Skip to main content

The EV graveyard: All the electric cars axed by automakers this year [Business Insider]

It was supposed to be the year of the electric takeover. Instead, 2025 is shaping up to be the year of the EV graveyard. From Detroit to Stuttgart, automakers are pulling the plug on plug-in models faster than you can say "range anxiety." If you’ve been following the industry, you’ve probably noticed the headlines: production delays, slashed sales targets, and now, entire model lines being killed off. Let’s dig into the dirt and see which electric cars got the axe this year—and why.

First up, Ford. The Blue Oval has had a rocky relationship with EVs. After the Mustang Mach-E success and the F-150 Lightning’s rocky launch, Ford announced in early 2025 that it’s killing the Ford E-Transit Custom, the electric version of its popular delivery van. Why? Sales just weren’t there. Fleet buyers, the backbone of the commercial van market, balked at the $50,000-plus price tag and the reality of charging downtime. Ford said it will refocus on hybrid vans instead. The E-Transit Custom joins the scrapped Ford Focus Electric and the discontinued Ford C-Max Energi in the EV graveyard.

General Motors: The Bolt finally bites the dust

GM has been a strange player in the EV space. They hyped the Ultium platform, then had battery issues, then hyped it again. This year, the company quietly ended production of the Chevrolet Bolt EV and EUV. Yes, the Bolt—the affordable EV that made electric cars accessible to the masses—is dead. GM says they want to focus on "more profitable" EVs like the Blazer EV and Silverado EV, but let’s be honest: the Bolt was a sales darling. The problem? GM couldn’t make money on it. With a starting price under $27,000, the Bolt lost thousands per unit. Now, it joins the Cadillac ELR and the Chevy Spark EV in the history books.

Volkswagen: The ID.3 and ID.4 get the red pen

Volkswagen’s ID family was supposed to be the people’s EV. But 2025 has been brutal. VW announced it will discontinue the ID.3 and ID.4 in North America and Europe by the end of the year. The reason? Software glitches, delayed updates, and a general lack of demand. The ID. Buzz, the retro-styled electric van, will live on (for now), but the ID.3 and ID.4 are gone. VW cited "supply chain issues" and "changing consumer preferences," but most analysts point to the fact that the ID.4 simply couldn’t compete with the Tesla Model Y or the Hyundai Ioniq 5 in range or charging speed. The ID.3, meanwhile, was a European-only model that never gained traction in a market flooded with cheaper Chinese EVs.

Mercedes-Benz: The EQC and EQS SUV get axed

Mercedes-Benz is rethinking its "Electric First" strategy. In a surprise move, Mercedes announced it will stop producing the EQC, its first mass-market electric SUV, as well as the EQS SUV. The EQC was plagued by mediocre range and high prices (starting at $70,000), while the EQS SUV, despite its luxury, suffered from complex tech and a design that divided buyers. Mercedes CEO Ola Källenius said the company is "rebalancing" its portfolio toward hybrids and high-performance AMG EVs. The EQC and EQS SUV join the EQC 4x4² and the EQA hatchback in the graveyard. It’s a big shift for a brand that once promised to be all-electric by 2030.

Nissan: Goodbye, Leaf. Hello, nothing?

The Nissan Leaf was the original mass-market EV. But after 15 years, Nissan finally pulled the plug this year. The Leaf was outdated, with a tiny range (150 miles on a good day) and a Chademo charging port that was becoming impossible to find. Nissan said it’s focusing on the Ariya and the upcoming "e-Power" hybrids, but the Leaf’s death leaves a big hole in the affordable EV market. No surprise: the Leaf joins the Mitsubishi i-MiEV and the BMW i3 in the "pioneer but obsolete" section of the graveyard.

Rivian: The R1T and R1S get cut (sort of)

Rivian fans, don’t panic—yet. This year, Rivian discontinued the base "Explore" trim of both the R1T pickup and R1S SUV. It also killed off the "Launch Edition" model. The reason? Supply chain constraints and a pivot to higher-margin trims. Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said the company needs to focus on "profitable growth" before rolling out the next-gen R2 platform. While not a full cancellation, the death of these entry-level trims effectively raises the starting price of a Rivian by $10,000, pushing it further out of reach for average buyers.

Why is this happening?

So, why are automakers killing EVs left and right? It’s not because people hate electric cars. It’s because they hate expensive electric cars. The reality is that EV battery costs remain high, and most automakers are losing money on every EV they sell. Add in rising interest rates, a pullback in government subsidies, and the fact that many buyers are waiting for cheaper models (like the $25,000 Tesla that still doesn’t exist), and you get a recipe for cancellations. Automakers are also realizing that hybrids are the real bridge technology—they sell better, cost less to produce, and don’t require massive charging infrastructure.

