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Comment by jes5199 | Hacker News Reader

Tesla has margins on their EVs so they could afford to cut the price. The other Western manufacturers aren't there yet, so there's not sufficient competition. Maybe Chinese manufacturers will get into western markets and we'll get a real price war

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They're already in Europe, and there is a price war.

In response, European automakers are both innovating and pressuring governments for restrictive measures.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-launches-anti-subsid...

Why is it that we let China manufacture aosr everything else but cars are a restricted category?

The car industry is still massive in Europe, it's a big employer and in many localities, it's basically the only one.

China help its manufacturers a lot, regulations are lax around worker and environment rights, wages are kept artificially low, subsidies, tax cuts, export, creating an unfair competitive advantage to European cars.

Europe might never be able to compete fairly, and it's looking at ways to penalize the import of these cheap cars to rebalance the market.

I think that beyond the purely short term economics, there is a real danger that you are jeopardizing your sovereignty if you relinquish such a huge chunk of your transportation capabilities and become hostage to the whims of a country that doesn't value your vision of the world.

It becomes more than just being able to buy cheap cars and letting the market sort it out. It's about geopolitics, relevance and survival or your way of life.

Or Germans protect their biggest export.

The last thing the West needs is to allow China to gut another manufacturing sector. 1/3 of global manufacturing is already in China and they are far and away the single largest manufacturer in the world (comfortably beating the USA as well).

The loss of the ability to make large amounts of stuff at a certain point becomes a national security issue.

The problem is that China is the biggest market in the world and western auto makers sell more cars in China than in their respective home markets. Protectionism will only benefit Chinese car makers. I mean, BYD would love to have a captive 27 million car a year market by themselves.

People don't seem to realise this is already playing out with semiconductors. Huawei didn't go away despite crushing sanctions. Same for Longsoon. Both still need fabs, both are now captive customers of SMIC despite previously being huge customers of TSMC. SMIC now has the required guaranteed volume to sink money into new nodes instead of just making automotive/appliance level chips. This whole thing is going to go down as the worst blunder in geopolitical maneuvers of all time. While the West completely controlled the most important parts of the pipeline they always had innate advantage. Trump gave that up for a one time, single decade advantage forcing Biden to double down to try make the best out of a slow motion train crash.

Because we were stupid when it comes to the little things, but cars are expensive. And the gov't knows that in a pinch, a car manufacturer can figure out how to make tanks and planes. The last thing we want to do is let unfair competition from China kill off our native manufacturing ability.

Unfair competition due to fewer environmental regulations and fewer labor standards can be remedied by USA creating wage and environmental parity import duties/tariffs. This should apply to everything including iPods and rollerblades.

I am stoutly unconvinced of the notion that the United States is capable of formulating plans, much less executing on them.

Because in realpolitik the ability to make cars is the ability to make artillery and protect your nationstate from the anarchy of nations.

This. Australia subsidised Ford and GM(Holden) onshore production across the cold war to ensure a domestic tank and aircraft capacity. In modern times the minute the subsidies ended they shut down.

Because every nation that claims to love free trade is incredibly protective of its high-value-add heavy industry.

Because China doesn’t want to drop its tariffs on imported cars, and so the USA reciprocates. The more interesting question is why other countries don’t apply tariffs to imported Chinese cars (since they would still do the same), although it is probably a non-concern in countries without their own auto industries.

People complain about the cost of the transition away from fossil fuels, and then China offers to subsidize Europe ending its dependency on imported oil, and people are ungrateful?

While part of me is looking forward to affordable minimalist EVs that aren't trying to be self-driving smartphones on wheels, I'm certainly not looking forward to reliving no-name chinesium smartphone knockoffs with batteries that try burn your house down the first time you forget them charging overnight...

It goes both ways though. My brand name Chinese made iPhone is great.

The difference is that it’s not designed in China. Foxconn certainly provides input to the manufacturing process, but the engineers in the US keep the quality bar high.

Nope. Anyone can build iPhone quality devices in China. They will just cost as much as an iPhone.

