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If the US or EU want to keep up, they can sunbsidize EV manufacturing to the same degree
You can’t allow dumping-inducing subsidies without also allowing defensive tariffs, otherwise the richer and more authoritarian countries, which have greater capacity for subsidies and greater ability to concentrate them in specific sectors, will easily kill foreign competition and establish monopolies.
The marketplace brah is a place where, without regulations that maintain a degree of fairness, the rich kills the poor, competition dies off, and consumers are drained to their last cent.
Just think of it: competition is when different actors fight it off and it ends the moment one of the contenders wins.
If you want the fight to go on forever, you don’t want an unregulated market.
Subsidizing sales of EVs (ie. I pay for my neighbor’s new EV because I want cleaner air) does make environmental sense.
Subsidizing production does not have the same positive environmental impact, mainly because factories in China pollute more than factories, say, in the EU (due to different environmental laws), but also because moving finished products from China to the “west” obviously pollutes more than moving just those components that would need to be sourced from China anyways (eg. batteries).
As for the “makes economic sense” part… IDK: I guess that mainly depend on your political stance.
Personally, I don’t like that both sales and production subsidies have the effect of moving money from the poor to the rich, but other people may focus on different effects (eg. more production = more jobs) and support subsides.
In case you wonder: my take is that, instead of incentivizing adoption and production of EVs, one should disincentivize internal combustion vehicles by adding taxes to them (which, in a sense, aren’t really taxes but just charging for the very real environmental costs society as a whole will have to pay for your shiny SUV).
Anyone not doing this is an idiot and a climate terrorist.
You should really think twice before spewing judgements… and also avoid misusing words like “terrorist” because, when misused this way, it only conveys that you don’t like someone, dulling your message instead of strengthening it.
That’s catchy, but not entirely true.
China heavily subsidizes EV manufacturers (and production in general), plus they have cheaper environmental and labour standards… it’s not like there’s a fair market EU companies can compete in without some sort of handicap.
PS: Yes, “western” countries have been playing along with China’s deliberate long term strategy with full awareness of where it would lead, but that’s another story that is both much older and has a much broader scope than the EV industry.
The problem with Chinese EVs is that they show it’s possible to innovate, keep prices down, and mass produce.
It’s not only possible, it’s easy: you just need terrible labor and environmental standards, poor welfare, cheap access to raw materials, and tons of state subsidies :)
It’s interesting to note that “we” knew all along it would end like this but just couldn’t resist moving/outsourcing production to China nor investing in China’s fast-growing economy.
“We” were chasing short-term profits and China was playing the long game. Apparently, both parties won, each at their own game.
Stop making $70K SUVs and start making $20K Taurus and Escort EVs. You did it once. You can do it again.
The cost of batteries is (relatively) higher for cheap vehicles, so that’s the segment where it makes the most difference.
only dangerous for around 500 years
That “only” is just ridiculous :)
Just try to imagine the history of a nuclear waste storage site from the 1500s… how many budget cuts would have it seen? how much buck-passing when it changed hands as a result of war of revolution? how many times would it have been bombed? (and it’s not like we’ve had bombing for a very long time).
We are just not responsible enough to play around with nuclear. Hell, we are showing we are even not responsible enough for hydrocarbons.
(yes, I do know some amount of nuclear waste, from medical applications etc., is definitely worth it and unavoidable - let’s just keep it to a minimum)
AFAIK a sunken reactor is not as big of a threat to life as a one (marine or land-based) that releases nuclear material in the atmosphere, so the biggest issue should be what may happen before the reactor sinks.
Anyway IMHO the biggest issue with nuclear is not its safety, but rather that, even when it operates without the slightest of incidents, it produces waste that needs to be kept “safe” for periods of time that exceed the age of most nation states (let alone private companies).
It may not be a scam per se, but it certainly is a misnomer at this point… it’s one of those words (like “enterprise” or “pro”) that have been appropriated by marketing and devoided of any meaning. AI as a word will gradually die while people gradually realize it doesn’t mean anything. Marketing consumes words (and people too).
Nice, but the name should be AS Roma :)
I actually found the tone of the article (which is in tune with the title) quite refreshing, to the point that I read it all despite the fact I couldn’t care less about cars :)
IDK about the US press (I live elsewhere) but sometimes I feel the news could benefit from more candidly opinionated articles like this one and less professional-sounding pieces crafted to influence the readers’ opinions instead of informing them of the writer’s.
To put an even finer point on it, Musk’s tweet today announcing that “all core systems are now on X.com” featured the logo of the company he founded 25 years ago.
That’s the news… is it newsworthy?
Death warrant? Maybe, but I expect companies (maybe not the EU, but - let’s be frank - probably the EU too) to go back into X as soon as they feel they are done cashing in this virtue signaling.
There were plenty of reasons to leave twitter before this idiotic tweet from Musk (reasons due to twitter’s action as a company, and not just Musk’s drunken posts) and they were all happily tweeting and advertising.
Is this drop that breaks the camel’s back? Maybe, but I wouldn’t be holding my breath.
I am amazed at the achievement, and even more amazed at how much people can cheer at anything like madmen.