We got one of the first Tesla Model 3s. You might think it was my idea but it was my wife’s.  She put down the deposit, sight unseen many months in advance.  From the first time I drove it I was sold.  Fast, quiet, clean, low maintenance.  What else could you want in a car?  Nothing in the ensuing years has changed my mind.  Quite the opposite.

I figured it was only a matter of time before everyone bought an EV, especially with battery prices plummeting and batteries being around half the cost of the original Model 3.  And in some parts of the world that’s exactly what happened.  But not in the US.

Today there are stories in the press about the EV “bubble” being over.  Only for the US auto industry, which has failed to make a competitive product, even with subsidies.   Well, Tesla did have a good run until a series of bizarre decisions by their management trashed their brand.

Today China makes what are said to be very nice EVs for $10k.  But American auto buyers will never see them.  Nor will they see a $20k EV American auto manufacturers could surely make and sell, if they wanted to. Instead Americans will be paying $50k per car for last century’s technology.  It is a bit like the pharmaceutical industry now, but worse.  Americans will not be paying vastly more for the same product, but will be paying vastly more for an inferior one.

So much for free markets and capitalism.  Big oil and The Big Three (or is it Big Two these days?) will be profiteering and we will all be paying in so many ways while the rest of the world moves on into the 21st century without us.