What happpens is that there is a demand for cheap crap so that's what they design in China. If you were willing to pay Apple level prices for a Chinese brand they'd build you Apple level quality.

If you were willing to pay Apple-level prices for a Chinese brand, provide significant oversight at every step of the process, and constantly quality check every batch delivered, then you might get Apple-level quality.

What do you think Apple does to get that level of quality? :)

It's simple. It costs.

The times of inferior chinese products are pretty much gone. I would even argue that in some cases they are better.

I think it is still true that they have a higher dynamic range. They can build on the highest level of quality (iPhone, DJI) but also produce loads of cheap but dangerous stuff.

> The times of inferior chinese products are pretty much gone. I would even argue that in some cases they are better.

You and I must have absolutely zero overlap in our Amazon purchases.

Keep in mind that vehicle safety is heavily regulated pretty much everywhere, and once you've paid the money necessary to make your car safe you might as well make it not garbage as well or nobody will buy your product.

Since they're making cars for international markets they have to meet safety standards for the entire world, which are stricter than those for any one country and so harder to meet. You can't compare them to the shitty airpod ripoffs you get for $60.

> Since they're making cars for international markets they have to meet safety standards for the entire world, which are stricter than those for any one country and so harder to meet.

They'd have the scale to manufacture for individual markets, like any large auto manufacturer. Already I've seen videos/articles of people buying various (typically non-EV) cheap Asian vehicles that are not road-worthy in the US, but allowed for use on large parcels of land.

Some Chinese car models are now achieving top ratings on crash safety tests.

https://www.euroncap.com/en/press-media/press-releases/nio-s...

This is a very recent development, and only happened because China started importing talent from places that know how to make good safe cars.

For example, no car company would ever cheat on emission standards because regulations.

Heavy regulations are what produce the reputable finance and healthcare industries we enjoy today.

Have you heard about Dieselgate?

To what do you think I was referring? Did that comment need a /sarc tag?

That's not the Chinese products though, that's Amazon natively supporting the faulty knock-off market. Every country has rort factories, if you look hard enough. And Amazon's binning system is perfectly designed to platform them to captive audiences.

They cant control their own counterfeit supply chain, so we will never know until they do.

A friend who drives city buses says the BYD electric buses are reliable and perform well, and he prefers them to the European EV buses.

But these are sold with service contracts and so on, so it doesn't necessarily transfer to cars.

https://www.sustainable-bus.com/news/issues-electric-buses-b...

I can't find any similar reports of problems in Denmark, although it does seem to be the same model of bus.

> Maybe Chinese manufacturers will get into western markets

They already have - volvo makes nice evs but pretty pricey

Western market Volvos are made by the "original" Volvo with minimal Geely influence. For now anyway.

the design language and the consumer software in the Geely era are of atrocious quality

Hopefully the safety, mechanics and embedded software are still Volvo-engineered, but I wouldn't bet on it

I've heard much better things about the Zeekr infotainment software. I wonder if they'll consolidate. Then again, Lotus (Geely) also have their own. Not sure about the other car Smart #1.

All EVs by Volvo and polestar are made at one factory in shandong, so they are made at least with Geely manufacturing influence.

Nah.

The EX90 is being built in South Carolina for the US market. Polestar 3 and 4 will also be built there.

XC40 and C40 Recharge are built in Ghent, Belgium. The EX30 will also be manufactured there starting in 2025.

Somewhat complete list here[0], but it's not including the US-built Polestar 3 and 4 which were announced in 2021. Maybe those plans have changed, not sure. Also if the US EV incentives were to go away, see planned US production to diminish across the board.

The battery production plant joint venture (with Northvolt) is being constructed outside of Gothenburg, Sweden.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Volvo_Car_production_p...

That’s new. Even if the incentive goes away, the tariff will still make production outside of China (in Mexico or the USA) worthwhile for Geely.

Tesla is out on account of Musk being their CEO. They've locked in for now through licensing their plug.

Only in the US. Tesla and everyone else is CCS2 in Europe.

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