high pay unionized manufacturing assembly jobs (with union donations going to Biden).
BMW assembles cars in the US (due to Tariffs)….with German parts and IP, for decades, but that hasn’t taught the US how to make a BMW, as much as Trump and Biden want assembly jobs of other people’s tech.
Maybe basic research into next Gen battery tech and sponsoring materials science engineering programs would have been a better use of those EV subsidy funds?
> Maybe basic research into next Gen battery tech and sponsoring materials science engineering programs would have been a better use of those EV subsidy funds?
The market has already decided. Electro is kicking Petro's hairy ass. Which is why the GOP is using the power of the federal government to block renewable energy projects, block permits, increased Petro subsidies--to slow or even stop growth of electrification. It's like a form of Stalinism, skewing the free markets to subsidize their beloved Petro.
Maybe more than half. And lots of rich people there eager to engage in social signaling. Certainly a big enough market for someone to address without handouts and government coercion, no?
If I were going to force Chinese batteries on Americans I would have used those earths for grid storage rather than some rich guys second car.
, but progressives have always had a hate for ICE and dreams of electric cars so we base policy on misconceived notions rather than sense
> but progressives have always had a hate for ICE and dreams of electric cars
That kind of rhetoric signals the doom of the US Empire. Good luck with these ICE drones you are all building.
> If I were going to force Chinese batteries on Americans I would have used those earths for grid storage rather than some rich guys second car.
If the US was going to force next generation battery on Americans it should be subsidising that technology and the car technology that could be the initial consumers.
Investing in and subsidising technology is something the US was great at, it’s why we have the Internet.
Rebates might not make sense now with lower battery costs, but they made sense earlier as a means to drive down costs. Look up "Swanson's law" for an example. Cost reduction via industrial learning curves is correlated with total volume delivered, not just time or scale. That means boosting early demand can shave years off scaling up. That saved billions of tonnes of emissions, in a way that isn't immediately obvious because it occurs years later through indirect effects.
And due to how those industrial learning curves work, creating a vehicle battery market greatly accelerated the cost reductions that make grid storage possible now. The vehicle market was more tolerant of the early high cost per kwh. EV promotion can be seen as an industrial strategy to lower battery costs with multiple downstream benefits.
As to "coercion", I'm sorry but that framing is ridiculous. It wasn't "coercion" when leaded gasoline was phased out, and it won't be "coercion" when gasoline is phased out. There is no right to burn fuel in vehicles.
No coercion? Ever heard of net zero and all of the hare brained regulatory regimes that arose from that? Still happening outside the US.
Tesla exists mostly because of CAFE, which forces car companies to buy EV credits. For years these payments represented a good portion of its revenues.
The entire renewables policy was based upon regulatory coercion and handouts. That doesn’t mean (on its own) that it was good or bad policy- but please don’t deny reality.
I own two EVs. Bought my first in 2018 and my second in 2023. Charge them up at home at night whenever they need it, which is typically every 4th or 5th night. Have taken both EVs on multiple road trips up and down the west coast. Never had range anxiety issues.
Recently, I was asked if I would ever consider going back to owning an ICE vehicle. My answer: Never. I'm completely done with ICE. Maintenance on both of my EVs are basically zero. The brakes on both EVs still look new since I do far more regen breaking than physical breaking.
At some point I'd like to replace my 2018 EV for a newer EV. Keeping a close eye on Rivian's R3X.
I have an EV and I love it, but no way could it be my only car, road tripping is still miserable if you live in a flyover state, you're only going to be able to find one or two 250kw+ charging stations every few hundred miles for DCFC. And they'll be in high contention at certain times because charging still takes too long on the mostly 400v US ev fleet. And of course there's always one or two stalls broken down. Unless we get some industrial policy on the go here with the charging infra and start whipping manufacturers towards 800v, middle America is going to be stuck on gas or hybrids for the forseeable future. We're in a bad equilibrium where no company wants to build charging infra because there's not a large enough ev fleet, but consumers aren't swapping because there's not enough charging infra in America B.
I friggin' love my EV. The Taycan Turbo S is the most fun sports car I've ever driven. I'm not even a climate-concerned kinda guy; I just feel like it's just a legitimately faster, quieter, more enjoyable sports car than any consumer gas vehicle on the market.
As for the fuel costs... Got one in 2021 and it came with free charging for three years, which was the entire term of the lease! Rolled into a 2025 about a year ago. It only came with one year free charging, but you can charge at the dealer any time for free. I'd be shocked if my total fuel costs over the last *five years* has amounted to more than $150 total (I don't charge at home like most people do).
Caught some flack from conservative friends for driving an EV. Not sure why they politicize EVs. I'm guessing because they associate it with climate activism. My experience though, is that once someone drives an EV, they don't go back -- regardless if they're conservative or liberal.
What I can't explain for the life of me is why people are so stuck on these gas cars. And the car manufacturers pander to these guys. You know what Porsche does that's just so insane? The Taycan has a button you can push that makes a fake noise from a rear speaker, to make the EV sound like a gas vehicle. Sounds more like a vacuum cleaner noise than a car noise to me but whatever. That's not all though. The 2026 model is going to have a fake gear shifter (and presumably clutch pedal?) to make it seem even *more* like a primitive gas guzzler. Not even making this up. I just don't understand people.
Don't mock range anxiety... That's actually a legit concern. At least for Porsche owners. At full charge, it says 330 miles remaining. I'm lucky to get 250. It's less of a concern for Tesla and Lucid owners though. I believe Lucid can get 500 miles on one charge which is more than most gas vehicles! Those dudes don't even know the meaning of the phrase "range anxiety."
"That story ended with Detroit rebounding in the late 90s and 2000s after oil prices went back down, by shifting to high-margin gas-guzzling SUVs. "
No. The oil glut ended in 1998. Prices in the late 90s and early 2000s were up from the glut period.
What rebound? The 'Big' "3" continued to lose market share. Chrysler effectively went bankrupt in the early '80s. Ford mortgaged everything in 2007. GM went bankrupt in 2008/9. The only thing that allowed them to restructure periodically was the 25% tariff on light trucks (read: SUVs) dating back to the late '60s.
Electricity prices have risen faster than oil prices since 1990. The EV transition is likely driving up electricity prices and helping keep oil prices very close to the marginal production cost of more efficient producers. Despite spikes in gasoline prices , the 'fuel' cost of driving EVs and ICE keeps converging.
Meanwhile, ICE cars became much more fuel efficient. My large sedan today consumes less than 4L/100km, while my ride in 1979, a 1968 Caprice sedan, consumed 23L/100km. That's a 83% decline in consumption.
yeah, I feel like the biggest thing impeding EV ownership in America is a decreased rate of home ownership among the age groups of people likely to buy an EV
I bought my EV just 6 weeks ago, great timing I suppose ! But they truly are far superior technology. I get 320 miles of range, and instant torque plus quiet cabins are a godsend. Never going back.
