Two interesting stats paint a vivid picture of the wreckage caused by the pushing of battery powered vehicles.
The first is the $55 billion in losses reportedly incurred so far by Ford, GM, Stellantis, VW and other car companies that malinvested in battery powered vehicles because they assumed the government would succeed in shoving people into them. The main thing that prevented that from happening was not the election of Donald Trump so much as the failure of the EV pushers to eliminate the alternatives to battery powered vehicles, which they could have done by imposing taxes on gasoline so high as to make driving a vehicle that burns gas even more expensive than making monthly payments on a new EV. Or by forbidding people from driving gas-engines vehicles in places where they need to drive, such as cities – or making them pay obnoxious fees to be allowed to drive into cities. This sort of thing has already been imposed in several European cities, such as London and Paris.
But – thank the Motor Gods – the EV pushers did not do that here and that made it easy enough to opt out of the EV “market.” In time, of course, the situation would have changed as gas engined vehicles aged out of service and perhaps at that point, most people would have been pushed into an EV if they wanted to continue driving. But the point is that we were blessed with time – and it just ran out on the EV.
This brings us to the second indicator – which is that EV registrations have crashed by almost 50 percent. The major driver here is Donald Trump, who did a righteous thing by ending the federal government’s direct subsidization of battery powered vehicles via the $7,500 tax credit affluent people could take advantage of if they bought an EV. (It is not often discussed that you had to have paid enough in federal taxes to qualify for this credit; the working and middle class were effectively excluded.)
With the federal government’s thumb off the scales, even affluent people have lost interest in EVs.
This unwinding is only the beginning – because of the lag-time effect. An example of this being new EV launches, as for instance that of the 2027 Toyota Highlander. This EV was not designed for 2027 but for 2023, when it was assumed that come 2027 battery powered vehicles would have become the dominant vehicles, due to ever-more-forceful pushing of them (and ever more forceful pushing of alternatives to them off the market). Think of it like the already lit fuse of a piece of dynamite. Once you light it, it’s hard to stop the explosion that’s coming – but it takes a little while for the fuse to burn down to the dynamite.
The “electrified” 2027 Highlander is by no means the only new EV in the pipeline. There are lots of others that will be coming out over the next year or so and that means the $55 billion in losses just reported is far from being the end of the losses.
When the final cost is tallied, it may encompass the bankruptcy of several brands, including very possibly Stellantis and VW, which have incurred the most disproportionate losses. Ford has lost a bundle on “electrified” hot messes such as the F-150 Lightning and GM on its devices, but the both have models that sell well and for a profit, such as their non-electric trucks and SUVs.
Chrysler has nothing to sell – except a minivan. Dodge is trying to jump-start sales of the Charger, which cratered after they turned it into a device that needed to be charged.
Jeep is bleeding out over “electrified” loss leaders such as the Wrangler 4xe and Ram is having to absorb the losses incurred over the “electrified” Ram truck that was killed off before it even became available.
VW is hurting, too. The ID Buzz has proved to be a real buzz-kill. So also the other “ID” devices.
The lag-time effect is just beginning to show.
. . .
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I believe the EV was already in steep decline due to people figuring out the ‘Truth’ about what the EV really was and wasn’t. Trump ending the tax break just hastened the decline. But there was no way the EV could succeed liked some hoped. They could not ‘eliminate the alternatives’ unless the US Power Grid and Power Generation was addressed, which it was not. I am 90% certain that the today the primary factor killing EV, and in particular Govt/Industry support, is AI. Gotta have that Electric Juice to power the Data Centers!
“The major driver here is Donald Trump, who did a righteous thing by ending the federal government’s direct subsidization of battery powered vehicles”
-Eric
Nah. Though (temporarily) pausing the tax credits is one of the few good things Trump has done, I don’t think that that had much to do with the decline in EV registrations, as the majority of people who could both afford to buy said EVs, AND take advantage of that tax credit are not likely to be swayed by such a thing on a purchase that a)depreciates faster than dog crap on a Las Vegas sidewalk in July; and b)Impacts their life on a daily basis, in terms of convenience and functionality.
