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points by Danox 1 day ago | 0 comments

One state makes up over a third of all EV sold in the country EV’s have a way to go in the United States. Hybrids seem to be doing a lot better in recent times.

California accounts for roughly 35% of all U.S. EV sales, though some estimates put its share near 40%.

[–] epistasis 1 day ago

That's certainly a way to view the data, but it's a way that ignores the trajectory of the technology and sets up The Big Three for complete failure.

The Big Three have not figured out how to make compelling EVs, without a doubt, but it's not the technology that's the problem, it's the leadership's product choices and failure of implementation.

Meaning that the entire industry will be pushed farther and farther behind in the race, only to be completely disrupted.

This will happen far slower than the transition from Palm to iOS-style phones, because the lifetime of cars is far longer than phones and are far larger investments, but the trend is inevitable. EVs are superior on so many different fronts that there's ~0 chance that gas and diesel engines persist except for a tiny fraction of future market share.

US manufacturers are trying to delay the transition as long as possible, which only ensures their own doom.

[–] CharlieDigital 1 day ago

It's not just US manufacturers. Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mazda, etc. are also falling behind on the technology, expertise, and platform development.

Koreans look competitive. It's interesting that the later the entrant to the market, the faster they are to adapt.

[–] nikanj 1 day ago

Vinyl is still doing great, better than CDs actually. Technical supremacy is useless, if the customer base wants nostalgia

[–] jemmyw 21 hours ago

Great against CDs because those were obsoleted by streaming. Streaming takes over 80% of the revenue and probably far more of the volume.

Your comment would be like if 85% of the market was EVs and you said that cars with manual transmission are still doing great, better than autos.

[–] double0jimb0 1 day ago

It's not just the Big Three, it's a boat anchor of the Big Three + Tier 1/2/3 suppliers. Tesla probably most vertically integrated of any, therefor most likely able to survive a major pivot.

[–] mathgeek 18 hours ago

Well, there's that one US manufacturer that bucks the trend, so it's not _all_ of them.

[–] toomuchtodo 1 day ago

California is the world’s fourth largest economy, so this tracks. Whether or not flyover country gets EVs is immaterial to the overall US situation. They can pay forward curve petrol prices if they so choose (“freedom!”), or find a suitable EV if that is a more suitable choice for their needs, unless federal policy returns to assist with purchasing. I am hopeful, concerning recent regime change, that federal EV incentives come back to enable folks to buy affordable EVs (because we should be optimizing for affordable zero emission mobility for all, imho), but only time will tell.

Wyoming‘s population of 600k people is less than one percent of total US population, for example. Californians buy about half that number of EVs per year (~300k-400k).

[–] wat10000 1 day ago

Flyover country has several times the population of California. It’s vital to the success of American manufacturers that their products sell well there too.

[–] toomuchtodo 1 day ago

Nah. You go where the purchasing power is, and that is not poor rural America that is evaporating [1]. K Shaped economy. That’s related, but distinct from the fact that American auto makers are already dead. They collectively wrote off $50B in EV investment to turn away from EVs, and GM just created a $20B multi year stock buyback plan while not investing more in electrification. That is an active choice to allocate that capital to profits instead of investment to build EVs.

The future is affordable, well built Chinese EVs. They already have the capacity to build 50M EVs per year, more than half of global total light vehicle demand. They are currently exporting ~12M/year, and constrained only by there not being enough marine car carriers available to ship more. They are building more car carriers to ramp exports to the world. How long would it take the US to learn how to build 10-20M EVs per year? A decade, probably more, on current trajectories, during which Chinese automakers will continue to ramp. “Build the machine that builds the machine.”

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48586250

(the US sold out its future in this context for globalization and shareholder returns, unfortunately)

[–] wat10000 1 day ago

There are plenty of well-off people in poor rural areas, and there are plenty of wealthy urban areas in flyover country. California is an important market but it's not so important that the rest can be ignored.

[–] toomuchtodo 1 day ago

Please provide geographic economic citations of where.

Here’s mine:

Interactive: Visualizing Median Income For All 3,000+ U.S. Counties - https://www.visualcapitalist.com/interactive-median-income-u... (blue is better, red is worse)

(assume 45k-$50k new vehicle price in the US, back out to the income needed to support a payment at current interest rates on a 5-7 year term, which is roughly $500-$1000/month, which is why auto loans are currently defaulting at record highs)

/r/dataisbeautiful: USA auto loan delinquency rate from 2000 to 2025 - https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1ueked2/oc...

[–] wat10000 1 day ago

It makes no sense to respond to this with a chart of median income. That tells you nothing about how many well-off people there are beyond limiting it to less than 50%, presuming the median is below whatever threshold you consider.

Here's a table of states with median, top 20%, and top 5% figures: https://beforeview.com/income-percentile/state

Mississippi, the lowest one on the list, has a top 5% at over $200,000/year. That's ~150,000 people in households who can comfortably afford a nice new EV, in just one small, poor state.

The states defined by the Census Bureau as being in "the midwest" (a subset of "flyover states") contain about 70 million people. The top 5% would be 3.5 million people who can afford a nice new EV. And this is conservative: someone in the top 6% can probably afford one too, but I'm not counting them, and there's plenty of "flyover state" territory beyond the midwest.

California is big enough and rich enough to have a huge amount of market power. But it's not so big and rich that it makes 100+ million Americans in the middle of the country completely irrelevant and ignorable.

[–] michaelt 1 day ago

Los Alamos, in New Mexico :)

Seriously though, everywhere I've lived there have been at least some doctors, dentists, college professors, business owners and suchlike; even Mississippi has hospitals, or so I'm told.

[–] toomuchtodo 1 day ago

Sure, I know and admit these people exist. I did extensive market research on the US EV TAM before being a late private early public investor in Tesla (~<$20/share), riding in the first Roadster to evaluate the product, etc, and even with updated models to account for socioeconomic strata that continues to bifurcate, I believe my thesis holds around who and who cannot to afford to buy new vehicles at current price levels (it’s definitely gotten worse than 15 years ago, for gestures broadly at everything reasons). I’m saying, broadly speaking, all of the purchasing power is mostly in urban areas, although there are some exceptions in the middle of nowhere as you commented. This does not mean we should leave Rural America out in the cold.

Fundamentally, if we expect Rural America to buy affordable EVs (which, imho, they will need to do, and we should crank on policy to achieve), someone will have to force them to be affordable. Allow cheap, high quality Chinese imports, or nationalize an automaker as they approach failure. But right now, Rural America is captive to a parasite US auto industry profitmaxxing by minimizing production and maxing their profits, protected by tariffs. You cannot compel them to make affordable cars currently, but if you don’t, Rural America is fucked.

“You can just do things.”

(no current TSLA exposure, out long ago around “420 funding secured,” but still own a handful of Teslas out of sentimental reasons)

[–] 59percentmore 18 hours ago

>because we should be optimizing for affordable zero emission mobility for all, imho

Cool, build rail and solar.

[–] MisterMower 1 day ago

That’s just what we need: more subsidies to Elon Musk via federal EV tax credits.

[–] toomuchtodo 1 day ago

Limit subsidies to vehicles that are no more expensive than $25k after subsidies. Make them build cars like BYD, with sub 4% margins. No subsidies for Tesla, they had their chance. He can find a new grift. It’s time to focus on people who actually build, not those who use theatrics to inflate silly capital market numbers for power and status.

[–] tstenner 1 day ago

To be fair an absolute amount already does that. $6k less is nice for a Mercedes CLA (~$55k), but there's a reason you can't buy a Hyundai Inster ($20k) and get it within a year.