cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/51970309
Rivian’s CEO praised the Xiaomi EV’s design after a teardown.
RJ Scaringe said he’d buy the SU7 himself if he lived in China.
He called it a well-integrated, nicely executed technology platform.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/51970309
Rivian’s CEO praised the Xiaomi EV’s design after a teardown.
RJ Scaringe said he’d buy the SU7 himself if he lived in China.
He called it a well-integrated, nicely executed technology platform.
Until someone can do it cheaper and then they take over. This has already happened many, many times as chinese quality increased and wages and thus prices increased.
It’s just capitalism doing capitalism things. The cheapest labor generates the greatest profits. It started with trinkets and now it’s much more advanced manufacturing. We’ve already seen other countries with cheaper labor step in for various manufacturing.
The only reason why we don’t manufacture in rich companies is because the investment for automation and labor for maintenance is more expensive than continuing production in poorer countries. Exceptions are abound for things that aren’t financially viable to import from other areas.
We’ll run out of resources and/or destroy the environment long before the world gets western QOL across the board though.
Unless some other nation finds a stockpile of rare earth minerals, slave labor, and bottomless government subsidies, I don’t see this happening with EVs. Currently nobody else on the planet is able to sell them anywhere near the price China is and that’s not because of simple cost cutting and business efficiency.
Lithium prices are down 80% since 2022 and new mining investments for it have dried up.
EVs are absolutely “advanced manufacturing” though. You don’t just stand up a battery plant in a country, let alone an automotive manufacturing industry when said country doesn’t even make cars today. You could obviously do it, but the costs are outrageous.