I just read an article stating that Ford lost 36k on every EV they sold in 2023… In a market where they had government protection from Chinese EVs.
Comment on Trump Is Obsessed With Oil. But Chinese Batteries Will Soon Run the World
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 13 hours agoJFC…are people this dumb? The first taste is free buddy, these TEMU EVs are being sold below cost just to attack US industry. BYD has a $38B debt propped up by the Chinese government.
You geniuses forgot about the Biden investment in US battery plants.
Bytemeister@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
I just read an article stating that Ford lost 36k on every EV they sold in 2023…
Ford, and other American auto makers, were asleep at the wheel when EVs were starting to take off. Instead of investing in R&D to make a solid product they were caught unprepared and had to throw everything at the wall to see what stuck with their first EVs. Yes, they were able to bring them to market fairly quickly (good), but at the cost of efficient of the product and the production method.
This means for every EV they make, they do it expensively where they wouldn’t need to if they improved their designs and production methods.
jjlinux@lemmy.zip 13 hours ago
Wrong, they are selling cheap to dismount Mercedes, Porsche and BMW in Europe, and it’s working. Once they dump on those 3 companies they will raise the prices to be profitable, but Europe will already have no options. Just wait and see. Chinese EVs are all over Germany now, and it’s only going to increase.
3abas@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
You’re mixing a few real dynamics with a lot of propaganda framing.
Yes, China uses industrial policy and subsidized credit, and yes, firms can price aggressively to gain market share. But pretending the U.S. is some pure “market” victim is absurd when it literally did the same thing via public-credit industrial policy. The Biden-era battery buildout you cite is a perfect example: the public underwrites corporate risk, and when demand softens the companies pause projects, restructure deals, and keep the upside private. Ford/SK On’s “big national strategy” became delays, a JV breakup, and loan restructuring; Stellantis/Samsung is ramping cautiously amid volatility. That isn’t “saving U.S. industry,” it’s socializing risk and then calling it patriotism.
Also, “TEMU EVs” is just culture-war branding. The issue isn’t that consumers are “dumb,” it’s that working people are getting squeezed, and cheaper cars matter when wages lag and housing/healthcare eat the paycheck. If you want to defend tariffs or targeted restrictions, make the case honestly on labor, climate, and supply-chain resilience, not xenophobic moral panic.
And the funniest part is you invoke BYD debt like it’s uniquely scandalous while ignoring the mountain of subsidies, tax abatements, and cheap financing that props up U.S. automakers and battery JVs. If you’re worried about state-backed capital distorting markets, congratulations: you’re arguing against capitalism as it actually exists, not for it.
If we’re going to spend public money on industrial capacity, attach enforceable labor standards, community guarantees, and public equity or governance rights. Otherwise it’s a corporate welfare program with a flag taped to it.