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Comment by surgical_fire | Hacker News Reader

Wasn't Tesla unprofitable until as late as 2020? And I mean, fully unprofitable, with no shenanigans to save it.

Why for US companies is it okay to be unprofitable while they grow, but for Chinese companies it is shenanigans?

Also, if they actually sell things such as high-margin batteries, is it even shenanigans? Using a profitable division to finance the growth of another division sounds like excellent business strategy to me. Better than promising bullshit FSD to artificially inflate the stock price.

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  >Why for US companies is it okay to be unprofitable while they grow, but for Chinese companies it is shenanigans

If the narrative is "China won EVs" then "they didn't do the R&D to make EVs a net economic win, and it's been a predatory loss-leader the whole time" is a pretty big caveat.

Predatory pricing is nothing new. Walmart did the same thing, but (of course) they raised prices as soon as the local competition was dead. China is merely doing the same, so their "winning" in the economic market is a temporary illusion.

"Turns out communists make great capitalists" is still true.

That's a fair point, but US companies do that all the time, especially startups.

What annoys me is that when this discussion is about US companies it is taken as just "that's how business is done" and accepted as a perfectly voable strategy but when it is companies elsewhere it is suddenly evil, icky, and predatory.

My point isn't to say it's evil and icky.

My point is China hasn't "won" this technology race, despite what the seemingly competitive product offerings and pricing would otherwise imply.

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