I hope they can compete with plugin hybrids. We have a BMW X5 plugin hybrid, bought on the advice of a friend, and it's such a great car. Almost always on electric in town, and for the rare times we go on road trips we never have to worry about range anxiety.

I really feel that plugin hybrids with 40-50 miles of electric range are the ideal car for like 85%+ of Americans whose usual daily commute could all be done on electric. I've heard all the arguments against them, and after owning 2 PHEVs (Chevy Volt before this), I disagree with all these arguments. Yes, I understand that they're more complicated that a pure EV, I know pure EVs will be the future (I'll also be dead in the future), but my ownership experience with PHEVs over the past decade proved they were the perfect car for me. Never had any reliability issues, and despite hearing arguments that they are "the worst of both worlds", they were definitely the best of both worlds for me - all the benefits of an EV (low operating cost, fantastic acceleration, quiet, smooth ride, almost no trips to the gas station) with none of the downsides (didn't need to install an expensive charger at home as the wall charger was sufficient, never had to worry about range anxiety, never had to carefully plan road trips around charger locations).

I think the biggest problem with German EVs are not the battery but the software. EVs are practically computers on a wheel and compared to the competitors the software and features it offers are still terrible. I remember VW even had a huge joint venture with Rivian to get things back on track. But seems like it didn’t work out

that's not the issue, you can buy the batteries if you wanted to. The problem is that EVs require about 50% less labor than ICE cars and this is the first time since the 80s that German car companies have started to fire anyone or close plants. Car companies here aren't price competitive, software or a battery you can always purchase.

China has the big advantage of having designed these car companies around drastically reduced labor needs and until we adapt to that we're not going to compete on the most important factor which is how much the car costs.

And yet the Toyota RAV4 hybrid is selling so fast in the USA that customers can barely find one at a dealership.

It's an interesting comparison. In China they prop up businesses with cheap loans and help from local governments, in the US it's the VCs. So when Uber was subsidized then everything was ok, but when China state propped up EVs then suddenly it's not ok. These subsidies in the majority of cases are over btw, because competition was too big in China between carmakers, cars in China are ridiculously cheap. Because that's their strategy, you fund a lot of players, like there were 100+ EV makers in China, then you let the market do its job, they optimize or they die, some will die and the best will prevail. Margins are so low in China that they are looking at outside markets where legacy carmakers need to drop the margins and scale up or they will have no chance in competing. And for the argument that they do it to kill the industry so then they can make cars for more price, the most obvious counterargument is why they didn't do it for everything else that they dominate already? Why are solar panels going down? They dominate the world in solar panels, there is basically no competition and prices are still going down, same with batteries.

Capitalism and free markets failed to deliver, lots of cope around that mental model. If it was superior, it would’ve succeeded. China is 1/3rd of global manufacturing capacity, and it shows. Play to win.

Well, the intention is much more really-actually-defensive this time.

Germany is currently the world's fourth biggest weapons exporter, and AIUI that's roughly how it has been for decades.