The U.S. has used tariffs and security rules to keep Chinese cars off dealer lots. Alphabet’s robotaxi company appears to be buying them by the boatload.
  • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
    6·
    7 hours ago

    That’s because Waymo is ordering “glider” chassis with no connectivity and adding their own “Waymo Driver Suite” electronics, thereby bypassing the ban, and the reason for the ban.

    • Sir G'kar@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      6 hours ago

      I just wish some of those Chinese companies would start making cheap EVs with no connectivity to sell in the US. They’d get around the ban, and we’d get to buy some decent budget EVs without all the invasive bullshit.

        • anomnom@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          3 hours ago

          If the tariffs ever dropped they’d take over.

          Ford execs seem convinced that will happen before the decade is out.

        • Sir G'kar@lemmy.worldEnglish
          9·
          6 hours ago

          My best guess is that they don’t want to go through the effort of developing cars just for the US, only to have the rules changed to prevent them from coming to market for some other reason.

            • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
              6·
              4 hours ago

              Partially - but the EV rules trump has passed have seriously impacted US automakers. Ford, for example, wound up having to shitcan their $5.8 billion plant in Louisville because of this, and they’re pretty furious about it. Reap what you sow sure, but US automakers didn’t want or expect this kind of absurd lockdown of the EV market, and nearly all of them were shifting production towards EVs before this happened.

              • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
                2·
                3 hours ago

                https://www.wkyufm.org/news/2026-02-09/a-kentucky-town-bet-big-on-fords-ev-strategy-then-the-battery-plant-closed

                Hardin County was projected to grow by 22,000 residents. The community spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build a workforce training center, redesign the Glendale exit off Interstate 65, build more homes, expand the hospital, and upgrade electric, water, and sewer systems.

                Now, this metro with momentum is in a slowdown.

                The Glendale plant shuttered six months after the first electric vehicle batteries rolled off the assembly line.

                BlueOval SK restructured the project after Congress ended the $7,500 tax credits to buy electric vehicles, changes to a manufacturing credit program that denied tax credits to projects owned by foreign entities, and declining EV sales.

                Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers has called the battery plant “the biggest boondoggle of economic recruitment in the state’s history.”