The US auto industry under its pro-oil policy incentives is in for a disastrous long-term outlook in exchange for short-term prosperity.
At best, it’ll be a situation where the US market is segregated from the rest of the world: US auto consumers will be buying inferior vehicles from the rest of world that are more expensive to buy and own, since they will only be viable in the US market and will only be built in the US, Canada, and Mexico.
At worst, the US is setting itself for horrendous energy policy issues moving forward. Sure, the US produces a lot of gas and oil and will for a long time, but any sort of price shock will be leaving the US and its car-dependent economy destabilized while Europe and Asia power forward with an ever-decreasing dependence on oil and gas. The US’ endless energy wars will continue to serve as incredibly expensive endeavors that other countries don’t even need to engage in.
Just look at the number of nuclear power plant projects in progress in China. Comparatively few people in China depend on oil to get to work and travel long distances, and the amount that do is plummeting.
Having owned a Model 3 I would argue that it’s basically “done” at this point, pending software updates for better FSD.
It already charges in 20-30 min at Tesla chargers and has a practical range of around 600 kms, so super fast charging is a bit of a straw man.
Their big downfall is they lack an advertising department willing to spend $1B on pro-electric propaganda to debunk all the Trump/big oil propaganda. IMO EVs have addressed all the main product concerns, and the last ones are buyer stupidity.
I am very skeptical that your Model 3 has a "practical range" of 372 miles. EPA range for the long range model is 342 miles, and I would expect usable range to be considerably less (since you probably want to start charging at around 10% remaining, and you probably want to stop charging at 80-90%). 0% - 100% is kind of not "practical" as it would require you to fully deplete the battery, and then wait for the slow charging at the margins (90 to 100% tends to be pretty slow).
You think it’s done only because you are not ambitious enough. And neither is Tesla. A Hyundai charges faster than a Tesla. Chinese cars from several brands are getting five-minute charging times. If you think that’s a straw man I don’t know what to say; a buyer wants charging to be as fast as pumping gas, and are you going to blame buyer stupidity for not delivering on that?
I think this opinion fails to explain why Tesla is faltering so badly in China.
The products aren’t “done.” They’re stagnant.
Where is their proper 3 row SUV, not a hacked together half-effort like the YL?
Where is their passenger premium van product for China?
Remember that this is a company with a huge factory and presence in China, and they were the first mover in that market, but they’re getting eaten alive by competitors.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the Volkswagen Group is outselling Tesla in EVs. The #1 EV in Europe is a Skoda, and on top of that Tesla doesn’t make a European style city car. Small sedans like the Model 3 are really not popular in Europe, you need a hatch.
And I haven’t even brought up the Cybertruck selling a couple hundred thousand units below company expectations, that is kind of a low blow cherry on top.
To some degree, I agree. Esp. on the 800V part which could make charges a bit faster. But I think they're overall stagnant: they pushed a ton of boundaries in the first 10-15y because they had to make something people could buy and use, but now that innovation push has diminished greatly: the cars work for most people, and the range is acceptable and not such a big inconvenience that pushes people to other brands. So no sense in going axial flux motors (that everyone is experimenting with) or bigger battery capacities, or even 48V + Ethernet instead of 12V + CANbus (the CyberTruck has these, but I don't think it has trickled down to the other models).
> Meanwhile, in Europe, the Volkswagen Group is outselling Tesla in EVs. The #1 EV in Europe is a Skoda, and on top of that Tesla doesn’t make a European style city car. Small sedans like the Model 3 are really not popular in Europe, you need a hatch.
Yes, but the Model Y remains the single unique best-selling car. VW needs to put together a few vehicle models to get to the same numbers. And I think the reason is the same as with China: Tesla has always been EV only, and built assistance and infrastructure for it, while VW doesn't have a very clear direction and makes products which are perhaps slightly mechanically superior, but feel inferior on the software and UX side. A car with hardware equivalent to Tesla (which now has 2 trims and 2 battery picks) costs anyway more than the base Tesla (you need to add a few optionals to the VWs). What Tesla is lacking in Europe are smaller models with ~450-500km range.
Not everyone wants the same thing from a car. Some care most about the price, some about the efficiency, some about the size, some about the comfort, some about the charging speed despite what you say.
If Telsa were still innovating, they'd have rounded out their offerings to fill in the gaps that are now getting filled with other brands in the world outside the USA.
I keep shouting from the rooftops that Tesla’s lack of offerings has them completely hamstrung.
Tesla sells more vehicles than Mazda, and both brands are in a similar semi-premium non-luxury segment. Compare lineups between these brands.
How does Mazda have 3.5 SUVs and Tesla only has 1.5? (The .5 is counting the CX-70 and CX-90, and the Y and YL as essentially the same car)
Mazda is able to offer a sedan and hatchback variant of the 3.
They also have a city car in Europe, the Mazda 2. Absolutely nothing in the segment from Tesla.
And of course, Mazda has the legendary MX-5, which chugs along selling a very respectable quantity while the Tesla Roadster remains MIA.
Where is Tesla’s lineup? For being a being China-focused brand, where is their premium/luxury van? For being a US-focused brand, where is their family 3-row Grand Highlander killer? How did they botch a truck made in Texas?
I’m convinced super-fast charging will be a game changer, because it will eliminate the ~only remaining downside to EVs. If Tesla had charging tech like BYD the market in the U.S. would look very different
I don't buy it. "Recharging == Fuel" is the wrong way to think about it.
Think about your phone. Do you plan how you'll charge that quickly? Do you know where you can get a quick charge at a local mall while ordering coffee? Nope, it just gets charged over night when you're asleep, no problem.
I agree charging at home/work is best, and ideally we would have ubiquitous slow charging at apartment lots, workplaces, and on the street. But that’s not really realistic right now in the U.S., and more importantly, it isn’t under Tesla’s control. Whereas they could have solved the problem for people with less charging access by making their fast charging faster like BYD has done.
