When Stellantis last week announced it was writing down $26 billion, the CEO of the car company that now owns Chrysler, Antonio Filosa, said it was “part of a decisive process we started in 2025 to once again make our customers and their preferences our guiding star.” [some emphasis, links added]
Which begs the question: What was Stellantis’ guiding star before if not its own customers?
For that matter, who or what has been guiding General Motors (which announced a $7.6 billion writedown last month), Ford ($19.5 billion), and other automakers that’ve written down a total of $140 billion in just the past three years?
Anyone who has followed the auto industry over the past decade knows the answer. All of these losses are the result of automakers chasing the phantom known as “zero emission” cars.
Remember that until just recently, we were treated to a constant barrage of stories about how EV sales were skyrocketing, and car companies were winning plaudits for going green.
Just five years ago, GM promised to go all-electric by 2035, and just two years ago, its chief executive, Mary Barra, said “we believe in an all-electric future.” Honda, Volvo, Ford, and others laid out plans to be 100% “zero emission” within two decades.
It was all supported by Big Environment, which brayed that EVs were the only way to save the planet from “climate change.”
But none of it worked out as planned.
And keep in mind that the $140 billion in combined auto industry losses is just the tip of the iceberg. Those are just the costs incurred by shareholders and employees of these companies.
Taxpayers have forked over hundreds of billions in federal and state tax dollars in subsidies designed to “kick start” the EV market. They paid thousands toward the cost of each EV sold. They paid companies to build battery factories. They paid for charging stations.
Fuel economy standards imposed another hidden subsidy on EVs. The only way automakers could meet increasingly stringent federal fuel economy standards, commonly known as CAFE standards, was to sell more EVs.
For each EV sold, they’d get an oversized credit toward the miles-per-gallon average of all cars sold in any given year.
If they still couldn’t hit those CAFE standards, they’d buy “credits” from companies such as Tesla, which banked more than $11 billion selling its fuel-economy credits.
When the Texas Public Policy Foundation ran the numbers in 2021, it found “nearly $22 billion in federal and state subsidies and regulatory credits” that year alone.
Those families trying to buy a decent car were the ones who ultimately paid all these costs.
Joe Biden’s criminally misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” included more than $1 trillion in additional subsidies. Biden dumped $7.5 billion into the production of charging stations, which resulted in fewer than 400 charging ports being built.
Read rest at Issues & Insights
As of early 2026, the total cost to American taxpayers for the electric vehicle (EV) industry is estimated to be in the range of $30 billion to $45 billion in direct federal spending and tax revenue losses, though figures vary based on how “cost” is defined.
$140 billion only affects stockholders of auto companies
$30 to 45 billion is far from the largest boondoggle ever from the federal government:
Vietnam war boondoggle:
Total Economic Burden:
If including long-term costs—such as interest on war-time borrowing and decades of veterans’ benefits—some estimates increase the total economic cost to over $1.5 trillion in current dollars.