EV Enthusiasts Are Losing The Battle In The USA Right Now — Why?

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Elections matter.

Xi Jinping was elected President of China on March 14, 2013. As a scientifically aware leader with long-term economic vision, Xi Jinping implemented strong, aggressive cleantech policies that made China the global leader in solar power, wind power, and electric vehicles. Thanks to intelligent EV policies (modeled in good part on Californian policies) implemented over the course of more than a decade, 33% of auto sales in China are now BEV sales, and more than 50% of sales are plugin vehicle sales. More than half of the world’s electric vehicle sales now take place in China, and many EVs produced in China are also sold elsewhere. EVs have become a major economic growth engine for China. (Apologies for the bad metaphor.)

Over the past couple of decades, European countries have elected leaders practical enough, scientifically literate enough, and with enough long-term vision to implement fairly strong CO2 emissions regulations and drive EV adoption as well. As a result, 19% of new vehicle sales in the first 10 months of 2025 were BEV sales, and 28% were plugin vehicle sales.

In the US, when I was a young adult, we decided to elect someone to the presidency who had constantly failed upward throughout his life. The son of a former US president, he failed his way into Yale, he failed his way into the role of Governor of Texas, and he failed his way into the presidency. Unsurprisingly, he also failed as president, getting us into nonsensical wars; subsidizing the oil & gas industry (that he was heavily tied to) via trillions of dollars of federal subsidy; and, with the help of the rest of his party, deregulating the financial industry and walking us into a financial crisis while dramatically increasing wealth inequality.

We turned a corner and elected the USA’s first climate-focused president. President Obama pulled us out of the financial crisis, brought healthcare costs down via the Affordable Care Act, and kickstarted big stimulus support for industries of the future, such as the electric vehicle industry. Bailing out the auto industry, he also required that they get focused on selling more efficient vehicles and developing sustainable long-term vision rather than living quarter by quarter. Alas, after saving and stabilizing the economy, things got too boring and his potential successor was not exciting enough, so the country elected someone born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a golden toilet under his bum. Using constant griping and complaining as a mobilization tool, and benefiting from his long-developed TV brand as a supposedly successful person, the bankruptcy king and con man from Queens stepped into a role he was not fit to fill. Donald Trump has never been eager to do anything for anyone if it didn’t benefit him more. He has engaged in multiple kinds of fraud, felony, and morally bankrupt behavior. Nonetheless, after the biggest reshoring of US manufacturing in history under President Joe Biden, slow but steady economic recovery after COVID-19 shutdowns, and the biggest cleantech support packages in Western societal history, enough Americans again decided to elect the impeached moron who wants to bring us backwards and wants to stop cleantech progress as much as possible.

So, it should come as no shock to most of us that automakers have shut down or pulled back on their electric vehicle plans, have dropped their commitments to EV model growth and EV sales growth, have canceled EV production lines and EV factories, and have fallen in line with President Trump’s badmouthing of electric vehicles. Our weak, shortsighted auto industry executives have taken the opportunity to pump out more polluting, climate-destroying gasmobiles. They have flipped from an EV smile to The Joker’s chemical-stained frown. Consumer incentives have been killed, decades-long fuel economy standards have been hollowed out, and EV battery factories have been raided. So, why should automakers stick to their EV commitments? We are going backward, and fast.

So, yes, EV enthusiasts are losing the battle at the moment. We have never had a long period of support for EVs or strong EV manufacturing policy in place, so it’s been hard to gain any real momentum and cement a strong economic situation for EV sales here. We’ve got the most backwards-thinking, luddite politicians on the planet, and electric vehicles’ meager 8% share of the US auto market is going to shrink while China passes 33% EV share and Europe passes 20% EV share.

Policies matter. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be such dramatic divergence between the EV markets of China, Europe, and the US. Elections matter. And US election history has led to EVs and EV enthusiasts losing the auto industry battle at the moment. That’s where we are. Where do we go from here?