Cancer spreads, and the UAW is an aggressive cancer. However, I think Honda and Toyota are in a better position to fight the UAW in that they already have quite cushy jobs and their top executives are not constantly in scandals where they are milking the company for every penny its worth at the expense of the organization as a whole.

Its a lot easier sales pitch for unionization that the wrench turners need a 30% raise if the executives already making millions give themselves a 30% raise even when they are performing poorly, or like Ford suddenly say “oh yeah, BTW we have so much extra profit that we have $10 billion to buy out our stocks.”

Japanese CEOs and board members make good money, but not the insane amounts you often see in the West where its hundreds of times the average employee’s salary.

There’s a big movement against that now, and the EU ICE ban has been recognized as unrealistic and has been lifted. The people are recognizing that this would represent economic suicide, and the public are not willing to give up the freedom of personal mobility or restrict themselves into living in crowded conditions huddled around public transit. I think the conflict with Russia has pushed them over the limit and demonstrated how their grid and economic structure simply can’t handle such a ban.

Electronics have a far higher profit margin than EVs, as they are profitable for every unit sold, whereas all manufacturers with the exception of Tesla lose money on every vehicle. Ford recently announced that for every EV they have sold this year, they lost $33.5K. The electronics industry is a massive global phenomenon with mobile devices that go beyond just mobile phones, and battery life is a primary selling point in the industry for these products.

They are going to regret that. So far even with all the government interference, EVs have been a massive money loser for everyone but Tesla. Those that drag their feet the longest and wait for the next battery revolution (which will happen without automotive investment, since batteries are so useful for electronics) will be the winners.

Fiat 500 was the only decent vehicle they had, but they didn’t do any real updates since 2012 and while it was great with the 5-speed manual nobody drives manuals anymore and the slushbox was sad. The 500X was just a less practical Jeep Renegade, one of the least reliable and overpriced vehicles in the segment. The Spider could have been cool, but it didn’t really do anything better than the Miata version, especially after Miata got an updated powertrain whereas the Spider never got the updated 1.3T (a shame, as the update was decent).

The United States has a plethora of abandoned ghost towns, but LA doesn’t even have to go that far just cut its population to 7 million or so and most of the problems would disappear. *thanos snap* Just don’t move to TX please, we dun full up!

For years Nokia was more popular than iPhones too

Great example, and yet somehow the masses transitioned to iPhones from Nokia when they found that the product was superior, without any government mandates or subsidies on iPhones required!

Imagine! Consumer choice can create market changes!

So you are saying without $7500, EV sale would be zero? Ok.

Without massive government interference, EV sales would be zero. I think we can all agree, Tesla wouldn’t even exist, right? Musk says that, so why shouldn’t we trust him? And if major manufacturers like Ford tell us that they are losing $33.5K on every EV they sell, and they have all the numbers to back that up in their earnings reports that are scrutinized by law, why should we believe they are lying?

Lets say, just for the sake of argument, that vehicle manufacturers actually make cars because they want profit (crazy, but hear me out). So if Ford increased their EV prices by say $40K to get the same profits they enjoy on ICE vehicles and then consumers had to add another $7.5K to the price, do you still think they would spend nearly $48K more for the electric version of a vehicle?

My guess is nuh-uh, and if nobody is buying them then no one would be making them, and sales would be zero.

And what city in the world to this day has the worst smog? LA… almost as if the geography and climate has something to do with it, and it was a stupid place to live with no water and people should just move.

Or are you forgetting gasoline is heavily subsidized by the government?

Oof, again with this nonsense. Fossil fuel industry is heavily net taxed, and gasoline would be MUCH cheaper if the government completely abandoned interference in the energy sector. And if you actually believed this, then you would advocate for smaller government staying hands-off the energy sector since you’re claiming corruption in propping up what you think is an obsolete technology.

Nearly every piece of technology we have developed has some sort of regulation or interference with it, whether you like the tech or not

With the exception of the space race (which was not remotely useful to the average man considering the massive expenditure compared to the direct return on investment), this is completely divorced from reality. We transitioned from oars to the age of sail because it was more efficient and we traded those sails for steam when it became more efficient and those steam engines turned to oil when the economics again made sense.

