now canada needs to invest in proper public transportation, so in the future people wouldn’t need to buy a car just for day to day life.
“Open the door to Chinese EVs” isn’t a simple solution because it has wider reaches than restricting Tesla-imports. There’s a reason Germany just effected tariffs on chinese EVs, namely because they are arguing that as china subsidizes their EVs, naturally non-subsidized local companies could never be price-competitive.
I don’t know how that situation is in canada, but I bet similar things have to be looked at.
I like the solution, but it’s not a simple one.
I have a better alternative: invest in viable alternatives to driving! expand protected bike lanes, build the damn high speed rail, more trains, trams and bus lines. One more asphalt lane for cars wont solve traffic problems :)
That would work for much of the population that lives within 100 miles of the US border, but there is a lot of rural and green space in Canada, and bikes aren’t great in Canadian winters. Canada needs good car options too.
As of the 2021 census, nearly 6 million people (16% of the total Canadian population) lived in rural areas of Canada.
84% of Canadians live in cities, and that’s where good urban infrastructure is the most needed.
Making car-centric infrastructure mostly electric will help a bit, but not a whole lot.And spending that money to get us cheaper transit in the long term will probably also free up more resources to help the remaining 16%.
Oh, I agree that mass transit wouldn’t really work in areas that aren’t as dense, but we should definitely have those where possible. I didn’t mean to say we don’t need good car options, but we should also have more options besides just cars
Now regarding bikes and winter, I’d say that’s more of an infrastructure problem. Finland also has terrible winter, yet they can bike as usual. You should watch this video if you are interested in this theme: “Why Canadians Can’t Bike in the Winter (but Finnish people can)”
I understand that infrastructure is more important to be able to cycle in the winter, even eclipsing temperature in very cold areas. I live in an area where there is no bicycle infrastructure, I’m actually 100x safer riding my motorcycle well below freezing on the road, than riding my bicycle on a beautiful fall day. And I do, I have gear for it .There are cities though, where temperatures don’t regularly get super cold and people don’t actually have the clothing and gear to cycle in the winter. I would guess in those areas, temperature is more of a factor. In areas where winters are consistently very cold, people already have what they need and are able to cycle if the infrastructure is there.
That’s the thing, with infrastructure you don’t need special gear to ride in winter. You commute on your commuter bike in your regular clothes that you use for everything else. You don’t need to run crazy speeds or jump over crazy hills, you ride you commuter with the same intensity you would have if you just walk.
In cities at least, bikes are just as good as cars in winter. Your city just needs to put as much effort in to building and clearing bike lanes as it does car lanes. Places that give a shit actually plow and salt their bike paths and bike lanes.
In cities at least, bikes are just as good as cars in winte
Your bike has a heater built-in and a way to block out the cold wind and/or rain?
That’s usually what people mean when they mention vehicles in the winter, not just the road being cleared
That’s just a matter of having the proper clothing.
Having ridden bikes in snow (and would be willing to again): yeah, no, they’re a very different experience and to pretend otherwise is to engage in a shocking level of willful ignorance
Walkable cities. Biking infrastructure. Reliable public transit.
Regularless of of what’d going on in the world right now, these would make our cities far better.
Love this idea; however, bringing Chinese cars is like applying pressure to the wound… fixing public transportation is the long term healing process.
1 - They are not mutually exclusive, bring the Chinese cars now while starting on the long term public transportation projects
2 - The Federal gov can act on the Chinese cars now… public transportation is 100% Provincial purview so an entirely different team needs to address this other priority
Along with more work from home jobs?
Just make it so that commutes count as clocked-in time, and let the market sort it out.
Our newly-elected Premier has unfortunately doubled down on giving cars priority with the mandated removal of bike lanes and building new highways (413), even though their own data says that Toronto with be just as congested a few years after building them.
Oh I forgot to mention the tunnel under the 401, which is a massive boondoggle waiting to happen
we have the reverse problem in west of us, removed some car lanes for bike lines causing huge congestion that the bicyclist barely use anyways.
As someone who loves driving cars, I’m completely on board with this. Driving should be optional, and I’d love to leave the car home when I go out partying, or don’t want to worry about leaving my nice ride somewhere sketchy overnight.
This is the way
Bang on!
We dont need chinese ev to wreck US car industry. We need toyota and their hilux truck brand. We could build a toyota electric car manufacture around quebec’s battery shop and a toyota hilux around alberta.
Or just fix public transit for fucks sake. Evs are a distraction from the problemm
The world needs to tariff ALL elon companies and move away from American products/offerings in general. We need something to replace AWS in the worst way. The world needs to remember the corporations foreign and domestic that helped faciliate this and freeze them out because if they do it here in the US they WILL do it in your countries too. Toyota helped fund 1/6 for example. I will never buy a toyota because of it and elons companies will never get any patronage from me either.
Please please please…BYD is making super cheap Tesla killers. I’d love to get my hands on one.
