The US auto industry under its pro-oil policy incentives is in for a disastrous long-term outlook in exchange for short-term prosperity.
At best, it’ll be a situation where the US market is segregated from the rest of the world: US auto consumers will be buying inferior vehicles from the rest of world that are more expensive to buy and own, since they will only be viable in the US market and will only be built in the US, Canada, and Mexico.
At worst, the US is setting itself for horrendous energy policy issues moving forward. Sure, the US produces a lot of gas and oil and will for a long time, but any sort of price shock will be leaving the US and its car-dependent economy destabilized while Europe and Asia power forward with an ever-decreasing dependence on oil and gas. The US’ endless energy wars will continue to serve as incredibly expensive endeavors that other countries don’t even need to engage in.
Just look at the number of nuclear power plant projects in progress in China. Comparatively few people in China depend on oil to get to work and travel long distances, and the amount that do is plummeting.
Having owned a Model 3 I would argue that it’s basically “done” at this point, pending software updates for better FSD.
It already charges in 20-30 min at Tesla chargers and has a practical range of around 600 kms, so super fast charging is a bit of a straw man.
Their big downfall is they lack an advertising department willing to spend $1B on pro-electric propaganda to debunk all the Trump/big oil propaganda. IMO EVs have addressed all the main product concerns, and the last ones are buyer stupidity.
I think this opinion fails to explain why Tesla is faltering so badly in China.
The products aren’t “done.” They’re stagnant.
Where is their proper 3 row SUV, not a hacked together half-effort like the YL?
Where is their passenger premium van product for China?
Remember that this is a company with a huge factory and presence in China, and they were the first mover in that market, but they’re getting eaten alive by competitors.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the Volkswagen Group is outselling Tesla in EVs. The #1 EV in Europe is a Skoda, and on top of that Tesla doesn’t make a European style city car. Small sedans like the Model 3 are really not popular in Europe, you need a hatch.
And I haven’t even brought up the Cybertruck selling a couple hundred thousand units below company expectations, that is kind of a low blow cherry on top.
To some degree, I agree. Esp. on the 800V part which could make charges a bit faster. But I think they're overall stagnant: they pushed a ton of boundaries in the first 10-15y because they had to make something people could buy and use, but now that innovation push has diminished greatly: the cars work for most people, and the range is acceptable and not such a big inconvenience that pushes people to other brands. So no sense in going axial flux motors (that everyone is experimenting with) or bigger battery capacities, or even 48V + Ethernet instead of 12V + CANbus (the CyberTruck has these, but I don't think it has trickled down to the other models).
> Meanwhile, in Europe, the Volkswagen Group is outselling Tesla in EVs. The #1 EV in Europe is a Skoda, and on top of that Tesla doesn’t make a European style city car. Small sedans like the Model 3 are really not popular in Europe, you need a hatch.
Yes, but the Model Y remains the single unique best-selling car. VW needs to put together a few vehicle models to get to the same numbers. And I think the reason is the same as with China: Tesla has always been EV only, and built assistance and infrastructure for it, while VW doesn't have a very clear direction and makes products which are perhaps slightly mechanically superior, but feel inferior on the software and UX side. A car with hardware equivalent to Tesla (which now has 2 trims and 2 battery picks) costs anyway more than the base Tesla (you need to add a few optionals to the VWs). What Tesla is lacking in Europe are smaller models with ~450-500km range.
Judging by single model is going to make Tesla look better than it is when compared to badge engineering and/or whole platform sales. The MEB platform/ID.4 cross brand cousins outsell the Model Y.
BYD is likely moving a few hundred thousand more pure BEVs than Tesla each year, although it’s hard to gauge the exact mix given that they have hybrids and ICE vehicles.
I am not saying Tesla is in doomed in China or anything like that, they’re a top brand. But they should be definitively the #1 brand and their product lineup is short 2-3 models.
You think it’s done only because you are not ambitious enough. And neither is Tesla. A Hyundai charges faster than a Tesla. Chinese cars from several brands are getting five-minute charging times. If you think that’s a straw man I don’t know what to say; a buyer wants charging to be as fast as pumping gas, and are you going to blame buyer stupidity for not delivering on that?
But which brands last longer than a Tesla? None. That’s because faster charging wears out the battery. Charging fast is not marvellous, actually it requires a lot of self-control from the manufacturers to limit charging speed for longevity, even though most people won’t understand why.
Yes, I would blame the buyer for thinking it's important at this point. It's almost a meme response to EVs.
All you need to do is an honest look at how many days a year you drive 500+ miles per day. People can't seem to do that and fixate on the ultra long distance road trip that they might make once per year. And neglecting to realize that they stop for bathroom breaks and food and so the actual time you're simply waiting for charging is, at best, maybe 20-30 minutes per year.
99% of the time you would be plugging your car into the charger at your house. And it just charges overnight.
I guess it's different if people have no way to charge their car at home or have it plugged in overnight. But in that case a lot of times they can pick up charge while at work, or whole doing grocery shopping, etc.
No. You are presupposing a particular usage of a car and imposing that on a potential buyer. I take the train or bike to work, so for me my car is only for weekend trips. That’s why I bought the fastest-charging car available at that time.
Even for road trips there are different ways to approach it. Some people just want to get to their destination fast and don’t mind eating at wherever the charger is. Others take road trips differently and would want to eat at the best restaurant at each local town they pass through, which may not be where chargers are. And if there are many passengers the bathroom breaks are usually not aligned with when the car needs charging. The perfect scenario of getting food or bathroom breaks exactly when the car needs charging could be a rare scenario.
I am very skeptical that your Model 3 has a "practical range" of 372 miles. EPA range for the long range model is 342 miles, and I would expect usable range to be considerably less (since you probably want to start charging at around 10% remaining, and you probably want to stop charging at 80-90%). 0% - 100% is kind of not "practical" as it would require you to fully deplete the battery, and then wait for the slow charging at the margins (90 to 100% tends to be pretty slow).
Practical meaning I don’t plan to ever drive more than 600km per day so if it’s 600km from A->B, and then a 8 hour charge, that’s fine by me… if I want 700km I’ll stop and charge for 5 min at 30% SOC or so
I’m convinced super-fast charging will be a game changer, because it will eliminate the ~only remaining downside to EVs. If Tesla had charging tech like BYD the market in the U.S. would look very different
I don't buy it. "Recharging == Fuel" is the wrong way to think about it.
Think about your phone. Do you plan how you'll charge that quickly? Do you know where you can get a quick charge at a local mall while ordering coffee? Nope, it just gets charged over night when you're asleep, no problem.
I agree charging at home/work is best, and ideally we would have ubiquitous slow charging at apartment lots, workplaces, and on the street. But that’s not really realistic right now in the U.S., and more importantly, it isn’t under Tesla’s control. Whereas they could have solved the problem for people with less charging access by making their fast charging faster like BYD has done.
With respect to your phone analogy, if I weren’t able to charge my phone at home or at work, I would definitely be interested in being able to fast-charge it at some conveniently located business
I think you're both right. An EV is wonderful if you can charge at home, and a chore if you can't. Fast chargers help, but they're expensive and still not as fast as gas.
If you have a wall plug at home, an EV is basically always full. I'm shopping for a flat and one of my non-negotiable requirements is a parking spot with a plug. The one I'm looking at now even has a three-phase plug, which is a nice extra, but not really necessary.
Yes I do get the fastest charging speed and highest battery capacity phone, which are Chinese now too like OnePlus. Once you know you can depend on your phone for a few days, it's a game changer.
Not everyone wants the same thing from a car. Some care most about the price, some about the efficiency, some about the size, some about the comfort, some about the charging speed despite what you say.
If Telsa were still innovating, they'd have rounded out their offerings to fill in the gaps that are now getting filled with other brands in the world outside the USA.
I keep shouting from the rooftops that Tesla’s lack of offerings has them completely hamstrung.
Tesla sells more vehicles than Mazda, and both brands are in a similar semi-premium non-luxury segment. Compare lineups between these brands.
How does Mazda have 3.5 SUVs and Tesla only has 1.5? (The .5 is counting the CX-70 and CX-90, and the Y and YL as essentially the same car)
Mazda is able to offer a sedan and hatchback variant of the 3.
They also have a city car in Europe, the Mazda 2. Absolutely nothing in the segment from Tesla.
And of course, Mazda has the legendary MX-5, which chugs along selling a very respectable quantity while the Tesla Roadster remains MIA.
Where is Tesla’s lineup? For being a being China-focused brand, where is their premium/luxury van? For being a US-focused brand, where is their family 3-row Grand Highlander killer? How did they botch a truck made in Texas?
