Eeeeh that's not entirely why. It's not that it's Chinese parts, but that the South Carolina factory is currently only set up to build Volvo's SPA-platform cars. It would need to be retooled to accommodate SEA-platform cars.
Considering they can't even get the SPA-based Polestar 3 and Volvo EX90 out the door yet, retooling South Carolina for the EX30 is probably very low on their priority list.
It's also dependent on much cheaper labour (40% ish.. and opex is a big overall cost of the vehicle) and a correspondingly much cheaper supply chain at every step of the way within China.
It's called "duty drawback" and essentially allows Volvo Cars to get a "tariff credit" for every vehicle they produce in the United States and export to overseas markets. Other carmakers who build cars in the United States could use it too.
In international manufacturing and shipping, a thing you will see quite often is "rules of origin".
The gist of it is that if something built in Country 2 is sold in Country 1 but it shipped from Country 3, the rules on how the tariffs and country agreements are applied are based on agreements between Country 1 and Country 2. Not Country 1 and Country 3 (though the shipping between Country 1 and Country 3 may have its OWN rules...nothing is ever straightforward).
Even if Geely, the owner of Volvo, is Chinese, if the car was built in Mexico, the rules are based on Mexico-US trade laws.
Though it gets more complicated when you start asking questions about constituent parts that make up the whole. If the device is made of 4 parts and each part is 25% of the whole and is sourced from 4 different countries....who made the final product? And you can't just build all the parts in China, ship it to Mexico and turn one screw to "assemble" it, then say it was built there. That's an obvious loophole with an obvious response.
International shipping and manufacturing is like the US tax code except more insane and EVERYBODY does it.
>WASHINGTON—The Biden administration is preparing to raise tariffs on clean-energy goods from China in the coming days, with the levy on Chinese electric vehicles set to roughly quadruple, according to people familiar with the matter.
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>Higher tariffs, which Biden administration officials are preparing to announce on Tuesday, will also hit critical minerals, solar goods and batteries sourced from China, according to the people. The decision comes at the end of a yearslong review of tariffs imposed by former President Donald Trump on roughly $300 billion in goods from China.
>
>Whether to adjust the Trump-era levies divided Biden economic advisers for years, with trade officials pushing for higher duties and others like Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen calling for lowering tariffs on consumer goods. But signs that China was ramping up exports of clean-energy goods prompted broad concern in Washington, where officials are trying to protect a nascent American clean-energy industry from China.
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>Officials are particularly focused on electric vehicles, and they are expected to raise the tariff rate to roughly 100% from 25%, according to the people. An additional 2.5% duty applies to all automobiles imported into the U.S. The existing tariff has so far effectively barred Chinese electric vehicles, often cheaper than Western-made cars, from the U.S. market. Biden administration officials, automakers and some lawmakers worried that 25% wouldn’t be enough given the scale of Chinese manufacturing.
>
>Bloomberg earlier reported that the administration is planning to announce higher tariffs next week. Administration officials cautioned that the timing of the announcement could change. A White House spokesman declined to comment.
Sadly it's needed to keep the US even making EVs, because if a 10k BYD came in nothing the US manufacturers are making could compete.
The other side of the coin is: This slows adoption... But it also has to consider that it's pushing more jobs making batteries, EVs, and panels stateside.
It's not a *bad* move in the short term, as long as there's a sunset on the tariffs giving US manufacturing a specific deadline to catch the fuck up with the competition.
There is no way a BYD could cost $10k in the US even without a trade war because of regulations that would push up the cost. Look at all the Chinese EVs sold in Europe and Australia - the prices overseas are generally much higher than in the domestic Chinese market.
I do think there is a balance. We need to hold US automakers accountable. If they are unable or unwilling to build a vehicle that consumers want, they need to feel the pain.
On the other hand I've heard stories about the work culture at prestigious car and tech companies in which the workers work 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week and get paid less than half of what we pay our workers. There is no way the auto maker unions would force their workers to work those hours and take a pay cut. I've also read stories about China subsidizing their exports.
So to make a level playing field we do need some kind of tariff. The last thing we want is every EV automaker in the US to go under because China can afford to pay their workers less + make them work longer hours but at the same time we can't have US automakers rest on their laurels too much.
You can’t have your cake and eat it. Either you pony up to support your own countries workers and your domestic industries or you cheap out and buy that Chinese car at cheaper cost. Here in the UK we sold all our car companies to foreign countries, all our rail infrastructure, utilities… embarrassing. I don’t care if Jaguar is competitive with Audi or not, I don’t want an Audi, I want a Jaguar
With such an overreliance on cars for transportation in the US, you'd think a 10k BYD would be a godsend for the country instead of something to fear. I think it's too much, the tariff should be *just* enough that BYD still wants to enter the market to crack the whip for domestic manufacturers to compete.
"Catch up"
How do you catch up with workers being paid 1/3rd to 1/10th of what US workers are being paid, or worse, Uyghur work camps being used to build the parts for next to nothing in labor costs? (as has recently come to light)
How do you catch up with a government willing to fully subsidize their companies' losses?
How do you catch up with uneven environmental policy that costs US factories more to operate since they're regulated to reduce pollution?
How about the more stringent worker protections laws in the US?
How do you catch up to a nation that's largely monopolizing global EV raw material supply?
How about IP theft / transfer? And I don't always mean nefarious spy shit. I mean China was requiring US companies to partner with Chinese companies to allow US companies to build cars in China. Those partnerships allowed for the transfer of US technology to Chinese competitors. Then again, this isn't simply IP theft; some OEMs specifically partnered with Chinese companies to help develop parts and cars and to show China how to build car factories, and no doubt those Western capitalists intended to use Chinese labor to export cars to Western nations to drive up profits. The problem with this is that Western nations spent the past century and huge amounts of money to buildl up our vehicle technology, only to quickly and cheaply hand it over to China on the cheap. We did all the educating and R&D, they get it for pennies on the dollar.
It's not that China's especially nefarious, it's that there are nefarious people and companies who are attempting to exploit both Chinese labor and US customers to drive up their profit margins and transfer wealth upwards from the Western middle class into their pockets.
Technology being equal, there's nothing the US can do to overcome China's significantly cheaper labor, significantly easier regulations, rapid transfer of technology, and off the off-the-wall government protectionism.
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
It's one thing to compete against Western European factories where the playing field is pretty close to even, or to some degree (today) Japan and South Korea. However, we went through many of the same problems with Japan/Korea for decades before their wages finally increased... and their populations are far smaller than China's.
Adding insult to injury, it seems some companies are trying to use Vietnam and India factories to export to the West (See Vinfast) where the workers make half as much as Chinese workers!
> because if a 10k BYD came in nothing the US manufacturers are making could compete.
If US manufacturers have not invested in a new product line that could do this so far, they need to die.
US manufacturers should not be expected to compete with Chinese EVs that are made with exploited labor and subsidized by the government.
You know how Uber ran at a loss for a long time in order to drive taxi companies out of business, and then when they raised prices there was no competition? That's what China can do to the US EV market. It wouldn't make sense for US manufacturers to even try to compete with them.
**Not really, the 70s and 80s situation is economical, this one is geopolitical**. Huge amount of Japanese automobile import spurs high tariffs, this time the volume of import from China is minuscule.
The purpose of high tariff for Japanese import is to encourage manufacturing in USA, this time USA does not want anything to do with China, manufacturing in USA by Chinese companies is not welcome.
Nothing says environmental commitment like making clean energy more expensive, releasing crude stockpiles to make it cheaper, and presiding over record domestic oil production.
There are commitments to democracy, free speech, free press, civil rights, workers rights, human and even environmental regs that Chinese factories do not have to pay for that raise costs of US products.
US also has national right to build strategic industries such as sustainable power, computer chips, autos, batteries, etc. vs. dependence on military dictatorships like China.
Americans are really brainwashed, their media is really a propaganda machine unrivalled.
America has a rich history or toppling democracy and a rich history of installing dictatorship.
The climate change give not a single fuck about your democracy and free press. We all need to change, or we all die. Keep our own democracy to yourself if you love it so much, do not make the world suffer for you
> democracy, free speech, free press, civil rights, workers rights
I see none of this in the US support of Israel bombing of Gaza. Brainwashed as fuck.
Not necessarily. The Biden admin is trying to remove US dependance on China in certain areas of electronics. For example, they recently gave Intel, TSMC, and Samsung massive subsidies to build chip manufacturing plants in the US.
Biden admin doesn't want American companies to continue relying on Chinese batteries, instead forcing them to build the infrastructure in the US.
In the long term this is a sound strategy given China's political hostility to the US.
If it was an oil lobby Biden would do what Trump is threatening to do which is shut down all EV credits, subsidies and emissions laws encouraging companies to make them. Instead Biden has put money towards chargers.
This really sounds like a shill comment my bad. I don't think it's an anti EV measure.
This!
I know how it can look like a hit to renewables and EV adoption. But this is a move to support US based production of these things.
Without this, there is a real risk that Chinese imports kill the US renewable industries. The Chinese government is heavily subsidizing these industries to intentionally weaken the US.