I do believe what we are really seeing is:
A)The bloom is off the rose. The people who initially bought the hype have finally come to the realization that EVs are not practical, functional, convenient or economical. It i no longer “cool” to drool over an EV, as their futuristic space-age sophisticated pipe-dream is now recognized as being not quite ready for prime-time. Enough people now know that driving an EV is expensive and very inconvenient. EVs are not the VW Bug [practical transportation for the masses]; they are virtue-signal toys for those who can afford expensive toys that will get thrown away.
and…
B)Just as with the decline of “smartphone” sales, once everybody who wants something has one….the numbers naturally fall off .
and for good measure:
C)They’re too expensive and offer no benefit for those who can afford them.
D) Elon is no longer their darling. Which shows the real reason why many bought the damned things in the first place…and why they’re no longer interested- much like if some guy with a hard-on for a football player bought an actual jersey worn by that player, and then the player was caught committing the high crime of “using a racial slur”[gasp!] or diddling a kid, would suddenly be looking to off-load the jersey and not buy another.
E) Free charging and cheap charging are largely no longer a thing.
F)The cost of registering an EV in most places has increased substantially, and the realization is hitting that insurance and repairs, etc. are not negligible as had been touted….but rather very expensive.
I could go on…but I think you get it.
Tl;dr; The tax credit was just a small incentive for those who wanted and who could afford an EV. Now, few who can afford them want them; and it is no longer ‘cool’ to drive an EV. When the next potentate ascends the throne and reinstates the credits, I don’t believe it will make one blip on the radar of EV sales.
Don’t worry when there all running in the red the government will bail them out again.
Here in WA the state gov still all in all electric @ 2035 despite Feds saying no, this moron from State Ecology still trying the “sea level rise/drought/wildfire” schtick:
“We’re not going to slow down that progress. Washingtonians already experience the impacts of climate change every year, from drought and wildfire to flooding and sea-level rise,” Sixkiller said in a statement following the Attorney General’s lawsuit. “As our Attorney General’s Office fights to protect our state’s rights, we’ll continue working with the Legislature, industry partners, local governments, and other states to continue our progress on clean transportation. At a time of great uncertainty, that’s a promise we can keep.”
Time to start paying attention to all the ID and MT real estate listings my daughter sends me.
More cash flow for Costco, and that’s who owned Governor Inslee.
Not that Bob Ferguson is much better, having stopped the Kroger-Safeway merger as Attorney General, but he does have some deniability about what goes on in Issaquah.
Inslee had Costco’s lawyers in to write the liquor deregulation rules a decade ago.
The irony is that Costco doesn’t really run the auto buying program. It is a consortium of dealers based in San Diego who license the Costco name.
“ Inslee had Costco’s lawyers in to write the liquor deregulation rules a decade ago “
Yeah another scam the voters fell for. I did the calc for a 1.75 L bottle of booze, “tax as a % of retail price: 42.49%” Includes liquor and sales tax.
Well WA, you’re #1 again.
Sure am glad I left WA in 1980.
ID and MT are full. I hear North Dakota is nice.
Nebraska is a miserable place to live, Avoid it like the plague.
Jey, watch out Sparkey! MT. and ID have been going libtard. There are so many former CAers, ORers and WAers there who apparently haven’t learned their lesson….. MT was on my list years ago, but I didn’t go because of the weather. Now I’m glad that the weather scared me off! I had some dealings with a few people in MT c. 3 years ago. Got a good feel for the local’s view of what’s happening, and it ain’t good. Ditto ID. ID is most fed owned…. Both may still be saner than WA…but they’re catching up fast. Personally, I’m very disappointed in MT. It used to be like a shining beacon. “There’s always MT.” (Could endure the weather if need be), but they’re going down fast!
@Eric – How close is Dodge to producing the four door variant of the new Charger/Challenger?
The cops do not have a V8 saloon to replace the old Charger, and the new Crown Vic I saw in Chicago in March 2019 never made it to production once Impeachment started.
Rumor is late spring, early summer. Dealers already discounting the initial high msrp of the 2-doors, which was expected, but not that fast.
Things that make you say, “Hmmmm…”:
My neighbors no longer keep their ID Buzz inside their garage.
Did VW issue some kind of saaaafety directive?
41 DUI arrests by trooper dismissed after many drivers were deemed sober
https://www.wlbt.com/2026/02/14/41-dui-arrests-by-trooper-dismissed-after-many-drivers-were-deemed-sober/
The new math. Rich 1% pricks are being subsidized to buy vehicles that the 99% can not afford.
