I wish if this U.S. administration and U.S. carmakers don't care to promote EVs, that they'd at least let in the Chinese manufacturers that are interested in them.
IMO, the biggest perk is dependent on the ability to charge at home. If you can, then the price per mile is about half (if Google is right that California rates are about $0.30/kWh) or less than for an ICE. But even if the $/mile were equal, never needing to visit a gas station again is itself the biggest perk.
And sure there are people for whom an EV won't meet their range needs, but probably way fewer than think that's the case for them.
I maybe fuel up once a month unless I'm doing a road trip. It isn't that big a deal.
I don’t have AC. I don’t have anything. That’s just a fridge, computer, and a little bit of cooking. Genuinely have no idea how I even hit 10kwh/day because I have nearly nothing on in this place.
You must be paying about 4.7 cents per kWh, or about 90% less than you'd pay here.
Those prices are wild.
China's anti-market tactics in EV/battery supply-chain past 15 years haven't exactly helped promote EVs outside China -- they are now countervailed not only in the US, but also the EU, Canada, Turkiye; even in China-friendly nations, such as Brazil and Russia now are imposing restrictions on Chinese EV imports. Not very realistic.
1) forced technology transfer/IP theft -- all foreign automakers/EV battery producers forced to give up IP to access China's market (and subsidies). This was litigated before the WTO by the EU in 2018 (see WT/DS549):
Hybrid in a Trade Squeeze, Keith Bradsher, Sept 5, 2011, NYT
... The Chinese government is refusing to let the Volt qualify for subsidies totaling up to $19,300 a car unless G.M. agrees to transfer the engineering secrets for one of the Volt’s three main technologies to a joint venture in China with a Chinese automaker, G.M. officials said.
Power Play, Trefor Moss, May 17, 2018, WSJ
... China requires auto makers to use batteries from one of its approved suppliers if they want to be cleared to mass-produce electric cars and plug-in hybrids and to qualify for subsidies. These suppliers are all Chinese, so such global leaders as South Korea’s LG Chem Ltd and Japan’s Panasonic Corp. are excluded.
... Foreign batteries aren’t officially banned in China, but auto executives say that since 2016 they have been warned by government officials that they must use Chinese batteries in their China-built cars, or face repercussions. That has forced them to spend millions of dollars to redesign cars to work with inferior Chinese batteries, they say.
... “We want to comply, and we have to comply,” said one executive with a foreign car maker. “There’s no other option.”
Why a Chinese Company Dominates Electric Car Batteries. Keith Bradsher and Michael Forsythe, Dec 22, 2021, NYT
The government soon said electric car buyers could get subsidies only if the battery was made by a Chinese company. G.M., which had not been notified of the rule, started shipping Buick Velite electric cars in 2016 with batteries made in China by LG, a South Korean company.
Angry consumers and dealers complained that local officials were denying them subsidies, people familiar with the episode said. G.M. switched heavily to CATL for the huge Chinese market.
Why a Chinese Company Dominates Electric Car Batteries. Keith Bradsher and Michael Forsythe, Dec 22, 2021, NYT
... A rival had released a video suggesting that a technology used by the company, CATL, and other manufacturers could cause car fires. Imitating a Chinese government safety test, the rival had driven a nail through a battery cell, one of many in a typical electric car battery. The cell exploded in a fireball.
Chinese officials took swift action — by dropping the nail test, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. The new regulation, released two months later, listed who had drafted it: First on the list, ahead of the government’s own vehicle testing agency, was CATL.
re: subsidies. China's consumer direct purchase subsidy ended in Dec 2022, but was extended again as tax credit for another 4 years in Jun 2023. Just to be sure though, there are many other subsidies besides the consumer subsidies at every layer of China's EV/battery supply-chain. The EU's anti-subsidy probe last year (see Regulation 2024/1866) for instance evolved around "export subsidies."
2,3) Okay, yes, half-separating China from the rest of the world is anti-market. But then they did a lot inside the country that was pro-market. With a population of over a billion, I don't consider that picking winners.
