Comment by delfugal
14 hours ago
Gasoline would be $0.99 if EV platforms (build your own whatever) and low cost China Auto imports were available in America. But Elon has a hold on congress.
14 hours ago
Gasoline would be $0.99 if EV platforms (build your own whatever) and low cost China Auto imports were available in America. But Elon has a hold on congress.
Being blunt, I don't think Elon is the only factor in that.
That protectionism is just as much in place for the sake of GM, Ford, and Stellantis, and their suppliers. In 2008 it was estimated that if the big three (Well, back then it was Chrysler instead of Stellantis) went under without a bailout [0], that up to 3 million jobs across the country were at risk. Michigan alone would have possibly lost over 8% of it's jobs.
We do see similar-ish protectionism in other countries as well, FWIW. Part of Toyota and Honda's lack of aggressive shifting to EVs is that a 'full shift' would remove millions of jobs from the workforce. Toyota has even published what could be considered propaganda in their home country about it [1].
It's an elephant in the room. European automakers are all struggling with it too, with various degrees of failure.
If there is one irony I will point out, it's that if they had all been more aggressive about hybrid technology for at least the last 15 years, they could have at least kicked the can down the road. Which honestly may have helped; part of the problem is that when things like engine or transmission plants are built, the amortization of the costs between the factory itself, training workers, expected retooling etc is measured and planned in the 10-30ish year range. The complacency means they have a bunch of assets that would be unpaletable write-offs.
Cause, Let's face it; every carmaker could have at least been doing even basic hybrids for most of their non-truck models for over a decade, which aren't perfect but would have raised the bar for MPG and improved the economies of scale faster [2].
[0] - For whatever it's worth, Ford at the time did not need a bailout, but did ask for a line of credit that it never had to use in case the others totally collapsed, because if that had happened it would have been a huge impact to their suppliers.
[1] - https://electrek.co/2021/11/11/how-toyota-sneakily-spreads-a...
[2] - I'll point to the Ford Maverick, which initially launched at ~22K and got 35-40MPG in base configuration despite being a very large compact truck. IMO if the automakers got serious about the tech in 2010, we could have seen something at that price point at least 5 years sooner.
Those would hurt legacy auto much more than Tesla, which is why the last admin who had a lot of legacy auto union donations banned them. If anything Tesla will benefit from the charging infrastructure created due to a lot more EVs on the roads.