It's not nonsense at all. There is no creativity from EV manufacturers; PHEVs would be the optimal solution. From a macro-energy perspective, a 40-mile PHEV idea is arguably the most efficient use of global resources. It solves the "lithium scarcity" problem, reduces the need for new gas turbines, and matches how people actually drive. All currently produced batteries have almost zero recycling ability and contain exotic components that can't be recycled. Vehicles that can go 40 miles on a charge won't melt the grid and force so many 9-year-olds to produce artisanal cobalt
EV only household with 13 kW of solar and 60kWh of whole home backup! We're good and haven't thought about driving range or gas or energy prices in years.
Canadian Solar Panels (I live in Colorado), Iron Ridge racking, local electrical supply store wiring, EG4 DC String Inverter plus some hired-out install labor to help me get the panels placed - $15,000. EG4 Batteries $8,000. All hardware UL listed. Based King Joseph Robinette Biden and the Democratic Party got me a 30% discount on that via the IRA, so net price was ~$16,000. Payback period of 4-6 years given our electric usage ($3-6,000 per year between our EVs, AC, heat pump, oven, and clothes dryer). I also got the benefit of experiencing the world's lowest observed post-pandemic inflation rate thanks to Joe Biden. Even then the price and payback period makes sense.
Tesla Model Y also had a tax credit, and we picked up a Chevy Bolt EUV for the second EV. Both have been absolutely flawless. We regularly drive across the country in the Tesla and doing so is a completely thoughtless process. EVs just work no matter where you live. I would recommend Mr. Technology Connection's recent video, to all the many doubters in the comments, because you're all just plain wrong even after reading Noah's data. "You are being misled about renewable energy technology" https://youtu.be/KtQ9nt2ZeGM?si=tlMJZ2GC9cnawQiY
The crazy part of all of this is: everything I bought above could be 4-6 times cheaper today (not kidding) if only we dropped the abominably stupid tariffs that we have in the USA. Nuts!
Your post and the comments that follow confirm my mantra: If you own an EV, you ought to install a solar array. if you own a solar system, you bought to buy an EV.
We did that several years ago with similar capacity (17 kW), powering in full our home, garage, workshop, heated/cooled garden shed and battery powered tools of all kinds. 50,000 miles on our Chevy Bolt now at zero cost for running it. Plus, the payback period on our solar system has been nearly halved thanks to climate change (more sunny days and fewer foggy mornings here in Oregon) and the rapid rise of electricity rates (double what was estimated in the payback calculations five years ago).
Want affordability? Move to solar (renting a system if need be) and EVs (leasing if you can't afford to buy).
That's a lot of capacity and power, which is great, and thus it cost a lot of money to build. The problem for many people is that they can't get their investment back or lack the capital. We finally got a used EV because the rebates were expiring but still in force. It bothers me on a daily basis that I don't have solar and a battery bank in my urban home. It's just stupid, but most neighbors don't, either.
4 year payback period. It's fast if you own EVs.
This. We put up a system a bit more modest than your own in HI, and estimate a six year ROI. We pay $30/month to maintain a hookup for emergencies...but otherwise pay zero in gas and electricity.
Macroeconomically, Electro beats Petro by almost every metric. But Republican politicians are paid big bucks by their Petro constituents, and are leading us hard into a past that is not only financially hurting themselves and their families, but the rest of the country.
That’s not passing the smell test, sorry! Not even close.
$16,000 for my system. We use $3,000 to $4,000 of electricity each year (easy to do this with 2 EVs, electric oven and dryer, and AC plus heat pump). I will let you finish the math!
I actually would happily argue that it paid for itself day one, given the existing value of my house vs comps in the neighborhood - it's a statistically proven fact that solar materially increases the value of a home. And in my case it increased it more that $16,000.
OK, 60kwh storage, 13 Kw solar array, inverter etc all installed by someone for 16k. I'll let you have a commission if your guy comes and does that for me, and he can start tomorrow.
It was not installed for 16k - that includes the tax credit. I hired out the on-roof install which took 8 hours, about $500 paid to two workers. I did the on the ground install myself, an admittedly overcomplicated install because I wanted whole home backup. Would have been plug and play if I didn't go the whole-home backup route.
You can do what I did, and do zero work, for maybe $5-8,000 more by hiring a master electrician.
Ah, towing the anti-solar/EV/battery party line. Sounds like you may need to stop watching Fox News.
We should be like Mao and each have a steel mill in our back garden. Economies of scale are so yesterday!
Buying a used EV is smart - resale is in the toilet so they are quite cheap. I have two friends who recently did this (Tesla 3 and a Bolt)
I got solar panels put on a few years ago and ended up doing the 'lease' option. There was no upfront cost and the monthly cost is literally one third of what my monthly electricity bills were before. My electricity bill itself has dropped by 80%-90%.
How did you get your solar installed for just over $1 per watt? I thought avg price in US was more like $3/watt.
Same with 60kwh battery for $8k. That's just $133/kwh. I don't know of any US vendor selling a new UL listed battery for less than ~$300-500/kwh all in (Powerwall is over $600 I think).
These prices must be for used gear or for AliExpress or Ebay gear and also a fully DIY install.
No shade, but your cost numbers aren't even close to what a normal person would have to pay for a similar setup.
Definitely zero alibaba/ebay crap. Canadian Solar 400W modules plus Tigo DC optimizers, Iron Ridge racking, EG4 Inverter plus EG4 batteries - high quality and extremely affordable. Don't forget that the net price includes the 30% IRA tax credit.
Bought it myself, installed it by hiring out the solar panel install labor and monitoring the install myself. On the ground, I performed the electrical myself. I pulled the permit and walked the inspection with the inspectors.
The solar and its wiring was extremely easy - went up on a 8 hour day like legos. The on the ground electrical took me 2 full weekends, probably 40 hours total but I did it right and very carefully. It's really so close to a plug and play setup, aside from some oddities in my instance related to the fact I wanted whole home backup. It would have been a plug and play type deal, 8 hours to install the electrical on the ground, instead of 40, if I didn't do that.
That makes more sense.
Seems like you got a smoking deal on the gear (signature solar?) and thanks to your expertise you probably saved at least $10-20k on labor and middleman costs.
Unfortunately most people would pay something closer to $50-70k for your setup I think.
I agree on your last point, definitely that most people would.
I would say though that for most people in a position to buy a home, what I did is absolutely doable. It's really so close to a plug and play setup, aside from some oddities in my instance related to the fact I wanted whole home backup. It would have been a plug and play type deal if I didn't do that.