With respect to your phone analogy, if I weren’t able to charge my phone at home or at work, I would definitely be interested in being able to fast-charge it at some conveniently located business
I have compared prices in fast-charging stations to gasoline here in Sweden, and a gasoline car get more miles for the money. The price can be up to 100x, or 10000% that of the market price that the fast-charging stations buy their electricity from.
And even with that, very few places seems to be willing to build competing charging stations that will undercut those prices. The only way to actually save money is to have a charging stations at home or at work where you pay the normal (through still very high) cost that the utility company take.
I have found fast-charging prices near where I live to be fairly competitive with gasoline per-mile. The lower maintenance costs of an EV are icing on the cake, so to speak.
But I actually do most of my charging as trickle-charging from a regular home outlet, despite it being slow; it adds about 40 miles of range per 24 hours of charging. My car sits in my driveway most of the time so that's actually sufficient most of the time.
The average person in America drives about 37 miles a day.
EVs gain about 3-5 miles per hour on a household 120V charger.
You sleep for about 8 hours and are probably home away from work and errands for an about 12 hours.
Do the math: 3 miles per hour for 12 hours is 36 miles.
And even if you don’t keep up with your pace, the weekend can act as additional time to charge. Or if you drive more on the weekend, you can basically decide that you’re going to go to a fast charger every 2-4 weeks just like a gas car (or maybe even less frequently than a gas car).
Let’s say you drive 50 miles a day but you’re only able to charge up 35 miles per day at home. If your vehicle’s range is 250 miles that means you need to go to a fast charger every 15 days including a little room for reserve power.
Also, all of this is even less of a concern if you live in a country with 240V power.
What is terrible about charging at home from a regular outlet? As long as you average <50-60 miles a day, like most people, you basically never have to go to fast chargers (or gas stations). It’s amazing.
> At best, it’ll be a situation where the US market is segregated from the rest of the world: US auto consumers will be buying inferior vehicles from the rest of world that are more expensive to buy and own.
That's where we are now. Here's BYD's main model lineup.[1] Ford's CEO brought a few into the US, paying the insane tariffs, and has his executives driving them to see what the rest of the world is doing.
US automakers are already unable to compete globally even within the ever shrinking ICE share.
Protectionism makes industries weak and uncompetitive, ultimately hurting the economy of the nation doing the protectionism. The proper strategy to become competitive is to provide a small amount of protectionism so that the industry does not die, but to ruthlessly cull underperforming companies so that only the strongest survive. The continual bailouts of companies, keeping old and incompetent executives at the helm, has destroyed the US car industry.
Capitalism requires killing the underperforming companies. Until we let that happen, or at a minimum cull leadership and boards, nothing will get better. The rot is at the top.
The rot is that a empire selling security can subsidize any economic policy indefinitely and is completely decoupled from anything resembling a free market forever.
You didn't take the time to point out what was wrong with what they said, and why. So please do so if you don't want people to just ignore your comment.
Right. Australia is crazy sunny. You might intuitively expect there'd be more PV power closer to the equator but that's not how it works, Australia just doesn't have as much cloud as almost anywhere on Earth, especially places a bunch of people actually live - and so that's a lot more energy ("insolation") from the sun ready to harvest.
While I'm waiting for my Kia EV3 to arrive, I'm desparately trying to figure out which wallbox I need to buy to make use of V2H/V2G. Everything claims to be "ready", but I still don't know whether V2H/V2L will be DC or AC. Which protocol do my smart meters have to provide? What about the PV-inverter? How many apps will I need? How many cloud accounts? What about island-operation? Will I be able to use Home-Assistant for everything? What about feeding in the flexible pricing of my power provider? Another App/API? Which node in this hairball will have which role? Will the car decide when to charge? Or the App? Or the Wallbox? Or its App?
I'm drowning in theoretical options and I'm left with the feeling that everything seems to be possible in theory, but I won't find a solution that works in practice. There are just too many protocols and regulations at play.
Would have loved to wait another year until the dust around these topics have settled a bit, but the old car broke too early :(
(sorry for the rant)
The industry has managed a transition. Some European brands have partnered with chinese suppliers while integrating some research in-house. Some cars have a lot of features, cute look, and good price.
Well one interesting thing is that if you want to buy a Toyota Yaris right now in Europe (specifically in Greece) the only options offered are hybrid. One with 116 hp and one with 136 hp. No petrol, no diesel. And only automatic transmission (a no no for me but that another discussion).
Now considering that Yaris is one of the most popular cars (if not the most popular), the increase in sales is not surprising
They Toyota hybrids are still gasoline, what's the objection to the eCVT? So long as we're still using combustion engines it seems like the best design anyone's come up with.
They're making the typical journalism mistake of trying to use prose for what would be better expressed in a chart. This is a pretty common issue with journalists who can write but don't know how to create useful and informative charts.
I looked at other posts by this author and they're all sales by month charts, which are totally devoid of context as they lack historic trend data. So you have to read words to find that out, and its a slog.
I have firsthand experience starting a news company and dealing with this...
does anyone have a data-backed reason as to why US market share has capped out around 10%? is it economics + lack of access to chinese EVs? range anxiety?
We have just about the cheapest gasoline in the developed world. Partly because we make it here, and partly because we refuse to raise taxes on it. (The federal tax was last raised in 1993. It has be 18 cents per gallon ever since.)
If gas were 2 to 4 times as expensive, as it is in much of Europe, there would be a lot more demand for electric cars.
It doesn't help that we exclude all of the new BEVs from China, which are considerably less expensive.
And there it is, we're keeping competition out of the states to protect our auto industry, instead of giving we consumers other options. I've rented cars in Aus/New Zealand, if I lived there I'd own an EV, hands down.
The only way to make our auto makers change is to "make" them change by competition. Consumers want this change, why else do we buy so many Japanese cars? (Beside the fact they are superior.)
