Not quite. The UK govt has a rolling target of how many EVs are sold as a proportion of all vehicles. The manufacturers get "fined" £15k per ICE car sold over the target. The targets are ramping up rapidly - 22% in 2024, 28% in 2025, 33% in 2026, etc, reaching 80% (AFIAK, keeps changing) in 2030. There's various trading mechanisms in place and what not so it's a bit more complicated than this.
So it's far better to sell EV below cost (Chinese or not) to get more sold than have to a pay £15k for an ICE car.
The Chinese manufacturers are arguably at double advantage here as they have more BEV to sell so it's far easier for them meet the targets, and they can 'sell' the excess to the Western manufacturers (and further subsidise their EVs!).
I'm not personally against it, I got a brand new EV on a lease recently for close to free after all the tax advantages, and it's not like the Western manufacturers didn't have time to prepare...?
The goal is to migrate everyone to EVs, and it sounds like the government incentive mechanism is working, albeit in a roundabout way.
The problem is that there is not enough infrastructure for EVs. If you can't charge at home (e.g. you live in a flat), it is hard to live with an EV and it's much more expensive than the ICE.
I had a rental EV while I was there for 6 weeks last summer, it was a pretty low spec jeep model and I stayed at mates places all over England none of which had parking or charging, to tell the truth charging was a bit spotty in town, but if I was just going around the local area the battery was good for a week or more. My take away was I would definitely rent an EV again, but a lot of the older charging infrastructure still sucks, under-provisioned at peak times, and cost 2-3 times what a similar charge would cost here in NZ. I ended up doing most of my charging at the Tesla superchargers on the motorways and at supermarkets in town. I did 2900 miles total and it was about the same cost as petrol in the end, but worth it as the EV was cheaper to rent and was automatic (which renters charge a premium in UK)
Not sure fast charging all the time is good for battery life though. 99% of my driving in NZ is on a normal 10A overnight charge
Local government can quickly change that, if they get their act together. Here in the Hague, there's literally thousands of public chargers available on the city's residential streets. Coupled with the fact that the charging-price is city-mandated at a fixed rate (currently around 35ct/kwh), this gives a perfectly fine solution for most people. (I can charge at home, for 20ct/kwh currently, so that's even nicer)
Not in the UK. Local governments (councils) are going bankrupt and are saddled with an overwhelming burden to pay for adult and child social care. There's no money for much else
35ct/kwh is highway robbery.
Not sure what country you're from but in France it's not rare to see 0.30-0.60€ per kWh and even requiring a subscription on top of that.
What is actually the realistic cost. Covering infra, the charger and the maintenance of everything involved. Power and transfer included, with transfer including any standing charges. And after that you probably want decent margin to well run the business.
I don't expect 10 thousands of the fast chargers in my town.
I'd love to have slow chargers built into the street lights. Not everyone owns a house, and the public charging usually meets or exceeds the petrol price per mile.
If you're referring to DC charging it's going to be pretty expensive. The construction and power electronics for a DC station is going to be in the millions.
For AC the rectifier is inside the car and the L2 chargers is just a fancy plug. Price should just be the base electricity cost.
would be nice if california had such discounted prices... :)
Jesus, I had no idea California was that bad. How is that even possible? Our rate is 15c/kwh.
> How is that even possible?
It's PG&E for the most part, and their huge liability payout for burning a city to the ground due to skipping maintenance on their distribution lines.
Some places in California have prices closer to the US average.
And not enough share on the people who built on a tinderbox which historically regularly (every few years) had fires go through.
I'm in CA and only charge at home, and pay 14c/kwh.
palo alto and santa clara don't count. They have well-run power companies, not pushing regulatory capture.
It’s getting better.
https://transportandenergy.com/2026/04/16/42-of-councils-to-...
Governments would do better to try to fix the bureaucracy around installing L2 chargers in shared living spaces. It's a problem they created and it should be on them to fix. But it guess that's harder than impossible mandates and high EV taxes.
You can't fill up your gas tank at home or at work, which is presumably where a significant portion of EV drivers charge their cars.
There are many, many homes in the UK with no garaging, where cars are parked in non-reserved spaces on the street overnight.
If a significant percentage of cars start to become EVs then spaces where people regularly park overnight will get chargers because it will allow whoever is operating them to make a bit of money selling electricity. You don't have to be making a huge profit margin to make it worth your while to have people passively buying ~200kWh/month of electricity from you.
The same applies to workplaces, especially if solar causes electricity to cost less during daylight hours, and then it becomes convenient to get an EV if there is a charger where you park at night or where you park during the day.
that would depend on the infrastucture cost to install such charging and to maintain it? This is kerbside slow charging presumably overnight. Note that spaces in these residental areas are typically not even marked spaces; the worst outcome might be losing more footpath space to charging infra for road users.
> would depend on the infrastucture cost to install such charging and to maintain it?
The UK runs on 240V. A regular outlet would probably be fine.
Non-fast chargers aren't very big. They can be installed in lampposts, or in lampost-diameter boxes sunk into the pavement (with the socket sticking out at the top)
Lampposts or even curbstone: https://www.rheinmetall.com/en/products/charging-infrastruct...
Yeah, or these ones https://trojan.energy/
About 65% of homes are owned (either outright or via mortgage), but I can't estimate how many of them have garage or off street/driveway parking they can charge their car on.
There's usually very little of the garage space available.
And this is how the typical street looks like: no way to charge at home: https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2X6K1R4/typical-english-terraced-h...
In the UK? Nah.
Electricity is expensive in the UK (~25p/kWh) But not gas car expensive. It is £1.57/L (£5.94/gallon).
The EV infrastructure is also pretty dang far along, especially compared to the US. Remember that everything in the UK is a lot smaller and closer together than it is in the US. Further, the UK has a functional train system for long distance travel. You can go from the top of Dunnet Head to Lizard Point in a 15 hour drive.
People downvoting me, Look up chargers in plugshare to see just how many there are in the UK, it's a lot. And also correct my math if it's wrong. An 80kWh car costs £20 to fill up. A 55L car, which has about the same range, costs £85 to fill up.
Also if you are able to charge at home you can subscribe to a smart tariff that gives you electricity for 4p/kWh overnight. That’s £3.20 to fill an 80kWh battery that on a modern car will take you up to 320 miles.
"Functional train system" is not how anyone would describe the UK. It's cheaper to fly than take the train.
Cost to fill up doesnt matter, only the cost per mile.
> It's cheaper to fly than take the train.
It can be, depends on a lot of factors. Obviously flying ryanair will often be the cheapest way to go, but if you do any sort of other regular airline trains will quickly start to win out.
And it's not as if you can fly everywhere in england. As soon as you start looking at more oddball flights (for example, london to birmingham) ryanair goes away as an option and all the flights end up super expensive.
Trains, on the other hand, remain cheap for pretty much the entire nation. You can basically go anywhere by train for under £60. A lot cheaper if you book in advance.
~1.5 billion train journeys a year is “functional”.
It's cheaper to purchase new bike/used car, tax and insure it, service and fuel, than to use train to ride to work.
Annual train ticket form my small town (25 miles from the Zone 1 of London) is over £5,500. Five GRAND. For the pleasure of standing every time and a much higher risk of getting mugged.
£15k will give you REALLY nice bike or pretty new car. After third year you're saving thousands. Of course if you decided to buy something old and used, you're saving from the second quarter of the first year on.
It's only functional because not everyone can afford another car to work.
That is because of the cost structure of trains vs planes. Trains require a huge amount of infrastructure, and have higher labour costs because they are slower (so the same journey means people work for longer).
Trains are barely staffed, I can't believe it's a significant cost.
Staff per passenger hour has got to be far higher in the airline industry.
£3.20/320 miles = 1p/mile
Typical ev car is .25kwh/m and at 25p/kwh it should be closer to 6p/m. Quite a bit more than 1p/m.
