But cars are more expensive when we have to pay a living wage :'(
this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2026
77 points (95.3% liked)
Electric Vehicles
2808 readers
158 users here now
Overview:
Electric Vehicles are a key part of our tomorrow and how we get there. If we can get all the fossil fuel vehicles off our roads, out of our seas and out of our skies, we'll have a much better environment. This community is where we discuss the various different vehicles and news stories regarding electric transportation.
Related communities:
- !automotive@discuss.tchncs.de
- !avs@futurology.today
- !byd@lemmy.world
- !ebike@lemm.ee
- !energy@slrpnk.net
- !geely@lemmy.world
- !micromobility@lemmy.world
- !polestar@lemmy.ca
- !rivian@lemmy.zip
- !teslamotors@lemmy.zip
- !xiaomi@lemdro.id
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
We should only build steam rollers in this country so we could squish the people who don’t want to pay living wages like human tubes of toothpaste
Mane I’ve had too much to drink today. Or mortar is the sweet spot. I don’t know.
Soylent Green!
In this case, the CCP also provides massive subsidies to them. If they did not build in China, all the money would dry up
Xpeng builds it's cars for the EU market in Austria.
Sooo many economists on Lemmy.
It's a very old myth that Chinese labor is cheaper. That was true 25 years ago. It's a reach to call UAW skilled labor.
https://www.aiu.edu/innovative/the-myth-of-cheap-chinese-labor-unpacking-a-complex-reality/
This article doesn't refute that Chinese labor is cheaper than the rough equivalent western worker. China has been upskilling its workforce, and has invested in a lot of manufacturing-specific infrastructure and ecosystem, but the individual workers for any given skill level and education level still gets paid significantly less than a similarly situated worker in North America or Europe.
The workers assembling iPhones in China are both high productivity and low pay (on Western standards). Despite rapidly increasing pay, starting pay was still less than $4 USD/hour for the peak season last year.
And much of that is just the reality of exchange rates, but from the perspective of a multinational company, the exchange rates feed right into their bottom line. They'd prefer to pay Chinese wages over Canadian wages, especially if the Chinese labor is more productive/efficient.
They would stop being cheap if that were the case. They are able to build competitively in China because of huge government support. Building Overseas, they would become just another car maker.
Name one Ontario automaker that hasn't received huge government support. This industry sucks billions from governments every year, federal and provincial. China is estimated to boost automakers by $8B, peanuts.
Detroit automakers have seen >$88B in government support...so where are the affordable EVs? How many EVs do we make in Canada? Just this laughable POS @$75,000.
7,400 total sales worldwide.
Well there is obviously a reason they dont do it, or you would see them doing it. Its just finding the reasons why at this point.
That's just part of the story.
China has massively subsidized EVs in the last decade. Subsidies amounted to 45 billion dollars in 2023 alone. However it is true that subisdies are now reduced. This aligns with Chinas industrial policy: Subsidies are used to inflate certain sectors and once the state money dries up its survival of the fittest creating competitvly successful market leaders. Basically evolution on a makro economic scale. Perhaps a wise policy but the state wise hedging of markets is also part of the story.
/edit: Source https://www.csis.org/blogs/trustee-china-hand/chinese-ev-dilemma-subsidized-yet-striking
Except that's not really the case. While EVs do receive some subsidies in China because there's a push to out ICE vehicles, they're cheap because they essentially make all the components and there's insanely high competition. There are more EV manufacturers in China than there are Auto-manufactuers in the entire rest of the world combined.
Most have nearly completely automated factories at this point, because that's the only way to compete. Others have found very specific niches early enough that it would be too expensive to develop the tooling to compete, like XMCG's current relative domination in electric construction vehicles.
The problem then being if any of them go international in production the number of jobs produced are pretty low, and either extremely high skilled requiring imported Chinese labor or extremely low skilled providing very little tax revenue.
There's also the history of Chinese EV companies really not vetting local or partner construction companies, resulting in awful PR and lawsuits.
Or... what?
Chinese companies build their cars in China for profit and strategic reasons. What plan does Canada have to force them to change this?
Not allow more than 50,000/yr. Exactly what we are doing now.
And how is that working out for Canada - one of the few countries to currently be in recession?
Canada has had economic slowdown due to US trade policies, but is not in recession. Have fun if you want to make shit up.
Statistics Canada said real gross domestic product fell 0.1 per cent on an annualized basis in the first three months of this year. That comes after a downwardly revised contraction of one per cent in the fourth quarter of 2025.
Two consecutive quarters of contraction in economic growth is termed a technical recession.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/recession-gdp-may-2026-statscan-9.7216352