My point is that they don’t have a wide enough breadth of models and that’s holding them back, and the fact that lower volume brands have more models and appeal to a wider range of customers helps demonstrate that.
I can fill a gas car in 3 mins basically anywhere within reach of civilization. It is frictionless pretty much. People I know with ev and no home charger have to plan their entire life around when they take the car to charge. Sometimes they have to just take the gas car because the ev is down to 30% and too close to empty for comfort.
I have compared prices in fast-charging stations to gasoline here in Sweden, and a gasoline car get more miles for the money. The price can be up to 100x, or 10000% that of the market price that the fast-charging stations buy their electricity from.
And even with that, very few places seems to be willing to build competing charging stations that will undercut those prices. The only way to actually save money is to have a charging stations at home or at work where you pay the normal (through still very high) cost that the utility company take.
I have found fast-charging prices near where I live to be fairly competitive with gasoline per-mile. The lower maintenance costs of an EV are icing on the cake, so to speak.
But I actually do most of my charging as trickle-charging from a regular home outlet, despite it being slow; it adds about 40 miles of range per 24 hours of charging. My car sits in my driveway most of the time so that's actually sufficient most of the time.
In Greece, fast charging is 4x more expensive than slow charging at home. Slow electricity is around 4x cheaper than gas, so you're right, fast charging makes it about even.
Good thing I only need to fast charge a few times a year, on long trips (or consecutive trips away from home/a plug).
Not to mention that fast charging degrades your battery faster. I've had my car for a year and a half and I charged at a fast charger maybe four times.
The average person in America drives about 37 miles a day.
EVs gain about 3-5 miles per hour on a household 120V charger.
You sleep for about 8 hours and are probably home away from work and errands for an about 12 hours.
Do the math: 3 miles per hour for 12 hours is 36 miles.
And even if you don’t keep up with your pace, the weekend can act as additional time to charge. Or if you drive more on the weekend, you can basically decide that you’re going to go to a fast charger every 2-4 weeks just like a gas car (or maybe even less frequently than a gas car).
Let’s say you drive 50 miles a day but you’re only able to charge up 35 miles per day at home. If your vehicle’s range is 250 miles that means you need to go to a fast charger every 15 days including a little room for reserve power.
Also, all of this is even less of a concern if you live in a country with 240V power.
I forgot that the US uses 120 V, that's a bit less convenient, but I agree. I live in a country that uses 240V, and I ~never need to worry about charging. I'll usually intentionally not charge for days/a week because I wait for the battery to go down to 20%.
What is terrible about charging at home from a regular outlet? As long as you average <50-60 miles a day, like most people, you basically never have to go to fast chargers (or gas stations). It’s amazing.
I have a standard plug (not even three phase) and charge 30 kWh in ten hours (overnight). That's around 90 miles, which is plenty.
If I'm going on a long trip, I just make sure I start charging from > 50% the previous day, and I'm good. It's trivial to manage the state of charge when you have a charger at home and a planned trip coming up.
In the U.S. our standard outlets are 120V, so you only get about 1kW or so out of them. Plenty for most people, but annoying if you need >50 miles of range a day, or if you want to boil water in an electric kettle. The situation is much better in Europe, and most of the rest of the world, where you have 220+V
That's my only car, and it's the best thing ever. I'm never going back to ICE. I have a normal wall plug in my garage and I charge once or twice a week overnight, and I never need to worry about gas station trips.
The fact that I can do 100km with 3 €, even with our expensive electricity, is icing on the cake.
If you don't have a charger at home, though, an EV is a chore, I agree.
> At best, it’ll be a situation where the US market is segregated from the rest of the world: US auto consumers will be buying inferior vehicles from the rest of world that are more expensive to buy and own.
That's where we are now. Here's BYD's main model lineup.[1] Ford's CEO brought a few into the US, paying the insane tariffs, and has his executives driving them to see what the rest of the world is doing.
US automakers are already unable to compete globally even within the ever shrinking ICE share.
Protectionism makes industries weak and uncompetitive, ultimately hurting the economy of the nation doing the protectionism. The proper strategy to become competitive is to provide a small amount of protectionism so that the industry does not die, but to ruthlessly cull underperforming companies so that only the strongest survive. The continual bailouts of companies, keeping old and incompetent executives at the helm, has destroyed the US car industry.
Capitalism requires killing the underperforming companies. Until we let that happen, or at a minimum cull leadership and boards, nothing will get better. The rot is at the top.
The rot is that a empire selling security can subsidize any economic policy indefinitely and is completely decoupled from anything resembling a free market forever.
And it’s very likely that If the orange idiot keeps threatening 50% tariffs on Canadian goods Ike he is now every two weeks then Canada will just drop the quota and open the floodgates.
In what way are US vehicles inferior? I've been told from many in the country that Americans make the hardiest, most rugged vehicles in the world, and everybody is clambering to get them.
You didn't take the time to point out what was wrong with what they said, and why. So please do so if you don't want people to just ignore your comment.
Yes, Norway leads. But it's not an apples with apples comparison.
Norway is a smallish country (you can fit 24 Norway's in Australia - so less range anxiety), whose government pushed the transition to EV's hard. Australia has the worlds most competitive new car market and with one of the least restrictive emissions controls on ICE engines.
It's not that surprising that Norway's government engineered transition to EV's was successful. In Australia EV's became around the same price as ICE vehicles in the last 12 months, and it feels like we've hit a market driven tipping point.
If battery developments take their predicted path, with pricing dropping about 10% per years and range per unit weight doubling, it's difficult to see how it isn't all over bar the shouting - for USA car manufacturing.
Trump sealed the USA's fate, when his changes EV policies lead to $51B in direct write downs. I don't see how you can recover from that.
Right. Australia is crazy sunny. You might intuitively expect there'd be more PV power closer to the equator but that's not how it works, Australia just doesn't have as much cloud as almost anywhere on Earth, especially places a bunch of people actually live - and so that's a lot more energy ("insolation") from the sun ready to harvest.
The industry has managed a transition. Some European brands have partnered with chinese suppliers while integrating some research in-house. Some cars have a lot of features, cute look, and good price.
By features you mean surveillance and spyware bundled with locked down, closed source software aimed at restricting you as much as possible whilst extracting every last cent out of you.
Effectively no modern car "looks cute" or good. They are all stupid SUVs for soccer moms brainwashed by car marketing.
I need to replace a 20 yr old Prius. I’d be a natural Tesla customer if not for Elon. All the BEV cars I like have been cancelled by their manufacturers. I want value and I keep my cars a long time. What should have been a slam dunk purchase has become disappointment. I’ll be buying another hybrid.
While I'm waiting for my Kia EV3 to arrive, I'm desparately trying to figure out which wallbox I need to buy to make use of V2H/V2G. Everything claims to be "ready", but I still don't know whether V2H/V2L will be DC or AC. Which protocol do my smart meters have to provide? What about the PV-inverter? How many apps will I need? How many cloud accounts? What about island-operation? Will I be able to use Home-Assistant for everything? What about feeding in the flexible pricing of my power provider? Another App/API? Which node in this hairball will have which role? Will the car decide when to charge? Or the App? Or the Wallbox? Or its App?
I'm drowning in theoretical options and I'm left with the feeling that everything seems to be possible in theory, but I won't find a solution that works in practice. There are just too many protocols and regulations at play.
Would have loved to wait another year until the dust around these topics have settled a bit, but the old car broke too early :(
(sorry for the rant)
They're making the typical journalism mistake of trying to use prose for what would be better expressed in a chart. This is a pretty common issue with journalists who can write but don't know how to create useful and informative charts.
I looked at other posts by this author and they're all sales by month charts, which are totally devoid of context as they lack historic trend data. So you have to read words to find that out, and its a slog.
I have firsthand experience starting a news company and dealing with this...
Well one interesting thing is that if you want to buy a Toyota Yaris right now in Europe (specifically in Greece) the only options offered are hybrid. One with 116 hp and one with 136 hp. No petrol, no diesel. And only automatic transmission (a no no for me but that another discussion).
Now considering that Yaris is one of the most popular cars (if not the most popular), the increase in sales is not surprising
They Toyota hybrids are still gasoline, what's the objection to the eCVT? So long as we're still using combustion engines it seems like the best design anyone's come up with.
They don't seem to link their sources (that's bad) but the general numbers seem to match The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) report for H1 2026 [0]. They include EU + EFTA + UK.
I'm not entirely sure why you're getting downvoted. I wasn't able to find a source for the data but it is probably new vehicle registrations. Europe here seems to include Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Switzerland.
Sweden, Finland and Iceland would be part of any definition of Europe? They're all EU countries, and (irrelevant to that) are now all NATO members too.
