How China’s EV Boom Caught Western Car Companies Asleep at the Wheel

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How China’s EV Boom Caught Western Car Companies Asleep at the Wheel
wired.com

Auto execs in the US, Europe, and Japan never thought Chinese EVs were a threat. Now they’re coming to wipe the floor with their Western counterparts.

“You won’t believe what’s coming,” warned the title of a January 2023 video from the Inside China Auto YouTube channel. “Europe’s premium car makers aren’t ready for this,” warned another video from the same channel, uploaded in July.

Produced by Shanghai-based automotive journalist Mark Rainford, a former communications executive for Mercedes-Benz, the channel is one of several by China-based Western commentators agog at what they are seeing—and driving.

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American, Japanese, and European car manufacturers had decades head start in this area and they blew it chasing higher profit margins on large trucks and SUVs with lax EPA gas mileage restrictions at a time when climate change has become a major crisis.

Invested in lobbying instead of products

And BS green washing with dead end hydrogen demo cars.

Yeah they're so weirdly fucking attached to hydrogen cars even though there has never been anything even remotely approaching a solution to their problems.

The execs could make extra money double dipping from oil companies, they are taking marketing funds from oil companies pushing hydrogen too.

Utility companies are often public and even otherwise evs don't really have the same margins for electricity.

I’m curious if the “climate change is a hoax” stuff is as prominent in China as the US. I’ve run into so many people who hate EVs solely because they think climate change is a hoax and EVs are just another way to scam them out of money for a lower quality vehicle… despite any evidence of EVs being better quality

American gasoline cars suck and are more embarrassing than other country's gasoline cars, but Chinese EVs are not at all a viable competitor in the market yet and so far have consistently failed to even gain a foothold for 15 years straight.

If you have any counterargument to that, I'd like to see it.

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