st0v

Solar manufacturing is not destroying China’s environment, fossil fuels are. By a massive margin.

They need to get off that merry go round as quickly as possible. While the efforts they’ve made are incredible it needs to continue to accelerate.

I wouldn’t say they’ve achieved these prices through subsidies in the way many people think. government support pushed their entire renewable industry ecosystem, western manufacturing went belly up, and now they are reaping the benefits.

China was briefly an observer state to Warsaw Pact and then pretty quickly completely withdrew.

After sino-sovet split in the early 60s Sino-soviet relations did not really normalize until Gorbachev.

There’s a bit more to it than that. But yes EVs are subsidized in China.

I worked in a business where we had one product that was useful for automakers but especially useful for EVs. About 8 years ago the EVs in China were mostly cheap shitty BYDs.

Seemingly out of nowhere, the government changed a bunch of rules and regulations for new cars. Within a month design teams were being established at every major automaker in China focusing on EVs. It was a great year for us.

Key EV components, especially the materials to make batteries, started to come down in price.

Then the green plates started turning up. Every city has its own rules for car registration, some places like Shanghai, would auction new number plates each month resulting in a low supply and high demand. It was possible to buy a car cheaper than the number plate. Then if you register an EV you can get a green plate for almost nothing.

About 3 years ago the cities started requiring new taxis and busses to be EV. Places like shenzhen just converted everything to EV. Released licenses for training and testing self driving.

Charge stations started popping up everywhere. There’s no way a shopping mall or new residential development could avoid having at least a large section for charging. My own home, converted an entire floor to charging parking stations in the underground car park.

Finally tesla set up Shanghai giga factory. I have no idea how they managed to make that deal but not long after they started shipping model 3s domestically they slashed the prices down to cheaper than a niceish BYD.

If you go to Shenzhen today about a third of cars are EV and you will see a dozen brands you’ve never heard of before (some are terrible cars, but most are reasonable quality and a handful are bullshit luxury)

As in tradition in China, the government will now let them go into a price war to push the manufacturers to find cheaper ways to make them. Many will go bust or give up.

you can visit the entire country on the subway or a short grab ride.

owning registering, parking, repairing and fueling a car is a completely unnecessary living cost, not to mention much much more expensive than the US or Europe.

what a lot of people can’t understand is that a car I’m singapore is a ball and chain. it’s not freedom by any stretch of the imagine there.

it’s a status symbol or a job requirement.

when measuring centuries a bit of give and take is fine.

It was after all a protracted team effort of subjugation and well, by today’s standards, genocide.

Most nations would be a bit butt hurt about it or at the very least work to prevent it from happening again.

China opened up long before the soviet union collapsed. that’s just wrong.

like 20 years wrong. You really need to do some reading chief.

it’s a thing and kind of rough

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation

Common sense would dictate that we look into the cause of the pandemic. But I totally get the fear of the pointless propaganda war that would have probably come out of it.

It’s beyond belief at this point how much the western press will bend any story about China into China bad.

maybe 40 years ago. but 20 years ago was 2003. China was not like India or Africa is now.