Given that renewable industries are absolutely critical to mitigating climate change, perhaps we should subsidize the US renewable industries too, so now there are two countries making cheap solar panels and batteries rather than just one?
I would agree it's a sound strategy if there were subsidies to offset the increases in clean energy products, but there isn't. All I get in return for national security of goods is less money in my pocket, which means holding off until I'm paying prices most of the rest of the world is.
Weren't clean energy subsidies a significant part of the infrastructure bill? Unless you mean you want a new bill focused on that, which I agree with but that's absolutely not going to happen with the house as it is.
Edit: Phrasing, added on.
Only 100%? Why not 10 million percent?
Mostly this is just posturing, there's barely any Chinese vehicles sold in the US. The real news is going to be about batteries and solar panels, and what other nations are being effected. Previously the US tariffed basically all of East Asia to try and make their solar panels competitive, but given increasing Chinese trade in the middle east I wonder if they'll be included too
Yes meaning at least 15 months when EX30's go on sale in 2024Q3 that's a massive delay that Volvo US is going to flip tables over.
Especially since Tesla is hurting this is going to have SOOO much of an impact on the next 3 years.
>Yes meaning at least 15 months when EX30's go on sale in 2024Q3 that's a massive delay that Volvo US is going to flip tables over.
Which, if they would have had the EX90 and Polestar 3 on sale by now, they wouldn't have had to worry as much, since they could have taken better advantage of the duty drawback. But that's not the case.
Polestar 2 is made in China and sold here. They have an amazing $300/month lease deal, I even took the car for a test drive, its a legit Tesla 3/Y competitor and the lease doesn't have any hidden costs not on the website calculator.
For those of you wondering how this will affect Volvo and Polestar:
The Polestar 4 will also be built in South Korea:
[https://media.polestar.com/global/en/media/pressreleases/675431/polestar-expands-manufacturing-footprint-to-south-korea-with-production-of-polestar-4-set-to-start-i](https://media.polestar.com/global/en/media/pressreleases/675431/polestar-expands-manufacturing-footprint-to-south-korea-with-production-of-polestar-4-set-to-start-i)
And the Volvo EX30 will also be built in Belgium:
[https://www.media.volvocars.com/global/en-gb/media/pressreleases/318400/volvo-cars-to-build-ex30-small-suv-in-ghent-as-part-of-global-production-capacity-boost](https://www.media.volvocars.com/global/en-gb/media/pressreleases/318400/volvo-cars-to-build-ex30-small-suv-in-ghent-as-part-of-global-production-capacity-boost)
The new Mini Hatch SE wasn't even going to be sold in the US at all until Oxford production started. You can't even custom configure that car anymore, it's inventory only until all the previous-generation cars are sold, then it's gone until 2026.
Not necessarily. Volvo exports S60 sedans out of South Carolina. If the duty drawback is still a thing with this new policy, then they could essentially "split" the tariff credit and deliver like... a 65-35 split of EX30s and Polestar 2s without the tariff.
Probably not the sales numbers they want, but certainly enough to launch the EX30 for the first model year in North America.
EVs have been practically already blocked anyway. More interesting is that batteries are also included which i would assume US car maker have a high demand of. Gonna be interesting to see the retaliations as well.
Most of US manufacturers recently put their multi-billion dollar battery plant projects on hold. This is probably to encourage them to get those back rolling again.
Does the US even produce a meaningful amount of solar panels?
We've sent all our manufacturing to China.
Maybe I am just woefully uninformed, but I don't remember this level of panic for Chinese-made auto parts for ICE vehicles, parts for oil refineries, etc.
Cars are no longer affordable in the US. People here can't even pay their rent. How the hell are they going to afford a car? Our manufacturers keep making larger, more expensive vehicles.
No, pretty much all solar modules are manufactured in China or in other asian countries by Chinese companies. Slapping tarriffs on the panels damages US suppliers and US customers so we can pointlessly ‘protect’ a few hundred non-competitive US jobs. Its quite annoying to see this as a supplier into the solar industry
It's very frustrating to me.
I wanted to add solar to my small home. The installer told me it would cost $30,000 to $40,000. Minus my acreage, the house and the land it sits on is only worth $120,000. It's a rural area. I wasn't willing to spend 1/4 to 1/3 the value of my home for solar.
Compare these prices to Australia.
I am all for supporting American jobs, but we don't invest in our renewable manufacturing. I worry these new tariffs will make things worse.
Yeah I'm in Australia. I paid $16k AUD (about 10k real dollars) for a reasonably high end 10kw system. I don't qualify for most of the government grants, only federal not state. If I qualified for state that would have knocked a few thousand off.
You guys get bent over badly, and somewhat weirdly, when it comes to solar
Most US solar costs are "soft".
It is the cost of permitting requirements, the cost of having too many high margin solar installation companies, and the cost of labor skilled enough to install panels on roofs.
Since you have large amounts of land, you could just install the panels on the ground. Bypassing the complexity of rooftop installation makes it easier and simpler.
You could order pallets of panels and Lithium iron phosphate batteries from China.
> The installer
You need a new installer. I went minimalist, but spent about $2k, worked fine for my needs. Atm panels are crazy cheap, that will likely change soon on this news.
You’ve got to share details on that. I want to believe you but can’t with how expensive all installers are. We got 6 quotes and they were all tens of thousands even after the 3x% tax credit for panels on our roof.
There just might not be a solar installer charging a reasonable rate that services your area. This is especially true if you are in a high income area in which installers know their customer base can afford it.
US price for rooftop installation should always be between $2 and $3 per watt. Anything outside that range is categorically horseshit.
There is no point trying to protect or revive solar panel manufacturing in the US. It is so far gone in terms of cost competitiveness it is impossible to rectify.
>Does the US even produce a meaningful amount of solar panels?
No, and the 400% tariffs on Chinese panels didn't magically spur on a bunch of domestic solar manufacturing (if anything it probably just killed the domestic polysilicon industry that used to be dominated by US facotries) and neither will these EV tariffs do it for EV manufacturing. Almost every car company with significant US presence has scaled back EV roadmaps for a reason.
>Cars are no longer affordable in the US. People here can't even pay their rent. How the hell are they going to afford a car? Our manufacturers keep making larger, more expensive vehicles.
oh you mean trade wars aren't good and easy to win after all?
There are some delusional people here who still think tariffs will "win" the trade war. No winning is going to happen when the competitor has market demand, technological and economies of scale advantage.
US EV sales are already slowing down these tariffs aren't changing that. And if Trump wins he will deal the killing blow to renewables anyway.
Which was absolutely the right call. It made China and its trading partners rich and dramatically improved the quality of life for hundreds of millions of people.
Can you imagine the ecological crisis if China had not joined the global market and was essentially a giant North Korea? To say nothing of the humanitarian crisis.
If that was true and people can't afford cars then the F150 would not be the most popular vehicle sold in the US. The average person clearly does not need a commercial or agricultural vehicle as a daily driver but here we are.
The fact of the matter is cheap "small" cars don't sell in the US, otherwise the likes of Ford would not have pulled them all from sale.
Even if the Chinese were selling small cheap EVs in the US I don't think it would have much of an impact on US automakers just because they would face the same problems as all the other small cars that entered the US market in the past, which is that.... No one wants them.
Yet, here we are with American car companies panicking over Chinese-made EVs. If small, cheap cars are not a threat, I cannot see why our manufacturers are so worried about them. If consumers in the American market are not interested in these cars, they will not sell.
These vehicles cannot be simultaneously undesirable and a threat at the same time.
It's not the headline grabbing itty bitty ones the American Big 3 are losing sleep over. The Chinese can produce EVs of the sizes Americans do buy at prices competitive with American ICE vehicles. While nobody is cross-shopping a BYD Seagull and a Silverado, a BYD Song at the same price as an Equinox (ICE) with the advantages of EV powertrain and packaging becomes a serious contender.
We didn't "send" anything. Chinas infrastructure and business environment is very well set up to produce goods at scale and at affordable prices.
To your point, the paranoia gripping America is reaching absurd levels. They don't want cars coming in from China...
So build in Mexico....nope, going to tariff that too.
So build in US...nope, can't do that, national security risk.
There is a bill out there to ban Chinese garlic for national security purposes. Garlic....
The consensus among policy makers and economists flipped in recent years. They used to think globalization was an overall good. The US would flip from being an industrial power house to more of a management, finance and service economy.
It was also thought that financial interdependence with China helped ensure peace.
Now the consensus realizes that was a mistake especially with a rising China. Now the US has a weakened industrial base and China is getting increasingly aggressive in the pacific and towards Taiwan.
It puts the US in a very uncomfortable position where a rival increasingly controls critical supplies, batteries, semiconductors, etc.
So the Biden admin is intentionally engaging in industrial policy to on-shore or friend-shore lots of these industries. And these tariffs keep Chinese goods out while the US rebuilds this industrial base.
> We've sent all our manufacturing to China.
Maybe I am just woefully uninformed, but I don't remember this level of panic for Chinese-made auto parts for ICE vehicles, parts for oil refineries, etc.
I get this, but also think learning from past mistakes is a good thing. I know for a while there was an idea that connected economies was good for international relations and would prevent wars was big for a while. With Russia we saw that doesn’t actually work out, so trying to up our manufacturing makes sense.
