Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

pcmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 110 posts

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#41

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

dannersy wrote: post #21
JimsonYang wrote: post #10

>Americans watch the rest of the world getting better, cheaper, ... If we wanted cheap cars, there needs to be demand to justify building giga factories of EVs. There just wasnt sufficient consumer demand to justify the giga factory investments China CAN generate demand for EVs because they have the political ability to 1) force gas restricted cars to only drive on certain days of the week 2) create a brutal lottery…

If we ignore the cultural issues with Americans where some places buying an EV is considered "gay" (because that is inheritently negative to them) then we can easily point to the hostile lobbying tactics and government capitulation via bought congressmen. Go look at the historical hostilities Tesla faced when first trying to take off. If I still lived in the US, I'd be hesitant to buy an EV because the infrastructure…

"Americans where some places buying an EV is considered "gay""

They would jump on EVs in heartbeat if Trump told them to.

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#42

Post by matheusmoreira »

Avicebron wrote: post #25
vkou wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4) People in China want to save money on gas, while America prefers to bitch about gas prices, while doing nothing to switch away from gas-guzzling ICE land yachts.

You've cracked the code on this one, it's not the fact that someone realized they could use labor arbitrage 50 years ago to get rich while selling the American people down the river. Treason in the name of profit.

Labor arbitrage as treason is a very interesting idea. It's a major reason why China is as developed as it is now.

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#43

Post by antonvs »

nxm wrote: post #9

Umm not when the adversary is using heavy government subsidies to undercut prices and essentially take over the industry. Look at what’s happening to the European car industry, with more job losses planned by VW just this week

Why does it matter whether the subsidies come from a government, from venture capitalists, or from private equity?

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#45

Post by actionfromafar »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #33
nxm wrote: post #9

Umm not when the adversary is using heavy government subsidies to undercut prices and essentially take over the industry. Look at what’s happening to the European car industry, with more job losses planned by VW just this week

Effective Chinese subsidy per vehicle is lower than the $7000 per vehicle the US had in place.

Is that even knowable? The Chinese economy is very opaque.

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#46

Post by cyberax »

OutOfHere wrote: post #6

To play devil's advocate, there is some logic to banning Chinese cars, which is that their firmware risks sending telemetry to China, also disabling/malfunctioning the car if China were to have a military engagement with the US. I suggest a middle road which is that the entire telemetry surface and firmware updates must be domestically managed, with no room for a closed-source foreign entity to manipulate it. An EV r…

I'm sure China is going to be yearning for those sweet traffic pattern data during a war. They'll know which Walmarts they need to bomb first.

It's not like there are satellites that can get high-res pictures of most of the US every few hours. Or millions of phones running all kinds of software.

Even the US-made cars have dozens of computers that run very crude C-based code, full of bugs and overflows. Security was never a priority for this code. There are so many routes of ingress that it's not even funny.

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#47

Post by bryanlarsen »

marcosdumay wrote: post #37
bryanlarsen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New car sales in Europe in 2026 are approaching 50% EV with essentially none of the above. Europe has had generous EV subsidies in the past, but in 2026 those are mostly (but not completely) gone.

Hum... Announcing you will completely outlaw combustion cars soon is missing from the GP's options.

AFAICT, that increases sales. "I better buy it now, it's going to be banned soon". Just ask the American gun manufacturers. They love announcements of bans because it provides a huge immediate boost in sales. And then in the end the ban ends up being watered down/removed, just like the European bans of combustion vehicles have been.

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#48

Post by ronsor »

JimsonYang wrote: post #10

>Americans watch the rest of the world getting better, cheaper, ... If we wanted cheap cars, there needs to be demand to justify building giga factories of EVs. There just wasnt sufficient consumer demand to justify the giga factory investments China CAN generate demand for EVs because they have the political ability to 1) force gas restricted cars to only drive on certain days of the week 2) create a brutal lottery…

They don't have the political will because doing (1) and (2) would result in the removal of whatever politicians approved it.

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#49

Post by thesmtsolver2 »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #36
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #32

I don't understand the surprise in this article. This particular story is absolutely nothing new—the Germans and Japanese did it first to the US car market, which is inefficient, stuck in a bygone era, and propped up by government protectionism. Nearly all* American cars have been backwards in all metrics since about the 1970s. In general, if you wanted... Reliability: Japanese. Value: Korean, French, Japanese. Perfo…

US only loves free market if they're the winners.

So does China. E.g.,

China goes beyond protectionism and even threatens other countries from doing their own strategy.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/renewables/chi...

https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/china-briefs/chinas-use-unoff...

> The authors conclude that non-tariff barriers were a primary instrument used by China in the U.S.-China trade war, with implications for China’s trade conflicts with other countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...

So does the EU

https://ahdb.org.uk/europe-market-access-and-barriers-to-tra...

Interestingly, champions of free trade come out only when the US puts in any place the tiniest of restrictions.

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#50

Post by Telemakhos »

JimsonYang wrote: post #29
bryanlarsen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New car sales in Europe in 2026 are approaching 50% EV with essentially none of the above. Europe has had generous EV subsidies in the past, but in 2026 those are mostly (but not completely) gone.

Youre right, i forgot to add 4) europeans are environemtally conscious Americans however like their gas guzzling F150s. The reason I did the original comment was I know for a time the major car companies did a huge push into EVs. Like the ford 150 lightning, chevy bolt and mustang mach E. But they stopped manufacturing them due to weakened sales and profitability. Its a vicious feedback loop of consumer adoption, hig…

> Americans however like their gas guzzling F150s.

Pickup trucks have always made up between 10% and 20% of vehicles on the road in America; it's the SUV that has picked up from next to nothing in 1980 to almost half of all new vehicles now, while the sedan has plunged from 80% to about 25% of new vehicles today.

A big part of that transition to larger SUVs (which are not F150s) was the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) Standards, which sought to make cars more fuel efficient. They regulated based on the size of the vehicle, so larger vehicles (including both the SUV and the F150) became cheaper to manufacture, while smaller cars were squeezed out of the market as meeting CAFE became too expensive. Larger cars also perform better on safety tests and have an easier time passing onerous safety regulations. Had environmental and safety regulations been handled differently, or if there weren't any, Americans might well be driving more fuel-efficient smaller coupes and sedans.

That said, the Chevy Bolt and Mustang Mach-E are, in fact, being manufactured—the Bolt was recently brought back, and the Mustang Mach-E was never discontinued. The Ford F150 Lightning has been discontinued. Tesla outsells all of them by far.

Post reply on HN