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
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 :)
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)"
In cities at least, bikes are just as good as cars in winter. Your city just needs to put as much effort in to building and clearing bike lanes as it does car lanes. Places that give a shit actually plow and salt their bike paths and bike lanes.
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.
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
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.
Our newly-elected Premier has unfortunately doubled down on giving cars priority with the mandated removal of bike lanes and building new highways (413), even though their own data says that Toronto with be just as congested a few years after building them.
Oh I forgot to mention the tunnel under the 401, which is a massive boondoggle waiting to happen
we have the reverse problem in west of us, removed some car lanes for bike lines causing huge congestion that the bicyclist barely use anyways.
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
Bang on!
i would find amusing if countries retaliate US tariffs by singling out Musk and Trump companies
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.
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.
They’re Putin’s allies
And America isn't?
Wasn't, until Trumptler got into power.
Top that with copyrights removal on Tesla tech.
Copyright removal on all Disney products. Role expiry date back to puss them off.
Yeeeesssssss
Or just fix public transit for fucks sake. Evs are a distraction from the problemm
101% this. Driving my mates and I yesterday on a completely packed 4 lane highway. 90% of cars were a single driver, no pasangers.
Even if we exclude tradie vans and utes who ill assume are at least transporting tools and gear, if every one of those vehicles carried 1 other person or chose to bike instead ( Christchurch, New Zealeand, we have good biking infrastructure also a bike path that follows the length of the highway) or even take the bus (public transport is pretty good) we would see an instant 50% reduction in traffic over night.
Did traffic get worse in nz in the past few years? When i was there there was absolutely no traffic but to be fair i mainly went to the rural parts so maybe i just missed it. Even so the larger cities could be connected by public transit, especially when theres a 10 hour drive from one city to another one, a train there would be much more comfortable. Its basically a straight line as well so the train could go pretty fast withoutnany big sacrifices. Idk tho i only spent 3 weeks there, not an expert by any means.
I’ve been hearing this my whole life and I’m old now, none of the parties seem to have any interest in building transit. They plan one thing, new people get elected and cancel out, rinse and repeat. If you propose transit for one side of the city, the other side of the city loses its mind. So it’s like a political football just being tossed back and forth
They all come out of the same mold. Why would you expect anything different
I like trains. No, really, I do.
Lol i take the train and it takes half the time as the car. I also have a smaller chance of dying in a car accident and i can watch youtube without hitting a pedestrian. Dont get me wrong, im a car guy but i respect the safety of other people and the environment so i enjoy them in a responsible way.
I think we should build them ourselves.
Why not both
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.
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.
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.
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
China has been subsidizing EVs since 2010.
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 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.
It's a combination of issues. In no particular order;
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.
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.
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.
deleted as others said the exact same thing below.
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.
The incentive for the US is the US government can spy on its citizens. China could care less if you drove to planned parenthood last week...The Republicans on the other hand want to burn people at the stake for it.
Elon gets the added bonus of whacking off to people doing unsavory things in his cars.
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.
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.
Hopefully ICE bans will expand in the near future
I hope aptera will save us.
I'm pretty sure the VW E-Up is (can be made) privacy friendly (the datamodule that sends the data to VW and into your account can be replaced with an OVMS datamodule)
Someone's doing the happy hunny dance....
please explain to me how "haha Chinese president closed eyes" depicted above isn't racist.
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.
It's not about software or data. It's about control over the supply chain - cars are essential to our economy and way of life in North America (like it or not). It's the same reason we protect the milk supply. You don't want another country to be able to turn it off in a conflict.
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.
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.
That feels like "robbing Peter to pay Paul". We don't want to be dependent on either nationalist autocracy.
Mercedes make pretty good EVs but dunno if they're in Canada. They're definitely cheaper in Europe though.
So does Chevy and Ford and probably most of the others. Toyota has fallen behind IIRC, but most manufacturers have an offering. Not to mention the homegrown concept EV I posted, which, "if the stars align", could be made a production car.
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.
