Can Trump (or anyone) stop the momentum of the EV revolution?
Someone’s going to be left in the rear-view mirror.
By James Gaines
November 16, 2025
Donald Trump is not a fan of electric vehicles. In a 2023 Christmas message, he claimed “All Electric Vehicle Lunacy” thugs, among others, were “looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL.” And even though he did end up buying an EV from his political mega-donor Elon Musk, Trump has tried to quash the American electric vehicle market, from halting funding for chargers to waiving fines for fuel efficiency violations.
But here’s the question: Are we getting to the point where EVs make sense even without the government? Electric vehicles are no longer the niche novelty they once were, and sales worldwide have been exploding since Trump last left office. In some countries new EVs are as common as gas cars—if not more. In China, EVs make up roughly 50% of new car sales. In Norway it’s nearly 90%.
So are we at a tipping point on EVs? Is the world just going to pick up momentum and leave the US in the dust? Or is there still a window in which Trump can slam on the brakes?
Source: IEA (2025), Global EV Outlook 2025
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Throwing up Roadblocks
1. No more carrots. If you want EVs to take over, you need people to buy them. And one of the things that had been sweetening the deal for US car buyers was a hefty tax credit from the federal government—up to $7,500 on new electric vehicles. But that credit, which was supposed to go through 2032, got axed as part of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” And when it officially expired at the end of September, as experts were predicting, sales of electric vehicles subsequently plummeted. Estimates put their market share going from 12% to only 5% that month.
2. And no more sticks. Another way governments have tried to get more EVs on the road is targeting manufacturers. California, for example, had strict rules around air pollution, which required auto manufacturers to sell an increasing number of exhaust-free electric vehicles, up to 100% by 2035. But the Trump administration has now decreed that states can’t set their own rules on car emissions anymore. California sued, of course, but in the meantime Trump is trying to revoke the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas car emissions entirely. This all may make car makers look twice at whether they need to switch to EVs, or whether they can keep pumping out gas guzzlers.
3. The “Meh”-ing of America. There are signs that electric cars were already hitting some speed bumps. Polling last year suggested that, even before Trump took office, Americans were cooling on electric cars. Pew Research Center found that in 2024 only 29% of Americans said they would seriously consider an electric car for their next vehicle, down 9% compared to the previous year. One reason might be concern about the availability of charging stations. Another may be a sudden drop in confidence that EVs are actually better for the environment than gas cars: 20 percentage points since 2020! That’s a huge drop. Pew doesn’t get into why this drop happened, but it may have to do with worries about the harms of battery manufacturing. Yet the data doesn’t bear this out: EVs still handily beat gas engines in terms of climate impact over the course of their lifetime.
Source: Pew Research Center
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Not Slowing Down
1. The price is (nearly) right. So the loss of that $7,500 tax credit definitely hurts. But new electric vehicles have been getting cheaper over time, even without it. In fact, we’re now at the point where they may already be cheaper than gas cars when you add in the cost of fuel and wear-and-tear over the car’s lifetime. And we may be right at the start of what Forbes called a “perfect storm” of cheap raw materials, price wars, and a flood of affordable EV’s now coming out of China. If electric cars really reach a 1:1 buying price with gas cars (which may already be happening for some categories and countries, like SUVs in China), government tax incentives may not be needed for them to take over.
Source: IEA (2025), Global EV Outlook 2025
2. Out for delivery. Also, while personal EVs get most of the attention, they’re not the only kind of electric vehicle on the road. Many big companies like Amazon have switched at least part of their vehicle fleet over to electric, purchasing over $1 billion worth of Rivian vehicles in 2024 alone. And if battery prices continue to drop, it may make sense for even some heavy-duty tractor trailer operators to switch over. If these companies push for EVs, they have so much cash and weight behind them that the infrastructure and rest of the market may follow, even if individual consumers are still unsure.
3. The US is not the only market—and it’s not the biggest. While it looks as though U.S. auto makers are now walking back from visions of an all-electric future, they’re not closing up shop. In August, Ford announced they were investing a further $5 billion into electric vehicle production. Part of the logic might be that, while the U.S. is a major market, it’s not the only one. And even if the US cools down, the world at large is still pushing ahead. Globally, around 1-in-5 new cars sold is now electric. In China, that number is nearly 1-in-2. If U.S. automakers want to tap into those markets, they’ll need to be prepared to meet the demand.
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What to Keep An Eye On
1. Battery tech. Batteries are the heart of electric vehicles, so any changes or breakthroughs in battery technology (like China’s all-solid-state battery, battery-swapping stations, or something more experimental) has the potential to really shake-up the EV market.
2. Chip shortages. While batteries are important, another component worth keeping an eye on are computer chips. Modern cars (both electric and gas to be fair) rely on a bevy of internal computers to function. In some ways, they have as much in common with a computer network as a steam engine. Shortages or supply chain issues around semiconductor chips could slow down production.
3. Changes to the electrical grid. If electric vehicles do take over, how will that change our electrical grid? We’ll need more chargers, for sure, but some experts are investigating even more interesting changes, as Anthropocene covered in September. One idea is whether we could use electric vehicles as on-grid energy storage (imagine an agreement to let the power company tap your car battery during high demand hours in exchange for lower rates later, for instance, or being able to power your house or even an entire neighborhood off car batteries during a blackout).
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