What a $15,000 Electric SUV Says About U.S.-China Car Rivalry
wsj.com
wsj.com
Tesla and Rivian gave us the impression that electric cars were very difficult and expensive to make. When I was in Shenzhen in 2023, I saw that Huawei was selling electric cars. Every car on the road was basically an EV. I wondered why Tesla and Rivian had such troubles making EVs when everyone and their grandmas were mass producing them in China.
I think Rivian being worth as much as $100b is laughable with hindsight. They'll never be able to compete selling $100k SUVs.
Before I do, I want to mention that part of the equation for why cars cost so much money in the United States is that there is no competition for most Americans. It's not that there are not a lot of different automakers, it's that if you want to forgo a car because of the cost, say $30,000 or $50,000 or more, you cannot function very well in society including in all major US metro areas save a few select locations (NYC, Chicago, parts of other cities).
So what this results in is that automakers can basically get away with anything in terms of pricing or features, and citizens can't say "nah I'm not paying for that" like we can with so many other products and services in our daily life, even if sometimes it's painful to do so.
Now there's certainly a lot to be said for labor cost and such as well. I'm not claiming that the lack of sidewalks, bike lanes, trams, trains, and more are the sole reason for higher costs in the United States, but when you take into account the total costs we're paying across the board to maintain our car-centric method of transportation it's quite a bit. Many may be happy to pay that, but it would be nice if they'd stop complaining about it too (gas prices, new car prices, etc.).
Now, there were a few select quotes that I cherry-picked from the article that I thought were amusing in light of tariffs and such.
Most Chinese buyers these days are buying a local brand. Some, such as BYD, have begun to gain international recognition, but the malls are filled with dealers that offer brands virtually unknown abroad—Zeekr, Lynk & Co, Aion, Aito and many more.
Because of customer demand, even the low-end models come with advanced driver-assistance software.
Tesla is better-positioned than other American automakers to compete in China, since its models have always been all-electric and it makes the vehicles in Shanghai with Chinese batteries.
Toyota said its bZ3X—the recently introduced model that starts at $15,000—was designed in China by the company’s engineers in the country, who worked with a local joint-venture partner. It is made in Guangzhou with Chinese batteries and driver-assistance software from Momenta, a Chinese leader in that field.
“This couldn’t happen without a Chinese supply chain,” said Masahiko Maeda, head of Toyota’s Asia business. “Unless you localize, it’s out of the question.”
Like other foreign automakers, Toyota needed a jolt in its China business after local rivals surged in recent years. Still, it retains a market share near 10%.
You could choose to balance comments on Chinese actions against equivalent comments on US protectionism (Chicken Laws, import tariffs and non-tariff market protectionism).
Cars are status symbols. Very noticeable here in New Zealand where new cars are mostly only purchased by a small minority of wealthy people. The majority of kiwis can buy second hand because we import a lot of second hand cars from Japan. As a percentage of income I suspect we're lucky to be able to spend less in NZ.
This is really rather obvious and simple in the public sphere, though certainly trade policy is extremely complex.
Liberals and the Democratic Party are continuing to lose economic arguments and elections because they fail to understand these double standards that many millions of Americans clearly understand, even if they don't understand the complexities of trade policy that underpin these arguments.
China needs to fully open its markets, or perhaps we should do what we can to stop trading with them and influence others to do the same.
Protectionist policies like these matter a little less with small countries, but with a country with the economic power of China they matter quite a bit. If China doesn't open its markets, and they won't, that will be the precise cause of the demise of bulk of the world's free trade schemes. It's untenable for other nations to lose their manufacturing capacity while also not being able to compete fairly in Chinese markets. This ranges from their forcing of joint ventures, to banning of American social media and technology companies, to measures they take to depress their currency to keep their exports artificially cheap. Certainly other countries engage in these practices, but the scale of China's economy doing so is again untenable. I'd argue that it would be great if we could all lower trade barriers, but unless China does there's no reason for the United States to do so any longer either except where it can negotiate specific deals that are hopefully mutually beneficial.
To put it simply, yes absolutely the United States, as does the European Union, have tariffs, various rules on imports, and other mechanisms that restrict free trade. China does too. If we aren't going to have "free trade" or head toward more free trade together, I'm not interested in complaints about the United States restricting trade in other ways like placing tariffs on imports or removing the de minimus exemption. Everyone is restricting trade to their advantage, we're just doing it too or in new ways, which others will do as well and so on. If you are clutching your pearls about it, you've lost the argument. If you are complaining about the United States doing it but not other countries including the EU or China, you've also lost the argument.
I don't really follow your comments about New Zealand in the context of this conversation, but certainly an interesting anecdote!