Electrical Failure

Oh, of course, we should have seen this coming.

General Motors is expected to lose $1.6 billion on its electric vehicles as a result of falling sales and the end of government subsidies and tax credits in favor of Trump's policy encouraging greater production and sales of gasoline-powered vehicles.  And it's not just GM that's suffering.  Sales of all EV models in These States, like the 2026 Chevrolet Equinox EV (pictured above), could end up going down by 50 percent as a result of the factors suddenly working against them.

The truth is, though, that even if Kamala Harris had been elected President (I know, a ridiculous idea) or if former President Biden had been elected to a second term (an idea even more ridiculous than the previous one), electric-vehicle sales still would have ended up in the toilet.  Elon Musk was drawing unfavorable attention to Tesla even before Trump got back in power, EVs are still too expensive with few places at which to charge them, and efforts to attract nontraditional customers as with the Ford F-150 Lightning pickup truck have failed.  And,, as I noted before - when I pointed out that it took a hundred years for the Fifteenth Amendment, which gave blacks the right to vote, to be implemented - Americans traditionally are stubbornly resistant to change.

It's probably for the best, at least for now, as many if not most EVs are lacking in quality and reliability.  I have been reading horror stories about the dependability of Volkswagen's ID.3 hatchback (pictured above - my own photo, taken in Munich! 😁), which was developed in a contentious period at Volkswagen under the leadership of Herbert Diess, who was trying to get Volkswagen to embrace the streamlined development process that Tesla uses to create electric vehicles.  The EV-platform program that did get developed missed the mark, as it were, and the resulting product recalled the teething problems that the original Volkswagen Golf (marketed as the Rabbit in North America) faced after its debut in Europe in 1974 and in North America in 1975.  At that time, Volkswagen's experience in making watercooled, front-engine, front-wheel-drive cars was limited to whatever expertise was gained in having purchased NSU and Auto Union nearly a decade before.  VW had even less expertise with electric vehicles when it started developing them, so maybe no one should be surprised that the ID.3 - and the ID.4 crossover, for that matter - has had a lot of problems.

But you have to walk before you run, and Trump's anti-EV policies will ensure that GM's and Ford's EV programs don't even make it out of the starting gate - not to mention cause Volkswagen's Tennessee factory to produce fewer ID.4s and more Atlases.  As for EVs imported from elsewhere, well, the tariffs will likely stop them from gaining traction.  Meanwhile, GM has to figure out how to go forward into the future while dealing with a presidential administration that is hostile to the future.  How it does that is, like how Democrats win back power in Washington, anyone's guess.