Walking and chewing gum at the same time

America: Fight climate change or fight China's early dominance in EVs?

Great Axios piece by Courtenay Brown summarizing the emerging showdown over who gets to save the planet with electric cars.

If you want it bad/fast, then China is the answer. But, because China “cheats” so much with subsidies (always cheating when the other side does it but a strategic move to pioneer a new industry when you do), this much-needed answer to climate change gets caught up in a superpower brand war over who’s gonna lead and shape and ultimately define this global industry: China or the US/West.

China, far closer to a command economy than anything in the West, has made this very large bet and now naturally wants to cash in the way China usually cashes in: flood your market at dramatically cheaper prices and kill the local competition (in the US, primarily Tesla). Elon Musk has been sounding this alarm, as mega-billionaires are wont to do when their fortunes are put at risk, and now the ultimate free marketer wants the government to shield him from Chinese competition — not a bad idea.

Why?

If the green transition on cars in the US results in a Chinese “invasion” of EVs, then that whole dynamic is going to be tainted in the eyes of many Americans, and that’s bad both for our car industry and — ultimately — our struggles with climate change. We cannot let the green transition get painted in these negative colors.

The race to provide the world with EVs is not just about the green transition but about all the big data that will be permanently generated by that fleet transition.

Think about it: If you want to capture both the consumerism and the media feeds of individuals around the world, you start with their smart phone. But, next up after that? You just know it’s their cars, and all that big data? That’s raw material for advancing our AI capabilities — another competition with China around the world. [Conversely, we’re sure as hell not going to allow China to snatch up all that driving data across the US.]

More generally, cars, going back far further than smart phones, are the sine qua non of development status, so don’t discount the national prestige factor here.

Frankly stated, we’re already way behind the Chinese in pushing 5G (deployment and infrastructure), and thus the IoT, around the world, and that alone is a worrisome trend. We don’t want to repeat it on EVs.

China, for example, has installed around 1.4 million 5G base stations, estimated to be close to two-thirds of the world’s total. The US has accounted for maybe 50,000.

Still, we tend to focus on better performance in high-band coverage: good for the developed world but quite possibly leaving us behind across the Global South.