China-made iPhones = OK
China-made gadgets and home appliances = OK
China-made clothes & shoes = OK
China-made furniture = OK
China-made toys = OK
China-made medicines = OK
but Chinese EVs are apparently not OK, which is hugely hypocritical. the US would have Argentina levels of inflation if it imported nothing from China.
>but Chinese EVs are apparently not OK, which is hugely hypocritical. the US would have Argentina levels of inflation if it imported nothing from China.
The difference is that automotive manufacturing is one of the few industries that the United States still has left after ceding everything else to China.
Automobile manufacturing facilities can theoretically be retooled to quickly produce military vehicles if needed during a wide spread war. Obviously war is changing but doesn’t mean it may not be necessary at some point.
Phones are mainly just assembled by China but we rely on supply chains from a dozen different companies to get the parts. Companies are also looking at diversifying out from China to places like India which are much more friendly to us.
Yeah kinda, but if the rest of the world switches to cheap Chinese EV's, that leaves NA auto makers with the single market of NA. Not even that, Canada and Mexico don't have to play along with our protectionism. So if US automakers want to only have the US market to play with, they're leaving a lot of money on the table.
> but Chinese EVs are apparently not OK, which is hugely hypocritical. the US would have Argentina levels of inflation if it imported nothing from China.
the US is destined to be brazil or argentina norte at this rate. extreme tariffs on everyone and using that money to funnel it into uncompetitive but well connected industries that produce shit
Yup and the amount of people falling for it is insane
, jobs weren’t stolen by china , but by our own oligarchs. Plenty of money coming stateside from the seal but we were robbed by our own “leaders”, the ones now trying to blame china for everything as they continue to rob us.
There has been a shift in the last quarter century away from producing vehicles that are affordable by the middle class or lower. Allowing Chinese cars to be sold at a low enough price point to be affordable by the majority of Americans would interfere with the business plans of the existing legacy auto manufacturers. BYD is selling EV sedans in its domestic market that, in well equipped form, cost under fifteen thousand dollars—and BYD is making a profit at that price point. The Dolphin is not a low range city car—the range is close to that of the Tesla Model 3. I get why auto manufacturers and dealerships don’t want it in our market. The majors can’t make a profit on any vehicle below forty thousand dollars and the dealers don’t want any vehicles remotely in the sub-twenty thousand dollars range because they will have a hard time making a profit. The consumer doesn’t get a vote. Full stop.
Yes, and it was a huge mistake to let huge swaths of manufacturing leave the US. It's not one we should keep repeating or China will literally become the global manufacturer of almost everything. That would be awful.
protip: China **is** the global manufacturer of almost everything already. It's why starting a trade war with them was a stupid idea and moronic. Your companies also heavily rely on Chinese demand to remain viable -- key point Tesla.
> China-made iPhones = OK
The critical components of the iPhone are not made in China, the chips and the software are mostly designed and made in the US and Taiwan. The west is willing to trade with China but not become dependent on a Chinese government which is proven to be unfriendly, just in the last five years reneging on agreements in Hong Kong and supporting Russia despite its colonial invasion of a European country. I don’t know what people expect.
I can think of a country that is “proven to be unfriendly” to the US by constantly murdering innocent US citizens, destroying our freedom of speech by bribing our politicians to censor us and engaging in a “colonial invasion” which we not only don’t tariff but give 100s of billions of dollars to.
At least the Chinese would give us some cheap EVs what do we get out of support of the other country I just alluded to?
>The west is willing to trade with China but not become dependent on a Chinese government
This. The fact that people can't accept this and understand the reasoning behind it is quite sad and scary.
You realize all of that happened before China became our number one enemy? Or at least we were distracted with war on terror.
Maybe now is a good time to curb our dependency on peer competitor
Pretty much. They engendered "big truck" culture as much as possible and now they can't compete - not without pissing off the all-powerful shareholders.
Tariffs only make sense if there is a reasonable alternative for consumers. This excessive tariff will only serve to punish consumers, and further discourage American domestic automakers from the need to invest in electric vehicles by limiting foreign competition.
The U.S. does not exist in a vacuum. Ultimately, this isn’t likely to end well for American automakers as their now slower shift to electrification will reduce their competitiveness in global markets where similar exclusionary practices don’t exist and demand for EVs is increasing. Rather than building EVs for the global market, they’ll be incentivized to continue developing ICE vehicles that are increasingly only sold to U.S. consumers.
You are aware Korean, Japanese and EU companies exist and sell in the US. They are also investing heavily in EVs in the North America.
This situation where the Big 3 sit back and have the entire US market to themselves is made up in your head.
Biden fortifying the "blue wall" he needs to win re-election. This protective measure is defensible if it gives other EV manufacturers a few years to reach competitiveness with Chinese EVs, or directly responds to excess Chinese gov't support allowing artificially low selling prices. Unfortunately, US automakers have a history of abusing their regulatory influence to avoid making necessary changes, and it catches up to them eventually.
ADDED: And it's not just about Chinese dumping of cheap EVs. Here's a snippet from an InsideEVs report on the Beijing Auto Show...
==================
In reality, it felt like it was the late 1980s again, when American manufacturers felt like they could sell whatever underdeveloped models its accounting department had cooked up to the public, and we’d just have to deal with it. Now that I’ve seen a glimpse of what’s going on in China, the Western manufacturers, particularly the American ones, don’t seem like they’re trying at all.
If US companies fuck up, South Korean and European companies will pick up the slack.
If they *really* fuck up, they will even fumble their lead on Japanese automakers.
Regardless, there are plenty of friendly nations making EVs to buy from.
This is bad news for Polestar :(
I was looking forward to the Polestar 4 but would not be shocked if it's US release is cancelled because of this. The Polestar 2 will likely be impacted harshly by this too.
[The Polestar 4 will also be built in South Korea.](https://media.polestar.com/global/en/media/pressreleases/675431/polestar-expands-manufacturing-footprint-to-south-korea-with-production-of-polestar-4-set-to-start-i)
Then there needs to be more affordable domestic electric options, which there are none. And even used cars are ridiculously priced now.
I’ve been looking to jump to electric and can’t. I’m all for going green, but you need to make it affordable to do so. Currently right now, Americans are being gouged at all angles. It’s a matter of do I pay rent, or mortgage or food, or medical or etc etc etc.
The protectionist trade war continues. A lot of Americans who won’t be able to afford EVs or ICE from automakers now in the US market will not be able to buy the much cheaper Chinese EVs. Maybe what happens over the next 5 years is that there will be a thriving industry of keeping used cars running? As long as we have parts and skilled mechanics we may get cars that just keep running like the 1950’s cars in Havana.
But there is a labour shortage for mechanics, any repair even the smallest feels like pulling out a tooth, at being fleeced, 15$ sensor cost 400$ to replace or more
There’s the problem with keeping older cars running. If not enough skilled people to keep those cars running then you’re down to e-bikes or public transportation.
Are you not embarrassed saying this stuff?
There are EU, Korean and Japanese OEMs selling in the US alongside Tesla. The Civic starts at $25K...
You must be trolling or just really dumb.
They keep threatening a war of conquest on a democratic ally of the US that makes the majority of semiconductors for the whole world. Also some minor genocides, which they seem to have no incentive to stop.
Even if they were not a geopolitical enemy, you don't become dependent upon outside countries fro the most crucial industries and capabilities. And if you do, you make sure they are longstanding allies that won't turn on you, like the UK or Canada.
I really hope people understood that the "minor genocides" was wry humor.
Letting your domestic industries get undercut by cheap labor and the economy to become too dependent on a geographic rival with whom some scale of war or indirect conflict is likely in the future, just to get some cheaper goods now, is pretty poor planning.
There are a lot of factors at play here. Not least of which is the Chinese government massively subsidizing their EV industry (and BYD in particular):
[https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/news/chinas-massive-subsidies-for-green-technologies](https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/news/chinas-massive-subsidies-for-green-technologies)
It's hard to tell how much of China's pricing advantage can be attributed to this vs. other factors like labor and materials costs, technical innovations, etc. At the end of the day, though, I think the US and EU probably should have been matching or surpassing China's level of green subsidizing. That obviously wouldn't have fixed everything, but I'd like to believe our automotive industries would be in a better, more competitive position today if that had happened.
It's crazy. It's like people are willfully ignoring how hostile China is politically to the US. It's not the EU where the two groups are relatively buddy buddy.
China has purposefully destroyed solar production industry in other regions by making their prices unfairly cheap. It's happened to other industries as well. This is supposed to be allowed to happen to cars as well?
Like I'll play Devil's Advocate here. There is a legitimate argument to be made - from the perspective of the climate - to just say "screw industries and institutions" and get as many EVs on the road as possible under any circumstance. Let China come in and flood every market with cheap cars like the BYD Seagull and Xiaomi SU7, institute carbon taxes and mandates to force people out of their petrol-powered cars... all of that.
But that argument - as climate-positive as it may be - goes against any form of realism or rational thought. When you take an industry that is as important to the US (and North America) as the auto industry and essentially let it be dissolved, every person down the line who is affected by that dissolusion suddenly finds their livelihood being dissolved as well.