4) That's obnoxious of them but doesn't really affect what I was saying.
subsidies) I was unaware of extensions, and I thought the supply chain subsidies were already gone? But okay, let's assume this is accurate, 17% duty on BYD. Man. As I've said before when Trump was talking about 25% on everything, I wish the US was putting 25% tariffs on Chinese EVs instead of whatever dumb number it is.
2) restricting market access (and subsidies) to foreign automakers isn't exactly pro-market -- especially to those who were already in China and manufacturing products that local "champions" weren't able to mass-produce. All domestic, foreign Automakers forced to source inferior, yet also costlier, batteries. ie, anti-market.
3) demonstrates Chinese consumers wanted GM Velites with LG, but their choice was denied. Limiting 1.5B consumers' choice in the name of promoting national "champions"? anti-consumer and anti-market. Definitely picking winners and loser, or foreign over domestic.
4) just another example of arbitrary safety regulation restricting market access to foreign companies. ie, anti-market.
re: subsidies. China's EV subsidies have been around since 2009; renewed/extended every 2-4 years. That's also in addition to provisional subsidies thrown around time to time, eg, ICE-to-EV conversion subsidies between May-Dec 2024 to prop up slowing EV sales.
EU is quite silly with countervailing measures against China's dumping/anti-subsidies. Despite 100+ ACTIVE counter measures, the EU Commission still think the targeted approach against China's anti-market/mercantile practices can work. The EU should also consider imposing country-specific tariff rate of 100%, akin to Biden's tariff.
China's export ban against Sweden has shown that their NEV initiatives aren't really aimed at addressing environmental problem or benefiting their population.
2) Restricting subsidies reduces the pro-market effect, but overall providing subsidies to such a big number of companies was pro-market.
3) Yes that's anti-market but when you're splitting up such a big market into two still very big markets it's not hugely anti-market.
4) It exposes corrupt motives more than it actually affects the market.
2) Restricting subsidies to some, but not others based on "local" vs "foreign"?-- ie, anti-market. All NEV subsidies were further conditioned on using Chinese batteries by local Chinese battery "champions" only to funnel them back to local battery industry is an industrial policy, definitely anti-market and anti-consumer.
3) what "two" markets? We are talking strictly about China's internal EV market and the Chinese gov't's anti-market policies; not the rest of the the World.
4) Sure, and the Chinese govt makes the "market regulation" in China. China's NEV market is likewise anti-market, anti-consumer, and corrupt.
2) You seem to be refusing to acknowledge that some actions have mixed consequences. Having many of those subsidies helped the market. Restricting them hurt the market compared to not restricting them. You can't look at just the restrictions to make the judgement, you have to look at the whole picture. Without the restrictions, they wouldn't have enacted the same subsidies.
3) If we're looking at just the internal market, then those policies made many more companies prosper and compete. I don't see how you can possibly say that they hurt the internal Chinese market! The EV market internal to China is far stronger than it would have been if the Chinese government sat there and did nothing.
That's also why Japanese + Korean who hold 80% of all ACTIVE lithium ion battery patents are pursing legal actions OUTSIDE China, in neutral regions such as the EU. For instance, Japan + Korea patent pool, Tulip Innovation, in Hungary started enforcing their IP this year and already won significant legal victories and sales injunctions in Germany. Sunwoda, EV battery suppliers to Dacia, considered a low-hanging fruit of China's battery industry, was the first to go; and there wil be many more to come, such as CATL/BYD protected by China's "corruption," to borrow your word, aren't too safe in functioning markets outside China where IPR is enforced.
You seem very hung up on the fallacy of numbers, as if benefiting 50 companies justifies the means. If any, that sheer number of companies demonstrates that the industry is at infant stage. And, as the industry matures, that number is likely whittle down to a dozen or fewer. Your Chinese gov't certainly does not want all 100+ EV companies still in business today, already down from nearly 500 not too long ago. In the EV battery sector, however, China's alreadu had preordained national champions all along, namely CATL/BYD, everyone else in the business is there for window dressing. Otherwise, this means very little.