I’d guess a greater percent of car owners in the US are working class. A lot of cities car modal share is like 85% or higher which shows how much car ownership is democratized in the US compared to asia or eu, where ownership might be higher relative income and more able to afford new ev premium prices vs cheap used gas cars.
EVs continue to be expensive in the US. But the trajectory is the opposite in the rest of the world due to the benefit of Chinese exports. In Brazil, for example, new car prices have a now a discount of up to $10K, all due to increased competition from China.
And range/charging infrastructure. The middle of the US is large and mostly rural. There's no charging infrastructure to speak of. But even the smallest towns at least have a gas station.
This isn't accurate - they charge slower and Plug & Charge is common in many vehicles now, including with the Tesla network - whereas Teslas cannot Plug & Charge on other networks.
Sure they can, you can buy a CCS adapter. You are limited a bit by 400V, but honestly I have never been able to not find a Tesla charger - and I’ve done 100k miles around the US over the last 5 years
Charging experience? Teslas can't charge as fast as a modern Kia, Lucid, Geely, or BYD. They can't two-gun charge like a BYD. They don't have battery-swaps like NIO. They've got a single charge port in a back corner... very unclear what's best about them.
And as for software, on the infotainment side, AA/CP are great (but not available on Tesla), and people often like having _some_ physical controls, which goes against Musk's aggressive cost-cutting.
If by software you mean FSD (Supervised), I think essentially every major auto lane-keeping + adaptive cruise covers the key use case where FSD is useful: highway slogs.
For anybody who lives outside of the USA, the Chinese EVs are the obvious answer -- they've surpassed Tesla on essentially every dimension.
For people who live inside the USA the math is different, since the government is actively interfering with the free market to protect a critical donor.
Android Auto and Carplay are better than dealing with just crappy infotainment systems but they still don't make the overall software experience good. You end up with disjointed interface with functionality split between the automakers UI.
FSD is unmatched. Auto lane-keeping and adaptive cruise control don't provide the reactivity that FSD does even for straight highway driving.
Most objective reviews comparing a Model Y and Chinese EVs are far less conclusive than you propose.
They have a very reliable charging network with excellent coverage. You just plug your car in and it charges. No fiddling with the charger or apps.
> And as for software, on the infotainment side, AA/CP are great (but not available on Tesla)
The infotainment is good enough where you don't need AA/CP but that's a very subjective detail. The software also extends outside of your car because you can do a lot from the Tesla phone app. It's your car key, control/schedule/monitor charging, lets you control climate remotely, use GPS to find your car, dashcam, etc... all are standard with a Tesla but unavailable or locked behind a subscription elsewhere.
> If by software you mean FSD (Supervised), I think essentially every major auto lane-keeping + adaptive cruise covers the key use case where FSD is useful: highway slogs.
Agree but FSD (Supervised) is actually getting better over time. You 100% need the latest model/hardware car to see those improvements though. Still needs supervision but far less than you may have seen before.
And you can plug almost any modern EV into the Tesla supercharging network without issue. However, unlike Teslas, you can _also_ plug and charge them in other networks.
On self-driving: if you want true autonomy, where you can relax and do something else entirely while you drive, the answers are Waymo, Apollo Go, and to a lesser extent: rideshare.
Every other system requires that you sit in the driver's seat, pay attention, and be ready to handle exceptions. Which means that ongoing improvements don't actually buy you much of anything, because having to handle an exception every 50 miles isn't a better experience than having to handle one very 5 miles.
> Which means that ongoing improvements don't actually buy you much of anything, because having to handle an exception every 50 miles isn't a better experience than having to handle one very 5 miles.
That's what I thought too but after trying FSD on HW4 for two months I really think they are almost there. HW3 was really bad but I didn't need to intervene once with HW4. I think their biggest hurdle will be more of a legal or insurance one when they need to shift liability to actually stop saying it needs supervision.
> the answers are Waymo, Apollo Go
Both of which are supervised too, but remotely, and not constantly. There's no reason why Tesla can't do the same - they probably do for Robotaxis now - as soon as the exception rate is low enough, why not?
Tesla wins on charging because Superchargers are ubiquitous and they just work: you can pull up to one and be pretty much guaranteed that you'll be able to charge. This is manifestly not the case for any of the competition.
The Rivian R2 is not $20k more. It’s $5k more than the deeply stripped down Model Y base model.
The R2 base model is not as premium as the higher models but the Model Y base model is really deeply stripped down including some really barebones stuff like removing liner material from the frunk and removing some of the exterior LED lights.
Cheapest Model Y is $40k and cheapest R2 is $58k. Cheapest Model 3 is $37k. The vast majority of Teslas sold are in an entirely different market than Rivian, which hasn’t even started delivering R2s yet.
So really, the price gap is $40k or more until R2s are actually delivered.
Oh yes, I see that now. Either way, Tesla has a proven product that is cheaper, so if I’m trying to save money, for all intents and purposes, a Tesla is still thousands cheaper with a far longer track record, plus the option of FSD.
I think you should go look at journalist reviews and impressions of the R2 if you still doubt them. Rivian is also a proven brand, and they also have a self-driving product. And while it isn’t as good as Tesla’s, most customers are pretty happy with basic highway self-driving/adaptive cruise control, as that’s the most fatiguing form of driving.
Only about 12% of Tesla owners have the FSD subscription or purchase according to articles I’ve found on the subject.
Being the cheapest game in town isn’t always the path to success. The RAV4 is at least $5k more in street price than an equivalently specced out Mitsubishi Outlander and Toyota sells a whole lot more RAV4s than Mitsubishis.
In my opinion, the base trim Model Y is probably not being purchased by a lot of non-fleet-style customers. I think that model is a price anchor like a 256GB MacBook Air. Your Uber driver will buy one but someone buying a new car paying the EV price premium rather than a used car really doesn’t want a stripped down experience.
Not really true in Europe where charging is properly standardized.
“Best software” is subjective as well. Many car owners really don’t care for their software and just want to bypass the infotainment system for CarPlay and Android Auto.