“$7,500 tax credit affluent people could take advantage of if they bought an EV”
Rich people are rich because of asset price inflation caused by easy Federal Reserve monetary policies. Charles Hugh Smith has charted this ever increasing widening gap between the 50% at the bottom vs. the top 1% who own the real estate and stocks. (BTW Pam Bondi caustically pointed out the Dow at 50,000 as some great Trump achievement, when in fact it wasn’t Trump, it was the Fed, and the inflation of the DJIA is a monetary phenomenon caused by criminally insane ruling class)
Basically, the modern world is a dystopian science fiction horror, the rich in their EVs in their large countryside estates while the 99% are herded into 15 minute cities – easy prey for the top predators who prefer human meat.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/epstein-egregore
The Politics Of Institutionalized Predation.
“I become stronger as you become weaker, I absorb strength as yours flows into me. I become capable of this because I do not experience your pain, I don’t care about your loss, and I feel no regret about using, abusing, and devouring you.”
— Page 63, An Age For Lucifer
An egregore isn’t an analogy or mythical. It’s what a shared belief system becomes when it fuses with incentives and institutions and starts behaving like an organism. It recruits, it feeds, it protects itself. The Epstein network isn’t the egregore. It’s one of its organs.
————–
Likewise, only the rich owning cars is another phenomenon, the WEF climate cult is to elevate the 1% to gods, and make the 99% their disempowered prey. EVs were ultimately about taking away our mobility so the top predators could feed on us easier. It reminds of the Dark Ages, the vampire overlords had horses and swords, while the serfs walked in fear.
Trump’s promise of “the best is yet to come” is not about elevating us, it is about building resort hotels and royal casinos on our graves. At Mar a Lago Trump is a god-king, waited on hand and foot, and trafficking the poor for profit. It is the ultimate wealth disparity sickness consuming our society at this moment. All caused by the Federal Reserve – it’s ability to magically conjure up money so our hard work and the value of our labor is siphoned off to the top 1%.
Indeed Jack,
I saw an article on Substack the other day describing the mega yachts of our overlords, Bexos, Zuckerberg, etc. They burn enough diesel to power a small (15 minute?) city and emit tons of that evil CO2. Meanwhile they fund all the “climate change” NGO’s that want to put us peasants back into the dark ages. Bring on the guillotines.
I agree, bring on the guillotines. I am being literal too, I saw a forestry guy saying what are we waiting for, he has a wood chipper. Others say burn it all down. Couldn’t agree more, so why are we not hanging these criminals as our forefathers did as recently as the wild west in the 19th century? Hang ’em High, like the Clint Eastwood movie.
Our problem is that we have become to civilized, cower in fear of the police state we live under, we now look to the Congressional hearing of Pam Bondi who spits venom in our faces. No one even jumped up and shouted her down demanding her immediate resignation. Everyone is fucking polite. It is beyond disgusting. Bondi should of dragged out and shot in the head and thrown down the capitol steps. Fuck that cunt protecting pedo Trump and his sick baby raping, killiing and eating monsters. This is beyond the pale, the ruling class is a Satanic cult raping, killing, and eating children. They deserve no consideration or mercy whatsoever. They deserve death.
https://www.thewisewolf.club/p/epstein-was-a-cannibal-eating-children-witchcraft
This song is one of the best shots at the “Epstein class”
Accept – No Shelter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmBtbRRuUgk&list=RDvmBtbRRuUgk&start_radio=1
A sample of the lyrics for your enjoyment:
Welcome to Main Street… You forgot your champagne
All of your off-shore accounts, have gone down the drain
Your stocks are all worthless, your paper trail burns
Your riches have turned into rags, the tables have turned
An eye for an eye… justice is served
Vengeance is ever so sweet, when you get what you deserve
No, no… NO, NO!!!
Chorus
There is no Shelter… (No Shelter)
No limos, no yachts, no homes
There is no Shelter… (No Shelter)
Vultures pick at your bones
There is no Shelter… (No Shelter)
Only life in your cell
There is No Shelter… (No Shelter)
No, you can’t take it with you to hell
Even if EVs were a direct replacement for the equivalent ICE powered automobile, people probably wouldn’t be buying them. At least not at the numbers promised by starting up a complete factory just for one vehicle. There’s still the infrastructure problem, the app for the chargers tracking you problem, the “fake and gay” problem… (literally, with Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust)
Back when the EV1 was popular with the Reflexology Sandals crowd it got a ton of attention. The fanboys even made a documentary about how GM “killed” it after the trial was over, never mentioning the clearly obvious flaws with them, or that California backed down on their EV mandate (not the current one, the one from the 1990s) after it became clear that the cars weren’t ready for mass conversion. Sound familiar?
