Canada proposes 100% tariffs on Tesla, I have an alternative: open the door to Chinese EVs
Canada proposes 100% tariffs on Tesla, I have an alternative: open the door to Chinese EVs
A Canadian candidate for Prime Minister has proposed implementing a 100% tariff on Tesla vehicles in response to US tariffs...
Someone's doing the happy hunny dance....
That feels like "robbing Peter to pay Paul". We don't want to be dependent on either nationalist autocracy.
I dont think there is a single privacy friendly EV on the market.
If a Canadian company could build and export an EV that wasn't loaded with invasive sensors and where the data recording and uploading was opt-in (or non existent), loads of US Americans and Europeans would import them from Canada.
I think you can expand that to all cars, not just EVs.
I hope aptera will save us.
I think we should build them ourselves.
Why can't you guys make your own? Its not hard. Musk figured it out.
No he didn’t. They were already making them when he got there.
musk didn't build anything.
I mean, we literally can and have (as a concept car). Should I link my recent post here about it?
Canada has the same incentive to not open the door to Chinese EVs that the US does.
Why would they shoot themselves in the face just to splash some blood on someone else?
Canada doesn't have the incentives that the Americans have at all. Correct me if I'm wrong. America's incentive is to protect its own EV industry, Canada doesn't have an EV industry of its own.
You're wrong. Just the nature of of the auto industry makes it a little confusing since the entirety of a car isn't manufactured in one country. But there are a lot of components for EVs manufactured in Canada. There's especially a focus on manufacturing batteries for EVs which is the single most important component in an EV. And more plants for battery manufacturing are under construction.
What is the reason btw? Genuinely asking because I dunno
It isn’t that an inexpensive electric vehicle from China is bad, in fact that’s great.
The issue is that the cars are subsidized at such a rate that it goes beyond domestic incentive and into “we’ll just make sure no matter what we can sell for less than the competition” in an effort to drive any competition out of business.
It’s an anticompetitive practice that has significant impacts if allowed unchecked.
This is not meant as a value statement about the west, USA or Canada … as in I’m not saying “China bad when they do it, west good when they do it” because it’s bad when it’s done by whoever does it.
Effectively it’s a lever to weaponize fair trade and that’s antithetical to the idea of fair trade, at least insomuch as the international community tends to agree.
Tesla stands no chance to compete with Chinese vehicles. It's wild how high quality and cheap these Chinese cars are.
I wouldn't really call the high quality tbh. At least better than Tesla.
Supposedly, the quality is amazing. Here in the Netherlands, a car called Zeekr is making the rounds. They're supposed to be terrific cars. And that's a brand I had never heard of until a few weeks ago
I have a better alternative: invest in viable alternatives to driving! expand protected bike lanes, build the damn high speed rail, more trains, trams and bus lines. One more asphalt lane for cars wont solve traffic problems :)
Along with more work from home jobs?
Just make it so that commutes count as clocked-in time, and let the market sort it out.
Love this idea; however, bringing Chinese cars is like applying pressure to the wound... fixing public transportation is the long term healing process.
1 - They are not mutually exclusive, bring the Chinese cars now while starting on the long term public transportation projects
2 - The Federal gov can act on the Chinese cars now... public transportation is 100% Provincial purview so an entirely different team needs to address this other priority
Walkable cities. Biking infrastructure. Reliable public transit.
Regularless of of what'd going on in the world right now, these would make our cities far better.
As someone who loves driving cars, I'm completely on board with this. Driving should be optional, and I'd love to leave the car home when I go out partying, or don't want to worry about leaving my nice ride somewhere sketchy overnight.
This is the way
That would work for much of the population that lives within 100 miles of the US border, but there is a lot of rural and green space in Canada, and bikes aren't great in Canadian winters. Canada needs good car options too.
As of the 2021 census, nearly 6 million people (16% of the total Canadian population) lived in rural areas of Canada.
84% of Canadians live in cities, and that's where good urban infrastructure is the most needed.
