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The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

(www.wsj.com)
152 points voisin | 1 comments | 17 Nov 24 23:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.207s | source
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aprilthird2021 ◴[18 Nov 24 00:11 UTC] No.42168525[source]▶
Something has to disconnect here. Everyone complains that everything costs so much, but the average Americans' paycheck is not rising the same way, so they can try all they want to sell $95k electric vehicles because of thin margins for cheaper products, but if purchasing power doesn't rise with inflation, then that market that "sucks" is going to be the only real market one day...
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1. derbOac ◴[18 Nov 24 14:35 UTC] No.42172602[source]▶
The problem IMHO is a variety of US policies have artificially taken out that cheap market in all kinds of domains through protectionist policies like rent seeking, monopolies, and tariffs. So, for example, tariffs hurt the emergence of a cheap EV market.

The solutions for this in general don't line up nicely with any of the major party platforms, at least in the US — major deregulation of certain areas in certain ways, aggressive antitrust enforcement, and dismantling of tariffs, possibly combined with government incentivizing of competition in certain areas, at least for awhile. It feels like candidates and parties demonize one or more of these things and overemphasize other things, or implement some of these things in the wrong ways, like they're all mutually exclusive.