For anyone that doesn't know, then president Ronald Reagan signed a bill into law in 1988 that banned all car imports into the US unless the car is at least 25 yaers old.
Why? Because US Mercedez-Benz dealers were selling their cars at too high a price and a lot of Americans were importing them directly from Germany. So the dealers associations lobbied Congress for a ban.
They're all over the place in Mexico City. It'll be interesting as these EVs start to show up along the northern and southern borders traveling within the US.
The sad reality is how politically influential it will be for Americans to take a Chinese EV from the airport to a hotel in Cancun and say, "Why don't we have this in the US?"
I agree that that would be great as a consumer, but given how protectionist China is, you can hardly blame countries for responding in kind. Trade should be a two way street.
They do. The Chinese government gave them a special exemption, presumably because they wanted to build EV manufacturing expertise. Other foreign auto companies are not allowed to open their own factories in China; they have to do a joint venture with a local manufacturer.
BYD has been making batteries since '95, cars since '05, plug-in hybrids since '08 and EVs since '09. I don't doubt that China may have made use of Musk, but I severely doubt he's the one who "taught them how to build an EV".
If you think China can only make stuff by copying what other does, you're gonna under-estimate them.
The timing doesn't line up. BYD has already been selling EVs by the time Tesla opened a factory in China. Heck, they were selling EVs even before _Tesla_ existed.
And they clearly have their own expertise. There are videos of BYD and Tesla car teardowns, and you can see that they quite differ in design philosophies.
I think China was more interested in creating more competition internally, rather than just ripping off the technology.
Which is sensible; the problem is favouring some players so much they capture an entire industry. Free market is a perfect ideal, it can't exist in the real world.
Why? Because US Mercedez-Benz dealers were selling their cars at too high a price and a lot of Americans were importing them directly from Germany. So the dealers associations lobbied Congress for a ban.
Country of free markets, by the way.