You could pay maybe $8,000 more than what I did, to have an electrician come on site in my area and get the work done with you doing zero. I'm in a HCOL State, Colorado, so might be less than 8 grand elsewhere.
idk, I still think you are under-valuing what you accomplished, both in terms of what percent of the population could do it and also how much it'd cost to sub out all the work in most places. A friend called 5 electricians, eventually got 2 quotes after repeat follow ups and nagging, and ended up paying $2500 just to have an EVSE installed 10 feet from his main panel.
I've followed Will Prowse and the DIY solar world for years and while it's really cool and interesting stuff, imo it isn't for weekend warrior DIY types. Sure, some percentage of people can self-teach using the great online resources available, but we're probably talking about less than 5% of homeowners.
Magellan is right - this is not something that one can extrapolate to en masse as most population won't have either the expertise or the capital.
In end it is on total cost basis much more rational to have industrial scale projects as labor, etc cost is spread over more asset spend and economies scale are economies of scale
That is likely far more backup capacity than is economically justifiable. But if you like the peace of mind, all the power to you.
It's cheaper than a single tesla powerwall. Those cost $10,000 before you install them. Tesla Powerwalls have 1/6th the capacity of my batteries. I'm a little lost on what you mean?
I thought you were paying $8k per battery, not in total. You paid far less than anyone I’ve ever heard of, as discussed elsewhere in the comments.
We went with a Powerwall3 because near Hilo they're the cheapest battery carried by the sole reputable solar installer in the area. My cousin and a few other friends had older, smaller batteries that they said were constantly at risk of being stolen here in rural Hawaii. They all had these crude rebar cages built on pads inside small sheds to hold their batteries. Crazy.
The PW3 weighs something like 330 lbs, and can be bolted to a concrete pad.
There's something uniquely American about having the solution sitting right there and actively choosing not to use it.
The price volatility chart says it all. One line bounces around like a heart monitor, the other one barely moves. And we picked the heart monitor. I say this as someone who drives a gas car because the only real EV option for a while was Tesla, and I don't want a Tesla.
What does it actually take to get people to switch when the alternatives still feel limited?
If Jesus returned tomorrow on clouds of glory, and called to the multitudes to buy EV's or hybrid plugins, the needle would definitely move.
When Elon donated $300 million and put Trump and the GOP over the top in '24, it seems he was hoping for just such an opening. To sell Tesla's to the untapped MAGA market. But irrational hostility to Green tech is such a deep part of the conservative mindset, it'd take a war that closes the Straits of Hormuz for an extended period to make a mark. Oh, wait...
Pretty sure MAGA would run Second Coming Jesus out of the country unless he arrives in a Hummer.
I mean, if you actually read the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth seems a lot like a Communist...
Feeding the poor. Looking after the less fortunate. Welcoming the Stranger. Turning the other cheek to forgive transgressions. MAGA Christian Nationalism proudly does the opposite...
Ken Wilbur has written extensively on the conflict between "Churchianity" and Christianity. The former being low-brow human impulses like greed and hate dressed up as religiousity. Another way of saying church leadership follow Satan, not Jesus. Repent, oh ye sinners!
Obligatory link to GOP / Supply Side Jesus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ2L-R8NgrA&t=2s
If Jesus arrived tomorrow, he’d be arrested as a long-haired socialist, woke, liberal hippie.
MAGA is not interested in love thy neighbor or turn the other cheek. They are more Old Testament and Hammurabi Code.
Ah, I am someone who’d love to have an EV and overnight charging but I have neither a nice apartment complex with chargers nor do I have a driveway.
I’d basically have to drive to a nearby shopping complex and hang around in the parking lot to charge.
American infrastructure still has a long way to go.
Probably not allowed at an apartment but around here lots of people string extension cords arcross the sidewalk.
That would last about 5 minutes in my neighborhood before somebody either 1) tripped on it and sued, or 2) just plain old stole the extension cord.
The neighborhoods where I see this are low to mid price inside the city of Seattle. I guess they aren't stolen too much because they have been doing it a long time. My niece has been charging her car this way for four years or so. She hasn't mentioned stolen cords.
She just lays her cord on the sidewalk, others I know lay a rubber doormat over the cable, that seems better.
Lots of totally justified criticism of Seattle for high house prices and homelessness, but at least in the neighborhoods I frequent people aren't fussy. They don't mind a charging cord over the sidewalk.
I've been doing that for 5 years. It's no problem.
Yeah, I live in an older apartment complex, so I wouldn't have access to overnight chargers even if I had an EV.
If I were in the market for a vehicle to replace my current one, it would probably be a plug-in hybrid. Of course, by the time that I am in that market, the infrastructure situation may have changed.
Battery capacity too. In ten years you might only have to charge up once per week analogous to a gas fill-up.
Maybe even sooner, like 4-5 years.
I guess we'll have to pass regulations on new apartment builds for EV charging and parking minimums again. Crap.
Same there. My options are paying a bit more during once-a-week fill-up, or convincing condo trust to allow EV charger installation and then paying for this installation. It will take quite a price shock to make the latter option preferable.
Another case of the culture war leaving us worse off.
What’s a $7500 handout divided by say 100,000 miles, on a per mile basis?
And that doesn’t include the electricity subsidy some states offer EV owners or the handouts given to the Chinese battery companies.
As a tax payer, I feel better off that the subsidies have been scaled back. Paying rich people to buy cars is insane. If the car is good and the tech is good people will buy it. Used Teslas are very cheap in Elon-hating blue states and most used EVs are pretty cheap everywhere. People should go buy them
The battery companies are chinese because the usa allowed A123 to fail, the original developer of the LFP battery chemistry that China is winning with. If the US had chosen to subsidize early demand then, pushing the industry along the industrial learning curve, america would be in a far better industrial position now.
We weren’t paying rich people to buy cars, we were paying US firms to onshore battery and EV technology.
Exactly! We were practicing positive industrial policy, just like we did in the early days of the aviation industry, the automotive industry (Eisenhower Interstate road construction), and the home building industry, with cheap mortgages funded by GSEs Freddie and Fannie.
There are schemes to give the rebates to people who can prove they’re high mileage drivers. This is a more demographically representative group than the typical new EV buyer.
https://coltura.org/gasoline-superusers-3-report/
I’m a carbon tax sort of person, rather than rebates or subsidies or mandates
That’s fair. I’m just pointing out that there are distributionally fairer ways to dole out EV subsidies.
