October 4 is the day the EU decides how expensive to make Chinese EVs

30 September 2024

Remember when EVs were promised to eventually become as cheap as ICE cars? Well, something funny happened along the way to that goal. Actually, two things. First, ICE cars got more and more expensive (which is exactly the opposite of said promise), and EVs haven't really gotten cheap past a point. With one very obvious, very clear exception: Chinese EVs.

The EU's answer to this has been baffling, to say the least. In a bid to save its inefficient (and expensive) car making industry, the bloc is actively going against consumers (the people who theoretically vote in all those bureaucrats) by doing its best to make Chinese EVs more expensive, thus forcing people who want EVs to pay more than they otherwise would have in a free market.

The ongoing saga of adding extra tariffs to Chinese EVs is almost at its end, however, for October 4 is apparently the day on which the EU will vote on whether to introduce new anti-competitive measures, and how far to go with them.

It could add-on tariffs of up to 45% on EVs imported from China, but there's also a chance this will turn into a 'minimum price' agreement, which simply prices the poorest of consumers out of the EV market entirely while not in any way inconveniencing those who can afford multiple tens-of-thousands-of-euros vehicles.

Such protectionism of homegrown industry is something the EU keeps accusing China of, without realizing (or maybe not caring about) the horrendous irony. This time the pretext is "subsidies" by the Chinese state - though, of course, when France does the same with Renault, for example, it's all fine.

Anyway, the vote will result in implementation of the new policy, whatever it may end up being, by the end of October reportedly, unless 15 EU members (out of 27) representing 65% of the population vote against the measures.

Source