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Comment by ericmay | Hacker News Reader

They need to get their sales up (lots of folks like me won’t buy one now because Elon sucks) but your reasoning I largely disagree with. We don’t have a fuel crises in the US for example. And Chinese EVs won’t be able to gain too strong of a foothold in American or European markets because neither market will permit their domestic industries to collapse due to Chinese state subsidies and industrial overcapacity.

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Even if Chinese EVs can't make it into the American market in numbers it's a pretty clear signal that Tesla models are vastly overpriced for their functionality. The subsidies have spurred innovation and do continue to artificially depress the price of vehicles, but the value you're getting for a dollar in Chinese EVs far outshines Tesla without any of the weird built-in design annoyances needing to be present like the door handles or terrible dashboard UX.

Tesla will continue to rule the US for the next two years due to the admin but the Euro and Canadian markets are likely going to continue to close to them. It might be that home-grown competitors will step up to the plate or maybe they'll open their doors to Chinese exports - it's hard to say. So while it's hard to identify a winner, the loser is clearly Tesla.

They will increasingly not make it to European markets either though (Canada who cares the market there is tiny) because the EU won’t allow its domestic industry to be destroyed regardless of how good Chinese EVs are. It’s not “hard to say” it’s easy to say. Just yesterday the France and Germany announced changes to emissions standards. The writing is on the wall there.

The problem with China’s economic model is that you can’t just sell to everyone else and not buy their stuff too. As European automaker sales continue to collapse in China, the EU will find new protectionist policies to enact to preserve domestic manufacturing jobs.

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