Technology

Yes, the absolute basic required technology to make it road legal, physical switches and either physical gauges or a non-touch screen for gauges if that's cheaper.

They don't know how to market something that doesn't have a bunch of gimmicky bullshit.

The problem is you can’t efficiently electrify a vehicle designed for fossil fuels. The requirements differ too much.

Actually EV conversions were common before we got intentionally designed EVs and the original Tesla roadster was built on a standard Lotus body and frame, but luckily we’re beyond that now.

You can still choose to electrify a vehicle now but you get poor performance and range, unbalanced handling, and pay way too much for a mediocre vehicle. It’s bot worth it

Batteries will need a frame change if you don't want to sacrifice the trunk or something. And range will be bad unless you improve areo dynamics and heating. But I think the Bolt and the Nero are pretty close to their ice counterparts.

Not true. Most products aren't the cost of the materials. There are a lot of included expenses in the price of a product like the cost of labor. They're also not the same cars.

Except it's rarely the "same car". For example a Tesla Model 3 manufactured in China has an LFP lithium-ion battery, while the US manufactured ones use an NCA lithium-ion battery. It's by far the most expensive component of the car and LFP batteries are much cheaper.

There are often other differences too - such as optional extras being standard in one market. And warranties vary (those are not free - it costs money to fix faulty cars and they factor it into the sale price).

While that is part of it, the other, bigger part is that Western countries actually do have higher labour costs: better salaries and conditions for our workers.

When China was outcompeting us on undesirable, low productivity, jobs, we accepted that. It was better to raise a billion Chinese out of poverty than to protect our lowest productivity factory workers. And those workers mostly transitioned to other jobs with higher productivity.

But now China is richer and their labour force is shrinking, so they will compete with highly productive factory jobs.

Politically, it is unlikely that car workers will accept unemployment. Nor will other highly paid workers.

So a trade war is brewing, you better brace yourself for it.

Chinese manufacturers are being heavily subsidised and even making a loss on their cars.

They're trying to kill off our domestic car industries.

It's not on, it really isn't, the Chinese shouldn't be allowed to engage in the free market. They're supposed to be the enemy.

They should be sanctioned so that Western car makers can continue to put out vehicles for ludicrous prices, the way God intends.

China is using subsidies to accelerate the green transition, exactly like the US is doing with the "Inflation Reduction Act" and other initiatives.

Selling at a loss is how you build volume and reach the economies of scale that drive down costs.

If you fiddle around half-heartedly putting out small numbers of EVs, you'll never come close to competing with a company that puts out over a million a year. A lot of automakers still aren't willing to commit, and they're whining about the position they chose to put themselves in.

I truly don't care if China destroy the car industry, it's fucking ridiculous how expensive some basic shit is. In my opinion if you introduce a feature into your cars, you have ten years before it should become standard.

a comment in the article you linked says this better than I ever could:

This whole narrative about alleged “subsidies” to Chinese EV makers and them “losing $35,000 per vehicle” is pure propaganda. Firstly, that company - Nio - is a relatively new one and it is still ramping up its production. A year ago when they were not selling EVs yet but invested a lot in R&D it could be said that they were losing infinite amount of money per vehicle - because infinity is what you get from dividing by zero. Both this logic and this math are erroneous. Tesla was losing money for years even after it started making and selling its cars.It kept going by taking money from investors in exchange for shares. That is exactly what the Chinese EV companies do. So secondly, those are not “subsidies” but investments, even if the money comes from Chinese government entities. This article states itself that local governments take stock in companies in exchange for investment - exactly the same thing Tesla investors did.

The article also talks about BYD, a more established manufacturer than Nio, that is making profits selling electric cars.

Citroën Ami is available. Closer to $8000 and technically a quadricycle. All bare minimum to make it street legal.

You can get an electric motorcycle for that price. Even electric microcars cost more than $5000. Unless you want to buy a Chinese tin can death machine on four wheels that aren’t street legal.

I mean people also eat it up like good luttle piggies.

https://electrek.co/2021/06/16/i-bought-an-inexpensive-electric-pickup-truck-from-china-and-you-can-too/

The $2,000 price was legit, but that didn’t include batteries. It was another $300 or so for heavy lead acid batteries, $500 if I wanted a lithium-ion battery pack (3 kWh), $710 for a bigger lithium pack (5 kWh), and $1,050 if I wanted a giant lithium battery (6 kWh).

The article goes on to say that shipping is a big deal, too. It requires thousands for a space in a container. But the total clocked under $9K IIRC

Most Europeans have one, max 2 cars per household. A fuckton of Europeans also go on holiday with their cars once or twice a year.

One car needs to work for most use cases. It's fine if you have more cars than people in the house that one of them is a 100 mile range commuter, but a different kettle of fish if the same car needs to do an 800+ mile trip to the Mediterranean in summer and a 500 mile ski trip in winter.