EV adoption

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Ford switches gears, will push smaller EVs over full-size pickup and van

affordable EVs, Cars, EV adoption, Ford / /

The Ford Motor Company is adjusting its electric vehicle strategy. The automaker will prioritize smaller and more affordable EVs ahead of the replacement for the F-150 Lightning fullsize pickup truck and e-Transit van. The Lightning replacement, codenamed T3, should now appear later in 2027, with the van a year behind.

Here in 2025, EV adoption isn’t exactly going the way everyone thought—or rather hoped—it would. The hype surrounding EVs worked fast, and the glinting dollar signs in people’s eyes as they saw Tesla’s share price soar higher and higher convinced even people who don’t care about decarbonization that going all-in on EVs was the way to go.

But it takes longer to develop a new vehicle than it takes to excite an investor. And it takes longer even than that to build out the charging infrastructure necessary to transform EV motoring from something for early adopters and the eco-conscious into a viable alternative for a largely incurious and change-averse general public. Which is a long-winded way of saying the industry got out over its skis.

Take the Ford F-150 Lightning. Americans adore their pickup trucks, and the Lightning is a darn good pickup in most regards. It looks like a normal F-150, and while it might not tow as far before it has to stop, it does most other things as well or better than the gasoline-powered equivalent.

But something the size and shape of a full-size pickup truck is always going to require a lot of energy to push it through the air—even if you squeezed the drag coefficient, there’s no getting away from so much frontal area. And that means you need a gigantic battery in order to meet range expectations. And that means the truck that customers thought would cost $40,000 actually costs way more; sometimes as much as twice that. So it has hardly been the sales success people once imagined.

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Trump’s trade and environment policies are a disaster for carmakers

Cars, EV adoption, trump tariffs / /

General Motors blamed Trump’s tariffs for costing it $1.1 billion in Q2 and as much as $5 billion by the end of the year. And while the new anti-EV adoption policies are yet to fully bite, it’s clear they’ve motivated some action inside the GM boardroom. Although GM CEO Mary Barra wrote to investors that the company believes “the long-term future is profitable electric vehicle production,” she followed by explaining that GM’s flexible factories will help it succeed in a world where EPA fuel economy targets are no longer a thing. That’s probably why GM added 300,000 more units of capacity for “high margin light-duty pickups, full-size SUVs and crossovers.”

Ford said that the tariffs could cost it as much as $2 billion this year, despite it making more actual vehicles in the US than any other automaker. That’s because it has to pay the US government to import raw materials like steel and aluminum, as well as components and subassemblies.

Foreign automakers are also feeling the effects, given the importance—until now, at least—of the US car buyer. Stellantis, which owns the Jeep and Ram brands, said it had already lost $2.7 billion this year due to tariffs, although the automaker stands to benefit in the coming years from the gutting of fleet fuel efficiency fines.

Aston Martin may benefit from a lower 10 percent tariff for UK-made cars, but it described the process as “extremely disruptive,” and although it has now restarted shipping cars to America, it issued a profit warning last week.

BMW is among the less badly hurt; although its operating margin fell to 5.4 percent, this was within its expectations. Mercedes had to warn investors to expect less this year, and it says the US will become a less-important market for the company, which plans to make up for it with growth in China. Volkswagen Group said the tariffs have cost it $1.5 billion so far this year, and it has also revised down its forecasts for the rest of the year.

Although Porsche announced record deliveries in North America just a week ago, its operating profit was a third of that a year ago. “In the US, import tariffs are also putting huge pressure on our business. Looking ahead, the movement of the dollar could also have an impact. In addition, the transformation to electric mobility is progressing more slowly than expected overall, with consequences for the supplier network,” said Porsche and VW Group CEO Oliver Blume.

Trump’s trade and environment policies are a disaster for carmakers Read More »

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Tesla skepticism continues to grow, robotaxi demo fails to impress Austin

Autonomous Driving, Cars, EV adoption, Tesla / /

Tesla’s eroding popularity with Americans shows little sign of abating. Each month, the Electric Vehicle Intelligence Report surveys thousands of consumers to gauge attitudes on EV adoption, autonomous driving, and the automakers that are developing those technologies. Toyota, which only recently started selling enough EVs to be included in the survey, currently has the highest net-positive score and the highest “view intensity score”—the percentage of consumers who have a very positive view of a brand minus the ones who have a very negative view—despite selling just a fairly lackluster EV to date. Meanwhile, the brand that actually popularized the EV, moving it from compliance car and milk float to something desirable, has fallen even further into negative territory in July.

Just 26 percent of survey participants still have a somewhat or very positive view of Tesla. But 39 percent have a somewhat or very negative view of the company, with just 14 percent being unfamiliar or having no opinion. That’s a net positive view of -13, but Tesla’s view intensity score is -16, meaning a lot more people really don’t like the company compared to the ones who really do. The problem is also growing over time: In April, Tesla still had a net positive view of -7.

