Is there any other writer addressing both the granular detail and strategic overview of the global industry like Roger? If so, that debate must be held in private sessions. Brilliant analysis as always.
The luxury/sport Geely-Polestar brand announced record sales in 2025, of 60,119 - up 34% y-o-y. Polestars are predominantly produced in China, with some of the Polestar 6 production planned for South Korea (probably to beat EU and US tariffs). The Polestar 3 is also produced in the US. The Polestar 7 is planned to be built in Europe.
78% of Polestars are sold in Europe (nearly 17,000 were sold in the UK and 5,000 in Germany). It is now following an "All About Europe" strategy, and is opening up more and more physical sales sites - with entry to the French market in 2025.
Sales fell in the US, and Chinese sales collapsed to the point of the closure of Polestar's last physical store there. In its main markets, it's a Chinese import masquerading as a Swedish brand. Polestar delivered more cars in Australia than in China in 2025.
Volvo is owned by Geely. The compact EX30 BEV SUV was designed and developed in China, and was to only be built in China until the US 100% tariffs. Some production was then moved to Belgium, where it will stay with the final EU-US trade agreement and the US removal of EV incentives.
The larger EX60 BEV SUV will be manufactured in Sweden, most probably to dodge the EU anti-China EV tariffs and to help manage the European angst about the Chinese-EU trade deficit. Very much the same with the Chinese car plants in Hungary, Austria, Spain, Turkey and Algeria. The even larger EX90 BEV SUV is manufactured in the US and China and it will stay that way.
Volvo set a new sales record in 2024 with 768,389 sales globally, but has struggled a bit in 2025. Nearly half of Volvo's cars are sold in Europe (370,000), then China (156,000) then the US (125,000). Its now a Chinese car company, which will be increasingly integrated into the Chinese technology platforms. With Geely now starting to sell its Geely, Zeekr (the Zeekr X is the sister car of the EX30), and Lynk & Co. models in Europe it could also use the Volvo manufacturing plants to produce cars for these brands to localize production. By 2023, the ICEV Volvo cars manufactured in Sweden will be phased out. By then those plants may be producing more non-Volvo brand cars than Volvos.
Notably, Swedish industrial electricity prices are half those of Germany. Geely's production in Sweden also provides it with the backing of the Swedish government, with Sweden being a member of the EU.
But the article doesn't address the fundamental questions about the US abandoning EV; Why and what are the implications for the future of US capitalism?
The core of its productive forces falls far behind China, greatly reducing its global competitiveness and its ability to produce up to date armaments. With China grinding its way toward competitiveness in chips, aircraft and pharmaceuticals over the next 5 (chips and pharmaceuticals) to 10 years (aircraft) the US will have no real technological advantages left.
Then why abandon the technological advantage that it held? It's claimed that the US can 'catch up' but by then, it will be game over. It seem that the US is banking on WAR, that will, as previous wars of production did, leave the US on top. It seems that the US ruling class and its servants, have lost the plot, that instead of leading the next revolution in production like the Chinese, the US has banked everything on AI.
The US oligarchy is not a homogeneous group but a set of sub-groups with differing interests. Trump's oligarchic coalition is much more US domestic profits focused, including US resource extraction. The increase in electric vehicles directly challenges the fossil fuel group, as its cuts into oil demand; affecting both domestic oil producers and the US global oil majors (e.g. Exxon). Then you also have the other domestic interests (real estate, retail etc.) that would be affected by a domestic oil industry recession, predominantly in Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, Colorado and Alaska. All but Colorado are Republican strongholds.
Over the past decades, as the US oligarchy has gained absolute domestic domination, internal disputes have come more to the fore in the absence of external threats. In addition, short-term rentier, profiteering and extractive mindsets and groups have more taken hold (e.g. private equity). Classic end of empire stiff, where the previously "builder" oligarchy becomes rentier and financialized with its interests many times at odds with the national interest.
For some reason, you're ignoring the central role of the military as the single biggest consumer of oil, without which there is no US military. Yes, competing interests etc but the role of the MIC determines everything.