When fossil fuels become a more scarce resource or underperform in some way compared to an alternative, that alternative will be adopted organically just as it has time and time again throughout history.

Imagine how many EVs would be sold if gas price goes up 50% without all the oil company subsidies?

Why would gas prices go up 50% overnight without government interference to cause that? The fossil fuel industry is also heavily net taxed, not net subsidized, so you seem very confused. For example, if a banker makes $10 million and gets various subsidies (such as buying some EVs and taking advantage of other government programs) that amount to $90K tax discount but still pays $2.8 million in taxes, that is not a net subsidy. By contrast, lets say there is a fast food employee that makes $20K, but receives various subsidies that add up to $9K, this person receives more from the government than is paid and is a net subsidy. The fact that the banker received ten times the “subsidy” doesn’t mean he was net subsidized, and in fact if the government didn’t interfere he would be millions richer, whereas the fast food employee would be $9K poorer.

Sorry to ELI5 this, but I hear this a lot about fossil fuel subsidies which is laughable, and defies common sense since regions with a lot of fossil fuels often get most of their income from the heavy net taxation of those industries (like Alaska for example).

By lumping in EVs with non-EVs, the first glance impression is that they are more popular than they are, as people will remember the 18% figure instead of 7%. And even 7% sounds better than saying that 93% of vehicles sold are not EVs.

And imagine what the EV sales figures would be without the $7.5K discount, or conversely, imagine how much higher non-EV sales would be if they also enjoyed a $7.5K discount.

Imagine if gas RAV4s were sold instead of $30K for only $22.5K.… a little common sense goes a long way to see how even with Ford losing $33.5K on every EV they sell and the government forcing Americans to pay for EVs with their tax dollars whether they buy one or not, that they are remarkably unpopular.

Imagine how much better and less expensive vehicles would be if the government didn’t interfere at all and allowed the natural organic pace of technological change to handle the transition? Imagine giving consumers the power to choose what they want to spend their money on instead of a handful of wealthy people in seats of power taking that from them.

Don’t lump EVs and hybrids together. Hybrids have been popular for a long time, don’t change the ownership experience from any other ICE vehicle, and are an organic way to transition from fossil to electric power.

EVs, despite all the subsidies and being pushed hard worldwide with threatened ICE bans and other punitive government regulations against ICE, are still unpopular. Toyota was right to put out that EV ecosystem is immature and that hybrids are the answer and would NOT go all in on EVs, and that connect with reality is why they are the number one largest automotive manufacturer and are likely to remain so, while others like Ford are having big time regret as they lose a huge amount of money on every EV they sell.

China is killing it in volume, but I believe its based on a lot of smoke and mirrors and throwaway extremely cheap vehicles that would never pass crash safety tests in developed markets. Here is a field of over 10,000 BYD vehicles with license plates parked away remotely rotting with only 30 miles on the odometers and wrapped in plastic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SEfwoqKRU8

Not surprised.

Nissan dealers were the only Asian automakers not putting massive markups on their vehicles when I was shopping a year back. I also never thought I would ever buy a Nissan, but after going to dealer after dealer and being told of markups on all the hybrids, I checked out a Nissan Rogue on a whim since they advertised 37mpg highway from a fancy variable compression turbo engine and ended up picking up a base model for $500 under MSRP. Been quite happy with it for commuting/family hauling, and have been recommending it to others.

Mitsubishi has also now joined that Renault/Nissan alliance, and while I hadn’t seen a Mitsubishi product in decades I felt was worth a damn, the PHEV Outlander also would have been a strong contender had it qualified for the PHEV rebates in the states.

My most infuriating experience was years back in Austin, TX in which I got out of my friends vehicle and watched a woman hit his bumper, then the bumper of the car behind her, and then his bumper again, before settling into her spot while parallel parking.

She kept talking to me like I was a child when I asked her what she thought she was doing and that we were standing here watching the whole thing, “wHaT iS ThE ThiNG On The FROnT Of The VEHicLE Caallleeed? YES ITS A BUMP-ER, a BUMP-ER, for BUMP-ing.”