The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

I wish it would have adjusted for inflation. One quote: "The average transaction price for a new vehicle sold in the U.S. last month was $48,623, according to Kelley Blue Book, roughly $10,000 higher than in 2019, before the pandemic." However, about 9200 euros of that is due to inflation according to this calculator: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

That's a nitpick though. All in all, an interesting article, which can be summarized as: the EV car market is lacking demand, and car makers definitely don't want to make cheap EVs since it's already so hard.

There is scant evidence for this. Every time prices improve, sales surge. Sounds like the demand is there, but price matters. As it always has.

Any time you're not at highway cruising speed, it's just in the normal position where the electric motor drives it (the engine only functions as a generator). It's effectively an electric car with a small, far under provisioned in Civic terms, engine that comes on to top the battery up sometimes if regen braking isn't enough.

At highway speeds, the gearbox has the engine drive. And since it's a less powerful engine, it will have better fuel economy than one that has to ever handle acceleration from a standstill.

And the whole thing weighs about 3200-3400lb, far less than any electric vehicle. So you're "lugging" around less.