Secondarily power electronics; at that scale, you can't just pick a bigger transistor and call it a day.

By comparison the motors seem to be a mostly solved problem, although I'm sure there's still some scope for power-to-weight engineering there, it's not as critical as the battery pack.

OK so the billion Euro question is: why not? Tesla seem to be making adequate sales in Europe. China has passed 50% EVs as new sales. Norway (in Europe, but not the EU) is approaching 100%.

Is it simply price? Of the car, and/or electricity?

The EU was originally proposing to phase out ICE in 2035, which is now less than 10 years away!

> compliance car EVs (i.e. their "let's stuff a 50 kWh gross battery

I had noticed that all the Stellantis EVs have desperately bad range. I guess that's why they're showing up for cheap leasing offers to meet compliance.

But that's what I mean. It's an intentionally half-assed product. Only the recent Renault 5 and VW ID series cars feel like serious market entrants rather than "will this do?"

BYD and Tesla are popular in the UK, but not EU manufacturers. Why? Product? Price?

The UK used to have a special BT+Huawei+MI6 joint office where the kit was subject to inspection. I never heard of anything confirmed coming out of there, and the thing seems to have vanished from the internet. So I suspect the order to phase out Huawei was similarly politically motivated.

The problem is this is really hard to objectively measure.

> Complete protectionism doesn't work because it makes your own manufacturers non-competitive on the global stage.

Yes - and this is a problem Detroit has been struggling with since Japan got decent at cars. The recent wave of protectionism is backing them into the dead end.

Long ago hand painters used cadmium yellow. It may be art, but it's also poisonous. Same for Napoleon and his arsenic wallpaper. In the end, same for CO2-emitting engines.

But yes, the main natural predator of Americans is other Americans.

I dunno, for decades the policy by most of the West has been (a) keep Germany from re-arming in case they start WW3 and (b) discourage nuclear proliferation by anyone, and now because the Americans have thrown security out the window in exchange for freedom to bully, we have to reverse course on both of those?

The thing is, this problem exists regardless of who the manufacturer is, and using nationalism to make it about China disguises the real problem. Tiktok didn't magically become safe or unsafe when it was divested.

In the middle of this was Jack Welch's "destroy your business dot com", which is still highly controversial. But he did at least recognize that running a big ossified business in a time of change was going to need a massive kick to get everyone out of their complacency (and if not, out of their jobs!). Cannibalize your own legacy business, or some competitor will.

I think this is a serious problem in existing car companies. They attach too much prestige and career to being "petrolheads", or simply working in the engine division; after all, that's the most expensive to develop and least easy to substitute part of the car. The EV transition threatens to sweep that all away. Probably most of the EU manufacturers won't really get on board until those people retire.

There's probably a whole other essay that could be written about labour relations and the decline of mass car manufacture in the UK while we retain a lot of high-end boutique expertise (Formula 1 etc).

Anyway, I have an EV on order from FCA Poland, so we'll see how that turns out.

Chinese imports and local manufacture should be able to compete in the "free market". It's just that that term has been heavily debased by idiots misusing it, like everything else.