The EV graveyard of 2025 is a sobering sight. But it’s not the end of the electric dream. It’s a correction. Automakers are learning that you can’t force consumers into EVs before the price, range, and charging network are ready. The survivors will be the ones that adapt—like Hyundai with the Ioniq 6, or Tesla with the Cybertruck. As for the dead? They’ll be remembered as the pioneers who got us here. Rest in pieces.

Ahmed Abed – News journalist

Latest

Want to hire for your robotics startup? The autonomous vehicle industry is ripe for picking. [Business Insider]

Want to hire for your robotics startup? The autonomous vehicle industry is ripe for picking. If you are trying to build a robotics startup right now, you know the pain. You are competing against the defense industry, big tech, and legacy manufacturers for the same small pool of engineers. But there is a secret patch of talent that is suddenly, and somewhat unexpectedly, available. I’m talking about the autonomous vehicle industry. For the last decade, self-driving car companies hoarded talent. They paid six-figure salaries for people who could write a sensor fusion algorithm or calibrate a LIDAR array. But the tide has turned. The hype has normalized. The "robotaxi in every driveway" promise has been pushed back a decade. And as a result, some of the most brilliant hardware and software engineers in the world are looking for their next move. This isn’t about poaching desperate people. It is about recognizing that the AV sector has matured into a perfect training ground ...
Read more

In OpenAI trial, Elon Musk points to meetings with Barack Obama and Larry Page as proof he's serious about AI risks [Business Insider]

In a California courtroom last week, the ongoing legal battle between Elon Musk and OpenAI took a turn into the realm of high-stakes geopolitics and celebrity summits. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, testifying in a trial that could reshape the future of artificial intelligence development, pointed to two specific private meetings to underscore his long-standing warnings about unregulated AI. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and later left the board, is currently suing the company and its CEO, Sam Altman, alleging breach of contract and a deviation from the original non-profit mission. But in his testimony, Musk pivoted from the legal minutiae to a broader narrative: his personal, decades-long crusade to prevent an AI apocalypse. The Obama Meeting: A Warning at the Highest Level According to court transcripts, Musk recounted a private meeting with former President Barack Obama. The billionaire claimed he used this high-level audience to directly warn the 44th president about the exi...
Read more

Disney has decided to keep ESPN

It's official: Disney has decided to keep ESPN. After months of speculation, boardroom drama, and whispered rumors about spinning off the "Worldwide Leader in Sports," the House of Mouse has chosen to hold onto its most controversial—and profitable—asset. For sports fans, this is a seismic moment that deserves more than a headline. The decision, announced late Tuesday, ends a prolonged period of uncertainty. Analysts had been divided; some argued that ESPN's linear cable model was a dinosaur in a streaming world, while others insisted the brand still held immense value. Disney CEO Bob Iger, who returned to the helm in late 2022, has now made his stance clear: ESPN is staying in the family. Why the Change of Heart? To understand this, you have to look at the numbers. For all the talk about cord-cutting, ESPN still generates massive cash flow. It commands the highest affiliate fees of any cable network—around $9 per subscriber per month. That adds up to billions in...
Read more

Inside the rise of vibe coding's newest crowd [Business Insider]

In the sprawling digital landscape of 2024, a new kind of programmer is emerging. They don’t speak in Python or JavaScript. They don’t debug with breakpoints. They don’t even own a mechanical keyboard. Instead, they converse with artificial intelligence, describing their desires in plain English, and watch as code materializes before their eyes. This isn’t a dystopian future; it’s the present reality of "vibe coding," and its newest crowd is changing what it means to be a developer. Vibe coding, a term that first gained traction in niche developer forums, refers to the practice of using large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4, Claude, or specialized coding copilots to generate entire applications based on natural language prompts. The "vibe" is the key ingredient. It’s not about precise technical specifications. It’s about the mood, the aesthetic, the feeling you want the software to evoke. A user might say, "Create a retro-futuristic weather app that feels l...
Read more

Tory Burch says she would 'never trade off' being a good mom while building her company — but something had to give [Business Insider]

In a rare, candid interview that peeled back the glossy veneer of entrepreneurial mythology, fashion mogul Tory Burch admitted that building a billion-dollar brand while raising three sons required a trade-off she never publicly discussed—until now. "I would never trade off being a good mom," Burch told a small group of journalists last week in New York. "But something had to give. And that something was my own sleep, my own health, and the illusion that I could do it all perfectly." The 57-year-old designer, whose namesake company is valued at over $5 billion, has long been held up as a paragon of work-life balance. Yet in her new memoir and in conversations surrounding its release, Burch is rewriting that narrative—not as a confession of failure, but as a realistic blueprint for the compromises that define modern motherhood and ambition. The myth of 'having it all' Burch launched her company in 2004 from her kitchen table in Manhattan, with three y...
Read more

