Biden really, really doesn’t want China to flood the US with cheap EVs

Hey man the Toyota I drive was made in the USA, it's great.

No it literally wouldn't. It's absolutely possible to produce smaller lightweight vehicles with the exact same standards. But unfortunately we've all been pushed towards larger vehicles. Simply because they make more money on them.

Just producing EV versions of Honda Fit or Ford Fiesta like what the Chinese EV makers do is enough. Instead, they keep producing EVs with luxury features (and high price tags) then surprised people won't buy them without subsidy.

We already use slave labor in the guise of prisoners. How low do we need to go?

No, I'd prefer they get used. What an odd question.

Stop whining and enjoy dying from obesity related complications and Healthcare bankruptcy like the rest of us.

We subsidize exports? Show me.

The Volvo EX30 is based on a Geely platform, made in China, and does well in the EU (won several Car of the Year awards).

MG (SAIC/Roewe) also has no trouble selling in the EU.

Chinese manufacturers can make regulatory-conforming cars when the market demands it of them. If the market wants cheap and doesn't demand safety, they can do that too.

They're already selling in Europe. To good reviews.

But they don't want to make better products for you. They want China to make products for you that they slap their badge on and sell you at an enormous mark-up.

German industry is/was in shambles as they allowed an unreliable trade partner, Russia, to completely take over a segment in the German economy (oil & gas). When that unreliable trade partner pulled the rug in 2022, suddenly Germany is paying out the ass for LNG, reducing factory output, even on-lining coal plants to keep the lights on.

It is simply a bad idea to allow an unreliable trade partner to completely take over a segment in your economy.

wasn't that the whole point of capitalism anyways? /s

Americans get cheaper EVs and the legacy auto industry gets taught a valuable lesson as companies who refused to modernize go bankrupt.

They aren't exporting them below cost, that's why they want to export. Inside China every company tried to start an EV division because they heard Apple was doing it and assumed it must be a good idea. Now the market is topped out and the biggest companies are trying to price the smaller ones out of business (which still isn't below manufacturing cost because China regulates that and is nervous about having tons of cars from bankrupt companies on the road). They export with a huge profit margin to make up for the domestic price war.

Also by claiming "developing nation", which is up to the nation to decide for themselves instead of having someone else decide for them, the planet's second largest economy gets to claim WTO rules that the recipient (country) pays delivery. That's why you can buy something from China for $1.50 and yet it costs $150 to send it back if it doesn't work.

Well, they're actually heavily subsidizing steel and aluminium, which are coincidentally what these Tariffs are for. It was never about EVs specifically.

I agree, but in the meantime lets not make it that easy...

Rip all the computer shit out of your car and slap a carburetor on it, problem solved.

The whataboutism doesn’t help. It’s a wrong practice regardless of nationality. But since the house and senate is bought by the corporations, at the very least ban those who you can.

No, they don't want the profits getting funneled off to China.

The tariffs are for Steel and Aluminium, intentionally shifting the discussion to EVs is disingenuous, just like the article.

This makes the most sense. Sell them here. Built elsewhere? Tax the shit out of them. You can avoid the tax by creating American jobs and having them manufactured here.

Make them on the moon!

They don't want them to, they want you to keep using gas.

It partially fixes a single problem of the many caused by car-dependency and car-centric infrastructure

They partially solve the fuel and the bad air problems. In exchange they damage roads way more (I recall reading that the damage is proportional to the vehicle weight to the fourth power, probably with some more nuance) and that also creates substantially more rubber micro particle pollution. They also happen to be more dangerous in the event of a crash. Plus the additional challenges with grid load, which some people dismiss with silly ideas like having said cars act like load balancers (that would be a mess to scale).

In most cases, EVs are not a solution to mobility, they are a solution to save the car industry from real solutions to climate change, namely spamming trams, trains and buses (in sparse locations) all over the place.

EVs are a step in the right direction.

However, EVs only change one aspect of cars: How they go vroom vroom.

They are still heavy metal boxes operated by random people. Most drivers suck (myself included probably), they are lazy and don't follow the local law on driving.

They are absurdly dangerous, for people inside other cars, themselves, and pedestrian. Anytime someone goes too early with their car it's potentially an accident with death causes. Same if they spin their funny wheel a little too much.