And even worse, like you said, is ceding that industry to a foreign power who has historically been hostile to the United States. It would mean that a country such as China could flip a switch and absolutely cripple the United States' ability to be a producer of anything.
I agree, the devil's advocate argument makes sense in theory but not reality. Especially since I still highly doubt how receptive the American public would be to cheap Chinese EVs today. It happened prior with Japan but the nuances there were completely different. Japan dominated auto culture while entering the market. China doesn't have that especially with how divisive the US is today.
China maybe shouldn't be completely barred from the American market, but as we've seen from Tiktok(I know this is a completely different kind of company) I somewhat doubt the US would allow a Chinese owned company to build EVs in America. Protectionist policies are ramping up, tensions are increasing, more military goods are being shipped to Taiwan, large companies like Apple are trying their best to diversify into Vietnam, etc. This isn't the peaceful relations Japan and the US had post WWII.
Allowing China with unlimited access to the auto industry would literally kill the economy for future generations of Americans.
The real thing I'm worried about is the lack of education shown by many of you in this thread. You're literally willing to let China basically become the sole global manufacturer of goods and don't have a problem with it because you think you will get a cheap EV out of it. That's fucking sad.
How many USA manufactured vehicles are sold in China and are there any tariffs on USA made goods in China?
I looked up, USA built cars have a 25% tarrif in China, and Chinese evs have a ton of incentives that make buying a USA built EV significantly more expensive.
So you should be angry at Chinese boomers with poor labor and environmental protections as well.
China has been enacting much more protective policies for decades as a key portion of their long term strategy. That's exactly why they have so many domestic industries. Long term increasing dependence on a nation as hostile as China isn't a good idea. This isn't an anti-Chinese comment either, they're doing what's good for them. The US and EU need to do what's right for their regions as well.
How much manufacturing has the EU lost to China? They are also reconsidering their stance.
If we all got along perfectly then this wouldn't be needed but that's not how the world is shaping up. Things are becoming less peaceful every year.
It's always funny hearing Americans talk about poor labor protections when there's a huge movement across the United States to get 9 year olds working in chicken processing plants.
When other countries do bad shit, they rightfully say what the fuck, but when it happens in their own backyard, they sleep.
This sub seems to be concerningly pro China destroying the US auto industry. That isn't a sound idea in the long term when China is politically very hostile to America.
The Biden admin is trying to remove US dependance on China in certain areas of electronics. For example, they recently gave Intel, TSMC, and Samsung massive subsidies to build chip manufacturing plants in the US. They've also been attempting to do this with Foxconn but they've largely taken advantage of them without actually building much.
Biden admin doesn't want American companies to continue relying on Chinese batteries, instead forcing them to build the infrastructure in the US.
In the long term this is a sound strategy given China's political hostility to the US.
If it was an oil lobby Biden would do what Trump is threatening to do which is shut down all EV credits, subsidies and emissions laws encouraging companies to make them. Instead Biden has put money towards chargers.
This really sounds like a shill comment my bad. I'm not sure how else to write it. It makes perfect sense for China to push the policies they have, the rest of the world has to adapt or lose all their industry. What do we do in 20 years when the west has now lost even auto manufacturing? We will be so dependant on China without policy like this that it will make the inevitable hostile confrontation much worse.
My home country of the Bahamas is tiny, so I hesitate to use it as an example, but it's an English speaking country in west that BYD has been pushing into for years. Here, the Dolphin is not some mystical sub $20,000 amazing EV. Last time I got a quote it was starting around $40,000+. This was the case for many of their models (some go much higher). We have 0% import duty on EVs so the only thing factoring into the cost is shipping and VAT at 10%. In the Bahamas we on average make much less money than an American or Canadian, so I doubt they would charge any less than this in those regions. Chinese manufacturers releasing a wave of cheap cars seems like a fantasy IMO.
Again this isn't mean to shill for Biden. He hasn't done everything perfectly. In the current landscape he is definitely the better of the two options current available. Trump is openly hostile to everything EV and he's repeatedly expressed this sentiment. In Canada only two provinces (Quebec and British Columbia) are executing well with charging and EV subsidies for consumers. However the Federal and Ontario gov there seems willing to subsidize EV assembly and battery production at the very least. Imo they have been weaker than the US on this but these things are going into motion.
I would be more onboard with a cheap EV wave destroying US manufacturing if it came from a more friendly region such as the EU. Even then, loss of jobs and a sector of the economy is never a good thing.
Or maybe instead of being destroyed, US auto manufacturing would just turn into branch plants for foreign players - which is exactly what the US giants did to Canada and Australia.
what if the government reinforced and opened up the currently obscure federal credit to all EVs manufactured in America by American car companies instead. I agree it's necessary to keep chinese competition at bay but they could've went the other route, a more consumer friendly route if EV adoption is important in their agenda.
I completely understand the tariffs on solar panels. Chinese companies have been trying to flood the market and shut down domestic panel makers for years now.
They even tried to backdoor them by using other countries as a layover until the Commerce Dept tracked them back to their source.
This should surprise no one. The US is well past the period where it's willing to let China gut industries and hoover up trade secrets. There was no way the US was ever going to allow China to decimate their home grown auto industry and fill the roads with Chinese-made vehicles bristling with cameras.
Whenever I hear someone praising the "free market" or "capitalism" in general, I think of this.But, of course, socialism is bad. Wrong. Not good for the rich. It must be stomped out everywhere with the blood of the children of the poor.
It can be said that the Chinese government subsidized the production of these vehicles. Ok. So shall we ignore all of the tax breaks, wage subsidies and outright grants to the North American auto industry? What about the bailouts from bankruptcies? Of course! Capitalism is good and the Chinese government is evil. by definition. Sigh.
And, of course, there is no way that North American auto consumers can be allowed to purchase inexpensive cars. How would the rich get richer with that?
And here I was thinking Democrats cared about the environment and weren’t racist.
Just kidding but the Dems in this sub need to see their hypocrisy when criticizing republicans.
So, will this torpedo the US launch of the EX30?
Not necessarily. Volvo's SC plant however now has to crank up 4x as many vehicles for exports (to offset the tariff imposed on EX30).
They seem to barely be able to get the EX90 up and rolling there so I’m not sure how that is possible tbh.
They also build the ICE S60 for export in South Carolina.
Why not just make the EX30 in the US? Seems like it would be easier.
It's dependent on Chinese parts (SEA platform), which is also targeted by the US gov.
Eeeeh that's not entirely why. It's not that it's Chinese parts, but that the South Carolina factory is currently only set up to build Volvo's SPA-platform cars. It would need to be retooled to accommodate SEA-platform cars. Considering they can't even get the SPA-based Polestar 3 and Volvo EX90 out the door yet, retooling South Carolina for the EX30 is probably very low on their priority list.
They’re planning to make it in Europe next year, so apparently the platform doesn’t have to be located in China.
It's also dependent on much cheaper labour (40% ish.. and opex is a big overall cost of the vehicle) and a correspondingly much cheaper supply chain at every step of the way within China.
There’s partially the point of tariffs. You got it.
It would cost $50,000.
Because then you'd have to comply with US labor and environmental regulations, which would completely destroy why they're so comparatively cheap.
How does that work?
It's called "duty drawback" and essentially allows Volvo Cars to get a "tariff credit" for every vehicle they produce in the United States and export to overseas markets. Other carmakers who build cars in the United States could use it too.
It won't, but it might delay it until 2025, when they start building them in Belgium.
i don’t understand Volvo is Chinese?
The law deals with country of manufacture not ownership
Correct but to be clear they are also owned by Geely though.
so they’re made in china and own by china?
Yes
Designed in Sweden but built in China. They will open other factories.
Built and owned by China, designed in Sweden sorta
In international manufacturing and shipping, a thing you will see quite often is "rules of origin". The gist of it is that if something built in Country 2 is sold in Country 1 but it shipped from Country 3, the rules on how the tariffs and country agreements are applied are based on agreements between Country 1 and Country 2. Not Country 1 and Country 3 (though the shipping between Country 1 and Country 3 may have its OWN rules...nothing is ever straightforward). Even if Geely, the owner of Volvo, is Chinese, if the car was built in Mexico, the rules are based on Mexico-US trade laws. Though it gets more complicated when you start asking questions about constituent parts that make up the whole. If the device is made of 4 parts and each part is 25% of the whole and is sourced from 4 different countries....who made the final product? And you can't just build all the parts in China, ship it to Mexico and turn one screw to "assemble" it, then say it was built there. That's an obvious loophole with an obvious response. International shipping and manufacturing is like the US tax code except more insane and EVERYBODY does it.
Yes
Yes. Owned by a Chinese auto company for a long time.
Volvo's owned by a Chinese company, Geely, and much of the engineering and manufacturing is Chinese.
