Most Chinese E.V. Firms Are Unprofitable. Local Governments Keep Propping Them Up Anyway.
Electric cars
Kevin Garcia-Galindo | 9.24.2024 3:15 PM
The odds are stacked against many Chinese electric vehicle (E.V.) firms. And yet they keep hanging on.
A decline in federal government subsidies, tariffs from abroad, intense price competition, and waning demand should have led to a consolidated Chinese E.V. market. But local governments have used incentives to keep half-dead E.V. firms from shuttering, and in some cases, even revived dead ones.
Such Chinese E.V. manufacturers have benefited greatly from massive industrial policy support from the government. A combination of "generous government subsidies, tax breaks, procurement contracts, and other policy incentives," as laid out in the MIT Technology Review, helped create the dominant E.V. market China has today. In just the Chinese domestic market, for example, E.V. ownership reached 13.1 million in 2022, accounting for 60 percent of........
© Reason.com
visit website