Volkswagen seeks to counter rivals with budget EV model

That's way too expensive for an "affordable EV".

The BYD Seagull retails here in Uruguay for less than that and we tax cars at about 100%. On China it seems to go for 10-12k.

It's a proper, basic city car. 4 to 6 air bags, ~300km range (more than what this article's car indicates), all basic security features and standard gadgets out of a modern car.

Our EV infrastructure is not viable if you don't have a charger at work/home and yet these have sold like hot cakes.

Legacy carmakers are making increasingly worse ICE cars for the most part (btw does GM sell a C-segment hatchback on any market, anymore?) and their EVs are simply uncompetitive. What's it going to take for them to wake up to the fact they're going to have to stop fleecing their customers with crappy products? Bankruptcy?

It's too expensive for an affordable EV in half the world I am sure. The wealthier half of the world will never let Chinese auto makers in. China wants to do the same thing they've done with other manufacturing, use government subsidies, borderline slave labor, and artifically low currency to eat the market and kill everyone else's manufacturing capacity until they have the market entirely.

There's no way we let that happen to cars. China's average auto worker pay is $4.20 an hour. America's is 6x that. What you call fleecing customers we call paying workers a living wage.

We'd rather pay $25k for a cheap EV and have a thriving auto industry than pay $10k and have none. We'd happily choose paying more for cars over Latin America-style wealth inequality, though lately it seems as if we're going to manage both at the same time.

Says you. Poorer people in the United Stares would LOVE to have the option for a 10K car. It would really help their standard of living.

I’m happy for you that you can afford to plop $25K down for a car.

I am very doubtful that one could manufacture a $10k (USD) car, have some tiny amount of profit margin on it, and still meet federal dual airbag, crash test safety standards. The extremely affordable cars sold in India for example would never meet US/Canadian road standards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Motor_Vehicle_Safety_S...

That’s a different conversation. The OP was arguing 2.5X the price solely to support union wages.