We tried carbon taxes in the US. Look up the 2009 ACESA bill, which passed the House and got 50+ votes in the Senate but died due to the filibuster and unprecedented fossil fuel lobbying. This was the moment that carbon taxation was taken off the table in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Clean_Energy_and_Security_Act
I’m pointing this out not to win Internet points, but because 2009 was genuinely a long time ago and many people on the Internet don’t remember the saga. They think that all these subsidy schemes were the first choice, and criticize them on the grounds of being less efficient than carbon taxation. But oh boy, that’s not how things went down. Pro-climate groups (and politicians) tried the economically optimal routes first — and found them barred. Everything we do today is built around the philosophy of “what’s the most efficient thing we can do, given that carbon taxation is politically infeasible due to fossil fuel lobbying.” That these less-efficient policies still led to the global success of EV, battery and renewable tech is a testament to how beneficial these technologies are, and the folks that engineered the subsidy regimes that produced them.
You think the existence of carbon taxes (as with gasoline taxes) would cause pols to hesitate in coming up with new schemes to provide handouts to donors and activists? Too bad we can’t fuel the nation on gullibility.
Oh, I was posting just on the off chance you were discussing carbon taxes based on a serious policy/economics interest. But I guess you just have political feelings you wanted to share.
Used Teslas are definitely not cheap in my bluest of all the blue states.
https://www.cars.com/vehicledetail/e51038ed-e406-4016-9f06-404b15a1ce1b/
Time for some scary looking dude doing a channel on long deer huntin' trips, deep into the sticks, in an EV pick-up with a very long range. Then replenishing back at the ranch while the meat's in the cooler. This may not be far off or already possible.
Those were likely the sorts of sugar-plums dancing around in Elon's head when he was ponying up $300 million to put the GOP in power in '24. But crush a man's dreams at your peril. When all US taxis are Robo Teslas in a few years, Elon will have his revenge!
This post was smug, angry, and ill-informed.
Most Americas cannot afford to buy new cars. Used car sales are 3x new car sales. And EV's are a tiny part of Used car sales. About 1%.
The wealthiest Americans will buy whatever car they prefer with little price sensitivity, whether that's an EV or a gas powered Escalade.
You are preaching in an echo chamber to a narrow audience.
Being an EV owner is a personal consumer market decision, not a badge of honor.
Smug AND angry at the same time? Sounds like an impressive feat! 😂
"Most Americas cannot afford to buy new cars." <-- When we talk about shares of new vehicle sales, we're only talking about people who CAN afford to buy new cars.
"You are preaching in an echo chamber to a narrow audience." <-- Then help me grow my audience by 10 million!
"Being an EV owner is a personal consumer market decision, not a badge of honor." <-- That's no excuse for spreading nonsense and FUD about a technology for political reasons.
I don’t know what FUD is. I think people’s actual car buying preferences, limited by there constraints, are expressed by what they buy rather than their politics.
Just ask ChatGPT
Is that the new Just F---ing Google It?
🥰
FUD = Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt
I think Noah actually defined in the piece. (Or at least footnoted it.)
Americans can easily afford to purchase EVs at the same rate as other countries. The difference is cultural, and (like healthcare) the US culture around EVs is one of ignorant self-harm.
That’s just not true. Used car prices are significantly Lower than new car prices and EV used car sales are tiny for now.
You are ignoring facts to fit your own narrative. You are contributing to disinformation.
Is any of that different in Pakistan or Thailand? Are people in those countries so much richer than Americans that they are buying more new cars than Americans?
You’re projecting.
Your arguments fall over when looking at other countries. Used cars are cheaper in other countries too. And most people in those other countries aren’t as wealthy as Americans.
You guys seem allergic to doing any basic research involving numbers. Or maybe you are not numerically inclined. Which is fine. Lots of people have trouble with ratios and percentages and proportionality and still live perfectly good lives.
Does your research show that used cars are cheaper than new cars outside the US? And if so, what is your point?
It’s fairly obvious that EVs have become an irrational culture war battleground in the US, moreso than in most places.
You are clearly missing cause and effect. Used EVs are not selling because people are not buying them. The resale market is there. The prices actually drop quicker than gas guzzlers.
It’s not price.
EV’s are less than 1% of the Used Car market. That will grow over time. But for now 99% of people buying used cars are buying gas powered.
You don't know what you're talking about. EVs share in European countries (except a few tiny very rich ones in which huge subsidies were given) is small-to-abysmal as well.
Interesting how you accuse others of being ignorant.
If you think that the chart in the article is misleading, direct your comments to Noah. Or post your link to the better source.
The chart is real but it doesn't tell the whole story, since PHEVs are included there, and they make more than 1/3 of so-called "EV" sales. PHEVs are far from not needing fuel, in fact there are a lot of studies showing that in the real-world they often consume more than full-hybrid cars due to how users end up using them.
It is also misleading in some sense because the US, despite a population of around 350 millions compared to Europe's 450 millions (more or less), in recent years buys far more cars each year than Europeans, and they have a country that is just huge compared to Europe, in which the commutes and trips usually take much longer.
In terms of pure numbers you have about 1.88M BEVs in EU for 2025 and 1.02M PHEVs, while for the US the number about 1.25M BEVs and 0.27M PHEVs.
If you consider the population numbers, the numbers are very similar, with the difference being that there are much less PHEVs due to not making very much sense in the US: on average, excluded very recent high-end PHEVs, you can make 50-70 km with full battery, while many commutes can be longer than that. Here in Europe a commute of 70km is extremely less common.
The share doesn't tell the full story because 1) Americans buy much more cars due to how large the US and how sparse some areas are, 2) being a more car-centric country.
There's also another factor that inflates a lot the share of BEVs. There was a gigantic tank in car sales in Europe, from like 15-16 million in 2017 to 10.5 millions in 2025, due to economic problems, slow growth and inflation.
Almost all those cars that are not sold anymore are ICE cars.
And this is not for environmental reasons, is due to not being able to afford them.
That’s a lot of handwaving to disguise the statistics. If Europeans buy fewer cars in general and yet the share of EVs being bought is higher then the chart in the post still stands. It’s also higher in China and other Asian countries. More importantly the trend is heading towards EV dominance.
Handwaving is dismiss all the other data points I brought. It's not that 25% of market share is because people replaced a ton of ICE car purchases, it's because the purchase of cars plummeted while the share of EVs started from about 0% a few years ago. If Europeans bought at the same trend as pre-covid/inflation/whatever, we would see a market share similar to the US.
Everyone is buying a lot of used cars here (don't have data but wouldn't be surprised to see a big increase in purchase price for used cars).
China too is not a good case in point. The cars/population ratio is a fraction of that of Europe and US, and in many places you're basically forced to buy an EV because buying an ICE car is prohibitive, or just unallowed.
BEV share of new car registrations in 2025:
Netherlands 40.2 %
Belgium 34.7%
Portugal 23.2%
Austria 21.3:
France 20.0%
Germany 19.1%
Source: https://www.acea.auto/
"Netherlands 40.2 %
Belgium 34.7%"
As I said above:
"except a few tiny very rich ones in which huge subsidies were given"
Conveniently ignoring the 20% in France and Germany?
