“The move might even serve as a signal that if Trump starts threatening Canada the way he’s been threatening Greenland, Canada could geopolitically reorient toward China for protection.”
If Trump starts threatening Canada? It’s been about a year hasn’t it that Trump has been talking about annexing us? And now members of his administration are playing footsie with Alberta separatists https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8ylqx0zw4o
I don’t see us looking to a different authoritarian superpower for protection (our moves with China are about trade diversification). Our heart is with all of the democratic middle powers and with our liberal democratic friends to our south.
Yeah, Americans seem pretty unaware that Trump and his cabal have been similarly threatening Canada for a year now. Like any aggressive and powerful autocrat, they're deliberately beggaring and destabilizing their neighbours.
How this will go down is in the form of "help". For any country, "help" is one of the hardest things to defend from.
If Alberta has a referendum, count on Trump soon afterward moving troops to Montana as a prelude to 'helping' separatists. The BS rhetoric will go to 11, and support for intervention among Americans will shoot up, providing cover for it. Then we'll see reports of "little green men" in Alberta.
The Alberta separatists are what Russians used to call "useful idiots".
you are right but under the current mendacious and incompetent regime in the US probably won't happen. meanwhile the rest of the world move on from the USA EU free trade with India has concluded successfully and more to come. MAGA stupidity is just another way of growing poorer and more isolated.
I was pretty skeptical at first and was thinking “no way” when I first started to read your piece, but the “force Detroit to compete” point changed how I was thinking about it.
We’ve seen this before in manufacturing with Japanese cars too. It hurt in the short term, but it ended up pushing U.S. automakers to actually modernize instead of just protecting legacy tech.
That plant closed, along with the one in Newmarket, Ontario.
Many of the buses BYD produced have been mothballed by the cities that bought them, such as Toronto. Other cities moved them to short or boutique runs.
BYD's first foray into North America was a fiasco, but it doesn't mean a second would fail.
The whole point of tariffs is not to compete. Trump’s tariffs are a Buy American campaign. He envisions Americans buying American-made cars while making good wages and with no competition.
I can tell you how that ended for Detroit. The made POS cars, Americans wised up and bought Toyotas and Datsuns, small trucks. That expanded during the Middle East oil crisis, and people wanted fuel-efficient vehicles. Trump is a moronic luddite and while Noah makes a case for allowing them in, it will never happen. Detroit doesn’t want to compete; they want a closed market. Just ask your friendly UAW rep.
There's one other useful data point in favor of this: it's what China did! China rolled out the red carpet for Tesla with the express aim of giving their domestic car industry a kick in the pants and something to aim for. Evidently, it worked!
Tesla vehicles need an internet connection for self driving data and over the air software updates. Other vehicles have connectivity for map data, music and emergency response, although many could get by with letting phones handle that instead like CarPlay.
I agree with Noah about letting Chinese vehicles into the US. Trump and MAGA are rejecting the electric stack including electric vehicles, solar and wind energy, motor and almost everything associated with the electrification of the economy. The rest of the world are transforming their countries to be based on electricity derived majorly from solar and wind, while MAGA is forcing expensive, inefficient coal power plants to stay open? Do you want your son or daughter working in a coal mine?! Noah is correct that the domestic automobile manufacturers will give up on EVs and just continue to build internal combustion engine cars unless they are forced to have to compete with low cost, high quality Chinese imports. The one thing I would add to what Noah has said is that even without a JV, there can be a high degree of technology and knowhow transfer. Apple built their phones in China without a JV, but it was enormously beneficial to China because Apple trained thousands of engineers and showed them how to build world call products. And then many of these workers left the Apple factories and the knowledge and knowhow was diffused in Huawei, Xiaomi, and others. But please, listen to Noah. We need to start building the manufacturing foundations for the electric stack. The government should be taking the lead in this, but even if that isn't possible with MAGA, Noah's idea of allowing Chinese EVs into the US will force some of the changes necessary to begin to embrace the electric stack and begin to move the US toward a future powered by abundant, cheap electricity.
Electric cars depend on coal electricity generation in China (60 %) and many parts of the USA (17%). If you don’t want your children working in coal mines, then gasoline or hybrid cars are what you need, since they use zero coal.
Electric vehicles powered with coal-generated electricity are still less polluting than gasoline powered cars (225gCO2 / mile for coal-powered electricity in China v. 296gCO2/ mile @ 30mpg for an ICEV). Hybrids that get over 40mpg are slightly cleaner than either. And since there is no regional grid in America that is 100% coal-powered, there in no place in America where an EV pollutes more than any gasoline or hybrid vehicle.
