this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
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Fear of cheap Chinese EVs spurs automaker dash for affordable cars (www.reuters.com)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 85 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (8 children)

Chinese EVs are being sold at a loss of up to 35k per car:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/05/business/nio-china-electric-vehicles.html

The Chinese government is subsidising their car industry, so they can engage in dumping, and decimate our car industries. When our domestic car industries are dead, they'll raise prices. It's like Amazon or any other scummy megacorp that kills local businesses.

This being said, it's hard to feel sorry for companies who also receive plenty of government subsidies and tax breaks, broke the law on emissions testing and likely killed a lot of people because of it, and refused to innovate or lower prices out of sheer greed.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

a comment in the article you linked says this better than I ever could:

This whole narrative about alleged “subsidies” to Chinese EV makers and them “losing $35,000 per vehicle” is pure propaganda. Firstly, that company - Nio - is a relatively new one and it is still ramping up its production. A year ago when they were not selling EVs yet but invested a lot in R&D it could be said that they were losing infinite amount of money per vehicle - because infinity is what you get from dividing by zero. Both this logic and this math are erroneous. Tesla was losing money for years even after it started making and selling its cars.It kept going by taking money from investors in exchange for shares. That is exactly what the Chinese EV companies do. So secondly, those are not “subsidies” but investments, even if the money comes from Chinese government entities. This article states itself that local governments take stock in companies in exchange for investment - exactly the same thing Tesla investors did.

The article also talks about BYD, a more established manufacturer than Nio, that is making profits selling electric cars.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

just google chinese ev car graveyard https://i.imgur.com/vjtkj6J.png

not only are they selling at a loss, most of the sales aren't even real

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