Tesla remained at the bottom of the charts when EVIR looked more closely into demographic data. Tesla was the least-positively viewed car company regardless of income, although the effect was most pronounced among those with incomes less than $75,000, as were the results based on geography (although suburbanites held it in the most disdain) and age (where those over 65 have the most haters).

Vinfast is the only other automaker with a negative net-positive view and view intensity score, but 92 percent of survey respondents were unfamiliar with the Vietnamese automaker or had no opinion about it.

When asked which brands they trusted, the survey data mostly mirrored the positive versus negative brand perception. Only Tesla and Vinfast have negative net trust scores, with Tesla also having the lowest “trust integrity score”—those who say they trust a brand “a lot” versus those who distrust that brand “a lot,” at -19.

Tesla skepticism continues to grow, robotaxi demo fails to impress Austin Read More »

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Nissan feels the effect of US-China trade war

Cars, EV adoption, Nissan, trade war / /

Nissan’s future product portfolio is feeling the effects of some of Trump’s other policies. Working with congressional Republicans, the president has chosen to end federal tax incentives meant to encourage the adoption of clean energy vehicles like EVs. As a result, many new EVs will get $7,500 more expensive for most customers from October 1.

There’s no question that EV incentives help spur demand, given the higher purchase price of an EV. No credit means lower demand, so Nissan is delaying a pair of EVs it plans to build in Canton, Mississippi, according to Automotive News. The automaker has told its suppliers to expect a 10-month delay to the original schedule for an electric Nissan crossover now due for November 2028, and an Infiniti version that will now go into production in March 2029.

It’s not the first time this year that the production schedule at the factory in Canton has been torn up and redone. In April, Nissan said it had to “face reality” and accept that “the sedan market is shrinking,” as it cancelled a pair of electric sedans that were also to be built in Canton in the coming years.

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Tesla crushed in Europe as BYD outsells; BEV sales surge 28%

Cars, EV adoption / /

When you look at sales at the brand level, things get a little worse for the American automaker. Volkswagen sold more EVs than anyone else in Europe last month, increasing by 61 percent to 23,514 units. As for Tesla? It fell to 11th place, with just 7,165 sales in total, a 49 percent decrease year on year.

Beating it to 10th place was China’s BYD. Barred from the US market by protectionist laws and now heavy new tariffs, BYD has focused instead on Europe. Its PHEVs have been selling strongly there, unaffected by tariffs aimed at BEVs, but even its BEV sales have now eclipsed Tesla, with 7,231 registrations last month.

“Although the difference between the two brands’ monthly sales totals may be small, the implications are enormous,” said Felipe Munoz, global analyst at JATO Dynamics. “This is a watershed moment for Europe’s car market, particularly when you consider that Tesla has led the European BEV market for years, while BYD only officially began operations beyond Norway and the Netherlands in late 2022.”

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Republicans want to tax EV drivers $200/year in new transport bill

Cars, EV adoption / /

WASHINGTON, DC—The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will meet today to discuss its proposed budget legislation, and there’s a doozy in there for drivers of electric vehicles and hybrids. As part of the Republican Party’s ongoing war against science and the environment under President Trump, committee chairperson Sam Graves (R-Mo.) has included some new annual fees that will cost all drivers some, but some drivers more.

Republicans plan to use the budget reconciliation process to pass this legislation, which is an expedited process that removes some of the US Senate’s ability to stall. They’re proposing a new annual federal motor vehicle registration fee, which state DMVs would have to collect and pass back to the federal government.

If it passes, all battery EVs would be subject to a new $200 tax. Hybrids—defined as vehicles that are propelled by both an electric motor and an internal combustion engine or other power source (which would include fuel cell EVs)—will pay $100. But someone who commutes 90 miles a day in a particulate-belching Ford F-350 Duramax diesel pickup truck gets away with a mere $20 a year, and only from October 1, 2030; until then they get to drive for free.

To make things even better, the bill requires these fees to be linked to inflation and should be increased each year, until 2034 when the tax expires for unelectrified vehicles, or 2035, the last year that EVs and hybrids would be taxed like this. So, a $200 registration fee in 2026 becomes a $250 registration fee in 2035.

Not everyone will have to pay, however. The bill exempts commercial vehicles, which should see a rush from tax avoiders to register their vehicles under their businesses, similar to what we saw during the George W. Bush administration, when a change in the tax law meant businesses could claim a $100,000 tax credit if they purchased a truck or SUV that weighed more than 6,000 lbs. Farm vehicles are also exempt from the law.