I'm an admitted Elon hater, so maybe that clouds my judgement. But I rented a Tesla 3 a few years back to try an EV before deciding to buy one. I ultimately went with a Chevy Bolt, and find the Apple Carplay to be far better than Tesla's proprietary system. The only thing I recall that Tesla did better was pre-conditioning the battery before planned charging--something Apple Carplay (at least its current version) lacks the API to handle.
As far as charging, I think that was the case even as recently as ~2 years ago. But today, the charging game is pretty decent for CCS cars. You can even charge at Tesla stations using an adapter.
Calling it clouded is an understatement. Apart from some Chinese cars (xpeng comes to mind), Rivian, bmw new class (but on paper; practically there are too many issues), other cars don't even come close to Teslas.
I own a 2018 Model 3 and I love it. Plus it's in good shape with limited maintenance. I'm looking to trade it in. But honestly, I don't want to buy effectively the same car but slightly worse, with no turn signals (the recent M3) or an uglier version (the Model Y.) Historically, upgrading from an eight-year old car to the current version of the same model was a pretty big upgrade. Not with Tesla: I'll either keep this car until the wheels fall off, or I'll buy an R2.
As a data point - in my market Tesla is the only manufacturer that makes an EV sedan, and has made them long enough for there to be used ones at reasonable prices (not a lot of people have Taycan money). Most of EVs, especially used ones, are tall and heavy SUVs that put driving experience as the absolutely last priority.
Did I actually buy a Tesla? No. But this has entered as part of my "which EV" conundrum.
They don't seem to link their sources (that's bad) but the general numbers seem to match The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) report for H1 2026 [0]. They include EU + EFTA + UK.
I'm not entirely sure why you're getting downvoted. I wasn't able to find a source for the data but it is probably new vehicle registrations. Europe here seems to include Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Switzerland.
Sweden, Finland and Iceland would be part of any definition of Europe? They're all EU countries, and (irrelevant to that) are now all NATO members too.
> Thanks to a number of factors (new cheaper models, high gas prices, mass arrival of Chinese models, etc.), EVs are currently in high demand in Europe.
EVs are in high demand in the EU because laws have been passed in every country and ICE are getting banned in many cities.
Chinese EVs did flood the EU not because people did want to buy chinese EVs: people in the EU were totally fine buying ICE cars (german, french, italian, spanish, ...) but the EU pushed for both legislation and incentives greatly favoring EVs over ICE cars.
It's IMO a good thing to push people to buy EVs. But the EU being the EU, of course they did it incredibly stupidly and managed to inflict great harm to EU car manufacturers and basically hand the keys of the kingdom to both US and chinese EVs (because in the EU we're led by treacherous dumbasses).
People can nitpick as much as they want as to what makes a great car: I do personally have a car from 1988 (38 and a half years old now) that, unlike chinese EVs, doesn't spy on me and that I could still use as a daily (I regularly use it to go, say, pick my kid at school). It's a gas-guzzler and it's not as safe as a modern car, but we definitely could have a talk about the actual CO2 of that car over its lifetime (which is far from done yet) compared to the CO2 over the lifetime of a brand new EV (and if we talk about chinese EVs brought by boat to the EU, we can have a talk too about coal usage in China).
The article could be summed as: "Yay, the EU caused great harm to its car industry and is now buying chinese EVs by the cargo load!".
The US auto industry under its pro-oil policy incentives is in for a disastrous long-term outlook in exchange for short-term prosperity.
At best, it’ll be a situation where the US market is segregated from the rest of the world: US auto consumers will be buying inferior vehicles from the rest of world that are more expensive to buy and own, since they will only be viable in the US market and will only be built in the US, Canada, and Mexico.
At worst, the US is setting itself for horrendous energy policy issues moving forward. Sure, the US produces a lot of gas and oil and will for a long time, but any sort of price shock will be leaving the US and its car-dependent economy destabilized while Europe and Asia power forward with an ever-decreasing dependence on oil and gas. The US’ endless energy wars will continue to serve as incredibly expensive endeavors that other countries don’t even need to engage in.
Just look at the number of nuclear power plant projects in progress in China. Comparatively few people in China depend on oil to get to work and travel long distances, and the amount that do is plummeting.
It is remarkable that a US company had an enormous lead in BEVs for a decade. Then they just kinda stopped innovating, and slid backwards.
Having owned a Model 3 I would argue that it’s basically “done” at this point, pending software updates for better FSD.
It already charges in 20-30 min at Tesla chargers and has a practical range of around 600 kms, so super fast charging is a bit of a straw man.
Their big downfall is they lack an advertising department willing to spend $1B on pro-electric propaganda to debunk all the Trump/big oil propaganda. IMO EVs have addressed all the main product concerns, and the last ones are buyer stupidity.
I am very skeptical that your Model 3 has a "practical range" of 372 miles. EPA range for the long range model is 342 miles, and I would expect usable range to be considerably less (since you probably want to start charging at around 10% remaining, and you probably want to stop charging at 80-90%). 0% - 100% is kind of not "practical" as it would require you to fully deplete the battery, and then wait for the slow charging at the margins (90 to 100% tends to be pretty slow).
You think it’s done only because you are not ambitious enough. And neither is Tesla. A Hyundai charges faster than a Tesla. Chinese cars from several brands are getting five-minute charging times. If you think that’s a straw man I don’t know what to say; a buyer wants charging to be as fast as pumping gas, and are you going to blame buyer stupidity for not delivering on that?
China is even doing 90 second automated robotic battery swap stations.
I think this opinion fails to explain why Tesla is faltering so badly in China.
The products aren’t “done.” They’re stagnant.
Where is their proper 3 row SUV, not a hacked together half-effort like the YL?
Where is their passenger premium van product for China?
