Europe is looking to fight the flood of Chinese electric vehicles. But Europeans love them

Lee Duna@lemmy.nz to Technology@lemmy.world – 249 points –
Europe is looking to fight the flood of Chinese electric vehicles. But Europeans love them
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Exactly.

Europeans like Chinese electric vehicles because they are affordable.

Meanwhile European manufacturers are probably pushing behind the scene to restrict the Asian competitors on the market so they can decide what price is right.

In the next months in France they will reduce the subsidies for Electric Vehicle with a poor CO2 bill like imported Chinese cars.

So even less people will get to afford EVs.

I don't think this is just about cheap Chinese labor importing cheap Chinese cars to Europe. It's also about Europe ignoring the importance of battery tech and manufacturing for decades and suddenly acting all surprised that we are not competitive.

How VW, one of/the largest car manufacturers in the world, turns out the overpriced shit EVs it does, yeah... No wonder people are looking elsewhere

Covid also really did a number on the car market (like so many others), probably take another 2-4 years before the used market gets anywhere back to normal.

VWs recent EVs were shit as well. Paywall locking the biggest battery behind the most expensive high performance model when people who are looking to adopt are chasing the max range as possible due to range anxiety. A shit infotainment system that controls everything but regularly crashes or lags out. Crap charging rates, crap regen and efficiency. Killing off their more popular entry level trim that was actually priced competitively to drive up margins.

Its just another example of a market dominator trying to abuse their position in a new space and coming unstuck. They had to cut back on shifts and staff at their EV plants they fucked up that hard.