The problem isn't infrastructure. Its the amount of Li in reserve.
that is absolutely not the problem. We have more than enough li, subject to cost of extraction. New chemistries dont even need it. you need to update your talking points.
There already are in production cars with Na-ion batteries.
Another problem is that fuel taxes are a reasonably equitable means of paying for the roads, and EVs don't have that -- the closest would be vehicle miles * weight or some such.
Equivalents of fuel taxes for EVs have been announced recently - charging directly on a per mile basis.
> The rate of tax will be 3 pence per mile for fully electric cars; this is around half of the 6 pence per mile the average petrol or diesel driver pays in fuel duty.
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/consultation-on-...
In my state they decided to tax EVs punitively through our annual registration fee. I already pay an additional $200 for my EV registration, which is $50 more than the average ICE driver pays is gas taxes. I drive considerably less than the average TN driver. Next year it will be $274.
Fuel taxes don't seem to take into account the quartic scaling of damage by vehicle weight on pavement.
Well, if they did then EVs would pay more, since they are much heavier., because of, you know, the batteries.
At least in the US, EVs are not heavier than the average driver's vehicle, though they are heavier than other vehicles in their class. And practically all consumer vehicles are nothing compared to semi trucks.
Like for like, about 10% heavier. For now, at least. Few more years and they will be lighter on average.
Bollocks - all generalizations are false.
My Model 3 (RWD SR+ 2023) is 1847kg unloaded weight, including driver.
And that will never change?
> The goal is to migrate everyone to EVs
This won't happen unless they outright ban non-EV vehicles which is unlikely considering how many people are still using old cars and cannot afford new cars, how many car enthusiasts are there, and not to mention potential lobbying from big oil.
So 20 years from now, all the old gas regular people cars have aged out. You’re left with what, 1 or 2% of enthusiasts cars? Seems like success to me, and fairly inevitable
There will undoubtedly be a death spiral of sorts when it comes to gas stations, refineries, etc. where they become fewer and farther between as less people buy fuel. And that makes it more expensive and inconvenient, so more people buy EVs, which in turn...
Death spiral to gas stations? why? EV cars need to charge somewhere (and on long trip it can’t be at home) and people need to take a break and grab a coffee sometime too. They will change, sure, but certainly not die. Refineries will be fewer but we do need another products from them also.
Presumably a lot of people will charge at home which significantly cuts down the number of stations needed or the traffic to those stations.
For example, I have 2 gas stations within a mile of my home. They stay pretty busy because people around me constantly need to fill up. I, on the other hand, basically never visit either of those stations since I switched to an EV. I charge at home.
If everyone around me switched to EVs, those stations could not stay in business. There's a grocery store in the same area which makes anything those stations offer obsolete.
Those are the majority of gas stations that die with a mass switch over to EVs. There's a gas station for my hometown without an attached convenience store with 300 people there. There's no way that station stays in service if a significant portion of the community switches to EVs. It already struggles to be profitable as is (I know the owner).
That might be the case in places where most people live in single-family homes with dedicated garage.
Where I live (Spain) that's not the case at all - our towns are very dense. People in big cities tend to live mostly in flats (Europe's highest elevators-per-capita). Even people in the countryside, where it's more common to have a 1-family homes, often don't have a dedicated garage.
Chargers can be anywhere. They are at grocery stores, parking lots, restaurants, I can see the need for a dedicated re fuel station to disappear when charging is ubiquitous.
This is what people don’t get. Charging just means parking. The idea of dedicated charging stations where you stand around doing nothing, maybe buying a candy bar, really only make sense in the context of a fuel which is not literally already everywhere.
I've seen this on the Autobahns: what were just parking spots with unattended bathrooms are becoming little charging stations. Since I don't have an EV yet, I've not stopped at one to see how high-speed the chargers are, but at the very least, I assume that 10-15 minutes would be enough to get you somewhere more efficient/pleasant to wait for a full charge.
A place where you can take a break and grab a coffee is called a cafe, not a gas station.
Also, with Chinese manufacturers increasingly pushing out batteries capable of 1000+ km, you'll be able to charge fully at home for increasingly long road trips.
I'm using the definitions:
- Gas Station = retail outlet that sells and dispenses gasoline and other petroleum-based fuel products
- Charging station = place to charge your EV
Could be an interesting long bet. Will the number of retail locations selling gasoline in the UK in the year 2045 be higher or lower than in 2026?
In 2045 petrol stations will be well on the way the being about as rare as places selling paraffin or special racing car fuel today.
I don't see how this is an interesting bet. No new petrol car will have been sold for 10 years. Places selling fuel for large lorries etc will last a bit longer, but these are already a fraction of the total.
Charging stations will only need to be on highways if cities are sensible and build slow charging infrastructure (aka normal wall sockets) in parking spaces. Urban gas stations will be a thing of the past.
Is AVgas in a death spiral? It's survived as a niche product for a long time.
Does anyone have reliable data on the number locations selling avgas in say, the U.S. compared to the number of locations selling automobile grade gasoline?
To what extent is avgas effectively subsidized by the existence of gas cars?
This has already happened in Norway, where 96% of new cars sold are EVs. They didn’t ban combustion but they did support adoption with subsidies and other incentives
New EVs become used EVs that poorer people can afford.
Poor people don't buy new cars. New EVs being expensive is not a poor person problem.
The problem is a 50kWh battery in a car is worth more as a battery than a typical £1500 car.
The lowest end of the market won’t have electric cars unless the batteries are shagged (early Leafs)
And given how insanely cheap petrol is (15p a mile, so £450 for a low mileage runaround) the savings even if electric was free and they weren’t introducing a 3p/mile charge isn’t there.
A £1500 car is £1500 because it's expected you'll need to replace the engine or transmission pretty soon. That can be up to a £4000 job (£2500 on the low end).
And, as it turns out, a brand new 50kWh battery costs around £4000 to manufacture. Used will be cheaper.
With most modern ICE cars everything but the transmission and the engine will fail before those two go out. Also: I don't think that's the usual case. Plenty of sub 2k cars that will happily keep driving for years (I've had 3 such cars). ~700 mark is where you start seeing 300k mile "finish-them-off"-type cars.
Plenty of EVs will drive for years as well (so long as they have a good thermal system for the battery). So I'm not sure what point is being made.
Saying "It costs a lot of money to replace the battery" doesn't mean much as the battery, even if it has 70% of it's original capacity, is still perfectly functional. Very much the same as the engine which also costs a lot of money to replace.
I just thought the parent comment was unfair to ICE cars to make the EV proposition sound better. I'm a fan of EVs but they are still more expensive to buy. That said, very cheap ICE cars have a sweet spot where any damage to engine / transmission / clutch+flywheel often means replacing the entire car since the repair cost exceeds the market value of the car.
I heard plenty of horror stories involving modern cars and their transmissions and engines.
That, for one - also: people constantly are overconfident in their ability to judge the status of really anything in a ICE car.
Newsflash: you simply cannot "readout" the status of an engine, transmission, ...
But you can/could/should for a battery.
Now, someone hammer that into peoples brains...
I spent £1100 on a car 4 years ago and have spent half that keeping it going through mots
>A £1500 car is £1500 because it's expected you'll need to replace the engine or transmission pretty soon.
Really not true at all. Care to share your sources for this claim? Anecdotally, I've (plus friend and family) owned plenty of beater cars in that ballpark price, and none had failures needing to replace engine or transmission. Most of their faults came in the electronics (sensors, actuators, fuse box, wire harness) plus suspension, body rust, etc basically the same parts EVs also have.
Meanwhile, if you look up 'EV clinic' postings online, you'll see they find plenty of design failures with European and Korean EVs that are basically ticking timebombs(sometimes literally, hello Stellantis) where electric motors, inverters or battery packs are guarantee to fail in a short timeframe due to various design faults that were entirely preventable. Most common faults with poor EV designs I saw, seem to be the seal of the electric motor stator cooling which fails quickly leading coolant to flood the motor rotor killing it, needing a rebuild.
