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posted by cmn32480 on Monday November 13 2017, @11:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the Detroit-on-another-deathwatch-and-still-doesn't-know-it dept.

The BBC and many other sources report:

The US car industry will be wrecked if President Trump relaxes emissions standards, California's governor says.

Jerry Brown said China would dominate car manufacture because it was heavily promoting the electric vehicles that would dominate the future.

He said huge investment was needed on electric vehicles, along with federal rules to encourage their purchase.

He said President Trump and US car-makers were "half asleep" and hadn't understood the scale of the challenge.

He told BBC Radio 4's Costing the Earth: "There will be a serious threat to the US auto industry.

Unlike many in Silicon Valley, Gov. Brown seems to want the USA car industry to survive this Chinese nationally supported onslaught.

While not specifically mentioned in the article, China is working on cars at all price points, not just early adopters that can afford a Tesla or other luxury car. The Chinese stuff may be junk now (think about the batteries in Chinese "hoverboards") but it won't be for long, they learn fast. Here's a little minivan that's headed to production, https://carnewschina.com/2017/09/28/new-photos-sinogold-gm3-electric-mpv-china/


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Tuesday November 14 2017, @11:46AM (1 child)

    by TheRaven (270) on Tuesday November 14 2017, @11:46AM (#596753) Journal
    When this came up in a previous discussion on the green site, someone pointed to a five and ten year analysis of the cost of buying a more expensive house / flat that's walkable to work versus buying a car. One is an appreciating asset, the other a depreciating asset. I was quite surprised that even in America, you will be better off if you buy a house somewhere where you can walk / cycle to work than if you buy a car. For most of Europe, it's much more obvious.

    When I was buying my first house (in a small city in the UK), I could spend about £110K to buy somewhere in the city centre, or about £85K to buy somewhere similar far enough out of town to need a car. That extra £25K on a mortgage would cost me about £1000/year, which is in the same ballpark the fixed costs associated with car ownership (tax and insurance), even if I don't drive it. Fuel, servicing, and depreciation all work out to about 30p/mile, so even driving it into town and back each day would cost me another £500 or so per year (assuming I found free parking each time, otherwise add another £2-5 each trip), so even if the house prices remained constant I'd be better off living in the middle of town than driving in. If house prices appreciated by 1% each year then at the end of five years I'd be another £1.2K better off and that amount goes up a lot more if house prices increase even more. Oh, and a lot of the reasons that I'd want to go into town involve alcohol, so I wouldn't be able to drive home anyway.

    As someone just young enough to count as a millennial, I did the calculation and found that a car was a financial burden that I didn't want and instead invested in living somewhere a short walk from shops, restaurants, and places of work instead.

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  • (Score: 2) by Spamalope on Tuesday November 14 2017, @12:58PM

    by Spamalope (5233) on Tuesday November 14 2017, @12:58PM (#596770) Homepage

    That doesn't make up for the large property tax burden here. Or the cities like San Fran that began restricting new building to protect the look, but then lots of people bought at very high prices and we lose big time if the housing market supply caught up so most property owners are against new housing now.
    Where I live there is no property tax on car, but there is for homes.