China went from making cars with 3 gears and lawn mower engines (practically speaking) to mass EVs in like 15 years.
Meanwhile here the big automakers are crying about unfair competition and Chinese subsidizes. Free market sucks when it's not in your favor anymore, ain't it?
The history is a bit different. China is still making three gear lawn mowers compared to their ICE competition. The EV market opened an enormous opportunity, where suddenly every single manufacturer had to start propulsion from zero, the advantage of decades of ICE research instantly vanished. This combined with Chinas long push in manufacturing and somewhat recent push in high tech manufacturing made for a very good environment.
>Meanwhile here the big automakers are crying about unfair competition and Chinese subsidizes.
Not in Europe. The car makers are opposing the tarifs, the EU leadership wants them.
That's not true though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1
U.S. automakers refused to invest and plan for the future while they could continue to profit off their cash cow.
Now they are behind because of their negligence.
It is. Or do you think that any of the engineers at GM knew how to make EVs, because 25 years ago they designed one once? The advantage of that was completely negligible and easily outweighed by Chinese companies being in direct contact with e.g. battery manufacturers.
>U.S. automakers refused to invest and plan for the future while they could continue to profit off their cash cow.
Which contradicts what I said how?
Do you think GM has been developing EV motors and batteries since 1996 and just never used them for anything? That is ridiculous. All of the people there had to start from zero when designing EVs.
There is no advantage of having had an idea but abandoning it 25 years ago.
If anything Chinese EV companies had an advantage as getting specialist in producing batteries and motors is surely easier if your country is one of the biggest manufacturers.
What of course is true is that GM could have had 25 years of development advantage, but chose to abandon that idea. This does not conflict at all with my point that they did not have that advantage, as they did not continue to make EVs.
So yes, U.S. automakers did have electric propulsion and battery engineers for some time.
Again, the U.S. automakers were negligent in planning for the future and are now laughably behind.
That was my original point though?
I corrected you, that's it's worse than that because the U.S. automakers weren't even starting at 0 in comparison (which you doubled-down on that they were for whatever reason). They had the advantage to be ahead.
It's easier to act as EVs are not coming than change the old investor base.
That and their solar/nuclear capacity being rapidly developed is putting them on path to depend for oil only on very specific purposes, looking like in the next decades the main one will be for their military but if they can cut away from oil dependency for most other uses... They will be happy with being supplied by Russia, even better if the oil is kept cheap by price caps.
The USA is really looking to be deciding to get stuck on an increasingly stagnating path if it keeps getting more and more conservative and inwards-looking.
With the Nissan Leaf as the first major production EV in the world, and the Prius the first major hybrid, They have basically refused to proceed.
I feel, to appease US financial and military interests.
The Prius, by simply scaling the battery capacity, and adding a plug-in charger could be a very affordable plug-in hybrid. The Leaf with a little battery capacity increase could compete as a low cost EV against the typical $80K models entering the market..
Instead both of those manufacturers have cancelled those product lines.
Meanwhile the US is doubling down on fossil fuel energy sources which will be decreasing in demand globally over the next several decades as EVs grow in market share along with growth in alternative energy generation.
In all forms of electrification, and in any mitigation of equity stake market threat avoidance.
Monopoly is a good thing, for the monopolists...
Chongqing is the latest poster child, there is not one city in the US like it, but it's just one example.
The modernization that eventually arose from WWII reconstruction bypassed the US. This is now starting to show its consequences...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/biden-...
Btw it doesn't meet European Union standards and hence isn't sold there.
The US (people) doesn't want to lead the world in EVs, and thus we won't.
Because American EVs are astronomical in price due to no competition.
(yeah, it's really about protecting local manufacturing that has fallen behind and can't compete, despite having its own domestic subsidies)
Your post is the first time I've seen anyone else note this...
Outsourcing semiconductors was considered good for the consumer too.
Not so much for national security.
> Free market
Pick one.
They just used them to be able to continue to make gas guzlers, instead of electrifying, like in China.
Just search for: US auto industry bailouts
And choose your reference...
Given 100% tariffs on Chinese vehicles, we're not free to buy a $25K EV...
If the concern is security, instead of tariffs, why aren't we outlawing surveillance of users and private data telemetry by _any_ automaker, or any product maker?
A country dumping money into an industry in order to undercut foreign competition should be punished. I don't care if it is the US, China or whoever.
One can not let it stand or the market distortion will drive domestic competitors out of business at which point they'll be able to hike up prices. For something like the auto industry with high capital costs to get into, one might never recover.
Chinese gave Tesla subsidies as well and a massive amount of valuable land near Shanghai for their Giga plant. They also sped up construction regulation approvals for Tesla.
The fact that ultimately Tesla is an American company does not matter as the effect of shifting manufacturing due to market manipulation remains.
The kind of non-preferential subsides I was referring to are generally purchase subsidies without any origin requirements. For instance, EV purchase rebates in the US aren't restricted to domestically manufactured vehicles.