The US defence industry may be the biggest institutional consumer of oil, but its yearly consumption is about 100 million barrels per YEAR. Global oil production is 100 million barrels per DAY. US oil production is 13 million barrels per DAY, so the US defence industry consumes under 8 days of US production.
The US oligarchy is is control of the US, the state including the military is their tool. The management of the US military is part of the PMC, which is the courtier class of the US, and only those that are faithful servants of the oligarchy are allowed to make it to the top.
If there is a military aspect to USA turning from EV, it's that China controls the supply chain right now. So if USA wants to be ready for war with China and thus minimize reliance on Chinese imports, it can't switch to EV until USA has its own EV supply chain. Meanwhile, a USA supply chain for rare earths is a much higher priority, so why waste limited funds on developing this USA EV supply chain when there is still plenty of oil available?
The US along with the rest of the Western Oligarchal / Monarchical establishment have decided to resort to the age old tried and tested form of Wealth Extraction "RENT" and so long as they can permanently subdue the populaces they will get away with it. Absolutely everything else is a distraction, keep you frightened, keep you poor, keep you uninformed / misinformed and you will be unable to fight back.
USA is taking the conservative approach. ICE technology works now, USA has mastered it, and ICE is only limited by oil supplies, which USA controls in abundance, unlike China. EV depends on copper, silver and cobalt supplies, which may be limited. China has no choice but to move forwards, whereas USA can afford to wait. If EV technology really is the way forwards, and copper, silver and cobalt supplies are not a long term issue, then USA can eventually catch up in EV, same as Japan and Korea caught USA in ICE back in the day.
Also, China currently has an massive lead in EV. If USA tried to protect its own EV industry now with tariff walls, comparison of USA to Chinese EV would look terrible for USA (as in this very substack post above) and raise questions about USA corporate and government competency. Next thing you know, there would be calls for higher taxes on the rich to pay for massive job skills, R&D, infrastructure and reindustrialization programs in USA. Whereas at least for now, the USA masses can be bamboozled to think that EV technology has "terrible problems". Easy to conjure up imaginary terrible problems if few people in USA actually experience EV technology. Issue of comparing USA to Chinese governance can this be kicked down the road another decade.
The US had the lead in EV technology with Tesla in 2020, when EVs were only 6.6% of the Chinese market and BEVs even less. China invited Tesla to build a factory so that it could kick start its own EV supply chain, now far outstripping Tesla. The battery manufacturers have already vastly reduced the cobalt usage in batteries, and other technologies are removing much of the need for lithium. That's called materials engineering, which tends to put the lie to material bottlenecks, which anti-EV folks have been going o about for years and years.
The longer the US waits the more difficult/impossible it will for it to catch up, given the dynamics of institutionally learning, industrial clustering, scale and institutional learning productivity dynamics. Tariffs without real competition, the US car market is an oligopoly with little or no price competition, just leads to more price gouging not product progress. The US will not be able to catch up, that is the issue. look at how long it is taking the Chinese to build their own aircraft industry with a full-on all of society industrial policy - decades. The US no longer has the manufacturing strength to even start such a journey. And soon it may not even have Tesla.
The EV industry is also in the middle of the technology S-Curve, the steepest part, where technological changes provide large benefits and drive prices down and adoption rapidly up. That will be the case for all of the world outside North America. As the Chinese found with microprocessors you can't just start at the latest level, you have to start at the old tech and slowly grind up the technology curve. In the end, the US will most probably have to allow Chinese EV, battery and even sensor manufacturers to set up shop in the US as that will be the only way to develop a US EV supply chain that is anywhere near competitive.
Aircraft is not a fair comparison. China and anyone else long ago could/did build most pieces except the jet engines. Its the jet engines that are very hard technology, equal in difficulty to advanced semiconductors. The other issue with commercial aircraft is the need for licensing approval and maintenance facilities at both ends of every route (you've mentioned the "slow walk" of Chinese aircraft in EU several times). Neither of these issues applies as strongly to automobiles as commercial aircraft, which is why South Korea was able to break into the USA market and why Honda emerged in Japan despite opposition by the government (as adding unnecessary dilutive competion).
