The recent surge in fuel prices due to the war in Iran has spurred demand for electric vehicles around the world, and Chinese car makers are making the most of the opportunity.
The recent surge in fuel prices due to the war in Iran has spurred demand for electric vehicles around the world, and Chinese car makers are making the most of the opportunity.
There are around 290m cars in the us for the 330m people
There are around 420m cars in Europe for the 730m people
So while the actual amount of cars in all of Europe is more than the US the percent car ownership in a single country is insane
Than why don’t they buy foreign EV’s? There were options but now both Hyundai and Kia have stopped selling EV models last year solely in the US. In my opinion that makes the choice for BYD logical as these US established brands can’t even sell their EV’s.
My own opinion, they were too expensive and the EV charging network wasn’t built up enough to prevent people from feeling like the available range options weren’t large enough.
Hyundai has pulled the ioniq 6 but the ioniq 5 and soon to be ioniq3 are sold in the USA still. Unless there was some news I missed. For Kia, Im not sure what their status is.
Kia pulled its EV6 GT, which basically did not sell well in the US. They only manufactured that particular top tier trim level in Korea, but the other EV6 trim levels continue to be manufactured and sold in the U.S. (Wind, GT-Line). Kinda stupid that they named their top of the line the GT and the one just below that the GT-Line, but brands can be stupid with naming schemes sometime.
They’re basically one company and they stopped importing EVs. They still build and sell plenty of new EVs in the U.S., made in their plants in the state of Georgia. They’re also currently expanding capacity at their plants, in the hopes of catching more of the growing electric SUV market.
So they no longer sell the top of the line trim level of the Kia EV6, or the Hyundai Ioniq 6, but they’re still building and selling very similar models on the same platform. The Kia EV6 still exists in the lower trim levels, and the Ioniq 6N and the Ioniq 5 and 5N, and their smaller EVs (Kia Niro, Hyundai Kona) are still available, too. Both brands launched their 3-row electric SUVs in the US, too (Hyundai Ioniq 9, Kia EV9).
A lot of companies are slowing down their EV rollouts, but I wouldn’t say that Hyundai/Kia is the best example of that.