What SaaSpocalypse? Atlassian, Twilio, and Five9 stocks soar as their AI moves deliver earnings beats [Business Insider]

In a tech landscape often painted with broad strokes of doom and gloom over software-as-a-service (SaaS) valuations, a trio of enterprise stalwarts just flipped the script. Atlassian, Twilio, and Five9—three companies that have weathered their fair share of market skepticism—delivered earnings beats that sent their stocks soaring this week. The common thread? A sharp pivot toward artificial intelligence that isn't just a buzzword in a press release, but a tangible driver of customer uptake and revenue growth. Forget the "SaaSpocalypse" narrative for a moment; these results suggest that AI might just be the lifeline the sector needed. Atlassian: The DevOps Darling Gets an AI Upgrade Atlassian, the company behind Jira, Confluence, and Trello, has long been the backbone of developer workflows. But its latest earnings report, released late Wednesday, showed that the company is successfully moving beyond its traditional "self-managed" roots into a cloud-first, AI-...
Read more

I planned to travel indefinitely — instead, I started a company in rural Japan [Business Insider]

It started as a simple fantasy: sell everything, buy a one-way ticket to Japan, and wander through its remote villages and mountain trails for a year or two. I had the backpack picked out, the minimalist wardrobe sorted, and a Google Doc titled “The Infinite Trip” filled with potential itineraries. I was a news journalist covering city council meetings and downtown real estate developments, and I was burned out. The plan was to escape the noise, the deadlines, and the endless notifications. I wanted to live in a place where the loudest sound at 8 PM was a rice field’s irrigation pump. Six months later, I found myself in a dusty, vacant kominka (a traditional wooden farmhouse) in the Tohoku region of northern Japan, surrounded by empty sake bottles, a laptop with a cracked screen, and an incorporation certificate from the local legal affairs bureau. I hadn’t gone on a single hike in three weeks. Instead, I had accidentally started a company. This is the story of how my “infinite tra...
Read more

Trump administration says its war in Iran has been 'terminated' before 60-day deadline

So, here we are again. You might have caught the headlines this morning: "Trump administration says its war in Iran has been 'terminated' before 60-day deadline." And if you’re like me, you probably did a double-take. A war? Terminated? Before a deadline? It sounds like a plot twist from a geopolitical thriller, except this is real life, and real lives are tangled up in the words. Let me break this down for you, because the phrasing alone is enough to make you wonder if someone’s playing with semantics—or if there’s something genuinely newsworthy beneath the jargon. What exactly happened? According to statements attributed to the Trump administration, the military campaign they’d initiated against Iran—yes, a campaign they themselves described as a "war"—has now been called off. Not paused. Not paused for negotiations. Terminated. And here’s the kicker: this termination comes well before a self-imposed 60-day deadline that was supposedly set for the ...
Read more

US company aims to resurrect bluebuck antelope that was hunted to extinction

Let’s be honest: when you hear the words “de-extinction,” your brain probably jumps straight to Jurassic Park. You know, the chaotic scenes of velociraptors testing fences and a T. rex wreaking havoc in the rain. It’s a fun movie, sure, but it’s not exactly a blueprint for real-world science. Yet here we are, in 2025, with an actual company—a US-based biotech firm called Colossal Biosciences—announcing they want to bring back a creature that humans wiped off the planet centuries ago. Not a dinosaur. Not a woolly mammoth. An antelope. Specifically, the bluebuck antelope. And before you roll your eyes, hear me out. This isn’t some Silicon Valley stunt funded by a bored billionaire with a god complex. Well, maybe a little of that, but there’s more to it. The bluebuck ( Hippotragus leucophaeus ) was a striking animal—a medium-sized antelope with a bluish-grey coat (hence the name) and long, elegant horns. It once roamed the grasslands of South Africa’s southwestern Cape region. But by 18...
Read more

Here's what's behind oil's 8-day climb back to Iran-war highs [Business Insider]

Oil prices have surged for eight consecutive sessions, climbing back to levels not seen since the height of tensions with Iran earlier this year. The rally has caught many traders off guard, but the underlying drivers are a mix of tightening supply, geopolitical risk, and shifting market sentiment. Here’s a breakdown of what’s really behind this sustained climb. The Supply Squeeze: OPEC+ Discipline Meets Global Demand The most immediate factor is the ongoing production cuts from OPEC+ members, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia. Since late 2023, the alliance has trimmed output by roughly 2 million barrels per day (bpd). This isn't new news, but the market is now feeling the cumulative effect. Stockpiles in major consumer nations, especially the United States, have been drawing down faster than expected. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported a larger-than-anticipated crude inventory draw last week of 4.5 million barrels. When supply is tight, any additional bullis...
Read more