This isn't accurate - they charge slower and Plug & Charge is common in many vehicles now, including with the Tesla network - whereas Teslas cannot Plug & Charge on other networks.
Sure they can, you can buy a CCS adapter. You are limited a bit by 400V, but honestly I have never been able to not find a Tesla charger - and I’ve done 100k miles around the US over the last 5 years
Plug & Charge, referring to the ability to Plug in and automatically process payment, is what I am referring to.
Tesla cannot Plug & Charge on any non-Tesla network. Whereas other vehicles can Plug & Charge on Tesla networks. Therefor, the advantage is to everyone else.
Teslas have poor charging curves and are not cutting edge for charging performance. They are average.
Charging experience? Teslas can't charge as fast as a modern Kia, Lucid, Geely, or BYD. They can't two-gun charge like a BYD. They don't have battery-swaps like NIO. They've got a single charge port in a back corner... very unclear what's best about them.
And as for software, on the infotainment side, AA/CP are great (but not available on Tesla), and people often like having _some_ physical controls, which goes against Musk's aggressive cost-cutting.
If by software you mean FSD (Supervised), I think essentially every major auto lane-keeping + adaptive cruise covers the key use case where FSD is useful: highway slogs.
For anybody who lives outside of the USA, the Chinese EVs are the obvious answer -- they've surpassed Tesla on essentially every dimension.
For people who live inside the USA the math is different, since the government is actively interfering with the free market to protect a critical donor.
Android Auto and Carplay are better than dealing with just crappy infotainment systems but they still don't make the overall software experience good. You end up with disjointed interface with functionality split between the automakers UI.
FSD is unmatched. Auto lane-keeping and adaptive cruise control don't provide the reactivity that FSD does even for straight highway driving.
Most objective reviews comparing a Model Y and Chinese EVs are far less conclusive than you propose.
They have a very reliable charging network with excellent coverage. You just plug your car in and it charges. No fiddling with the charger or apps.
> And as for software, on the infotainment side, AA/CP are great (but not available on Tesla)
The infotainment is good enough where you don't need AA/CP but that's a very subjective detail. The software also extends outside of your car because you can do a lot from the Tesla phone app. It's your car key, control/schedule/monitor charging, lets you control climate remotely, use GPS to find your car, dashcam, etc... all are standard with a Tesla but unavailable or locked behind a subscription elsewhere.
> If by software you mean FSD (Supervised), I think essentially every major auto lane-keeping + adaptive cruise covers the key use case where FSD is useful: highway slogs.
Agree but FSD (Supervised) is actually getting better over time. You 100% need the latest model/hardware car to see those improvements though. Still needs supervision but far less than you may have seen before.
And you can plug almost any modern EV into the Tesla supercharging network without issue. However, unlike Teslas, you can _also_ plug and charge them in other networks.
On self-driving: if you want true autonomy, where you can relax and do something else entirely while you drive, the answers are Waymo, Apollo Go, and to a lesser extent: rideshare.
Every other system requires that you sit in the driver's seat, pay attention, and be ready to handle exceptions. Which means that ongoing improvements don't actually buy you much of anything, because having to handle an exception every 50 miles isn't a better experience than having to handle one very 5 miles.
> Which means that ongoing improvements don't actually buy you much of anything, because having to handle an exception every 50 miles isn't a better experience than having to handle one very 5 miles.
That's what I thought too but after trying FSD on HW4 for two months I really think they are almost there. HW3 was really bad but I didn't need to intervene once with HW4. I think their biggest hurdle will be more of a legal or insurance one when they need to shift liability to actually stop saying it needs supervision.
> the answers are Waymo, Apollo Go
Both of which are supervised too, but remotely, and not constantly. There's no reason why Tesla can't do the same - they probably do for Robotaxis now - as soon as the exception rate is low enough, why not?
Tesla wins on charging because Superchargers are ubiquitous and they just work: you can pull up to one and be pretty much guaranteed that you'll be able to charge. This is manifestly not the case for any of the competition.
This article was about Europe. There is no benefit for Tesla here. It’s all CCS now. Anyone can use Tesla superchargers.
Afaik it’s the same in US, isn’t it? Just with the complication that there’s no government mandated standard, but NACS seems to becoming the de facto standard? So a benefit to Tesla for older models I suppose?
The Rivian R2 is not $20k more. It’s $5k more than the deeply stripped down Model Y base model.
The R2 base model is not as premium as the higher models but the Model Y base model is really deeply stripped down including some really barebones stuff like removing liner material from the frunk and removing some of the exterior LED lights.
Cheapest Model Y is $40k and cheapest R2 is $58k. Cheapest Model 3 is $37k. The vast majority of Teslas sold are in an entirely different market than Rivian, which hasn’t even started delivering R2s yet.
So really, the price gap is $40k or more until R2s are actually delivered.
Oh yes, I see that now. Either way, Tesla has a proven product that is cheaper, so if I’m trying to save money, for all intents and purposes, a Tesla is still thousands cheaper with a far longer track record, plus the option of FSD.
I think you should go look at journalist reviews and impressions of the R2 if you still doubt them. Rivian is also a proven brand, and they also have a self-driving product. And while it isn’t as good as Tesla’s, most customers are pretty happy with basic highway self-driving/adaptive cruise control, as that’s the most fatiguing form of driving.
Only about 12% of Tesla owners have the FSD subscription or purchase according to articles I’ve found on the subject.
Being the cheapest game in town isn’t always the path to success. The RAV4 is at least $5k more in street price than an equivalently specced out Mitsubishi Outlander and Toyota sells a whole lot more RAV4s than Mitsubishis.
In my opinion, the base trim Model Y is probably not being purchased by a lot of non-fleet-style customers. I think that model is a price anchor like a 256GB MacBook Air. Your Uber driver will buy one but someone buying a new car paying the EV price premium rather than a used car really doesn’t want a stripped down experience.
Not really true in Europe where charging is properly standardized.
“Best software” is subjective as well. Many car owners really don’t care for their software and just want to bypass the infotainment system for CarPlay and Android Auto.
I'm an admitted Elon hater, so maybe that clouds my judgement. But I rented a Tesla 3 a few years back to try an EV before deciding to buy one. I ultimately went with a Chevy Bolt, and find the Apple Carplay to be far better than Tesla's proprietary system. The only thing I recall that Tesla did better was pre-conditioning the battery before planned charging--something Apple Carplay (at least its current version) lacks the API to handle.
As far as charging, I think that was the case even as recently as ~2 years ago. But today, the charging game is pretty decent for CCS cars. You can even charge at Tesla stations using an adapter.
Calling it clouded is an understatement. Apart from some Chinese cars (xpeng comes to mind), Rivian, bmw new class (but on paper; practically there are too many issues), other cars don't even come close to Teslas.
I own a 2018 Model 3 and I love it. Plus it's in good shape with limited maintenance. I'm looking to trade it in. But honestly, I don't want to buy effectively the same car but slightly worse, with no turn signals (the recent M3) or an uglier version (the Model Y.) Historically, upgrading from an eight-year old car to the current version of the same model was a pretty big upgrade. Not with Tesla: I'll either keep this car until the wheels fall off, or I'll buy an R2.
As a data point - in my market Tesla is the only manufacturer that makes an EV sedan, and has made them long enough for there to be used ones at reasonable prices (not a lot of people have Taycan money). Most of EVs, especially used ones, are tall and heavy SUVs that put driving experience as the absolutely last priority.
Did I actually buy a Tesla? No. But this has entered as part of my "which EV" conundrum.
does anyone have a data-backed reason as to why US market share has capped out around 10%? is it economics + lack of access to chinese EVs? range anxiety?
We have just about the cheapest gasoline in the developed world. Partly because we make it here, and partly because we refuse to raise taxes on it. (The federal tax was last raised in 1993. It has be 18 cents per gallon ever since.)
If gas were 2 to 4 times as expensive, as it is in much of Europe, there would be a lot more demand for electric cars.
It doesn't help that we exclude all of the new BEVs from China, which are considerably less expensive.
And there it is, we're keeping competition out of the states to protect our auto industry, instead of giving we consumers other options. I've rented cars in Aus/New Zealand, if I lived there I'd own an EV, hands down.
The only way to make our auto makers change is to "make" them change by competition. Consumers want this change, why else do we buy so many Japanese cars? (Beside the fact they are superior.)
I’d guess a greater percent of car owners in the US are working class. A lot of cities car modal share is like 85% or higher which shows how much car ownership is democratized in the US compared to asia or eu, where ownership might be higher relative income and more able to afford new ev premium prices vs cheap used gas cars.
