The move is likely to intensify trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies, and carries risks of retaliation from Beijing. But the US president said the increased levies – which hikes tariffs from 25% to 100% on EVs – were a proportionate response to China’s overcapacity in the EV sector. Levies will also increase on related goods such as lithium batteries and solar cells.
How significant is this? At the moment, it’s largely symbolic – Chinese EVs have already been virtually excluded from the US market by tariffs previously introduced by Donald Trump.
On the other hand … Lobby groups have suggested Beijing could pose a future threat by using exports to make up for a frail domestic economy, which the Alliance for American Manufacturing claims would result in an “extinction-level event” for US carmakers.
It looks a bit like a Polestar 2 with an EX30 nose. I’ve driven the Polestar 2 over 1000km now, but would not rate it as “good value” since it is rather expensive. But… if this thing is built on the same SEA platform (it looks like it is), it won’t be complete crap.
A friend of mine sent me a picture of the eActross (the big electric Mercedes Benz Lorry) this morning, running around somewhere up North. That thing is insane. It has a 600km range, LFP batteries. I think it weighs something like 20 tons just on its own, although I will gladly be corrected on that.
It does seem to me that while the general public is opining around the Braaivlies fire: “What about load shedding? The charge stations will be vandalised! This is all part of the Woke new world order and I will have nothing to do with it!”… well… the rest of the world is just getting on with it. Adapt or die.
So far they only have it for 2 months or so and Saturday was actually the furthest they drove with it so far since getting it, 55 km. They say it has a 100 km range. The fastest they’ve taken it before was around 50 km/h.
Apparently it has a 50 kWh battery and if I remember she mentioned it’s a 120v system, I didn’t ask about charging speed/time.
When crawling along you hear nothing which is pretty cool, however once you go a bit quicker 20, 30 km/h you start hearing a slight whine from the motor and you also hear the gearbox and diffs of the Landy.
I was quite surprised that with this conversion the standard gearbox is still used, I’m not sure how many of the gears, we only used first, second and reverse, I also forgot to ask.
You should follow Electric classic cars and Jaunt motors on Facebook. They’ve both done quite a few Land Rover conversions. These days, the preference is to bypass the existing gearbox. That makes it more expensive of course.
Oddly enough the loudest clunk and jult of the entire driving experience was when changing gears, fortunately because it was a slow game drive, this wasn’t often.
Obviously I made a joke about it no longer leaking oil only because it no longer having oil. The owner said when she took it for road worthy after buying it, the oke told her it’s the first Defender in a very very long time he can pass right away because it has no oil leaks.
This is the weirdest situation right now. Trump intends to end the whole EV-mandate thing. Not that most states even have a mandate for EVs (just some ambitious plans for carbon reduction), but he says he is going to end the madness. At the same time Elon publicly supports him, alienating probably more than half his customer base in the process. To some extent I get it: I’m a conservative man myself when it comes to whether databases need more than a boolean field to indicate gender. But there was another option on the table: The option of keeping your mouth shut.
Pity about our Elon export! Egos tend to get in the way of pragmatic engineering.
I’m still undecided about the man. He’s clearly a visionary but this must be impacted by his other ambitions.
He’s Canadian for all practical purposes. He left when he was 17, and got Canadian citizenship at 18. I don’t blame him for washing his hands off SA. His story has similarities to my own: on the ASD spectrum (I found out when I was in my 40s), had a tough time in school, conflict with his father at the time, really not in the mood for more bashing around in the form of military service, etc etc. I feel very similar towards my old university res… I will not be attending reunions any time soon, if ever.
What he’s done, or the people he has hired have done, is not so much to have visions but to perfect them. Starlink has prececedents - low orbit satellites linked to each other and with ground stations - but he’s the first to make it work. He didn’t conceive the electric car, but he was the first to build one that seemed plausible.
And he can attract funding. Without funding he wouldn’t have done half of what he does. Now, of course, the funding just rolls in. He’s the new Richard Branson, anything he does there will be people wanting to provide backing because he’s Elon Musk and look at all these great products he’s put out already, and look at the money they made.
