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Chinese technology companies are paving the way for a world that will be powered by electric motors rather than gas-guzzling engines. It is a decisively 21st-century approach not just to solve its own energy problems, but also to sell batteries and other electric products to everyone else. Canada is its newest buyer of EVs; in a rebuke of Mr. Trump, its prime minister, Mark Carney, lowered tariffs on the cars as part of a new trade deal.

Though Americans have been slow to embrace electric vehicles, Chinese households have learned to love them. In 2025, 54 percent of new cars sold in China were either battery-powered or plug-in hybrids. That is a big reason that the country’s oil consumption is on track to peak in 2027, according to forecasts from the International Energy Agency. And Chinese E.V makers are setting records — whether it’s BYD’s sales (besting Tesla by battery-powered vehicles sold for the first time last year) or Xiaomi’s speed (its cars are setting records at major racetracks like Nürburgring in Germany).

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[-] melfie@lemy.lol 18 points 2 weeks ago

I’d sooner buy a Chinese EV than a Tesla, but the orange gameshow host running my country says I can’t.

[-] infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 weeks ago

I can hold out on not buying a new car a hell of a lot longer than the American economy can survive under a tariff regime.

[-] 3abas@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Because Biden said you could? He's the one that doubled tariffs on Chinese EVs from 50% to 100%. Biden also gave the EV tax credit which was essentially a subsidy to Tesla, which Trump ended.

Note that I'm not defending Trump, but simply noting that the US was heading in his direction. He's a symptom of advanced disease, but you don't get to blame him all the shitty things all US presidents ever did. He's a raging tumor, but the cancer was spreading already.

[-] mirshafie@europe.pub 4 points 1 week ago

You're absolutely right. Trump is a lightning rod for rage, but most of what the US is doing is bipartisan. It's a huge problem that so many people harbor false hope for the controlled opposition.

[-] 3abas@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

People downvoting facts simply because they contradict their own stated position tells so much. They want cheap Chinese EVs but can't accept that what they defended as protecting American companies (Biden's tariffs) and making EVs more affordable for Americans (Biden's EV tax credit) are the reasons they can't have cheap Chinese EVs.

Instead of reflecting on the progranda they've been consuming, they downvote and move on to repeat the same nonsense later. I'm relieved they didn't call me a tankie Russian bot this time for suggesting Biden wasn't an angel.

[-] mirshafie@europe.pub -1 points 1 week ago

Well this is Lemmy, not reddit. We're all tankies here.

[-] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca -1 points 1 week ago

JFC...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.

[-] 3abas@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week 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.

[-] Bytemeister@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

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.

[-] lobut@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

That is a very fair statement.

[-] mirshafie@europe.pub 3 points 1 week ago

I want a fucking Huawei P70. The 10x camera on that thing can practically take stabilized macro photos from a 5 m distance. But Ursula says Orange Man will spank her if she allows competition to Apple and Google.

[-] Wispy2891@lemmy.world -2 points 1 week ago

I wouldn't buy that even if it wasn't banned, locked bootloader and spyware preinstalled at all levels

[-] hanrahan@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 week ago

For Australians (alas, big Teska supporters) and much of the world they are all made in China anyway.

[-] BoJackHorseman@lemmy.world 0 points 2 weeks ago

I thought America was a democracy as opposed to China.

[-] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

US is the same as China now. Well that's not true, US foreign policy is way more batshit insane than China's. If you can even call it a foreign policy... it seems to me it's just the whims of a deranged old child molester surrounded by fucking Nazis.

And China is further away and there's pretty much zero probability China will invade my country. With the US, who knows? Kinda stupid to send money to a country I may have to be fighting against within a year.

[-] WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 0 points 1 week ago

Whenever I hear news of China, they built a new electric railway, invented something new, or made massive tech progress.

Whenever I hear of USA on the other hand...

...they are still following the philosoohy of the people who explicitly said they want the human race extinct.

[-] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

Whenever I hear news of China, they built a new electric railway, invented something new, or made massive tech progress.

A lot of things in China fall apart in a few years. You can build things fast when you don't care about people's rights and just force them off whatever land you need, and make people work insane hours. A lot of the amazing things China brags about is a Potemkin village, just made to show the authoritarian leaders they did got the project complete on time and they in turn use it in their propaganda. Authoritarians always love to brag about making the trains run on time, right? The reality is often different from what the media portrays it to be in an authoritarian country.

But still, China is slightly preferable to the US at the moment.

[-] Auth@lemmy.world -1 points 1 week ago

Trump is following in china's footsteps. His longterm plan will fail because he is not authoritarian enough to retain power. If the CCP were in his shoes they'd have murdered millions of americans to ideologically cleanse the country.

[-] BoJackHorseman@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago

Trump is on it dummy

[-] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca -1 points 1 week ago

Many Chinese EVs are made by Tesla

this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
109 points (93.6% liked)

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