Do you consider 19-20% to be high?
Germany and France are the two largest economies in the European Union, together accounting for roughly 40% of the total EU GDP.
In 2025, around 20% of passenger vehicles sold in that 40% were BEVs.
The German subsidy program provided an unintentional experiment to determine how influential subsidies were in supporting the BEV market: when subsidies were paused in 2024, there was a 27% decline in BEV sales, so it’s reasonable to conclude that, absent subsidies, new German EV sales in 2025 would still have been around 15% of the new car market.
I'm through doing your research for you - you are going to see what you want to see - but what you are seeing is just not what is actully happening.
If you really did some research on the matter you would also find out that car sales in Germany and France (like in the rest of Europe too) absolutely tanked compared to before covid without bouncing back, or marginally bouncing back, (something that hasn't happened in the US), at the same time as EVs were given huge subsidies.
So yeah, the higher market share is not due to germans/French understanding how amazing EVs are, it's more like poor people that cannot afford to buy new cars anymore at the same time EVs were starting to being sold en mass and given huge subsidies.
The Netherlands has a population of 18 million, and Belgium has 12 million, which would make the #5 and #6 as US states, in the top 1/3 of countries in the world.
They're still very small compared to Germany or France or Italy. And of course are irrelevant when comparing it with something like the US. They're tiny-to-small (Norway too here for example) very rich countries that does not make sense to compare to the US or other larger European countries in general.
My used EV was $14,000. Runs perfectly fine.
Smug/angry is a subjective viewer opinion, so, fine. Like for me: I'd say that your comment comes across as smug and angry, but only because I've spent enough time in the corporate world to know that an email structured like your post, would send off warning alarm bells that "this person is irrationally angry at me and wants to threaten me personally." But regardless, ill-informed makes no sense. Isn't a big part of what Noah's talking about, that gas cars will be unaffordable in a crisis scenario like we are facing today?
A larger part of what he's arguing for, is a much larger support for EVs among American consumers, and wider development and infrastructure for EVs. It feels like you're intentionally just arguing against the title rather than the content?
EVs are a small part of used car sales because they're a small part of new car sales in the US! This is the problem that Noah is concerned about.
The failure to acknowledge that most car sales are used and that most Americans c cannot afford new cars is a failure to step outside the bubble.
And the failure to account for consumer preferences, even if they are not your preferences or the preferences that you wish consumers had, is a failure of economics.
This post struck me as the type of thinking that continues to give MAGA a political life.
The problem is, surely, with guys like you bringing the culture wars into a discussion on technological change.
Please don’t call me Shirley.
Culture was implicit in not recognizing that only a small proportion of Americans can afford to buy new cars. It’s that type of cultural ignorance that gives coastal elites a bad name. I’m a coastal elite so I can say that.
Holy extrapolation Batman! I have no response beyond that for you, I'm afraid.
And we had just passed and begun to implement excellent legislation designed to boost adoption of EVs, solar, more efficient appliances, and batteries, that Trump and Co decided to overturn.
Failure was a conscious choice in this case.
There's something funny about so-called urbanism experts that only want to walk and/or take transit that have been auto-proclamated "car experts" after a brief 30-min conversation with their friend in San Francisco who invested 150k in a battery company (or whatever).
There are tens of millions of people in western countries (not only in US) where EVs cost a good 5/10k more of equivalente ICE cars (and often these basic EVs have ridiculously slow charging times and tiny batteries), and that's the first biggest problem, but most importantly, you just don't have a place where to charge them, here in Europe the majority of people park on the street because they don't have a box making the purchase basically impossible.
Noah renegaded a lot of progressive bs he said in the past and even denounced the crazy smugness of progs in a lot of cases, yet he still remains smug and condescending in this particular case for no reason at all. He really thinks he's a huge expert of the car world now because he discovered that electric engines are more efficient than combustion engines lol. The same with solar panels.
Please stop behaving like this on this topic.
p.s. EV sales tanked basically everywhere in the world, including in china, so it's not that everyone in the world didn't understand how magnificent EVs are and you and a bunch of guys on twitter have to lecture everybody.
I have no idea why you're saying EV sales have tanked. In China, you have 2.2M sold in the first 2 months of 2026, while in 2025 they set records at the time with with over 5M EVs sold. In Norway, 2025 had a record 95.9% of all new car sales being electric.
Back in the aughts, I had a hybrid and commuted 50+ miles a day. I'm retired now and drive about 10 miles per week as a baseline, with perhaps another 1500 miles of longer trips, for a total of 2000 miles per year. We'd buy an electric, but we have a perfectly serviceable 4 year old Subaru and burn an average of < 2 gallons per week, so it's hard to justify a new car at all.
The sales are down 20-40% in china YoY in china so far, you can find the data by searching "China Feb NEV sales drop 32% as broader auto market weakens, CPCA data shows" from cnevpost. They're even lower than in 2024 in some cases or about the same.
Norway is the exact kind of example when I said "except a few tiny very rich ones in which huge subsidies were given", in the comment above.
If you have the means to buy an EV and maintain it, in a way that is not less convenient for you than a hybrid-ICE car, then good for you, if I could I would buy one as well, the problem is that I, and this is true for a huge share of Europeans as well (just to make clear that this is not a problem limited to Americans), do not have the means to do the switch. Namely, the EVs I could afford to buy are terrible (small cars with small batteries and painfully slow charging times), and I would spend more to maintain it since re-charging it at public chargers means spending like 2-3x what I would spend by charging it at home, likely spending more per mile than a combustion car.
If I could spend 50-60k on a car and if I had a single home with solar panels with a 7k charger at the wall, then I would switch too, but this is not the case.
If you google "month by month ev sales in china" you'll see that February was a one off due to holidays and tax changes. March sales are expected to double February's.
Anyway, this is a silly argument. EVs will clearly become dominant in non-protected markets: they're already more reliable and cheaper to operate. They are improving in range as battery technology improves. And we're still pretty early on in the technology curve for magnets, batteries, and everything else that goes into an EV.
Also, you don't need solar panels to charge an EV at home -- a 220V plug will do. And the IONIQ 5 is $36K list price, not $50-60K. There are decent options available for lots of people, even if they don't work for you.
The US can set tariffs to keep better cars out, and subsidize oil and coal production, but eventually cheaper EVs from outside the US will arrive here, and when that happens, unfortunately, our auto makers will probably get destroyed.
No because January was much lower YoY too. The main reason is a cut in subsidies in China.
"Anyway, this is a silly argument. EVs will clearly become dominant in non-protected markets: they're already more reliable and cheaper to operate.".
