# Is the US EV market dead? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 14, 2026, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671 "2026-02-14T20:46:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2026, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671/161 "2026-02-16T21:17:32Z")
@pezworld : this is clearly a very important topic to you, and it’s clear to me that you’re very frustrated and dismayed by what’s happening in the US EV market. You’re arguing with people in this thread who largely agree with you. I’m stepping away from the thread, because I don’t think I’m doing any good here. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2026, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671/162 "2026-02-16T21:18:59Z")
There are people who take lots of road trips, and people who don’t. There are people who can charge at home and those who can’t. There are people who can afford to get the oil changed regularly and wait in line to buy gas every week and those who can’t. Choice is good. I do think the people who live in places that lack EV infrastructure grossly underestimate how much EV infrastructure has already sprung up along the coasts. And how convenient electric cars are for people who have access to suitable infrastructure. But i expect that will change. In the mean time, what’s really a privilege is being able to swap out the car you are using for a new one of your choice. No matter what the incentives, no matter what the infrastructure, most people will keep driving the car they currently have available most years. Turnover (whether to seatbelts or EVs) is always slow in automobiles. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2026, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671/163 "2026-02-16T21:22:43Z")
Trying to jump past the recent unpleasantness … > [@Euphonious\_Polemic](#): > > > [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > > > don’t know that cars really burst into flames at all, at any appreciable level. I’d expect that nearly all of them are simply subjected to fire. E.g. they’re collateral damage of house fires, vandalism, wild fires, etc. > > Top three causes of car fires are: > > 1. Fuel leaks - gasoline on hot car parts > 2. Electrical faults - 12 volt battery or work electrical harness > 3. Other fluid leaks - oil, transmission fluid, brake fluid etc. I’ll point out that there are two very different scenarios that are glossed together: Car catches fire while being driven or car catches fire while parked. For an IC, two of the big three you rightly cite can pretty much only happen while the car is being driven or a handful of minutes after. Once there’s not multi-hundred degree F metal available, leaks can’t ignite. Electrical faults can occur any time, and modern IC car electrical systems are always at least partly energized. Larger point being that IC fires overwhelmingly tend to occur while the car is being driven. Folks pull over, jump out, call 911, and watch their car be consumed sitting on the shoulder before the FD shows up. EV cars can have a battery fire while in motion. But they can also have them while parked & charging. I’m going to bet that of fires started by parked cars in garages, EVs are the greater percentage risk. Right now they’re few in number, such that I’ll also bet that the total annual number of “burning car sets garage afire” cases is much larger for IC than EV. The fact the IC fleet age is a bunch older the EV, and IC fires are almost always age-related failures, further tilts the scale that way. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2026, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671/164 "2026-02-16T21:25:43Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Around here, installing central air is often the can-opening event. Ooh, good one. I totally skipped that idea. I’ve only ever lived where / when it was either utterly unneeded or utterly necessary. As AGW continues, and there’s more summer warmth everywhere, more and more of old housing stock that never had air conditioning will be wanting to retrofit it. The AC belt will just keep marching northwards. Which, given the last 125 years’ settlement patterns in the USA, also means marching increasingly into predominantly older housing stock with elderly on a 5-character whatever booster plate on a car.. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2026, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671/165 "2026-02-16T21:27:41Z")
The charger starting a fire is more common than a failure of the car starting a fire. And those fires often leave the car unscathed. It’s not actually that easy to light a car battery on fire, even though it’s incredibly hard to put out once it happens. Despite my posting about cars and phones burning up, what’s more common is e-bikes, because people sometime buy cheap, off brand batteries for them, and your really don’t want a cheap, off-brand lithium battery. ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2026, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671/166 "2026-02-17T00:13:52Z")
