zlacker

>>surpri+(OP)
They're going to eat our lunch because we let our legacy ICE vehicle manufacturers dictate the terms of the shift to electric. We have to be better about identifying economic developments that are likely to be concerns for domestic stability and national security, and not let greed and fear in the corporate class stop us from making the necessary changes. Another arena where we've already lost, in a sense, and will need to play hardball catch-up is healthcare: other countries have a more stable and hour-for-hour productive workforce because their workers can get preventative care and treatment for illnesses quickly and without a fuss. If we have to trash the medical insurance industry to reach parity with our peers, so be it.

>>underl+Bv1
I mean, the ultimate reason why the US doesn't have China's electric vehicle policy is that the US is a democracy, and it would be massively unpopular. The median US voter is, like, a 40-something mother in a random suburb of Pennsylvania, who doesn't have a college degree, has a house with a mortgage, and is moderate but doesn't pay much attention to politics. To get Chinese policies enacted in the US, people like that would have to be convinced that mass-producing electric cars was more important than preserving local forests (need 'em for a factory site), paying workers prevailing wage (drives up production costs), keeping gas and ICE car registration cheap (makes electric less competitive), having cheap goods on sale at Walmart (strong currency makes imports cheap but exports expensive), avoiding noise and dust from construction (have to put the power lines somewhere), running a low government deficit (manufacturing subsidies aren't free), etc. There's a lot of trade-offs that people don't want to make.

>>apsec1+dE1
> To get Chinese policies enacted in the US, people like that would have to be convinced that mass-producing electric cars was more important than [...] keeping gas and ICE car registration cheap (makes electric less competitive)

It's worth noting that car registration in Shanghai was staggeringly expensive before electric cars were a possibility. That's just a continuation of existing Chinese policies; it obviously helps electric cars, but that was no part of the intent of the policy. (I assume the intent was some combination of reducing traffic times and reducing pollution from exhaust.)

>>thauma+mI1
Shanghai's government has a significant stake in a number of EV companies as well - SAIC is owned by Shanghai's government.

The support by local governments is a major factor for the EV boom (along with other booms like renewables).

The mixture of federal, regional, and local support is a fairly critical part of the Chinese development model.