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US cities pay too much for buses

(www.bloomberg.com)
355 points pavel_lishin | 1 comments | 26 Sep 25 13:57 UTC | HN request time: 0.221s | source
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mschuster91 ◴[26 Sep 25 14:23 UTC] No.45386830[source]▶
A lot of fluff (although I do appreciate the hard numbers and reasons - thirteen shades of grey for flooring is utterly ridiculous) for essentially these two points:

- low lot size combined with a lot of customization demands leads to high per-unit costs

- "Buy American" is expensive. D'uh. Unfortunately the article doesn't dig down deeper into why BYD and other Chinese manufacturers are cheaper - 996 style slave labor production, a lack of environmental protection laws and, most notably, a lot of state/regional subsidies artificially dumping prices below sustainability not just against American companies but against other Chinese companies.

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1. JKCalhoun ◴[26 Sep 25 14:28 UTC] No.45386892[source]▶
Not calling you out on BYD, but a lack of competition in the U.S. means we'll never know what the price for "Buy American" could be.

To your point though, even at a much higher price, the "Buy American" is putting that money back into the U.S. economy (we hope).