Making car-centric infrastructure mostly electric will help a bit, but not a whole lot.Oh, I agree that mass transit wouldn't really work in areas that aren't as dense, but we should definitely have those where possible. I didn't mean to say we don't need good car options, but we should also have more options besides just cars
Now regarding bikes and winter, I'd say that's more of an infrastructure problem. Finland also has terrible winter, yet they can bike as usual. You should watch this video if you are interested in this theme: "Why Canadians Can't Bike in the Winter (but Finnish people can)"
Chinese EVs are very dangerous because of low quality standards. There are plenty of videos with batteries catching fire and the EVs burning up in the middle of the road.
There are tons of those videos from Teslas.... so unless you have a legit source showing Chinese EVs are more dangerous than Tesla's, your comment is nothing but an annecdote
There are plenty of videos of gasoline cars burning too. Turns out packing a shitload of energy into a small volume is dangerous.
This is not true.
This is also not true.
Canada can set safety standards however they want. Chinese EVs are available elsewhere, like Australia. Are they catching fire there?
Or is there one video in China where these vehicles already sell in huge numbers?
Your opinions on the Cyber truck? (An American EV that is very dangerous because of low quality standards)
Lol goodbye tesla if that happens
They've been on sale in Europe for years and Tesla kept market share. Many everyday E-cars are chinese (MG, BYD etc), with Nissan and Citroen too.
But that was before the past couple of months and Tesla is now suffering hugely from reduced sales (70% in some countries) - but that has absolutely nothing to do with the Chinese ecars.
China isn't our friend. The whole 'make it more financially appealing for the world to not war' is not working. China isn't influencing the world to be decent and at peace. They're Putin's allies and therefore our enemies.
They’re Putin’s allies
And America isn't?
Wasn't, until Trumptler got into power.
China can buy our housing to rent it back to us, but we can't buy their EV because other companies won't make as much profit. Great trickle down.
The thing is, if Trump wants to kill Canada's role in US car manufacturing, then it will cost him the car markets in Mexico and Canada. If there's no jobs here to protect, then we'll just drop the tariffs on Chinese EVs. (This is speaking like 20 years down the road). We'll all be driving Chinese cars in that scenario. The tariffs are a total lose-lose situation, so dumb.
$15k EV... Yes Please!!!
Nah you wouldn't want one, they're bare bones.
Okay, add $5k worth of options = $20k EV... Yes Please!!!
I have driven byd and some other Chinese brands and it's a really great experience minus the shitty touch screen UX. That being said I wouldn't trust China to run my car ever. Everything is locked down and it absolutely spies on you. I wouldn't trust my life with that to save a bit of money.
Just buying a 2nd hand ice vehicle is better for you and the environment if you're looking for a affordable option.
Replacing nazi cars with slave labor cars is a pretty fucked up idea.
Pretty much anything that you've ever owned has been made from the exploitation of some working class somewhere. The clothes you wear. The house you live in. The electronics that you use. The furniture that you own. The very food you eat and drink is often cheap because of an exploited worker somewhere that's paid pennies on the dollar. Your going to draw the line at a drastically cheaper car that's leaps and bounds better for the environment than a petrol vehicle? Okay.
Yes.
EVs are definitely better for the environment than ICE powered cads. But they won't singlehandedly solve climate change, let alone all the harms when places prioritize single occupancy passenger cars at the expense of public transit.
And sure, I'm drawing a line here because cars are one of the precious few industries where you can still buy union-made.
Where do you draw that line?
To be fair, as someone said, it’s not EV that will save the environment. They bring their own problems such as rare earth minerals, heavy metals, lithium fires, heavier cars = move road degradation because of weight, more PM2,5 because of the weight on caoutchouc tires, the difficulty to replace parts when broken because of the more locked design and less right to repair friendly and more.
Are they good for the environment? More than a combustion car, probably. Are they the silver bullet solution? Absolutely not. We are in Canada and we have industries, local, that could benefit from investing into public transportation and trains. That’s true Canadian investment to our companies and solutions to the current environmental crisis.
Cars factories are heavily automated. Manual labor is barely a factor in their cost. China gives state subsidies for EVs and has a far stronger local supply chain.
As much as I hate Elon, this is a terrible idea. Cheap Chinese trash mobiles built by Uyghur slave labor are not the answer.
How about we build cars in Canada instead?
Cheap Chinese trash mobiles built by Uyghur slave labor are not the answer.
Source?
How about we build cars in Canada instead?
Another person who thinks the world is like a SIMS game... just press the button and the factory pops up, right?!
