Should we Import Chinese Electric Vehicles?

In My Humble Opinion
1

If there were some way the average person could help make a tiny dent in the climate change problem, should we do it? I understand the desire to shield industry from unfair competition from overseas, but the Chinese have developed a way to help curb our emissions. I guess what I am asking is how serious we are about global manmade climate change - it seems like just serious enough to talk about it, but when a tool comes along that may help, we have other priorities.

From the linked article:
Chinese-made cars used to be a punchline. Economist Sue Helper, who has spent decades tracking globalization and auto manufacturing, remembers seeing BYD vehicles a few years ago that were, in a word, “terrible.” But she recently took a Seagull for a test drive in a parking lot in Detroit. (They are not allowed on U.S. streets.)

“It’s impressive,” she says. “It’s cute.”

The Seagull would cost more than $10,000 in the U.S., given that it would have to be modified to meet U.S. safety standards. But you could double the price of the Seagull and it would still be a steal.

In fact, you could double the price and pay the 27.5% tariff, and it would still undercut every EV for sale in the United States.

Aside from questions about the infrastructure in the US being able to handle millions of cheap EVs, should we lower the barriers somewhat to allow some of these cars on our roads? How can US automakers compete - should we give them a timeline to develop domestic options before allowing Chinese cars into our markets? It just seems like if you want to start addressing environmental concerns with AGW we would want to start with things that are in the reach of average people - but in this case we are prioritizing jobs over progress. Maybe there is a middle-ground that allows for some progress while also protecting livelihoods? Thoughts?

2

I agree, and you suggested one, a timeline.

IMHO, and I say this as part of a household that just bought a new PHEV with a $53k pricetag, the costs are discouraging, especially if you need anywhere from another $1.5k to $9k to install the charging infrastructure (the later being our case for a level 2, due to the need for a new panel).

And that leaves out the fact that I can do that because I’m a homeowner, others may have a lot fewer at home charging options.

Even with the $12k in lease-based state and dealer incentives, the cost barrier is just damn high.

And for the moment at least, the prior generations of (comparatively) economy EVs like the Leaf are gone, and the US market seems to be all in on more expensive EV options, NOT the economy market.

So, if the US doesn’t want that market, what are they losing?

Given the power, I’d give US carmakers, say, a 10 year mandate, to produce US compliant EVs with a maximum base cost of, say, $20k (spitballing here, I’m not sold on that particular pricepoint) that had to have a minimum range of say 120 miles. That would cover most people’s daily use, with plenty of fudge factor, but be able to cut costs on batteries that would be impossible for the current crop of 200+ milers as an example.

At the end of the 10 years, let the Chinese market in, still with a hefty tariff, fine, and see what happens.

IF the US car makers, with the 10 year warning, still can’t be bothered to develop the economy market, well, they can’t be losing jobs they didn’t create, so screw them. And if they just want to sell the never ending realms of giga-vehicles, belching ICE fumes to coal roll, then they’ll just how to downsize to their (probably still substantial) core audience.

American car makers through away things like the Ford Focus (which I liked, and almost bought several times) because their money is on big SUVs and Pickups. Screw that!

3

We could subsidize US companies the same way China subsidizes theirs.

4

People’s private vehicles are a very small percentage of the carbon problem. Further, if the power plant charging the car is based on fossil fuels as well, it doesn’t matter whether the combustion and pollution happens inside the car’s engine or in a coal plant miles away.

There may be compelling reasons to rethink tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, but if so, saving the environment is not really among them.

5

Not really true; large “heat engines” are more efficient than small ones. That’s a major reason that we build a relatively small number of huge power plants instead of building small ones all over in the first place.

6

This. China is trying to break the US auto makers by dumping heavily subsidized vehicles into our market. Then watch the cost rise once they so. Buying one of these cars is short sighted. Its selling our tomorrows for short term gratification today.

7

Yeah, that’s a really good point.

8

Biden proposes banning Chinese vehicles, ‘connected car’ technology from US roads - https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/biden-proposes-banning-chinese-vehicles-us-roads-with-software-crackdown-2024-09-23/

Backdoor devices that have potential for
Surveillance and vehicle control. Yep ban them.

Protect our US steel, aluminum and ship building industries from unfair trade practices! Yep keep your cheap Chinese vehicles.

9

My answer to the thread title question is: Not sure, but I do know it is super-important. Here is some info:

The European Union will press ahead with hefty tariffs on China-made electric vehicles, the EU executive said on Friday, even after the bloc’s largest economy Germany rejected them, exposing a rift over its biggest trade row with Beijing in a decade.

I am more worried about war with China than global warming. This isn’t to minimize global warming, but to say what the stakes might be.

Maybe I shouldn’t say this until after the U.S. elections, but if Xi was somehow willing to trade Taiwan’s continuing freedom for half the U.S. auto industry, it would be a good deal for my children, and even for the children of GM workers. But no such trade is available.

The answer I guess I lean towards, right this minute, is No. The U.S. needs to be building more warships to counter China, while raising highly graduated taxes to pay for them. It will be impossible for Pres. Harris to get Americans to understand the need for this while our roads are flooded with Chinese cars.

10

This isn’t really germane to the main question of the o.p. but because it is such a virtually ubiquitous misapprehension I feel that it must be stated up front; personal battery electric vehicles (BEV) used primarily for commuting and recreational use are not going to ‘save the environment’ or materially offset global climate change, and indeed, the extraction of resources needed to build all of these vehicles (and their lithium ion and LiFePO4 batteries) contributes to significant environmental harms, notwithstanding that the gasoline and diesel engine cars nominally offset by adoption of BEVs are not recycled and do not magically disappear off the face of the planet but are generally resold on the secondary market, or shipped oversees in the global automotive grey market to developing countries where emissions controls are often stripped off to salvage valuable materials off and to keep them running for many years, and then dumped in big landfills or just off the side of the road.