Another interpretation of the high modal share of cars in the US is that there are no viable alternatives to driving in many US cities. In Europe, public transport and biking are viable forms of transportation, so we're not forced into car ownership to participate in society (although the situation can definitely still be improved further). I believe this to be a more "democraticed" outcome than an inescapable 85% modal share for cars.
We're talking about new cars, which in the US the average price of is $50K. The working class tends to buy used cars, of which 3 times more than new cars are sold each year.
Doesn’t matter the price really. People will lease new cars for a couple hundred a month. Or finance them to about that monthly. No one is paying $50k day one. This makes it so people you wouldn’t expect to afford a 50k asset actually do have one, because they can afford to part with like $200/mo.
EVs continue to be expensive in the US. But the trajectory is the opposite in the rest of the world due to the benefit of Chinese exports. In Brazil, for example, new car prices have a now a discount of up to $10K, all due to increased competition from China.
And range/charging infrastructure. The middle of the US is large and mostly rural. There's no charging infrastructure to speak of. But even the smallest towns at least have a gas station.
> Thanks to a number of factors (new cheaper models, high gas prices, mass arrival of Chinese models, etc.), EVs are currently in high demand in Europe.
EVs are in high demand in the EU because laws have been passed in every country and ICE are getting banned in many cities.
Chinese EVs did flood the EU not because people did want to buy chinese EVs: people in the EU were totally fine buying ICE cars (german, french, italian, spanish, ...) but the EU pushed for both legislation and incentives greatly favoring EVs over ICE cars.
It's IMO a good thing to push people to buy EVs. But the EU being the EU, of course they did it incredibly stupidly and managed to inflict great harm to EU car manufacturers and basically hand the keys of the kingdom to both US and chinese EVs (because in the EU we're led by treacherous dumbasses).
People can nitpick as much as they want as to what makes a great car: I do personally have a car from 1988 (38 and a half years old now) that, unlike chinese EVs, doesn't spy on me and that I could still use as a daily (I regularly use it to go, say, pick my kid at school). It's a gas-guzzler and it's not as safe as a modern car, but we definitely could have a talk about the actual CO2 of that car over its lifetime (which is far from done yet) compared to the CO2 over the lifetime of a brand new EV (and if we talk about chinese EVs brought by boat to the EU, we can have a talk too about coal usage in China).
The article could be summed as: "Yay, the EU caused great harm to its car industry and is now buying chinese EVs by the cargo load!".
> EVs are in high demand in the EU because laws have been passed in every country and ICE are getting banned in many cities.
Can you give us an example of a city in the EU banning ICEs? (Not that I'm complaining, it's nice to have quiet cities with clean air, I just don't know about those)
> But the EU being the EU
The EU being the EU did the responsible thing and gave car manufacturers clear rules and a long timeline (over 15 years) to apply them; they also gave them the escape hatch of hybrids and PHEVs that will only be closed using the OBFCM in the following years. But the manufacturers chased fast money and refused to innovate and lower prices because they still made lots of money in export markets. Then China changed the rules, it became very hard to make money with ICE cars there, and then the mfgs complain about the EU and want to be saved again.
> Chinese EVs did flood the EU
There are tariffs on Chinese EVs, depending on the manufacturer, ranging from 27% (BYD) to 45% (SAIC). If the customers still buy a Chinese EV and not an european EV, then the European EV manufacturer does something wrong.
Yes there are incentives to buy EVs but they are still much more expensive than ICE vehicles (I'm in the market for a new car so that is an observation from my experience)
You imply that ICE is banned when in reality many European cities decided to require that you stop polluting their city by meeting newer standards but a brand new ICE car would do that too today, the problem is always that people think a car produced twenty years ago (or like yours, 38 years ago) ought to count, because hey, by the standards of twenty years ago it didn't pollute very much. Standards change. Fifty years ago you could smoke on an aeroplane, today you can't! When my mother first went out to work it wasn't yet legal for her to have her own bank account, the money was hers, her ancestors won that right, she was an individual who could own things and not legally a component part of her father, but banks didn't give out accounts here without a man's say so. By the time she had me, that changed and they'd also banned employers from paying her less because she was a woman.
Amsterdam's current plan says they'll eliminate ICE from their city centre by 2030. I have no idea why you'd drive in central Amsterdam anyway, seems like a terrible idea - but if you insist on doing it after 2030 you'll need an electric vehicle. But that's not today is it? Things change.
Yes, Reduce, Re-use, Re-cycle is in that order for a reason. It's good that you're continuing to use this old car while it meets your needs. A dense European city may well not want you there because the trade-off sucks too bad for them.
And while China does use proportionally more coal than Europe today and likely for the foreseeable future, like European leadership Xi can do the math. The problem I have with Trump is that I'm not sure he even understands the problem, obviously if he did understand he'd lie about it, but I'm just not sure he's even lying, I think he might well be too stupid to understand.
It is extremely stupid to kill your native companies and then become dependent upon foreign companies, see the US if you want to see what happens when you do.
The US auto industry under its pro-oil policy incentives is in for a disastrous long-term outlook in exchange for short-term prosperity.
At best, it’ll be a situation where the US market is segregated from the rest of the world: US auto consumers will be buying inferior vehicles from the rest of world that are more expensive to buy and own, since they will only be viable in the US market and will only be built in the US, Canada, and Mexico.
At worst, the US is setting itself for horrendous energy policy issues moving forward. Sure, the US produces a lot of gas and oil and will for a long time, but any sort of price shock will be leaving the US and its car-dependent economy destabilized while Europe and Asia power forward with an ever-decreasing dependence on oil and gas. The US’ endless energy wars will continue to serve as incredibly expensive endeavors that other countries don’t even need to engage in.
Just look at the number of nuclear power plant projects in progress in China. Comparatively few people in China depend on oil to get to work and travel long distances, and the amount that do is plummeting.
It is remarkable that a US company had an enormous lead in BEVs for a decade. Then they just kinda stopped innovating, and slid backwards.
Let’s not overstate Tesla’s lead.
BYD were breathing down their neck after a few years.
Having owned a Model 3 I would argue that it’s basically “done” at this point, pending software updates for better FSD.
It already charges in 20-30 min at Tesla chargers and has a practical range of around 600 kms, so super fast charging is a bit of a straw man.
Their big downfall is they lack an advertising department willing to spend $1B on pro-electric propaganda to debunk all the Trump/big oil propaganda. IMO EVs have addressed all the main product concerns, and the last ones are buyer stupidity.
I think this opinion fails to explain why Tesla is faltering so badly in China.
The products aren’t “done.” They’re stagnant.
Where is their proper 3 row SUV, not a hacked together half-effort like the YL?
Where is their passenger premium van product for China?
Remember that this is a company with a huge factory and presence in China, and they were the first mover in that market, but they’re getting eaten alive by competitors.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the Volkswagen Group is outselling Tesla in EVs. The #1 EV in Europe is a Skoda, and on top of that Tesla doesn’t make a European style city car. Small sedans like the Model 3 are really not popular in Europe, you need a hatch.
And I haven’t even brought up the Cybertruck selling a couple hundred thousand units below company expectations, that is kind of a low blow cherry on top.
> I think this opinion fails to explain why Tesla is faltering so badly in China.
Apparently not so much, the restyle and a consolidated assistance and charging network make people prefer it over the homemade products lately, which keep innovating but you essentially need to re-learn from scratch every time (my original source article is in Italian - https://www.vaielettrico.it/troppa-scelta-poca-fiducia-i-cin... ; this is the closest I could find in English: https://paultan.org/2026/01/21/tesla-model-y-again-best-sell... )
> They’re stagnant.
To some degree, I agree. Esp. on the 800V part which could make charges a bit faster. But I think they're overall stagnant: they pushed a ton of boundaries in the first 10-15y because they had to make something people could buy and use, but now that innovation push has diminished greatly: the cars work for most people, and the range is acceptable and not such a big inconvenience that pushes people to other brands. So no sense in going axial flux motors (that everyone is experimenting with) or bigger battery capacities, or even 48V + Ethernet instead of 12V + CANbus (the CyberTruck has these, but I don't think it has trickled down to the other models).
> Meanwhile, in Europe, the Volkswagen Group is outselling Tesla in EVs. The #1 EV in Europe is a Skoda, and on top of that Tesla doesn’t make a European style city car. Small sedans like the Model 3 are really not popular in Europe, you need a hatch.