Finally, no matter how much China try to fake it, everything you are describing here is called mercantilism, or nationalistic policies of protecting domestic champions from import, or foreign competition, and maximizing exports/profit -- perhaps, the 18th Century British Empire and the East India Company ring a bell for you? This isn't very compatible with the market economies outside China.
2) Not about consequences, but how we get there.
3) Again, that's what China's neo-mercantilism is.
Thank you for playing, but I suspect we are going to make any progress at this point.
At this point I just want to be clear on one thing:
I didn't say the ends justify the means. Something can be unjustified and pro-market at the same time. (And I was focusing on net effect.)
Again, no point in talking in circles.
If you use your truck as a truck, that’s simply not feasible. If you just use it as expensive transportation, you probably still try to convince yourself by thinking about how you might use it as a truck sometimes and won’t buy an electric truck either.
There’s not much of a market, so leaving makes sense.
I've seen some people claim the earth is flat, too! That 40 miles figure had 0 connection to reality
See, that's what you get for believing whatever you read on the internet that confirms what you already wanted to believe.
Back in reality, towing does demolish the range, you end up around 1.0 to 1.2 miles per kWh if you put a travel trailer behind a Lightning. Normal 70-75 mph driving is about 2.0 miles/kWh. Around town, depending on your habits, it's 3.5-4 mi/kWh. The battery is 131 kWh. So range can very quite a lot based on your current activity, but someone who told you sub-40 miles was jerking your chain (or had their own motivation for lying).
Let's be honest, most people who have trucks don't use them for work and towing
And in contrast to the listed items above, for civillian cars you can choose from dozens of countries who produce them. And if you cannot accept security risk of owning a "kill switch" car then you can still go back to gasoline or diesel.
I feel it's crazy to collectively accept security risks in vital electric equipment but suddenly cars are the one product that becomes a political issue. An unlike cars there are very limited alternatives with electrical equipment.
The scale of car travel plus the inherent kinetic energy involved make a correlated risk particularly likely to lead to a mass casualty event. There are very few information system vulnerabilities with that magnitude of short-term worst case outcome.
No need to design & ship another low-cost car model for this.
Surveillance technology is nessisarially selective, so these "all or nothing" hypotheticals do not apply.
See also "slaughterbots". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU
China could kill every anti-russian politican with robots, and start a nuclear shootout between the US and Russia.
I'd expect HN crowd to be smarter than nonsense security propaganda, yet it seems to work.
"security" and "war" come in all sizes and shapes. Even inter-national warfare can be of the "cold" variety, in which nobody is nuking anybody else, but making automobiles randomly unreliable could be extremely effective (for a while, anyway).
I agree with your point. But cars are the last line of defense, and they are technology most people understand. With computers, you can just unplug them at the end of the day. A backdoor in a car or a drone or something just kills you.
Occam's razor suggests that the simplest solution is the most probable: they are scared of the competition, because they know that if those cars enter the market they will dominate it.
Their production infrastructure is.
> the idea that China would turn off their EVs or starting to use them as weapons from the other side of the world is borderline absurd
Is it? If we got into a shooting match with Beijing, would we not try to hijack Tesla’s OTA features to disrupt their economy?
I'm confident that even if at war with China, the US would not hijack random civilian cars, yes. That's absolutely absurd.
You mean Ukrainian Teslas. We are currently on Russia's side.
The USA isn't at war with Russia right now, despite what Russia may think about NATO (despite Ukraine still not even being in it) and proxy wars.
Of course we fucking would. Maybe not in a shooting match, which I guess means a proxy war. But if we went to war? If Americans were dying? It would be ridiculous not to.
Do you think China would permit vehicles it could disable to allow Americans to travel to and from jobs that might involve attacking it? Do you think they have some moral obligation to allow that?
Yet we don't ban those on security concerns.
Thus, this points to the fact that it's merely being scared of competition, not security.
Sure about that?
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-congressional-committee-...
https://www.techtarget.com/WhatIs/feature/Chinese-companies-...