As much as I hate Elon, this is a terrible idea. Cheap Chinese trash mobiles built by Uyghur slave labor are not the answer.
How about we build cars in Canada instead?
this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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Except they aren't trash, they're better than Teslas that's for sure.
They are still data hungry, surveillance machines that are allways online and gps tracked. We need cars without that kinda shit built in.
There has been talks about forcing Chinese cars to come over disconnected. Every new car is a surveillance machine. The western brands will not be asked to disconnect anything and it will probably be illegal to do so yourself, so Chinese cars might be an actual win in that regard.
I'de rather China have my data than an company over here. What are they gunna do with it that would affect me?
that's exactly what got us in this mess in the first place.
What mess? American Imperialism / Capitalism imploding on itself?
A foreign power having far, far too much control over our economic possessions. Information is a resource; what they do with it is inconsequential, we have to stop giving it away to people simply because they're our 'trade partners' right now.
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American car company secretly send your driving data to your insurance company so they can squeeze more out from you for any minor reason they see fit. There's no reason canada insurance company won't do that. Scared about chinese car collecting your data is kinda missed the point, you should have stronger data protection instead.
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Build cars in Germany, Japan, South Korea and the like. focus on something non car you can sell to them in return. You can do anything but not everything.
Building cars is something we already do in Canada. And there's currently a lot of capacity coming online to build electric cars. Pretty much the entire car could be sourced from Canadian parts, including the batteries. I think semi-conductors are the only thing that doesn't have a domestic source right now.
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I would be sympathetic if the Uyghur stuff was true.
Do you have any substantial sources, to objectively prove your claims? I've never seen anything convincing.
I'm not intending to simp for China. They are authoritarian. But I'm also not going to fall for propaganda especially if it's false. The USA has a motive for making the masses hate China.
There is plenty of evidence widely available from organizations like human rights watch and amnesty international. Claims that deny any evidence exist of the persecution of China's Muslim population rely on logical fallacies to attempt to obscure the validity of the body of evidence. Namely ad hominem attacks against the individual who first gathered the evidence to begin with.
While the researcher obviously has biased opinions about the CCP, that doesn't affect the validity of the evidence gathered, most of which comes directly from publicly available information released by the CCP itself, or from leaked internal communication from party members that have been widely verified by reputable journalists and organizations specializing in human rights violations.
While I personally wouldn't claim that there is a genocide as we traditionally understand it has occurred, it's hard to deny that the Uyghur people aren't being systemically oppressed or that significant human rights violations haven't occurred.
Simply looking at publicly available census data releases by the CCP we can tell that Uyghur people are being driven from culturally important sites that are being replaced by ethnically Han Chinese, and that Uyghur populations have been shrinking at a worryingly abnormal rate.
If we look at recent history of ethnic conflict within China in tibet, Manchuria, and inner Mongolia, I fail to see why it's logical to assume that the accusations of crimes against humanity is pure propaganda.
Han chauvinism is well documented, and even Mao Zedong spoke about how it would negatively affect the future of the party. Ethnic conflict/cleansing has been a constant in the region and is part of the foundational history of modern China.
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But we were fine with the usa destroying multiple countries, participating in many coups and supporting Israel for decades.
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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.
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i would find amusing if countries retaliate US tariffs by singling out Musk and Trump companies
I think this is the sanest thing that has been said in the last couple of hours. I'm still recovering from the trump speech from yesterday, so not totally sure.
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Replacing nazi cars with slave labor cars is a pretty fucked up idea.
Pretty much anything that you've ever owned has been made from the exploitation of some working class somewhere. The clothes you wear. The house you live in. The electronics that you use. The furniture that you own. The very food you eat and drink is often cheap because of an exploited worker somewhere that's paid pennies on the dollar. Your going to draw the line at a drastically cheaper car that's leaps and bounds better for the environment than a petrol vehicle? Okay.
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China isn't our friend. The whole 'make it more financially appealing for the world to not war' is not working. China isn't influencing the world to be decent and at peace. They're Putin's allies and therefore our enemies.
China can buy our housing to rent it back to us, but we can't buy their EV because other companies won't make as much profit. Great trickle down.
Yeah China feeling more emboldened to invade Taiwan and talking about wanting to send in troops to gain experience in Ukraine shows they are looking to fill in the power vacuum left by the US and become US 2.0.
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Or just fix public transit for fucks sake. Evs are a distraction from the problemm
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Yes, more Chinese infrastructure, that phones home and can be turned off remotely, with a switch, is definitely what the West need.
Haha yeah sure, unlike Tesla that has already remotely locked (and unlocked!) vehicles at their whim.
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Why not both
I think we should build them ourselves.
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?
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I obviously don't understand the economics of it and I realize that China will always have the upper hand on price but is there a reason every western EV has to be $40,000+? Like surely it's possible to build a barebones model for less than 30k right - especially if I don't need or even want touch screens or fancy interior materials or heated seats or anything.
Western culture is built on delivering value to shareholders first and foremost.
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The argument against Chinese Ev's is not an economic one.
If some authoritarian state wants to steal from its poorest in society and transfer the wealth to foreign electric car buyers, why is our government trying to win in the race to the bottom?
Billions have been spent on the Canadian EV industry through subsidies, tax cuts and grants. The relative amount of jobs and Canada made goods are pitiful. The real beneficiaries are the foreign auto companies.
We will NEVER have a competitive advantage against China, Japan, US, UK, SK and Germany. Stop trying and put all that money and effort into something we do have a chance at being competitive in.
It's not about being competitive against Chinese EVs, it's about preventing China from attacking us economically, politically, and potentially even digitally.
These aren't just dumb vehicles, they're running Chinese made software, for a Chinese company, and reporting data back to China.
They're not just manufactured in China like you may have with other digital devices, with the software control and data residing in more friendly nations.
That matters.
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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.
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That feels like "robbing Peter to pay Paul". We don't want to be dependent on either nationalist autocracy.
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Ban the fucking things.
Offer loan forgiveness to any Tesla owner. Tell musk to fuck off.
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Why would Canadians want cheaper EVs that may or may not be reliable when they can have American assembled ones that are more expensive and may or may not work?
Please please please...BYD is making super cheap Tesla killers. I'd love to get my hands on one.
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I hope EVs don't get a bad name out of all this. EVs are one of the few good things to come out of the last decade or so.
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.
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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.
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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.