Comment on Europe's carmakers fret over China's EV prowess at Munich car show
cyd@lemmy.world 1 year agoIt’s quite a bit more complicated than that. Those joint ventures were for traditional cars, and even today Chinese automakers aren’t that great at making internal combustion engines. But in EVs, the Chinese didn’t get significant help from joint ventures; their EV industry predates foreign involvement (Tesla only set up there in 2018, a decade after BYD already started making their own EVs).
Sure, the Chinese probably picked up a lot of general industrial know-how from foreign investors, but a lot of their EV expertise is also based on figuring things out for themselves, and seizing an opportunity to exploit a new technology and disrupt slow moving incumbents.
Yeah, it was both. The european brands avoided electric cars for a long time, while the chinese pushed hard for them. And because electric motors and car batteries were a new technology, this was a great opportunity for the chinese to pull ahead(everyone started from 0).
And the chinese also used their cooperations and acquisitions(Volvo is owned by the chinese brand Geely), in order to improve the conventional car making part production(everything other than the electric engine and batteries).
Hazdaz@lemmy.world 1 year ago
EVs are easily.
They are considerably less complicated than ICE cars. And since they’ve been building iPhones and Playstations and TVs for a couple of decades now, they have the expertise to manufacture electrical components which is where they have learned about the E in EVs.
Hypx@kbin.social 1 year ago
This the real truth. Anyone can make a BEV. It also means nothing when someone does. European car makers can do so if they wanted. The problem is that people don't want BEVs. They're just too expensive and limiting.