this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
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There's a bit more to it than that. But yes EVs are subsidized in China.
I worked in a business where we had one product that was useful for automakers but especially useful for EVs. About 8 years ago the EVs in China were mostly cheap shitty BYDs.
Seemingly out of nowhere, the government changed a bunch of rules and regulations for new cars. Within a month design teams were being established at every major automaker in China focusing on EVs. It was a great year for us.
Key EV components, especially the materials to make batteries, started to come down in price.
Then the green plates started turning up. Every city has its own rules for car registration, some places like Shanghai, would auction new number plates each month resulting in a low supply and high demand. It was possible to buy a car cheaper than the number plate. Then if you register an EV you can get a green plate for almost nothing.
About 3 years ago the cities started requiring new taxis and busses to be EV. Places like shenzhen just converted everything to EV. Released licenses for training and testing self driving.
Charge stations started popping up everywhere. There's no way a shopping mall or new residential development could avoid having at least a large section for charging. My own home, converted an entire floor to charging parking stations in the underground car park.
Finally tesla set up Shanghai giga factory. I have no idea how they managed to make that deal but not long after they started shipping model 3s domestically they slashed the prices down to cheaper than a niceish BYD.
If you go to Shenzhen today about a third of cars are EV and you will see a dozen brands you've never heard of before (some are terrible cars, but most are reasonable quality and a handful are bullshit luxury)
As in tradition in China, the government will now let them go into a price war to push the manufacturers to find cheaper ways to make them. Many will go bust or give up.
Isn't that how a market economy is supposed to work, I mean normal textbook style? That's how capitalism was sold to me in my econ classes.
Sure, but what op described sounds like the equivalent of breaking a pool cue in half and telling the Chinese EV market there's only room for one manufacturer on the crew.
It's a massive waste of resources to have everyone race to the bottom like that.
I still don't get it. Isn't the point of capitalism and a market economy to have a constant "race to the bottom", eg. a race to provide a better service for a lower price on the supply side? I mean, interfering with that would be picking winners and losers, wouldn't it?
Usually governments regulate their markets to prevent humans from going full human and burning everything as a sacrifice to the gods of greed. This is why we have agencies that regulate food safety, engineering standards, nuclear materials and chemical disposal.
The phrase "regulations are written in blood" reminds us that a race to the bottom will result in massive problems, and that regulation is an excellent idea.
Common sense regulations like safety and such make sense, but isn't that just part of the "race to the bottom"? I mean, if a regulation is well-written, it either affects all participants equally, or affects larger market participants more to enforce a balanced market with many competitors and healthy competition.
I could see it might be something other than described, or I might not be getting some implication here, but what is described here sounds like a "race to the bottom" with regard to profit margins, and that is how a market economy should work, at least according to my very basic econ studies.
The same exact product offering should have decreasing profit margins due to competition, which companies should compensate for with innovation, but what happens very often is that market distortions are introduced by either the government or big market players to heighten profit margins artificially.
I'm reading this sentence as "profits go down drastically as competition sets in". That doesn't preclude regulation.
Thanks for entertaining my questions, I am really trying to understand the point here.
Makes you wonder where the US could have been by now if they supported the transition sooner.
That's fantastic that the CCP is creating the infrastructure to switch over to EV. It STILL doesn't change the fact that they are intentionally dumping on the competition.
Also requiring the public to switch to EVs non organically has repercussions as well. https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-china-ev-graveyards/
The company you work for saw subsidized money for more e-waste and what the (fuck)CCP did actually increase greenhouse gases.
Other notable CCP fuckups are....
1 child policies Covid lockdowns And my personal favorite: The Four Pest Campaign (which led to one of the biggest famine) https://youtu.be/ojOmUWLDG18?si=1OXqD3bXpWVI5RI2