Imagine yourself overtaking a car on the highway. Now let's say the driver slips by accident, wheel stairs to your sidey giant death machine crashes yours from the side, and its a horrible accident.

Besides that, car infrastructure is absurdly expensive, and becomes even more expensive Everytime it needs to be renewed. The city I was at school at is literally one of the poorest in my country after having endless money in the 70s, because they built too many roads. They built some roads not on the ground but in large pillars, and it's literally falling apart.

Lastly, cars take up tons of public space. Cities designed (or rather bulldozed for) cars sprawl, need huge parking lots, huge streets, produce noise pollution, regular pollution.

There is much more but that should suffice for now.

That being said, I doubt we can ever go truly car free. Remote regions do not have enough people for good public transit to be maintainable, and the distances are often too long for walking or biking. Deliveries need some kind of individual vehicle. Some of that can be addressed with EVs and car sharing.

Sadly, EVs are being presented as the all around solution.

Ironically, cars are stopping me. Roads used to be for walking, and now they’re for cars. They gave us sidewalks and now some places don’t have them, and are unwalkable. The bike lanes either don’t exist or are too dangerous to use. It’s all roads and stroads now, with speed limits dangerous to pedestrians, and large SUVs meaning that car crashes with a pedestrian are more likely to end in death.

The amount of people in cars has also crippled public transportation. Buses aren’t quick, and there are so few of them in general. Not to mention the lack of high speed trains, and the inefficiency of our subways.

Giant parking lots with no cars took our parks. Took our public spaces. Took our nature. And they’re everywhere. Everywhere I look is dull, grey asphalt.

It’s depressing to be outside. And where would I walk to? Everything is too far away to walk to. It used to be a 5-15 minute walk away. Now it’s more like 40 minutes to hours...

I’m tired of human interests and public transportation being overlooked so that people can drive a couple minutes faster to their destination. When people in Europe, Japan, and China can just… get on a train.

Sorry for the rant but I hate this bs

I literally do that to go to work and university. I walk to my local train station 20 minutes and it's amazing that I can. It makes me wake up, even as someone who hates to get up early and gives me time to listen to music, podcasts or think about personal stuff.

That being said, it's not true that no one is stopping me. All those idiots that park in the sidewalk are stopping me. All those idiots that endanger me with their crappy super heavy metal boxes are stopping me. I literally have to stop when I want to cross the road.

And besides that, walking is only possible if you don't live in a car infested hellscape (luckily I do for the most part). Otherwise, the next destination is hours away by walking, rendering it pointless, and walking becomes very dangerous.

Imagine believing that China is the only country playing "currency games".

It's all just imaginary numbers based on printed paper.

I want American heavy industry to be good enough to continue to exist. Otherwise we're just a house of cards waiting for a stiff wind.

China flooding the market with cheap EVs still makes the rich richer... Just different rich people in a different country.

Novel idea: make a car, not a cloud service. My phone is better at navigation etc anyways.

"source code inspection."

Great idea. That way it can be put on pause indefinatly because that shit takes years.

On top of it. You can NEVER be certain anyway because there's code burnt into the chips that you cannot read.

Because no car company would ever lie about the software there cars are running or go to extreme measures to hide that its not what it claims to be when being tested.

Just because I already was backdoored without a lube by person A, doesn't mean I'd love to be backdoored again by person B.

Yes, it runs grapheneos.

Irrelevant.

I'm talking about the mass deployment of spying devices across an entire country mapping every street running facial recognition collecting military related data. The idiot who buys the var who cares its everyone else.

How about PRC-manufactured electronics at large?

Are we really going to do this today?

From the article at the top of the page.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the Biden administration will announce plans to roughly quadruple tariffs, to 100 percent from the current 25 percent, as well as tack on an additional 2.5 percent duty.

Sorry I get political when I don't sleep sorry about that

Anecdotally cheap Chinese EVs are all over Costa Rica and even there they’re generally known to be garbage. Like how do you get a fairly car rusty in Costa Rica? Even if you live exclusively on the beach you’d have to have some really bad paint and 0 rust prevention done.

Clearly that's America smoke, which is far superior.