For decades, the Latin American nation has been a leading assembler of motorized vehicles. Mexico is now led by a president with a PhD in sustainable energy engineering.
Claudia Sheinbaum supports Mexican companies that aim to design and build their own brand of EVs.
It is the right strategy to use Chinese batteries and motors, but their operation is very labour intensive. Even at low Mexico wage rates, a US manufacturer car can likely beat on price/quality/features.
Makes me wonder if China isn’t pushing the whole thing. Get Mexico to just do the final manufacturing step so they can get around American tariffs on Chinese imports while still being the source for 98% of the parts.
I don’t actually know if that’s how any of that works. It’s just a thought.
China’s car are cheap because they have good robotics. This is hand placing and wiring batteries into a good looking car, but the body may have a lot of manual labour too.
US or Europe could manufacture a car with these specs for $20k. Even with more expensive batteries.
Though the US/EU being slow at making $20k or $30k cars does mean there is this market opportunity for this in MX.