EVs are easier to build than gas cars at least
Except they aren't trash, they're better than Teslas that's for sure.
My toenail clippings are better than Teslas.
That's what my friend in NZ told me too, they're really good, better or the same as Tesla.
Build cars in Germany, Japan, South Korea and the like. focus on something non car you can sell to them in return. You can do anything but not everything.
Building cars is something we already do in Canada. And there's currently a lot of capacity coming online to build electric cars. Pretty much the entire car could be sourced from Canadian parts, including the batteries. I think semi-conductors are the only thing that doesn't have a domestic source right now.
But we were fine with the usa destroying multiple countries, participating in many coups and supporting Israel for decades.
At least keep the tracking and voice-recording (for Ai) in-country. I don't see that in a provable fashion in the cheap asian cars.
I would be sympathetic if the Uyghur stuff was true.
Do you have any substantial sources, to objectively prove your claims? I've never seen anything convincing.
I'm not intending to simp for China. They are authoritarian. But I'm also not going to fall for propaganda especially if it's false. The USA has a motive for making the masses hate China.
There is plenty of evidence widely available from organizations like human rights watch and amnesty international. Claims that deny any evidence exist of the persecution of China's Muslim population rely on logical fallacies to attempt to obscure the validity of the body of evidence. Namely ad hominem attacks against the individual who first gathered the evidence to begin with.
While the researcher obviously has biased opinions about the CCP, that doesn't affect the validity of the evidence gathered, most of which comes directly from publicly available information released by the CCP itself, or from leaked internal communication from party members that have been widely verified by reputable journalists and organizations specializing in human rights violations.
While I personally wouldn't claim that there is a genocide as we traditionally understand it has occurred, it's hard to deny that the Uyghur people aren't being systemically oppressed or that significant human rights violations haven't occurred.
Simply looking at publicly available census data releases by the CCP we can tell that Uyghur people are being driven from culturally important sites that are being replaced by ethnically Han Chinese, and that Uyghur populations have been shrinking at a worryingly abnormal rate.
If we look at recent history of ethnic conflict within China in tibet, Manchuria, and inner Mongolia, I fail to see why it's logical to assume that the accusations of crimes against humanity is pure propaganda.
Han chauvinism is well documented, and even Mao Zedong spoke about how it would negatively affect the future of the party. Ethnic conflict/cleansing has been a constant in the region and is part of the foundational history of modern China.
Oh boy, genocide denial.
Oh I think you registered on the wrong instance
Hexbear is what you're looking for, this way most of us won't see your comments.
Yes. It is absolutely shameful propaganda to the most humanist response to terrorism in history: Education and job creation. Very significant prosperity in region. The political designation of genocide is based on some unwed mothers with 4+ children going to UK to say they were now sterile, FFS. The anti-China hateful have no metrics to stop hating China. Only propaganda amplification.
i would find amusing if countries retaliate US tariffs by singling out Musk and Trump companies
I hope EVs don't get a bad name out of all this. EVs are one of the few good things to come out of the last decade or so.
I obviously don't understand the economics of it and I realize that China will always have the upper hand on price but is there a reason every western EV has to be $40,000+? Like surely it's possible to build a barebones model for less than 30k right - especially if I don't need or even want touch screens or fancy interior materials or heated seats or anything.
Higher profit margins.
Europeans get the bulk of cheaper and smaller EVs. Meanwhile in North America, Ford stopped selling sedans. It’s a niche that car makers could fill if they wanted to.
If I specifically don’t want touch screens, what then?
Legally, cars sold in the US have to have a backup cam, so there has to be a screen, so it might as well be a touch screen.
I agree this is dumb and that's why I drive an old car with nothing but bluetooth
Me too! What is the cost/benefit FOR ME? I understand what it is for the manufacturers but it's a UX nightmare, especially when you're trying to drive too.
Western culture is built on delivering value to shareholders first and foremost.
That's why I snatched up a Bolt before Chevy (temporarily, they say) discontinued the line. I even did upgrade it a little to get heated/cooling front seats and a heated steering wheel plus the extra safety features. $32.5k with a $7.5k rebate from the federal Clean Vehicle Credit. So $25k for a car with a 175-280 mile range. (175ish in winter when the battery is less efficient, 280 in summer).
