Another exceedingly bad take by this guy. Tesla's main supplier of battery technology - the core of EVs - is CATL, a Chinese company. Tesla does NOT make batteries, contrary to its main Chinese competitor BYD which started making its own batteries in 1995, 9 years before Tesla even existed and 17 years before the launch of the Model S! BYD also launched their first electric vehicle 4 years before the Model S... Which goes to show just how dimwitted this narrative of "Chinese EVs owe it all to Tesla" is... Also Tesla sells about a third of its cars in China and makes more than half its cars in China. That's why they went there: huge market and the world's manufacturing hub, where you can build things most efficiently. In the words of Elon Musk: "China is super good at manufacturing, and the work ethic is incredible. If we consider different leagues of competitiveness at Tesla, we consider the Chinese league to be the most competitive." They didn't go there as a trap to get their tech stolen... In fact if they hadn't gone they'd be even less competitive: Elon Musk is on the record saying "By far Tesla's competition is in China. There's a lot of people out there who think that the top 10 car companies are going to be Tesla followed by nine Chinese car companies. I think they might not be wrong." The very nature of competition is that you need to compete: if Tesla didn't go to China, it wouldn't adapt to the Chinese competition and would be less competitive as a result. It's like an athlete: if you want to improve and understand your worth, at some point you need to go to the big league. China is the EV industry's big league. And contrary to what this dimwit implies the Chinese EV industry didn't get started by Tesla deciding to make cars there in 2019. In fact most of Tesla's competitors pre-date the moment Tesla started making cars in China: Nio started in 2014, XPeng in 2014, Li Auto in 2015, BYD as we saw launched its first EV in 2008, etc. I really wonder what's his deal in spreading all this hogwash? Does he want to make himself and his readers feel good with self-soothing lies: "China owes it all to us, they've stolen what was rightly ours, etc."? Guess what, it's not China you're hurting with this, it's yourself. Because it results in you and your readers living in a world of delusion, where you victimize yourself, which is pointless and self-destructive.
Small correction: Tesla has in fact started producing its own batteries in October last year in their Texas factory and as of last month they produced enough batteries for 1,000 cars a week insideevs.com/news/713173/te… Which funnily is more a case of Tesla copying Chinese companies than the contrary since it's BYD that pioneered the concept of being an EV car company that produces its own batteries. See, when I said competition is useful for Tesla!
@RnaudBertrand Good stuff, Arnaud! @Noahpinion should be community noted relentlessly. He's blocked me, but his tendentious takes are an annoying form of misinformation/propaganda.
Tesla and China made a deal: China would allow Tesla to set up its factory in China with the understanding that except for certain specified tech items, Tesla would HAND OVER its technology to China. If Tesla hadn’t agreed, they would not have been allowed to set up their factory in China. Musk knew this going in, and saw no harm in the Chinese getting their tech, because all Musk wants is to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy” (it’s written there in black and white in Tesla’s mission statement, for Gawd’s sake!) MUSK DOES NOT WANT MONEY, BUT THE GOOD OF THE WORLD. HE’LL DO ANYTHING TO MAKE T•H•A•T HAPPEN, EVEN LOSE ALL HIS MONEY.
@RnaudBertrand I would’ve agreed with @Noahpinion but after reading your rebuttal, I agree with you. I would consider that maybe Tesla made owning an EV SEXY 😉 and that probably helped all the other Chinese EV makers.
@RnaudBertrand China isn't more efficient, it's more subsidised. Wages are low relative to their productivity, they export their surplus.