"China is awash in $10,000 EVs. Importing them could have changed everything"

That seems pretty inexpensive and brings to mind the joke about the Texan who didn't use air conditioning in his vehicles. When asked why he drawled "Ah just keep a six-pack of 'em in ma drive-in freezer."

From Fast Company, June 10:

Tariffs mean that China’s cheap EVs aren’t accessible in the U.S.—and the transition to clean transportation is happening more slowly.

A tiny electric car called the Seagull, designed by a former Lamborghini designer, starts at less than $10,000 in China. A version with a battery that can go 250 miles on a charge costs a little more, at $12,000.

The car—made by BYD, the Chinese manufacturer that overtook Tesla as the world’s biggest seller of EVs late last year—isn’t available in the U.S. Neither is the Zhidou Rainbow, another tiny Chinese car that starts at $4,400. More expensive Chinese cars, like the sleek Xiaomi SU7 (which looks like a Porsche, at a fifth of the price) or the XPeng G9 SUV, are also priced to undercut competitors like Tesla. The cheapest EV for sale in the U.S., by contrast, is the $28,000 Nissan Leaf.

New tariffs from the Biden administration make it unlikely that Chinese EVs will be sold in the U.S. anytime soon. But if they had, they almost certainly would have sped up the shift to cleaner transportation.

“If the goal is to try to drive a transition and to get more EVs on the road, putting up trade barriers is counterproductive,” says Michael Lenox, a business professor at the University of Virginia who studies the EV industry.

Consumers still see EV cost as a barrier
In a recent survey, more than half of Americans who don’t yet own electric cars said they were interested in buying one. But 64% said cost was a significant barrier.

Ever since Tesla pioneered high-end EVs—recognizing that early electric cars would be more expensive to make, and the luxury market offered more room for margin—other American automakers have also focused more on expensive cars. “The next push will be toward those less expensive categories of cars,” says Lenox. “Clearly, Nissan with the Leaf and Chevy with the Bolt have been playing in that area for a while. But the numbers coming out of China are just game changers.”

That’s not to say that Americans would have necessarily wanted to buy Chinese cars. For decades, American automakers have moved toward bigger, heavier vehicles and away from sedans, arguing that that’s what consumers want.

“With these tariffs, we’re just not going to put that assumption to the test. It’s entirely possible that you could have companies like BYD bringing their low-cost smaller vehicles and American consumers might not be interested,” says Ilaria Mazzocco, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “But it’s also possible that consumers might respond in the same way that they have in many other parts of the world, by changing their preferences because the cost is so low, and they’re really efficient, and there are all these other benefits to the vehicles.”....

....MUCH MORE