this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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[Dormant] Electric Vehicles
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And these Chinese vehicle prices are artificially deflated.
I don't really follow this line of logic. You state that companies here are artificially inflating their prices but then state that you'll buy a foreign brand electric, which is going to be one of the exact same companies that you accuse of inflating prices. There are only a handful of US car makers, GM, Ford, and Tesla, and only 1 of those 3 put out EVs in any meaningful quantity.
What is it you're not understanding? Honest question, no sarcasm. I'm stating I won't buy a US vehicle, and my next will most likely be a foreign electric. Did I state something false because US manufacturers aren't meeting a threshold of electric vehicles produced? Market is shifting to electric, which means even if they aren't now, they'll probably lean into electric in the coming years. Again though, no relation to either of the statements I made.
Because all those foreign manufacturers are already selling their vehicles here and for comparable prices to the tiny share of remaining US companies that still exist (GM, Ford, Tesla). If you think these high prices are just US companies being greedy, then how do you explain VW, Hyundai, Kia, Toyota, etc selling their cars for the same price?
In reality it's all about the battery manufacture. It's the most expensive component and BYD is vertically integrated (they even mine their own lithium, they are a huge battery manufacturer in their own right and sell cells to other companies to make cars) and has done extensive research on making it cheap with their BYD blade. Nobody can afford to compete with them, but it's not because they're getting subsidies. It's because they're a company that's built completely different when you compare it to buying batteries from third parties.
The cry foul that people make is no company would've survived in building that sort of initial vertical integration without the government propping them up. That's right, but I don't see the US trying to develop an industry that even compares.
This is obviously false as Tesla has their own battery factories and still can't sell that cheap, Korea has Samsung and LG manufacturing batteries on a comparable scale and Hyundai/Kia can't sell that cheap, Japan has (partnered with Tesla) Panasonic and can't sell that cheap. China is heavily subsidizing these vehicles. You can't sell an equivalent car for less than half the competition, tens of thousands of dollars cheaper, just because you happen to be vertically integrated in manufacturing a big part of the car.
like how the cost of gas is artificially deflated in the USA ?
Yes.
From your tone, it sounds like you think that's a bad thing, yet it also seems like you're arguing for more of the same from China.
The major difference is China is subsidizing green technologies that are good for curbing climate change and the USA is subsidizing harmful shit that's killing us all
Give me a break. China has some of the most lax environmental regulations on the planet which is why all the nastiest shit on the planet is produced there. To pretend like they're some bastion of environmental protection is laughable.
Yes, they are subsidizing green technology but this isn't for the benefit of the people, it's for the benefit of the government as they want the rest of the world to be reliant on them alone. About a decade ago they did this same exact thing with photovoltaics and put a ton of solar manufacturers out of business because nobody could compete with a pocketbook the size of the Chinese government's.
In China, abandoned EVs are piling up all over the place. Can you point out what about this is good for the environment when EVs only begin to offset the pollution created from their production after they've been driven around for a few years?
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-china-ev-graveyards/
https://ccpi.org/ranking/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita
Does your gut have any published studies?
They're also building 95% of the world's new coal plants: https://www.carbonbrief.org/china-responsible-for-95-of-new-coal-power-construction-in-2023-report-says/
New coal construction has basically stopped everywhere else, including the US.
"Per capita" is also doing some heavy lifting. Nature doesn't care about per capita. It cares about overall output, and China's is enormous. They'd need to produce over four times less co2 on a per capita basis to be equivalent to US output. They're closer to two times.
Per capita is the only rational way to make comparisons between countries. China is also still largely a manufacturing economy rather than a service economy, and nevertheless it's outperforming Canada and the USA.
Being patriotic sometimes means demanding more from your country not just pretending you're better against the facts.
China's climate action is far more effective, and there are myriad non-partisan organizations ranking it higher than the US and Canada. We're not taking their word for it, it's independently verified.
