Yeah, it's extremely frustrating here. The EV market actively sucks with limited options and inflated prices. I also bought a used Polestar 2 last year, so now I'm extra frustrated.

My guess, however, is that PS just didn't care to deal with obtaining the waiver- the brand has sold poorly here in the US and they've been posturing to exit the market for a few years.

It’s gets better. Even if you find an EV, the states tax you more than an ICE car. Texas has a $200 yearly fee to supposedly make up for lost gas tax revenue. But at 20c/gallon and assuming 30mpg, I’d have to drive 30,000 miles to offset that cost (only drove about 8,500 miles per year).

And now they want to do the same at the Federal level with another $150 tax (federal taxes are 18c/gallon), which would be another 25,000 miles.

So I would be taxed $350/year to offset “gas tax losses”, which would only even out for me if I were to drive 55,000 miles in a year.

It’s almost as though Tesla is being granted a monopoly.

Hey just a friendly reminder those Chinese EVs are backdoored with an Elon style god mode like Tesla. Lots of modern cars have a similar issue but EVs get it bad. Tl;dr rip out your car's modem.

In Europe we are spoiled with choice

Even more so in Australia, as we have zero tariffs, as the new EU trade agreement removed the small tarrif that was on EI cars, none on Chinese cars.

I have a BYD and charge off solar panels on my roof

I'm interested to see how the low-cost Chinese brands do on longer-term reliability. Their initial build quality is generally good, but their product cycles are so short that I don't see how they can capture knowledge that leads to them correcting design defects. To me, it looks like too much churn. But maybe they'll be fine. We'll have to see.

to compensate for the Chinese subsidies.

🤣

rather to keep European manufacturers afloat. Protectionism under a different name.

European car makers too profit from subsidies and they make worse e-cars for double, triple the price.

Being an American wanting an electric car must be a nightmare! Not many options, and all of them are too expensive,

Chevy Bolt MSRP is $28,995.

Yea but then they couldn't harvest and sell your data

It's not arbitrary, as your second paragraph suggests there are other reasons. Someone didn't pay off the administration. It really is like that.

Oh, but you can build yourself one.

/s

It's because it's not transparent and seems arbitrary, this isn't mentioned but these are the perfect conditions for corruption or simple stupidity.

So the thesis of this piece is the government picking winners and losers in the auto industry through opaque mechanisms should terrify you because you should believe in total free market capitalism.

Those are not the only choices. For example, a rules-based and facts-based system of regulation is another possibility. But the current system's rule appears to be that the spoils go to whoever got a slice of Trump's goldfish-like attention, or wrote him a fat enough check.

And you might well get the vapors the next time one of the US automakers receives a massive government bailout because their having been protected from competition left them unable to compete in the global market, or possibly even in the time before that when US consumers are being forced to buy sub-mediocre products in order to fatten the bonuses of non-performing parasitic executives.

And it's good to remember that free markets are a myth, and that real capitalists love anything that shelters them from having to compete, even if it's protectionism.