From what I gather from their analysis', the crux of this issue seems to be that some modern EVs, especially those less premium ones, are cost cut to the extreme in a race to the bottom to maintain shareholder value, both at manufacturing but also at design phase, leading to cut corners everywhere and such issues being a common occurrence and manifesting en-masse after their warranty runs out. From their analysis, IIRC Tesla's powertrains seem to be some of the most reliable and well designed, with the likes of Audi, VW, BMW, Mercedes being less so and Stellantis being trash tier.
Meanwhile, plenty of older ICEs are largely immune form such massive reliability faults, because they benefited from decades of industrial design and development experience done in a past era where race to the bottom cost cutting and planned obsolescence weren't yet a thing. So I wouldn't be surprised when an older 1500$ ICE car will last longer than a 1500$ EV.
Battery prices are still falling though, it's just demand is enormous. But I works fully expect China to start having "compatible replacement packs" being built once the volume is there to support it.
A logical future market is battery-refurbished EVs, just a question of where the crossover point is.
"Gas" prices are hiking up here - its about £1.90 per litre of diesel at the moment and petrol isn't much less.
In contrast, my cheaper 'leccy rate is now about 25% less at 5.2p per kWh than it was. Electricity is weird in the UK - its pinned to the price of gas and is currently (lol) rather expensive "on peak" at 27.87p per kWh and there is a day standing charge of 47.71p. That's from Octopus.
We also have a petrol car - an elderly Renault Clio. It does just run and run and is pretty economic for a pretty shagged out ICE.
My EV is cheaper to run, by far. However, its unlikely the battery will last 20 odd years. I haven't yet sat down and done some whole life costs for ICE vs EV yet.
My Saic MG4 can do 300+ miles on a 100% charge of its 78kWh battery. After two years, it still manages to exceed its WLTP (with care, when required) and I quite like the ridiculous 0-30 acceleration etc.
It sounds like ICE buyers are subsidizing EV buyers. The math starts to get ugly as EVs become a larger percentage of the mix. ICEs will be priced out of the market, but there won't be anyone left to subsidize the EVs. In short, it sounds like buying a car is about to get a lot more expensive in the UK.
> It sounds like ICE buyers are subsidizing EV buyers.
Given how long we have all been subsidizing ICE buyers, I think it is fair to spread the love around a little.
How are ICE buyers subsidised?
In the US, at least, we directly subsidize fossil fuels to the tune of billions of dollars a year -- just counting the above-board, direct subsidies through legislation. If you count indirect subsidies, the figures are staggering.
But put a $7500 point-of-sale rebate on an electric car and people go nuts. So the solution is either make the EV subsidy less obvious, like we do for fossil fuels, or try to educate people on where their tax dollars actually go. The former is more feasible, certainly, in the modern political environment where ideology rules over facts.
The comment I replied to was "Given how long we have all been subsidizing ICE buyers, I think it is fair to spread the love around a little."
The subsidies you talk about are US specific and was in rely to one about ICE buyers subsidising EV buyers in the UK.
In the UK we pay heavy fuel duties and car taxes so ICEs have not been subsidised any time recently, but, have been very heavily taxed.
There is no fairness in taxing UK ICE owners for subsidies received by American ICE owners.
Some countries literally subsidize gasoline, but even if your country does not it probably supports oil companies with tax breaks ('creating jobs'). There also are lots of untaxed externalities like global warming and exhaust pollution.
Untaxed externalities are very different from subsidies. We do not generally tax externalities.
I live in the UK where we pay heavy taxes on fuel and we pay higher taxes on vehicles with higher CO2 emissions.
In Germany for example(and other EU countries) you get money back from the government on your tax return for your daily commutes to work, if you live far away enough from work to qualify for commuter subsidies. Those subsidies you get no matter which transportation you use, bicycle, train, car, etc. And plenty of people commute by car when their work/home is far away and remote enough for cycle/public transportation to not be very useful or convenient.
Funny how their solution was to subsidize burning fossil fuels for car commutes to the office instead of, oh I don't know, MANDATING WFH!, given Germans are such staunched green environmentalists. Sure, let's turn off nuclear and ban plastic straws, but let's also subsidize the generation of diesel, brake pad and tire fine dust particles we breathe in, for commuting by car to work. We can't forget our car industry lobbyists.
I am guessing its a deduction in calculating your taxable income. You also say it applies to all forms of transport. That is not a subsidy. It is not different from allowing a factory that uses a fuel to deduct the cost of that fuel in calculating their taxable profits.
That is the aim. Its not a bad idea to reduce the number of cars (at least in cities) but the problem is that the British government wants to drastically reduce the number cars without spending on providing more public transport.
Just introduce a charge per mile for EVs as the current government have already done
ICE cars are already hugely subsidised by ignoring the health issues they cause e.g. air pollution
What we really need in the UK is better mass transit systems in cities and their commuter zones to remove cars from the roads
Oh no will people who don't use EVs subsidize infrastructure that they don't use?!? This sounds so familiar ...
The goal is that if you’re poor you can’t own a car.
That's interesting!
Do happen to have a link for how the "brand new EV on a lease recently for close to free after all the tax advantages" works in the UK?
As sibling comment posted, if you run a company you can write off the cost of the lease against corporation tax (25% tax saving), VAT (a further 10% saving if you have personal use, otherwise the full 20% if it's purely business), and you don't have to pay income tax on the money (albeit with a small benefit in kind payment).
If you're in the higher tax brackets this means a £200/month lease (say) ends up more like £90/month.
And because of the "new" £3kish subsidy the govt put in, the car finance companies seem to basically apply that as a big discount to the lease value (or it seems that way?). So you could get a brand new ~£30k EV with no upfront payment and a 2-3 year term for <£100/month including maintenance. Mine even came with a free car charger install at home.
This only works for business leases. The employee sacrifices part of their salary in return for being provided a lease car, and both the employee and employer save tax on that money (up to 45% employee, ~15% employer).
For an ICE car the government claws this money back through hefty "Benefit In Kind" taxes placed on employer-provided vehicles, but as an incentive to drive adoption the rates on EVs are only 3% of the car's nominal purchase price (and you only actually pay up to 45% of that 3%).
It doesn't work out "free," but it's typically as cheap to lease a new EV through this scheme as it is to pay the depreciation on a used ICE.
Not sure what schemes are that good (would be interested to see). My company has one, but I ended up buying a used ICE because it worked out to cost about the same as leasing the equivalent EV model of that car. But that might have been the case for the specific car I was looking at (small Volvo SUV).
Yeah, my company has similar scheme and it's terrible, both EVs and ICE.
Unfortunately, if your employer uses a "scheme" then the middleman creams off the 15% that the employer would save, then jacks up prices well beyond the market because they have a captive audience.
If the employer leases the car themselves and provides it to you as a benefit, it can be good value -- but then someone has to own the risk of you changing jobs.
check out https://www.leaseloco.com/ (there's other sites - I am assuming you are in the UK), they have a lot of deals on. If you want a really good deal then I don't think you want to look for a specific car, you want instead to see what deals are going on and choose between them. It _seems_ that from time to time the manufacturers do a bit of a firesale via leases.
I tried getting "close to free" EV on the electric car scheme and considering take home pay cut, all in all, I'm better off buying WITHOUT the scheme, on pcp.
The reasons are:
- the provider is absolutely bonkers, and employing idiots, offering as "in stock" car models twice since updated or discontinued
- the provider is offering the cars at the very steep price, entirely eating the tax advantage
- on top of that id have to pay BIK tax
- and lastly I'd have no choice of choosing the insurance provider, which results in any damage covered by me not covered, and the company itself having absolutely atrocious reviews (ex customers claiming they've been "fined" for the normal wear and tear (eg tiny windscreen chips))
> And the presence of lower-cost alternatives can force non-Chinese brands to have to compete, rather than sitting on their laurels and gathering profits from expensive land yachts as the competition’s prices are inflated by tariffs. This is why the UK is getting Honda’s super cool Super-N, and the US isn’t.
