Federal subsides weren't rolled back because the market was taking off on its own, they were rolled back for ideological reasons.
Every once in a while people ask about cost and discover that for most people charging in your garage is significantly cheaper than anything else and charging on the road is still cheaper than gas and while it does take longer it's not too bad.
And as was pointed out, there is every reason to believe that there'll be a change in administration in the federal level in a few years. And once again, the rules will change. The car manufacturers are going to keep building what they know and have good investments in. But they're going to keep investing in EVs both because in the world they're important players and also because they know the government will change and with it their rules and they don't want to be left behind.
Chart: A record two-thirds of car sales in China are now electric vehicles - https://www.carbonbrief.org/chart-a-record-two-thirds-of-car... - October 23rd, 2026
50% of their heavy duty trucks are electric already, four years ahead of the government’s 2030 target.
Electric trucks hit 50% of China’s heavy truck sales, diesel demand falls - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50340612 - November 2026
China is going to hit 100% light and heavy vehicle sales by 2030, and then they’re going to export them to the world as fast as they can build and ship them.
Get in your car, drive up to a few hundred miles. Dive home. Repeat. Never stop for fuel ever. That is what EV life is like for many people. I think most people.
If you live in an urban area and want to charge an EV, it can be quite a pain
Though honestly, in urban cities, we don't need to add more chargers, we need to add good public transit.
And I do normally use public transit, so the primary reason I have a car is for out of town trips where I’d need to charge away from home.
I’d love to have an EV but I just can’t make it make sense.
If we incentivized parking structure owners to install chargers, it would be a different situation
Here is our EV life:
Need to go to San Francisco (~90 min away, no good place to charge there so need to get back too). Can we make it? Mild panic. No, we can't.
Drive to a fast charger place nearby. Spend 45 minutes charging, bored with nothing to do. We were on time but now we're very late. Child is grumpy because we'll miss the start of the event (this is for watching Fleet Week last month). Finally get going, got there late due to time wasted charging, missed a few planes.
Coming home in the evening, battery is at 30% with half hour to go, partner is panicking. Will we make it? Maybe? Do we detour to a fast charger found on the map? Yes! No, maybe we'll be ok. Rather not stop in some dark sketchy place to charge for 30+ minutes. Let's hope for the best and keep going. Got home with ~10% left, stress on high alert.
Maybe some people like the adrelanine rush of this kind of stress on every road trip, but it's not for me.
All the gas cars I've ever had, if I did a few gallons of gas, would only take a few minutes. Overall, the cost savings is worth having an EV, but charging time is a major downside. We need to stop blaming people for the downside of the technology.
The charge time is a downside, but it's not like (particularly in San Francisco) there isn't an abundance of options that will give you 90+ miles in 5 minutes.
But further, in that 100 mile radius, there's EV chargers literally every 10 miles or less on all major roads.
Because the charge curve on basically all EVs starts high at a low state of charge, there's basically no reason he'd have to wait more that 5 or 10 minutes at a stop to continue on his trip. 45 minutes is absurd.
I say this as someone that lives in Idaho and makes 6 hour road trips relatively regularly. Even on my longest "without charger" stretches, the wait is roughly 20 minutes to get enough to get to the next charger.
Not sure what you're saying, there are places to charge, but it takes a long while. That's what caused the big delay in the trip.
> there's EV chargers literally every 10 miles or less on all major roads.
Right. There is no lack of available chargers on the way. The issue is having to stop and wait a long while.
We don't have a tesla, but charge at the tesla fast charger station near the house, they work for our car. Took 45 minutes to bring the charge up enough for a round trip to SF.
> Because the charge curve on basically all EVs starts high at a low state of charge, there's basically no reason he'd have to wait more that 5 or 10 minutes at a stop to continue on his trip. 45 minutes is absurd.
Amusing when people are so confidently wrong. That's exactly how long it took to charge. Not to a 100%, but enough to be able to do a round trip to SF.
Agreed. Yes, we could plan better around the limitations of an EV.
But does every small road trip really need to revolve around planning to meet the needs of the car?
Yes, and no.
Yes, we definitely could have planned better the night before that we're taking the EV so we could've driven to the nearby fast charger and wait those 45 minutes then, to be ready to go in the morning. This is undeniably true.
But also, it is an EV issue.
If we had taken the gas car and noticed in the morning that the tank was almost empty, we could've done a quick 3 minute stop at the gas station which is on the same street we'd drive on anyway (no detour) and that's that.
No, none compatible with the plans anyway. We were going to an event, and had pre-purchased parking at a parking garage near the event. That's where the car was going to be all day. The garage does not have EV chargers available for our use.
pebcak issue
Where did you read that? Not in my post.