BYD is unique because it can leverage the Chinese government's push into EVs along with the lax environmental regulation giving cheap batteries & other components. I dont think anyone can compete with Chinese car makers.
I believe that this thesis supported by many Americans, that the Chinese companies are too strong competitors for the US companies only due to governmental subsidies and lax environmental regulation is an extremely dangerous illusion.
Until maybe 10 years ago, I would have agreed that all or at least most of the Chinese products were no better than copies of Western products.
However during recent years, at least during the last 5 or 6 years, both among commercial products and among the published research papers, I have seen far more innovation from China than from USA.
Such underestimation of the capabilities of a competitor, like the assumption that without subsidies or lax regulations they would not still be better, can only doom USA.
While these claims about subsidies and lax regulations are ubiquitous in USA for justifying failures, I have yet to see any proof or any accurate numeric data supporting them.
I doubt that China really has laxer environmental regulations than USA. What is likely to happen is that in China it must be much easier to avoid the enforcing of the regulations, by bribing the authorities.
Perhaps there are governmental subsidies in China, but in USA I never see the start of any significant private investment without great subsidies, at least from the local government, in the form of various kinds of tax breaks.
This kind of governmental subsidies that are very common in USA are only seldom permitted in other countries, e.g. in Europe.
> this thesis supported by many Americans, that the Chinese companies are too strong competitors for the US companies only due to governmental subsidies and lax environmental regulation is an extremely dangerous illusion.
[...] I have seen far more innovation from China than from USA.
I full agree on this.
But what people also often miss is that wage levels are not even close to comparable. Chinese manufacturing pays an average of <$25k (purchasing parity adjusted, ~15k otherwise!!) for a 49h week.
It is absolutely expected that the US is not competitive in labor intensive industries, simply because Americans are rich. Trying to "fix" this with tariffs and relaxed regulations (to lure heavy industry/manufacturing back) is an expensive experiment doomed to fail, and taxpayers and consumers are gonna pay the price.
If you campaign with "we're gonna bring back tons of jobs that pay $5/hour, but don't worry, taxpayers/consumers are gonna pick up the difference", suddenly the whole thing does not sound that good any more.
And subsidies don't only affect the final price of a good: they also provide a company more funding for R&D. To say nothing of forced technology transfers via joint ventures.
The EU also still subsidizes a ton of industries, e.g. agriculture at €40.95 billion https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/common-agricultural-policy/... (I'd agree that subsidies are needed to support a key sector like agriculture today, but they're still subsidies)
EU car manufacturers are also heavily subsidized. Subsidies are really hard do compare because you can structure them very differently and still achieve similar results (think direct loans or land leases, lower taxes, state sponsored infrastructure like rail, electricity, water, large state-sponsored orders, research grants, workforce education, consumer grants for EV vehicles, lower taxes for EV vehicles etc.).
Hyundai and Kia still manage to make fairly competitive EVs. Having an established dealer, customer and maintenance networks can mitigate those BYD advantages.
Also if Japan had a serious contender fr the EV space, a good CEO should be able to persuade their government subsidies are deserved. With a trifecta of corporate, union and environmentalist lobbying.