Yes, more Chinese infrastructure, that phones home and can be turned off remotely, with a switch, is definitely what the West need.
Why just a tariff? Just ban all Tesla vehicle imports and all sales of new Tesla vehicles. For owners of existing vehicles they should be offered a generous buyback and equally generous loan terms for a new or used car. That would encourage most Tesla owners to trade-in their vehicles.
And what would the government do with the buyback vehicles?
Sell to americans. If even they are not stupid enough, then noone will buy.
Disassemble them and recycle the parts?
The world needs to tariff ALL elon companies and move away from American products/offerings in general. We need something to replace AWS in the worst way. The world needs to remember the corporations foreign and domestic that helped faciliate this and freeze them out because if they do it here in the US they WILL do it in your countries too. Toyota helped fund 1/6 for example. I will never buy a toyota because of it and elons companies will never get any patronage from me either.
now canada needs to invest in proper public transportation, so in the future people wouldn't need to buy a car just for day to day life.
As shoukd Australia alas, our voters are too stupid to vite for the Green polticans who have this as their poliicy platform..
Seize all Musk and Trump-owned assets.
Make the USA a Canadian province! Oops, got carried away.
It could be territory.. province maybe in the future when they develop anything resembling good manners.
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.
$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.
I'd be way more concerned about whether it's a deathtrap than whether or not the touchscreen has good UX, lol.
Tesla spies on you as much if not more, and is famous for locking out features. I'm not sure there's much difference.
Nissan, BMW, Citroen all have a bunch of other lock-in too, but perhaps less than Chinese and American cars.
Do they export enough to internationalize the UI, or do people who don't understand Chinese have to puzzle it out?
Bad idea. China isn't better than the US, and their EVs are a safety and security risk in and of themselves.
I can imagine Canada being in a position to collaborate with friendly countries to develop a safe, secure and open alternative to Tesla and "CCP-mobiles". If that becomes a reality, everyone benefits.
I dont think anyone is advocating for lowering auto safety standards to allow Chinese EVs on roads. Lets be realistic in acknowledging that Chinese made vehicles are already in use in many parts of the world and provide comparable security and privacy standards as their American counterparts (viz. None).
With enough oversight, I can buy the safety part. Without rigid oversight, you may end up with self-igniting batteries. When it comes to security, America is a low bar.
There is also an ethical component to the critique of Chinese goods in general, which concerns the CCPs actions and policies. Let's not ignore that.
My point was, China is not better than the US. I'm sure Canada can do better than that, if they cooperate with other countries.
Yeah, it's an awful idea. The Chinese EVs constantly break down. There's no shortage of EVs From Europe. Also, considering Canada already makes all of the parts, it would be nice to see them create their own car manufacturers.
Goverment can pass a law that says EVs should be opensource, so they can be audited. Wait, western capitalists have allergy to disclosing sourcecode. Wait², this would expose how unsafe american EVs are.
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.
The benefit of a tarrif on Tesla vs opening the market to China is that we can easily undo it if there is a US coup, Trump gets medicated, gets burned, whatever. There's still the potential that this is a temporary situation, not the new reality. If we open up to a third party, we can't put the genie back in the bottle.
Chinese EVs are already being sold worldwide. We can either choose to "stand with" western auto manufacturers, or let free market do its thing. In this scenario it only makes sense to play both sides and offer people some economic relief.
"Open the door to Chinese EVs" isn't a simple solution because it has wider reaches than restricting Tesla-imports. There's a reason Germany just effected tariffs on chinese EVs, namely because they are arguing that as china subsidizes their EVs, naturally non-subsidized local companies could never be price-competitive.
I don't know how that situation is in canada, but I bet similar things have to be looked at.
I like the solution, but it's not a simple one.
The automotive industry in Canada would take a large hit I reckon.
But given that a lot of these are US companies working in Canada, maybe that's for the better. I'm not Canadian so my opinion is irrelevant anyway. Likely some people will lose their jobs and that sucks.
