GM had already developed the Volt, but abandoned it because it was cheaper in the long run to put more money into battery manufacturing.
It wasn't just the long-run. Chevy Volt simply didn't sell enough vehicles to keep production running. This is ultimately why it was discontinued, the sales volume did not merit more investment into a redesign.
Western auto manufacturers did not really take into consideration batteries from China becoming some political hot potato, they just assumed they would be treated like any other manufacturing component. Apple is probably importing more batteries from China per Wh than anyone else. Ford's Mach-E was already transitioning to CATL LFP batteries and getting ready to build a factory stateside. VW bought 25% of Gotion and was planning a US facility. Suddenly these components became a political issue when Chinese suppliers have already become a normal part of the stateside supply chain.
It wasn't really that. US auto manufacturers did not expect two things;
A. That EV batteries would be so hard to build.
B. That Chinese car manufacturers would leapfrog them so fast. Listen to Ford's CEO. He didn't even know how good Chinese EVs were until a couple years ago.
citation needed
I don't believe there are more PHEVs than BEVs in the US
There's maybe a dozen models, and that includes the RAV4 Prime and Prius Prime which are super limited deliveries. The Wrangler 4xe is the bestselling PHEV and that is in the low tens of thousands, which is nothing compared to Model 3/Y.
Now you said only Hybrid the second time, so maybe you meant Toyota junk too
That's not what my I'm talking about. I'm talking about
number of models for sale. There's over 30 PHEVs avaialble for sale in USA. If you include Hybrids, that number is even larger.
Ford alone has an Escape PHEV, a Maverick Hybrid, and a F-150 Hybrid, and they've announced more Hybrid models incoming.
By contrast, the only two pure BEVs Ford has in the plans is the F-150 and Mach-E.
GM walked back its pure-EV strategy in favor of PHEVs.
There's a bajillion Audi TFSI E models on sale, which are PHEVs. BMW eModels, also PHEVs (or Hybrids), Dodge Hornet, Jeep Grand Cherokee, the Wrangler, KIA and Hyundai has a PHEV for most of their regular model cars. Same for Mercedes.
If we want to count Japanese autos, large part of Lexus' line-up has PHEVs, Mitsubishi used to be nearly all PHEVs, and who knows what Nissan is even doing,
So no, by contrast, I'd say there's a lot of PHEVs and Hybrids out there. Tesla is basically hard-carrying the US EV industry by itself.
