The Electric Cars Americans Can't Buy—But Should Be Able To

Flagging one figure worth double-checking: the Han L's 1,000 kW Super e-Platform charging claim is real but it's a peak number under specific conditions, not a sustained rate — BYD's own published curve tapers hard past 50% SoC like every other flagship fast-charging platform. The "250 miles in five minutes" claim in the piece is technically accurate for the first few minutes of a low-SoC charge, not a five-minute full session. Worth being precise about since it's the kind of number that gets repeated without the asterisk.

"Nine cars Americans should be able to buy" is doing a lot of work for a list that's mostly cars I wouldn't buy even if they showed up tomorrow. The Cyberster is genuinely cool, I'll give it that — scissor doors on a sub-$80k roadster is a real gap in this market. The rest reads more like "look what Europe gets" than "look what we're missing." Grass is greener.

Drove a rental Inster in Manchester last spring — the piece undersells how good the packaging is for the footprint. Feels like a car a full size class up on the inside. That said, don't romanticize the UK pricing too hard: £23,500 sounds cheap until you remember our electricity and insurance costs are also higher, so the ownership math isn't a straight transplant to a US comparison. Still, the fact that Hyundai builds EVs in Georgia and won't bring this one over is the real story here, not the Chinese cars.

Went down a rabbit hole on the MG4's semi-solid-state battery claim because "first mass-produced EV" claims usually have an asterisk somewhere. Best I can tell the Chinese-market MG4 variant uses a hybrid electrolyte cell supplied by a joint venture partner, not a true all-solid-state pack — which lines up with basically every "solid-state" production claim from 2024–2026, they're all semi-solid hybrids with a liquid or gel component still in the mix. Doesn't make it not impressive, energy density is still meaningfully up. Just don't let the marketing copy imply Toyota-style true solid-state, because that's still not shipping in anything you can buy.

Cutting to the actual buying decision here: of these nine, the only one I'd write a check for today is the Sealion 7, and only because I've already got a Model Y and know I want that segment. Everything else on this list is interesting to read about and irrelevant to an actual US purchase timeline. Worth a bookmark, not worth waiting for.

Range-extender SUV with six lidars and a three-row cabin. Sure. Still just a car. Works or it doesn't — ask me in five years when one's actually on a lot.

The RD6 platform specs have me thinking way too hard about a conversion donor. Unibody midsize pickup, existing V2L discharge hardware already wired in from the factory — that's most of the hard part done for you if you were ever going to source a chassis for a small EV utility build instead of starting from an ICE donor. Wish I could get my hands on a wrecked one just to see the pack layout. Probably years off from US salvage yards even in the best case.

Ran the numbers on the Seagull for a hypothetical last-mile delivery use case out of curiosity. At $10-12k landed cost (if it could ever clear the tariff wall, which it can't right now) the payback period on a low-speed urban route would be under 18 months against a comparable ICE compact. That's the number that should scare US automakers more than the sedan and SUV comparisons — fleet buyers do this math automatically, and there's currently nothing in that price band domestically that comes close.

Everyone's excited about the sticker prices on the Chinese cars and nobody's asking who fixes them in eight years. No parts network, no trained techs, no guarantee the brand is even still selling in whatever market you bought in by the time you need a control arm. Doesn't mean don't build them — means don't act surprised when resale value and repair costs are a mess for early adopters. Seen this exact story before with off-brand imports in other categories.

I want the Seagull so bad it's not even funny. My Leaf is nine years old and the idea of a genuinely cheap new EV instead of hunting used is appealing in a way none of the $45k+ "affordable" EVs sold here actually are. Not holding my breath though.

Nobody in this thread has brought up thermal performance and it's the first thing I check. BYD's Blade LFP chemistry should handle Phoenix summers fine on paper — LFP is generally more heat-tolerant than NMC — but "should be fine" and "verified in 115°F ambient for three summers" are different claims. Until there's real desert-market data I'm filing the Sealion 7 under "probably okay" rather than "confirmed."

The Cyberster entry undersells the chassis a little. Rear-drive, low mass for the segment, and MG's been quietly building a real performance halo brand in Europe the last few years — the Trophy variant's 5.0s 0-60 with a proper convertible top is genuinely competitive with cars costing twice as much. Heat management on repeated hard runs is the open question, same as every EV that isn't track-homologated from day one. Would love a lap day if it ever gets here.

Judging the RD6 by actual work truck standards since nobody else in this thread has: midsize unibody means the bed and payload numbers are going to be closer to a Maverick than an F-150, which is fine for a lot of jobs but not all of them. No mention of payload rating in the piece, no mention of whether the frunk holds a toolbox or just looks nice in photos. Interested but reserving judgment until someone publishes real numbers instead of lifestyle press shots.

Did the cost-per-mile math on the Seagull out of habit. At $10-12k purchase and LFP chemistry, depreciation alone would be brutal in absolute dollars but tiny as a percentage of a much smaller number — that actually works in a high-mileage rideshare model where you're not trying to preserve resale on a $45k asset. Won't happen here anytime soon given the tariff wall, but if it ever does, gig drivers should be paying attention before the article's target audience even considers it.

Genuine question, not trying to be that guy — what's the actual difference between CLTC, WLTP, and EPA range numbers? The article flags that CLTC and WLTP both run more generous than EPA but doesn't say by how much, and I have no intuition for whether a "700km CLTC" car would land at 550 miles or 350 miles EPA. Is there a rule of thumb?

The comparison table's footnote about exchange-rate conversions and mixed test cycles is doing important work and I'd push it even further. Converting a Chinese post-subsidy yuan price straight to USD at spot rate doesn't capture purchasing power differences, and stacking WLTP next to CLTC next to (implied, absent) EPA in one table invites readers to do apples-to-oranges math in their heads regardless of the caveat. Not a criticism of including the data — it's useful — just a reminder that "directional" is doing a lot of load-bearing work in that disclaimer.

Had a supply chain analyst on the show a few months back who made a point that stuck with me: the interesting question isn't which of these nine cars eventually reaches the US, it's what happens to pricing and features on the cars already sold here once even two or three of them do. Competition doesn't require market entry to change behavior — it just requires credible threat of entry. This piece is basically a list of credible threats sitting outside the fence.

Been driving my '13 Leaf since it was new and I've heard "the good ones are coming, just wait" about foreign EV models for a solid decade now at this point. Might be different this time with how far ahead the Chinese battery cost curve has gotten — that part of the piece checks out against everything else I've read. But I've learned not to hold my breath on any specific model showing up here on any specific timeline. Believe it when it's on a lot.