The Honda Super-N EV will also be released in Australia, New Zealand, and other countries in Southeast Asia that were also British colonies: this decision has nothing to do with tariffs and everything to do with left-hand-drive vs. right-hand-drive.
Is Honda even bothering with a LHD version of the Suoer-N? As far as I can tell, they never bother with left side versions for Kei cars, and just limit them to right side markets. It’s a pity because I always wanted a Daihatsu Copen.
Well, you also see them in the Russian far east which gets a lot of used cars from Japan.
Is it really that hard to produce an opposite-handed version? That sounds more like a convenient excuse.
Surprisingly. A lot of eg: aircon ducting, placement of stuff in the bonnet, dash configuration, wiring looms, is all -handed. Certainly doable but it’s a significant burden in both design effort and handling of parts/supply chain/inventory which may or may not justify it.
I briefly worked on doing LHD-to-RHD car conversions and the devil was definitely in the detail.
No no, that's obviously wrong. It's because the sun rises in the East much earlier than the west, it only seems like like they're getting it earlier but it's only because of the way the planet works. And the sun never sets on the British empire is why they'll be getting it.
Coming to Canada soon, though in a limited way:
https://nationalpost.com/news/massive-risk-chinese-evs-are-t...
Hopefully this means competition with the other EV manufacturers in Canada too.
Unfortunately, because the number of imports is restricted the cars will likely be about as expensive as the competition. Chinese car companies have no strong incentive to undercut the market when they can take a fat margin and still sell out anyway.
Fantastic. More competition and choice is always, always better for the consumer.
Unlike the EU and the US, the UK doesn't have any major car companies anymore, so there's less of an incentive for them to apply tariffs on Chinese imports.
Not UK headquartered car companies, but there is a lot of car manufacturing in the UK. There is still an industry and jobs to preserve.
Also, take a look at the reports on the knock on effects on suppliers of the JLR hack.
Same as Australia! The rate of proliferation of Chinese EVs (and gas) there is crazy to see. Free market baby!
(And before the inevitable “but Chinese subsidies” comment - update your talking points, subsidies no longer happens to any meaningful degree)
Same in NZ. Most popular car is Tesla + 15 different Chinese brands: https://evdb.nz/sales
Actually somewhat surprised we still even have legacy auto in top 10.
Did anyone think of the national security implications?
Retrospectively, yes
https://www.forcesnews.com/news/warning-mod-staff-amid-fears...
"Warning stickers banning military workers from discussing sensitive information have been placed inside the Ministry of Defence's electric cars, as fears grow that China could be listening."
Google/Waymo is importing a Chinese EV van into the USA and putting in its own electronics (they would have done that anyways, even if it wasn’t banned).
Certainly typed out on a Chinese made phone...
Whataboutism is not helpful.
There's nothing lazier than a whataboutism claim. If we're okay with Chinese made phones and other electronics, then let's give their cheap EVs a chance instead of worrying about a plethora of other hallucinated *isms. Anyways, if the Chinese want to hurt "US" they have plenty of other ways to go about it.
China is still banning Teslas from driving near government buildings and leaders' motorcades.
China is smart and recognizes known threats as threats. In the US we give them quasi government positions where they inflicted massive damage causing millions of senseless deaths.
Then why China approved Tesla to be the one and only wholly foreign-owned enterprise in vehicle manufacturing?
Something tells me there are extreme limits on what foreign-owned manufacturing companies are allowed to do, just like the US.
It's yet to be seen if Chinese companies will be as civilization destroying as US companies, but the bar is literally rolling on the floor now and all the dice seem to be rolling in China's favor due to the US unable to control their elites that are sucking society dry.
> There's nothing lazier than a whataboutism claim.
You're right, I guess it is only just slightly more lazy than writing the whataboutism.
> if the Chinese want to hurt "US" they have plenty of other ways to go about it.
Another what aboutism...
Why should those other national governments move away from Microsoft, the U.S. has other ways to hurt those countries.
Then drive some Schitty Chevy, what do I care. The rest of us need reliable affordable transportation that won't boil the oceans over. The Chinese are willing to make it, that is a good thing (+ they haven't bombed anyone for quite some time to boot).
First it was whataboutisms, now it's trying to disparage me.
You're incorrectly assuming I don't want something reliable that's safe for the environment in an attempt to make me look bad because you're defaulting to attacking the person instead of the message.
Whataboutism is helpful?
Just to give you an idea of what it costs to lease an EV in the UK. I use lingcars often for pricing and it is peanuts compared to the US.
https://www.lingscars.com/car-lease-deals/?fuelTypes=electri...
Did lingscars get rid of their crazy website?
Yes… but (from memory) someone recreated it but can remember who
For anyone who hasn't been in a BYD, maybe because their government protects them from the open market, I'm sorry. It's over. We lost.
I've been in one and it's kinda meh? Its fine for what it is, but it's also filled with buggy bizarre issues on a level of VW ID.3 and doesn't match up with even something basic like latest Peugeot models.
Meanwhile Ford’s CEO said that if Chinese EVs are allowed into USA it will destroy the US automakers.
He is not even hiding the fact US automakers make a more expensive inferior product, but that US consumers should not be allowed have the superior one.
> Ford’s CEO said that if Chinese EVs are allowed into USA it will destroy the US automakers
I'm a strong advocate for giving Chinese EVs an import quota per manufacturer (with a 1.5mm-unit annual cap on total Chinese EV imports, downgradable to 1mm in a recession, representing about 10% of demand).
This gives American consumers–and designers–access to and a taste for what the competition is doing. But it preserves a moat for our own producers.
So no free market. Consumers have to subsidise crap companies.
The company isn't necessarily crap; American manufacturing has to pay higher labor costs due to higher cost of living. A completely free market allows low cost of living companies to essentially arbitrage cost of living, with the result that the higher cost of living country gets reduced manufacturing capability. Inability to manufacture things is a strategic weakness, and we will probably get to see the consequences of that if we ever get in a serious war with China.
Closer to free than now…so I support. I would prefer us automakers to start competing, but at this point I’ve given up on Them.
Well, the UK no longer has a domestic auto industry
For anybody wondering about this the UK was making two million cars a year prior to Brexit. Last year it was about seven hundred thousand.
This was widely predicted by economists at the time, even by the few Brexit supporting economists.
Or at least to have the inferior product at a lower price.
From what I've seen, I have no reason to expect that a cheap new Chinese EV sold in the U.S. would be meaningfully lower quality than a cheap new American car.
Conversely, I have no reason to expect that a new Chinese EV sold in the US would be meaningfully cheaper than a new American car. At least not to the extent that China fans are dreaming about. That just is not how markets work.
Well, I suspect it is how a relatively free market would work.
only one way to find out!
Ford’s CEO just said exactly that. Chinese cars are superior.
The big 3 absolutely have an inferior product. Just rode in a new gas Cherry Tiggo, I'd compare it to a Hyundai in terms of value/features, but even a bit better. No American car in that class comes even close. And I rode in one 10 years ago (Tiggo), they have come a very very long way.
Meanwhile China does hide the fact that they block superior competition of various foreign services via the Great Firewall
No, its because the Chinese subsidize the costs of those cars. Say I live in a country that will pay me $50k to build a car. It costs me say, $55K to build the car which I now sell for $60K. How you do you, in a country that pays you nothing to build cars, compete? This is an extreme example but its what is happening here (just will different and smaller numbers).
Every time when any competitive Chinese product is discussed, there are claims that it is competitive because it is subsidized.
Perhaps many of these claims are true, but at least in USA I also see huge amounts of subsidies for a lot of products, which are never compared with the Chinese subsidies.
I have never heard about any significant investment in some factory in the USA, which was not conditioned by very large reductions in taxes for that company. I do not see any difference between this and any subsidies that China might have.
