In much of North America, if you want to buy an electric vehicle, you’re going to shell out far more than if you lived elsewhere.
In China, you can purchase the compact BYD Seagull for ¥90,000, or about $17,000 Canadian. In Switzerland, the similarly sized Dongfeng Nammi Box runs about $27,000. But in the U.S. and Canada, the cheapest EV is the three-door hatchback Fiat 500e, which comes in at $40,000. That’s a 48% surcharge for living in the wrong country. Or, more precisely, for keeping cheap, Chinese-built EVs out.
There was some hope that cheaper EVs were on their way, but that was extinguished this summer when Washington and Ottawa announced 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs, essentially guaranteeing they will not be available anytime soon.
Support for this decision has been nearly universal – from industry, unions and partisans across the political spectrum, who say it will protect a nascent domestic EV supply chain, which has been promised more than $50 billion in public subsidies in Canada (and nearly 10 times that in the United States) and all the jobs and economic ripple effects the auto industry provides. North America’s auto industry, it appears, is simply too big to fail.
Just as the integrated auto industry benefited from massive Canadian and American bailouts during the financial crisis 15 years ago, these tariffs can be thought of as a preemptive bailout, a tacit admission that local producers cannot compete with Chinese automakers, which both governments say have the unfair advantage of cheap labour and government subsidies.
Only this time, the bailout is being paid for by the consumer – who will shell out tens of thousands of dollars more for an EV – and the climate, which will be forced to absorb additional carbon due to the slower uptake of more expensive EVs.