Yes, but the Model Y remains the single unique best-selling car. VW needs to put together a few vehicle models to get to the same numbers. And I think the reason is the same as with China: Tesla has always been EV only, and built assistance and infrastructure for it, while VW doesn't have a very clear direction and makes products which are perhaps slightly mechanically superior, but feel inferior on the software and UX side. A car with hardware equivalent to Tesla (which now has 2 trims and 2 battery picks) costs anyway more than the base Tesla (you need to add a few optionals to the VWs). What Tesla is lacking in Europe are smaller models with ~450-500km range.
Judging by single model is going to make Tesla look better than it is when compared to badge engineering and/or whole platform sales. The MEB platform/ID.4 cross brand cousins outsell the Model Y.
BYD is likely moving a few hundred thousand more pure BEVs than Tesla each year, although it’s hard to gauge the exact mix given that they have hybrids and ICE vehicles.
I am not saying Tesla is in doomed in China or anything like that, they’re a top brand. But they should be definitively the #1 brand and their product lineup is short 2-3 models.
They are doomed in China. It’s over for Tesla in China and it’s not just China. It’s the rest of the world outside the US doomed.
You think it’s done only because you are not ambitious enough. And neither is Tesla. A Hyundai charges faster than a Tesla. Chinese cars from several brands are getting five-minute charging times. If you think that’s a straw man I don’t know what to say; a buyer wants charging to be as fast as pumping gas, and are you going to blame buyer stupidity for not delivering on that?
But which brands last longer than a Tesla? None. That’s because faster charging wears out the battery. Charging fast is not marvellous, actually it requires a lot of self-control from the manufacturers to limit charging speed for longevity, even though most people won’t understand why.
No, because Chinese EVs have advanced in battery technology too above Tesla.
> CATL also says the battery retains more than 90% of its original capacity after 1,000 ultra-fast charging cycles
https://www.evdances.com/blogs/news/hongqi-unveils-ultra-fas...
Tesla buys batteries from CATL.
China is even doing 90 second automated robotic battery swap stations.
Yes, I would blame the buyer for thinking it's important at this point. It's almost a meme response to EVs.
All you need to do is an honest look at how many days a year you drive 500+ miles per day. People can't seem to do that and fixate on the ultra long distance road trip that they might make once per year. And neglecting to realize that they stop for bathroom breaks and food and so the actual time you're simply waiting for charging is, at best, maybe 20-30 minutes per year.
99% of the time you would be plugging your car into the charger at your house. And it just charges overnight.
I guess it's different if people have no way to charge their car at home or have it plugged in overnight. But in that case a lot of times they can pick up charge while at work, or whole doing grocery shopping, etc.
No. You are presupposing a particular usage of a car and imposing that on a potential buyer. I take the train or bike to work, so for me my car is only for weekend trips. That’s why I bought the fastest-charging car available at that time.
Even for road trips there are different ways to approach it. Some people just want to get to their destination fast and don’t mind eating at wherever the charger is. Others take road trips differently and would want to eat at the best restaurant at each local town they pass through, which may not be where chargers are. And if there are many passengers the bathroom breaks are usually not aligned with when the car needs charging. The perfect scenario of getting food or bathroom breaks exactly when the car needs charging could be a rare scenario.
I am very skeptical that your Model 3 has a "practical range" of 372 miles. EPA range for the long range model is 342 miles, and I would expect usable range to be considerably less (since you probably want to start charging at around 10% remaining, and you probably want to stop charging at 80-90%). 0% - 100% is kind of not "practical" as it would require you to fully deplete the battery, and then wait for the slow charging at the margins (90 to 100% tends to be pretty slow).
Practical meaning I don’t plan to ever drive more than 600km per day so if it’s 600km from A->B, and then a 8 hour charge, that’s fine by me… if I want 700km I’ll stop and charge for 5 min at 30% SOC or so
But the GP is saying a Tesla won't do 600km on one charge, which does sound reasonable.
I agree with you about just stopping to charge for a few minutes along the way if I need more, though.
For me Tesla's brand is irreparably damaged.
That's worth accounting for - I'm likely not alone.
I’m convinced super-fast charging will be a game changer, because it will eliminate the ~only remaining downside to EVs. If Tesla had charging tech like BYD the market in the U.S. would look very different
I don't buy it. "Recharging == Fuel" is the wrong way to think about it.
Think about your phone. Do you plan how you'll charge that quickly? Do you know where you can get a quick charge at a local mall while ordering coffee? Nope, it just gets charged over night when you're asleep, no problem.
I agree charging at home/work is best, and ideally we would have ubiquitous slow charging at apartment lots, workplaces, and on the street. But that’s not really realistic right now in the U.S., and more importantly, it isn’t under Tesla’s control. Whereas they could have solved the problem for people with less charging access by making their fast charging faster like BYD has done.
With respect to your phone analogy, if I weren’t able to charge my phone at home or at work, I would definitely be interested in being able to fast-charge it at some conveniently located business
I think you're both right. An EV is wonderful if you can charge at home, and a chore if you can't. Fast chargers help, but they're expensive and still not as fast as gas.
If you have a wall plug at home, an EV is basically always full. I'm shopping for a flat and one of my non-negotiable requirements is a parking spot with a plug. The one I'm looking at now even has a three-phase plug, which is a nice extra, but not really necessary.
Yes I do get the fastest charging speed and highest battery capacity phone, which are Chinese now too like OnePlus. Once you know you can depend on your phone for a few days, it's a game changer.
Not everyone wants the same thing from a car. Some care most about the price, some about the efficiency, some about the size, some about the comfort, some about the charging speed despite what you say.
If Telsa were still innovating, they'd have rounded out their offerings to fill in the gaps that are now getting filled with other brands in the world outside the USA.
I keep shouting from the rooftops that Tesla’s lack of offerings has them completely hamstrung.
Tesla sells more vehicles than Mazda, and both brands are in a similar semi-premium non-luxury segment. Compare lineups between these brands.
How does Mazda have 3.5 SUVs and Tesla only has 1.5? (The .5 is counting the CX-70 and CX-90, and the Y and YL as essentially the same car)
Mazda is able to offer a sedan and hatchback variant of the 3.
They also have a city car in Europe, the Mazda 2. Absolutely nothing in the segment from Tesla.
And of course, Mazda has the legendary MX-5, which chugs along selling a very respectable quantity while the Tesla Roadster remains MIA.
Where is Tesla’s lineup? For being a being China-focused brand, where is their premium/luxury van? For being a US-focused brand, where is their family 3-row Grand Highlander killer? How did they botch a truck made in Texas?
> Tesla sells more vehicles than Mazda
Isn’t that all that matters ?
My point is that they don’t have a wide enough breadth of models and that’s holding them back, and the fact that lower volume brands have more models and appeal to a wider range of customers helps demonstrate that.
They cost too much…
I can’t own one because I can’t install a fast charger at my place.
Yeah this is the kind of thing people say on a day to day basis.
I don't have a gas station at my house, and yet I still own a gas-powered vehicle.
I also don't have a fast electric charger at my house, and yet I still also own an EV.
I can fill a gas car in 3 mins basically anywhere within reach of civilization. It is frictionless pretty much. People I know with ev and no home charger have to plan their entire life around when they take the car to charge. Sometimes they have to just take the gas car because the ev is down to 30% and too close to empty for comfort.
I have compared prices in fast-charging stations to gasoline here in Sweden, and a gasoline car get more miles for the money. The price can be up to 100x, or 10000% that of the market price that the fast-charging stations buy their electricity from.
And even with that, very few places seems to be willing to build competing charging stations that will undercut those prices. The only way to actually save money is to have a charging stations at home or at work where you pay the normal (through still very high) cost that the utility company take.
I have found fast-charging prices near where I live to be fairly competitive with gasoline per-mile. The lower maintenance costs of an EV are icing on the cake, so to speak.
But I actually do most of my charging as trickle-charging from a regular home outlet, despite it being slow; it adds about 40 miles of range per 24 hours of charging. My car sits in my driveway most of the time so that's actually sufficient most of the time.
In Greece, fast charging is 4x more expensive than slow charging at home. Slow electricity is around 4x cheaper than gas, so you're right, fast charging makes it about even.
Good thing I only need to fast charge a few times a year, on long trips (or consecutive trips away from home/a plug).
Most people don’t need a fast charger to own an EV. Most people would actually be just fine on a household outlet.
Have been charging my model 3 from an outlet since 2020, we only need fast charging occasionally when taking a long trip
Not to mention that fast charging degrades your battery faster. I've had my car for a year and a half and I charged at a fast charger maybe four times.
Sounds terrible if that is your only car.
Not really.
The average person in America drives about 37 miles a day.
EVs gain about 3-5 miles per hour on a household 120V charger.
You sleep for about 8 hours and are probably home away from work and errands for an about 12 hours.
Do the math: 3 miles per hour for 12 hours is 36 miles.