> [@bump](#): > > That puts the boys in my truck there considerably later than everyone else I’ve argued enough about this in every single other EV thread on this board, so I try to stay out of it, but there is absolutely no way you can convince me that a car full of boys makes a 5 minute fuel stop. Unless you have the child locks engaged so they can’t get out, there is going to be a series of “I don’t have to pee, no wait, now I do”, “now I want that kind of snack”, “I left my bandana in the bathroom”, and on and on. The beauty of an EV charging stop is you can be inside the store wrangling the herd while the unattended car does its thing. With just my little family of 3 people, on about a third of our road trip charging stops the car is ready to leave before the people. My extended family road trips have all been in gas cars 3 row SUVs or minivans, and the stops are always so long that I move the car away from the pumps, to not be an icehole. Frequently traveling to locations that do not have charging is a completely legitimate issue, but have you actually looked at the places you go? [![](https://i.imgur.com/mKKsAqB.png) ](https://i.imgur.com/mKKsAqB.png) > [@pezworld](#): > > if we don’t consider the poor apartment dwellers, _nobody_ can have a BEV. Been arguing about this for probably 10 years here. Everyone has an objection, but quite often people just _think_ they have an objection from something they heard somewhere, or from a news article about EVs they read 10 years ago… ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2026, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671/167 "2026-02-17T00:31:39Z")
The working poor _will_ be last to receive the benefits of EVs. That’s simply a given. They’re last for every automotive innovation: air conditioners, AM then later AM/ FM radios, radial tires, seatbelts, air bags, CD players, nav systems, etc. That’s the USA. They’re last for everything. It’s not wrong (factually or morally) for somebody to point that fact out. It _is_ a mistake for anyone to say that justifies stopping innovation. It’s also almost always a mistake to infer, as was done upthread here, that pointing out the fact of inequality amounts to a call for stasis. It almost never amounts to that. The person bringing up inequality is pointing out - I’m hurting here. Be polite. Recognize I/we exist. - Don’t forget we’re Americans too. So be careful about your generalizations. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2026, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671/168 "2026-02-17T00:35:10Z")
> [@echoreply](#): > > With just my little family of 3 people, on about a third of our road trip charging stops the car is ready to leave before the people. My extended family road trips have all been in gas cars 3 row SUVs or minivans, and the stops are always so long that I move the car away from the pumps, to not be an icehole. Your experience is very different from mine. When i fill the tank, usually everyone else stays inside the car and we are off in five minutes. We’ll stop at a proper rest area if people want to pee or buy snacks. Most trips don’t include that stop. ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2026, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671/169 "2026-02-17T00:40:33Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > When i fill the tank, usually everyone else stays inside the car and we are off in five minutes How is that even possible? I deny your lived experience! For me, “I’m going to wait in the car” really means, “I’m going to wait until a few people are done before I decide to get out, extending the stop by at least 5, but probably 10 minutes.” I forget, are you in the north east where the rest areas all have a Roy Rogers or something? Here in the mountain west we have some breathtakingly scenic rest areas, but if you ignore the Colorado river flowing just outside, they’re really only toilets by the freeway with _maybe_ a vending machine. ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2026, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671/170 "2026-02-17T00:47:08Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Your experience is very different from mine. When i fill the tank, usually everyone else stays inside the car and we are off in five minutes. We’ll stop at a proper rest area if people want to pee or buy snacks. Most trips don’t include that stop. I’m trying to parse this. By “Most trips don’t include that stop” are you saying that on most trips you have zero pee/snack stops, and you typically drive non-stop aside from 5m gas pit stops? What sort of distances are we talking about here? ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2026, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671/171 "2026-02-17T01:11:56Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > . . . regenerative breaking (which is annoying), We have a plain base model Kia Niro hybrid with regenerative braking. I asked on the forum for that model how you can tell you are or are not using regenerative braking. Replies to my post all said you cannot know, and that this was true of most or all other brands, not just Kia. According to Kia, you need new brake pads at 100,000 miles, but posters also said it is more like 200,000. So there’s one less maintenance annoyance. We drive a lot, and I would have range anxiety with a pure electric today. But ICE, even with hybrid, is inefficient compared to pure electric. And ICE technology is so much more mature than EV that there’s much more room for EV improvement. In five or ten years, EV range will consistently beat that of our Niro (500 - 600 miles between fill ups). Thrn EV adoption will roar back. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2026, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671/172 "2026-02-17T01:25:10Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#): > > Thrn EV adoption will roar back. If America is rational, yes. And I sure hope so. But EVs may be “damaged goods” by then. I’m struggling to remember examples, but there have been other mass market products released in “not really ready for universal prime time” condition. Which left their potential customers at v2.0 release time in “once burned twice shy” mode. Some of the examples never recovered; v2 flopped because bearly nobody was brave enough to try again. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2026, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671/173 "2026-02-17T01:27:03Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > I can beat _ **any** _ ICE vehicle out of a stoplight-- any pick-up, SUV, or sportscar. Actually, I can also beat any hybrid or very old EV. I’ve never tried to beat a new Tesla, or Volt or anything. I’m fine with your being pro-EV. I don’t think you live near me. All of our 21st century cars have been base models with supposedly low pick up, and it is extremely rare that I notice someone trying to beat me at a stoplight. And if I am — this is rare — in a hurry, I’ll beat them. Car marketed in the U.S. nowadays are IMHO all over-powered. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2026, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671/174 "2026-02-17T01:38:46Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#): > > I asked on the forum for that model how you can tell you are or are not using regenerative braking. Replies to my post all said you cannot know, and that this was true of most or all other brands, not just Kia. My car as a gauge that shows me how much I’m “charging” or discharging constantly. (Jaguar iPace) ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2026, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671/175 "2026-02-17T01:44:23Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > My car as a gauge that shows me how much I’m “charging” or discharging constantly. (Jaguar iPace) So does mine. But I suspect it doesn’t tell you if the reason(s) it is now charging include regenerative braking. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2026, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671/176 "2026-02-17T01:49:43Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > I’m struggling to remember examples, but there have been other mass market products released in “not really ready for universal prime time” condition. Which left their potential customers at v2.0 release time in “once burned twice shy” mode. The one example I can think of is from EV’s – swappable batteries. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2026, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671/177 "2026-02-17T01:57:38Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#): > > > [@Procrustus](#): > > > > My car as a gauge that shows me how much I’m “charging” or discharging constantly. (Jaguar iPace) > > So does mine. But I suspect it doesn’t tell you if the reason(s) it is now charging include regenerative braking. What other charging source does a BEV have? Or are you talking PHEV / hybrid? ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2026, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671/178 "2026-02-17T02:09:14Z")
Big part of our problem with EVs coming up lies in the _political_ decision to stop subsidizing expansion of the charging infrastructure. That will only intensify the perception of insecurity over charging availability. BTW, very, very briefly there was a glimmer of hope that maybe everyone would just swallow their pride and make Tesla’s system the de facto standard for a faster expansion. But let’s just say Tesla themselves seem distracted of late. > [@PhillyGuy](#): > > Car marketed in the U.S. nowadays are IMHO all over-powered. Though you wouldn’t know that from all the whining and moaning by online car reviewers about anything slower than 0-60 in 8. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2026, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671/179 "2026-02-17T02:13:08Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > > [@PhillyGuy](#): > > > > > [@Procrustus](#): > > > > > > My car as a gauge that shows me how much I’m “charging” or discharging constantly. (Jaguar iPace) > > > > So does mine. But I suspect it doesn’t tell you if the reason(s) it is now charging include regenerative braking. > > What other charging source does a BEV have? Or are you talking PHEV / hybrid? Yes, I was thinking hybrid. So if the BEV gauge says you are not charging, while you are non-emergency braking, that is a sign you wasted energy, and wore out the brake pad a bit, by braking too vigorously? Is is possible to safely notice that? ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2026, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671/180 "2026-02-17T02:15:14Z")
Cars need to be powerful enough to get up to highway speed from a standing start in the length of a standard or somewhat shorter interstate on-ramp to merge at co-speed with 75mph traffic running in the right lane. I don’t know what 0 to 60 time that corresponds to, but if any car can’t perform that maneuver, it ought not be allowed on a freeway. Maybe we should’ve built the interstates and such with longer on-ramps and longer merges. But that ship has comprehensively sailed. A car which must enter the right lane of traffic at 20 or more mph below the speed of traffic is a hazard to everyone. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-us-ev-market-dead/1027671.md?page=10)