Remember that this is a company with a huge factory and presence in China, and they were the first mover in that market, but they’re getting eaten alive by competitors.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the Volkswagen Group is outselling Tesla in EVs. The #1 EV in Europe is a Skoda, and on top of that Tesla doesn’t make a European style city car. Small sedans like the Model 3 are really not popular in Europe, you need a hatch.
And I haven’t even brought up the Cybertruck selling a couple hundred thousand units below company expectations, that is kind of a low blow cherry on top.
> I think this opinion fails to explain why Tesla is faltering so badly in China.
Apparently not so much, the restyle and a consolidated assistance and charging network make people prefer it over the homemade products lately, which keep innovating but you essentially need to re-learn from scratch every time (my original source article is in Italian - https://www.vaielettrico.it/troppa-scelta-poca-fiducia-i-cin... ; this is the closest I could find in English: https://paultan.org/2026/01/21/tesla-model-y-again-best-sell... )
> They’re stagnant.
To some degree, I agree. Esp. on the 800V part which could make charges a bit faster. But I think they're overall stagnant: they pushed a ton of boundaries in the first 10-15y because they had to make something people could buy and use, but now that innovation push has diminished greatly: the cars work for most people, and the range is acceptable and not such a big inconvenience that pushes people to other brands. So no sense in going axial flux motors (that everyone is experimenting with) or bigger battery capacities, or even 48V + Ethernet instead of 12V + CANbus (the CyberTruck has these, but I don't think it has trickled down to the other models).
> Meanwhile, in Europe, the Volkswagen Group is outselling Tesla in EVs. The #1 EV in Europe is a Skoda, and on top of that Tesla doesn’t make a European style city car. Small sedans like the Model 3 are really not popular in Europe, you need a hatch.
Yes, but the Model Y remains the single unique best-selling car. VW needs to put together a few vehicle models to get to the same numbers. And I think the reason is the same as with China: Tesla has always been EV only, and built assistance and infrastructure for it, while VW doesn't have a very clear direction and makes products which are perhaps slightly mechanically superior, but feel inferior on the software and UX side. A car with hardware equivalent to Tesla (which now has 2 trims and 2 battery picks) costs anyway more than the base Tesla (you need to add a few optionals to the VWs). What Tesla is lacking in Europe are smaller models with ~450-500km range.
Not everyone wants the same thing from a car. Some care most about the price, some about the efficiency, some about the size, some about the comfort, some about the charging speed despite what you say.
If Telsa were still innovating, they'd have rounded out their offerings to fill in the gaps that are now getting filled with other brands in the world outside the USA.
I keep shouting from the rooftops that Tesla’s lack of offerings has them completely hamstrung.
Tesla sells more vehicles than Mazda, and both brands are in a similar semi-premium non-luxury segment. Compare lineups between these brands.
How does Mazda have 3.5 SUVs and Tesla only has 1.5? (The .5 is counting the CX-70 and CX-90, and the Y and YL as essentially the same car)
Mazda is able to offer a sedan and hatchback variant of the 3.
They also have a city car in Europe, the Mazda 2. Absolutely nothing in the segment from Tesla.
And of course, Mazda has the legendary MX-5, which chugs along selling a very respectable quantity while the Tesla Roadster remains MIA.
Where is Tesla’s lineup? For being a being China-focused brand, where is their premium/luxury van? For being a US-focused brand, where is their family 3-row Grand Highlander killer? How did they botch a truck made in Texas?
I’m convinced super-fast charging will be a game changer, because it will eliminate the ~only remaining downside to EVs. If Tesla had charging tech like BYD the market in the U.S. would look very different
I don't buy it. "Recharging == Fuel" is the wrong way to think about it.
Think about your phone. Do you plan how you'll charge that quickly? Do you know where you can get a quick charge at a local mall while ordering coffee? Nope, it just gets charged over night when you're asleep, no problem.
I agree charging at home/work is best, and ideally we would have ubiquitous slow charging at apartment lots, workplaces, and on the street. But that’s not really realistic right now in the U.S., and more importantly, it isn’t under Tesla’s control. Whereas they could have solved the problem for people with less charging access by making their fast charging faster like BYD has done.
With respect to your phone analogy, if I weren’t able to charge my phone at home or at work, I would definitely be interested in being able to fast-charge it at some conveniently located business
I can’t own one because I can’t install a fast charger at my place.
I don't have a gas station at my house, and yet I still own a gas-powered vehicle.
I also don't have a fast electric charger at my house, and yet I still also own an EV.
I have compared prices in fast-charging stations to gasoline here in Sweden, and a gasoline car get more miles for the money. The price can be up to 100x, or 10000% that of the market price that the fast-charging stations buy their electricity from.
And even with that, very few places seems to be willing to build competing charging stations that will undercut those prices. The only way to actually save money is to have a charging stations at home or at work where you pay the normal (through still very high) cost that the utility company take.
I have found fast-charging prices near where I live to be fairly competitive with gasoline per-mile. The lower maintenance costs of an EV are icing on the cake, so to speak.
But I actually do most of my charging as trickle-charging from a regular home outlet, despite it being slow; it adds about 40 miles of range per 24 hours of charging. My car sits in my driveway most of the time so that's actually sufficient most of the time.
Yeah this is the kind of thing people say on a day to day basis.
Most people don’t need a fast charger to own an EV. Most people would actually be just fine on a household outlet.
Have been charging my model 3 from an outlet since 2020, we only need fast charging occasionally when taking a long trip
Sounds terrible if that is your only car.
Not really.
The average person in America drives about 37 miles a day.
EVs gain about 3-5 miles per hour on a household 120V charger.
You sleep for about 8 hours and are probably home away from work and errands for an about 12 hours.
Do the math: 3 miles per hour for 12 hours is 36 miles.
And even if you don’t keep up with your pace, the weekend can act as additional time to charge. Or if you drive more on the weekend, you can basically decide that you’re going to go to a fast charger every 2-4 weeks just like a gas car (or maybe even less frequently than a gas car).
