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More likely, they would end up buying from a Chinese supplier, and the US would miss out on all that business. And two decades from now, China would be the cent
by raldi 12y ago
More likely, they would end up buying from a Chinese supplier, and the US would miss out on all that business. And two decades from now, China would be the center of the electric car world, instead of the western US.
And perhaps the extra expense and inefficiency of overseas manufacturing would've stopped the electric car industry from getting off the ground at all.
- georgeoliver 12y agoDo you have an idea of the economics of US vs. foreign production for a factory like this? I've been searching around a bit this morning but the articles don't discuss that.
- kenrikm 12y agoNot shipping heavy batteries halfway around the world should help. But labor costs will be significantly higher in the US. Not sure if it'll come out to a wash or not.
- raldi 12y agoIndeed -- if the batteries were being made in China, perhaps they'd start manufacturing the cars there too.
- cmsmith 12y agoMusk has said that the incentives add up to 5% of the short term investments and 1% of the long term costs of actually running the factory. I could see relocating the factory from Texas to Nevada for that kind of savings, but moving it to China seems harder to imagine.
- jacquesm 12y agoIn that case the savings would probably be substantially larger. Of course then he'd have to deal with import tariffs.