Rivian is now the #2 EV brand in the US, up from 10th last year, taking GM’s spot as almost every other automaker tries to slow down the inevitable transition to electric cars.

In the last year, the US electric car market has been… volatile, to say the least.

Q3 2025 saw a huge sales jump, in an advance of an effort by US republicans to inflate the price of EVs by $7,500.

So, looking forward to this year, it was inevitable that we would see a large drop in sales in Q3, since records were set in last Q3.

Sure enough, as sales numbers came in, most brands were down. This is to be expected after incentive expiry – though EV sales have been steadily recovering in the intervening months.

Part of the reason for that recovery has been due to a lot of dumb oil conflicts around the world, causing oil prices to rise to record levels (helped by intentional policy decisions to push them even higher). As oil prices rise, the already-obvious case for electric transportation becomes all the more clear.

This has caused EV sales to shoot up in the rest of the world. Unfortunately, American access to affordable EVs has been restricted due to dumb tariffs and other barriers intended to keep Americans spending and polluting more.

EV sales could have been higher in the US, but the reason they’ve stayed depressed from previous levels isn’t due to consumer demand, but because automakers are almost universally refusing to make EVs, according to research from UC Davis .

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