We just bought a Ford Mustang Mach-e EV. With incentives, the price was close to the current US median new car price. It's an outstanding vehicle, powerful, good ride, great tech. It's got the best Apple CarPlay implementation of any car I've ever driven. Range, at 300 miles, is fine.
I guess the stats show that people aren't buying as many EVs, but it sure isn't lack of quality or exorbitant price.
Agree on this, sadly. Detroit has simply proven itself incapable of the innovation and concerted application of technological advances to industrial production that this age demands. We have one and one-half legitimate EV companies in the country (I'm counting Rivian and Lucid combined as the one-half) compared to 15(?) in China, and our once shining EV leader Tesla is so under the thumb of an incontinent madman that it doesn't even call it self an EV company but an "AI" company, as the madman tries to shift all value into his closely-held ancillary ventures. This screwed up company recently announced it would remove basic lane-centering cruise control from the car (standard in entry level Kias, Hyundais and Toyotas) -- unless you buy a $99/month subscription to the the still-not-functioning "Full Self Driving" package. It's a shit-show shedding customers globally and can't be relied on for anything of substance going forward. I once held out hope for already well-integrated foreign companies manufacturering in the US like VW and Hyundai group (and Kia/Hyundai/Genesis is, in fact, kicking ass with its EVs), but it won't be enough to stimulate the full blown electrified industrial revival we need. Sigh. What wasted opportunity.
I don't really follow how allowing Chinese cars into the US will "force" the domestic auto makers to pivot back to electric vehicle manufacturing. They face competition in virtually all segments of the market (except full size pickups) from Korean, Japanese, and European vehicles. Not everyone has abandoned the electric market and the domestics retreat wasn't because "it was hard" but because the American consumers transition to electric vehicles was much slower than anticipated.
The North American market is much different than the European and Chinese markets. EV's are still not practical in much of the country due to a lack of charging stations, longer range requirements, climate in parts of North America, and our need/desire to own a vehicle that can tow the boat or travel trailer.
The domestics haven't completely abandoned the segment, it was just foolish to move so quickly based upon hope rather than market reality. And, the pick up segment is the least ready for the transition as vehicle range drops astronomically when towing or carrying a large load.
North America will continue to transition toward electric vehicles but at a pace dictated by consumer demand and not the fanciful predictions of the eco warriors or unsustainable Federal subsidies. The domestic manufacturers will continue to build EV's although that list of "domestics: now includes many Korean, Japanese, and European brands with manufacturing plants in the US.
I might have been more sympathetic to the idea of protecting our auto industry, but GM’s recent decision to only have a limited run on the new 2023 Bolt and then switch the Fairfax Kansas plant to a gas Buick is a major disappointment. The Bolt was a popular EV and well priced. I owned one for six years and wanted better tech so I traded it in for an Equinox EV. Had the new bolt been available then, I might have just upgraded to the new Bolt. The Bolt is about the lowest priced EV available in the US. GM has a nice variety of EV’s but not at that price point. Without subsidies, it’s going to take even longer for EV’s to catch on, but if GM isn’t committed enough to keep up production of what is likely to be a well received EV, then the hell with them. They get what they deserve.
Canada is letting in less than 50,000 Chinese EVs a year without tariffs, but about 2,000,000 new light vehicles in total are sold in Canada annually, so that will hardly have any impact at all.
I think you are missing the problem of no nationwide network of charging stations. The US is big, and people like to drive, and often drive long distances. We need a (checks notes) zillion charging stations in the US, and we need them to work, and we need to not have several different apps on our phones to get them to work. None of that is happening. These are not problems in most of the rest of the world, mostly because of different driving habits. And no, Americans aren't going to start driving like Europeans because Europeans are just better than we are.
My family has three hybrids and a plug-in hybrid. Hybrids are very popular, but straight EVs aren't. I have talked to many car dealers and hybrid owners and they all say the same things (see above). Fix that and EVs will flourish in the US.
Great post. 100% agree. I'm old enough to remember how awful US cars were before the Japanese inundated us with super dependable, efficient Hondas & Toyotas. Let's be smart!
“The move might even serve as a signal that if Trump starts threatening Canada the way he’s been threatening Greenland, Canada could geopolitically reorient toward China for protection.”
If Trump starts threatening Canada? It’s been about a year hasn’t it that Trump has been talking about annexing us? And now members of his administration are playing footsie with Alberta separatists https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8ylqx0zw4o
I don’t see us looking to a different authoritarian superpower for protection (our moves with China are about trade diversification). Our heart is with all of the democratic middle powers and with our liberal democratic friends to our south.
