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Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

> “We take the information we know about that nickel and we create a digital replica of it,” said Carey. “Where was it mined? What was its geolocation? What was its weight? What was the elapsed time in terms of processing?

“Then all of that information that we gather – at every step along the journey about that same piece of nickel – we can tie to that VIN or that QR code.”

This opens so many possible control and regulation scenarios...

> Carey said that this could influence buying decisions.

And 'soft' discrimination/protectionism scenarios.

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> take the information we know about that nickel

Yea the problem with this is tracking basic materials, commodities is HARD. Nickel is about 15k a ton... so a buck a KG to track (not unreasonable) you're adding quite a bit of cost. How about zinc at 2k a ton... that's a huge cost addition.

Let's be clear tracking and sourcing of basic commodities would be a HUGE win for a lot of industries. Metal fraud is large, and rampant. See: https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/devils-metal-strikes-...

The reality is that people who think these things up have little context for the complexity, scope and scale of what they are proposing. If they want the information to be accurate and useful then it's going to be expensive. If they want the system to of reasonable cost then it isnt going to do the job...

Good point, what's preventing a Chinese manufacturer to just generate the "perfect" QR/VIN in this case?

The vin is a unique key in a database which contrails the data. Sure you can forge the vin, just like you can today, but that can be discovered and comes with a ton of risk

Well, that's the same for all documents. You can just make them up, it's not that hard with 5 minutes of photoshop.

But if there is a control and a manufacturer get caught lying about the provenance they are going to have a bad time (or the car manufacturer/battery resellers which didn't do their due diligence).

It is obviously about preventing Chinese battery manufacturers selling in Europe.

The problem for EU is that EU car companies make a lot of money in China so banning Chinese cars here makes us open for retaliation.

Apart from Dacha there is no affordable cars being made anymore. I think BMW etc really don't want competition for the 3rd or 4th owners market.

Like, they want rich people to buy new cars and resell them.

Not that poor people buy new 12kUSD cars from the factory since it would tank the economics of buying a new BMW.

> Dacha

Dacia :-)

I had the opportunity to examine a Dacia recently, and I was blown away by the apparent build quality. Just closing the door felt as solid as any German luxury brand if not as heavy. The owner smiled and mentioned, yes, this vehicle is designed to still be functional after driving on Romanian roads.

I'm a bit confused, you one side say there's no cheap car in Europe, then give a price in USD - are you actually in Europe and know what you are talking about? You can get a new Fiat, Citroen or Mitsubishi under 15k (some even hybrids) even here in the high-price-island Switzerland.

Ye I might have underestimated the available cheaper models. A Mitsubishi Space Star seems to have about the same price as a Dacia Sandero.

Nope. This is an equalizer. We already can only sell pre-approved stuff in China and the same for US.

We are about to enter an age where these things are going to be revised.

"We already can only sell pre-approved stuff in China" ????

What's confusing you?

Yes, but my point is rather the opposite: This allows to enforce various sanctions and controls against, for instance, Chinese manufacturers or specific mining countries, or to steer consumers away from certain producers while claiming that this is not protectionism but only "consumer choice".

For instance, Wikipedia says that Russia is the 3rd largest producer of Nickel in the world (and France is 4th through New Caledonia...). This system, and indeed assuming that data are not falsified, allows them to indirectly hit them.

Once the EU has visibility of so many data I'm sure they'll get creative ;)

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