Opinion

For years, Tesla has been the go-to EV recommendation for “normals” looking for a painless, low-effort experience from their first electric cars. In light of questionable recalls and its CEO’s recent involvement in controversial politics, however, people are starting to distance themselves from the trailblazing company.

All that begs the question: what should we recommend to EV noobs now?

Republicans launched multiple attacks against EVs, clean air and American jobs this week, at the behest of the oil industry that funds them. These attacks won’t be successful, and EVs will continue to grow regardless, and inevitably take over for outdated gasoline vehicles.

However, these republican attacks on EVs will still have some effect: they will diminish the US auto industry globally, leading to job losses and surrendering one of the jewels in the crown of American industry to China, where there is no similar effort to destroy its own rapidly growing domestic EV industry.

After canceling the upcoming Airflow electric crossover and killing its popular 300 sedan, Chrysler only has one nameplate left in its lineup – but it doesn’t have to be this way. Stellantis already builds a full-size electric sedan that could prove to be a badge-engineered winner.

And, yes – it really should have been the new Chrysler 300. Meet the DS No. 8.

Big changes are hitting the US car market this week – but uncertainty bring opportunity, and few companies have less to lose and more to gain from 2025’s automotive turmoil than Nissan. With a new, enthusiastic CEO, interest from Foxconn and Honda, and a number of American manufacturing sites already in operation, Nissan has a chance – but the new LEAF is a snoozer, and they’ll have to do better if they want to survive.

The SGMW Wuling Hongguang EV offers Chinese car buyers five or seven-seat configurations, 300 km of range (that’s about 185 miles to you and me), and a $9,600 price tag – but it’s the 1000 km EREV version that would take the US by storm in 2025.

Context: this is an opinion/satire piece, so get that out of the way and have some fun.

In the past week, TSLA stock has increased by about one-third of its previous value. But this increase has had nothing to do with company performance, or even due to external factors like consumer tastes or beneficial changes in EV policy. Rather, the week’s speculation has come out of a simple desire to see Tesla become the benefit of government corruption.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who said he would stay on the sidelines during this election, will spend $45 million per month to elect Donald Trump, a presidential candidate who has repeatedly targeted EVs during his campaign and who has promised to end EV incentives in exchange for a billion dollars in bribes from the oil industry.

The US “Supreme” Court has just issued an opinion that would overturn Chevron v Natural Resources Defense Council, ensuring more government gridlock and casting activist judges in the place of career scientists to decide specific answers to some of the most crucial questions of the day, such as those related to climate emissions and other environmental issues.

Among many incredibly stupid opinions the court has issued recently, this is among the stupidest, and we’re going to go into why.

News came out on Friday that President Biden is set to quadruple tariffs on Chinese EVs to protect the US auto industry from the rapid growth of Chinese EV manufacturing.

But instead of just de facto banning the competition from giving Americans access to affordable hot new EVs, the US should instead try making affordable hot new EVs itself.

Republicans have introduced a bill to eliminate the US EV tax credit in the Inflation Reduction Act, with the effect of slowing US progress on EV manufacturing, thus handing the lead in EV manufacturing to China.

Automakers are fiercely lobbying governments to water down already-compromised emissions rules, but doing so will only lead to their doom as market entrants that are serious about EVs will continue ramping them anyway.

This week, Kia unveiled a tranche of new EV concept cars, and the common element among them that stood out to me? These cars have some really weird wheels. And I mean that in a good way!

In the midst of the United Auto Workers’ strike, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was asked on Face The Nation whether she plans to trade in her Tesla Model 3 for a union-built EV.

However, there really aren’t many EVs she could pick from, and that’s a problem for the Big Three, the UAW, the American auto industry, and US workers in general. And also for AOC.

Over the years, we’ve seen several car companies tout their decision to create an “EV division” within the company, a group tasked specifically with looking into EV technology and how to implement that within the product line.

But many times, this can still be counterproductive. With the EV shift happening now, companies need to stop thinking about “EV divisions” and go all-in on EV development today.

A looming crisis is brewing in China, as hundreds of thousands of unsold, polluting gas-powered vehicles may be rendered unsellable due to incoming emissions rules. It’s another sign that the global auto industry isn’t ready for the shift to EVs and will be caught unawares if it doesn’t ramp EV production fast enough.

After an (American) holiday weekend largely dedicated to setting things on fire, we think it’s relevant to note something that caught on fire this weekend that absolutely shouldn’t have: namely, the sea.

Over the weekend, not only did a fire break out in the Gulf of Mexico but also in the Caspian Sea. Both incidents were, predictably, associated with fossil fuels.

In Victoria, Australia, the state government is considering implementing a punitive mileage tax specifically on electric cars. A coalition of organizations, including Hyundai, VW, Uber, ABB, WWF, and others, has come out against the proposal, calling it the “worst electric vehicle policy in the world” in a full-page ad in The Age newspaper in Melbourne.

The Victorian government currently collects no such tax on gas cars — and doesn’t even collect a gas tax at all. It also has no specific electric vehicle incentives to balance out this proposed tax.

It’s happened yet again: Another EV sold out before it launched. This time, it’s the upcoming Opel Mokka-e that is sold out in Europe, even though the car won’t hit the road until next March. Opel says they were “totally surprised” by the demand and were expecting a “high-four-digit” number of sales next year.

Opel is not the first company to experience this. GM, Ford, Porsche, VW, and others have all had a hard time meeting initial demand for their vehicles, or sold them out well in advance of launch. So if this keeps happening, what’s it going to take to convince manufacturers that consumers want electric cars?

Germany has taken the lead over Norway in annual EV sales for the first time, edging out Norway for total sales since the start of this year, as reported by Bloomberg. Currently, Germany’s 2019 total is 57,533 EVs, while Norway has sold 56,893.

This would be good news for Germany — if it weren’t so embarrassing for them and the rest of Europe.  Norway is a tiny country with a population of 5.3 million, where the main industry is oil, and where the whole country is cold. Germany’s population is roughly 16 times larger than Norway’s. And yet, Norway has still had higher EV sales than every country in Europe until now.

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Toyota, GM, and FCA have been getting a lot of flack the last couple days, in response to their move to join the EPA in opposing better MPG standards against the interests of consumers and the environment.

Toyota responded to this public outcry by claiming that it wants “continuous, year-over-year improvements in fuel economy,” but there’s one problem with that: Their fleet average MPG is actually getting worse over time, unlike every other automaker.

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