Yeah, Americans seem pretty unaware that Trump and his cabal have been similarly threatening Canada for a year now. Like any aggressive and powerful autocrat, they're deliberately beggaring and destabilizing their neighbours.
How this will go down is in the form of "help". For any country, "help" is one of the hardest things to defend from.
If Alberta has a referendum, count on Trump soon afterward moving troops to Montana as a prelude to 'helping' separatists. The BS rhetoric will go to 11, and support for intervention among Americans will shoot up, providing cover for it. Then we'll see reports of "little green men" in Alberta.
The Alberta separatists are what Russians used to call "useful idiots".
you are right but under the current mendacious and incompetent regime in the US probably won't happen. meanwhile the rest of the world move on from the USA EU free trade with India has concluded successfully and more to come. MAGA stupidity is just another way of growing poorer and more isolated.
I was pretty skeptical at first and was thinking “no way” when I first started to read your piece, but the “force Detroit to compete” point changed how I was thinking about it.
We’ve seen this before in manufacturing with Japanese cars too. It hurt in the short term, but it ended up pushing U.S. automakers to actually modernize instead of just protecting legacy tech.
BYD already has a plant in Lancaster, California. It is unionized and hires veterans to build electric buses. It’s a different market, but the sky hasn’t fallen. See https://www.modern-times.blog/p/the-us-should-set-the-terms-of-competition.
That plant closed, along with the one in Newmarket, Ontario.
Many of the buses BYD produced have been mothballed by the cities that bought them, such as Toronto. Other cities moved them to short or boutique runs.
BYD's first foray into North America was a fiasco, but it doesn't mean a second would fail.
I believe the Lancaster production facility was rebranded "RIDE" but is still owned by BYD and is still manufacturing transit and school buses.
The whole point of tariffs is not to compete. Trump’s tariffs are a Buy American campaign. He envisions Americans buying American-made cars while making good wages and with no competition.
I can tell you how that ended for Detroit. The made POS cars, Americans wised up and bought Toyotas and Datsuns, small trucks. That expanded during the Middle East oil crisis, and people wanted fuel-efficient vehicles. Trump is a moronic luddite and while Noah makes a case for allowing them in, it will never happen. Detroit doesn’t want to compete; they want a closed market. Just ask your friendly UAW rep.
It isn’t just the UAW rep. It is Management as well that wants a comfortable and protected home market.
Indeed.
There's one other useful data point in favor of this: it's what China did! China rolled out the red carpet for Tesla with the express aim of giving their domestic car industry a kick in the pants and something to aim for. Evidently, it worked!
Why allow cars to communicate with the internet at all? No radio transceiver, no security problem.
This should be a mandatory option on North American vehicles. Or at least a physical switch where it can be disabled.
Tesla vehicles need an internet connection for self driving data and over the air software updates. Other vehicles have connectivity for map data, music and emergency response, although many could get by with letting phones handle that instead like CarPlay.
I agree with Noah about letting Chinese vehicles into the US. Trump and MAGA are rejecting the electric stack including electric vehicles, solar and wind energy, motor and almost everything associated with the electrification of the economy. The rest of the world are transforming their countries to be based on electricity derived majorly from solar and wind, while MAGA is forcing expensive, inefficient coal power plants to stay open? Do you want your son or daughter working in a coal mine?! Noah is correct that the domestic automobile manufacturers will give up on EVs and just continue to build internal combustion engine cars unless they are forced to have to compete with low cost, high quality Chinese imports. The one thing I would add to what Noah has said is that even without a JV, there can be a high degree of technology and knowhow transfer. Apple built their phones in China without a JV, but it was enormously beneficial to China because Apple trained thousands of engineers and showed them how to build world call products. And then many of these workers left the Apple factories and the knowledge and knowhow was diffused in Huawei, Xiaomi, and others. But please, listen to Noah. We need to start building the manufacturing foundations for the electric stack. The government should be taking the lead in this, but even if that isn't possible with MAGA, Noah's idea of allowing Chinese EVs into the US will force some of the changes necessary to begin to embrace the electric stack and begin to move the US toward a future powered by abundant, cheap electricity.
Electric cars depend on coal electricity generation in China (60 %) and many parts of the USA (17%). If you don’t want your children working in coal mines, then gasoline or hybrid cars are what you need, since they use zero coal.
