American Policy Won't Get Us to Mass EV Adoption. Chinese Cars Will

> But if you could buy a brand-new car here for $11,400 (the approximate list price for a BYD Seagull in China), I think many people would figure out a way to live with the fact that it's electric.

Besides largely handwaving away all of the infrastructure questions, I think this article might be built on a couple of mistaken premises.

1) I believe that China's EV market is heavily subsidized by their government as noted in some of the comments in the article. If China is willing to heavily subsidize US consumers buying cars, I'd be rather surprised.

2) I could be wrong on this as I'm not an expert in automotive regulations in China and the US. But a car that's made for the Chinese market might not necessarily pass US safety regulations without extensive and expensive changes.

This article gets extremely doomerish about half way through.

Good policy helped to create the cheap BYD vehicles. Good policy will help get to mass EV adoption

Good policy will help avoid the Mad Max future he predicts.

Policymakers might not want to subsidize Chinese industrial might when it comes to realpolitik, not all decisions are about optimizing EV adoption, some may try to slow rate of tank production.

The max speed of the BYD seagull is 80 mph, which is safe highway speed in my area of the country as everyone drives 10 over, can these vehicles maintain 75 mph for 30 minute intervals without over-stressing the internals?