> an ideologically driven push for renewables

Renewables (especially wind) are now just about the cheapest way to generate electricity, and new battery technologies do much to help with their intermittency, so where’s the problem?

(Plus, the ‘ideology’ in question would seem to be: it’s bad to fry the planet, and also bad to run even a small risk of radioactively contaminating one’s landmass, and IMHO neither of these positions deserves to be called an ideology).

It's not just Vietnam. It's almost any country anywhere in the world that is seeing healthy growth in EVs. Especially the ones that barely have a road network or a petrol distribution network.

This is an effect that is still underappreciated in western markets but developing markets embracing renewables and EVs means they are enabling some serious economic growth. They are eliminating chunks of fossil fuel imports from their balance sheet while enabling economic activity in areas that have poor grid coverage and limited access to fuel.

Pakistan is a good example. They have a very under developed grid. Solar and battery storage are enabling the locals to work around that and they have installed a lot of that in recent years. This is enabling local businesses that previously had very poor access to reliably power to now have reliable power and grow. The Pakistan government is also putting in place incentives to stimulate EV imports.

Ethiopia is going a lot further and has actually banned ICE car imports last year. They want to reduce the amount of fossil fuel imports on their balance sheets.

Electricity costs in the UK (which I believe is still in Europe) are cheaper now than they've ever been if you have the right tariff and that's all due to renewables. Granted, that's primarily at night, but for EVs that's perfect.

One can get a tariff at <7p/kWh for 6 hours in the night. That's cheaper than gas (actual gas, not gasoline).

> an ideologically driven push for renewables

It is not an ideological push, but one driven by the necessity to fight climate change.

Maybe it is ideology to emphasize renewables over nuclear. But all over the world the energy transition seems to involve primarily renewables and only maybe a dash of nuclear.

For many years (20+?) Vietnam has had huge import tariffs on US/German/etc cars. It varies by origin country and engine displacement, but it's around 75% to 175%. Some trade agreements with other Asian countries result in much more reasonable tariffs for Asian brands, but some rich Vietnamese people have bought BMW or Merc with 150%+ tariff/tax. (I found it a bit mind-blowing.) So, it's pretty obvious why Asian made EVs are expected to "explode" in popularity over there. (I'm pretty sure the trend is already well underway, I know a retired guy there who replaced a Merc with a hybrid Mitsubishi (?) last year.)

Your reliable BloombergNEF says that onshore wind became the cheapest source of unsubsidized new electricity in Germany and UK in 2015, a decade ago.

Coincidentally that's roughly when the UK government banned the building of onshore wind across England, which was only recently revrsed.

Now that sounds like an Ideologically driven attempt to raise electricity prices.

The European tarriffs on Chinese EVs typically amount to 20%, which doesn't keep them out but does somewhat slow their adoption.

Would we price out cheap Vietnamese EVs (say) in the same way?