But sure, start from the conclusion that CHINA BAD and pretend USA is rosy, that'll bring some comfort as we continue to build long-term fossil fuel infrastructure and ship LNG overseas for the next few decades.
Continuing to build coal plants in 2024 isn't just "pretending you're better".
Liquid natural gas production in the US and Canada is rapidly increasing, and although the carbon emissions of burning it are lower than that of coal, methane leakage in the extraction and supply process is a huge problem. Methane is 40x worse as a greenhouse gas compared to carbon dioxide.
The only methane leakage numbers that are reported are opt in and self reported. As little as single digit % losses put the environmental impact of natural gas at higher than coal. The self reported numbers are very close to this figure. Many places aren't reporting. Detecting leakage is a very hard problem requiring very expensive equipment all over the supply chain.
In addition, we're building special infrastructure in the form of pipelines, refineries, special cargo ships, and special ports to ship LNG overseas. We're calling it a "bridge fuel" while renewables catch up, but these are decades long projects that are in progress.
Both could be doing better, but China is putting their innovation and money into solar and EVs, and we're putting ours into different fossil fuels.
Give up your blind nationalism and do some research.
I can accept that the US is doing bad things. Can you accept that China is doing bad things?
My thesis is that China is doing better. 50th in the world compared to 60th isn't a celebration of their success.
China scores extra points because they make literally everything we all consume.
Can you concern yourself with how to do more instead of whataboutism?
We should celebrate China subsidizing BYD and solar technology
Here: a fun way for you to learn more https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw?si=I0_Q7qsW19H0Xg52
Maybe you'll trust an American academic's comedy climate channel over me.
Deflated thanks to the buying power of the US dollar. That's just more US economic policy rebounding on itself.
Domestic automakers are running enormous administrative overhead, thanks to their focus on stock buybacks and investment in kitsch features like AI. That, plus the high cost of computer chips created by the AI/Metaverse/Crypto bubble which is, itself, feeding into buybacks and other corporate accounting tricks to boost executive and board compensation.
Chinese firms don't have that baggage. So they don't need to put enormous markups on their vehicles. The real cost to produce for a new car (especially a small one) is fairly low and you can still turn a big profit on volume if you can outcompete American automakers on price.
Thanks to decades of consolidation. But those car makers have millions of workers spread across dozens of factories. They command hundreds of billions of dollars in domestic capital. Its not like these are three smol beans fighting the Big Scary BYD. These are three of the wealthiest and most profitable businesses to ever exist on the planet.
And they can't compete.
Deflated because China is subsidizing these vehicles directly as they're state owned companies. What are you even talking about with the buying power of the US dollar?
Really? Let's see some names and numbers. How much did Hyundai invest in the Metaverse and crypto. How much have they spent on stock buybacks? What about Toyota, VW, BMW, GM, Tesla, Honda, and MINI. What percentage of their overhead accounts for these investments exactly? This reads like incoherent ramblings of all the things you don't like in the world but focused at car companies.
So what's the exact cost to produce a new car?
Uh, what? Are you referring to the decades of 1900-1910? GM has owned their subsidiary brands for over 100 years along with Ford and Tesla is a relatively new company. What consolidation?
And China commands hundreds of trillions of dollars, which is who automakers are really competing against.
Three of the wealthiest and most profitable businesses to ever exist on the planet? This is legitimately hilarious and so false. GM was bankrupt 15 years ago. Ford has had to survive on government loans which it wasn't able to pay back until recently and both have a market cap of ~$50B. Tesla is an outlier as they're valued extremely high for their financial situation and what they've produced thus far and most people agree that they're a bubble waiting to burst. By what metric are they the most profitable and wealthiest?
Also, aside from all this ignorance, what's your justification for the bulk of the US auto market, made up of foreign companies, selling their cars for the same prices as these three domestic companies?
What do you think those $7k US tax credits for new EVs constitute?
A subsidy that applies to everyone in the market, not just the "home team." That's the difference between subsidies to entice consumers to buy EVs and subsidies to put your competitors out of business to the detriment of everyone but you.