Of course the IRS fucked up the point of sale rebate when I was purchasing, but it's finally incoming with my taxes this year.
It's a combination of issues. In no particular order;
- precursor availability: All the stuff that EVs are made of, is made in China. If you want to build EVs it's easier and cheaper to get all the parts in China than it is in the US
- logistics: China has more modern roads, railroads, ports etc. That makes it much easier to get parts in and finished products out
- government aid: China has prioritized EVs for a long time and has all kinds of policies to encourage EV production
- EV infrastructure: China has more EV charging stations than the US and EU combined
- limited ICE competition: China doesn't have any big ICE vehicle companies. There are no significant groups in China advocating against EVs
Labor costs don't seem to be a factor at all. EVs are made in modern factories that are almost completely automated. The biggest part of "precursor availability" is likely batteries. The main innovation in EVs was the batteries. The electric motors, chassis, computers, etc are all secondary to batteries that can safely hold a lot of charge and discharge reliably. China dominates that market too.
How about the rare earth materials as well as much more expensive metals in the motor and electronics construction? An ICE engine is well understood and you can pick up a higher performing aluminum block and head crate motor for ~$13k or so. The higher trim Tesla motors are ~$20k, and they can have up to four motors. That’s a huge difference.
E: y’all downvoting…why? OEM electric motors for cars like a Tesla are expensive AF whereas you can get a relatively inexpensive ICE (~$7k for a base model V8 crate motor). That’s retail, not the manufacturer internal price.
I imagine China is subsidizing the R&D of their EVs while American car companies are trying to recoup those costs
Every major country subsidizes R&D. That's what federal research grants are all about. The NSF, NIH, etc do exactly that.
Other US subsidies on EVs aren't specifically restricted to R&D but US companies could apply it to that, if they want.
edit: typo
Definitely related. EVs are relatively new technology and internal knowledge for engineering R&D, materials, and manufacturing infrastructure all have to be spun up. All this, and you need marketing/planning folks to decide on what sort of vehicle will sell the best against their engineering capabilities.
Touch screens are actually cheaper than physical buttons as it’s the reason why so many electric cars have them. Most of the cost comes from the batteries so they try to save in other areas.
We should see more physical buttons back in newer electric cars as the batteries get cheaper to mass produce.
touch screens are a lot cheaper than buttons because you only need the one. and if one trim level of a car has heated seats, they all do because it's a lot cheaper to only produce one kind of seat.
car economics are weird.
Rear cameras are required, which means some sort of screen is required. Might as well make it a touch screen so you can cut costs on wiring and installing buttons if you already need one.
My guess is that none of them are at scale to the point where the margins are great. To make the margins acceptable price had to go up.
Nothing is really profitable in auto until the whole production line is operating at full scale.
Yeah that makes sense, I bet you're right or at least that's a large part of it.
Reminds me of this video I saw about economies of scale specifically regarding a special part that went into a guitar. The maker could get the material and produce that part pretty cheaply until the automotive industry stopped using that same material. Suddenly they could barely source the material anymore and just had to cancel the part.
Yes it costs more to live in those societies because people are paid more.
Why would Canadians want cheaper EVs that may or may not be reliable when they can have American assembled ones that are more expensive and may or may not work?
Ban the fucking things.
Offer loan forgiveness to any Tesla owner. Tell musk to fuck off.
Watch the Republicans start a civil war against themselves with the people who accept the buyout vs the ones "paying their dues" to their Lord and Savior.
Don't offer loan forgiveness... force Tesla to do a full recall - it's not like actions need to be logically justified these days...
We could just pass a law that says any car with more than 10 fatalities per 100k units is unsafe and has to be recalled and refunded. No car has come even close. It's 17 times worse than a Ford Pinto.
Or maintain and drive the car you already have. There are more options then Tesla and BYD. These are probably the worst options.
Top that with copyrights removal on Tesla tech.
Copyright removal on all Disney products. Role expiry date back to puss them off.
Yeeeesssssss
Why not both
I still want diy builds to be eligible for hov lane sticker and rebates when they have those
Seize all Musk and Trump-owned assets.
Make the USA a Canadian province! Oops, got carried away.
That's too far. Just parcel out the east (well, some of the east) and west coast into separate nations and form an alliance with those ones. They should stay separate, at least until they can get over their gun and money craze.