This is patently untrue. It can be true in some cases, it's not in many others. Right now, march 26, the cheapest ones in my country (that are not micro-cars) are for EVs the dacia spring and Citroen e-C3. The range is 225 km for the spring and around 300 for the e-C3. In US standards, it's about 10-15% less IIRC. These ranges are ridicolous if that's the only car you purchase. The second huge problem is charging times. For the spring is max 7 kw of charging power (so it takes hours), for the eC3 is 100kw but they say 20-80% is 30 mins. 60% of real-world 250-300km is not great at all.
The price is 19.700 euros for the spring and 20.490 for the e-C3.
In the meantime you can find real cars (not microcars) for around 14k new, like the dacia Sandero or the fiat Panda.
No range problems, no huge charging waiting times and so on.
"Also, you don't need solar panels to charge an EV at home -- a 220V plug will do."
Man, I don't know how to tell you this, but again, yes, maybe in America there are hundreds of millions of people with a box and parking outside the house, but here the vast majority of people live in dense apartments of like 5-10 stories, and only a fraction of those have a box, and even fewer a box in which electricity arrives.
Electricity here is also fairly expensive. Even if you don't have panels, maybe you would still save, the problem is that as soon as you charge at public chargers, it starts to not make sense anymore.
So they cost more/much more and the performance for base models is a shit. Also, a ton of people just can't charge at home.
"And the IONIQ 5 is $36K list price, not $50-60K.". Here the base model is almost 45k euros, that is almost 52k US dollars.
Also, I wouldn't buy that car as my sole car even if I had the money.
"The US can set tariffs to keep better cars out, and subsidize oil and coal production". Good EVs are already there (see the Korean brands), it's just that EVs, maybe, don't work for everyone.
This is not a religion.
Well, I apologize for my US centric response. Certainly here in Pittsburgh, arranging for charging at home isn't a big deal. Many apartments have chargers, and adding one to your home is straightforward, even if you don't have a garage. Walking around my neighborhood, I see lots of charging cables to cars parked on the street.
I still think that EVs will be more reliable, if they aren't already. Fundamentally, maintaining an electric motor is just a lot simpler than maintaining an engine that needs to operate many controlled gas vapor explosions per second, and then transform that energy into rotational energy.
As for China, all I know is what Google is reporting -- that March is expected to bring in 900K cars in EV sales. Given the price competition in China I keep hearing about, I'd be surprised if EV sales volumes go into reverse there, but I certainly bring no expertise to this area.
Cars are far more reliable than they were 20 years ago, so replacing an older car has become more of a luxury than a necessity. My old rule was 3 car repairs in a few months, meant it was time to get a new (newer) one. My Model 3 has had zero maintenance. In the US, 79.5% of Americans owned a car; the UK and Germany aren't too far behind. If you subtract out kids, and adults who can't drive due to age or disability, folks who live in NYC who don't want to, the number is over 90%.
I do agree that if you don't own your home and can't add solar, the case for buying and EV is far less compelling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_motor_vehicles_per_capita
EV sales have grown 30% yoy in Europe, surpassing petrol in Dec 25. Because of Chinese competition and Korean imports EVs are dropping in price, battery technology is growing year on year. So not much going for you there, fact wise.
The fact that you mentioned “progressive” in the argument shows I think why you believe what you believe. Particularly in the US, and people tuned into American cultures wars, the whole EV vs petrol debate is a culture war, not a debate ok facts.
I’m not progressive, I’m driving an EV. I do it to save money.
There are still 15 million new vehicles sold in the US every year. At that rate there could be an EV for every US household within 8 years. Now of course we'd have to take into account that some of those are utility vehicles, a whole bunch are vanity pick-up trucks that will never see a load heavier than a week's worth of groceries, etc. but even if we'd only consider suburb-SUVs and other 'ordinary' cars that's still millions of new cars each year, which all go for prices similar to what buys you a decent electrical car. You can add to that the millions of 2nd hand cars that still sell for 30-50k (or more), and you'd have plenty of additional EV buying power. Money is not the limiting factor here.
As a former EV owner here in. California, it’s not quite so simple Noah. Full solar and battery here at home, but this state can barely sustain its current electricity demand. And millions of people don’t have access to at-home chargers in their garages and/or driveways (if they have one). Are you honestly suggesting we could just flip overnight to all-EV? I don’t think so. Bur should we be striving to be less reliant on fossil fuels? Yes, and had we focused on hybrids rather than just BEVs, we d be so much better off for it.
But it’s not really a national security issue. This country is the new Saudi Arabia. Our oil reserves are staggering, and we produce more oil than anyone. So the national security trope is a little thin. But just like the manner in which we’ve shot ourselves in the foot over EVs, we’ve also had stupid oil production policies. Time to be smart about both.
I don't think that Noah suggested all EVs overnight.
No, of course not. It was rhetorical, and why I wrote “I don’t think so.” But the notion that we could have had enough EVs by now to avoid some fuel sticker shock—even with all the dumba$& public policy—is almost as fanciful.
He’s saying a lot more individuals could have avoided fuel sticker shock, even if no set of policies would have gotten 100% of individuals to avoid it.
Once the EV penetration reaches a tipping point where we see gasoline demand start falling the USA will lose market share pretty quickly - Fracking ain’t easy or cheap. Our actions in Venezuela and the Middle East are reflective of this long term reality. If you are going to stay on oil it better be cheap.
Right. When I owned my EV, I honestly thought for a while we had hit that tipping/saturation point. And there were a fair number of articles published asserting we had or were about to hit it. But it’s a complicated thing trying to deplatform entire industries and introduce new ones. I still think we got it wrong by not encouraging and policy-incentivizing hybrids. Your *average* driver rarely drives more than a few miles a day. That load could have shifted quickly to PHEVs. They’re easier to charge everywhere and don’t take nearly as long. And on the highway, range anxiety isn’t an issue because the fuel infrastructure is there. PHEVs would/could/should have made the platform transition so much smoother. And PHEV technology was much readier to fill that gap than BEV and infrastructure. Wholesale adoption, or even just 3x more than BEVs could have achieved significant reductions in gasoline use.
I loved my EV. Home solar/battery made home charging nearly free. And for the first three years, charging at Electrify America was free. I did two cross-continent trips in that car. It was a lot of fun, but it was also stressful. I would never (not yet anyway) put my wife or my daughters in a BEV alone for an extended trip. Not convenient or safe. But a PHEV is a different story.
P.S. On fracking, I differ a bit. We’ve proven it can be done reliably at a market-sustaining price; easy and cheap are no longer relevant negative criteria.
Turns out many people fail to plug in their hybrids, resulting in dead battery weight draining efficiency.
Why did they buy PHEVs? Maybe there was an education component missing.
It is indeed a national security issue, because oil is a global commodity and priced at the margin. Therefore an oil shock impacts us as well.
