[throwaway_20357]

How can manufacturers fight EV adoption? If an EV is a superior offering it will find its market. Germans are free to buy Teslas, BYDs or domestiv EVs. There are reasons why the EV market share in Germany was still only 4.1% in 2025 (most likely: high electricity prices, relatively low gasoline price) but manufacturers "fighting adoption" is not one of them.

[jandrese]

Domestic auto manufacturers can also set high prices on their EV offerings to prevent them from effectively competing and lobby the government to put high tariffs on competitive foreign EVs, or even completely block them at the border.

People will come in to say that the batteries are inherently expensive, but that's not really true anymore. Manufacturing costs have plummeted over the past few years, but you wouldn't know that in the west.

I think it is a market failure that there have not been more Tesla-like startups that come in to eat their lunch. I get that even when you don't need to make an engine the startup costs are high, but there is a crapton of money sloshing around the markets right now looking for the next big company. We need someone with the gumption to execute.

[adrianN]

Manufacturers have large marketing budgets. Presumably all that money influences which cars people want to buy.

[Spooky23]

Germany has different factors. But in the US, lobbying has established BYD as a national security threat.