Prospect of low-priced Chinese EVs reaching US from Mexico poses threat to automakers
Prospect of low-priced Chinese EVs reaching US from Mexico poses threat to automakers
America’s auto industry has grown concerned that Chinese carmakers may be preparing to set up shop in Mexico to exploit North American trade rules.
It’s a scenario that terrifies America’s auto industry.
Chinese carmakers set up shop in Mexico to exploit North American trade rules. Once in place, they send ultra-low-priced electric vehicles streaming into the United States.
As the Chinese EVs go on sale across the country, America’s homegrown EVs — costing an average of $55,000, roughly double the price of their Chinese counterparts — struggle to compete. Factories close. Workers lose jobs across America’s industrial heartland.
If only US automakers had developed the electric car in, say, the early 90’s and then had the infrastructure and knowledge base in 2024 to produce an EV people (who aren’t automotive executives) could afford.
OR, failing that, it would have been great after US automakers blew their entire savings on gas guzzlers and fucking went bankrupt sixteen years ago so the taxpayers gave them boatloads of free fucking money if they could have set aside some money, say, six billion, to develop an EV people could afford - that’d have been great.
BUT THEY DIDN’T. Now China’s at the door and they’ve got it. Fuck. Uhhhhh . . Unfair trading advantage!! Help! Gummit! More money!
US Automakers have shit the bed 1000 times. They can show themselves out.
"Competition is good until it threatens my business."
This isnt about competition, its about safety standards and not having literal death traps on our roads. Like another comment said, look at how many chinese brands with word salad names there are on amazon, now imagine that but with cars. If people are buying these and importing them into the USA it could put many lives at risk since they wouldn't be following our safety standards for vehicle manufacturing.
This is already addressed by the fact that a vehicle has to comply with NHTSA safety standards in order to be imported into the US. Tariffs do nothing about this.
You can have well regulated competition or boot legged death traps. Not both. Instead of tariffs make them regulated, with strong safety rules and need for a network. It might just give you cheap, well built EVs. They might target small city cars with 200 miles range instead of humongous SUVs that everyone is running after.
The US's own automakers have a history of doing the same thing, moving manufacturing to Canada and Mexico.
I'm not an expert, but I think its totally possible to make a safe 20k EV, maybe even cheaper. We dont need supercomputer touch screen sell yer data super gps NSA track all civilians crap in there either. Just a simple goddamn daily driver.