The argument against Chinese Ev's is not an economic one.
If some authoritarian state wants to steal from its poorest in society and transfer the wealth to foreign electric car buyers, why is our government trying to win in the race to the bottom?
Billions have been spent on the Canadian EV industry through subsidies, tax cuts and grants. The relative amount of jobs and Canada made goods are pitiful. The real beneficiaries are the foreign auto companies.
We will NEVER have a competitive advantage against China, Japan, US, UK, SK and Germany. Stop trying and put all that money and effort into something we do have a chance at being competitive in.
It's not about being competitive against Chinese EVs, it's about preventing China from attacking us economically, politically, and potentially even digitally.
These aren't just dumb vehicles, they're running Chinese made software, for a Chinese company, and reporting data back to China.
They're not just manufactured in China like you may have with other digital devices, with the software control and data residing in more friendly nations.
That matters.
These aren’t just dumb vehicles, they’re running Chinese made software, for a Chinese company, and reporting data back to China.
If your paranoia wins, then dumb EVs are cheaper than FSD. Tesla will be reporting data back to US. These are issues that only arise because you are committed to having a war on China, as bestest idea ever for Canadian prosperity. USA current war on us should be a bigger concern.
That is the rationale, if Trump destroys our auto industry, to get better value cars for net prosperity of Canadians even if we lose our very highly subsidized auto industry.
The future (present in China) of car manufacturing is robotics, and EVs require fewer parts that Canadians have specialized in. Still, Canadian resources and manufacturing can help build EVs cheaply here, and worth investing or nationalizing legacy car plants to help bring construction jobs and value to Canadians.
Electrek (the publisher of the article) seems to be a bit of a shill for Chinese EV companies, or he's getting some kind of commission. He's repeatedly promoted Chinese factories, goes on Chinese factory tours, etc... I don't know what the angle is, but it's vastly different from similar sources like Electroheads out of the UK.
That said, fuck Tesla.
Also, Canada should invest in building more micromobility devices here, like e-bikes, e-scooters, etc. The future isn't cars, and we need more affordable, accessible modes of transportation.
Electrek (the publisher of the article) seems to be a bit of a shill for Chinese EV companies,
They are a shill for best EV options to have EVs everywhere. China has good EVs, and more than 50% of car sales are EVs because they are good. Our EVs are improving rapidly, and sales growth is good without achieving China levels, but their tech trickles down to us as slow as it is.
Also, Canada should invest in building more micromobility devices here, like e-bikes, e-scooters, etc. The future isn’t cars, and we need more affordable, accessible modes of transportation.
Electrek also shills ebikes. Mostly NA brands even if they are made in China. Agree that these are awesome urban mobility options.,
If things keep getting worse, could Canada in theory steal IP and just try to make the best EV it can by copying others including Tesla (if it’s worth copying)?
It’s a great time to boost Canadian manufacturing. Hint hint Ottawa
On that front, they pretty much already were doing that. The big battery plant in Windsor should be ready to start ramping up production later this year. There was a lot more, but most of it has been paused since Ford decided to delay EV production at Oakville.
Guess how China climb out of the poverty: copycat.
Yes there is no reason they wouldn't be able to. Russia is doing it with all the companies that pulled out. The McDonald's there is still running with Russian supplies*
Historically, companies like coke during WW2 when they lost access to the syrup invented Fanta. Wasn't the same product as it is now but they still went their own way during war times.
*I have not verified if this is still true but it was when the war began and MD pulled out.
In that article it is mentioned that Trump is going back on an agreement he signed a few years ago.
Therefore agreements made with Trump do not mean anything. He will choose not to honour them if and when it is convenient to him.
But then I guess we already knew that from his business practices.
The art of the deal is to make the other side believe you are honourable, use that credibility to offer more than you intend to give and leverage them to give you what you want. Then invent a pretext to cancel the deal and keep your ill-gotten gains.
The problem with governments dealing with trump is that they trust him to be true to his word. I do not believe he will. I fear he will use this approach with Ukraine to hand them over to Poo-tin. Then when it's to late for the international community to do anything he'll just say Zelenskyy didn't hold up his end of the bargain.
Switching from one Authoritarian to another is never the solution.
