Comment by rswail
6 hours ago
Tariffs are exactly the reason that situation is as it is.
BYD can outwait the adjustments of the US car industry to a new reality, in the same way that the Japanese did back in the 80s.
Last time, the US did it by screwing the union workers of the rust belt, while also giving up on passenger cars and moving to SUV/trucks, but this time it's a complete change in technology and the US (and Japan to an extent) is having trouble reorienting its manufacturing and supply chains to support the change.
If Ford can't sell an EV version of an F-150, then it has a real problem, because the rest of the world is not staying on ICE technology.
Artificial trade barriers don't last.
> If Ford can't sell an EV version of an F-150, then it has a real problem, because the rest of the world is not staying on ICE technology.
Is that a problem for Ford though? Basically nowhere outside of North America buys trucks like the F-150.
You see a few Ford Transit chassis cabs with a flatbed on the back in Europe but mostly enclosed Transit vans.
The Ford thing is bizarre. My brother has an F-150 Lightning. It’s an amazing vehicle that they just couldn’t market in this gonzo social landscape.
He is literally the walking version of the stereotype of a rural cowboy type. He runs a small hobby farm, leases pasture to local farms. He works in financial management for a regional company and his wife is a procurement officer for a state government.
They produce most of their electricity with solar. Replaced some tractor use cases with oxen. They literally don’t pay to operate their daily drivers. (A lightning and a Volt now Bolt)
The lightning replaced their emergent generator when that reached its end of life.
He got into this stuff after doing the numbers for the company. It’s cheaper and better to operate. Last year they bought a dozen Silverado EV pickups for their field people. They work fine where they deployed them. The workers love them and the opex is better.
The self described rednecks hate it because the internet told them to. He almost removed the branding because he gets approached by people warning him about all of the terrible things that will happen.
Isn't part of it the dealer network as well? They've existed so long on service money, they were actively pushing people away from the Lightning because the service needs were so low and they wouldn't be making money off them.
This has been my experience when trying to buy any EV in the US. They technically exist, but finding one at a dealership is hard. Harder still is finding one that they actually have charged. Finding one without massive dealer fees is impossible. They use the forced scarcity as an excuse. Chevy dealership told me I was better off buying a Tesla. Hyundai told me “this isn’t really an EV kind of city”
It's the towing issue that compromised the Lightning too. Attach something to an EV to tow and you kill the range. A lot of people in this country buy a pickup to tow something with it occasionally.
> Attach something to an EV to tow and you kill the range
It reduces the range, just as it reduces how far an ICE truck can go on one tank. But that's only an issue if you tow clong distance and cannot find a place to charge on the way. You could choose to rent an ICE truck for such (increasingly) rare occasions. People for whom that's not so rare should stick with ICE or hybrid, or in future with an EREV.