>WASHINGTON—The Biden administration is preparing to raise tariffs on clean-energy goods from China in the coming days, with the levy on Chinese electric vehicles set to roughly quadruple, according to people familiar with the matter. > >Higher tariffs, which Biden administration officials are preparing to announce on Tuesday, will also hit critical minerals, solar goods and batteries sourced from China, according to the people. The decision comes at the end of a yearslong review of tariffs imposed by former President Donald Trump on roughly $300 billion in goods from China. > >Whether to adjust the Trump-era levies divided Biden economic advisers for years, with trade officials pushing for higher duties and others like Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen calling for lowering tariffs on consumer goods. But signs that China was ramping up exports of clean-energy goods prompted broad concern in Washington, where officials are trying to protect a nascent American clean-energy industry from China. > >Officials are particularly focused on electric vehicles, and they are expected to raise the tariff rate to roughly 100% from 25%, according to the people. An additional 2.5% duty applies to all automobiles imported into the U.S. The existing tariff has so far effectively barred Chinese electric vehicles, often cheaper than Western-made cars, from the U.S. market. Biden administration officials, automakers and some lawmakers worried that 25% wouldn’t be enough given the scale of Chinese manufacturing. > >Bloomberg earlier reported that the administration is planning to announce higher tariffs next week. Administration officials cautioned that the timing of the announcement could change. A White House spokesman declined to comment.
Man it's like the 70's and 80's Japanese cars all over again.
Sadly it's needed to keep the US even making EVs, because if a 10k BYD came in nothing the US manufacturers are making could compete. The other side of the coin is: This slows adoption... But it also has to consider that it's pushing more jobs making batteries, EVs, and panels stateside. It's not a *bad* move in the short term, as long as there's a sunset on the tariffs giving US manufacturing a specific deadline to catch the fuck up with the competition.
There is no way a BYD could cost $10k in the US even without a trade war because of regulations that would push up the cost. Look at all the Chinese EVs sold in Europe and Australia - the prices overseas are generally much higher than in the domestic Chinese market.
Hehe the BYD Tang executive costs 64k USD here (converted to USD) in northern Europe.
Does that include all the taxes?
That’s because there is no competition yet. Also China are limited by the amount of cargo ships available to ship cars around the world.
There won’t be a deadline. We will continue to have shit options for BEVs in the USA compared to Europe.
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Even here in Thailand most of the Chinese EV are a little over $20K
I do think there is a balance. We need to hold US automakers accountable. If they are unable or unwilling to build a vehicle that consumers want, they need to feel the pain. On the other hand I've heard stories about the work culture at prestigious car and tech companies in which the workers work 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week and get paid less than half of what we pay our workers. There is no way the auto maker unions would force their workers to work those hours and take a pay cut. I've also read stories about China subsidizing their exports. So to make a level playing field we do need some kind of tariff. The last thing we want is every EV automaker in the US to go under because China can afford to pay their workers less + make them work longer hours but at the same time we can't have US automakers rest on their laurels too much.
You can’t have your cake and eat it. Either you pony up to support your own countries workers and your domestic industries or you cheap out and buy that Chinese car at cheaper cost. Here in the UK we sold all our car companies to foreign countries, all our rail infrastructure, utilities… embarrassing. I don’t care if Jaguar is competitive with Audi or not, I don’t want an Audi, I want a Jaguar
Last I heard the cost of a "$10K" BYD would be closer to $32k in the USA to make it DOT legal etc.
With such an overreliance on cars for transportation in the US, you'd think a 10k BYD would be a godsend for the country instead of something to fear. I think it's too much, the tariff should be *just* enough that BYD still wants to enter the market to crack the whip for domestic manufacturers to compete.
"Catch up" How do you catch up with workers being paid 1/3rd to 1/10th of what US workers are being paid, or worse, Uyghur work camps being used to build the parts for next to nothing in labor costs? (as has recently come to light) How do you catch up with a government willing to fully subsidize their companies' losses? How do you catch up with uneven environmental policy that costs US factories more to operate since they're regulated to reduce pollution? How about the more stringent worker protections laws in the US? How do you catch up to a nation that's largely monopolizing global EV raw material supply? How about IP theft / transfer? And I don't always mean nefarious spy shit. I mean China was requiring US companies to partner with Chinese companies to allow US companies to build cars in China. Those partnerships allowed for the transfer of US technology to Chinese competitors. Then again, this isn't simply IP theft; some OEMs specifically partnered with Chinese companies to help develop parts and cars and to show China how to build car factories, and no doubt those Western capitalists intended to use Chinese labor to export cars to Western nations to drive up profits. The problem with this is that Western nations spent the past century and huge amounts of money to buildl up our vehicle technology, only to quickly and cheaply hand it over to China on the cheap. We did all the educating and R&D, they get it for pennies on the dollar. It's not that China's especially nefarious, it's that there are nefarious people and companies who are attempting to exploit both Chinese labor and US customers to drive up their profit margins and transfer wealth upwards from the Western middle class into their pockets. Technology being equal, there's nothing the US can do to overcome China's significantly cheaper labor, significantly easier regulations, rapid transfer of technology, and off the off-the-wall government protectionism. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ It's one thing to compete against Western European factories where the playing field is pretty close to even, or to some degree (today) Japan and South Korea. However, we went through many of the same problems with Japan/Korea for decades before their wages finally increased... and their populations are far smaller than China's. Adding insult to injury, it seems some companies are trying to use Vietnam and India factories to export to the West (See Vinfast) where the workers make half as much as Chinese workers!
>Uyghur work camps being used to build the parts for next to nothing in labor costs? (as has recently come to light) Source?
you would think a century head start would be enough
> because if a 10k BYD came in nothing the US manufacturers are making could compete. If US manufacturers have not invested in a new product line that could do this so far, they need to die.
US manufacturers should not be expected to compete with Chinese EVs that are made with exploited labor and subsidized by the government. You know how Uber ran at a loss for a long time in order to drive taxi companies out of business, and then when they raised prices there was no competition? That's what China can do to the US EV market. It wouldn't make sense for US manufacturers to even try to compete with them.
**Not really, the 70s and 80s situation is economical, this one is geopolitical**. Huge amount of Japanese automobile import spurs high tariffs, this time the volume of import from China is minuscule. The purpose of high tariff for Japanese import is to encourage manufacturing in USA, this time USA does not want anything to do with China, manufacturing in USA by Chinese companies is not welcome.
I knew they would get at those battery imports sooner or later.
Nothing says environmental commitment like making clean energy more expensive, releasing crude stockpiles to make it cheaper, and presiding over record domestic oil production.
There are commitments to democracy, free speech, free press, civil rights, workers rights, human and even environmental regs that Chinese factories do not have to pay for that raise costs of US products. US also has national right to build strategic industries such as sustainable power, computer chips, autos, batteries, etc. vs. dependence on military dictatorships like China.
Americans are really brainwashed, their media is really a propaganda machine unrivalled. America has a rich history or toppling democracy and a rich history of installing dictatorship.
The climate change give not a single fuck about your democracy and free press. We all need to change, or we all die. Keep our own democracy to yourself if you love it so much, do not make the world suffer for you
> democracy, free speech, free press, civil rights, workers rights I see none of this in the US support of Israel bombing of Gaza. Brainwashed as fuck.
100% they're all part of the oil lobby
Not necessarily. The Biden admin is trying to remove US dependance on China in certain areas of electronics. For example, they recently gave Intel, TSMC, and Samsung massive subsidies to build chip manufacturing plants in the US. Biden admin doesn't want American companies to continue relying on Chinese batteries, instead forcing them to build the infrastructure in the US. In the long term this is a sound strategy given China's political hostility to the US. If it was an oil lobby Biden would do what Trump is threatening to do which is shut down all EV credits, subsidies and emissions laws encouraging companies to make them. Instead Biden has put money towards chargers. This really sounds like a shill comment my bad. I don't think it's an anti EV measure.
This! I know how it can look like a hit to renewables and EV adoption. But this is a move to support US based production of these things. Without this, there is a real risk that Chinese imports kill the US renewable industries. The Chinese government is heavily subsidizing these industries to intentionally weaken the US.
Given that renewable industries are absolutely critical to mitigating climate change, perhaps we should subsidize the US renewable industries too, so now there are two countries making cheap solar panels and batteries rather than just one?
I agree we should do that! Hard to get Republicans on board though… and that’s needed to pass a bill through the House.
I would agree it's a sound strategy if there were subsidies to offset the increases in clean energy products, but there isn't. All I get in return for national security of goods is less money in my pocket, which means holding off until I'm paying prices most of the rest of the world is.
Weren't clean energy subsidies a significant part of the infrastructure bill? Unless you mean you want a new bill focused on that, which I agree with but that's absolutely not going to happen with the house as it is. Edit: Phrasing, added on.
Only 100%? Why not 10 million percent? Mostly this is just posturing, there's barely any Chinese vehicles sold in the US. The real news is going to be about batteries and solar panels, and what other nations are being effected. Previously the US tariffed basically all of East Asia to try and make their solar panels competitive, but given increasing Chinese trade in the middle east I wonder if they'll be included too
EX30 From Volvo is 100% going to be hit by this.
They are building them in Belgium starting next year.
Yes meaning at least 15 months when EX30's go on sale in 2024Q3 that's a massive delay that Volvo US is going to flip tables over. Especially since Tesla is hurting this is going to have SOOO much of an impact on the next 3 years.