Morning, RK!
Yup. I test drove the EV1 when it was new. For more than 30 years, I have been writing about these things and trying to convey the Truth and the Facts (as Clover used to say) and maybe, at last, the Truth and the Facts are percolating into general awareness!
The voice of one, crying in the wilderness.
How to invert logic like a pro:
‘Four months after it opened with promises of stable, high-paying factory jobs, a $5.8 billion Ford-backed battery plant in Kentucky is sitting idle – and 1,600 workers are out of work. Kentucky’s Democratic governor Andy Beshear blames the president.
‘Those are 1,600 Kentuckians that lost their jobs solely because of Donald Trump pushing that big, ugly bill, eliminating the credits that had people interested and excited to buy EVs,’ Beshear told the New York Times.
‘I bet many, if not most, of them voted for him, and he basically fired them.’ — Daily Mail
As Eric pointed out, the $7,500 EeeVee tax credit was a viciously anti-populist policy which mulcted working folks to subsidize rich toffs buying EeeVees. Gov. Andy Beshear, correctly assuming that most of his D-party constituency are too dimwitted and uninformed to know this, now laments the end of this market distortion.
*sigh*
A relative of mine — a well-informed Democrat — thinks Gov. Andy Beshear would be a great D-party presidential nominee in 2028. Like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, young Andy can slip into the pasture unobserved, since he’s not from a radical communist jurisdiction like Commiefornia or Nueva York. But as his revealing statement shows, Andy still wants to kill us slowly with EeeVees and gun control and crushing taxes.
There’s a reason an ex-girlfriend used to call K-Y Jelly ‘Kentucky Jelly.’ NOW BEND OVER.
Much like Gavin Newsom, Andy Beshear has Daddy issues.
Unlike Newsom, however, Beshear did not have a set of kneepads in Willie Brown’s desk drawer, right next to Kamala’s.
Someone else keeps Beshear’s kneepads in their desk drawer, but it isn’t Brown.
“Someone else keeps Beshear’s kneepads in their desk drawer, but it isn’t Brown.”
It’s Mitch, even though Beshear has a “D” after his name.
‘Chrysler has nothing to sell – except a minivan.’ — eric
It was once assumed — I know I did — that each model year would bring new, better and more exciting models of cars to choose from. Those days are over.
Though individual deal killers like ASS may fade away, the overworked small displacement engines, 10-speed compliance transmissions, CANbus computer control, cell phone-inspired douchescreen human interfaces, multiple airbags, and connected telematic surveillance linger on like bedbugs that can’t be killed even with strong insecticide.
Chrysler could actually design a fun, interesting minivan. It could bring back the 300 sedan. It could bring back the Dodge Challenger. But would anyone want them, with all the unsought, undemanded crap technology listed above? As long as low-mileage garage queens from 15 to 30 years ago exist, even at top dollar one can profitably pay to avoid unpleasantness, obsolescence and technological oppression.
Like proctologists, today’s auto makers offer something that people may need, but no one really wants or looks forward to. Later this year, the 2027 models will arrive. NOW BEND OVER.
“Chrysler could actually design a fun, interesting minivan.”
They should give Tony Angelo a call.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1wJqvTUbCw
While I’m interested in the new charger in a 4-door coming soon, I would absolutely prefer a new 300. The charger is a little too boy toy’ish for this old man. I loved my ’18 300 V8, but it was RWD only (and one-rear-wheel drive only, yuk) which got me caught not being able to get home a few times. The new one is pretty slick in AWD, and you can turn it off for RWD only, me likes.
And it has a pretty nice trunk now too, which the older 300 suffered a little from.
I agree, Chris –
I think it would smart – good business – for Dodge to get a V6 (not the Hurricane six) four door “base” iteration of the current Charger into production ASAP. They’d sell scads to fleet buyers, such as the po’leece. They could spin off a 300 variant, which would perhaps save Chrysler. Make the Hurricane and the Hemi optional as progressively more potent engine options.