The anti-EV backlash

An article sent by a friend represents a distillation of the mainstream anti-EV backlash I've been expecting to see.

I'm sure there will be more and more of this, including some reality (automakers cutting back EV development and production).

The reality is that EV's contain more expensive raw materials, therefore they will be less profitable to make, therefore automakers will resist making and selling them, just as in the past.

I see no evidence of a (derided) New World Order sufficient to override this longstanding tendency.

Then automakers will claim, on the basis or horribly marketed and overpriced (compared to what most can afford) EV's, that there just isn't a market for EV's.

Once again, it happened before.

IMO the EV market will remain stunted until we give up a few things.

The first is insisting on all-electric purity.  Hybrids...especially those oriented towards efficiency...have made sense for most people for the last 20 years.  The raw material cost is far lower because they require far smaller batteries.  If many people get can get most of their miles on electric power, but always have gasoline available as backup, that's a far easier sell.  But nowadays all the subsidy and verbal support goes to EV's.  Hybrids could continue to be made (even low mileage EV's) with much safer and less-reliant-on-poorly-sourced-materials NiMH batteries.

The second is the need for high miles per charge.  The cost of a battery sufficient for the now fairly common 300 mile range results in cars too expensive for most.  There could be supply issues too, if everything else were to be phased out by 2030 or even 2035.  Most people could easily get by with 150 mile range.

However recent moves such as eliminating the subsidies on EV's with foreign batteries has removed the low cost options from the market, many of which had not been well represented here anyway.

It's as if they want to kill the EV again, and this time Congress.

US automakers have not recently been doing "small" very well.  They've virtually given up that market (even "cars" in general, to some degree) to foreign manufacturers, while they focus on selling trucks bigger than the buyers need.

Chevy, even Toyota, have killed off one tiny car line after another.  Chevy had the Cruz and the Volt, then they had the Spark.  The Volt was one of the most impressive automobile designs ever and if Chevy hand't quit making them I might be driving one now for that reason.  A true series plug in hybrid EV.

China is producing more and more small EV's, not available or subsidized here.

It appears that Communism is necessary for the EV transition, and probably most other aspects of the conversion to renewable everything that humanity and the world need now.

On the other hand, I hope this is real.  Solid State batteries could be made without lithium, and even if they do use lithium they are much safer and more reliable.  But then it's sad that Toyota makes this all about 900 mile range (who needs that???), and not safer/cheaper.