No. For all practical purposes, Chinese cars are perfectly fine for most consumers. Since you cannot beat China on manufacturing costs, this war is already lost. Musk or no Musk.

▲ adjejmxbdjdn 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There is no reason Chinese EVs couldn’t have been beaten on cost.

The labor/environmental costs of car manufacturing is relatively low and more than made up in the cost of shipping cars. One example of this was the number of foreign car manufacturers that were relocating manufacturing to the NAFTA region to serve the U.S. car market even before the tariff nonsense.

The area where China might have an edge is batteries cost. I’m not convinced that’s the case but even if we assume it is, it’s irrelevant because Chinese battery companies are largely not vertically integrated with the automakers and have been selling those batteries to non Chinese automakers at the same rates in an open market.

The reason Chinese EVs are cheaper is plain and simple competition. Some of those price advantages will disappear as Chinese companies need to start showing profits, but a lot of those won’t because they were the result of genuine innovation driven by the tremendously competitive market and the economies of scale that were rapidly created.

Keeping that in mind, while a lot of Tesla’s missed opportunities are self owns, the larger problem ultimately was the lack of govt support in developing a competitive ecosystem in the US.

	▲	jauntywundrkind 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I like your pretty optimistic take. I'm not convinced but I want to believe, and that's an interesting take. One critical correction though: BYD makes 16% of the world's batteries. And makes cars. So there is vertical integration in play. https://cnevpost.com/2026/02/04/global-ev-battery-market-sha... Ford and Stellantis are meanwhile busy trying to partner with Chinese companies, to make their own battery factories. Even though it seems like maybe they'll end up making more batteries for stationary power than for vehicles.

▲ whizzter 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Chineese phonemakers exist yet Apple pulls in a significant portion of profits due to their _halo_ allowing them to sell at a higher price point.

Tesla had that, all Musk had to do was refrain himself from waving his hand around in that certain fashion.

New registrations in Sweden for the past 3 years, Sweden alone would've probably absorbed about 14000 cars of that unsold stock.

  2023  20388  341835  0,0596428101276932  (5.96%)
  2024  21894  314485  0,0696185827622939  (6.96%)
  2025   7254  314426  0,0230706112089967  (2.31%)
  2026   2849   72525  0,0392830058600483  (3.93%)

(Sales in 2026 were low until March 2026, Musk probably gotta thank Trump for oil-prices jumping up enough to move the needle again)

The worst news for Tesla isn't the sales though, with "Texas-like" distances in Sweden (and Norway and Finland) there was a perception that only Tesla cars could properly handle the distances without getting too much battery angst.

When people started looking around they realized that the other carmakers were getting their shit together and could actually deliver cars that handled distances well enough.

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amelius 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Chineese phonemakers exist yet Apple pulls in a significant portion of profits due to their _halo_ allowing them to sell at a higher price point.

The difference is that most customers have the financial wiggle room to buy a more expensive phone. With cars this is an entirely different story because cars are the most expensive things people own (besides a house).

For most people it holds that a car should just get them from A to B. The money for anything more fancy is better spent on something else.

There is a reason Apple is not in the car business.

	▲	senordevnyc 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And yet the average price paid for a new car is up to $50k. Americans definitely aren’t just buying a basic car to get them from A to B.

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tzs 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Tesla had that, all Musk had to do was refrain himself from waving his hand around in that certain fashion.

He probably also would have had to refrain from retweeting white nationalists and adding the 100 points emoji that is usually used in that context to mean "100% agreement with the tweet".

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bulbar 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Buying a Tesla was already considered edgy in some demographics, but doing that famous fascist gesture because you feel powerful definitely crossed a line as far as Europeans are concerned.

	▲	spwa4 12 hours ago \| parent [-]
		DOGing half the US population didn't help. I guess he wasn't content firing most of twitter, then begging half of them to come back, only to then lament that twitter had lost 80% of it's value in this processs wasn't enough. He had to do the same to the entire US ... and it's still working.

▲ comfysocks 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah, EVs are completely mundane now. Not sexy enough of a story to justify the high PE ratios anymore.

I think this is the reason for the weird pivot to humanoid robots and for taking SpaceX public even though he originally said he wouldn’t. Better story for the investors than EVs.