Let’s say you drive 50 miles a day but you’re only able to charge up 35 miles per day at home. If your vehicle’s range is 250 miles that means you need to go to a fast charger every 15 days including a little room for reserve power.
Also, all of this is even less of a concern if you live in a country with 240V power.
What is terrible about charging at home from a regular outlet? As long as you average <50-60 miles a day, like most people, you basically never have to go to fast chargers (or gas stations). It’s amazing.
> At best, it’ll be a situation where the US market is segregated from the rest of the world: US auto consumers will be buying inferior vehicles from the rest of world that are more expensive to buy and own.
That's where we are now. Here's BYD's main model lineup.[1] Ford's CEO brought a few into the US, paying the insane tariffs, and has his executives driving them to see what the rest of the world is doing.
[1] https://www.byd.international/models
US automakers are already unable to compete globally even within the ever shrinking ICE share.
Protectionism makes industries weak and uncompetitive, ultimately hurting the economy of the nation doing the protectionism. The proper strategy to become competitive is to provide a small amount of protectionism so that the industry does not die, but to ruthlessly cull underperforming companies so that only the strongest survive. The continual bailouts of companies, keeping old and incompetent executives at the helm, has destroyed the US car industry.
Capitalism requires killing the underperforming companies. Until we let that happen, or at a minimum cull leadership and boards, nothing will get better. The rot is at the top.
The rot is that a empire selling security can subsidize any economic policy indefinitely and is completely decoupled from anything resembling a free market forever.
And Canadians will soon stop buying the inferior US vehicles (and Mexico already has), because Chinese EVs are now allowed in at only 6% tariff.
BYD are taking over.
Nothing you wrote there makes sense, there is just no chain of causality in it.
You didn't take the time to point out what was wrong with what they said, and why. So please do so if you don't want people to just ignore your comment.
Can you explain further? I’d be happy to see some of my specific ideas challenged.
Nearly 50% of vehicles sold in Australia in the last quarter were EVs or plug-in hybrids: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-02/electric-vehicle-ev-s...
A record for EV sales in Norway was set in 2025: 95.9 percent of all new passenger cars sold were fully electric, up from 88.9 percent in 2024.
Yes, but Norway is a very rich country because of all the resources they can just extract from the ground. Australia.. wait, never mind.
Top 10 new passenger cars 2025
1. Tesla Model Y: 27 621
2. Volkswagen ID.4: 8 802
3. Toyota bZ4X: 7 274
4. Volkswagen ID.7: 6 976
5. Tesla Model 3: 6 608
6. Volkswagen ID.3: 5 572
7. Volvo EX40: 5 270
8. Volvo EX30(xc): 5 206
9. Skoda Enyaq: 4 836
10. Nissan Ariya: 4 565
Sweet free free sunshine down here.
Right. Australia is crazy sunny. You might intuitively expect there'd be more PV power closer to the equator but that's not how it works, Australia just doesn't have as much cloud as almost anywhere on Earth, especially places a bunch of people actually live - and so that's a lot more energy ("insolation") from the sun ready to harvest.
BEV - battery electric vehicle
(P)HEV - (plugin) hybrid electric vehicle
ICEV - internal combustion engine vehicle
While I'm waiting for my Kia EV3 to arrive, I'm desparately trying to figure out which wallbox I need to buy to make use of V2H/V2G. Everything claims to be "ready", but I still don't know whether V2H/V2L will be DC or AC. Which protocol do my smart meters have to provide? What about the PV-inverter? How many apps will I need? How many cloud accounts? What about island-operation? Will I be able to use Home-Assistant for everything? What about feeding in the flexible pricing of my power provider? Another App/API? Which node in this hairball will have which role? Will the car decide when to charge? Or the App? Or the Wallbox? Or its App?
I'm drowning in theoretical options and I'm left with the feeling that everything seems to be possible in theory, but I won't find a solution that works in practice. There are just too many protocols and regulations at play.
Would have loved to wait another year until the dust around these topics have settled a bit, but the old car broke too early :( (sorry for the rant)
The industry has managed a transition. Some European brands have partnered with chinese suppliers while integrating some research in-house. Some cars have a lot of features, cute look, and good price.
We own a Model Y and now subscribe to FSD. The car is basically done and I sort of see why Tesla isn’t bothering
Well one interesting thing is that if you want to buy a Toyota Yaris right now in Europe (specifically in Greece) the only options offered are hybrid. One with 116 hp and one with 136 hp. No petrol, no diesel. And only automatic transmission (a no no for me but that another discussion).
Now considering that Yaris is one of the most popular cars (if not the most popular), the increase in sales is not surprising
They Toyota hybrids are still gasoline, what's the objection to the eCVT? So long as we're still using combustion engines it seems like the best design anyone's come up with.
I wish the article was written in a better way. It throws put many percentages in different contexts. 50-26-37-41- …
Not saying any particular number is wrong, just wishing it was a clearer way of writing.
They're making the typical journalism mistake of trying to use prose for what would be better expressed in a chart. This is a pretty common issue with journalists who can write but don't know how to create useful and informative charts.
I looked at other posts by this author and they're all sales by month charts, which are totally devoid of context as they lack historic trend data. So you have to read words to find that out, and its a slog.
I have firsthand experience starting a news company and dealing with this...
> I have firsthand experience starting a news company and dealing with this...
What is the solution for this, from the management POV?
Maybe having a data-vis person as part of the editorial process?
does anyone have a data-backed reason as to why US market share has capped out around 10%? is it economics + lack of access to chinese EVs? range anxiety?
We have just about the cheapest gasoline in the developed world. Partly because we make it here, and partly because we refuse to raise taxes on it. (The federal tax was last raised in 1993. It has be 18 cents per gallon ever since.)
If gas were 2 to 4 times as expensive, as it is in much of Europe, there would be a lot more demand for electric cars.
It doesn't help that we exclude all of the new BEVs from China, which are considerably less expensive.
And there it is, we're keeping competition out of the states to protect our auto industry, instead of giving we consumers other options. I've rented cars in Aus/New Zealand, if I lived there I'd own an EV, hands down.
