this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
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BYD and other Chinese manufacturers are only able to sell at these low prices because the government is paying a portion of the manufacturing costs which isn't sustainable long term. What will happen is that they'll continue to subsidize them until they put a bunch of competitors out of business and then end the subsidies. Their prices will shoot up, and we'll be right back in the same situation we are now with high purchase prices. The only difference is that a lot of American manufacturing (union) jobs will have disappeared because of it.
The US government can and should be directly financing mining and making lithium batteries. There's enough lithium and cobalt scattered around the world to not give China full control over the price. The perfect is the enemy of the good. Until a more energy-dense battery chemistry goes mainstream: lithium is our only option to stop burning (some) oil. Batteries needs to be fully embraced regardless of who's currently setup to profit. China just thought ahead and the US wants to throw a tantrum.
Great but this had nothing to do with selling cars with massive, unsustainable subsidies as the price of lithium is just one part of the cost to manufacture a car. Furthermore, their goal isn't to get more people into EVs. It's to increase power and influence by selling their product at prices so low, nobody can compete against them. Once the competition is gone, a monopoly forms, subsidies end, prices skyrocket, and ideas and innovation stagnate.
Your approach is akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Who's going to develop a more energy dense, climate friendly solution if the entire market is controlled by a single entity?
The batteries are about half the cost of making an EV. A $30k car literally has $15k+ worth of batteries inside. The Chinese are prepared to produce batteries today. China will not be able to arbitrarily limit global supply in the future. Global lithium supply is not analogous to oil prices and OPEC.
Lithium ion batteries are not produced by 1 entity and the tech has been around a few decades. People are absolutely innovating better, more sustainable, and less toxic battery chemistry. Lithium is just the best option we have now.
You keep focusing on the lithium market while I'm speaking about the automotive market. If China makes EVs unprofitable for the rest of the market by selling them at an artificially low price, who is going to be left to build them once the dust settles?