I just found the numbers for Germany for November 2025.

• Bestselling Chinese brand is BYD with 1.7% market share.
• Bestselling European brand of Chinese made cars is MG Roewe with 1.0% market share, followed by Tesla with 0.7%.
• Bestselling European brand owned by a Chinese company is Volvo at 1.9% market share.

This flood is often written about, but has not materialized yet. Chinese brands are only 8% of all BEV cares in Europe as of Octoberf 2025, and BEV cars are about 20% of the total car market. And even if we include Chinese made cars for non-Chinese brands (like Tesla sells in Europe), we are at less than 20% of BEVs or 4% of the total car market.

And the main reason for high energy costs in Germany are massive investments into the grid, amounting to a planned total sum of 300 billion euros. If you include local grids, it's 700 billion euros.

The grid investment were planned at a time, when battery storage was not viable, and is by many deemed to be excessive, as the average load of the grid is about 15% of the capacity.

Another quirk is that German regulations are currently paying a renewable energy provider for the potential amount of energy, not for the energy amount actually provided. This means that the provider is notifying the grid about the currently available power, and gets paid for being willing to provide the energy, independently of the grid's capacity to make use of the energy. This disincentivizes the combination of renewables with battery storage, and hence letting available renewable electric energy going to waste, because the surplus energy is not stored, but simply switched off. On the other hand, the amount of battery storage projects applied for is currently 20 times higher than assumed in the energy report from 2023, which means that the money planned for the grid might be freed up when some expansion projects are proven to be unnecessary.

A politician is by definition anyone doing politics. You trying to influence us to agree with you and ideally taking action the way you want it is the very definition of someone doing politics.

You, my friend, are an acting politician.

The Sam Altman types, and the Thiel/Musk types especially, want technofeudalism with them on top. For some of them the "good of society" factors in but it is always after this.

That being the case, I wonder why big companies haven't lobbied for national healthcare.

I was around back then, I remember the fight against it before and after its passage, and most importantly I remember that the actual legislative history of the Communications Decency Act disagrees with you. It was introduced by Senator Exon, a Democrat. Exon introduced it with a prayer that included the statements "there are those who are littering this information superhighway with obscene, indecent, and destructive pornography" and "Lord, we are profoundly concerned about the impact of this on our children." It initially passed the Senate by a vote of 81-18, with 1 not voting, and that 81 included plenty of Democrats. Then the Senate passed the conference version by a vote of 91-5. Bill Clinton signed it and made statements in favor of it, and his Justice Department vigorously defended it even as the courts tore into it. People forget that in the 1980s and '90s, prominent Democrats like Tipper Gore were among the most vocal proponents of censorship.

I wonder why in 2024, 92% (yes, ninety-two) of all power added to the grid worldwide was Wind and Solar, if it has so many disadvantages. And no, this was not mandated by some government. It was people in countries like Kenya or Pakistan buying some solar panels, loading them on their motorcycles and riding to their villages to mount them on roofs to get power independent from the big utilities. That's something you can't do with nuclear or geothermal.

If you want fast and cheap energy added to the grid, go Solar and Wind.

But cats would not be considered obstacles.

Is the law also valid for windows? Or trees? Windows are the most common obstacle for birds do die on, and single trees in a meadow are second.

Replying to myself for a post script:

A Kia EV3 would be the more likely equivalent to a Volkswagen T-Roc, and it comes in at 36,000 Euro. If you configure the T-Roc to be more close to the EV3 in amenities, you need to look at least for the T-Roc Life, which includes a rear view camera and adaptive cruise control. It's already above 34,000 Euro. If you want front seats to be adjustable for height, you need the Style line, and you are at 38,000 Euro.

Not exactly, as Chinese EVs are only a miniscule part of the European car market. But cars like the Hyundai Inster (Korean) or the Dacia Spring (Romanian) are less than 20,000 Euros.

In Europe, the price of an EV is on par with a gasoline car right now, and in East Asia, EVs are cheaper than gasoline cars.

Yes, that was one of the main solutions. Better battery management systems including cell balancing helped too.

But you don't get an 8 year warranty either. In general, car batteries seem to keep up much better than expected. With cars like the 1st generation Nissan Leaf having problems with fast aging batteries, there came the impression that this would be a general problem. But nowadays, those problems have been solved, and batteries age much less, and an 8 year old battery electric car like a 2017 Tesla are running fine on their first set.

We even have the reverse problem. With Lithium prices skyrocketing a few years ago (and returning to normal now), lots of businesses popped up to recycle used car batteries to sell the lithium for a profit. Most of those businesses struggle now, because there are not enough batteries to recycle, because they are still healthy and going strong.