Title: China’s Electric Vehicles Are Going to Hit Detroit like a Wrecking Ball
- Citation:
Meyer, Robinson. “China’s Electric Vehicles Are Going to Hit Detroit like a Wrecking Ball.” The New York Times, 27 Feb. 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/02/27/opinion/gm-ford-electric-vehicles.html.
- Summary:
In “China’s Electric Vehicles Are Going To Hit Detroit Like A Wrecking Ball” by Robinson Meyer, the author voices his thoughts on the dire state of Ford, GM, and Stellantis’ (the ‘Big Three’s) transition to electric vehicles. He remarks that despite the long United Auto Workers strike on the Big Three, they made billions of dollars in revenue in 2023. But even though they were the largest and most established American automakers, they fell short on their electrification goals. Citing another NYT article, Meyer states that BYD, the largest Chinese automaker and the largest electric vehicle manufacturer in the world, sold 3 million electric vehicles in 2023 alone. BYD is working to expand its annual production capacity by another million, and citing another article by Keith Bradsher, is currently building factories in Brazil, Hungary, Thailand, and Uzbekistan, countries who have not made significant strides to electrification. And not only is the volume of vehicles very high, the prices of the lower trim models are very low, with a hybrid model expected to sell at $11,000 USD equivalent. Meyer, referring to an earnings report from Ford, then points out how Ford lost an estimated $64,000 for each electric model it sold in 2023. The ‘Big Three’ are simply not competing at the same level as Hyundai and Tesla, let alone Chinese giants such as BYD. Robinson Meyer also points out a key difference between the American and Chinese markets: Americans are addicted to large vehicles. SUVs and pickup trucks, being bigger vehicles by definition, cost more in materials to build and money to simply run, and therefore there are less people able to afford them. Smaller vehicles such as sedans and microcars are the opposite, they are cheaper, and they require less energy to run. The author writes that the 2023 Inflation Reduction Act is helpful, as it subsidizes consumers and manufacturers for qualifying electric vehicles, but is still not enough to permit most American electric vehicles to compete with Chinese-made EVs, with the example of the Volvo EX30 targeting a price of $35,000 after a 25% import tariff (Volvo and Polestar are now subsidiaries of Geely, a Chinese company). Robinson Meyer warns that while import restrictions on Chinese EVs will be necessary to buy the Big Three time to compete, completely cutting off foreign competition will be equally destructive. “There’s no small amount of irony in the fact that all those involved here — Democrats, Republicans, major automakers — resent China for achieving what was once a goal of, well, hippies and environmentalists: making electric cars popular and cheap. But if they’ve done it, we can do it, too. It will take grit and good-faith effort. We should assume that Ford and General Motors will be competing with BYD and Geely for decades to come, and we should relish that fight.”
- Rhetorical Analysis:
This opinion piece is very recent, being published on February 27, 2024. Robinson Meyer, the author of this opinion piece, specializes in writing opinion pieces for the New York Times and is the founding executive editor for Heatmap, a climate change media company. Meyer primarily uses logos to express the dire situation of the Big Three’s future, bringing up sales and earnings reports, news articles from an assortment of sources, and making references to American and Chinese legislation. The purpose of this opinion piece is to convince the American populace to vote for people and legislation that will help save the American legacy auto companies and our transition to electric vehicles from potential extinction by Chinese companies.
- Quotes:
“The Chinese automakers, especially BYD, represent something new in the world. They signal that China’s decades-long accretion of economic complexity is almost complete: Whereas the country once made toys and clothes and then made electronics and batteries, now it makes cars and airplanes.” (Meyer)
“After BYD announced its $11,000 plug-in hybrid, it posted on the Chinese social media platform Weibo that “the price will make petrol car assemblers tremble.” The problem is many of those gasoline-car makers are American.”” (Meyer)
“But in the long term, Mr. Biden must be careful not to cordon off the American car market from the rest of the world, turning the United States into an automotive backwater of bloated, expensive, gas-guzzling vehicles. The Chinese carmakers are the first real competition that the global car industry has faced in decades, and American companies must be exposed to some of that threat, for their own good. That means they must feel the chill of death on their necks and be forced to rise and face this challenge.” (Meyer)
“That means that Republican lawmakers, in particular, must recognize that climate-friendly technologies are the future of global industry. Mr. Trump is threatening that, if elected, he would gut the Inflation Reduction Act, even though it’s full of policies meant to help America compete with Chinese E.V.s. There would be no faster way to destroy the U.S. car industry as a global force.” (Meyer)
“There’s no small amount of irony in the fact that all those involved here — Democrats, Republicans, major automakers — resent China for achieving what was once a goal of, well, hippies and environmentalists: making electric cars popular and cheap. But if they’ve done it, we can do it, too. It will take grit and good-faith effort. We should assume that Ford and General Motors will be competing with BYD and Geely for decades to come, and we should relish that fight.” (Meyer)
