I think they're referring to the Persian Gulf.

Economic coercion and dumping is well known.

For battery storage systems sure, but for panels, not really. The panel breaks you just throw it away and buy another. And sure China can cut us off from buying another, but we have 15 years with most panels to use them while we build out local manufacture if needed. (even beyond that point you likely get usable output)

A panel is just a dumb slate of crystals that shoots out electrons, the wires and inverters and rest-of-system are up to us to design if we're indulging our China-panic. But we're basically being paid to take as many dumb panels as we can warehouse. Whether you believe that oversupply is a weapon, a mistake, or just normal industrial strategy is basically irrelevant.

Software? For a solar panel? Likewise spare parts? What?

I am pretty sure a solar panel is just a solar panel, a frame and some wires?

The inverters and all that sure whatever just buy local. Those have not been the bottleneck - the panels have been what has been enabling the boom.

> You're dependant on the OEM for spare parts, support, software and whatever else

China also manufactures and exports ICE vehicle parts and fossil fuel extraction equipment. No one thinks that's a dangerous dependency.

You can have completely autonomous systems.

Also, really? You think that Internet-facing software in inverters is a big deal?

>I bought a used car for €2600 8 years ago and it’s still going strong.

Same for me. Also, I live in rental apartment, I don't live in a house with residential charging, which would make me dependent on public chagrin spots which suck and have massive energy prices compared to residential ones, so I'm in no way better off/cheaper with an EV than my gasoline car.

EVs where I live massively benefit the wealthy who own their homes and have charging at home, making EV ownership a slam dunk. Even cheaper for them if they have solar panels. But not for the poor, where TC ICE ownership is so much cheaper overall.

The government can fix this by putting cheap subsidized charging spots across all existing street parking to lead the way, but they aren't, so then we're at the mercy of the "free market" who will just gouge us, and so nothing will change.

You totally can get an EV for those sort of prices on the used market, e.g. https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-search?body-type=&channel=c...

No need to worry about cam belts or oil changes or spark plugs or mice eating your air filter or petrol going stale in the tank or replacing fuel filters or 12v batteries going flat if you don't drive them for at least 20 mins once every 10 days etc.

> That won’t buy me an EV.

for now, but maybe in a few years it will

Wait, why are you being downvoted? Not every European has Norwegian money to buy an EV. Wealth disparity across the EU is massive.

I just came from my short Euro vacation and majority of EVs I saw at the tourist spots had license plates from countries with above average wealthy people: CH, NL, DK, etc. Germans, Italians, eastern Europeans, etc mostly had ICEs.

You can't mandated all switch to EVs unless you can somehow mandate they all have the same wealth too, which isn't the case.

Taking out a loan for something that depreciates as fast as a car seems like the dumbest thing a person could do.

> A Tesla Model 3 weighs less than any new pickup truck for sale today.

I'm an EV fan but this is apples to oranges comparison. EV vehicles are substantially heavier than their ICE counterparts. Their instant torque also wears tread quicker. That's just facts and there's nothing wrong with that. The world is not black and white.

I have nearly 125k on a M3P, on the original pads. Right foot tends to be heavy on both pedals. Regen takes a lot of the load, makes a huge difference in pad usage / life.

Exactly. And EVs are marginally heavier if tire dust is an actual concern. Massive SUVs and pickup trucks should be criticized first.

They sadly also increase the tire problem significantly

what an embarrassment for the West. We are truly a 20th century civilization

Is this really the case though? The average car payment an American pays was $750/month last I checked, and I believe that was in 2025. Americans are willingly want to pay this price for... mediocre cars. Like leather and massage upholstered trucks and fully loaded Lexus ES's. If people really wanted, they can get a 1 year old EV with 10k miles for 40% off MSRP. Or wait 2 years, 25k miles and get it for more than 50% off. But people won't because they think the battery is depleted.

That is correct. I think the alleged "dumbess" comes most from voting for the people that won't do the things you mentioned in your second paragraph.

But as I always say, it is not a property exclusive to US citizens. currently it looks like there is a drinking contest on which country will do the most ridiculous election result. The US started it but Germany said "halt meine Leberwurscht" and whent straigt to the top.

Why is everyone not understanding that good cheap EVs are banned in the US? If people actually got an experience a Chinese EV I dont think it would be nearly this bad.

> but 300+ in a single day several times a year, well I bet it is quite a few.

And this hasn't been a problem in an EV for years. That's a single charge for almost all EVs now. And with fast chargers being almost everywhere, especially along highways, I doubt the actual time taken is very different.