With EV adoption as low as it is in the US, the sums raised by these EV and hybrid charges will be essentially a rounding error in the federal budget, which this year should top $7 trillion. The Eno Center for Transportation calculates that this new tax will contribute an extra $110 billion to the highway Trust Fund by 2035 but that cuts to other taxes and more spending mean that the fund will still be $222 billion short of its commitments—assuming that this added fee doesn’t further dampen EV adoption in the US, that is.

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Despite everything, US EV sales are up 28% this year

Cars, EV adoption / /

With all the announcements from automakers planning for more gasoline and hybrid cars in their future lineups, you’d think that electric vehicles had stopped selling. While that might be increasingly true for Tesla, everyone else is more than picking up the slack. According to analysts at Rho Motion, global EV sales are up 30 percent this year already. Even here in the US, EV sales were still up 28 percent compared to 2024, despite particularly EV-unfriendly headwinds.

Getting ahead of those unfriendly winds may actually be driving the sales bump in the US, where EV sales only grew by less than 8 percent last year, for contrast. “American drivers bought 30 percent more electric vehicles than they had by this time last year, making use of the final months of IRA tax breaks before the incentives are expected to be pulled later this year,” said Charles Lester, Rho Motion data manager.

With the expected loss of government incentives and the prospect of new tariffs that will add tens of thousands of dollars to new car prices, now is probably a good time to buy an EV if you think you’re going to want or need one.

Perhaps surprisingly, growth in the much more EV-tolerant European Union was barely higher, at 29 percent for the year to date, helped by a new tax on plug-in hybrid weight in France, Rho Motion says. Both Germany and the UK EV markets have grown by 40 percent this year.

China is speeding past the rest of the world in terms of electrifying its transportation, and unsurprisingly it comes out on top in Rho Motion’s data, with 35 percent growth for the year to date compared to 2024. Looking month by month shows an even more impressive 73 percent increase year over year, thanks to where the lunar new year fell in 2024 and 2025.

Despite everything, US EV sales are up 28% this year Read More »

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The EV transition hits some snags at Porsche and Audi

Audi, Cars, EV adoption, porsche / /

Now Audi has gone a little further, abandoning its almost-new nomenclature in the process. As naming conventions go, Audi at least tried to keep things a little logical when it told everyone last summer that henceforth, odd-numbered Audis—A3, A5, Q5, Q7, and so on—would be internal combustion or hybrids, and even-numbered Audis—A4, A6, Q6, Q8—would be electric, or e-tron.

This was the case when we went to see some of those new Audis in the studio last summer. There was an all-new gasoline-powered A5, which comes in a handsome fastback sedan or even more handsome Avant (station wagon) version, that won’t come to the US.

There’s also an all-new, fully electric A6, available as a sedan but also as a handsome fastback sedan and even more handsome Avant. This one also isn’t coming to America.

As of this week, things are back to where they used to be. Forget the odd and even distinction; for now, it means nothing again. A gasoline-powered A6 will break cover on March 3, Audi says. And as for names? “A” means a low floor, and “Q” means a high floor (i.e., SUV or crossover).

The EV transition hits some snags at Porsche and Audi Read More »

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California’s air pollution waiver and the “EV mandate” are banned by Trump

Cars, EV adoption / /

To do this, it eliminates “state emissions waivers that function to limit sales of gasoline-powered automobiles.” That spells bad news for California and the 17 other states that follow the California Air Resources Board’s Zero Emissions Vehicles regulations. California has been granted waivers under the Clean Air Act to set emissions controls within its state borders, but the first Trump administration spent much time and energy battling CARB’s waiver.

The previous moves to block CARB’s waiver were partially successful and only reversed by the US Environmental Protection Agency just over a month ago.

The revised clean vehicle tax credit, which provides up to $7,500 in credit toward the purchase of a new EV, or up to $4,000 for the purchase of a used EV, also looks to be in trouble. The executive order also calls out “unfair subsidies and other ill-conceived government-imposed market distortions that favor EVs over other technologies and effectively mandate their purchase by individuals, private businesses, and government entities alike by rendering other types of vehicles unaffordable.” However, as the clean vehicle tax credit is a part of the tax code, changes to it will require Congress to pass legislation to that effect.

As you might expect, environmental groups are not impressed. “The transition to electric vehicles is opening factories and putting people back to work across the country,” said Katherine García, Sierra Club director of the Clean Transportation for All campaign. “Instead of building upon progress we’ve made, Donald Trump remains intent on fear-mongering around electric vehicles and taking the US back in time while the rest of the world moves forward on auto innovation. Rolling back vehicle emission safeguards harms our health, our wallets, and our climate.”

California’s air pollution waiver and the “EV mandate” are banned by Trump Read More »

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Only 5 percent of US car buyers want an EV, according to survey

Cars, EV adoption / /

Only 5 percent of US consumers want their next vehicle to be a battery electric vehicle, according to a new survey by Deloitte. The consulting company gathered data from more than 31,000 people across 30 countries as part of its 2025 Global Automotive Consumer Study, and some of the results are rather interesting, as they pertain to technologies like new powertrains, connectivity, and artificial intelligence.

