American cars are the same, and China hasn’t joked about making us their 24th province.

This reasoning is weird. Was buying American goods or UK goods or German goods funding Israel’s genocide in Gaza??

Australians have access to Chinese EVs, why can’t we?

Serious question; how much does China subsidize EV sales to glut markets and buy market share? I’m guessing it’s non-zero.

I’d love to see canola embargoes open because I have a bunch of bins full, but is this fair to other vendors, domestic and other foreign makers?

I’m far less concerned about the American government disabling vehicles in Canada. If America wanted to take us over we couldn’t even dream of stopping them.

China could benefit from causing problems though.

Canada needs to diversify the trade to rely less on the USA. The current gov has a huge problem on their hands but also opportunities to do something new!

When it comes to the EV tariffs I see opportunities for Canada, we have factories, some of the raw materials, Human Resources, experienceand logistics in place for the automotive industry! The Ev industry needs more than the cars there is a new ecosystem that can be worked with Chinese companies by doing knowledge transfer, manufacture autos + parts by bringing the suppliers as well. EVs need batteries and the charging network, we can bring these items to the trade talks.

China al has the largest high-speed rail network and why not expand the deals to help Canada build our high-speed rail Network?

At this point it’s not even inconceivable for Americans to do something as retaliation for, say, Dougie Ford shutting down electricity. Or use it as a bargain chip as part of playing it tough in a negotiation.

Or forget the taking us over bit. It’s not the taking over that is hard for them, it’s keeping control. We can very effectively resist and make the occupation extremely costly for them. Every bit of leverage they have makes this harder.

Fuck, is it that inconceivable that if they go full Gilead they wouldn’t start shit like controlling whether you can drive your car to an abortion clinic?

Canada should not buy those american F35’s for exactly the same reason(s).

I’d buy a Chinese EV. I need an inexpensive vehicle to go from A to B in a city. There doesn’t seem to be an inexpensive option anymore in North America.

“inexpensive vehicle” usually means a pre-owned vehicle and there are plenty of affordable pre-owned EVs and hybrids on the market. If you’re the kind who buys new cars, then Chevy Bolt and Nissan Leaf are the least expensive. If you compare with new ICE cars, don’t forget to account for gasoline cost.

Seems to me that the happy medium here might be a lower tariff. 100% was never justified, but 10% or 25% might be. Just enough to allow European and Japanese manufacturers (I don’t give a damn about the US at this point) to price their vehicles somewhat competitively even though they don’t have the advantage of ignoring labour rights.

It’s not like Chinese EV’s are bad, but they have started a war to overtake EV industry.
Their government is founding EV companies, to advance and take the lead, putting at risk companies like Ford, BMW and so on.

I sawthis video, and I saw how they have managed to change battery instead of charging the car, and I was impressed of what they can actually do.

If Chinese manufactures can exceed Canadian standards, provide spare parts for a minimum of 10 years from the date of manufacture, provide a minimum of 10 years of software support/updates, AND allow all software to be audited for both safe function and security. Then sure. Bring on the cheap EVs.

(But not even our current domestically produced vehicles meet those requirements)

I don’t think Ford and BMW will be in that much danger, and given how long they’ve had to address this inevitability isn’t that just them not investing in their future and by capitalist standards their deserved failure if it were to happen?

Hell, large manufacturers often fought EV companies so they wouldn’t have to compete. It was cheaper to hurt the competition than it was to innovate so they did that instead. Maybe if they didn’t spend so much time and money attacking renewable resources they’d have more governments in place who actually supported giving them support for developing this technology.

“Woe is me, I on-purpose created an environment where all my most loyal customers have an irrational and deep-seated hatred for the thing I now want to do!” Like, cry me a river.

Besides, we don’t need more cars. We need more infrastructure that makes them unnecessary and we need to bring back the mid-density, walkable small town. We need to bring back the rail and bus systems we already had but tore up and/or knee-capped.

Mext municipal election you should make sure to vote for the person who’s championing stronger public transit options. I still have my car from loving in Ottawa but I barely touch it these days(usually for going to Ottawa, because I can easily get to Gare Centrale with the metro here but once I get to Ottawa it starts getting rough fast if I try to leave the LRT(and before the LRT it was a complete impossibility). Not to mention that it costs more because of the mess we made of privatising CN and shooting VIA rail in both its feet.

I don’t disagree with that.

The issues is they are artificially cheap, which undercuts Canada’s auto component industry from serving as an EV hub.
The Chinese government paid for production and have lots (as in sites) of cars that are unsold. They offered huge discounts to unload last years production. Since there were laws about discounting new cars, they moved them (paperwork wise) through shell type arrangements to make them appear as used cars (with less than 5km on the odometer etc).

That stuff undercuts any means of US and Canada EVs being viable.

Ten years ago I’m not sure I’d have said this, but now: fuck it. We should just get into bed with China. They seem totally uninterested in wars at all unless you’re Taiwan, which we’re not. Trade matters. They seem stable. Sure there are some human rights issues but given all the human rights issues fucking everywhere right now, like. I dunno. I’m for it.

It’s a serious security hole cause the software can be updated through network, the version gets audit and all the follow up update can be good, but the moment it needs to go rogue you just need 1 malicious update to have serious and wide spread harm/attack on a button.

IMO for any vehicles to allow over the network update is beyond stupid. (yes, that includes Tesla.)

Question, would you say that Teslas are artificially cheap?