Even with the new 100% tariff on electric vehicles imported from China, BYD would still have the cheapest EV in the US. According to a new report, BYD’s lowest-priced EV would still undercut all US automakers at under $25,000.
After discontinuing the production of vehicles powered entirely by internal combustion engines in March 2022, BYD has been at the forefront of the industry’s shift to EVs.
Honestly in my opinion it is time to remove all tariffs on EVs under 25k and let anyone who wants to fill that slot in. American car manufacturers refuse to fill the market need.
American (and european) car makers can’t fill that market need due to higher labour costs and stricter environmental laws.
Also the fact that the chinese government heavily subsidizes electric auto makers skews the market in favour of the chinese manufacturers.
They also make better cars. That also helps.
For example Volkswagen has no EV that even comes close to a BYD in terms of quality.
It’s the Walmart business model. Move into a new area and undercut your competitors just long enough to put them out of business. Once this happens you have the market over a barrel and can charge however much you like.
I seriously don’t understand how people keep falling for this rhetoric and claiming this is all about protecting US companies when there are only 3 US companies left and they barely makeup 1/3 of the US auto market.
Or just buy them out and close the doors.
At some point though the benefit of moving away from fossil fuels infrastructure outweighs the labor and strategic protection afforded by tariffs. IMO we are at that point- if we keep on doing what we’re doing for another 30-50 years union jobs probably won’t matter when vast parts of the world become uninhabitable
America owns the fossil fuel industry. That is what all those “invade countries to steal their oil” memes are about.
Those environmental benefits are lost when they’re built in a country with some of the most lax environmental laws in the world and then shipped halfway across the planet.
They also seem to be of questionable quality as in China, they have abandoned EVs piling up all over the place. There’s nothing good for the environment here.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-china-ev-graveyards/
then Incentivize EV reuse as home scale batteries
This is a good use for the old battery packs but it’s not like you can just park the derelict car in your garage to power your home.
These packs will need to be processed and then resold as battery storage banks. This also ignores all the pollution created from producing these cars in the first place along with the pollution created from recycling the car only for them to be treated like disposable junk and tossed into the garbage after a couple years.
why can’t the car just be parked in the back (or front) yard permanently with a tarp over it?
I wouldn’t buy such cars if I’d know they were X% made with human suffering.
Yeah I’m fine with just taking a train that will last way longer and is staffed by my local citizens who are being paid for their labor and effort and rent a well made car made from a respectful compamy or buy it if I need it long term.
But I guess I might just be a conservative socialist cause I don’t think mass produced with slave labor, with stolen raw materials still from Africa, millions of individual electric vehicles is still any form of solution for anything least of all climate change.
But sure let’s praise china for doing the uber model of electric cars.
Tariffs + subsidies of our own + improvements of public transit/city planning
Buying chinese electric cars ain’t gonna help the environment.