And even if you don’t keep up with your pace, the weekend can act as additional time to charge. Or if you drive more on the weekend, you can basically decide that you’re going to go to a fast charger every 2-4 weeks just like a gas car (or maybe even less frequently than a gas car).
Let’s say you drive 50 miles a day but you’re only able to charge up 35 miles per day at home. If your vehicle’s range is 250 miles that means you need to go to a fast charger every 15 days including a little room for reserve power.
Also, all of this is even less of a concern if you live in a country with 240V power.
So you forget to plug in one night and are screwed for work the next day it sounds like
You are probably never starting from zero on workdays, are you?
I forgot that the US uses 120 V, that's a bit less convenient, but I agree. I live in a country that uses 240V, and I ~never need to worry about charging. I'll usually intentionally not charge for days/a week because I wait for the battery to go down to 20%.
What is terrible about charging at home from a regular outlet? As long as you average <50-60 miles a day, like most people, you basically never have to go to fast chargers (or gas stations). It’s amazing.
I have a standard plug (not even three phase) and charge 30 kWh in ten hours (overnight). That's around 90 miles, which is plenty.
If I'm going on a long trip, I just make sure I start charging from > 50% the previous day, and I'm good. It's trivial to manage the state of charge when you have a charger at home and a planned trip coming up.
In the U.S. our standard outlets are 120V, so you only get about 1kW or so out of them. Plenty for most people, but annoying if you need >50 miles of range a day, or if you want to boil water in an electric kettle. The situation is much better in Europe, and most of the rest of the world, where you have 220+V
That's my only car, and it's the best thing ever. I'm never going back to ICE. I have a normal wall plug in my garage and I charge once or twice a week overnight, and I never need to worry about gas station trips.
The fact that I can do 100km with 3 €, even with our expensive electricity, is icing on the cake.
If you don't have a charger at home, though, an EV is a chore, I agree.
> At best, it’ll be a situation where the US market is segregated from the rest of the world: US auto consumers will be buying inferior vehicles from the rest of world that are more expensive to buy and own.
That's where we are now. Here's BYD's main model lineup.[1] Ford's CEO brought a few into the US, paying the insane tariffs, and has his executives driving them to see what the rest of the world is doing.
[1] https://www.byd.international/models
US automakers are already unable to compete globally even within the ever shrinking ICE share.
Protectionism makes industries weak and uncompetitive, ultimately hurting the economy of the nation doing the protectionism. The proper strategy to become competitive is to provide a small amount of protectionism so that the industry does not die, but to ruthlessly cull underperforming companies so that only the strongest survive. The continual bailouts of companies, keeping old and incompetent executives at the helm, has destroyed the US car industry.
Capitalism requires killing the underperforming companies. Until we let that happen, or at a minimum cull leadership and boards, nothing will get better. The rot is at the top.
The rot is that a empire selling security can subsidize any economic policy indefinitely and is completely decoupled from anything resembling a free market forever.
And Canadians will soon stop buying the inferior US vehicles (and Mexico already has), because Chinese EVs are now allowed in at only 6% tariff.
BYD are taking over.
Chinese made vehicles are limited to 49000/year only. 2.5% of Canadian market.
For now. The quota increases every year.
And it’s very likely that If the orange idiot keeps threatening 50% tariffs on Canadian goods Ike he is now every two weeks then Canada will just drop the quota and open the floodgates.
Quota will be 70,000 vehicles per year in 2030. That's almost nothing.
I thought I read that this exact thing happened when Honda and Toyota arrived in the US: they started selling in Canada first.
This has happened over and over, really. See also: Hyundai and Kia.
In what way are US vehicles inferior? I've been told from many in the country that Americans make the hardiest, most rugged vehicles in the world, and everybody is clambering to get them.
Nothing you wrote there makes sense, there is just no chain of causality in it.
You didn't take the time to point out what was wrong with what they said, and why. So please do so if you don't want people to just ignore your comment.
Can you explain further? I’d be happy to see some of my specific ideas challenged.
Nearly 50% of vehicles sold in Australia in the last quarter were EVs or plug-in hybrids: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-02/electric-vehicle-ev-s...
A record for EV sales in Norway was set in 2025: 95.9 percent of all new passenger cars sold were fully electric, up from 88.9 percent in 2024.
Yes, but Norway is a very rich country because of all the resources they can just extract from the ground. Australia.. wait, never mind.
Yes, Norway leads. But it's not an apples with apples comparison.
Norway is a smallish country (you can fit 24 Norway's in Australia - so less range anxiety), whose government pushed the transition to EV's hard. Australia has the worlds most competitive new car market and with one of the least restrictive emissions controls on ICE engines.
It's not that surprising that Norway's government engineered transition to EV's was successful. In Australia EV's became around the same price as ICE vehicles in the last 12 months, and it feels like we've hit a market driven tipping point.
If battery developments take their predicted path, with pricing dropping about 10% per years and range per unit weight doubling, it's difficult to see how it isn't all over bar the shouting - for USA car manufacturing.
Trump sealed the USA's fate, when his changes EV policies lead to $51B in direct write downs. I don't see how you can recover from that.
Top 10 new passenger cars 2025
1. Tesla Model Y: 27 621
2. Volkswagen ID.4: 8 802
3. Toyota bZ4X: 7 274
4. Volkswagen ID.7: 6 976
5. Tesla Model 3: 6 608
6. Volkswagen ID.3: 5 572
7. Volvo EX40: 5 270
8. Volvo EX30(xc): 5 206
9. Skoda Enyaq: 4 836
10. Nissan Ariya: 4 565
Sweet free free sunshine down here.
Right. Australia is crazy sunny. You might intuitively expect there'd be more PV power closer to the equator but that's not how it works, Australia just doesn't have as much cloud as almost anywhere on Earth, especially places a bunch of people actually live - and so that's a lot more energy ("insolation") from the sun ready to harvest.
Yeah, also we have a lot of room we don’t care about and nobody goes there, so we just put solar panels out there.
BEV - battery electric vehicle
(P)HEV - (plugin) hybrid electric vehicle
ICEV - internal combustion engine vehicle
The industry has managed a transition. Some European brands have partnered with chinese suppliers while integrating some research in-house. Some cars have a lot of features, cute look, and good price.
By features you mean surveillance and spyware bundled with locked down, closed source software aimed at restricting you as much as possible whilst extracting every last cent out of you.
Effectively no modern car "looks cute" or good. They are all stupid SUVs for soccer moms brainwashed by car marketing.
Big oversized, rolling couches down the road big and square, model 3 or Prius sized if you’re trying to save the environment.
I need to replace a 20 yr old Prius. I’d be a natural Tesla customer if not for Elon. All the BEV cars I like have been cancelled by their manufacturers. I want value and I keep my cars a long time. What should have been a slam dunk purchase has become disappointment. I’ll be buying another hybrid.
I'm trading in my 2018 Tesla Model 3 soon to buy a Rivian R2. It seems like the only real Tesla competitor actually coming to market.
While I'm waiting for my Kia EV3 to arrive, I'm desparately trying to figure out which wallbox I need to buy to make use of V2H/V2G. Everything claims to be "ready", but I still don't know whether V2H/V2L will be DC or AC. Which protocol do my smart meters have to provide? What about the PV-inverter? How many apps will I need? How many cloud accounts? What about island-operation? Will I be able to use Home-Assistant for everything? What about feeding in the flexible pricing of my power provider? Another App/API? Which node in this hairball will have which role? Will the car decide when to charge? Or the App? Or the Wallbox? Or its App?
I'm drowning in theoretical options and I'm left with the feeling that everything seems to be possible in theory, but I won't find a solution that works in practice. There are just too many protocols and regulations at play.
Would have loved to wait another year until the dust around these topics have settled a bit, but the old car broke too early :( (sorry for the rant)
I wish the article was written in a better way. It throws put many percentages in different contexts. 50-26-37-41- …
Not saying any particular number is wrong, just wishing it was a clearer way of writing.
They're making the typical journalism mistake of trying to use prose for what would be better expressed in a chart. This is a pretty common issue with journalists who can write but don't know how to create useful and informative charts.
I looked at other posts by this author and they're all sales by month charts, which are totally devoid of context as they lack historic trend data. So you have to read words to find that out, and its a slog.
I have firsthand experience starting a news company and dealing with this...
> I have firsthand experience starting a news company and dealing with this...
What is the solution for this, from the management POV?
Maybe having a data-viz person as part of the editorial process?
Well one interesting thing is that if you want to buy a Toyota Yaris right now in Europe (specifically in Greece) the only options offered are hybrid. One with 116 hp and one with 136 hp. No petrol, no diesel. And only automatic transmission (a no no for me but that another discussion).