Even if there might exist some kind of subsidizing system for electric vehicles in China, there is no doubt that there exists healthy competition between many Chinese companies, so they continuously innovate in EVs, while much less efforts in this direction can be seen in countries like USA, who claim to be scared by the Chinese "unfair" competition, but they seem to do very little or nothing to reduce their technical inferiority.
Then the US should have done like the EU and apply anti-subsidy countermeasures -- and show before impartial WTO arbitrators the adequacy of the mesures.
But of course the US (or Canada) can't justify their 100% duty in those terms, so they don't even try.
GM and Chrysler were given 85 BILLION dollars that has never been repaid (never will) despite them paying their CEOs tens of millions per year, doing stock buy backs.
At least the Chinese got good cars from subsidizing their auto makers. Americans just got ripped off.
you need to update your talking points. China no longer subsidizes their cars produced today to any meaningful level.
> Consumers accept that they can pay more for a better product, so when you compare a Model 3 to an ICE BMW 3 series, and they’re similar in price, but the Model 3 offers better technology and drive characteristics, then on balance you’re getting a better deal with the Model 3.
statements like these are what turn some people away. cz they're not sincere.
you can easily compare the costs between models within a manufacturer - BMW ICE version vs Electric version
& on a head to head basis the old guard of auto makers e.g BMW, Mercedes make better vehicles than Tesla.
Tesla has been cutting features, too. You can't even get lane keeping anymore unless you pay $99/mo for FSD. Lane keeping is a basic feature even available on the base model of some economy cars, so for the supposedly 'premium' Tesla to drop it is an interesting choice.
Right, brand new. But I think if the UK government want everyone to be using EVs they really need to help out the used market by incentivising it in some way. I can't get much other than a Nissan leaf or Renault Zoe under £10k second hand, or some massive SUV which I don't want. So then I'll buy an ICE powered car instead...
How does the service and support part of this work in countries that have opened the door to Chinese EVs?
Do they operate like Tesla, or can indie garages handle repairs? How long are warranties?
I think mostly like Tesla in the EU. And warranties are long, like 10 years.
Meanwhile in the EU, Chinese EVs face crippling tariffs that make them totally unaffordable.
Which EU countries? I see LOADS of them as taxis in Spain, for example
EU-wide tariffs: 10% on any imported car and an additional..
BYD: 17%
Geely Group: 19%
SAIC Group: 35%
Tesla (Shanghai): 8%
XPeng, Nio, ...: 21%
Others: 35%
[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:L...
I live in Spain. I think the ones you see here are likely hybrids as there is little/no EV infrastructure here and the hybrids are exempt from the tariffs (for now).
I can't remember if plug-in hybrids are exempt as well or only conventional hybrids.
I think I may have misremembered. It was only in Alicante than almost all my app-ordered taxis were BYD (fully electric, definitely not hybrid)
Loads of Teslas and BYD in Lisbon too
It's a shame that the UK isn't making their own EVs. It's a nation with a long tradition of manufacturing and a working class hungry for opportunities.
Both Labour and the Conservative parties seem to have resigned the nation to only being a financial hub.
Yeah they sold off pretty much their entire motor industry to the Germans (Mini, Bentley, ..), Chinese (Lotus) and Indians (Jaguar, Land Rover).
Typical case of short sighted capitalism.
I don't know, Stephen King couldn't write anything that matches the horror that was the management of UK car companies in the second half of the 20th century. British Leyland was a disaster from start to finish.
British cars in the 70s and 80s were shockingly bad. The Austin Metro and Allegro spring to mind.
What's funny is the new owners of MG make a pretty nice car (reliable and good looking): https://www.mgcyberster.co.uk
Besides that flagship vehicle, their other more standard cars are also pretty good. We just returned from Hong Kong, and the cars there were the same brands we saw in South America: Maxus et al. with some MGs. To be honest, they seemed very good. Unless something is secretly wrong with them regarding safety or reliability, the American and European car industries are in huge trouble.
A friend's dad just restored his ancient MG up here in California and it was funny to me to see that car and then go up to Hong Kong and see the modern incarnation of the same marque.
Regarding the MGs, I believe the design is still done in the UK, which explains the style. And from my understanding a lot of of the really good looking Chinese cars are actually designed by European design shops (Italian, Swedish etc). It seems like a pretty good strategy actually to let the Chinese handle the manufacturing while the Europeans handle the design and performance.
That is a good looking car.
I knew someone who owned one of the original MGs. They used to drive around with a boot (trunk) full of tools, for when it inevitably broke down.
The UK are making an incredible amount in tariffs though
Soon UK will start taxing EVs by distance driven which might offset many EV advantages and make their disadvantages more pronounced.
Vehicles incur costs on the infrastructure as a function of their weight and usage. Petrol engines pay taxes at the pump. There is no tax hypothication in this, it goes to general revenue, but as EV rise, general tax revenue falls. The government has an obligation of sorts, to try and normalise tax collection to the model, and the model is now breaking so they need to implement something, doing nothing is not an option.
It MAY make their disadvantages more pronounced, it MAY off set the specific EV advantage of operational cost compared to ICE. But, ICE are not some ground zero untaxed state, and other tax choices will alter the relative preferences and advantages AT THE TIME.
You can't compare tax now to tax "then" and argue "then" was fairer, if the tax then was on Horses.
Vehicles have road taxes. It’s a very clumbsy and annoying way the UK have planned this new tax. I hope other countries do not copy it.
A similar debate is happening in Australia, with the added complexities of federal vs state taxation models, and a nationally collected GST tax (VAT like) which is distributed to the states. Petrol (gas) taxation to consumers is a confusing topic with many people believing in lots of economies its a hypothicated tax, dedicated to roads and related costs. Well, it's not. It's not defined in legislation in the two economies I know of, which do this stuff. It may or may not meet road costs, or exceed road costs, or be less than road costs. In australia the only hypothicated tax, and there are disagreements about if it meets the bar or not, is the medicare levy. Everything else is consolidated revenue, no matter what you think they do with it.
In other words, EVs are used in a bait-and-switch scheme. First promising lower operating costs and negative externalities, then moving to new taxes possibly progressively increasing over time past the ICE taxation, and mandatory built-in surveillance and remote control.
Tell me more about this scheme. If there's someone who imagines they can tax EV's more than ICE vehicles what exactly is keeping them from just making the same increase (now) on ICE vehicles? If their secret goal is to raise transportation taxes how does switching their target from ICE vehicles to EV's make that any easier? And who exactly is doing the scheming? Is it construction firms who build roads (which is my neck of the woods is where most of the gax tax ends up going). Are they the ones hatching this scheme? You'd think they'd be lobbying harder for more trucks (heavily vehicles -> more wear on the roads ->profit!). But the more big trucks people seem mostly to be the opposite of the EV people. How confusing.
Step changes are often opportunities to introduce new unwanted features by default; see how countries switching to Euro experienced significant price increases on day 1. Policy makers often optimize to introduce new things the old market (in this case ICE) doesn't want as defaults after the change (e.g. EVs). This is like 101 of public policy.
Thats a very specific take on things. Nobody promised negative externalities as I understand it, I believe it was pretty clear the component of government taxation in fuel was going to have to exist somehow in this.
Your "possibly increasing over time past the ICE indexation" is very cynical but I would be in the worlds of ad hom if I carried on. I don't think you are here argung in good faith, if thats your basis of reasoning.
The surveillance and remote control is frankly unrelated to ICE/EV because pretty much all high end ICE cars have a SIM these days.
An 11 month out account with low karma posting inflammatory responses, I would be tempted to say you're karma farming for some other outcome.
"promising lower ... negative externalities..."
I drop my HN accounts when they reach certain karma threshold so that I am not surfing on my past successes but keep relevant in the present. I think you have the collector approach instead and use it as a weapon.