Electric vehicles are now an electric battery, an electric motor, electronics, sensors, and software (including AI) on an integrated platform, with the supply chain fully integrated and optimized within China (Chinese car companies are now even developing their own auto-specific chips to replace US ones). The battery industries of South Korea and Japan have already been left behind, Europe and the US are irrelevant in this space.
Hyundai initially worked with Ford, its first car the Pony was built with help from British engineers and Mitsubishi technology. Honda was a huge producer of motorcycles before moving into cars. Its first move was from motorcycles into small cars.
For aircraft, the issue is not just the engines but the whole supply chain. Including the avionics and navigation systems, which the Chinese still rely on Western suppliers for. Even the braking control and high lift systems are from the West. Its not just the jet engines. Europe knew how to do jet engines and it still took them huge amounts of subsidies and decades to rival Boeing.
To establish a complex manufacturing industry utilizing a technology and supply chain that you are lacking in is a decades long process, unless you allow those that have already developed that supply chain to set up shop and help develop that supply chain for you. Something that the Chinese understood from the 1980s onwards and excelled at, and now they have passed the Western companies. Even then, the Chinese could not compete in the production of ICE vehicles. The EV allowed them to leap frog past that issue.
So you don't think the reason the US has rejected EV has anything to do with the US' addiction to oil? After all, the entire US infrastructure is based on oil and most importantly, it's military power is based on oil.
I do believe part of the reason for sticking with oil is that is that Trump administration is heavily influenced by oil/gas oligarchs who don't want their market ruined. As for infrastructure, oil based was also true in China until recently. There needs to be a compelling reason to switch out this infrastructure. China has such a reason: China is a net oil importer. Whereas USA controls most of the world's oil, if you accept that it still controls most of North and South America, North Africa, Mideast. Why make a big societal investment to switch to EV if there is still plenty of oil controlled by USA? Why not focus investments on other areas where China is getting ahead, like AI? (By "why" i mean reasons other than reducing greenhouse gas emissions.)
Is there any other writer addressing both the granular detail and strategic overview of the global industry like Roger? If so, that debate must be held in private sessions. Brilliant analysis as always.
No mention of Volvo…maybe just not a player in the big picture, or are they just zeekr w Volvo badging?
The luxury/sport Geely-Polestar brand announced record sales in 2025, of 60,119 - up 34% y-o-y. Polestars are predominantly produced in China, with some of the Polestar 6 production planned for South Korea (probably to beat EU and US tariffs). The Polestar 3 is also produced in the US. The Polestar 7 is planned to be built in Europe.
78% of Polestars are sold in Europe (nearly 17,000 were sold in the UK and 5,000 in Germany). It is now following an "All About Europe" strategy, and is opening up more and more physical sales sites - with entry to the French market in 2025.
Sales fell in the US, and Chinese sales collapsed to the point of the closure of Polestar's last physical store there. In its main markets, it's a Chinese import masquerading as a Swedish brand. Polestar delivered more cars in Australia than in China in 2025.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/polestars-quarterly-ev-sales-jump-europe-pivot-pays-off-2026-01-09/
Volvo is owned by Geely. The compact EX30 BEV SUV was designed and developed in China, and was to only be built in China until the US 100% tariffs. Some production was then moved to Belgium, where it will stay with the final EU-US trade agreement and the US removal of EV incentives.
The larger EX60 BEV SUV will be manufactured in Sweden, most probably to dodge the EU anti-China EV tariffs and to help manage the European angst about the Chinese-EU trade deficit. Very much the same with the Chinese car plants in Hungary, Austria, Spain, Turkey and Algeria. The even larger EX90 BEV SUV is manufactured in the US and China and it will stay that way.
Volvo set a new sales record in 2024 with 768,389 sales globally, but has struggled a bit in 2025. Nearly half of Volvo's cars are sold in Europe (370,000), then China (156,000) then the US (125,000). Its now a Chinese car company, which will be increasingly integrated into the Chinese technology platforms. With Geely now starting to sell its Geely, Zeekr (the Zeekr X is the sister car of the EX30), and Lynk & Co. models in Europe it could also use the Volvo manufacturing plants to produce cars for these brands to localize production. By 2023, the ICEV Volvo cars manufactured in Sweden will be phased out. By then those plants may be producing more non-Volvo brand cars than Volvos.
