upvote
> Are open labs just loss leaders backed by Chinese govt

There are many layers of Chinese govt. But GLM is backed by Beijing municipal govt and Tsinghua University.

reply
US EVs were also heavily subsidized, but they were all built using Chinese parts.
reply
The EV supply chain in the US back in say 2007 certainly had far fewer key parts sourced from China than recent years.

As far as US EVs being subsidized early, if you take state and federal tax incentives, DoE grants and loan guarantees as subsidizes then that's true.

It's debatable (I think incentives applied to all suppliers not just US ones) but a reasonable statement.

reply
Tesla given $60M by Obama admin when they were deep in debt and may have gone out of business.

so Tesla technically is subsidized by US govt. SpaceX too. Without NASA funding, they'd be long out of business.

China and US ain't that different.

China realizes that being a tech and industrial powerhouse working on future tech is great for their economy. They bet huge on it. That's how they win.

Europe on the other hand is now a laggard.

reply
US EVs were "lightly" subsidized compared to what the Chinese govt has done. In the ballpark of 250 billion dollars by the Chinese vs maybe 10% of that by the US.
reply
Note that most of those subsidies are things like sales-tax exemptions for EVs and support for charging infrastructure in China.

In other words, they're not subsidies for Chinese cars being exported abroad. They're not even directly paid to the manufacturers.

reply
Fair point
reply
It's the same old "commoditize your complement" [0] playbook being run in the geopolitical arena.

[0] https://gwern.net/complement

reply
deleted
reply