The European Union voted on Friday to impose tariffs as high as 45% on electric vehicles from China, threatening a broader trade conflict with Beijing which has already vowed to protect its companies.
  • Pilferjinx@lemmy.world
    47·
    2 months ago

    I feel like we would need to utterly destroy the working class to the point that cheap Chinese EVs would become expensive if we were to compete at the same level. I could be wrong, but how many of the chinese workers are driving brand new evs?

    • potatopotato
      16·
      2 months ago

      Western manufacturing tends to be much more automation heavy. Chinese manufactures don’t bother with buying a $100k machine that can make a car part when they can just hire 10 guys at $10k/yr to make that same part with a $50 drill press and some hand files.

      It’s not that it all strictly balances out, but if we actually gave a shit we could potentially be cost competitive for a lot of price brackets, especially given the costs to move whole ass cars across the Pacific.

      Bear in mind these sub $10k Chinese EVs are not something US consumers would really be interested in buying, they are basically tiny car shaped golf carts with extremely minimalist feature sets. Think ‘no audio system at’ all type interiors.