Even if we could do a like-for-like swap of a BEV with every gasoline and diesel personal vehicle on the road in the United States, the total impact on emissions would be at best a couple of percentage points, which could be achieved just by upping CAFE standards on new vehicles. The vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions are so embedded and hidden in our lifestyle that the only way to make substantive reductions in emissions is at a structural level. Really, we should be encouraging a shift to less consumption in general, but of course no economist is going to advocate for that and no politician would promote anything that smells of a policy of ‘degrowth’ since Jimmy Carter lost an election for telling us that we should wear a sweater and turn the thermostat down.

That being said, importing inexpensive BEVs from China has certain advantages in making electric vehicles available to lower middle class consumers, and that at least comes with manifest benefits of reducing local emissions, encouraging adoption of BEVs by example and creating an impetus for a national electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and generally reducing total cost of ownership when it comes to the costs of fuel and maintenance (assuming these hypothetical BEVs are reliable). However, from an economic standpoint it hurts automakers assembling BEVs in the United States which cannot compete with cheap Chinese labor.

It also potentially compromises safety if the battery systems are not robust and failsafe against overheating and rupture, and there is of course the possible for a security vulnerability if there are backdoors or other exploits built into these systems that might allow the Chinese government or some nefarious actor to track these vehicles, disable systems, or cause them to fail in dangerous ways. The potential for this kind of supply chain vulnerability should be obvious to anyone who aware of the recent exploding pager attack by Mossad, and if you think that the PRC is above that kind of fuckery then you should do a bit of reading on what they do to their own citizens who express even the slightest bit of criticism of their government.

Stranger

11

This is incorrect, and has been debunked to death. EVs are more efficient than ICE cars - even if the electricity is generated from combustion, it’s still a CO2-reduction win.

12

I’m not sure many people would be happy with the Seagull. The base model is rated at 190 miles range–but that’s on the CLTC driving cycles, which overstates range relative to the EPA cycle by perhaps 40%. So it’s more like 135 miles in practice (and the EPA cycle is also optimistic at times).

That’s probably true, but it’s not as cheap as you might think. $10k * 2 * 1.275 = $25.5k. Cheap, but a Model 3 with Federal rebate is $35k. With various state rebates you can potentially get them for <$30k. And it’s a much, much better car than the Seagull (and roughly double the range).

Sure, that’s with rebates, but even if Chinese EVs are allowed in, you can bet your ass that the rebates won’t apply to them.

13

This is wrong on two fronts.

US cars are a significant contributer, check your facts.

Even coal plants are cleaner energy per mile than gas cars. Most plants are cleaner than coal now.

14

No, its is wrong.

15

The difference is even greater than it’s usually calculated. Gas takes about 7 kilowatt-hours per gallon just to refine. A decent EV will go about 30 miles on that. Which means that even if you completely ignore the CO2 emissions from burning the gasoline, the EV is doing comparably to the gas car. And refining is domestic and usually fairly local, so it’s likely pulling from almost the same grid as the EV.

16

Just as a cite, we have:

And specifically:

Within the transportation sector:

The largest sources of transportation greenhouse gas emissions in 2022 were light-duty trucks, which include sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks, and minivans (37%); medium- and heavy-duty trucks (23%); passenger cars (20%); commercial aircraft (7%); other aircraft (2%); pipelines (4%); ships and boats (3%); and rail (2%).

So 80% of 29% (or 23%) can be eliminated just by electrifying light-duty vehicles and semis. Both of which we already know can be almost completely converted over.

17

Thank you for that, we’ve been over this so often on this board, I’m shock two such major incorrect factoids were listed.

18

And of course the other big sectors can be addressed as well. A big dent can be taken out of residential & commercial just from heat pumps and increased efficiency. Industry has some challenges but much of that is already electrified and moving the grid to low-carbon sources will automatically improve them (some of them, like green steel, need work). Agriculture might be the most difficult but it’s a relatively small portion.

I suspect that about half of the remaining 20% of the transportation sector will be relatively easy to handle. Long-haul aircraft will be the hardest. But if we can cut transportation emissions by 90%, it solves about a quarter of all emissions.

19

Would American consumers purchase EVs with a range of only 120 miles? So far, these vehicles seem to all have 200-300 mile range. I suspect that a range of 120 miles might be achievable even without producing the cars in China.

20

Your post is a good contribution.

But I question the impact on lower middle class consumers AKA Trump-leaning voters. They buy used cars, and would find the Chinese cars small and underpowered. The people who would rather buy them are upper middle class types like me*, who could easily afford rather expensive cars, but do not see the point.

I do not think this will happen, but suppose Harris wins and finds a way to import large numbers of Chinese electric vehicles. What is the impact on class conflict in the U.S. over the next decade? Did the United Auto Workers just turn Republican? Did Vance win in 2028? What does that do for global warming?

Someone could respond that the middle class wants lower price levels, and cheaper cars will help. But I do not believe they want low prices as much as they want a government that cares about preserving high profile middle class jobs. Social solidarity probably requires protecting the U.S. auto industry in the 2020’s, even though I’m theoretically against protectionism…

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* IRL my wife and I bought a 2024 Kia Niro hybrid that is made in South Korea. Other hybrids, marketed in the U.S. and with similar high mileage, are made in either South Korea (Elantra) or Japan (Prius). So raising CAFE standards, as you suggest, may not be so good for the U.S. auto industry, but it I guess it is a good compromise between domestic jobs and addressing warming. Also, I wouldn’t personally buy a Chinese car because of being so much a friend of Taiwan – I’m just saying that other people with my savings and education level would.