There probably also an aspect of annoying Donald Trump in the decision to enter the US market.
I honestly think this will be the future: buying products directly from Chinese sites instead of Amazon. instead of fake product reviews you there have vendor rankings.
At Amazon the vendor is not even clickable in the overview. And even after clicking in the product page it does not show any vendor ratings(!?). This can and should be solved via UI though.
EVs just dramatically lowered the barriers to entry, it's just "a car with a motor and battery", will people notice and even care the difference in 0–100 km/h time between in-house design and generic parts cobbled together?
such joint ventures have been there for 3 decades, vw is the first western company that started such joint ventures back in the mid of 1980s. they are not stupid, they won't tech you the know how whatsoever. the best example here is the fact that Volkswagen Santana was the only model built and sold by that joint venture between vw and SAIC back in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s.