The only way to make our auto makers change is to "make" them change by competition. Consumers want this change, why else do we buy so many Japanese cars? (Beside the fact they are superior.)
I’d guess a greater percent of car owners in the US are working class. A lot of cities car modal share is like 85% or higher which shows how much car ownership is democratized in the US compared to asia or eu, where ownership might be higher relative income and more able to afford new ev premium prices vs cheap used gas cars.
EVs continue to be expensive in the US. But the trajectory is the opposite in the rest of the world due to the benefit of Chinese exports. In Brazil, for example, new car prices have a now a discount of up to $10K, all due to increased competition from China.
probably gas price
And range/charging infrastructure. The middle of the US is large and mostly rural. There's no charging infrastructure to speak of. But even the smallest towns at least have a gas station.
Why would anyone buy a Tesla in 2026?
Best charging experience and best software experience.
Note: I do not want this to be true. Other companies please copy what Tesla has done with both of these. You’ve had years to do this and failed.
> Best charging experience
This isn't accurate - they charge slower and Plug & Charge is common in many vehicles now, including with the Tesla network - whereas Teslas cannot Plug & Charge on other networks.
Sure they can, you can buy a CCS adapter. You are limited a bit by 400V, but honestly I have never been able to not find a Tesla charger - and I’ve done 100k miles around the US over the last 5 years
Charging experience? Teslas can't charge as fast as a modern Kia, Lucid, Geely, or BYD. They can't two-gun charge like a BYD. They don't have battery-swaps like NIO. They've got a single charge port in a back corner... very unclear what's best about them.
And as for software, on the infotainment side, AA/CP are great (but not available on Tesla), and people often like having _some_ physical controls, which goes against Musk's aggressive cost-cutting.
If by software you mean FSD (Supervised), I think essentially every major auto lane-keeping + adaptive cruise covers the key use case where FSD is useful: highway slogs.
For anybody who lives outside of the USA, the Chinese EVs are the obvious answer -- they've surpassed Tesla on essentially every dimension.
For people who live inside the USA the math is different, since the government is actively interfering with the free market to protect a critical donor.
Android Auto and Carplay are better than dealing with just crappy infotainment systems but they still don't make the overall software experience good. You end up with disjointed interface with functionality split between the automakers UI.
FSD is unmatched. Auto lane-keeping and adaptive cruise control don't provide the reactivity that FSD does even for straight highway driving.
Most objective reviews comparing a Model Y and Chinese EVs are far less conclusive than you propose.
Tesla FSD and infotainment is the best in the US only. Tesla is no match for Xiaomi or Li Auto.
> Charging experience?
They have a very reliable charging network with excellent coverage. You just plug your car in and it charges. No fiddling with the charger or apps.
> And as for software, on the infotainment side, AA/CP are great (but not available on Tesla)
The infotainment is good enough where you don't need AA/CP but that's a very subjective detail. The software also extends outside of your car because you can do a lot from the Tesla phone app. It's your car key, control/schedule/monitor charging, lets you control climate remotely, use GPS to find your car, dashcam, etc... all are standard with a Tesla but unavailable or locked behind a subscription elsewhere.
> If by software you mean FSD (Supervised), I think essentially every major auto lane-keeping + adaptive cruise covers the key use case where FSD is useful: highway slogs.
Agree but FSD (Supervised) is actually getting better over time. You 100% need the latest model/hardware car to see those improvements though. Still needs supervision but far less than you may have seen before.
And you can plug almost any modern EV into the Tesla supercharging network without issue. However, unlike Teslas, you can _also_ plug and charge them in other networks.
On self-driving: if you want true autonomy, where you can relax and do something else entirely while you drive, the answers are Waymo, Apollo Go, and to a lesser extent: rideshare.
Every other system requires that you sit in the driver's seat, pay attention, and be ready to handle exceptions. Which means that ongoing improvements don't actually buy you much of anything, because having to handle an exception every 50 miles isn't a better experience than having to handle one very 5 miles.
> Which means that ongoing improvements don't actually buy you much of anything, because having to handle an exception every 50 miles isn't a better experience than having to handle one very 5 miles.
That's what I thought too but after trying FSD on HW4 for two months I really think they are almost there. HW3 was really bad but I didn't need to intervene once with HW4. I think their biggest hurdle will be more of a legal or insurance one when they need to shift liability to actually stop saying it needs supervision.
> the answers are Waymo, Apollo Go
Both of which are supervised too, but remotely, and not constantly. There's no reason why Tesla can't do the same - they probably do for Robotaxis now - as soon as the exception rate is low enough, why not?
> However, unlike Teslas, you can _also_ plug and charge them in other networks.
why?
Tesla wins on charging because Superchargers are ubiquitous and they just work: you can pull up to one and be pretty much guaranteed that you'll be able to charge. This is manifestly not the case for any of the competition.
Pretty much every EV can use Superchargers.
I'm setting aside that charging off of public EVs is relatively rare anyway... but your premise is flawed.
(In the US) I switched from Tesla to Rivian. Their approach seems to be “Tesla, but nicer”. They have a similar non-legacy automaker feel.
That said while I appreciate their design focus their software still feels not quite as polished as Tesla’s.
“Tesla, but nicer, and $20k more”
Also, while FSD has limitations, I have found it provides enormous utility for older people, and Rivian doesn’t yet have a competing product for FSD.
The Rivian R2 is not $20k more. It’s $5k more than the deeply stripped down Model Y base model.
The R2 base model is not as premium as the higher models but the Model Y base model is really deeply stripped down including some really barebones stuff like removing liner material from the frunk and removing some of the exterior LED lights.
Cheapest Model Y is $40k and cheapest R2 is $58k. Cheapest Model 3 is $37k. The vast majority of Teslas sold are in an entirely different market than Rivian, which hasn’t even started delivering R2s yet.