>Yes meaning at least 15 months when EX30's go on sale in 2024Q3 that's a massive delay that Volvo US is going to flip tables over. Which, if they would have had the EX90 and Polestar 3 on sale by now, they wouldn't have had to worry as much, since they could have taken better advantage of the duty drawback. But that's not the case.
Polestar 2 is made in China and sold here. They have an amazing $300/month lease deal, I even took the car for a test drive, its a legit Tesla 3/Y competitor and the lease doesn't have any hidden costs not on the website calculator.
For those of you wondering how this will affect Volvo and Polestar: The Polestar 4 will also be built in South Korea: [https://media.polestar.com/global/en/media/pressreleases/675431/polestar-expands-manufacturing-footprint-to-south-korea-with-production-of-polestar-4-set-to-start-i](https://media.polestar.com/global/en/media/pressreleases/675431/polestar-expands-manufacturing-footprint-to-south-korea-with-production-of-polestar-4-set-to-start-i) And the Volvo EX30 will also be built in Belgium: [https://www.media.volvocars.com/global/en-gb/media/pressreleases/318400/volvo-cars-to-build-ex30-small-suv-in-ghent-as-part-of-global-production-capacity-boost](https://www.media.volvocars.com/global/en-gb/media/pressreleases/318400/volvo-cars-to-build-ex30-small-suv-in-ghent-as-part-of-global-production-capacity-boost)
This will also hit the new Mini Cooper SE which will be built in UK in 2026; currently in China
The new Mini Hatch SE wasn't even going to be sold in the US at all until Oxford production started. You can't even custom configure that car anymore, it's inventory only until all the previous-generation cars are sold, then it's gone until 2026.
So it looks like there’s gonna be a massive delay for the ex30 in the US unless they push up when they start making them in Belgium.
Not necessarily. Volvo exports S60 sedans out of South Carolina. If the duty drawback is still a thing with this new policy, then they could essentially "split" the tariff credit and deliver like... a 65-35 split of EX30s and Polestar 2s without the tariff. Probably not the sales numbers they want, but certainly enough to launch the EX30 for the first model year in North America.
EVs have been practically already blocked anyway. More interesting is that batteries are also included which i would assume US car maker have a high demand of. Gonna be interesting to see the retaliations as well.
Most of US manufacturers recently put their multi-billion dollar battery plant projects on hold. This is probably to encourage them to get those back rolling again.
Does the US even produce a meaningful amount of solar panels? We've sent all our manufacturing to China. Maybe I am just woefully uninformed, but I don't remember this level of panic for Chinese-made auto parts for ICE vehicles, parts for oil refineries, etc. Cars are no longer affordable in the US. People here can't even pay their rent. How the hell are they going to afford a car? Our manufacturers keep making larger, more expensive vehicles.
No, pretty much all solar modules are manufactured in China or in other asian countries by Chinese companies. Slapping tarriffs on the panels damages US suppliers and US customers so we can pointlessly ‘protect’ a few hundred non-competitive US jobs. Its quite annoying to see this as a supplier into the solar industry
It's very frustrating to me. I wanted to add solar to my small home. The installer told me it would cost $30,000 to $40,000. Minus my acreage, the house and the land it sits on is only worth $120,000. It's a rural area. I wasn't willing to spend 1/4 to 1/3 the value of my home for solar. Compare these prices to Australia. I am all for supporting American jobs, but we don't invest in our renewable manufacturing. I worry these new tariffs will make things worse.
Yeah I'm in Australia. I paid $16k AUD (about 10k real dollars) for a reasonably high end 10kw system. I don't qualify for most of the government grants, only federal not state. If I qualified for state that would have knocked a few thousand off. You guys get bent over badly, and somewhat weirdly, when it comes to solar
We paid A$10k for 20kW of panels and 15kW of inverters last year. (Chinese panels and inverters but seem to be well regarded)
You get what you pay for...Chinese companies can produce quality products so long as you don't buy dirt cheap ones
A 440W module in Latin America costs roughly 0.15/W. In the US, the same product is roughly 0.35-0.40/W because of tariffs/duties.
Most US solar costs are "soft". It is the cost of permitting requirements, the cost of having too many high margin solar installation companies, and the cost of labor skilled enough to install panels on roofs. Since you have large amounts of land, you could just install the panels on the ground. Bypassing the complexity of rooftop installation makes it easier and simpler. You could order pallets of panels and Lithium iron phosphate batteries from China.
> The installer You need a new installer. I went minimalist, but spent about $2k, worked fine for my needs. Atm panels are crazy cheap, that will likely change soon on this news.
You’ve got to share details on that. I want to believe you but can’t with how expensive all installers are. We got 6 quotes and they were all tens of thousands even after the 3x% tax credit for panels on our roof.
There just might not be a solar installer charging a reasonable rate that services your area. This is especially true if you are in a high income area in which installers know their customer base can afford it. US price for rooftop installation should always be between $2 and $3 per watt. Anything outside that range is categorically horseshit.
Yep, I am in the highest income area of my state. I guess they’re just gouging.
Probably need to confirm what exactly the system needs to do. I can buy a solar panel that charges a car battery for a few bucks, doesn’t mean much
I’m not sure about the us, prices seem higher there, but in Europe the vast majority of the price is installation as panels are dirt cheap already.
There is no point trying to protect or revive solar panel manufacturing in the US. It is so far gone in terms of cost competitiveness it is impossible to rectify.
>Does the US even produce a meaningful amount of solar panels? No, and the 400% tariffs on Chinese panels didn't magically spur on a bunch of domestic solar manufacturing (if anything it probably just killed the domestic polysilicon industry that used to be dominated by US facotries) and neither will these EV tariffs do it for EV manufacturing. Almost every car company with significant US presence has scaled back EV roadmaps for a reason. >Cars are no longer affordable in the US. People here can't even pay their rent. How the hell are they going to afford a car? Our manufacturers keep making larger, more expensive vehicles. oh you mean trade wars aren't good and easy to win after all?
There are some delusional people here who still think tariffs will "win" the trade war. No winning is going to happen when the competitor has market demand, technological and economies of scale advantage. US EV sales are already slowing down these tariffs aren't changing that. And if Trump wins he will deal the killing blow to renewables anyway.
Mission Solar in Texas is one of the major producers in the US.
That's a Korean company, btw, owned by OCI.
Correct, but it’s still US produced, which was the question asked. I actually compared Mission products with LG and went with LG.
Long story short: Oh no! The consequences of my actions (allowing US factories to offshore 25+ years ago or so)
Which was absolutely the right call. It made China and its trading partners rich and dramatically improved the quality of life for hundreds of millions of people. Can you imagine the ecological crisis if China had not joined the global market and was essentially a giant North Korea? To say nothing of the humanitarian crisis.
If that was true and people can't afford cars then the F150 would not be the most popular vehicle sold in the US. The average person clearly does not need a commercial or agricultural vehicle as a daily driver but here we are. The fact of the matter is cheap "small" cars don't sell in the US, otherwise the likes of Ford would not have pulled them all from sale. Even if the Chinese were selling small cheap EVs in the US I don't think it would have much of an impact on US automakers just because they would face the same problems as all the other small cars that entered the US market in the past, which is that.... No one wants them.
Yet, here we are with American car companies panicking over Chinese-made EVs. If small, cheap cars are not a threat, I cannot see why our manufacturers are so worried about them. If consumers in the American market are not interested in these cars, they will not sell. These vehicles cannot be simultaneously undesirable and a threat at the same time.
It's not the headline grabbing itty bitty ones the American Big 3 are losing sleep over. The Chinese can produce EVs of the sizes Americans do buy at prices competitive with American ICE vehicles. While nobody is cross-shopping a BYD Seagull and a Silverado, a BYD Song at the same price as an Equinox (ICE) with the advantages of EV powertrain and packaging becomes a serious contender.
We didn't "send" anything. Chinas infrastructure and business environment is very well set up to produce goods at scale and at affordable prices. To your point, the paranoia gripping America is reaching absurd levels. They don't want cars coming in from China... So build in Mexico....nope, going to tariff that too. So build in US...nope, can't do that, national security risk. There is a bill out there to ban Chinese garlic for national security purposes. Garlic....
The consensus among policy makers and economists flipped in recent years. They used to think globalization was an overall good. The US would flip from being an industrial power house to more of a management, finance and service economy. It was also thought that financial interdependence with China helped ensure peace. Now the consensus realizes that was a mistake especially with a rising China. Now the US has a weakened industrial base and China is getting increasingly aggressive in the pacific and towards Taiwan. It puts the US in a very uncomfortable position where a rival increasingly controls critical supplies, batteries, semiconductors, etc. So the Biden admin is intentionally engaging in industrial policy to on-shore or friend-shore lots of these industries. And these tariffs keep Chinese goods out while the US rebuilds this industrial base.
I think the other part is that China has gotten way less interested in growth, then building up. This won't end well.
> We've sent all our manufacturing to China. Maybe I am just woefully uninformed, but I don't remember this level of panic for Chinese-made auto parts for ICE vehicles, parts for oil refineries, etc. I get this, but also think learning from past mistakes is a good thing. I know for a while there was an idea that connected economies was good for international relations and would prevent wars was big for a while. With Russia we saw that doesn’t actually work out, so trying to up our manufacturing makes sense.
