The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

I would love a 10-15K BYD. I was told recently desiring a BYD is un-American when I can spend 3 times the price on a Tesla. No thanks! I’ll hold out for something truly cheap. Cars in America are insanely priced.

I will never buy an American car. I remember my parents' multiple Dodges and Fords catastrophically failing before they switched to Toyota.

US car companies have created the lasting idea that cars are dead at 100K miles, because those companies' cars absolutely were. Meanwhile, I bought my Honda at 148K and it's over 210K now and doing fine.

Tesla seems to live up to the legendary Ford quality, with hilarious workmanship issues, Ford Pinto level "it'll trap you in a fire" design and frequent failures. Probably because they threw out the hard-learned lessons of a century of auto-making for novelty electronic gimmicks.

I believe it's worth pointing out that with your Toyota, you're still buying an American car. The vast majority of Toyota vehicles sold in America are made in US plants.

Which is a good thing! It shows that those other quality issues are not related to US labor force, or some intrinsic American inability to make high quality goods.