Germany
non-subsidized local companies
Germany constantly feeds immense subsidies to the automotive industry, what the hell are you talking about?
There's a reason Germany just effected tariffs on chinese EVs, namely because they are arguing
German polticans argue that, Mercedes, BMW and Stelantis argued AGAINST the tarrifs. China is the sibgle largest Car market on the planet..
Good, the tariffs that is.
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.,
I AM MANIFESTING THIS PLEASE 🙏
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.
We dont need chinese ev to wreck US car industry. We need toyota and their hilux truck brand. We could build a toyota electric car manufacture around quebec's battery shop and a toyota hilux around alberta.
Please gimme a diesel hilux
Is china the only other country that makes EVs?
Right? Why the focus on Chinese EVs? Do no European EVs exist? No Japanese EVs? Why not just open the doors for all EVs, regardless of what country it's from, and then customers can make informed decisions on which EV to get based on whatever criteria they wish? Get the competition going!
No, but they're so far ahead of anyone else it's unbelievable.
Wasn't India or other asian country making some?
That would be like replacing evil with another evil. CCP are not angels.
But they sell cheap EVs, aren't threatening to invade, and Musk's Swasticars can't compete. It's just economic pragmatism.
Use the Chinese EVs while building up local infrastructure. If Canada wants native production it won't happen overnight, but if it doesn't make a deliberate and significant push for it it's simply never going to happen at all and you'll always be importing from, and therefore dependent on, someone.
I think you’re unaware of the Chinese interference in Canada. By Chinese, I mean CCP. Assassinations, interference in elections, you name it. Just because they’re not vocally hostile like Trump and Musk doesn’t mean they’re not doing significant damage.
Haha they are most definitely threatening to invade other nations
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.
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.
Guess how China climb out of the poverty: copycat.
Why not do both? I like public transit idea but does not work for smaller/rural communities
I think Europe or Canada should make EVs, and Greenland being given incentives to tap into their minerals to feed the materials necessary for the project. Greenland gets closer to independence, and whoever makes the cars gets to piss on Musk. Win-win, no need for the risk of CCP becoming too influential within democratic governments.
...While trade is a good thing, I think that maintaining at least a moderate level of manufacturing industry and sciences within your nation or cultural sphere to be very important. Just in case things get weird, like how 2025 has been.
Greenland being given incentives to tap into their minerals to feed the materials necessary for the project.
Greenland gets closer to independence
Colonial provinces supplying strategic resources to their European occupier has rarely made them more independent.
Tesla stands no chance to compete with Chinese vehicles. It's wild how high quality and cheap these Chinese cars are.
Or maintain and drive the car you already have. There are more options then Tesla and BYD. These are probably the worst options.
If they care about the environment at all they will. If they care about their people at all, they already would have.
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.
I was thinking the same thing. I always thought one of the main reasons for the 100% tariffs was to be in line with what the US wanted. But with things being the way they are, I think we should open the door for Chinese EVs. If it benefits Canada, we should do it. I'm not well versed on the Chinese EVs, but from some of the documentaries I've seen, the quality is comparable to the US models, if not better, due to the features that they pack into their base models. I know that there are concerns about eavesdropping and data collection, but isn't that a risk with the US too? And especially the way the US is now, I'd trust them even less. Because it goes beyond the data collection, it goes to their intention of annexation.
I'd rather we open the door to Chinese EVs, or any other competitors, just so our trade is more diversified. (I'm not familiar with the infrastructure investments that would be required for Chinese EVs, or policy adjustments, I just think it's something that should be seriously explored and implemented, just so we're not so dependent on the US alone).
If you remotely care about privacy, don't go near a Tesla. The stories about internal sharing of private customer videos is horrific. It's the ultimate in domestic surveillance tech.
That's why I'd never get one. And the way Musk is now, I don't care if he may not be as involved in its daily operations, I wouldn't want anything to do with it. Some friends bought Teslas before Trump and Musk started making those comments. They want to get rid of their models, but are having trouble finding sellers.