Electric vehicles powered with coal-generated electricity are still less polluting than gasoline powered cars (225gCO2 / mile for coal-powered electricity in China v. 296gCO2/ mile @ 30mpg for an ICEV). Hybrids that get over 40mpg are slightly cleaner than either. And since there is no regional grid in America that is 100% coal-powered, there in no place in America where an EV pollutes more than any gasoline or hybrid vehicle.
We just bought a Ford Mustang Mach-e EV. With incentives, the price was close to the current US median new car price. It's an outstanding vehicle, powerful, good ride, great tech. It's got the best Apple CarPlay implementation of any car I've ever driven. Range, at 300 miles, is fine.
I guess the stats show that people aren't buying as many EVs, but it sure isn't lack of quality or exorbitant price.
Agree on this, sadly. Detroit has simply proven itself incapable of the innovation and concerted application of technological advances to industrial production that this age demands. We have one and one-half legitimate EV companies in the country (I'm counting Rivian and Lucid combined as the one-half) compared to 15(?) in China, and our once shining EV leader Tesla is so under the thumb of an incontinent madman that it doesn't even call it self an EV company but an "AI" company, as the madman tries to shift all value into his closely-held ancillary ventures. This screwed up company recently announced it would remove basic lane-centering cruise control from the car (standard in entry level Kias, Hyundais and Toyotas) -- unless you buy a $99/month subscription to the the still-not-functioning "Full Self Driving" package. It's a shit-show shedding customers globally and can't be relied on for anything of substance going forward. I once held out hope for already well-integrated foreign companies manufacturering in the US like VW and Hyundai group (and Kia/Hyundai/Genesis is, in fact, kicking ass with its EVs), but it won't be enough to stimulate the full blown electrified industrial revival we need. Sigh. What wasted opportunity.
I don't really follow how allowing Chinese cars into the US will "force" the domestic auto makers to pivot back to electric vehicle manufacturing. They face competition in virtually all segments of the market (except full size pickups) from Korean, Japanese, and European vehicles. Not everyone has abandoned the electric market and the domestics retreat wasn't because "it was hard" but because the American consumers transition to electric vehicles was much slower than anticipated.
The North American market is much different than the European and Chinese markets. EV's are still not practical in much of the country due to a lack of charging stations, longer range requirements, climate in parts of North America, and our need/desire to own a vehicle that can tow the boat or travel trailer.
The domestics haven't completely abandoned the segment, it was just foolish to move so quickly based upon hope rather than market reality. And, the pick up segment is the least ready for the transition as vehicle range drops astronomically when towing or carrying a large load.
North America will continue to transition toward electric vehicles but at a pace dictated by consumer demand and not the fanciful predictions of the eco warriors or unsustainable Federal subsidies. The domestic manufacturers will continue to build EV's although that list of "domestics: now includes many Korean, Japanese, and European brands with manufacturing plants in the US.
I think the transition would happen much faster if we had less expensive and better options.
I might have been more sympathetic to the idea of protecting our auto industry, but GM’s recent decision to only have a limited run on the new 2023 Bolt and then switch the Fairfax Kansas plant to a gas Buick is a major disappointment. The Bolt was a popular EV and well priced. I owned one for six years and wanted better tech so I traded it in for an Equinox EV. Had the new bolt been available then, I might have just upgraded to the new Bolt. The Bolt is about the lowest priced EV available in the US. GM has a nice variety of EV’s but not at that price point. Without subsidies, it’s going to take even longer for EV’s to catch on, but if GM isn’t committed enough to keep up production of what is likely to be a well received EV, then the hell with them. They get what they deserve.
(Tangential but related fiction recommendation: "Attack Surface" by Cory Doctorow, about hacking into and using EVs as a mass weapon.)
Canada is letting in less than 50,000 Chinese EVs a year without tariffs, but about 2,000,000 new light vehicles in total are sold in Canada annually, so that will hardly have any impact at all.
I think you are missing the problem of no nationwide network of charging stations. The US is big, and people like to drive, and often drive long distances. We need a (checks notes) zillion charging stations in the US, and we need them to work, and we need to not have several different apps on our phones to get them to work. None of that is happening. These are not problems in most of the rest of the world, mostly because of different driving habits. And no, Americans aren't going to start driving like Europeans because Europeans are just better than we are.
My family has three hybrids and a plug-in hybrid. Hybrids are very popular, but straight EVs aren't. I have talked to many car dealers and hybrid owners and they all say the same things (see above). Fix that and EVs will flourish in the US.
Great post. 100% agree. I'm old enough to remember how awful US cars were before the Japanese inundated us with super dependable, efficient Hondas & Toyotas. Let's be smart!