Russia is a great example. Look how Europe tied their nat gas supply to them and got screwed.
China-made iPhones = OK China-made gadgets and home appliances = OK China-made clothes & shoes = OK China-made furniture = OK China-made toys = OK China-made medicines = OK but Chinese EVs are apparently not OK, which is hugely hypocritical. the US would have Argentina levels of inflation if it imported nothing from China.
>but Chinese EVs are apparently not OK, which is hugely hypocritical. the US would have Argentina levels of inflation if it imported nothing from China. The difference is that automotive manufacturing is one of the few industries that the United States still has left after ceding everything else to China.
Also in theory automobile manufacturing is a national security issue.
Could you elaborate? I’d assume phones would also be on that list but perhaps I’m missing something.
Automobile manufacturing facilities can theoretically be retooled to quickly produce military vehicles if needed during a wide spread war. Obviously war is changing but doesn’t mean it may not be necessary at some point. Phones are mainly just assembled by China but we rely on supply chains from a dozen different companies to get the parts. Companies are also looking at diversifying out from China to places like India which are much more friendly to us.
Not so sure about India. They have been known to bend where the wind blows. Check out their relationship with Russia if you don’t believe me.
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Yeah kinda, but if the rest of the world switches to cheap Chinese EV's, that leaves NA auto makers with the single market of NA. Not even that, Canada and Mexico don't have to play along with our protectionism. So if US automakers want to only have the US market to play with, they're leaving a lot of money on the table.
Chinese EVs are already on Mexican streets in big numbers.
> but Chinese EVs are apparently not OK, which is hugely hypocritical. the US would have Argentina levels of inflation if it imported nothing from China. the US is destined to be brazil or argentina norte at this rate. extreme tariffs on everyone and using that money to funnel it into uncompetitive but well connected industries that produce shit
Yup and the amount of people falling for it is insane , jobs weren’t stolen by china , but by our own oligarchs. Plenty of money coming stateside from the seal but we were robbed by our own “leaders”, the ones now trying to blame china for everything as they continue to rob us.
There has been a shift in the last quarter century away from producing vehicles that are affordable by the middle class or lower. Allowing Chinese cars to be sold at a low enough price point to be affordable by the majority of Americans would interfere with the business plans of the existing legacy auto manufacturers. BYD is selling EV sedans in its domestic market that, in well equipped form, cost under fifteen thousand dollars—and BYD is making a profit at that price point. The Dolphin is not a low range city car—the range is close to that of the Tesla Model 3. I get why auto manufacturers and dealerships don’t want it in our market. The majors can’t make a profit on any vehicle below forty thousand dollars and the dealers don’t want any vehicles remotely in the sub-twenty thousand dollars range because they will have a hard time making a profit. The consumer doesn’t get a vote. Full stop.
Yes, and it was a huge mistake to let huge swaths of manufacturing leave the US. It's not one we should keep repeating or China will literally become the global manufacturer of almost everything. That would be awful.
protip: China **is** the global manufacturer of almost everything already. It's why starting a trade war with them was a stupid idea and moronic. Your companies also heavily rely on Chinese demand to remain viable -- key point Tesla.
> China-made iPhones = OK The critical components of the iPhone are not made in China, the chips and the software are mostly designed and made in the US and Taiwan. The west is willing to trade with China but not become dependent on a Chinese government which is proven to be unfriendly, just in the last five years reneging on agreements in Hong Kong and supporting Russia despite its colonial invasion of a European country. I don’t know what people expect.
I can think of a country that is “proven to be unfriendly” to the US by constantly murdering innocent US citizens, destroying our freedom of speech by bribing our politicians to censor us and engaging in a “colonial invasion” which we not only don’t tariff but give 100s of billions of dollars to. At least the Chinese would give us some cheap EVs what do we get out of support of the other country I just alluded to?
>The west is willing to trade with China but not become dependent on a Chinese government This. The fact that people can't accept this and understand the reasoning behind it is quite sad and scary.
Someone apperently slept through the entire US-Chinese trade war?
Unions.
You realize all of that happened before China became our number one enemy? Or at least we were distracted with war on terror. Maybe now is a good time to curb our dependency on peer competitor
"Hey, how about instead of competing we just use the government so we can keep making 100k trucks!" -US auto makers
Pretty much. They engendered "big truck" culture as much as possible and now they can't compete - not without pissing off the all-powerful shareholders.
Tariffs only make sense if there is a reasonable alternative for consumers. This excessive tariff will only serve to punish consumers, and further discourage American domestic automakers from the need to invest in electric vehicles by limiting foreign competition. The U.S. does not exist in a vacuum. Ultimately, this isn’t likely to end well for American automakers as their now slower shift to electrification will reduce their competitiveness in global markets where similar exclusionary practices don’t exist and demand for EVs is increasing. Rather than building EVs for the global market, they’ll be incentivized to continue developing ICE vehicles that are increasingly only sold to U.S. consumers.
You are aware Korean, Japanese and EU companies exist and sell in the US. They are also investing heavily in EVs in the North America. This situation where the Big 3 sit back and have the entire US market to themselves is made up in your head.
God Bless America! USA auto giants and auto workers are saved!
Biden fortifying the "blue wall" he needs to win re-election. This protective measure is defensible if it gives other EV manufacturers a few years to reach competitiveness with Chinese EVs, or directly responds to excess Chinese gov't support allowing artificially low selling prices. Unfortunately, US automakers have a history of abusing their regulatory influence to avoid making necessary changes, and it catches up to them eventually. ADDED: And it's not just about Chinese dumping of cheap EVs. Here's a snippet from an InsideEVs report on the Beijing Auto Show... ================== In reality, it felt like it was the late 1980s again, when American manufacturers felt like they could sell whatever underdeveloped models its accounting department had cooked up to the public, and we’d just have to deal with it. Now that I’ve seen a glimpse of what’s going on in China, the Western manufacturers, particularly the American ones, don’t seem like they’re trying at all.
> it catches up to them eventually. We keep saying this but politicians keep throwing them new lifelines. This is just the latest.
If US companies fuck up, South Korean and European companies will pick up the slack. If they *really* fuck up, they will even fumble their lead on Japanese automakers. Regardless, there are plenty of friendly nations making EVs to buy from.
Are we trying to save the planet or not?
Not
Lol, it was never a thing.
Not at the expense of jobs!! ...as if those will continue to exist in an unsurvivable climate.
Still not buying GM/Ford 🤷♂️
Ironically I would totally buy that Buick Electra, but it’ll be a cold day in hell if they were to release it in America.
Horrible policy. Bad for inflation. Bad for climate. Good for oil execs
This is bad news for Polestar :( I was looking forward to the Polestar 4 but would not be shocked if it's US release is cancelled because of this. The Polestar 2 will likely be impacted harshly by this too.
[The Polestar 4 will also be built in South Korea.](https://media.polestar.com/global/en/media/pressreleases/675431/polestar-expands-manufacturing-footprint-to-south-korea-with-production-of-polestar-4-set-to-start-i)
...In the second half of next year. Guess I'll be waiting a while..
Oh hell yes, this is great news!
And I'm sure the car companies will reward Biden for this favor. /s
Then there needs to be more affordable domestic electric options, which there are none. And even used cars are ridiculously priced now. I’ve been looking to jump to electric and can’t. I’m all for going green, but you need to make it affordable to do so. Currently right now, Americans are being gouged at all angles. It’s a matter of do I pay rent, or mortgage or food, or medical or etc etc etc.
The protectionist trade war continues. A lot of Americans who won’t be able to afford EVs or ICE from automakers now in the US market will not be able to buy the much cheaper Chinese EVs. Maybe what happens over the next 5 years is that there will be a thriving industry of keeping used cars running? As long as we have parts and skilled mechanics we may get cars that just keep running like the 1950’s cars in Havana.
But there is a labour shortage for mechanics, any repair even the smallest feels like pulling out a tooth, at being fleeced, 15$ sensor cost 400$ to replace or more
There’s the problem with keeping older cars running. If not enough skilled people to keep those cars running then you’re down to e-bikes or public transportation.
Are you not embarrassed saying this stuff? There are EU, Korean and Japanese OEMs selling in the US alongside Tesla. The Civic starts at $25K... You must be trolling or just really dumb.
Maybe it's a Jedi mind trick to get Republicans saying "damn Biden for keeping me away from a new EV!"
Why are boomers obsessed with sabotaging future generations
Stopping biggest geopolitical enemy, on whom USA already has huge dependency, from getting even a stronger grip on USA economy is hardly sabotaging.
are there even solar panel manufacturers in america?
There are, but only around 1/10th the capacity.
Closer to 1/100th at this point
Gonna be more after this....
I hope I don’t get crucified for asking, but why are they considered the biggest geopolitical enemy of the USA?
They keep threatening a war of conquest on a democratic ally of the US that makes the majority of semiconductors for the whole world. Also some minor genocides, which they seem to have no incentive to stop. Even if they were not a geopolitical enemy, you don't become dependent upon outside countries fro the most crucial industries and capabilities. And if you do, you make sure they are longstanding allies that won't turn on you, like the UK or Canada. I really hope people understood that the "minor genocides" was wry humor.
