Mark Carney, 60, of 24 Sussex Drive, Canada; Xi Jinping, 72, of Zhongnanhai and Jade Spring Hill, Beijing; Manny Macron, 48, of 55 France Street, Paris; Albo, 62 and Barry Manilow of Copacabana and the bosses of Norway, Vietnam, Thailand, Uruguay, Costa Rica and Norfolk Island all have a dream.
An electric vehicle in every home.
But fantasy has collided with the real world. Price anxiety, range anxiety and hybrid anxiety (because hybrids work, they're easy and they don't need a spreadsheet to plan a road trip) and Chinese total world domination is causing that dream to slip away – and it's taking the old-world carmakers with it.
Follow the money (as it runs for the exit)
CFOs across Detroit and Europe have been throwing their hands and s of dollars in the air as China drives straight through. They've gone from "all-electric by 2030" to "actually, customers love petrol" – the corporate version of waving a white flag. Ford has thrown out $29bn in charges tied to resetting its EV plans, and Stellantis (the worst name since the artist formerly known as Prince, which is like the political party formerly known as the Liberals) has just dropped a $36bn EV-related writedown.
Peak hype, not peak sales
The US is the cleanest case study because it shows what happens when the government stops shouting the bar. In 2025, US EV registrations slipped 0.4 per cent to about 1.3 million vehicles – 7.8 per cent market share – even as the overall market grew 2.2 per cent. Analysts tied the dip to the end of the federal tax credit.
So, the "unstoppable consumer revolution" shrank the moment the incentives got messy. That's not a revolution; that's a discount day at JB Hi-Fi.
The used-EV reckoning is next
Here comes the part that really matters: the off-lease wave. The US industry is warning that off-lease EV volume is set to jump to roughly 300,000 vehicles in 2026, up from about 106,000 to 123,000 in 2025, as the subsidised 2022–23 lease binge comes home to roost.
That means dealers get a flood of low-mileage EVs … and existing owners get to watch depreciation do its favourite magic trick: now you see your resale value, now you don't. It also means finance arms will be staring at lease residuals that looked "fine" in 2022 and look like comedy in 2026.
Politics giveth, politics taketh away
The whole EV category still moves on incentives. But more importantly if the Chinese domination of the car industry continues, those nations with a car industry will see them disappear. Like it did in Australia. Of course, car industry haters, like some Australian governments, will say "if an industry is not competitive, we should import". All nations subsidise their car industries; some so badly that they are actually buying market share. Will the euro industry (except for Ferrari) survive? Will the US automakers survive? What about Norfolk Island? What Australia has woken up to (too late) is that the car industry is an industrial system that drags a lot of other capability along behind it. The big benefits: lots of good jobs and apprenticeships; a deep supplier ecosystem; advanced manufacturing know-how; lots of R&D and innovation; export income and national resilience and security. Lucky that Ford's design and engineering have stuck it out in Oz, despite attacks by vicious marsupials.
Roo bites Mustang. Roo wins
Bathurst is a race where you basically drive up and down a mountain with armco instead of yodelling cheese eaters and cows with bells beside you. The Mercedes-AMG Team GMR won it from 29th. Drivers Maro Engel, Maxime Martin and Mikael Grenier survived every kind of incident known to men and women to get on top of the podium.
This was Maro's (a German person) tenth go at Bathurst, so eventually every child gets a prize. Max Martin is from Belgium despite his last name and Mikael is from Canada but I can't tell you anything about him because his press kit is in French.
But the race's defining moment wasn't a pass, a pit call, or a heroic stint. It was the bit when everyone collectively realised, again, that Bathurst is happy to turn an endurance classic into a trauma seminar at very short notice.
Mid-race, the #79 Porsche (Johannes Zelger, who is actually Italian) spun on the kink before Forrest's Elbow, with the #14 Aston Martin of Damien Hamilton (who is Australian – a rarity these days at Bathurst) picking his way around the stranded Porsche, which is the nightmare scenario at Bathurst: a half-blocked corner on the mountain with fast cars bearing down and limited sightlines.
Compounding it all, Ralf Aron (who is Estonian) was dealing with radio/communication issues and, with little warning, stayed on the usual racing line. He arrived with no realistic chance to avoid the obstruction and slammed head-on into the Porsche, instantly wiping out the race-leading Mercedes.
The impact was savage. Aron's Mercedes had its nose ripped apart and briefly caught fire, while the Porsche was flung across to the other side of the track. And Ralf got a broken back.
Roo vs Mustang: As Fox Sports tells it, Chris Mies was covered in animal blood and guts in horrific 250km/h incident that left him vomiting beside the track. Chris hit a kangaroo on Conrod Straight at roughly 250km/h in the dark. The Mustang copped it, the roo definitely copped it and we all got another round of the annual debate about fencing, deterrents, and whether a pre-dawn start is basically wildlife roulette with sponsorship decals.
Of course, this happened because it's the year of the fire horse: Mustang/Ferrari/Porsche (features a mare on its crest, representing the city of Stuttgart derived from Stutengarten, meaning "mare garden")/Baojun (Chinese brand featuring a horse emblem, translating to "Treasured Horse") and BYD Seal (just kidding). As my Feng Shui master, Michael McMicheal says: "hold tight on the reins cowboys and cowgirls, 2026 is going to be a wild ride".
Farewell Phillip Island, hello Adelaide
And before we go, farewell Phillip Island (my favourite racetrack) hello to the streets of Adelaide. F1 owner Liberty Media decided it preferred Premier Peter Malinauskas over truckie Lyndsay Fox. This year will be the last 331km/h event at the island before it moves to the city that always sleeps, Adelaide.