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Comment by Tiktaalik | Hacker News Reader

We're heading down a crazy path where the rest of the world outside of North America has cleaner air and cheaper transportion options enabled by high quality Chinese EVs. Meanwhile life is worse and more expensive in wealthy NA, still chained to the whims of the oil market.

All because of political choices in banning imports and not sufficiently pushing local auto makers to push for an EV transition.

Really wild stuff to see NA that has always been at the technological bleeding edge, weirdly politicize vehicle engines and cede so much ground because it is so politically beholden to oil interests.

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It seems a bit cultural, a bit practical, and maybe a bit political? Tesla is an American company and seems like it was selling cars. There's no one stopping them so I'm not sure the oil industry is entirely to blame.

It's entirely cultural and political.

Not entirely. I would buy one if there was one I liked that was in the price range I want to spend. It would be practical as in I don't want to pay $25k more than an ICE car for the same quality of vehicle. Neither cultural or political in my case.

The cultural and political element is why there are no cars you want in your price range.

Tesla is a robotics and AI company, according to Musk.

hmmm... I was thinking "why is self-driving an extra-cost option then?"

but I guess all cars collect driving data for ai training, so each car is involved in ai.

> Meanwhile life is worse and more expensive in wealthy NA

Even in North America you’re seeing this bifurcating. I split time between New York City and a deep red and rural state. EVs are one of the weird commonalities between them. Not because of politics. But because I’m in a rich area in each.

> because it is so politically beholden to oil interests

Other than Exxon, Big Oil bet on renewables.

The answer is simpler: there was a messaging fuck-up and groundswell backlash from poor Americans being told they had to replace their cars at huge expense.

I wonder about other factors, like safety requirements, fuel price, fuel taxation, license requirements and population percentage/wealth owning a car.

I also remember when cellphones first became available in other countries.

Because landlines were so screwed up in other countries, and adding cellphone infrastructure was simple and competitive, uptake of cellphones was much more abrupt. The US got terrible cellphones at a slower rate.

Cellphone transition may be an apt comparison. Like how much of that slow transition was related to large established companies defending their existing infrastructure and investments? Reminds me of cars too.

The big problem NA has right now is giant rent seeking corporations have become too powerful and are uninterested in change.

I've heard that it's because we need to maintain domestic auto manufacturing capabilities so we can switch to tanks if ever needed.

In today's world, perhaps we should stop giving subsidies to auto manufacturers and start giving them to drone manufacturers.

> cleaner air

I'm not sure that move will help much. EVs PM2.5 footprint, is 0.5x of ICEv [0]. Good but not game-changing.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35760182/

Yep, looks pretty likely now to end up on the wrong side of history in the climate catastrophe (working counter to getting international emissions agreements, sponsorship of oil industry & having hugely outsized emissions per capita).

It's not about beholding to oil interests. Does the USA wants to kill all its car manufacturers and commit industry-suicide like the EU just did?

The EU is rendering countless people jobless and handing the auto market to the chinese so they can sell their spying devices on wheels (probably also complete with kill-switches that can be activated from China if needed: say in case of a full on war).

It's just insanity. I think the EU is going to be a case study as to how quickly you can kill an entire industry by voting laws favoring a competing nation state instead of your own nation/countries.

Be very careful what you wish for.

So the only options are batten down the hatches (tariffs) while continuing business as usual (ICE manufacturing) inside, or open the doors and surrender (let China take over the auto market)?

What about option 3? Stand and fight. Make an effort. Design something electric that people actually want to buy. Build out the necessary charging infra on a war footing. Shape consumer behavior with tax policy.

I could accept EV tariffs if they were meant to give domestic manufacturers breathing room to catch up. I don't see that anyone has gotten the memo though.

Agreed.

Another take has always been china doesn’t have environmental regulations so they can go faster. Is this true? on the face of it I don’t believe it because the insane cost differential would be like 10% cheaper Chinese evs not 50%.

Automation was supposed to save the west from cheap labor but the Chinese manufacturers have that too

> Stand and fight. Make an effort. Design something electric that people actually want to buy

This also requires revising U.S. regulations to be less onerous. Look at China’s export-variant EVs, see why they couldn’t be admitted into America, and question if that requirement is actually important. Because while it’s keeping Chinese EVs out, it’s also making American production uncompetitive.

I agree with you in theory, but we need more sane ways of government to support decent goals without being sucked dry by industry.

It seems the government has had lots of mistakes doing that. For example, supporting the early internet buildout (carriers took money), or getting solar off the ground (early startups took money, disappeared), or whatever happened with GM.

> Build out the necessary charging infra on a war footing

Why? If electric cars are the future, certainly building infrastructure will make sense for private companies. If it is not profitable for companies to build such infrastructure, then maybe electric cars are not the future but a fashion trend.

> I could accept EV tariffs if they were meant to give domestic manufacturers breathing room to catch up. I don't see that anyone has gotten the memo though.

China is overplaying their hand. They are having massive overcapacity in the car manufacturing, but most of the world can't afford such cars either due to price and/or due to non-existent infrastructure. You can forget on selling 30k EUR cars in Africa, India or Central Asia. You can also forget on selling such cars in most of China. So tariffs will decimate Chinese car industry.

> If it is not profitable for companies to build such infrastructure

I didn't say the government would build out charging infra, did I? But they can make it easier.

> most of the world can't afford such cars either due to price

The sun is free. Oil costs dollars. Most of the world is dollar-constrained. Until now capturing the sun's energy was costly, but China's manufacturing scale has changed that.

Their manufacturing scale has also produced EVs that are way cheaper than your average Tesla.

> and/or due to non-existent infrastructure

Most countries have cheaper labor and fewer environmental constraints than the developed world. If they have a reason to build infrastructure, they'll build it.

There are more tools in the toolbox than capitulating and letting China take over.

The reason China is ahead right now is that in addition to the carrot of heaps of funding, there was the stick that China brought in regulations that prevented hundreds of ICE vehicle models from being sold. They were serious about EVs.

This is something USA/Canada could do as well. But no people seem satisfied to do nothing and keep selling giant trucks that burn gas.

Well it's also that the EU is much further along at becoming a post-car continent than the US is. Our public transport is much better, especially rail.

Cars just aren't so important here anymore. I haven't owned or even rented or driven one for 6 years. Not even once.

There's big differences between countries here (the Netherlands is still very hung up on cars and Germany too) but in general we don't really look at a car as a must-have anymore. Personally I consider it much more of an obstacle and a huge money drain. I have nowhere to park it, I don't want the responsibility of driving (and possibly penalties), the maintenance, the insurance, the need to constantly worry about charging it or moving it to not hog charging stations (with EVs). Or not being able to use my time productively while driving.

Instead I just jump on the train whenever I need to, and I can read or watch something, all while spending much less.

Be very careful with your kettle and fridge, they're watching you

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hacked-from-china-is-your-kettl... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/01/23/china-could-spy-...

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