Noah: maybe you're right about EV's - but let the market handle it; I cannot stand the Govt telling me what to drive, eat, live etc. If EV's are so fantastic and they are cheaper to operate, then people will buy them and we do not need the govt involved. It is climate activists/extremists that have made EV's unpopular.
OK, so should we drop all tariffs and other trade restrictions on Chinese EVs and batteries?
No because China is a foreign adversary. We should be decoupling from China.
But, then you're not letting the market decide at all.
As I said in another comment. In general people should be free to do what they want, and I support free trade.
But when national security comes into the mix that is no longer the case and other considerations becomes important.
I'm fine with free trade with Europe, Canada, Japan, South Korea, etc.
China not so much (or Russia for that matter)
So you want the government telling you what to do? Why not let you decide the issue?
"So you want the government telling you what to do"
In general no.
But when there are national security issues, sometimes other considerations are more important.
That's why in general my position is we should have free trade with other countries willing to do free trade with us. For example, I would support free trade agreements with Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia etc etc.
China, not so much. I think we should be trying to decouple from China as much as possible.
"But when there are national security issues"
But there are security issues with needing domestic EV production - as seen in Ukraine drones are a huge part of war now. They in large part rely on batteries. The goal of the subsidies was to ensure the US had the manufacturing capability to switch those cells from EVs to drones if the need arose.
My comment didn't mention anything about subsidies
If we can be sure the CCP doesn’t have a “kill” switch or access to the data; then yes, absolutely.
We should drop all tariffs and trade restrictions on everything. But adding subsidies to counter high tariffs is even worse.
Thoughts on carbon taxes? The reality of climate change means we need them. The subsidies for renewable tech are just arguably a different form of a carbon tax, after all.
A national carbon tax would be self inflicted pain, just like tariffs. It would raise prices for gas and oil domestically, but since the market is global the carbon will just be emitted by the countries that use the increase in supply from our reduction. A global carbon tax is what we are getting right now from this mindless war, and we are seeing how painful and unpopular reduction in fossil fuel supplies actually is.
Ah.
Governments at all levels play a key role in building out the infrastructure that supports EV use.
Your position is also self-contradictory. If American consumers are so rational, why would activists make EVs unpopular?
Trump2 has already been pushing anti-EV propaganda; as well illegally clawing back IRA disbursements for Green energy projects. The BBB has increased *subsidies* for Petro. Because Petro loses bad to Electro in the free market.
Anti-EV is now a MAGA honor badge, and will part of the Culture Wars until or unless the price of oil surges above $200/barrel, due to something like a war that closes of the Straits of Hormuz. Oh, wait...
How on earth is the USG telling you any of that? A subsidy for EVs is hardly a gun to your head forcing you to buy one. Government doesn't prevent you from buying whatever you want to for food, unless you're desperate to get food poisoning (and even then, you have options).
Well, a couple of things: first of all the government of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, tried to stop people from buying large sodas. I’m certainly not defending large sodas, but there you have the government trying to tell us what to consume. Secondly, the metaphorical gun to my head is EV subsidies, which are my taxes being used to help someone else buy a car and the MPG requirements for ICE vehicles. Again, let the market decide.
Seriously? Total EV subsidies in 2024 were $10B, out of a budget of $7,010 billion, or 0.014%. I'm sure I wouldn't have to look very hard to find more expensive things I find more offensive in the budget. This isn't some libertarian paradise -- we elect representatives who make judgements about what's most important useful to spend our tax money on.
As for Bloomberg, surely you jest. He got his board of health to ban large sodas in NYC, and a judge promptly tossed the order out for being arbitrary and capricious. I'm not sure it was ever enforced. At worst, in the alternative universe where it actually became law, you'd have had to buy two smaller sodas.
We were in Singapore for a week last year. The Chinese EVs were more comfortable than expected, but felt exceptionally light. The car doors felt akin to cabinet doors in a first apartment, so light, they seemed hollow.
While that didn't cause concern on a tiny island, where traffic never moved above 30 mph, the notion the same cars would ever pass US auto safety standards or people would be safe on a 6 lane US freeway with traffic moving at 75 mph, seems very unlikely.
If people want to purchase EVs, they should, but without subsidy. Handing $7500 checks to families earning 3X US median family income, when they purchase an $80K luxury EV, was simply welfare for the wealthy.
I may be misinformed but I read recently most Chinese EVs have good to great crash ratings, who knows how true this is though.
Let the market decide. No need for handouts to buy or make an EV,
They make sense in urban areas. Singapore in 100 pct urban, Norway 84 pct. There are only about 14 US states that are as urbanized as Norway.
Of course, nobody in urban areas should own an EV in 20 years. Ride shares, jitneys and self driving taxis will be the norm. Don’t need to waste money owning an overpriced toy whether ICE or EV to signal status, let alone worry about parking, charging or fueling it. Convenience will be at hand.
If people still gravitate to cars as a luxury possession for show, they could be RVs or sports cars or ICE vehicles for long trips, while using self driving vehicles to get around town.
So I suppose you want to drop all tariffs and other trade barriers and let China sell their EVs and EV batteries in the U.S.?
Since China restricts the ability of some of the most successful US tech companies to operate in China, no- I don’t want free trade with China, but that has nothing to do with EVs.
If China were to open its markets and reduce its subsidies then absolutely the US market should be lousy with Chinese EVs.
What would be silly would be the Biden policy of spending billions subsidizing Chinese battery plants and EV manufacturing generally in the US.
The majority of the battery tech/IP and battery parts in IRA-subsidized EV and battery factories came from China.
Biden was happy to subsidize the Chinese so the US would get some low skill/high pay unionized manufacturing assembly jobs (with union donations going to Biden).
BMW assembles cars in the US (due to Tariffs)….with German parts and IP, for decades, but that hasn’t taught the US how to make a BMW, as much as Trump and Biden want assembly jobs of other people’s tech.
Maybe basic research into next Gen battery tech and sponsoring materials science engineering programs would have been a better use of those EV subsidy funds?
> Maybe basic research into next Gen battery tech and sponsoring materials science engineering programs would have been a better use of those EV subsidy funds?
Or both.
The market has already decided. Electro is kicking Petro's hairy ass. Which is why the GOP is using the power of the federal government to block renewable energy projects, block permits, increased Petro subsidies--to slow or even stop growth of electrification. It's like a form of Stalinism, skewing the free markets to subsidize their beloved Petro.
"There are only about 14 US states that are as urbanized as Norway"
Even if that were a limitation, those 14 states are likely half the US population.
Maybe more than half. And lots of rich people there eager to engage in social signaling. Certainly a big enough market for someone to address without handouts and government coercion, no?
If I were going to force Chinese batteries on Americans I would have used those earths for grid storage rather than some rich guys second car.
