Three years ago, the global auto industry was gripped by a collective hallucination. CEOs promised us that the internal combustion engine would be dead by 2035 and that legacy automakers were just one battery factory away from a trillion-dollar valuation.
That narrative has now collided with economic reality.
In this video, we analyze the collapse of the “inevitability” narrative. We look at why Ford has been forced to take a staggering $19.5 billion write-down, why the European Union is quietly dismantling its own petrol ban, and why—despite billions in subsidies—automakers are still losing $6,000 on every electric vehicle they sell.
We examine how the industry confused a political project with consumer demand, leading to a market where the cars are too expensive for the middle class and too unprofitable for the manufacturers.
Even in parts of the country that are more receptive to future tech, the reality of range and lack of working charging infrastructure keeps coming back. Not range anxiety but range limitation. I have some friends that gave it a good college try and I mean real hard. It has complicated their lives too much. Having to get hotel rooms or waste time stopping to recharge and add hours onto trips. They try to look at it like pretend 1950s traveling and try to find places to go and things to do while the car recharges, but it wears on them. They don’t plan on buying another EV, whenever they can afford to buy another car.