"use it as a weapon" I do indeed filter inputs which behave like noise, on other attributes which can indicate noise. You took an adversarial and argumentative approach to an otherwise rational discussion. Asserting what I consider unfounded, and unrelated consequences in a thread. I don't expect you to consider this a negative in your own assessment of your own behaviour, I do, and I think an implied lack of introspection on your own behaviour is telling. I also take on board that my behaviour reflects on what I see and respond to, and I understand (perhaps wrongly) that you impute this to a negative outcome. We differ on that, but I admit the possibility I'm wrong and you're right. Do you do me the same charity?
Obviously; the whole point of discussing on HN is to get exposed to variety of opinions and attitudes regardless of whether I mesh with them well or not; expressing IMO founded concerns about new tech is one of the reasons for commenting.
Founded, not well-founded I think. I can't see the evidence of intent for what you allege. I can see stupid policy. I can see failure to deploy. But to suggest the intent is remote control or track and trace, demands a basis. Whats your reasoning beyond supposition?
Why don't they e.g. do this with the BMW ICE cars which carry a SIM card?
Remember its the deploying state we're talking about, not the specific risk of BYD being under control of the CCP. Your response implied all EV in the UK, are part of a plan to supervise/monitor use of EV cars, not the foreign actor risk as I understand it.
UK stats are bogus because one in five new cars there are paid for by the government under the Motability scheme. What it actually costs is hard to say because we don't know where they're measuring the price at. Motability could have an agreement, or they might be not counting the motability money spent and so on.
Nope…
People who receive PIP can choose to use to lease a car from Motability which is an independent scheme
Those people could equally choose to have an ICE car
Of course EVs are perhaps a net benefit to society (noise, pollution etc) but at least be honest about the cost trajectory.
Any article that doesn't mention the cost of motorway/dual carriage way electric charging is being disingenuous. PAYG is 75-90p/kWh currently. Tesla superchargers with a subscription 57p/kWh (you'll pay with time, due to being busy)
And do you think when EV ownership becomes more popular, the 4p/kWh home charging rate is going to stick around? That is an insane discount compared to daytime electricity.
The UK does not have a good, cheap solution plentiful cheap electric in the next decade or two, so any major increase in demand will mean even higher costs.
> The UK does not have a good, cheap solution plentiful cheap electric in the next decade or two, so any major increase in demand will mean even higher costs.
Of course it does… the UK has tariffs that change by electricity demand and supply capacity
As we build out more renewables there will be more times of excess supply and hence cheaper electricity during these times
The buildout of battery storage and north-south inter-connectors will reduce this fluctuation but it’ll still be there
Over time the UK is going to switch it’s pattern of electricity consumption
The old "cheaper electricity is coming due to renewables, any day now"
An almost guaranteed reply
“Thanks to CCP money printing”
FIFY.
America has printed plenty of money and don't have much to show for it
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"thanks to Chinese competition". More like anti-competitive practices. They can force down Chinese wages to keep labor costs down. They can require companies involved in component technologies to share their IP in order to do business in China, then replicate it and subsidize the hell out of it to push them not just out of China, but out of business globally. Then subsidize the whole final vertically integrated manufacturing of the end product so it's all cheaper and harder to compete with.
Not very free market. It's basically military and intelligence budget combined. If you can hurt auto manufacturing, you further consolidate manufacturing inside China. Then if you can get people to pay for you to spy on them through their own cars, that's well spent intelligence budget. If you reduce the portion of global manufacturing outside of China, you reduce the amount of manufacturing that can quickly pivot to wartime production like we saw during World War 2.
I'm glad that we still have sane enough people in the US that we ban these obvious and transparently bad things. It wasn't that hard to see free trade died.
Hopefully people don't still think that China's green energy initiatives are about the climate. Whatever you think about those initiatives, don't let that blind you to the legitimate questions around China's motivations.
Chinese car manufacturers have state-of-the-art automated factories... probably more advanced than EU manufacturers at this point.
Honestly chinese manufacturing doesnt look like the market you describe. If anything it looks like from the outside that working conditions, manufacturing processes and technology are all escalating. EV's in particular, their EV industry used to make terrible cars that were basically just chewing up and spitting out low quality batteries with no range. Now they are making cars that I actually want to drive.
>Not very free market. It's basically military and intelligence budget combined. If you can hurt auto manufacturing, you further consolidate manufacturing inside China. Then if you can get people to pay for you to spy on them through their own cars, that's well spent intelligence budget. If you reduce the portion of global manufacturing outside of China, you reduce the amount of manufacturing that can quickly pivot to wartime production like we saw during World War 2.
The most dangerous nation on the planet, that threatens everyones national security is the USA. And thankfully we averted this risk by basically demolishing their car industry. Its honestly asias gift to the planet. China cant project power anywhere nearly as well as the US, so on balance, they are vastly the more preferable partner for this data.
>I'm glad that we still have sane enough people in the US that we ban these obvious and transparently bad things.
Lmao. Freedomburgerland summed up in one sentence.
>Hopefully people don't still think that China's green energy initiatives are about the climate.
Chinas green energy initiatives are both soft power, and sustainability for a massive population. They only care about the environment as far as it impacts on them economically.
>don't let that blind you to the legitimate questions around China's motivations.
China is the most stable superpower we have. We are right to be suspicious, but honestly the century of American humiliation is playing out pretty well for them without them having to do much of anything.
> EV's in particular, their EV industry used to make terrible cars that were basically just chewing up and spitting out low quality batteries with no range. Now they are making cars that I actually want to drive.
The cars used to be awful, but it's not surprising that they improved. I didn't say anything about the quality of the cars. If the CCP didn't have an iron grip on that country, maybe I would eventually think about them as favorably as Toyota or other Japanese brands. After all, Japan was an enemy and became a great ally with popular culture pervading the US.
> The most dangerous nation on the planet, that threatens everyones national security is the USA. And thankfully we averted this risk by basically demolishing their car industry. Its honestly asias gift to the planet. China cant project power anywhere nearly as well as the US, so on balance, they are vastly the more preferable partner for this data.
That doesn't accurately represent history and nobody serious will make the argument you're making. Culturally, the US is very isolationist. The reason we expand bases around the world is to reduce war (attacking a country with a US base on it is a bad idea, which is a deterrent) and to react quicker to war when it does happen (logistical efficiency). If nobody pushes back, it makes the next world war more likely to drag us in which costs lives.
If we're militarily involved somewhere, there's generally a good reason. It's like firefighting to prevent the whole thing from being engulfed and collapsing. War has a way of normalizing and spreading. Did we start World War 1? World War 2? Vietnam war? Korean war? What were we reacting to with Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Iran? Do you understand the historical events that resulted in those conflicts? Can you enumerate them?
Do you understand how similar today is to the beginnings of World War 2? Do you know what World War 2 was actually about? Communist Russia was using Marxist communist revolution and political parties in countries around the world to try to achieve global communism, and at the time Russia was doing a massive build out of military that had many countries worried. They had more military hardware than all countries combined including Germany.
Marxism was attacking religion and cultural heritage, which is what spurs these religious racist fascist backlashes. That sat on top of and amplified the industrial trade and power imbalances that remained after World War 1.
Russia's expansion was a combination of weaponized psychological Marxism (it evolved beyond just bottom-up revolution and into a top-down tool of the Russian state). It caused Japan, Germany and Italy to see it as an existential crisis which amplified their race for resource control to prepare to fight back against the eventual final war against Russia. Early CCP members were part of Russia's comintern.
Now we have China creating the most rapid military build-out in history while the CCP is realigning to hardcore Marxist-Leninist purity, on a purging rampage. Russia purged its military not long before invading Poland and Finland.
So, you'll have to excuse me if I don't find your argument convincing that China is the stable power, which is logically incorrect for far more geopolitical reasons than only this.
> What were we reacting to with Iraq
"The primary rationale for the invasion centered around false claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and that Saddam Hussein was supporting al-Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission concluded in 2004 that there was no credible evidence linking Saddam to al-Qaeda, and no WMD stockpiles were found in Iraq."