Notably, Swedish industrial electricity prices are half those of Germany. Geely's production in Sweden also provides it with the backing of the Swedish government, with Sweden being a member of the EU.
But the article doesn't address the fundamental questions about the US abandoning EV; Why and what are the implications for the future of US capitalism?
The core of its productive forces falls far behind China, greatly reducing its global competitiveness and its ability to produce up to date armaments. With China grinding its way toward competitiveness in chips, aircraft and pharmaceuticals over the next 5 (chips and pharmaceuticals) to 10 years (aircraft) the US will have no real technological advantages left.
Then why abandon the technological advantage that it held? It's claimed that the US can 'catch up' but by then, it will be game over. It seem that the US is banking on WAR, that will, as previous wars of production did, leave the US on top. It seems that the US ruling class and its servants, have lost the plot, that instead of leading the next revolution in production like the Chinese, the US has banked everything on AI.
The US oligarchy is not a homogeneous group but a set of sub-groups with differing interests. Trump's oligarchic coalition is much more US domestic profits focused, including US resource extraction. The increase in electric vehicles directly challenges the fossil fuel group, as its cuts into oil demand; affecting both domestic oil producers and the US global oil majors (e.g. Exxon). Then you also have the other domestic interests (real estate, retail etc.) that would be affected by a domestic oil industry recession, predominantly in Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, Colorado and Alaska. All but Colorado are Republican strongholds.
Over the past decades, as the US oligarchy has gained absolute domestic domination, internal disputes have come more to the fore in the absence of external threats. In addition, short-term rentier, profiteering and extractive mindsets and groups have more taken hold (e.g. private equity). Classic end of empire stiff, where the previously "builder" oligarchy becomes rentier and financialized with its interests many times at odds with the national interest.
For some reason, you're ignoring the central role of the military as the single biggest consumer of oil, without which there is no US military. Yes, competing interests etc but the role of the MIC determines everything.
The US defence industry may be the biggest institutional consumer of oil, but its yearly consumption is about 100 million barrels per YEAR. Global oil production is 100 million barrels per DAY. US oil production is 13 million barrels per DAY, so the US defence industry consumes under 8 days of US production.
The US oligarchy is is control of the US, the state including the military is their tool. The management of the US military is part of the PMC, which is the courtier class of the US, and only those that are faithful servants of the oligarchy are allowed to make it to the top.
If there is a military aspect to USA turning from EV, it's that China controls the supply chain right now. So if USA wants to be ready for war with China and thus minimize reliance on Chinese imports, it can't switch to EV until USA has its own EV supply chain. Meanwhile, a USA supply chain for rare earths is a much higher priority, so why waste limited funds on developing this USA EV supply chain when there is still plenty of oil available?
The US along with the rest of the Western Oligarchal / Monarchical establishment have decided to resort to the age old tried and tested form of Wealth Extraction "RENT" and so long as they can permanently subdue the populaces they will get away with it. Absolutely everything else is a distraction, keep you frightened, keep you poor, keep you uninformed / misinformed and you will be unable to fight back.
This is the only game in town left!
#Revolution
USA is taking the conservative approach. ICE technology works now, USA has mastered it, and ICE is only limited by oil supplies, which USA controls in abundance, unlike China. EV depends on copper, silver and cobalt supplies, which may be limited. China has no choice but to move forwards, whereas USA can afford to wait. If EV technology really is the way forwards, and copper, silver and cobalt supplies are not a long term issue, then USA can eventually catch up in EV, same as Japan and Korea caught USA in ICE back in the day.
Also, China currently has an massive lead in EV. If USA tried to protect its own EV industry now with tariff walls, comparison of USA to Chinese EV would look terrible for USA (as in this very substack post above) and raise questions about USA corporate and government competency. Next thing you know, there would be calls for higher taxes on the rich to pay for massive job skills, R&D, infrastructure and reindustrialization programs in USA. Whereas at least for now, the USA masses can be bamboozled to think that EV technology has "terrible problems". Easy to conjure up imaginary terrible problems if few people in USA actually experience EV technology. Issue of comparing USA to Chinese governance can this be kicked down the road another decade.
