> Thanks to a number of factors (new cheaper models, high gas prices, mass arrival of Chinese models, etc.), EVs are currently in high demand in Europe.

EVs are in high demand in the EU because laws have been passed in every country and ICE are getting banned in many cities.

Chinese EVs did flood the EU not because people did want to buy chinese EVs: people in the EU were totally fine buying ICE cars (german, french, italian, spanish, ...) but the EU pushed for both legislation and incentives greatly favoring EVs over ICE cars.

It's IMO a good thing to push people to buy EVs. But the EU being the EU, of course they did it incredibly stupidly and managed to inflict great harm to EU car manufacturers and basically hand the keys of the kingdom to both US and chinese EVs (because in the EU we're led by treacherous dumbasses).

People can nitpick as much as they want as to what makes a great car: I do personally have a car from 1988 (38 and a half years old now) that, unlike chinese EVs, doesn't spy on me and that I could still use as a daily (I regularly use it to go, say, pick my kid at school). It's a gas-guzzler and it's not as safe as a modern car, but we definitely could have a talk about the actual CO2 of that car over its lifetime (which is far from done yet) compared to the CO2 over the lifetime of a brand new EV (and if we talk about chinese EVs brought by boat to the EU, we can have a talk too about coal usage in China).

The article could be summed as: "Yay, the EU caused great harm to its car industry and is now buying chinese EVs by the cargo load!".

I take we should... Applaud that great success!?

Short term thinking in the EU and top it off Germany also got rid of their nuclear power plants, and then became dependent on Russian oil and gas.

Yes there are incentives to buy EVs but they are still much more expensive than ICE vehicles (I'm in the market for a new car so that is an observation from my experience)

They may import the cars, but now they don't need to import the fuel.

> EVs are in high demand in the EU because laws have been passed in every country and ICE are getting banned in many cities.

Can you give us an example of a city in the EU banning ICEs? (Not that I'm complaining, it's nice to have quiet cities with clean air, I just don't know about those)

> But the EU being the EU

The EU being the EU did the responsible thing and gave car manufacturers clear rules and a long timeline (over 15 years) to apply them; they also gave them the escape hatch of hybrids and PHEVs that will only be closed using the OBFCM in the following years. But the manufacturers chased fast money and refused to innovate and lower prices because they still made lots of money in export markets. Then China changed the rules, it became very hard to make money with ICE cars there, and then the mfgs complain about the EU and want to be saved again.

> Chinese EVs did flood the EU

There are tariffs on Chinese EVs, depending on the manufacturer, ranging from 27% (BYD) to 45% (SAIC). If the customers still buy a Chinese EV and not an european EV, then the European EV manufacturer does something wrong.

You imply that ICE is banned when in reality many European cities decided to require that you stop polluting their city by meeting newer standards but a brand new ICE car would do that too today, the problem is always that people think a car produced twenty years ago (or like yours, 38 years ago) ought to count, because hey, by the standards of twenty years ago it didn't pollute very much. Standards change. Fifty years ago you could smoke on an aeroplane, today you can't! When my mother first went out to work it wasn't yet legal for her to have her own bank account, the money was hers, her ancestors won that right, she was an individual who could own things and not legally a component part of her father, but banks didn't give out accounts here without a man's say so. By the time she had me, that changed and they'd also banned employers from paying her less because she was a woman.

Amsterdam's current plan says they'll eliminate ICE from their city centre by 2030. I have no idea why you'd drive in central Amsterdam anyway, seems like a terrible idea - but if you insist on doing it after 2030 you'll need an electric vehicle. But that's not today is it? Things change.

Yes, Reduce, Re-use, Re-cycle is in that order for a reason. It's good that you're continuing to use this old car while it meets your needs. A dense European city may well not want you there because the trade-off sucks too bad for them.

And while China does use proportionally more coal than Europe today and likely for the foreseeable future, like European leadership Xi can do the math. The problem I have with Trump is that I'm not sure he even understands the problem, obviously if he did understand he'd lie about it, but I'm just not sure he's even lying, I think he might well be too stupid to understand.