Bad idea. China isn’t better than the US, and their EVs are a safety and security risk in and of themselves.
I can imagine Canada being in a position to collaborate with friendly countries to develop a safe, secure and open alternative to Tesla and “CCP-mobiles”. If that becomes a reality, everyone benefits.
I think we should build them ourselves.
Yes, more Chinese infrastructure, that phones home and can be turned off remotely, with a switch, is definitely what the West need.
Someone’s doing the happy hunny dance…
I dont think there is a single privacy friendly EV on the market.
If a Canadian company could build and export an EV that wasn’t loaded with invasive sensors and where the data recording and uploading was opt-in (or non existent), loads of US Americans and Europeans would import them from Canada.
I think you can expand that to all cars, not just EVs.
I’m pretty sure the VW E-Up is (can be made) privacy friendly (the datamodule that sends the data to VW and into your account can be replaced with an OVMS datamodule)
Why just a tariff? Just ban all Tesla vehicle imports and all sales of new Tesla vehicles. For owners of existing vehicles they should be offered a generous buyback and equally generous loan terms for a new or used car. That would encourage most Tesla owners to trade-in their vehicles.
That feels like “robbing Peter to pay Paul”. We don’t want to be dependent on either nationalist autocracy.
Canada has the same incentive to not open the door to Chinese EVs that the US does.
Why would they shoot themselves in the face just to splash some blood on someone else?
Canada doesn’t have the incentives that the Americans have at all. Correct me if I’m wrong. America’s incentive is to protect its own EV industry, Canada doesn’t have an EV industry of its own.
The incentive for the US is the US government can spy on its citizens. China could care less if you drove to planned parenthood last week…The Republicans on the other hand want to burn people at the stake for it.
Elon gets the added bonus of whacking off to people doing unsavory things in his cars.
You’re wrong. Just the nature of of the auto industry makes it a little confusing since the entirety of a car isn’t manufactured in one country. But there are a lot of components for EVs manufactured in Canada. There’s especially a focus on manufacturing batteries for EVs which is the single most important component in an EV. And more plants for battery manufacturing are under construction.
What is the reason btw? Genuinely asking because I dunno
It isn’t that an inexpensive electric vehicle from China is bad, in fact that’s great.
The issue is that the cars are subsidized at such a rate that it goes beyond domestic incentive and into “we’ll just make sure no matter what we can sell for less than the competition” in an effort to drive any competition out of business.
It’s an anticompetitive practice that has significant impacts if allowed unchecked.
This is not meant as a value statement about the west, USA or Canada … as in I’m not saying “China bad when they do it, west good when they do it” because it’s bad when it’s done by whoever does it.
Effectively it’s a lever to weaponize fair trade and that’s antithetical to the idea of fair trade, at least insomuch as the international community tends to agree.
A worthwhile note is also that pretty much all US car manufacturers have dragged their feet doing EVs, excluding Tesla. So naturally US car manufacturers are struggling a lot with the massive costs related to adopting EVs now, and struggle competing with a country that spent this money getting established a good while ago.
The subsidies are still a problem, but the 100% tax is in my view a massive handout to domestic manufacturers that never bothered to try until they were behind. That 100% price increase in Chinese will probably mean high margins on EVs for yet some years before cheap alternatives come along.
It’s a fuck you to European partners also.
Fucking someone over isn’t worth fucking everyone over.
Why does that matter to Canada? They don’t make their own EVs. They have no domestic manufacturers to protect against dumping. Might as well just get as many cheap vehicles as you can, while you can.
Yes but Canada has no EV industry… so, even if it’s just temporarily to provide Canadians with an option while telling American companies to suck it… what’s the problem?
Are we really going to say we don’t to business with China because of anti-competitive practices when we have been doing business with American doing WAY worse all along?
It’s not just US companies harmed.
One also would think more long term and hope for better relations with Canada and USA having more cooperative relations especially as it pertains to an auto market.
Regardless harming your European allies to spite the US isn’t ideal either.
It’s not just US companies harmed.
Who else is harmed in this case?
One also would think more long term and hope for better relations with Canada and USA having more cooperative relations especially as it pertains to an auto market.
Why? this is exactly what we had and Trump destroyed… why would be trust them again? ever?.. even if we go back to a trade agreement, there should be hard guarantees in place to be able to trust the USA again in pretty much anything
Regardless harming your European allies to spite the US isn’t ideal either.
Why would that be the case at all? I am all for opening the Canadian market to European auto makers (very few make it here)… Most people who can afford it never buy American cars anyway as they are fairly low in everything when compared to Asian or European brands.
Why would reducing tariffs on Chinese EVs harm European allies when we already barely allow them into the Canadian market?
thats only from the us standpoint, canada doesnt have thier ev industry, so theres no competition to begin with. Canada doesnt have any EV production capabilities, i dont see how it affects them. sure they are importing cars, theres nothing to compete to, because canada isnt making cars with EV.
