The path to success is to most rapidly get combustion vehicle manufacturer and the fossil supply chain to their death spirals through demand destruction. How fast we get there is a function of change of rate in velocity of global EV sales.
Adapt to an EV future or die as a going concern. North American sales are lagging because of protectionism and low value for EVs on offer from domestic manufacturers. This will likely change as Congress turns over back to Democrats over the next several years, and clean tech policies are supported again.
Volkswagen to cut 50,000 jobs as China offers cheaper electric cars - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/03/10/volkswagen-t... - March 10th, 2026
Our World In Data: Tracking global data on electric vehicles - https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales
IEA: Global EV Data Explorer - https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-tools/global-ev...
Europe's numbers confirm it: subsidies work, but they're a crutch. The moment you remove them (Germany 2024), sales crater. The moment you reintroduce them (Germany, France, Italy 2026), they surge. That's not organic demand, it's policy-driven purchasing.
Meanwhile China is playing a completely different game. Domestic sales dip because of tax changes, but exports double to 500k units in two months. They're not trying to win the subsidy game — they're building scale to win on cost. BYD's cheapest EV is under $10k. No amount of subsidies in Europe or the US can compete with that long-term.
The real question nobody in the industry wants to answer: if EVs need permanent subsidies to compete in developed markets, and Chinese manufacturers can sell profitably without them, what exactly is the Western EV industry's endgame?