Now considering that Yaris is one of the most popular cars (if not the most popular), the increase in sales is not surprising
They Toyota hybrids are still gasoline, what's the objection to the eCVT? So long as we're still using combustion engines it seems like the best design anyone's come up with.
It looks like Europe no longer hates Elon. That didn't last long.
We own a Model Y and now subscribe to FSD. The car is basically done and I sort of see why Tesla isn’t bothering
What are their sources? How are they defining Europe?
They don't seem to link their sources (that's bad) but the general numbers seem to match The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) report for H1 2026 [0]. They include EU + EFTA + UK.
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I'm not entirely sure why you're getting downvoted. I wasn't able to find a source for the data but it is probably new vehicle registrations. Europe here seems to include Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Switzerland.
Sweden, Finland and Iceland would be part of any definition of Europe? They're all EU countries, and (irrelevant to that) are now all NATO members too.
Switzerland is not but its meager population can hardly significantly skew the sales stats
Iceland is not in the EU
Why wouldn't it?
Typically European Union vs Europe.
they’ll get included again if they order a few humanoid robots that will be shipping by 2078
Vehicle registrations.
Why would anyone buy a Tesla in 2026?
Best charging experience and best software experience.
Note: I do not want this to be true. Other companies please copy what Tesla has done with both of these. You’ve had years to do this and failed.
> Best charging experience
This isn't accurate - they charge slower and Plug & Charge is common in many vehicles now, including with the Tesla network - whereas Teslas cannot Plug & Charge on other networks.
Sure they can, you can buy a CCS adapter. You are limited a bit by 400V, but honestly I have never been able to not find a Tesla charger - and I’ve done 100k miles around the US over the last 5 years
Plug & Charge, referring to the ability to Plug in and automatically process payment, is what I am referring to.
Tesla cannot Plug & Charge on any non-Tesla network. Whereas other vehicles can Plug & Charge on Tesla networks. Therefor, the advantage is to everyone else.
Teslas have poor charging curves and are not cutting edge for charging performance. They are average.
Charging experience? Teslas can't charge as fast as a modern Kia, Lucid, Geely, or BYD. They can't two-gun charge like a BYD. They don't have battery-swaps like NIO. They've got a single charge port in a back corner... very unclear what's best about them.
And as for software, on the infotainment side, AA/CP are great (but not available on Tesla), and people often like having _some_ physical controls, which goes against Musk's aggressive cost-cutting.
If by software you mean FSD (Supervised), I think essentially every major auto lane-keeping + adaptive cruise covers the key use case where FSD is useful: highway slogs.
For anybody who lives outside of the USA, the Chinese EVs are the obvious answer -- they've surpassed Tesla on essentially every dimension.
For people who live inside the USA the math is different, since the government is actively interfering with the free market to protect a critical donor.
Android Auto and Carplay are better than dealing with just crappy infotainment systems but they still don't make the overall software experience good. You end up with disjointed interface with functionality split between the automakers UI.
FSD is unmatched. Auto lane-keeping and adaptive cruise control don't provide the reactivity that FSD does even for straight highway driving.
Most objective reviews comparing a Model Y and Chinese EVs are far less conclusive than you propose.
Tesla FSD and infotainment is the best in the US only. Tesla is no match for Xiaomi or Li Auto.
> Charging experience?
They have a very reliable charging network with excellent coverage. You just plug your car in and it charges. No fiddling with the charger or apps.
> And as for software, on the infotainment side, AA/CP are great (but not available on Tesla)
The infotainment is good enough where you don't need AA/CP but that's a very subjective detail. The software also extends outside of your car because you can do a lot from the Tesla phone app. It's your car key, control/schedule/monitor charging, lets you control climate remotely, use GPS to find your car, dashcam, etc... all are standard with a Tesla but unavailable or locked behind a subscription elsewhere.
> If by software you mean FSD (Supervised), I think essentially every major auto lane-keeping + adaptive cruise covers the key use case where FSD is useful: highway slogs.
Agree but FSD (Supervised) is actually getting better over time. You 100% need the latest model/hardware car to see those improvements though. Still needs supervision but far less than you may have seen before.
And you can plug almost any modern EV into the Tesla supercharging network without issue. However, unlike Teslas, you can _also_ plug and charge them in other networks.
On self-driving: if you want true autonomy, where you can relax and do something else entirely while you drive, the answers are Waymo, Apollo Go, and to a lesser extent: rideshare.
Every other system requires that you sit in the driver's seat, pay attention, and be ready to handle exceptions. Which means that ongoing improvements don't actually buy you much of anything, because having to handle an exception every 50 miles isn't a better experience than having to handle one very 5 miles.
> Which means that ongoing improvements don't actually buy you much of anything, because having to handle an exception every 50 miles isn't a better experience than having to handle one very 5 miles.
That's what I thought too but after trying FSD on HW4 for two months I really think they are almost there. HW3 was really bad but I didn't need to intervene once with HW4. I think their biggest hurdle will be more of a legal or insurance one when they need to shift liability to actually stop saying it needs supervision.
> the answers are Waymo, Apollo Go
Both of which are supervised too, but remotely, and not constantly. There's no reason why Tesla can't do the same - they probably do for Robotaxis now - as soon as the exception rate is low enough, why not?
If it is so good why don't they take liability? They aren't even willing to risk money while you are ready to risk your life...
Because it's not good enough yet.
comma.ai is the one that's available now to cars today.
comma.ai requires supervision just like Tesla's FSD.
> However, unlike Teslas, you can _also_ plug and charge them in other networks.
why?
Tesla wins on charging because Superchargers are ubiquitous and they just work: you can pull up to one and be pretty much guaranteed that you'll be able to charge. This is manifestly not the case for any of the competition.
This article was about Europe. There is no benefit for Tesla here. It’s all CCS now. Anyone can use Tesla superchargers.
Afaik it’s the same in US, isn’t it? Just with the complication that there’s no government mandated standard, but NACS seems to becoming the de facto standard? So a benefit to Tesla for older models I suppose?
Pretty much every EV can use Superchargers.
I'm setting aside that charging off of public EVs is relatively rare anyway... but your premise is flawed.
(In the US) I switched from Tesla to Rivian. Their approach seems to be “Tesla, but nicer”. They have a similar non-legacy automaker feel.
That said while I appreciate their design focus their software still feels not quite as polished as Tesla’s.
“Tesla, but nicer, and $20k more”
Also, while FSD has limitations, I have found it provides enormous utility for older people, and Rivian doesn’t yet have a competing product for FSD.
The Rivian R2 is not $20k more. It’s $5k more than the deeply stripped down Model Y base model.
The R2 base model is not as premium as the higher models but the Model Y base model is really deeply stripped down including some really barebones stuff like removing liner material from the frunk and removing some of the exterior LED lights.
Cheapest Model Y is $40k and cheapest R2 is $58k. Cheapest Model 3 is $37k. The vast majority of Teslas sold are in an entirely different market than Rivian, which hasn’t even started delivering R2s yet.
So really, the price gap is $40k or more until R2s are actually delivered.
Look again, cheapest R2 is $44,990. Deliveries haven’t started on that trim but they are less than a year away.
You are incorrect when you say that Rivian isn’t delivering R2s. Factually untrue. This claim of a $40k+ price gap is absurd.
Oh yes, I see that now. Either way, Tesla has a proven product that is cheaper, so if I’m trying to save money, for all intents and purposes, a Tesla is still thousands cheaper with a far longer track record, plus the option of FSD.
I think you should go look at journalist reviews and impressions of the R2 if you still doubt them. Rivian is also a proven brand, and they also have a self-driving product. And while it isn’t as good as Tesla’s, most customers are pretty happy with basic highway self-driving/adaptive cruise control, as that’s the most fatiguing form of driving.
Only about 12% of Tesla owners have the FSD subscription or purchase according to articles I’ve found on the subject.
This lines up well with Gallup polling that states that less than 20% of Americans even have a desire to own a driverless car in the future: https://news.gallup.com/poll/708683/americans-driverless-car...
Being the cheapest game in town isn’t always the path to success. The RAV4 is at least $5k more in street price than an equivalently specced out Mitsubishi Outlander and Toyota sells a whole lot more RAV4s than Mitsubishis.
In my opinion, the base trim Model Y is probably not being purchased by a lot of non-fleet-style customers. I think that model is a price anchor like a 256GB MacBook Air. Your Uber driver will buy one but someone buying a new car paying the EV price premium rather than a used car really doesn’t want a stripped down experience.
R2s are already being delivered to customers.
There is no honest way to manufacture a $40k price gap.