That's not what we were reacting to, that was the political rationale we used which is not the same thing.
You said logical reasons but all you did was repeat standard anti marxist rhetoric a few times. Nations run on internal logic, like all things. Chinas demonstrated interests dont include me. the USA on the other hand, has a history of being unpredictable and invading without any real intent or purpose.
You appeal to history but just compare all the aggressive wars started by the USA vs China since WW2. Tell me who to be more scared of.
China hasn't even done much more than pay lip service to Marx since Deng anyway. They are just the most stable, reliable capitalist superpower right now.
You mean, since the US defended China from Japan? Since the US defended South Korea from North Korea and China? Since we made the decision to allow China into global trade to lift it out of poverty and potentially liberalize its government despite the risk communism posed?
Just because you were told that the US has no intent or purpose behind its actions, doesn't mean it's true. Do you somehow believe that every country has reasons for things, except for the most powerful country in history? If so, that is a very unreasonable belief.
Some people are taught to hate the US, some people are taught to love the US, others are taught to think for themselves.
Marxists were openly interested in global imperialism, it's just that it was psychological imperialism backed by military follow-up.
I would like to see China as neutral-good and look at some Chinese brands as if they were a Sony, LG, Samsung, IKEA, Spotify, TSMC, etc. Unfortunately that is not possible: https://www.csis.org/analysis/new-challenge-communist-corpor...
Vietnam is communist too and they aren't always treating their people the best either, but they haven't been showing a lot of obvious signs of trying to expand physically or ideologically.
> China hasn't even done much more than pay lip service to Marx since Deng anyway. They are just the most stable, reliable capitalist superpower right now.
Reformists have been getting purged. There was a time where we could imagine China giving up on Marxism, but that may be less likely now.
>You mean, since the US defended China from Japan?
Is that what happened? That feels like a massive stretch considering who the US backed in the Chinese civil war.
>Since we made the decision to allow China into global trade
Thats another great example. The USA only ever serves to damage global trade. Really good point well made.
>Just because you were told that the US has no intent or purpose behind its actions, doesn't mean it's true.
Lmao.
> Do you somehow believe that every country has reasons for things, except for the most powerful country in history? If so, that is a very unreasonable belief.
The USA has reasons, they are just usually incredibly sucky reasons. And then hawks come in after the fact and make up retrospective reasons to try and justify further dumb interventions. This process is what makes the US extremely dangerous to world peace.
>Some people are taught to hate the US, some people are taught to love the US, others are taught to think for themselves.
Real "I am a dangerous free thinker" shit.
> Marxists were openly interested in global imperialism, it's just that it was psychological imperialism backed by military follow-up.
And you see that ideology as a threat to US Global Imperialism, and you have internalised US Global Imperialism as part of your personality, I get it.
>I would like to see China as neutral-good and look at some Chinese brands as if they were a Sony, LG, Samsung, IKEA, Spotify, TSMC, etc. Unfortunately that is not possible: https://www.csis.org/analysis/new-challenge-communist-corpor...
The difference between this and something like the US All Writs Act, or Australias Access and Assistance bill is super negligible. Just the overt trappings of single party politics really differentiate it. The US, and its allies are equally capable at compelling corporate action. I know its scary when the red guys do it, but if you want me to care about this, you would need the US and friends to not be leading the charge.
>Reformists have been getting purged. There was a time where we could imagine China giving up on Marxism, but that may be less likely now.
I could literally sit down, go through every single piece of Chinese history for the last 20 years and recontextualise it for a US audience. The problem is largely that you dont believe in their legal system. And fair cop, just like the national security courts in the USA theres literally no oversight. So when they disappear someone in the government, and claim they were a traitor, you say that's bad. Fair enough. But thats just noise to me. Because I dont trust the US legal system either. The purges are sold internally as fighting dissent and corruption. If the US government took precisely the same action with precisely the same justification you would be clapping like a seal, and trying to convince others using your "dangerous free thinker" powers.
Reality is Xi is getting rid of his internal enemies. He is very good at this. This isn't necessarily leading to more or less marxism, just determining how long we will be dealing with Xi.
> Is that what happened? That feels like a massive stretch considering who the US backed in the Chinese civil war.
China, the US, Germany and Japan were all fighting against cultural genocidal Marxism which had global domination ambitions. It's a matter of historical record. There were dictators on both sides, but not all dictators are created equal. Both Germany and the US were helping provide supplies. The problem is that Japan and Germany got so fanatical and expansionist themselves that they became the bigger threat.
We are lucky that there are incredibly incompetent people in charge of Russia and China, but if Japan and Germany had sufficiently expanded into Russia and China to gain the resources they needed, that would be too much geographic power to allow their respective ideologies to have.
My point in this thread is essentially that the CCP has never ended its war in support of communism and while the era of the tank has largely ended, we now have EVs rolling straight through the middle of cities unopposed. Arguably every bit as useful as rolling a tank down to the capitol.
> And you see that ideology as a threat to US Global Imperialism, and you have internalised US Global Imperialism as part of your personality, I get it.
People knew what life was like inside Soviet Russia. It wasn't free, life sucked. Nobody wanted that to happen to their country. If Marxists gained control of enough global resources and continued to build giant militaries to expand with then they posed a legitimate risk of erasing freedom worldwide.
The US has never been about imperialism in the way you think of the British Empire, the Russian Empire or the Chinese Empire. You're only applying a naive filter by suggesting land empires aren't real empires, only ocean empires are real empires. All of the other empires have been actually imperial, with kings, emperors and so on. It's not really accurate to call the US a religious empire even, but it was a country formed anew with deep understanding of the problematic cycles the world has faced for thousands of years.
There are scenarios where we have critical interests like Panama, Hawaii, Guam, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Greenland, etc, but it's not like we're in these places enslaving their populations and preventing them from knowing the truth. If we were a true British or Russian style empire with endless ambition, the US could have wrecked Germany and Japan, then gone on to finish China and take over Russia, capture all of the middle east, steamroll south america and so on. If we are an aggressive empire, then we have been extremely judicious relative to the amount of projection power we have.
After World War 2, we invested in the rest of the world to help it recover. Why do that when we could've just steamrolled a weak and battered world? Because that's not how we think.
The only reason we're using more of our leverage lately, is because we're countering the things Russia and China are already doing and we're not being ignorant about the threats that are being posed.
> The difference between this and something like the US All Writs Act, or Australias Access and Assistance bill is super negligible. Just the overt trappings of single party politics really differentiate it. The US, and its allies are equally capable at compelling corporate action. I know its scary when the red guys do it, but if you want me to care about this, you would need the US and friends to not be leading the charge.
The US does not require companies to hire political and intelligence minders. It would be like the US requiring a company to align with Republican politics, even if their company wasn't politically minded. We see this kind of wild stuff in radical Islam, where the religious law must be enforced, so religion and state are one. In China, it's more than nuance around a one party state, it is that the politics and the state are one, because Marxists believe that all social action is political action and so social action must sufficiently adhere to Marxist principles. It's just not realistic to enforce this at the lowest levels, so some version of CCP interests are imposed at the company level.
You can point to various laws, but it depends on the spirit of the law and how those laws are actually being implemented in practice. Next to Iran, China leads the charge globally in sociopathy around this particular issue, I'm sorry to say. So, no, you can't normalize it like China is just doing it, because the US is doing it. We're absolutely not doing it the way you are imagining.
The closest thing is when there is military-civil public/private fusion, which is for defense purposes in specific critical areas, but it's not about political compliance as much as it's about national security.
The CCP thinks the survival of the CCP itself is national security. In the US, if you got enough support you can make a new political party.
We do have scenarios where organizations that get a lot of public funding can be required to change some of their policies which can be close to political enforcement, but it is optional for organizations to receive public funding. They have to decide if they're committed to whatever their political thing is enough that they like it more than the money. It makes sense that if public funding is going towards anything that is considered political, it needs to be evaluated whether the state should be doing that since it risks a self-reinforcing cycle that can politically weaponize the state against itself into some kind of one party system.
