this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
194 points (95.3% liked)

Europe

10741 readers
1164 users here now

News and information from Europe 🇪🇺

(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)

Rules (2024-08-30)

  1. This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
  2. No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
  3. Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
  4. No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
  5. Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
  6. If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
  7. Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in other communities.
  8. Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
  9. No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
  10. Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.

(This list may get expanded as necessary.)

Posts that link to the following sources will be removed

Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media (incl. Substack). Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com

(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)

Ban lengths, etc.

We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.

If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.

If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the admin that applied the rule (check modlog first to find who was it.)

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 37 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

This is extremely generalized falsely concluding from "American" to be the same as "Western", when the reality the difference is HUGE between Europe and USA.
In USA Ford and GM have discontinued some of their more popular EV models. This is NOT happening in EU.
On the contrary EU manufacturers continue to expand their EV product lines.
The headline is a very big false equivalence.
Obviously Chinese brands have more success in EU, with about 13% tariffs than in USA with 150% tariffs.
Still European makers continue to compete on EV.

You can't lump USA and Europe together on EV, they are very different markets, and Trump is specifically undermining EV production now!

You also can't lump in South Korea, that have been very active making good electric cars, Japan is behind, and especially Honda seems to be pulling back on EV, but Toyota is finally beginning to show some decent offerings, and Nissan has been in the EV market for years now.

The article seems to think USA is "the west", when it is nothing like it.

[–] blackbeans@lemmy.zip 1 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Chinese EVs have up to 45% tariffs in the EU. The exact amount is different for each company and depends on the amount of state funding that company had received

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

up to 45%

13% is about average, brands that cooperate with EU have lower rates, obviously brands that export to EU cooperate.
AFAIK no brand is paying anything near 45%.

[–] blackbeans@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

13% is certainly not the average. Not sure who upvotes such utter dubious information.

All foreign cars have a 10% base import fee in the EU. Adding to that up to 35% extra anti-subsidy tariff.

Byd: 27%

Geely: 28%

Saic: 45%

Nio: 31%

Xpeng: 31%

Other: 45%

Excluding shipping, handling and homologation and not including VAT that is applied on top of the tariffs.

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I was not aware of the 10% base duty for all cars into EU.
But the rates you state are general for a brand, but do not account for per model negotiations:

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/eu-tariffs-imports-china-made-evs-2026-02-11/

Carmakers can now negotiate tariff exemptions for individual electric models imported from China.

Cupra Tavascan has achieved a 0% duty, and Tesla is 7.8%.
I suspect several of the more popular Chinese models, have negotiated lower rates too.

[–] blackbeans@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Thanks for the follow up. It is worth mentioning that both Tesla and Cuprsa Tavascan are not Chinese owned.

The biggest/most popular Chinese manufacturers in the EU are BYD, SAIC, Geely, NIO and Xpeng.

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It is not who owns the company that matters, but that they are made in China, and how much the factory has been subsidiced. The Tavascan is built on a Chinese owned factory, where VW has a minority ownership.

[–] blackbeans@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

VW has 75% ownership in the Tavascan factory since 2020.

VW got an exemption on the additional import fees based on certain conditions (agreements on minimum selling price level, EU car industry investment assurances)

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

OK so maybe they haven't got subsidies from the Chinese government, which is why they pay zero extra% duty.
As I stated earlier, the duty is based on the level of government subsidies Chinese factories have received. Where USA just has put a 150% tariff on everything car related from China. So I maintain EU and USA are not the same regarding duty/tariff, and EU and China are not the same regarding government subsidies, China subsidize Chinese car makers directly, while EU subsidies benefit all EV car makers disregarding country of origin.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Ooops@feddit.org 17 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Who cares about their irrelevance in 5 or ten years if you get giant boni for the bottom line in 6 months and are already somewhere else destroying another company 2 years down the line?

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 2 points 5 days ago (2 children)

It takes years to design a new car model. It's quite a risk to bet on combustion engines at this point.

While the world wide adoption of EVs is only about 20% of all new car sales (for personal cars), the statistics for countries that were early adopters shows that this figure doesn't just increase, it accelerates when it comes over 1%, which it is almost everywhere.

So, it might seem reasonable to bet on the type of car that sells 80% on the market now, but that market is going to look very difficult by the time the cars are ready for production. Consumers have spoken: They want to buy EVs.

[–] Ooops@feddit.org 2 points 5 days ago

You are explaining something everybody with 2+ working brain cells knows. But the company bosses only caring for the next bottom line and their bonus don't give a fuck, and neither do the populists.

Because the former don't care about anything but their personal short term gain before moving on, and the latter basically operate on letting everything go to shit intentionally to then blame some scapegoat for it.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›