If you don't take a single ~20 minute break in a 5 hour drive, you can beat it. I'm not sure that's healthy or safe though. If you have children this isn't even an option IMHO.

> Will this take me and my family where we need to go is a more important consideration than the daily commute

Totally your decision obviously. It's also why you see so many trucks and all terrain vehicles drive around for the 1 time a year that might be useful. The rest of the year you just pay for that in gas/maintenance/parking ease etc. Again, your decision and I'm not saying you should change, just playing Devils advocate

Charging, for me at least, is usually a 10-15 minute affair which is faster than my family can use a washroom and stretch our legs. Several road trips per year in an EV is painless.

Towing things long distances is one of the few EV weak points I can think of, but REV trucks should mostly fix that too.

I do this frequently. A 15 minute stop for a biobreak and a takeaway coffee usually adds 100 miles or so on a modern EV and fast charger.

It's really not much (if any) inconvenience. If in a gas car you assume you are going to stop to take a piss and grab a drink or a snack or something anyway during the course of a long 300+ mile drive (very likely I'd say, unless you and your passengers are urinating into bottles), you'd still need to stop for gas at some point too when with an EV you are actually spending less time since it's "filling up" while you are in the line waiting for your skinny latte. You don't have to do all that then also stop to grab gas too, because your car filled up without you.

You don't need a 40 minute change. My Ioniq 5 will go from 30% to 85% in 20 minutes. On road trips I'm usually in and out in about 15 minutes which is aligned with my stop time with my ICE car. Why would you limit yourself to stopping at a single vendor like Buc-ee's? My EV is the best roadtripping car I've ever owned. It's a superior car, and it "refuels" quickly.

I only drive 300 miles a week. The problem is, I live in a apartment and there are no chargers at my workplace.

> ...sure some people take airplanes, but most aren't that well off.

Which highlights the other American failure: dismal rail transportation

Do a few 500km trips in Sweden per year. We have lots of fast chargers so mostly not an issue, quick coffee/bathroom break, like 20 min is enough. Only time it was a bit of an issue was when it was minus 30c, had to wait 20 minutes for a charger where they didn't have many.

200+ miles is quite optimistic. On a bad day it's more like 130 miles, and a significant minority of americans drive 130 miles a day. I love my EV but my wife might refuse to buy another one for exactly this reason. A 250 mile range is more like 200 miles in cold weather(and that's what I see in florida so that's probably a best case). And at 85mph(what people are actually driving on the highway) it's more like 150 miles(mi/kwh really falls off a cliff over 60ish mph). And you don't want risk running out of battery just before you destination, so make that 130miles even with a dangerously small margin for error. That's 1.5 hours at highway speed in the winter. And chargers are 20-40 minutes apart and may not work(again florida so "good" charger availability...I've seen 1hr+ apart in new hampshire). So if you hit a bad charger you're potentially stranded.

Our EV is great for normal use, but my wife had to do a 200 mile round trip once a week for a couple months(not anticipated when we bought it). She quickly went from loving her fancy new car to wanting to sell that annoying POS. A faster charger plus extended range battery would have helped some(Chevy Bolt is weak on both) but it is honestly a pain point for the kind of trip many americans do somewhat regularly.

I believe you're misunderstanding OPs point. I read it as saying North Americans drive 200+ miles at once more often than Europeans, and so it makes sense that EV adoption would lag in North America given that.

If the power is generated by burning coal and after transmission efficiency losses etc, gasoline cars could actually be better for the environment.

Same here, but the initial cost is gigantic. And after a lot of Poles made the leap of faith and went all in on renewables, the gov changed the rules of buying/selling so now if you don't have a storage, there's a very small chance this investment will ever pay off. And if you want to have a storage, then you basically need a small bunker, a separate structure, to stay compliant, which requires from you to be even more wealthy.

That is much more complicated and expensive.

The ceremony :)

I wouldn't be so optimistic. At the current trend, we might be just walking corpses. Like newborn Japanese children from Nagasaki on the 2nd August 1945 (4 days before its sudden democratisation or vaporisation by the American democrazy). We are just seeing the apocalypse in slow motion.

According to some of the most optimistic doomsayers of the Interwebs, the warming levels we are enjoying as of today are due to the CO2 levels of 30 years ago.

Username checks out. Why age when you can sacrifice your life for climate preservation.

Most people, and especially women, don't want to ride motrocyrcles as they are dangerous. Yes, that's also because cars and dangerous, but motorcycles, by design, mingle with cars.