The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

You're never going to a hybrid under $25,000. Pretty much everywhere but the US has the option of getting an electric car for under $25,000 from BYD or Renault.

I've done over 20,000 km in road trips in an EV. You charge while you're eating or toileting or sleeping, it doesn't affect my trips.

I agree, the range has rarely been a problem for me. The battery runs out of juice about the time my butt needs a break, my bladder needs emptying, and my stomach needs filling. By the time I'm done with lunch, I'm good for another 250-300 miles, and I'm going to stop for the night at that point anyway. People doing >500 miles per day on a roadtrip are the outliers. Way, way outliers.

Out of curiosity, how long are those trips though?

In the US and probably Canada, there's an expectation that spending 8 hours in one day going somewhere is easily doable. (as in 800 km in 8 hours with a few 10-30 minute breaks for gasoline or food). It doesn't seem like that's a particularly normal thing for a European to do.

> Pretty much everywhere but the US has the option of getting an electric car for under $25,000 from BYD or Renault.

The US is afraid of competition in the automotive industry and the current import tariffs and taxes on cars are a bit of an elephant in the room here, too.

4 of the trips were 3000km each.

Longer trips are actually easier in an EV because you have no expectation of being able to power through without stopping for breaks. And it adds the option of charging overnight at a hotel.

It's the medium distance trips that are harder in an EV. A 500-800km trip is something people without kids expect to be able to do without any breaks.

We have three choices: 1) compete by enslaving our workers and treating them horribly like they do in China, 2) refuse to compete by simply outsourcing the slavery to China, or 3) compete by treat our workers well, use tariffs and tacitly admit that Trump has a good idea. Option 2 seems like the only option that is afraid of competition.

BYD just has to do the same thing Toyota did, build a plant in Mexico and use NAFTA to sell well made cars for dirt cheap.

I'm not yet convinced that BYD cars ARE well made yet though. When Hyundai had a similar amount of mistrust from American consumers, they improved their standing by offering a very compelling warranty, 100k miles or 10 years. The problem is I don't know if I can trust BYD the COMPANY that much.

Now you have to find a hotel with (working) overnight charging. These are rare in the USA epecially outside of major cities.

I drive home from Virginia to Florida in a single day, typically with one stop at the Florence, SC Buc-ee's. That's nearly 600 miles (in a gas RAV4). I do this a couple times a year and it takes about 9 hours, less if there's no cops.

They are rare, but easy to filter for in the standard hotel apps.

For most of my trips I was also able to use block heater plugs, which are ubiquitous in Western Canada. 120V isn't enough to get a full charge overnight, but 8-10 hours of charging at 120V is still adds a nice boost.

Labor is at most 10% of the overall cost of a car.

Now explain the remaining 15k of price difference!

Sure another 5 or 6k is subsidies from the Chinese government to the manufacturers, but there is still another $10k more that American cars cost VS Chinese cars.