BREAKING NEWS: EU Commission announces preliminary tariffs up to 38% on Chinese EVs
The EU will impose additional tariffs of 17.4% to 38.1% on electric cars produced in China, the European Commission announced on Wednesday (12 June), as preliminary results from its anti-subsidy investigation confirmed prices are being distorted by Chinese state support.
The value chain of Chinese electric cars “benefits from unfair subsidisation, which is causing a threat of economic injury to EU battery electric vehicles producers,” EU Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas said on Wednesday (12 June).
“When our partners breach the rules, we will assert our rights,” Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis said in a statement.
“Today we have reached a milestone in our anti-subsidy investigation,” he said, adding that “this is based on clear evidence of our extensive investigation and in full respect of WTO rules.”
Duties will differ per carmaker, with Chinese state-owned manufacturer SAIC facing the highest duty at 38.1%, Chinese Geely to face 20% and BYD 17.4%.
The point with EVs being over 45k is mostly the extremely pricey battery, China just subsidized until their cars are at a better price, the EU wants to protect European car manufacturers, that’s that.
Battery prices are now close to $100 per kWh and are predicted to keep dropping.
https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/electric-vehicle-battery-prices-falling.html
That's $7k for the 60-70kWh battery we see in lots of cars. That's offset against an engine that has multiple hundreds of moving parts, also worth several thousand.
The engine has hundreds of parts but really only a couple of them are moving. That's the beauty of electric motors.
They're comparing against the price of an ICE engine and the fact that they don't contain one to offset the cost.
But they do have an expensive electric motor instead of the ICE, plus an expensive battery.
Electric motors are substantially cheaper (and simpler, and lighter) than internal combustion. Hell, the typical ICE has two electric motors already in it! (starter, alternator)
Not really. There is a lot of metal - wires - in the electric motor. Retail prices on motors is a lot higher than the retail price on an ICE. https://www.grainger.com/product/WEG-IEEE-841-Motor-250-HP-15G092 is a 250 horse power motor for $30k. https://www.jegs.com/i/Chevrolet-Performance/809/19435110/10002/-1 is a 500 horsepower ICE (I think this is new, but the site also sells rebuilt engines) for $7k.
Of course with motors there are a number of different ways to built them at different costs. However they are not cheaper than an ICE and we shouldn't expect that they would be as there is a lot of metal in a motor.
Sure, but they are small, neither one is capable of moving your car down the road at full speed (the starter might do it for 10 seconds but then it will overheat)
You have whole (electric) cars for 30k, that price is laughable. Here you have 220kw (300HP) motor, inverter and differential for 3.5k euros: https://eveurope.eu/en/product/tesla-model-s-drive-train-220-kw-2/
The price difference between a single motor VS dual motor on most cars it's also around 5k, including extra cables, installation, etc.
I can't find any source for the type of motor used in electric cars - which presumably will be made in larger quantities bringing costs down.
A motor basically consists of copper wire and magnets neither of which are expensive materials.
An engine mostly consists of iron and aluminum which is much cheaper than copper. (cars makers are looking at if they can use aluminum wires in their motors - I'm not sure on status of that)
Yes with hundreds or thousands of parts that all need to be cast or machined to tolerances as tight as a few thousandths of an inch. Electric motors just need copper wire wrapped around in circles and a shaft with magnets attached to it. It's very basic. I get that you want to be right but you're not going to win the argument that electric motors are more expensive or costly to produce than an internal combustion engine.
An engine is not thousands of dollars. They mass produce them and so the incremental cost for each one is less than $100 each. There is a lot of engineering costs in an engine, and the cost to setup mass production is high, but that is amortized over all the cars they put that engine in. (there is a reason auto maters only have a few engines that they put in everything)
A battery is $7000, but the raw materials and labor to make it are a large part of that price (I don't have insight on what the price is) Of course auto makers know they need a lot of batteries and so are working on automation to bring the per battery cost down.
An engine would scrap for more than $100 you’ll have to cite that figure to make it believable.
Last I checked the whole car scrapped for $250, and there is a lot more metal in the rest of the car (transmission, drive train..) than the engine.
Engines are worth more than $100 if they are rebuild-able. However the incremental cost to the automaker is less than $100. Remember, incremental cost does not include the cost of engineering, setting up the assembly line, or profit margin (which are all very expensive and raise the actual cost) - just the raw materials and labor to run the line.
No citations and more outlandish claims. So I’ll put a little math here. From the first google results aluminum scraps around $0.44/lb and a smaller engine block is about 300lb which comes out to $132, not including heads manifolds, pistons etc.
Lmao if you can build a reliable car engine for $100 I'll give you a billion dollars for a car startup that will outcompete everyone else.
You fail to understand the difference between incremental costs and full costs. A modern car engine can be under $100 each for materials and assembly labor. However that does not count the costs of engineering, or building the assembly line, much less profit margin. Those costs are much higher in an EV.
"Subsidized until their cars are at a better price"
What do you think subsidies are? Do you think China is paying $10k for each export sale? Do you think China is just hemorrhaging money so that they can bump sales numbers up?
China dumped billions of dollars into a domestic fast charging network that aggressively stimulated domestic demand and dumped billions of dollars into clean energy initiatives to make sure that electricity prices hover around 1RMB/kWh ($0.14/kWh). How much is electricity in Europe? How much is it in the US?
China offered $1750 in purchase-side tax incentives that have since been phased out. How much are the American purchase-side tax incentives passed by the IRA? Are they still ongoing?
Shanghai gave Tesla hundreds of millions in low-interest loans to set up a factory in Shanghai as opposed to, say, Jiangsu, in exchange for billions of dollars in investment. How much did Tesla's Nevada Gigafactory receive in subsidies?
Plus, let's take a look at who's actually exporting cars to Europe:
MG (SAIC), Volvo (Geely), Tesla, and European joint ventures (BMW, Renault, Volkswagen, etc.)
China has been subsidizing the infrastructure for EVs, absolutely, but subsidizing infrastructure is not illegal. If Europe wants to protect its domestic car manufacturers, the first thing it should look at is Tesla. There's also a reason BMW, Volkswagen, and Mercedes oppose tariffs: these risk retaliation against their currently rather unfettered access to the highly profitable, rapidly growing premium car market in China. They're seeing upwards of 10% YoY growth in their luxury car lineups.
The EU Commission is stabbing itself in the chest to save its face. von der Leyen is pursuing a personal vendetta against the best interests of German automakers, completely forgetting the fact that while 10% of Chinese car production is exported, about 70% of German car production is exported. Meanwhile, while Chinese cars predominantly target the lower end of the market, German cars for export are overwhelmingly premium and luxury vehicles. Just an insane policy that seems to be more political pandering than anything else.