this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2025
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Some richer people buy EVs without incentives. Most people can't with how expensive they are upfront. Same with solar panels.
EVs have been expensive in part because it costs money to switch production from ICE or build new production capacity, and to establish supply chains and take advantage of the economics of scale. That's a huge investment, but one that they have to make if they want to remain competitive in the long term.
The bigger issue has been that they aren't designing lower cost EVs. It's not exclusively an EV issue since they have been moving away from lower cost ICE vehicles for years too, it's just that EVs didn't have existing low cost product lines, and they're more interested in delaying EVs and using them as HALO products than in building a functional but low margin model. To say nothing of the many dealerships that have no interest in selling EVs and would rather steer people to a high margin gas guzzler.
As for solar, at the grid scale it's the cheapest power source available, with or without government funding, not to mention the fastest to deploy. And residential solar does make sense even without incentives. It will pay for itself, it's just the upfront cost that's the problem.The incentives make that easier, but even without them and with the need for financing, you still come out ahead as long as your monthly payment is in the same ballpark as your electric bill because the solar payments will stay the same over time until the loan is paid off, while your electricity rate will only ever go up.
Chinese EVs and solar panels are dirt cheap. They become expensive because of tariffs. And western car companies really don't like to invest in EVs because planning ahead 10 years won't pay off right NOW.
Western countries give subsidies to EV buyers, Chinese government gives subsidies to EV manufacturers, including for cars sold overseas. The idea is to drown out competition and then they can drop the subsidies and raise prices.
The tariffs are protection from an unfair strategy and is used in other markets, not just EVs - and against other countries, not just China. The idea is that if another country makes things artificially cheap, you use tariffs to level the playing field.
So yes, tariffs do have a valid use case. Whatever the fuck Trump decided to do with literally all of USA's trading partners is not one of them unless you REALLY want to isolate your own economy for the benefit of literally nobody but a few billionaires. But protecting your own internal industries from unfair competition absolutely is one.
You are raising a good point. And I agree, countries should protect themselves from those practices. But this is done only selectively. Maybe Europe is the better example here, where tariffs only apply to EVs. And you know what. That's not even the problem. Why not buy subsidized products from China, as long as they don't destroy the local industry. But here's the issue. China has invested a lot in green tech and they produce it really cheap. The west is unwilling to make those investments. So they turn to tariffs and pretend that subsidies are the sole problem. Now people cannot by cheap Chinese EVs, but local car companies are also not committed to EVs. Contrast that with solar panels, where the Europeans did the exact opposite, but equally stupid. They let the local solar industry die. And since there are no tariffs, solar panels are actually cheap.
They're cheap because they're massively subsidized by the Chinese government.
This is just xenophobic propaganda. When we subsidize EVs and solar, that's just us stimulating new industries. When they do it, it's those devil foreigners up to their evil deeds again!
No. When China subsidizes EVs, it's stimulating their new industry. And it's working. But the fact is still that their EVs are super cheap because they're massively subsidized.