Not really true in Europe where charging is properly standardized.
“Best software” is subjective as well. Many car owners really don’t care for their software and just want to bypass the infotainment system for CarPlay and Android Auto.
The best charging experience would be any of 10 BYD models with flash charging.
10% to 70%: 5 minutes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Flash_Charging
Yes, but Americans don't have the freedom to experience this. They have to choose between expensive and more expensive.
Capitalism With American Characteristics
Americanism
I'm an admitted Elon hater, so maybe that clouds my judgement. But I rented a Tesla 3 a few years back to try an EV before deciding to buy one. I ultimately went with a Chevy Bolt, and find the Apple Carplay to be far better than Tesla's proprietary system. The only thing I recall that Tesla did better was pre-conditioning the battery before planned charging--something Apple Carplay (at least its current version) lacks the API to handle.
As far as charging, I think that was the case even as recently as ~2 years ago. But today, the charging game is pretty decent for CCS cars. You can even charge at Tesla stations using an adapter.
Calling it clouded is an understatement. Apart from some Chinese cars (xpeng comes to mind), Rivian, bmw new class (but on paper; practically there are too many issues), other cars don't even come close to Teslas.
I own a 2018 Model 3 and I love it. Plus it's in good shape with limited maintenance. I'm looking to trade it in. But honestly, I don't want to buy effectively the same car but slightly worse, with no turn signals (the recent M3) or an uglier version (the Model Y.) Historically, upgrading from an eight-year old car to the current version of the same model was a pretty big upgrade. Not with Tesla: I'll either keep this car until the wheels fall off, or I'll buy an R2.
Price? They are quite cheap these days relative to comparable cars from other manufacturers.
only if you exclude cars made in Asia
In Europe not so much. At least the base Model Y/3 are competitive or even cheaper than equivalent Chinese models.
Tesla does have production in Shanghai.
Self driving maybe? I’m happy to be corrected but I think most brands don’t offer the full self driving package Tesla offers.
As a data point - in my market Tesla is the only manufacturer that makes an EV sedan, and has made them long enough for there to be used ones at reasonable prices (not a lot of people have Taycan money). Most of EVs, especially used ones, are tall and heavy SUVs that put driving experience as the absolutely last priority.
Did I actually buy a Tesla? No. But this has entered as part of my "which EV" conundrum.
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does anyone have a data-backed reason as to why US market share has capped out around 10%? is it economics + lack of access to chinese EVs? range anxiety?
We have just about the cheapest gasoline in the developed world. Partly because we make it here, and partly because we refuse to raise taxes on it. (The federal tax was last raised in 1993. It has be 18 cents per gallon ever since.)
If gas were 2 to 4 times as expensive, as it is in much of Europe, there would be a lot more demand for electric cars.
It doesn't help that we exclude all of the new BEVs from China, which are considerably less expensive.
And there it is, we're keeping competition out of the states to protect our auto industry, instead of giving we consumers other options. I've rented cars in Aus/New Zealand, if I lived there I'd own an EV, hands down.
The only way to make our auto makers change is to "make" them change by competition. Consumers want this change, why else do we buy so many Japanese cars? (Beside the fact they are superior.)
I’d guess a greater percent of car owners in the US are working class. A lot of cities car modal share is like 85% or higher which shows how much car ownership is democratized in the US compared to asia or eu, where ownership might be higher relative income and more able to afford new ev premium prices vs cheap used gas cars.
Another interpretation of the high modal share of cars in the US is that there are no viable alternatives to driving in many US cities. In Europe, public transport and biking are viable forms of transportation, so we're not forced into car ownership to participate in society (although the situation can definitely still be improved further). I believe this to be a more "democraticed" outcome than an inescapable 85% modal share for cars.
We're talking about new cars, which in the US the average price of is $50K. The working class tends to buy used cars, of which 3 times more than new cars are sold each year.
Doesn’t matter the price really. People will lease new cars for a couple hundred a month. Or finance them to about that monthly. No one is paying $50k day one. This makes it so people you wouldn’t expect to afford a 50k asset actually do have one, because they can afford to part with like $200/mo.
EVs continue to be expensive in the US. But the trajectory is the opposite in the rest of the world due to the benefit of Chinese exports. In Brazil, for example, new car prices have a now a discount of up to $10K, all due to increased competition from China.
probably gas price
And range/charging infrastructure. The middle of the US is large and mostly rural. There's no charging infrastructure to speak of. But even the smallest towns at least have a gas station.
> Thanks to a number of factors (new cheaper models, high gas prices, mass arrival of Chinese models, etc.), EVs are currently in high demand in Europe.
EVs are in high demand in the EU because laws have been passed in every country and ICE are getting banned in many cities.
Chinese EVs did flood the EU not because people did want to buy chinese EVs: people in the EU were totally fine buying ICE cars (german, french, italian, spanish, ...) but the EU pushed for both legislation and incentives greatly favoring EVs over ICE cars.
It's IMO a good thing to push people to buy EVs. But the EU being the EU, of course they did it incredibly stupidly and managed to inflict great harm to EU car manufacturers and basically hand the keys of the kingdom to both US and chinese EVs (because in the EU we're led by treacherous dumbasses).
People can nitpick as much as they want as to what makes a great car: I do personally have a car from 1988 (38 and a half years old now) that, unlike chinese EVs, doesn't spy on me and that I could still use as a daily (I regularly use it to go, say, pick my kid at school). It's a gas-guzzler and it's not as safe as a modern car, but we definitely could have a talk about the actual CO2 of that car over its lifetime (which is far from done yet) compared to the CO2 over the lifetime of a brand new EV (and if we talk about chinese EVs brought by boat to the EU, we can have a talk too about coal usage in China).
The article could be summed as: "Yay, the EU caused great harm to its car industry and is now buying chinese EVs by the cargo load!".
I take we should... Applaud that great success!?
Short term thinking in the EU and top it off Germany also got rid of their nuclear power plants, and then became dependent on Russian oil and gas.
> EVs are in high demand in the EU because laws have been passed in every country and ICE are getting banned in many cities.
Can you give us an example of a city in the EU banning ICEs? (Not that I'm complaining, it's nice to have quiet cities with clean air, I just don't know about those)
> But the EU being the EU
The EU being the EU did the responsible thing and gave car manufacturers clear rules and a long timeline (over 15 years) to apply them; they also gave them the escape hatch of hybrids and PHEVs that will only be closed using the OBFCM in the following years. But the manufacturers chased fast money and refused to innovate and lower prices because they still made lots of money in export markets. Then China changed the rules, it became very hard to make money with ICE cars there, and then the mfgs complain about the EU and want to be saved again.
> Chinese EVs did flood the EU
There are tariffs on Chinese EVs, depending on the manufacturer, ranging from 27% (BYD) to 45% (SAIC). If the customers still buy a Chinese EV and not an european EV, then the European EV manufacturer does something wrong.
Yes there are incentives to buy EVs but they are still much more expensive than ICE vehicles (I'm in the market for a new car so that is an observation from my experience)
EVs are still more expensive? You should thank EU bureaucrats for setting penalty tariffs on Chinese EVs.
They may import the cars, but now they don't need to import the fuel.
You imply that ICE is banned when in reality many European cities decided to require that you stop polluting their city by meeting newer standards but a brand new ICE car would do that too today, the problem is always that people think a car produced twenty years ago (or like yours, 38 years ago) ought to count, because hey, by the standards of twenty years ago it didn't pollute very much. Standards change. Fifty years ago you could smoke on an aeroplane, today you can't! When my mother first went out to work it wasn't yet legal for her to have her own bank account, the money was hers, her ancestors won that right, she was an individual who could own things and not legally a component part of her father, but banks didn't give out accounts here without a man's say so. By the time she had me, that changed and they'd also banned employers from paying her less because she was a woman.
Amsterdam's current plan says they'll eliminate ICE from their city centre by 2030. I have no idea why you'd drive in central Amsterdam anyway, seems like a terrible idea - but if you insist on doing it after 2030 you'll need an electric vehicle. But that's not today is it? Things change.
Yes, Reduce, Re-use, Re-cycle is in that order for a reason. It's good that you're continuing to use this old car while it meets your needs. A dense European city may well not want you there because the trade-off sucks too bad for them.
And while China does use proportionally more coal than Europe today and likely for the foreseeable future, like European leadership Xi can do the math. The problem I have with Trump is that I'm not sure he even understands the problem, obviously if he did understand he'd lie about it, but I'm just not sure he's even lying, I think he might well be too stupid to understand.
It is extremely stupid to kill your native companies and then become dependent upon foreign companies, see the US if you want to see what happens when you do.
What's stopping the native companies from making EVs?