By pricing their models competitively, right?
…right?
Exactly.
Europeans like Chinese electric vehicles because they are affordable.
Meanwhile European manufacturers are probably pushing behind the scene to restrict the Asian competitors on the market so they can decide what price is right.
In the next months in France they will reduce the subsidies for Electric Vehicle with a poor CO2 bill like imported Chinese cars.
So even less people will get to afford EVs.
I don’t think this is just about cheap Chinese labor importing cheap Chinese cars to Europe. It’s also about Europe ignoring the importance of battery tech and manufacturing for decades and suddenly acting all surprised that we are not competitive.
How VW, one of/the largest car manufacturers in the world, turns out the overpriced shit EVs it does, yeah… No wonder people are looking elsewhere
Covid also really did a number on the car market (like so many others), probably take another 2-4 years before the used market gets anywhere back to normal.
VWs recent EVs were shit as well. Paywall locking the biggest battery behind the most expensive high performance model when people who are looking to adopt are chasing the max range as possible due to range anxiety. A shit infotainment system that controls everything but regularly crashes or lags out. Crap charging rates, crap regen and efficiency. Killing off their more popular entry level trim that was actually priced competitively to drive up margins.
Its just another example of a market dominator trying to abuse their position in a new space and coming unstuck. They had to cut back on shifts and staff at their EV plants they fucked up that hard.
I thought this was a new brand of cars I never heard of but no, you used the name of the corporate group instead of Citroen, confusing! Looks nice though, modern Citroen are really nice.
Lol, a car industry that hasn’t innovated in years is suddenly threatened by innovation. Still, fuck cars. We should make them nigh obsolete with better public transport.
I love cars. Fixing them is a pain in the ass but a fun challenge. Driving them can be fun, too. But, I think I’d love some kickass, efficient, abundant, affordable public transportation even more.
God. We could have had it by now. It’d be so rad. But no.
Chinese affordable EVs with an infotainment system that represents tech from the last 5 years.
That’s not innovation though? That’s just making the same thing but cheaply.
They have an electric suv under $20k usd
Sure, it’s probably gonna last like a mid-90’s Kia, but for the price it’s pretty nice.
At the rate of industrial investment into this tech coupled with some places punishing gas cars, a cheap car that spans the gap from now until affoedable and better EVs is the perfect prescription, not to mention we havent stopepd having some form or financial crises since covid.
I think it’s debatable. Is it really good if all the energy that went into making the vehicle goes to waste because it only lasts 50k miles? At that point you’re basically building disposable vehicles.
I think the sweet spot for this period is in hybrids that allow people to run on electricity around town but also have the ICE as a fallback for long/extended trips. The main hesitancy with EVs is range anxiety (ignoring high prices) and hybrids solve that issue while still retaining a lot of the benefits of an EV.
The problem with that is that phevs are surprising expensive/heavy/complicated. It’s why Chevy discontinued the volt over the bolt. And why chevy had to cut a lot of costs on the volt to get it down to a semi-acceptable price (the volt didn’t even have power seats except on the Premier, and only on the drivers side).
A large port of cars are recycled, so I’m not sure the energy costs are a big deal.
The solid state batteries that seem to be clearly on the verge of mass production within the next few years are going to make everything they’re making now horribly obsolete. I’ve been considering a EV for my next vehicle and will definitely be waiting now.
While researching Chinese EVs I came across articles about abandoned EVs, the article claimed it was because they were made obsolete (they have roughly 100 mile range or less) so they were abandoned for the newer cheaper models with 3-5x that range, that problem is probably gong to be a bigger one to tackle than Chinese EV longevity, which supposedly aims for roughly 200,000km lifecycle which is 125k miles (average ice car has a lifespan of 130k miles). It also showed me how close to production those batteries you are talking about are, there’s a bold claim that the battery could be good for 2 million kilometers, if it’s even on the same order of magnitude of that, it would make so many EVs ‘obsolete’.
The political class trying to protect the interests of the billionaire class. You grow up under this capitalist system and all you hear is “competition is driving innovation” but the moment true competition comes knocking on your door, you lock yourself into a room.
I’m not entirely sure why they want to fight low prices? The article doesn’t say why EU and others shouldn’t be able to afford e-vehicles
“Capitalism breeds innovation and drivers prices down!”
Capitalism: no not like that
It’s not that simple. Caricatures are easy, but the fact remains that the Chinese auto makers are heavily subsidized and it’s that government support that allows them (partially at least) to undercut the European auto makers.
That being said, the European auto makers really deserve to be hurt for their arrogance. And that’s coming from someone whose income is directly related to how well they do.
Would they not have to be, if the owner were to register them in the country?
In the US they would, unless they get an exception (which generally means they are not cars and cannot be used on roads, though there are other ways to get an exception: none would apply to anything mass market)
I don’t know what EU rules are.
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The Chinese cars by Chinese manufacturer are generally getting excellent safety rating. Most of them get 5 stars on NCAP crash test.
On the other hand the Renault Zoe, one of the best selling European car by a european manufacturer got a 0 star on the same crash test. It’s not an isolated case, the e-c3 got a 0 star on the latin american test, I’m waiting to see what will be the score in Europe.
I’m not saying that Chinese car are better but the bad reputation is not justified anymore. Europeans automakers should get their shit together if they want to survive.
low prices
They’re fighting Chinese market manipulation that is specifically designed to make the world dependent on them and lowers wages across the world by creating massive market imbalances. Every nation with two brain cells should ban the import of all Chinese vehicles and eventually all Chinese industry entirely.
Chinese electric car makers get absolutely massive state subsidies. There are companies like Nio that have never made a single dollar of profit. Nio has been losing money on every single car they sell, to the point where they’ve been losing almost a billion dollars in the last quarter alone.
However, China doesn’t care. The state keeps financing these companies, because if they can undermine European and American auto makers to the point where they’re simply unable to compete and maybe even completely collapse, then Chinese car makers will be the only ones left in the market, and they’ll be able to charge any price they want.
And realistically, which American or European car maker will be able to compete with a multitude of Chinese competitors that all can afford to lose billions and billions every year without batting an eye?
So that’s why they want to fight “low prices.”
