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Comment by _heimdall | Hacker News Reader

That does beg the question though, if none of the major non-Chinese manufacturers are focused on EVs did they all entirely miss the boat or do they know something the Chinese don't?

Its absolutely possible that they did all miss the boat, but even the stats just in this thread point to a drop in EV sales and economic challenges with regards to price and demand. The Chinese keep prices low with very low labor costs and subsidies from a totalitarian government, our goal isn't and shouldn't be to compete with that on price.

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> Chinese keep prices low with .. subsidies from a totalitarian government

Lower labour costs per hour can be balanced against lower cost of living for workers.

Industrial Policy Spending for China’s EV Sector (subsidies) have dropped from $13,800 USD per vehicle in 2018 to $4,700 USD in 2023 and are less today in 2026.

How do these subsidies compare to US subsidies to the fossil fuel oil and gas industry?

You backed up my point though, so thanks? The CCP subsidized EV production heavily, lowering it over time as I assume manufacturing facilities are in place, but they continue to subsidize to keep prices low.

The oil industry is irrelevant here and feels more like a whataboutism deflection. We can debate the oil industry, based on your comment we'd likely agree on much of it, but that's a separate discussion.

China, for all its flaws, is the undisputed master of innovative automated manufacturing. They can iterate over design revisions quickly. They will build you whatever you want, and, unlike twenty years ago, it will be insanely precise, and everything that can be automated will be. US and EU automakers have to keep their unionized employees happy, which means less automation and less precision and higher prices. Robots and AI don't unionize.

No disagreement on the technical skills today. My point was simply that Chinese EVs are cheap, in part, because the government spends money to make them cheap.

And they do have plenty of flaws to call out, though living in the US today I don't want to throw stones in a glass house...

BYD subsidies ended this year and Xiaomi was never subsidized.

BYD subsidies have swung up and down over the years. Some years like 2020 it was a very small percentage of revenue and profit. Other years its been much more, 2024 they received just over 10.5 billion yuan accounting for 26% of total income and last year they received 12.5 billion yuan representing 38% of net profit.

The company would not exist as it does today without such funding.

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