China makes cheap electric vehicles. Why can't American shoppers buy them? | Hacker News Reader

China makes cheap electric vehicles. Why can't American shoppers buy them?

npr.org

13 pointsharambae7 comments

Open articleView on HN

TL;DR:

- Heavy import tariffs

- US crash safety standards are high enough to double the price of existing Chinese models

- The cars are much smaller than the ones that sell in America

- The Chinese government heavily subsidizes production and inputs

- China is willing to, uh, suppress human rights violations in the supply chain

> - US crash safety standards are high enough to double the price of existing Chinese models

Just wanted to clarify that this is not stated in the article, which says:

"The Seagull would cost more than $10,000 in the U.S., given that it would have to be modified to meet U.S. safety standards. But you could double the price of the Seagull and it would still be a steal."

Subsidies: doesn't seem China is doing anything the US doesn't do. This morning I read something about how Georgia owes Rivian $1.5 billion in subsidies if they ever build a factory there.

Size: It's clear to me that American carmakers want to sell only XXL cars, I think American carbuyers are more diverse in their preferences.

When I was a kid going with my dad car shopping in the 1970s we saw all sorts of ways that dealers tried to get people into a larger vehicle than they really wanted. I mean, for the dealer, what could be a worse tragedy than a person who could have spent $55,000 on a car walks out with a $25,000 car and doesn't buy another car for ten years?

Before COVID-19 it was common to see a row of 150 pickup trucks or SUVs that nobody wanted to buy at a dealership with a $5000-$7500 discount. Try to buy something compact like a Honda Fit and they have all kinds of excuses why they didn't have any inventory (the factory washed out, yeah right, why are there 50 SUVS made in the same factory that nobody wants to buy sitting in a line) and you will have to settle for a used one at a new car price.

(It is not too different after COVID-19 except that anyone who never shopped for a car before COVID-19 wouldn't remember Detroit's long-time habit of heavy discounts on XXXL cars that people don't really want to buy.)

There's an order of magnitude difference between China's subsidies and the US's. For Rivian's case, we are mostly talking about tax breaks and favorable loan terms. In China, they have state-sponsored lithium mining supplying raw materials at a loss to their domestic market.

> Size: It's clear to me that American carmakers want to sell only XXL cars, I think American carbuyers are more diverse in their preferences.

That's up to time when you will get hit by XXL tank on wheels while sitting in a small car. Then you will start buying big cars too.

IIRC safety standards are also the reason Japanese kei cars/trucks can't be sold here? It's too bad.

Crash testing and DOT requirements also exclude a huge variety of European cars. It's probably one of the rare examples where the US laws are among the most stringent among countries.

To be fair, Kei cars only really exist in Japan in the first place to exploit a tax provision in their laws.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com