So really, the price gap is $40k or more until R2s are actually delivered.
Look again, cheapest R2 is $44,990. Deliveries haven’t started on that trim but they are less than a year away.
You are incorrect when you say that Rivian isn’t delivering R2s. Factually untrue. This claim of a $40k+ price gap is absurd.
Oh yes, I see that now. Either way, Tesla has a proven product that is cheaper, so if I’m trying to save money, for all intents and purposes, a Tesla is still thousands cheaper with a far longer track record, plus the option of FSD.
I think you should go look at journalist reviews and impressions of the R2 if you still doubt them. Rivian is also a proven brand, and they also have a self-driving product. And while it isn’t as good as Tesla’s, most customers are pretty happy with basic highway self-driving/adaptive cruise control, as that’s the most fatiguing form of driving.
Only about 12% of Tesla owners have the FSD subscription or purchase according to articles I’ve found on the subject.
This lines up well with Gallup polling that states that less than 20% of Americans even have a desire to own a driverless car in the future: https://news.gallup.com/poll/708683/americans-driverless-car...
Being the cheapest game in town isn’t always the path to success. The RAV4 is at least $5k more in street price than an equivalently specced out Mitsubishi Outlander and Toyota sells a whole lot more RAV4s than Mitsubishis.
In my opinion, the base trim Model Y is probably not being purchased by a lot of non-fleet-style customers. I think that model is a price anchor like a 256GB MacBook Air. Your Uber driver will buy one but someone buying a new car paying the EV price premium rather than a used car really doesn’t want a stripped down experience.
R2s are already being delivered to customers.
There is no honest way to manufacture a $40k price gap.
Not really true in Europe where charging is properly standardized.
“Best software” is subjective as well. Many car owners really don’t care for their software and just want to bypass the infotainment system for CarPlay and Android Auto.
The best charging experience would be any of 10 BYD models with flash charging.
10% to 70%: 5 minutes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Flash_Charging
Yes, but Americans don't have the freedom to experience this. They have to choose between expensive and more expensive.
Capitalism With American Characteristics
I'm an admitted Elon hater, so maybe that clouds my judgement. But I rented a Tesla 3 a few years back to try an EV before deciding to buy one. I ultimately went with a Chevy Bolt, and find the Apple Carplay to be far better than Tesla's proprietary system. The only thing I recall that Tesla did better was pre-conditioning the battery before planned charging--something Apple Carplay (at least its current version) lacks the API to handle.
As far as charging, I think that was the case even as recently as ~2 years ago. But today, the charging game is pretty decent for CCS cars. You can even charge at Tesla stations using an adapter.
Calling it clouded is an understatement. Apart from some Chinese cars (xpeng comes to mind), Rivian, bmw new class (but on paper; practically there are too many issues), other cars don't even come close to Teslas.
I own a 2018 Model 3 and I love it. Plus it's in good shape with limited maintenance. I'm looking to trade it in. But honestly, I don't want to buy effectively the same car but slightly worse, with no turn signals (the recent M3) or an uglier version (the Model Y.) Historically, upgrading from an eight-year old car to the current version of the same model was a pretty big upgrade. Not with Tesla: I'll either keep this car until the wheels fall off, or I'll buy an R2.
Price? They are quite cheap these days relative to comparable cars from other manufacturers.
only if you exclude cars made in Asia
Tesla does have production in Shanghai.
Self driving maybe? I’m happy to be corrected but I think most brands don’t offer the full self driving package Tesla offers.
As a data point - in my market Tesla is the only manufacturer that makes an EV sedan, and has made them long enough for there to be used ones at reasonable prices (not a lot of people have Taycan money). Most of EVs, especially used ones, are tall and heavy SUVs that put driving experience as the absolutely last priority.
Did I actually buy a Tesla? No. But this has entered as part of my "which EV" conundrum.
What are their sources? How are they defining Europe?
They don't seem to link their sources (that's bad) but the general numbers seem to match The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) report for H1 2026 [0]. They include EU + EFTA + UK.
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I'm not entirely sure why you're getting downvoted. I wasn't able to find a source for the data but it is probably new vehicle registrations. Europe here seems to include Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Switzerland.
Sweden, Finland and Iceland would be part of any definition of Europe? They're all EU countries, and (irrelevant to that) are now all NATO members too.
Switzerland is not but its meager population can hardly significantly skew the sales stats
Why wouldn't it?
Typically European Union vs Europe.
they’ll get included again if they order a few humanoid robots that will be shipping by 2078
Vehicle registrations.
> Thanks to a number of factors (new cheaper models, high gas prices, mass arrival of Chinese models, etc.), EVs are currently in high demand in Europe.
EVs are in high demand in the EU because laws have been passed in every country and ICE are getting banned in many cities.
Chinese EVs did flood the EU not because people did want to buy chinese EVs: people in the EU were totally fine buying ICE cars (german, french, italian, spanish, ...) but the EU pushed for both legislation and incentives greatly favoring EVs over ICE cars.
It's IMO a good thing to push people to buy EVs. But the EU being the EU, of course they did it incredibly stupidly and managed to inflict great harm to EU car manufacturers and basically hand the keys of the kingdom to both US and chinese EVs (because in the EU we're led by treacherous dumbasses).
People can nitpick as much as they want as to what makes a great car: I do personally have a car from 1988 (38 and a half years old now) that, unlike chinese EVs, doesn't spy on me and that I could still use as a daily (I regularly use it to go, say, pick my kid at school). It's a gas-guzzler and it's not as safe as a modern car, but we definitely could have a talk about the actual CO2 of that car over its lifetime (which is far from done yet) compared to the CO2 over the lifetime of a brand new EV (and if we talk about chinese EVs brought by boat to the EU, we can have a talk too about coal usage in China).
The article could be summed as: "Yay, the EU caused great harm to its car industry and is now buying chinese EVs by the cargo load!".
I take we should... Applaud that great success!?
They may import the cars, but now they don't need to import the fuel.