I've never said the US is perfect, but it's very cheap to point at some random thing in the US that looks vaguely duck-like and say look, you taught us about ducks! It's especially weak when you're trying to defend the goodness of your country and think of the US as bad, but then you use the US as an example for why you're doing something? What China does is much closer to the political radicalism of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union than the US.
> I could literally sit down, go through every single piece of Chinese history for the last 20 years and recontextualise it for a US audience. The problem is largely that you dont believe in their legal system. And fair cop, just like the national security courts in the USA theres literally no oversight. So when they disappear someone in the government, and claim they were a traitor, you say that's bad. Fair enough. But thats just noise to me. Because I dont trust the US legal system either. The purges are sold internally as fighting dissent and corruption. If the US government took precisely the same action with precisely the same justification you would be clapping like a seal, and trying to convince others using your "dangerous free thinker" powers.
Of course when you've been immersed in the kool-aid of any given system you get used to it and start to rationalize things like "well, the world didn't end after this and it happens a lot, so I guess it's ok". Being desensitized to it is a risk.
The difference is that our justice system succeeds far more than it fails. Journalism can get a little warped, but when one journalistic outlet goes crazy and becomes useless there are others you can look to instead. In China, so many political things are considered national security that you don't have the right to even be accurately informed about political things occurring. Essentially, this is like if Democrats started jailing Republicans for basic vanilla conservatism, but then also jailed any journalists that reports on it in a way that was not aligned with the Democrat party line.
Look at what Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and Russia do with their political opponents. China is that with a little more sparkle at a much larger scale with extreme censorship. When you are raised in a system like that, your ability to even know what is true is degraded significantly since it has been curated in advance to be more favorable to the CCP.
> What were we reacting to with Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Iran? Do you understand the historical events that resulted in those conflicts? Can you enumerate them?
With Iran specifically, it was Epstein files and wish to look masculine. Operation masculine insecurity, if you want. With Venezuela, it was wish to get some extortion money for Trump and wish to look like cool manly man.
From those four, only Afghanistan we reaction to outside world rather then deranged internal politics that just must have war.
> Do you understand how similar today is to the beginnings of World War 2?
It was about gaining living space for Germans at the expense of other countries. It was also about gaining world domination by Germans, extermination of all Jews as fast as possible and eventual extermination of eastern Europeans in about two generation (the plan was to prevent their breeding).
Just checked the ranking of EV patent Holders , did not find your country
The treatment of our betters regarding "nudged" electrification is borderline misanthropic.
For people with a garage or a driveway who can charge at home, EVs are overwhelmingly a better option. The problem is that large swathes of the population are outside of that and you're making their lives miserable by punishing ICE car ownership.
Meanwhile, adoption numbers are thrown about ignoring that for those in optimal conditions, adoption is already very high and cannot grow much more. While for those particularly misaligned with the strengths of EVs, it will often be so painful to own one they will resist with everything they have, and in many cases they will have to admit defeat and stop driving altogether. Which I guess the government will also be content with. But it will take some time.
*typo
I have an ICE and don't feel like I'm being punished? It's exactly the same as it's always been. If anything, we're still benefitting from ridiculous subsidies and driving an ICE should be a lot more expensive than it is.
The reason for the EV nudging is it's a chicken and egg problem. The government doesn't want to run a national charging network themselves for obvious reasons, but private investors don't want to build it out either until it can make money.
So they've been trying to fix it from both sides, both by incentivising EV ownership and encouraging EV charging infrastructure. They're also trying to make charging at home easier, even if you don't have a driveway, by installing those little channels you can run the cable through.
Yes, the government are putting their finger on the scale in favour of EVs. Nobody's pretending they aren't. If combustion taxes were as high as they need to be to account for the externalities, the economy would collapse, but we need to get off ICEs for myriad reasons. Seems like they're doing a pretty good job overall and the main problem is just our high electricity price.
Far from ULEZ/CAZ areas I guess?
I live in inner London within the ULEZ zone. ULEZ is about local pollution not GHG and even then the newest cars it affected were 8 years old. My 15 year old car was fine. If anything it didn’t go far enough.
It would be interesting to see how the market would shake out without all the nudging.
Petroleum companies also get a lot of subsidies—especially if you count implicit things like the cost of cleaning up all this carbon, and oil based geopolitical problems.
> The problem is that large swathes of the population are outside of that and you're making their lives miserable by punishing ICE cars ownership.
It's obviously not ideal to have an EV if you can't regularly charge at home or at work, but "making their lives miserable" seems like a bit of a stretch. Instead of spending 5 minutes a week filling up at the gas station, you'll spent 30 minutes a week at an EV charging station.
> you'll spent 30 minutes a week at an EV charging station.
And for a lot of people that can be 30 minutes at a grocery store where they were going to be for 30 minutes anyway. The nice thing about using the grid for fuel is that we have way more flexibility to refuel anywhere we want.
In my area, charging prices have been in the £0.70-£0.90 /KWh for a while. That makes ownership VERY expensive, especially for road trips. On top of that privilege, you have exorbitant insurance costs and terrible devaluation.
I rent EVs every couple of years, last time it was recently, just to see how things are evolving. Since anyway it's clear where policy is going. Whatever you think about said policy. Right now, they're lovely commute machines if you can charge at home.
Eh. A new EV can drive 400-700km on one charge. It takes 20-60 minutes to charge on public chargers depending on the charger. Except that charging on public charges is more expensive than charging at home I don't really see the practical issue. I know many people without charging options at home that will never go back to ICE.
> A new EV can drive 400-700km on one charge.
Only when it's one of the more expensive 'long range' models, weather is good and it doesn't exceed 100km/h.
Except availability of chargers is spotty in most of the country, and charging prices so high that the running expenses are considerably higher. Not even considering insurance, which is also a killer. Been there.
Second hand EVs devaluation is not a product of anecdote. It reflects the current state of the market.
They are a different product and they're great at what they do. In fact, for those in the market for them, "nudging" (state coercion) is not necessary at all.
>Except availability of chargers is spotty in most of the country,
the UK is a small country. The average British driver drives 20-30km per day. One full EV charge almost gets you through England South to North. If you're putting a bunch of charging stations next to workplaces for people to charge once or twice per week that's going to cover most drivers.
What do you suggest? That people spend most of their time on the road going to and from (very expensive) chargers across the country? That is such a prospect it makes our decrepit railways look good.
> The problem is that large swathes of the population are outside of that and you're making their lives miserable by punishing ICE car ownership
I think that's the plan - force adoption and double down on the misery so that people forcefully invest into building infrastructure that otherwise wouldn't have.
In other words, you're synthesizing demand. It would be extremely interesting to see how it works out! In my limited experience, these synthetic initiatives explode in costs because it lets grifters, scammers and arbitragers defraud the synthetic demand side (due to the lack of a real free market system which is naturally self calibrating and managing).
One thing that I wonder about - unlike in the U.S. where gas is cheap, my understanding is that it's around $10/gal around most of the E.U. right now? If so, what's stopping people from running towards EVs naturally?
- Is it just the lack of charging infrastructure?
- Is it because most people in the E.U. live in dense areas where it's hard to setup charging infrastructure?
- Is it because most people in the E.U. live in dense areas where public transportation is cheap on a unit "per head" basis making local governments hesitate to invest in charging infrastructure directly?
- Is it that over-regulation in the E.U. make it extremely difficult to build charging infrastructure in the first place?
From a U.S. perspective, I would imagine that most of the U.S. (especially rural and suburban US) would switch to EVs overnight if Chinese EVs were allowed to flood the market. A lot of cities in the U.S. are accommodating literally golf carts on their streets so a $10k brand new Chinese EV that you could plugin is likely to sell like hotcakes.