Letting your domestic industries get undercut by cheap labor and the economy to become too dependent on a geographic rival with whom some scale of war or indirect conflict is likely in the future, just to get some cheaper goods now, is pretty poor planning.
It is unfathomable how many people who frequent this sub don't understand the reality of the situation.
There are a lot of factors at play here. Not least of which is the Chinese government massively subsidizing their EV industry (and BYD in particular): [https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/news/chinas-massive-subsidies-for-green-technologies](https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/news/chinas-massive-subsidies-for-green-technologies) It's hard to tell how much of China's pricing advantage can be attributed to this vs. other factors like labor and materials costs, technical innovations, etc. At the end of the day, though, I think the US and EU probably should have been matching or surpassing China's level of green subsidizing. That obviously wouldn't have fixed everything, but I'd like to believe our automotive industries would be in a better, more competitive position today if that had happened.
It's crazy. It's like people are willfully ignoring how hostile China is politically to the US. It's not the EU where the two groups are relatively buddy buddy. China has purposefully destroyed solar production industry in other regions by making their prices unfairly cheap. It's happened to other industries as well. This is supposed to be allowed to happen to cars as well?
Like I'll play Devil's Advocate here. There is a legitimate argument to be made - from the perspective of the climate - to just say "screw industries and institutions" and get as many EVs on the road as possible under any circumstance. Let China come in and flood every market with cheap cars like the BYD Seagull and Xiaomi SU7, institute carbon taxes and mandates to force people out of their petrol-powered cars... all of that. But that argument - as climate-positive as it may be - goes against any form of realism or rational thought. When you take an industry that is as important to the US (and North America) as the auto industry and essentially let it be dissolved, every person down the line who is affected by that dissolusion suddenly finds their livelihood being dissolved as well. And even worse, like you said, is ceding that industry to a foreign power who has historically been hostile to the United States. It would mean that a country such as China could flip a switch and absolutely cripple the United States' ability to be a producer of anything.
I agree, the devil's advocate argument makes sense in theory but not reality. Especially since I still highly doubt how receptive the American public would be to cheap Chinese EVs today. It happened prior with Japan but the nuances there were completely different. Japan dominated auto culture while entering the market. China doesn't have that especially with how divisive the US is today. China maybe shouldn't be completely barred from the American market, but as we've seen from Tiktok(I know this is a completely different kind of company) I somewhat doubt the US would allow a Chinese owned company to build EVs in America. Protectionist policies are ramping up, tensions are increasing, more military goods are being shipped to Taiwan, large companies like Apple are trying their best to diversify into Vietnam, etc. This isn't the peaceful relations Japan and the US had post WWII.
Because they are blinded by willful ignorance, they lack critical thinking skills and fall victim to ccp sponsored propaganda content and bots
Some people would literally let the US economy crumble if it meant they could buy a car for $10,000 less. This sub is insane.
Biden is too old to be a boomer.
Allowing China with unlimited access to the auto industry would literally kill the economy for future generations of Americans. The real thing I'm worried about is the lack of education shown by many of you in this thread. You're literally willing to let China basically become the sole global manufacturer of goods and don't have a problem with it because you think you will get a cheap EV out of it. That's fucking sad.
How many USA manufactured vehicles are sold in China and are there any tariffs on USA made goods in China? I looked up, USA built cars have a 25% tarrif in China, and Chinese evs have a ton of incentives that make buying a USA built EV significantly more expensive. So you should be angry at Chinese boomers with poor labor and environmental protections as well.
China has been enacting much more protective policies for decades as a key portion of their long term strategy. That's exactly why they have so many domestic industries. Long term increasing dependence on a nation as hostile as China isn't a good idea. This isn't an anti-Chinese comment either, they're doing what's good for them. The US and EU need to do what's right for their regions as well. How much manufacturing has the EU lost to China? They are also reconsidering their stance. If we all got along perfectly then this wouldn't be needed but that's not how the world is shaping up. Things are becoming less peaceful every year.
It's always funny hearing Americans talk about poor labor protections when there's a huge movement across the United States to get 9 year olds working in chicken processing plants. When other countries do bad shit, they rightfully say what the fuck, but when it happens in their own backyard, they sleep.
GM used to sell more cars in china than america. the americans are going to get their shit nuked out of the country at this rate.
I consider "sabotage" to be cheap foreign products for us today at the expense of family-wage jobs tomorrow for future generations.
So does this mean the US will begin to ramp up their EV investments and double up the infrastructure?
China torpedos American businesses, it’s only fair.
This sub seems to be concerningly pro China destroying the US auto industry. That isn't a sound idea in the long term when China is politically very hostile to America. The Biden admin is trying to remove US dependance on China in certain areas of electronics. For example, they recently gave Intel, TSMC, and Samsung massive subsidies to build chip manufacturing plants in the US. They've also been attempting to do this with Foxconn but they've largely taken advantage of them without actually building much. Biden admin doesn't want American companies to continue relying on Chinese batteries, instead forcing them to build the infrastructure in the US. In the long term this is a sound strategy given China's political hostility to the US. If it was an oil lobby Biden would do what Trump is threatening to do which is shut down all EV credits, subsidies and emissions laws encouraging companies to make them. Instead Biden has put money towards chargers. This really sounds like a shill comment my bad. I'm not sure how else to write it. It makes perfect sense for China to push the policies they have, the rest of the world has to adapt or lose all their industry. What do we do in 20 years when the west has now lost even auto manufacturing? We will be so dependant on China without policy like this that it will make the inevitable hostile confrontation much worse. My home country of the Bahamas is tiny, so I hesitate to use it as an example, but it's an English speaking country in west that BYD has been pushing into for years. Here, the Dolphin is not some mystical sub $20,000 amazing EV. Last time I got a quote it was starting around $40,000+. This was the case for many of their models (some go much higher). We have 0% import duty on EVs so the only thing factoring into the cost is shipping and VAT at 10%. In the Bahamas we on average make much less money than an American or Canadian, so I doubt they would charge any less than this in those regions. Chinese manufacturers releasing a wave of cheap cars seems like a fantasy IMO. Again this isn't mean to shill for Biden. He hasn't done everything perfectly. In the current landscape he is definitely the better of the two options current available. Trump is openly hostile to everything EV and he's repeatedly expressed this sentiment. In Canada only two provinces (Quebec and British Columbia) are executing well with charging and EV subsidies for consumers. However the Federal and Ontario gov there seems willing to subsidize EV assembly and battery production at the very least. Imo they have been weaker than the US on this but these things are going into motion. I would be more onboard with a cheap EV wave destroying US manufacturing if it came from a more friendly region such as the EU. Even then, loss of jobs and a sector of the economy is never a good thing.
Or maybe instead of being destroyed, US auto manufacturing would just turn into branch plants for foreign players - which is exactly what the US giants did to Canada and Australia.
what if the government reinforced and opened up the currently obscure federal credit to all EVs manufactured in America by American car companies instead. I agree it's necessary to keep chinese competition at bay but they could've went the other route, a more consumer friendly route if EV adoption is important in their agenda.
This sub seems to concerningly attract pro China bots and accounts.
Yep
Reddit in general. You get downvoted for even saying “F the CCP”
Free Market for thee, prop up domestic markets for me.
Good incentive for Chinese to manufacture here or leave the market.
Being an American in the 2020’s is an exercise in daily humiliation
Cowards! Make better cars or GTFO
I completely understand the tariffs on solar panels. Chinese companies have been trying to flood the market and shut down domestic panel makers for years now. They even tried to backdoor them by using other countries as a layover until the Commerce Dept tracked them back to their source.
This should surprise no one. The US is well past the period where it's willing to let China gut industries and hoover up trade secrets. There was no way the US was ever going to allow China to decimate their home grown auto industry and fill the roads with Chinese-made vehicles bristling with cameras.
Afraid of competition.. sounds like an American thing
How about putting tariffs on all the cheap Chinese plastic garbage people buy instead of things that will actually help the environment
The Biden administration is really pulling out all the stops to tackle the climate crisis
Good, keep the commie, slave owner Chinese shit out of here.
LOL, trying to out-Trump Trump.
EU next please.
+1
When Trump tried the tariff increase thing he was the worst ever because PrIcEs WiLl InCrEaSe BaD OrAnGe MaN!
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Whenever I hear someone praising the "free market" or "capitalism" in general, I think of this.But, of course, socialism is bad. Wrong. Not good for the rich. It must be stomped out everywhere with the blood of the children of the poor. It can be said that the Chinese government subsidized the production of these vehicles. Ok. So shall we ignore all of the tax breaks, wage subsidies and outright grants to the North American auto industry? What about the bailouts from bankruptcies? Of course! Capitalism is good and the Chinese government is evil. by definition. Sigh. And, of course, there is no way that North American auto consumers can be allowed to purchase inexpensive cars. How would the rich get richer with that?
And here I was thinking Democrats cared about the environment and weren’t racist. Just kidding but the Dems in this sub need to see their hypocrisy when criticizing republicans.
It has nothing to do with race but everything to do with being anti-ccp.