Shenzhen, China-based BYD Co. is the largest manufacturer of electric automobiles in the world. Last year, BYD fully electric models outsold Tesla by more than 600,000 units.
BYD’s most affordable electric vehicle costs the equivalent of about $8,000. Those who have tried it in China report that it doesn’t feel cheap either. Meanwhile, the least expensive Tesla model will set you back $36,990.
Of course, you cannot buy a BYD vehicle in the United States because of ridiculously high tariffs and federal rules about connected car technology as well as certain vehicle safety standards. Lawmakers will bloviate about the latter, but all of this is really about trade protectionism for Tesla and its CEO and largest shareholder Elon Musk.
If inexpensive, effective, imported EVs were available in the United States, it would cost some American jobs in the automotive sector. This would primarily affect Tesla, though the availability of far cheaper alternatives to the large gas-guzzling vehicles favored by traditional automakers would no doubt cause a hit to the legacy brands as well.
To the criticism that throwing open the gates of trade to Chinese EV companies would cost American jobs, I say the benefits would vastly outweigh the costs. As of the end of June, the average price Americans were paying for a new vehicle reached a record $51,974. Driving that down by even a few thousand dollars would free up a whole lot of cash that consumers could spend to create plenty of new jobs elsewhere in the economy.
Moreover, a real alternative to Tesla would entice many more Americans away from gas-powered vehicles and into the EV market for the first time. By heading DOGE’s efforts to slash federal jobs and take lifesaving medications away from millions of people, Musk became very unpopular with Tesla’s customer base of people who care at least a little bit about the planet we live on. This hurt Tesla’s sales. If an inexpensive EV alternative to Tesla that was able to play at Tesla’s scale entered the U.S. market, a flood of consumers would likely seize the opportunity to embrace electric vehicles while distancing themselves from Musk’s toxic politics.
It’s not only about lowering the purchase price for vehicles. Thanks to the once again intensified fighting in Iran, the average price of a gallon of gas in the U.S. just reached $4 per gallon. Imagine the savings of never having to go to a gas station again, freeing up even more cash to pump into the economy rather than giving it to oil companies.
It’s true that longer trips would require stopping at charging stations. But this would be rare, with most EV drivers routinely able to charge at home. Fewer that 7% of U.S. vehicle trips are longer than 30 miles.
We would stay out of more foreign wars if affordable EVs were available on the U.S. market. Our current military entanglement in Iran, and the last one in Venezuela, were at least partially about “taking” these countries’ oil, according to President Donald Trump. If many more drivers used EVs, we would not need to sacrifice American lives to “take” oil from foreign countries.
Then there is the pollution. You don’t even have to consider the devastating effects of climate change for there to be obvious and compelling health reasons for more people to switch to EVs. Approximately five Americans die premature deaths every single hour due to breathing in the toxic fumes spewing from the tailpipes of our gas-powered vehicles. On the other hand, you can sit in your garage with the door closed next to a running EV all day with no ill effects on your health whatsoever.
This is all nuts. In return for safeguarding a handful of American jobs, we are needlessly costing ourselves a fortune to pump up the wealth of the world’s first trillionaire, getting the U.S. entangled in war after war with oil-producing nations, shortening and worsening the lives of everyone who breathes air, and destroying the natural environment.
The next president, regardless of party, should open the U.S. market to BYD and any other international electric automakers that can make a go of it with American consumers. The benefits stupendously outweigh the costs.
Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.
The post The Next President Should Throw Open The Gates Of Trade To BYD And Other Electric Automakers appeared first on Above the Law.
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