Anyway that's my theory regarding your question.
The US had the lead in EV technology with Tesla in 2020, when EVs were only 6.6% of the Chinese market and BEVs even less. China invited Tesla to build a factory so that it could kick start its own EV supply chain, now far outstripping Tesla. The battery manufacturers have already vastly reduced the cobalt usage in batteries, and other technologies are removing much of the need for lithium. That's called materials engineering, which tends to put the lie to material bottlenecks, which anti-EV folks have been going o about for years and years.
The longer the US waits the more difficult/impossible it will for it to catch up, given the dynamics of institutionally learning, industrial clustering, scale and institutional learning productivity dynamics. Tariffs without real competition, the US car market is an oligopoly with little or no price competition, just leads to more price gouging not product progress. The US will not be able to catch up, that is the issue. look at how long it is taking the Chinese to build their own aircraft industry with a full-on all of society industrial policy - decades. The US no longer has the manufacturing strength to even start such a journey. And soon it may not even have Tesla.
The EV industry is also in the middle of the technology S-Curve, the steepest part, where technological changes provide large benefits and drive prices down and adoption rapidly up. That will be the case for all of the world outside North America. As the Chinese found with microprocessors you can't just start at the latest level, you have to start at the old tech and slowly grind up the technology curve. In the end, the US will most probably have to allow Chinese EV, battery and even sensor manufacturers to set up shop in the US as that will be the only way to develop a US EV supply chain that is anywhere near competitive.
Aircraft is not a fair comparison. China and anyone else long ago could/did build most pieces except the jet engines. Its the jet engines that are very hard technology, equal in difficulty to advanced semiconductors. The other issue with commercial aircraft is the need for licensing approval and maintenance facilities at both ends of every route (you've mentioned the "slow walk" of Chinese aircraft in EU several times). Neither of these issues applies as strongly to automobiles as commercial aircraft, which is why South Korea was able to break into the USA market and why Honda emerged in Japan despite opposition by the government (as adding unnecessary dilutive competion).
Electric vehicles are now an electric battery, an electric motor, electronics, sensors, and software (including AI) on an integrated platform, with the supply chain fully integrated and optimized within China (Chinese car companies are now even developing their own auto-specific chips to replace US ones). The battery industries of South Korea and Japan have already been left behind, Europe and the US are irrelevant in this space.
Hyundai initially worked with Ford, its first car the Pony was built with help from British engineers and Mitsubishi technology. Honda was a huge producer of motorcycles before moving into cars. Its first move was from motorcycles into small cars.
For aircraft, the issue is not just the engines but the whole supply chain. Including the avionics and navigation systems, which the Chinese still rely on Western suppliers for. Even the braking control and high lift systems are from the West. Its not just the jet engines. Europe knew how to do jet engines and it still took them huge amounts of subsidies and decades to rival Boeing.
To establish a complex manufacturing industry utilizing a technology and supply chain that you are lacking in is a decades long process, unless you allow those that have already developed that supply chain to set up shop and help develop that supply chain for you. Something that the Chinese understood from the 1980s onwards and excelled at, and now they have passed the Western companies. Even then, the Chinese could not compete in the production of ICE vehicles. The EV allowed them to leap frog past that issue.
So you don't think the reason the US has rejected EV has anything to do with the US' addiction to oil? After all, the entire US infrastructure is based on oil and most importantly, it's military power is based on oil.
I do believe part of the reason for sticking with oil is that is that Trump administration is heavily influenced by oil/gas oligarchs who don't want their market ruined. As for infrastructure, oil based was also true in China until recently. There needs to be a compelling reason to switch out this infrastructure. China has such a reason: China is a net oil importer. Whereas USA controls most of the world's oil, if you accept that it still controls most of North and South America, North Africa, Mideast. Why make a big societal investment to switch to EV if there is still plenty of oil controlled by USA? Why not focus investments on other areas where China is getting ahead, like AI? (By "why" i mean reasons other than reducing greenhouse gas emissions.)