The problem is that there is not enough infrastructure for EVs. If you can't charge at home (e.g. you live in a flat), it is hard to live with an EV and it's much more expensive than the ICE.

The goal is that if you’re poor you can’t own a car.

> The goal is to migrate everyone to EVs

This won't happen unless they outright ban non-EV vehicles which is unlikely considering how many people are still using old cars and cannot afford new cars, how many car enthusiasts are there, and not to mention potential lobbying from big oil.

As sibling comment posted, if you run a company you can write off the cost of the lease against corporation tax (25% tax saving), VAT (a further 10% saving if you have personal use, otherwise the full 20% if it's purely business), and you don't have to pay income tax on the money (albeit with a small benefit in kind payment).

If you're in the higher tax brackets this means a £200/month lease (say) ends up more like £90/month.

And because of the "new" £3kish subsidy the govt put in, the car finance companies seem to basically apply that as a big discount to the lease value (or it seems that way?). So you could get a brand new ~£30k EV with no upfront payment and a 2-3 year term for <£100/month including maintenance. Mine even came with a free car charger install at home.

This only works for business leases. The employee sacrifices part of their salary in return for being provided a lease car, and both the employee and employer save tax on that money (up to 45% employee, ~15% employer).

For an ICE car the government claws this money back through hefty "Benefit In Kind" taxes placed on employer-provided vehicles, but as an incentive to drive adoption the rates on EVs are only 3% of the car's nominal purchase price (and you only actually pay up to 45% of that 3%).

It doesn't work out "free," but it's typically as cheap to lease a new EV through this scheme as it is to pay the depreciation on a used ICE.

> EV's in particular, their EV industry used to make terrible cars that were basically just chewing up and spitting out low quality batteries with no range. Now they are making cars that I actually want to drive.

The cars used to be awful, but it's not surprising that they improved. I didn't say anything about the quality of the cars. If the CCP didn't have an iron grip on that country, maybe I would eventually think about them as favorably as Toyota or other Japanese brands. After all, Japan was an enemy and became a great ally with popular culture pervading the US.

> The most dangerous nation on the planet, that threatens everyones national security is the USA. And thankfully we averted this risk by basically demolishing their car industry. Its honestly asias gift to the planet. China cant project power anywhere nearly as well as the US, so on balance, they are vastly the more preferable partner for this data.

That doesn't accurately represent history and nobody serious will make the argument you're making. Culturally, the US is very isolationist. The reason we expand bases around the world is to reduce war (attacking a country with a US base on it is a bad idea, which is a deterrent) and to react quicker to war when it does happen (logistical efficiency). If nobody pushes back, it makes the next world war more likely to drag us in which costs lives.

If we're militarily involved somewhere, there's generally a good reason. It's like firefighting to prevent the whole thing from being engulfed and collapsing. War has a way of normalizing and spreading. Did we start World War 1? World War 2? Vietnam war? Korean war? What were we reacting to with Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Iran? Do you understand the historical events that resulted in those conflicts? Can you enumerate them?

Do you understand how similar today is to the beginnings of World War 2? Do you know what World War 2 was actually about? Communist Russia was using Marxist communist revolution and political parties in countries around the world to try to achieve global communism, and at the time Russia was doing a massive build out of military that had many countries worried. They had more military hardware than all countries combined including Germany.

Marxism was attacking religion and cultural heritage, which is what spurs these religious racist fascist backlashes. That sat on top of and amplified the industrial trade and power imbalances that remained after World War 1.

Russia's expansion was a combination of weaponized psychological Marxism (it evolved beyond just bottom-up revolution and into a top-down tool of the Russian state). It caused Japan, Germany and Italy to see it as an existential crisis which amplified their race for resource control to prepare to fight back against the eventual final war against Russia. Early CCP members were part of Russia's comintern.

Now we have China creating the most rapid military build-out in history while the CCP is realigning to hardcore Marxist-Leninist purity, on a purging rampage. Russia purged its military not long before invading Poland and Finland.

So, you'll have to excuse me if I don't find your argument convincing that China is the stable power, which is logically incorrect for far more geopolitical reasons than only this.

Same in NZ. Most popular car is Tesla + 15 different Chinese brands: https://evdb.nz/sales

Actually somewhat surprised we still even have legacy auto in top 10.

Whataboutism is not helpful.

Far from ULEZ/CAZ areas I guess?

> you'll spent 30 minutes a week at an EV charging station.

And for a lot of people that can be 30 minutes at a grocery store where they were going to be for 30 minutes anyway. The nice thing about using the grid for fuel is that we have way more flexibility to refuel anywhere we want.

In my area, charging prices have been in the £0.70-£0.90 /KWh for a while. That makes ownership VERY expensive, especially for road trips. On top of that privilege, you have exorbitant insurance costs and terrible devaluation.

I rent EVs every couple of years, last time it was recently, just to see how things are evolving. Since anyway it's clear where policy is going. Whatever you think about said policy. Right now, they're lovely commute machines if you can charge at home.

Except availability of chargers is spotty in most of the country, and charging prices so high that the running expenses are considerably higher. Not even considering insurance, which is also a killer. Been there.

Second hand EVs devaluation is not a product of anecdote. It reflects the current state of the market.

They are a different product and they're great at what they do. In fact, for those in the market for them, "nudging" (state coercion) is not necessary at all.

I don't know, Stephen King couldn't write anything that matches the horror that was the management of UK car companies in the second half of the 20th century. British Leyland was a disaster from start to finish.

Every time when any competitive Chinese product is discussed, there are claims that it is competitive because it is subsidized.

Perhaps many of these claims are true, but at least in USA I also see huge amounts of subsidies for a lot of products, which are never compared with the Chinese subsidies.

I have never heard about any significant investment in some factory in the USA, which was not conditioned by very large reductions in taxes for that company. I do not see any difference between this and any subsidies that China might have.

Even if there might exist some kind of subsidizing system for electric vehicles in China, there is no doubt that there exists healthy competition between many Chinese companies, so they continuously innovate in EVs, while much less efforts in this direction can be seen in countries like USA, who claim to be scared by the Chinese "unfair" competition, but they seem to do very little or nothing to reduce their technical inferiority.

GM and Chrysler were given 85 BILLION dollars that has never been repaid (never will) despite them paying their CEOs tens of millions per year, doing stock buy backs.

At least the Chinese got good cars from subsidizing their auto makers. Americans just got ripped off.

From what I've seen, I have no reason to expect that a cheap new Chinese EV sold in the U.S. would be meaningfully lower quality than a cheap new American car.

The big 3 absolutely have an inferior product. Just rode in a new gas Cherry Tiggo, I'd compare it to a Hyundai in terms of value/features, but even a bit better. No American car in that class comes even close. And I rode in one 10 years ago (Tiggo), they have come a very very long way.