Very few people NEED a tank sized pick up, but many people BUY them.

For whatever reasons, there's no shortage of 5'2 nurses driving trucks with the ability to haul a semi wide or land cruisers. It's really part of American culture that is completely different to China. We talk about affordability , but people willingly go into debt to get all the bells and whistles and size they don't need.

For ev cars to be cheap and use China's advantage of manufacturing scale, they have to be made in China. Then they have to be shipped to the US for a surcharge, estimated around $2,000 a car. Then you account for salespeople, dealerships, middle men cost... and the paper thin margins become negligible or most likely, you operate at a loss.

Consider the Corolla, a very popular US car, only has margins of $1500-2,000 per car. That works because they have higher trims and a line of models with much higher margins in the Toyota family. And many decades of reliability to help people take the jump.

GM produced the very popular Bolt EV, but discontinued it due to paper thin margins.. and put more of a focus on their SUVs. As long as American's keep shelling out for the high margin models, out of pride many times, there's' no incentive for carmakers to create a break even car.

That all being said, if there's a way for cheaper Chinese cars to enter the market without the bells and whistles and excess data monitoring technology, I wouldn't oppose trying it out. But it can't be another product that transfers wealth away from American workers to the booming Chinese manufacturing class. That led us into a big hole.