TSMC looks to double down on U.S. chip factories as talks in Europe falter

"European chip and auto companies, for their part, are mostly lined up against the idea. They would prefer subsidies for the older-generation chips that are heavily used by car manufacturers and are in short supply.

Many of TSMC's most lucrative customers, such as Apple, are U.S.-based, while its European customer base is made up of mostly of automakers buying less-advanced chips."

Oh boy... This is exactly why EU will always stay third behind USA, China...

"We don't need e mobility, we have the best combustion engines!" Tesla owns VW now.

"We don't need Apple like chips"

This hurts. Apple and rest does many things differently and way better than EU. We should learn from them.

Or do I miss something?

Tesla are good electric cars, the best in their categories, but Europe has no problem to produce good electric cars that are the best in their categories too.

The VW group is doing particularly well these days, with the ID4 or the Taycan for example.

I was on the market for a new car this year in Europe and was happily surprised that every European brand now, not just VW, is offering a fully electrical model, at least, and several traditional models are offered as plugin-hybrids as well.

Audi has the e-tron[1] already, and plans to have every model it sells come with a fully electric version before 2030[2].

BMW has been selling the i3 fully electric model since 2013, now has several other electric cars[3] (including the iX, the first one it designed from scratch to be an electric car, and the ix3, an electric version of the popular X3) and most of its models come as plugin hybrid (I ended up buying an X1 plugin-hybrid, the electric models are still really expensive compared to hybrid, which are themselves really expensive compared to the old combustion engine models - but worth it because you save loads of money if the electric range is enough for your daily trips, like for me, and due to government bonuses and much lower taxation!).

Mercedez seems to have started a bit late, but now it's keeping up with BMW and also offers many plugin-hybrid models as well as the new EQ line[4] which is fully electric (I drove the EQC and it's amazing - the luxury of Mercedez with the modernity of a Tesla - but just a little too pricey for me).

Other brands are following the same pattern. For example, Seat has a new sub-brand called Cupra[5] which offers a more affordable fully electrical, but still pretty awesome, model called Formentor which seems to be getting pretty popular in my country. Volvo now offers the XC40 with a pure electric engine[6] or plugin-hybrid... and it has a subsidiary to challenge Tesla called Polestar[7] which makes highly performant electrical vehicles similar to Teslas.

Finally, Renault Zoe[8] is a fully electrical, small vehicle that is pretty popular in Europe (where small cars are more convenient to use in cities).

[1] https://www.audi.com/en/experience-audi/models-and-technolog...

[2] http://www.mobiletechdaily.com/audi-plans-to-electrify-every...

[3] https://www.bmw.com/en-au/discover/electromobility/electric-...

[4] https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/eq/

[5] https://www.cupraofficial.com/

[6] https://www.volvocars.com/intl/why-volvo/human-innovation/el...

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polestar

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Zoe