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Now electric car transition there is done, too: they won't buy Teslas, but Chinese electric cars are banned, and European one are incredibly expensive, lose mon
by anovikov 2y ago
Now electric car transition there is done, too: they won't buy Teslas, but Chinese electric cars are banned, and European one are incredibly expensive, lose money to their makers, and just plain suck. All hope is for "european" cars made by Chinese brands that are "reassembled" (sometimes by doing as little as bolting the wheels on) from "kits" coming from China. Like Volvo. They are actually decent and may be better than Teslas.
- dgellow 2y agoChinese electric cars aren’t banned, they are tariffed
- blitzar 2y agoBig beautiful tariffs, many say they are the finest tariffs they have ever seen.
- rwoerz 2y agoAnd then God spoke to me: "Sir, you have the greatest and most beautiful tariffs." And I said: "Yes, beautiful and great. Like the son I never had."
- tpm 2y agoAnd also chinese cars that are put together in european factories are not loaded with tariffs, so they are starting to do that. I think Leapmotor in a Fiat factory in Poland is first?
- postepowanieadm 2y agoThat's why Tesla has a factory in Germany. To avoid tariffs.
- mytailorisrich 2y agoTesla is/was the largest importer of Chinese-made cars into Europe. That's why the EU tariffs are decided brand by brand (to spare Tesla and BMW mostly)
- littlestymaar 2y agoTesla was given favorable tariffs terms by the European commission, even fro vehicles made in China, but who know how long that will last with Musk insulting them daily.
- formerly_proven 2y ago> European one are incredibly expensive, lose money to their makers, and just plain suck Nice 2019 talking point, bud.
- dash2 2y agoMercedes is planning a Tesla competitor: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/13/business/mercedes-cla-electric-vehicle.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/13/business/mercedes-cla-ele...
- skylurk 2y agoBy suck, are you referring to the budget low-range city car EVs?
- rockyj 2y ago> European one are incredibly expensive, lose money to their makers, and just plain suck Not true by any means. There are multiple options available and new cars are being planned / released all the time. Not to mention the second-hand market has ample choice.
- bl0rg 2y agoVolvo is designed/engineered in Sweden and has a global production network with factories in Sweden, Belgium, the US, and China. You're massively oversimplifying.
- D_Alex 2y ago>Now electric car transition there is done, too And right after that, the fight against climate change will be lost. Electric cars could have been the enabling technology for intermittent renewable power generation. Smart charging and back-feeding into the grid when needed could have largely solved the intermittency problem.
- jsemrau 2y agoNo they are not. Here is an example how you can buy a NIO in Germany https://www.nio.com/de_DE/get-your-nio/kauf https://www.nio.com/de_DE/get-your-nio/kauf EV is on a decline in general after the end of government subsidies And Germany is still dominated by local brands. https://www.best-selling-cars.com/germany/2024-full-year-germany-best-selling-electric-cars-by-brand-and-model/ https://www.best-selling-cars.com/germany/2024-full-year-ger...
- mpweiher 2y agoIn February 2025 electric car sales in Germany were up 30% year on year, whereas total sales were down 6% https://www.adac.de/news/neuzulassungen-kba/ https://www.adac.de/news/neuzulassungen-kba/ (This link is not dated, so contents will change in the future, the archive.org link is not up to February yet) Top 10 electric cars (again February 2025): 1. VW ID.7 2. VW ID.4, ID.5 3. VW ID.3 4. Skoda Enyaq 5. Audi Q4 6. Seat Born 7. Tesla Model Y 8. BMW 4ER 9. BMW X1 10. Seat Tavascan So the top 6 are all Volkswagen. And in total 7 of the top 10.
- copx 2y ago>Now electric car transition there is done It is not. Only 18% of newly registered cars are electric i.e. over 80% of the people are still buying new CE cars, to say nothing about the massive used car market which is almost completely CE.
- littlestymaar 2y agoI think you're misunderstanding “done” in the sense of “completed” when they meant “done” to say “dead”. Or maybe I am the one getting it backwards…
- Retric 2y agoEuropean, Japanese, and South Korean automakers haven’t achieved the economies of scale drive down EV prices, but they are getting better quickly. Tesla meanwhile has been stagnant for a while, which means people who wanted that that kind of car likely already bought one and don’t see much reason to buy a new one. The poor publicity from Elon isn’t helping but they peaked in 2023 even as total EV sales grew substantially in 2024.
- littlestymaar 2y agoBetting on the inability of German automakers to make cars isn't something I'd do, personally, but OK.
- roca 2y agoMusk's rightward lurch will be good for the electric car transition. His ideological opponents are just switching to other EV vendors. His ideological friends would normally not have considered buying an electric car, because anthropogenic climate change is a socialist hoax or something, but Trump is instructing them to buy Teslas as a sign of solidarity.
- zfg 2y agoAll Musk has done is damage Tesla sales. It turns out fascist salutes don't help you sell cars.
- atombender 2y agoI disagree that European EVs aren't good. The Volkswagen range (ID.3, ID.4, the ID.Buzz van) is excellent. Of all the EVs I've driven, the ID.3 is my favorite, far superior to a Tesla. I've driven rented EVs from Skoda, Opel, SEAT, Peugeot, etc., and they're all fine, if boring. If you count any brand available in Europe, Hyundai and Kia both have excellent EVs, including the Kia EV6 and EV9. Tesla have definitely nailed certain things that other manufacturers have struggled with. They're the only manufacturer that does a good UI (but like many others I deeply dislike that everything is on a poorly positioned screen), and their integration is excellent (things like automatic navigation to a supercharger when it knows it will need to charge to get to your destination). Tesla have also strived for more practical ranges; I find it really frustrating when other manufacturers launch new cars with 300-350km ranges, which is a step backwards.
- xiphias2 2y agoI love my Porsche Taycan as well (even if its resale price is dropping like crazy and sales are down), but whenever I travel outside Europe/USA in LATAM, I only see 1 brand: BYD. The main differentiator why people will switch to EVs is price, and Tesla seems to have stopped competing on it and is bettin on full autonomy instead (which is not a bad bet, as Waymo is achieving it slowly).
- microtonal 2y agoWe bought our first electric car last summer, we got an VW ID.3 and... we like it a lot. The pricing was pretty good, not much more expensive than a comparable VW combustion car. Apparently the infotainment system was quite bad/slow in older generations, but they fixed that in one of the upgrades and the on in ours is fast and works well. We couldn't be more happy with the purchase.
- OfficeChad 2y ago[dead]