Among US consumers, internal combustion engines (ICE) remain number one, with 62 percent indicating that their next car will not be electrified. Another 1 in 5 would like a hybrid for their next vehicle, with a further 6 percent desiring a plug-in hybrid. (The remaining survey respondents either did not know or wanted some other powertrain option.)

By contrast, only 38 percent of Chinese consumers want to stick with ICE; meanwhile, 27 percent of them want a BEV next. That’s a far higher percentage than in other large nations—in Germany, only 14 percent want a BEV; in the UK and Canada, only 8 percent are BEV-bound; and in Japan, the number is a mere 3 percent.

Meanwhile, hybrids are far more attractive to consumers in most countries. While only 16 percent of Chinese and 12 percent of German consumers indicated this preference, 23 percent of Canadians, 24 percent of UK consumers, and 35 percent of Japanese consumers replied that they were looking for a hybrid for their next car.

Deloitte suspects that some of this reticence toward BEVs “could be due, in part, to lingering affordability concerns.” The hoped-for parity in the cost of a BEV powertrain and an ICE powertrain has still not arrived, and fully 45 percent of US consumers said they did not want to pay more than $34,999 for their next car (11 percent said less than $15,000, 9 percent said $15,000–$19,999, and the remaining 25 percent said $20,000–$34,999.)

Why the reticence?

Despite popular sentiment, there are actually quite a few electric vehicles available for much less than the average new vehicle price of $47,000. But other than the Nissan Leaf, all of them have prices starting with a “3.” (Meanwhile, 75 percent of car buyers in the US buy used cars, and the transition to electrification will not change that underlying reality.)

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Trump to block the government and military from buying EVs

Cars, EPA, EV adoption, fuel efficiency, Trump / /

The incoming Trump administration has even more plans to delay electric vehicle adoption than previously thought. According to Reuters, which has seen transition team documents, the Trump team wants to abolish EV subsidies, claw back federal funding meant for EV charging infrastructure, block EV battery imports on national security grounds, and prevent the federal government and the US military from purchasing more EVs.

During the campaign, candidate Trump made repeated references to ending a supposed EV mandate. In fact, policies put in place by current US President Joe Biden only call for 50 percent of all new vehicles to be electrified by 2032 under EPA rules meant to cut emissions by 56 percent from 2026 levels.

More pollution

Instead, the new regime will be far more friendly to gas guzzling, as it intends to roll back EPA fuel efficiency standards to those in effect in 2019. This would increase the allowable level of emissions from cars by about 25 percent relative to the current rule set. US new vehicle efficiency stalled between 2008 and 2019, and it was only once the Biden administration began in 2021 that the EPA started instituting stricter rules on allowable limits of carbon dioxide and other pollutants from vehicle tailpipes.

About a third of the population looks to the California Air Resources Board, rather than the EPA, to get their emissions regulations.

The so-called ZEV states (for Zero Emissions Vehicles) do have something closer to an EV mandate, and from model-year 2026 in these states (California, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and the District of Columbia) a third of all new cars sold by each automaker will have to be battery-electric—assuming the EPA grants California a waiver to allow this to happen.

As with the first Trump administration, we can expect a sustained attack on California’s ability to set its own vehicle emissions regulations and any attempts by other states to use those regs.

More tariffs

Trade tariffs will evidently be a major weapon of the next Trump administration, particularly when deployed to block EV manufacturing. Even the current administration has been wary enough of China dumping cheap EVs that it instituted singeing tariffs on Chinese-made EVs and batteries, with bipartisan support from Congress.

Trump to block the government and military from buying EVs Read More »

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Trump team puts EV tax credit on the block, Tesla is on board: Report

Cars, EV adoption, EV tax credit, Tesla / /

Ending the tax credit is not something the incoming administration can do via executive action—Congress controls government spending, and this would require new legislation. But the budget reconciliation process results in bills that cannot be filibustered, and Reuters says that the Trump transition team will likely use this route as part of a larger revamp of tax laws.

Tesla was a major beneficiary of the new clean vehicle tax credit; under the previous scheme, an OEM was only eligible until it sold its 200,000th plug-in vehicle, at which point the credit available to its customers began to sunset. Tesla—which exclusively sells plug-in vehicles—was unsurprisingly the first to reach this threshold, at which point its EVs became more expensive than competitor cars. But the sales cap was eliminated under the new rules.

One might expect the company would be up in arms over this proposal. But according to Reuters, that’s not the case—Tesla is in favor of ending the clean vehicle tax credit, and CEO Elon Musk has previously said such a move would be far more damaging to rival companies than to Tesla.

Trump team puts EV tax credit on the block, Tesla is on board: Report Read More »