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Falling panel prices lead to global solar boom, except for the US

(arstechnica.com)
249 points Jtsummers | 1 comments | 30 Oct 25 16:32 UTC | HN request time: 0.207s | source
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softwaredoug ◴[30 Oct 25 17:18 UTC] No.45762476[source]▶
By not aligning economically to other country's markets, US companies are in a real pickle.

Imagine you're a US car manufacturer. You see EVs growing around the world, and stagnating in the US. Do you:

(a) Double-down on investments in EVs (billions of USD!), even with a soft US market for EVs, hoping you might compete globally.

(b) Become a parochial, US-only, business hoping to squeeze what you can out of a gradually shrinking industry

When other countries subsidize consumers to buy EVs, and the US does not, it effectively creates a self-own trade barrier for domestic companies.

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forgotoldacc ◴[30 Oct 25 17:31 UTC] No.45762652[source]▶
The US seems to be at risk of becoming a Japanese style economy in the coming years. As in they focus on tech that sells well locally, but is of no interest outside the country. And that can work for their economy and is a nice way to package protectionism. But eventually, people years down the road see how much better tech is in the outside world and jump to it and never look back. Then your own industry starts to drown and is only held up by a class of elderly people afraid of change.

Examples are the strange Japanese flip phones and the computers with CF card and floppy drives with a 1.5 ghz single core CPU selling for twice the price of a MacBook Pro.

With BYD selling globally now, and Boeing losing its reputation, American vehicles of all sorts are at risk.

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1. lenerdenator ◴[30 Oct 25 17:51 UTC] No.45762914[source]▶
Well, in order to compete, they'd have to cut costs.

You can't cut costs infinitely. You still need to pay people, suppliers, and above all, people who had nothing to do with the company but hold a piece of paper saying they're entitled to profits.

It's probably the case that you cannot do that enough to compete with the Chinese if you're in the US, so they won't try.

We're in a post-"what about the long term economic outlook of our country"-era and have been since the 1970s. John Q. Public in the US and Helga Öffentlich in Germany don't care that their purchase of a Chinese EV hollows out their country's industrial base, they just care that they spent less on the EV. And why shouldn't they? The countries themselves are lead by people who do the exact same thing on a massive scale.