Sky's Ed Conway explains how the rest of the world was caught napping in the electric vehicle race, which means our car prices and auto industry jobs are within China's grip.

Summary

China has become the world’s largest car exporter by dominating electric vehicle (EV) production, surpassing traditional carmakers in Europe, Japan, and the U.S.

This shift stems from China’s heavy investment in battery technology, supply chains, and generous subsidies, enabling it to produce cheaper EVs, like the BYD Seal, compared to Western competitors.

Europe and America, reliant on outdated internal combustion engine expertise, have struggled to adapt to this disruptive innovation.

Many nations are imposing tariffs on Chinese EVs, but without robust domestic battery infrastructure, Western car industries face mounting challenges as the EV transition accelerates.

  • j4k3@lemmy.worldEnglish
    43·
    17 days ago

    Xi openly said and made no secret that China was investing in RESEACH and DEVELOPMENT in 2014. There was no surprise. It isn’t due to Chinese subsidies either. It is simply R&D instead of corporate criminals fluffing quarterly earnings with absolutely no commitment to even the company itself, and certainly not customers, neighbors, country, the world ecosystem, or humanity as a species. The USA gave GM 6 billion dollars for EV R&D in 2017. The corporate criminals used it to do a stock buy back to fluff their short term earnings. We should not be getting punished with tariffs to subsidize criminals. Let these shits fail and fall apart first. Then build something new from the ashes. Their inability to fail is the primary reason that they are failing. We really do need a league of c-sweet assassin heroes, or a dark knight of the real Gotham.

    • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      17 days ago

      Chinese constructors indeed told this plan, I’ve seen the interviews, they’ve been following it exactly and got the results they were after. We knew this 10 years ago. There should not be any surprise.

      We knew the Western manufacturers would deny, delay and lobby against this to keep shareholder value up, to cry foul when sales take a hit and they did not disappoint. It’s the classic market disruption, something we’ve seen many times in history, but now on the losing side. Again, no surprise.

      Capitalism has a fatal flaw with long term planning and it’s been exploited masterfully by China. Actually China had plans to uproot the entire fossil fuel sector and replace it with their renewables, so hold on for a lot more drama.

    • uis@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      16 days ago

      The USA gave GM 6 billion dollars for EV R&D in 2017.

      The USA forgot to nationalize again.