Is 200% not legal?
Why not 10,000%?
We know that new(er) cars have spyware controlled by some government or corporation. If my privacy is going to be violated, I’d rather have a hostile gov/co do it. I’m not a government employee. When it comes to national security, I’m a complete nobody. I don’t give a shit what Beijing knows about my life, because they don’t care, and probably won’t share info with the West. Maybe they’ll share it with Russia, but again, that’s irrelevant to me.
I want Washington (and, to a much lesser extent, Ottawa) to know as little as possible, because I don’t trust them, and it’s much, much easier for them to make my life difficult if they want to.
I’d like to hear your opinions on this take.
By far, you should worry about your own government disapproving of you, and then using your car to kill you. Worrying about China only applies if your government helps force war on China. Probably the reaction to war on China, by China, is bricking your car instead of targeting everyone to crash or become an Israeli pager.
Why not both?
There needs to be some coercion of Canadian present (foreign) auto industry to make a committment to their Canadian operations.
The UAW said that despite the looming price increases, it will be companies that raise the costs that are ultimately to blame, not Trump.
There's certainly a danger for industry to cower to Trump, and help sacrifice Canada. A tariff level that is meant to raise revenue while still making Canadian industry/dealer network competitive, is a good starting point to "semi-welcome" dealership/repair or bigger investments from China into Canada. Trump has said he wants to get China to invest in EV manufacturing in US. Holding evil attitudes towards China because the US told us to apply their same tariffs without even talking to China, is simply an anti-Canadian attitude.
Overall tariff reductions on China is path to get a stronger Canadian retail sector that gains volume from US crossborder shopping and lower prices for Canadians as they also dump US alternatives. Deleting America program should be our common mission, and it is only through that mission, that "sense" will take place in Trump's cabinet, and then "undelete America" can happen again.
The main reason why Chinese cars (all of them) aren't allowed in North America is most don't pass our strict Safety standards. What needs to happen is provinces need to allow mini EV's. There are wonderful little single or two seater EV's that only do 30 Kmh, and can do 50 to 100 km's in range. But aren't allowed legally on the road. You can get them for like 5K.
I am sick and tired of people claiming that BYD are unsafe They have crash tested better than my current vehicle.
Right I came here to say this as well.
"Safety" you say. So why do you have Cybertruck, the kind of car that isn't safe for anyone? Removing signal stick is not safety either.
I find this hard to believe considering in Aus most of the EVs are Chinese and our safety standards are probably the highest compared to any country. A lot of BYDs available now.
China isn't morally superior to Elon Musk lol
In a geopolitical sense, they are more useful to us right now for two reasons:
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Any shot that hits Tesla hits America incredibly effectively as Tesla is one of the Magnificent 7, which means it has an outsized effect on the American markets/economy.
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Showing America that the world is ready to decouple from it and support to its rival over this nonsense is a powerful signal/threat.
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Would the Chinese EVs even meet our safety standards?
Almost certainly, because our safety standards are garbage, because we force ourselves to be in lockstep with NHTSA as to not make trade and travel difficult with the US
That's my concern as well. Seeing what happened with the cheap hoverboards and ebikes makes me wary of being too lenient on these.
You should also worry about if Chinese EVs meet reasonable labor standards. Which they don't.
They meet EU standards.
The whole “China bad America good” concept has been put in a different light of late.
Does EU/North America fear truly China because of its expansionist policies, or simply because their skin is a different colour? It’s not like the USA is above tampering in foreign government and bugging electronics.
I say go for it, Canada. If only because it’ll push Tesla off the scoreboard without the tariffs. They can’t compete.
I think a big part of why western countries “fear” china in the automotive space relates to local companies’ workers being expected to compete in a race to the bottom for compensation for labourers.
Just look at the fashion industry - sales of five dollar dresses made by workers at shein in miserable conditions dwarf those of 200 dollar dresses produced by local workers with a comfortable quality of life.
This is a fair point. China treats workers poorly, and they leverage labour camps for minorities.
The only difference is that "China bad America Good" has shifted to "China bad, America also bad". None of the issues people have with China have magically gone away.
Exactly this. Why is this so hard for people to understand. China Russia the US and Israel can all be bad at once! Hating one doesn't mean you have to side with the other!