Elon Musk isn't helping, sure, but this is really just a long-overdue market correction. Tesla was valued like a tech company, but now investors are realizing that it is, in fact, a car company. It never made sense to value it higher than every other auto manufacturer combined while it had a small fraction of the sales of a single one.
I also wonder about how much tech the Chinese gov got out of the China Tesla factory to help build the Chinese EV competitors, which are also eating into their market share.
The Chinese have learned a lot from the west, sure, some through espionage, but most directly through the west teaching them. Many German companies have cooperated with Chinese ones or manufactured, even for decades.
China can compete because they have serious engineering talent which had a long time to learn and both government and private industry, which recognized a major trend and managed to capitalize on it. To be frank the "stealing of R&D" is pure cope by people who do not want to acknowledge that the Chinese can actually make competent cars.
Yes, but I experience again and again people completely in denial about this. Often they view China as the producer of low cost and low quality products flooding global markets, which certainly is true, but at the same time Chinese companies have actually learned how to produce high quality products, that can actually compete with western offerings.
Stuff like this is why I think anti-China propaganda is so incredibly effective and strong.
It’s so weird. Tesla uses Chinese batteries because they’re simply better. Batteries are the most important part of a EV. China’s EV industry was already huge by the time Gigafactory Shanghai opened. Tesla China isn’t even a joint venture. It’s fully owned by Tesla.
But here, a user boldly and confidently claims that the CCP stole Tesla tech which allowed Chinese companies to dominate the EV industry. As if Tesla has some kind of secret tech that China stole in 2020 and within 1-2 years, Chinese EVs are now much better because of that secret.
People here seem to think so little of Chinese people. I wonder if they’ve ever stepped inside a Silicon Valley company before and find that most of them have a huge number of both Chinese Americans and Chinese foreigners in R&D. But I suppose people think that the Chinese in America are only smart because they’re under the supervision of Americans. Chinese in China must be dumb.
Thank you for the response. I had to think about what I wrote. Yeah, I am most likely affected by anti-China / CCP propaganda. My mind does go to theft when I think about Chinese advancements relative to American ones (such as EVs and CPUs). It's hard to unwind that, but I'll think more in the future before I'd confidently express such thoughts if they should even be said with confidence.
I do not think Chinese are dumb at all. They're definitely gaining footholds in different sectors that America is supposedly strong in and that is not something a "dumb" nation would be able to accomplish. Underestimating people in these situations would probably be fatal.
My issues are with the CCP / Chinese gov and not the people themselves. Probably as a result of said propaganda. One can dislike a government and still respect its people.
> It's fully owned by Tesla
Is it really? Correct me here. I currently think that foreign businesses in China must be partially owned by a Chinese entity and that eventually leads to some form of CCP meddling.
> People here seem to think so little of Chinese people.
I don’t get the feeling that HN belittles Chinese people or any particular race. What I do feel is that HN is pro freedom of speech and pro democracy. The idea that a dictatorship can advance beyond us is a scary thought. It is scary because it means maybe the freedoms we now enjoy may in fact be detrimental to humanity’s progress. This, I believe, is why you may see more anti-CCP opinions on HN.
No, the scary thought is another leader like Mao rising to the top of modern day China. The world wouldn’t survive this and there’s nothing preventing it.
We don’t know if they stole anything, it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary, but they definitely played Elon like a fiddle. They lured him in by letting Tesla China stay wholly owned, granting it a low corporate tax rate, and giving it below-market loans. Tesla then contracted with tons of local suppliers, who ended up working and sharing knowledge with domestic automakers as well. A year and a half later, their cars explode onto the market and eat Tesla’s lunch.
China’s EV industry was already well ahead of the US by the time Tesla arrived.
And yes, Tesla China is wholly owned by Tesla USA.
The problem I’m pointing out is that people here automatically assume that China steals in order to compete. They never give China credit. Since China actually leads in EV, they don’t have to steal. It’s companies like Ford, GM, Volkswagen that have to steal from Chinese companies.
I'd have to agree. The market for electric vehicles in the US seems to be saturated. If they can somehow add in a plug in hybrid, I could see them gaining sales. That won't happen though.
It's also an interesting thing as a car company. Other existing car companies make dozens of models across regions and are able to rev them constantly, including entire refreshes. Tesla can barely manage the three models and a meme that they currently have, one of the models being over a decade old.
