Hertz already dumped a third of their Tesla fleet, and now it's quietly unloading Polestars and whatever else it bought. Dealership lots look like parking lots from 2030 that nobody showed up to. Why? Three big punches hitting at once: 1. Interest rates are still high – a seventy-five thousand dollar truck at eight percent is brutal monthly payments. 2. The thirty-three-hundred-dollar used-EV tax credit loophole got killed in the new budget bill that passed last week, so all those cheap off-lease Model 3s and Mach-Es just lost their biggest buyer pool overnight. 3. Winter range reality checks are all over TikTok and YouTube – people are seeing thirty-forty percent drops in real cold, and the charging network outside Tesla's Superchargers is still a mess for non-Tesla owners.
Now flip to Tesla – they're the only ones still moving metal. Cybertruck is finally ramping (they delivered almost twenty-five thousand last quarter), Model Y is still the best-selling vehicle in the world when you count all powertrains, and they just opened Supercharger access to Ford and Rivian this month, so every non-Tesla charger complaint actually funnels more money to Tesla. Stock? TSLA closed at four hundred twelve yesterday – up another six percent just this week. Market's pricing in that everybody else is bleeding cash while Tesla's pulling in Supercharger membership fees, robotaxi hype, and they're about to drop the refreshed Model Y Juniper in January that apparently looks insane. Bottom line: the EV party isn't over, it just turned into a Tesla-only afterparty, and everybody else is stuck holding the tab. What do you think – is this just a rough 2025-26 reset or are we watching the beginning of Tesla eating the entire industry?
Yeah, Trump's been pounding that table for months, and honestly, right now it kinda looks like he called the shot. Hydrogen? Straight-up disaster in 2025. Toyota just quietly killed the Mirai program last month (they're taking a two-point-eight billion dollar write-off), Honda pulled the Clarity, and all those California hydrogen stations? Half are closed or broken, the other half has fuel at fourteen bucks a kilogram. Total faceplant. On the EV side, they don't work in the cold, batteries die fast, gthe rid can't handle it stuff he kept yelling about is hitting people in the wallet this winter.
Chicago and Minneapolis are full of stories of guys plugging in their new seventy-grand Equinox EVs and watching the range drop from three hundred to one-eighty overnight, then waiting forty-five minutes at a half-working Electrify America station in negative ten weather. Feels exactly like the EV mandate disaster clips he plays at every rally.
That said, Tesla's still cruising (literally) because they've got the charging network, the software, and the scale nobody else touched. So it's less EVs are dead and more everybody except Tesla bet on the wrong horses and got caught with their pants down. Trump's line that the only electric vehicle that works is a golf cart is obviously hyperbole, but when your average non-Tesla buyer is staring at a twenty-five percent resale drop in twelve months and four-dollar-a-gallon gas is back under three bucks in half the country… yeah, his sound bites are aging like fine wine right now. You seeing the same vibe where you are, or are people still lining up for anything with a plug?
D Rize the Editor for ThePowerPlayersMagazine.com
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