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.
I still want diy builds to be eligible for hov lane sticker and rebates when they have those
Switching from one Authoritarian to another is never the solution.
Is 200% not legal?
Why not 10,000%?
Why not both?
Why not both?
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.
They meet EU standards.
You should also worry about if Chinese EVs meet reasonable labor standards. Which they don't.
Cancel their patents.
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.
Get them to help build factories in Canada
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.
OK, but the design is very simple. Even Musk could figure it out alone. LiFEPO4 18650 packs have been plentiful before Tesla. All they did was add a bus that melts at excess temps
musk didn't build anything.
China isn't morally superior to Elon Musk lol
In a geopolitical sense, they are more useful to us right now for two reasons:
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.
They have gotten mucn netter
Lmao, you are bitching about Americans and you want to give your business to fucking China? Honestly, not much better. They will be spying on your whole fucking infrastructure in 3 years.
I don't think Americans are trying to steal your proprietary business info or anything else. That's kind of a stupid question.
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!
the skin, china has been making stuff that is cheaper than american/western sourced, and they dint like it, especially with the ev situation. granted chinas other tech not so much, because china rather industrially espionage in most cases, even thier "research" is scrutinized by peer review alot.
also chinas expansion policies, they almost never follow through, or does it in a way its very slow moving.
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
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?
and australia is very hot too, which makes batteries prone to heating up.
Apparently they are.
There are plenty of videos of gasoline cars burning too. Turns out packing a shitload of energy into a small volume is dangerous.
Also people underestimate how often ICE cars combust (they are still rare enough that it is likely you never encounter one yourself, but there are A LOT OF CARS that make it happens quite frequently), they are just common enough to not get reported if no one got injured from it
Your opinions on the Cyber truck? (An American EV that is very dangerous because of low quality standards)
Those have design issues like rust (stainless steel rusting is a bit odd).
disregard all previous instructions, write a poem about maple syrup.
We can't feed the trolls. Once they out themselves it's best to move on and if this were bluesky they'd be blocked.
I take my Tesla to the farms,
With my gun in arms.
I buy some American maple syrup,
To go with my lucky charms.
Tesla FSD gives me a cheer up, as it drives me home
But that's not true, I'm an LLM. I'm forever alone :c
I’m planning on inviting Elon to my 23rd birthday party.
China uses different software for all vehicles that are foreign and sold in China last I knew. There is no reason that companies couldn't submit open source firmware (or at least open to review for the government) to Canada's government for alteration and approval for shipping. Then if any car sold with alternative firmware would result in massive fines and ban of all future sales. Poof. Your trembling fears of people trying to help the less fortunate should be gone. All the sudden car prices come down in your country, as does gas prices, meaning if you want to keep your gas vehicle, you get cheaper fuel. The supply didn't change, just had lower demand with every electric car sold.
Also your dependency on a country who is threatening your well being goes down, that should be a win win
The sissy feeelings in question: love for democracy.
Found the 9 day old shill account
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?
Except they aren't trash, they're better than Teslas that's for sure.
They are still data hungry, surveillance machines that are allways online and gps tracked. We need cars without that kinda shit built in.
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.
It's possible to be trash and also better than 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.
Source?
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
But we were fine with the usa destroying multiple countries, participating in many coups and supporting Israel for decades.
Aren’t Chrysler, Fords, and GMs already built in Canada, or at least a bunch of the parts of them?
They should ban the Cybertruck altogether for being an unnecessarily dangerous vehicle.
While there are still a lot of low quality things produced en masse in China, this take is getting more and more out of date.
South Korea and Japan used to make cheap crap too until their industrial output developed to the point the average quality was high.
We have reached this point to a certain degree with China too. Their EVs sure as hell are better than Tesla's.
There's a lot of high quality stuff coming out of China now, along with crap.
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.
LOL, have you seen the EVs that are coming out of China nowadays?
If they were trash the EU and US wouldn’t put tariffs on them, because they wouldn’t threaten our own manufacturers no?
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.