You’ve seen it on social media: “This $15,000 Chinese EV will DESTROY the auto industry!!” In fact, 2025 was to be the year when electric vehicles reached global price parity with gasoline cars in their segments: They’d cost the same, regardless of whether they had an engine or a battery with electric motors. In North America, that didn’t happen.
As US vehicle prices continue to soar, it begs the question: When will the US get EVs that are more affordable, as cheap as gas cars, to make mass-market shoppers pay attention? They face new headwinds: The $7,500 national EV purchase incentive ended September 30. That month brought the highest ever EV sales—and many predictions of doom to follow.
Let's define “affordable” as around $30,000. The average new vehicle in the US now sells for an eye-watering $50,080, and that number will likely rise. Cheaper EVs are coming, though not as fast as they have in Europe and China. WIRED spoke to industry analysts as well as executives at Ford, General Motors, Kia, and others about how they see the market, and, crucially, when we’ll have affordable EVs in volume.
Every maker is keenly aware of the global threat posed by Chinese contenders like BYD. The existential question is whether non-Chinese makers will innovate fast enough to be competitive when today’s tariff barriers ultimately fall.
There are three basic ways automakers can cut EV prices and still make money: First, radically simplify the vehicle and build process; second, use far cheaper batteries; and third, make vehicles smaller. Most makers combine elements of all three approaches, but stress one or another.
Rethink Everything
Ford CEO Jim Farley has been vocal about how good Chinese EVs are, after six months with a Chinese Xiaomi SU7 as his daily driver in Detroit. He said last October he “didn’t want to give it back,” and he acknowledges that Ford must compete globally with the best of those companies.
He’s also said Ford won’t build and sell any EV on which it can’t make money within a year. For that reason, Ford killed a planned midsize EV crossover and delayed the opening of a second battery plant. Then in August, it announced an entirely new, radically simpler EV platform.
In interviews with Farley and Ford’s chief EV, digital, and design officer Doug Field, they told WIRED the company’s “skunk works” in Southern California rethought every aspect of designing and manufacturing an EV to lower costs, streamline development, and simplify assembly.