, but progressives have always had a hate for ICE and dreams of electric cars so we base policy on misconceived notions rather than sense
> but progressives have always had a hate for ICE and dreams of electric cars
That kind of rhetoric signals the doom of the US Empire. Good luck with these ICE drones you are all building.
> If I were going to force Chinese batteries on Americans I would have used those earths for grid storage rather than some rich guys second car.
If the US was going to force next generation battery on Americans it should be subsidising that technology and the car technology that could be the initial consumers.
Investing in and subsidising technology is something the US was great at, it’s why we have the Internet.
Rebates might not make sense now with lower battery costs, but they made sense earlier as a means to drive down costs. Look up "Swanson's law" for an example. Cost reduction via industrial learning curves is correlated with total volume delivered, not just time or scale. That means boosting early demand can shave years off scaling up. That saved billions of tonnes of emissions, in a way that isn't immediately obvious because it occurs years later through indirect effects.
And due to how those industrial learning curves work, creating a vehicle battery market greatly accelerated the cost reductions that make grid storage possible now. The vehicle market was more tolerant of the early high cost per kwh. EV promotion can be seen as an industrial strategy to lower battery costs with multiple downstream benefits.
As to "coercion", I'm sorry but that framing is ridiculous. It wasn't "coercion" when leaded gasoline was phased out, and it won't be "coercion" when gasoline is phased out. There is no right to burn fuel in vehicles.
No coercion? Ever heard of net zero and all of the hare brained regulatory regimes that arose from that? Still happening outside the US.
Tesla exists mostly because of CAFE, which forces car companies to buy EV credits. For years these payments represented a good portion of its revenues.
The entire renewables policy was based upon regulatory coercion and handouts. That doesn’t mean (on its own) that it was good or bad policy- but please don’t deny reality.
Was phasing out leaded gasoline coercion?
regulatory ban- even more direct than coercion.
If they let leaded gas exist but taxed it like cigarettes taxes that would be coercion.
I own two EVs. Bought my first in 2018 and my second in 2023. Charge them up at home at night whenever they need it, which is typically every 4th or 5th night. Have taken both EVs on multiple road trips up and down the west coast. Never had range anxiety issues.
Recently, I was asked if I would ever consider going back to owning an ICE vehicle. My answer: Never. I'm completely done with ICE. Maintenance on both of my EVs are basically zero. The brakes on both EVs still look new since I do far more regen breaking than physical breaking.
At some point I'd like to replace my 2018 EV for a newer EV. Keeping a close eye on Rivian's R3X.
I have an EV and I love it, but no way could it be my only car, road tripping is still miserable if you live in a flyover state, you're only going to be able to find one or two 250kw+ charging stations every few hundred miles for DCFC. And they'll be in high contention at certain times because charging still takes too long on the mostly 400v US ev fleet. And of course there's always one or two stalls broken down. Unless we get some industrial policy on the go here with the charging infra and start whipping manufacturers towards 800v, middle America is going to be stuck on gas or hybrids for the forseeable future. We're in a bad equilibrium where no company wants to build charging infra because there's not a large enough ev fleet, but consumers aren't swapping because there's not enough charging infra in America B.
I friggin' love my EV. The Taycan Turbo S is the most fun sports car I've ever driven. I'm not even a climate-concerned kinda guy; I just feel like it's just a legitimately faster, quieter, more enjoyable sports car than any consumer gas vehicle on the market.
As for the fuel costs... Got one in 2021 and it came with free charging for three years, which was the entire term of the lease! Rolled into a 2025 about a year ago. It only came with one year free charging, but you can charge at the dealer any time for free. I'd be shocked if my total fuel costs over the last *five years* has amounted to more than $150 total (I don't charge at home like most people do).
Caught some flack from conservative friends for driving an EV. Not sure why they politicize EVs. I'm guessing because they associate it with climate activism. My experience though, is that once someone drives an EV, they don't go back -- regardless if they're conservative or liberal.
What I can't explain for the life of me is why people are so stuck on these gas cars. And the car manufacturers pander to these guys. You know what Porsche does that's just so insane? The Taycan has a button you can push that makes a fake noise from a rear speaker, to make the EV sound like a gas vehicle. Sounds more like a vacuum cleaner noise than a car noise to me but whatever. That's not all though. The 2026 model is going to have a fake gear shifter (and presumably clutch pedal?) to make it seem even *more* like a primitive gas guzzler. Not even making this up. I just don't understand people.
Don't mock range anxiety... That's actually a legit concern. At least for Porsche owners. At full charge, it says 330 miles remaining. I'm lucky to get 250. It's less of a concern for Tesla and Lucid owners though. I believe Lucid can get 500 miles on one charge which is more than most gas vehicles! Those dudes don't even know the meaning of the phrase "range anxiety."
"That story ended with Detroit rebounding in the late 90s and 2000s after oil prices went back down, by shifting to high-margin gas-guzzling SUVs. "
No. The oil glut ended in 1998. Prices in the late 90s and early 2000s were up from the glut period.
What rebound? The 'Big' "3" continued to lose market share. Chrysler effectively went bankrupt in the early '80s. Ford mortgaged everything in 2007. GM went bankrupt in 2008/9. The only thing that allowed them to restructure periodically was the 25% tariff on light trucks (read: SUVs) dating back to the late '60s.
Electricity prices have risen faster than oil prices since 1990. The EV transition is likely driving up electricity prices and helping keep oil prices very close to the marginal production cost of more efficient producers. Despite spikes in gasoline prices , the 'fuel' cost of driving EVs and ICE keeps converging.
Meanwhile, ICE cars became much more fuel efficient. My large sedan today consumes less than 4L/100km, while my ride in 1979, a 1968 Caprice sedan, consumed 23L/100km. That's a 83% decline in consumption.
1) bought a car ten years ago. Gas was the right choice.
2) live in an apartment complex. No plug in. No complex anywhere near me that charges reasonable rent has anywhere to plug in.
Thanks for the advice anyway.
yeah, I feel like the biggest thing impeding EV ownership in America is a decreased rate of home ownership among the age groups of people likely to buy an EV
I bought my EV just 6 weeks ago, great timing I suppose ! But they truly are far superior technology. I get 320 miles of range, and instant torque plus quiet cabins are a godsend. Never going back.
It's not nonsense at all. There is no creativity from EV manufacturers; PHEVs would be the optimal solution. From a macro-energy perspective, a 40-mile PHEV idea is arguably the most efficient use of global resources. It solves the "lithium scarcity" problem, reduces the need for new gas turbines, and matches how people actually drive. All currently produced batteries have almost zero recycling ability and contain exotic components that can't be recycled. Vehicles that can go 40 miles on a charge won't melt the grid and force so many 9-year-olds to produce artisanal cobalt