So like the USA then?

Many things in history turned out to not have a functioning business model when all costs were included. You just don't remember them because they died out. That doesn't change the foundation of the business strategy. The AI strategy was banking on scaleup not just of their customer base, but the product itself.

For all the shit we heap on AI, in a year it's come an insanely long way, maybe not long enough, but that doesn't change the viability of their expansion strategy. In AI especially economies of scale are a thing. It takes a fuckton of money to create a model compare to using it.

I cannot name one single American Slashdotter who doesn't default to blaming everything wrong in the world on India and China either, even when there's precisely zero evidence that outsourcing either exists in this case (it probably does) or has anything to do with this case.

Guess what, fuckups exist the world over.

I'm sorry but you can't ignore the cost of design in products. The Roadster was "profitable" through the sale of ZEV credits only, it was never sold for a price that covered the cost of its production, and your talk of expansion ignores the fact that profit is reported through different divisions and typically excludes assets - i.e. building a factory is not an expense that hits your profit.

The Model 3 was Tesla's first truly self sustaining profitable model, and the first car to turn a profit without relying on EV credits.

There's a reason you haven't. It's not been anything out of the ordinary. But here's a couple of personal examples:

- My Polestar 2 (Geely) hasn't so much as hiccupped.
- A friend's Polestar 2 developed a problem with AC charging (big problem given that's the most common way to charge EVs). Polestar towed it from his house withing a couple of days and had it back to him 2 days later (and gave him a loan car in the meantime).
- My friend has a Geely EX5, it had a problem with its paint job (the top coat didn't cure so it scratched when you looked at it funny), that was also painlessly resolved.

Yeah problems exist, but service and support is there and in some cases better than traditional cars (one of my employees has been without her BMW for 5 weeks now due to a transmission problem). I can't see any meaningful difference between Chinese cars and western cars at least in my circle of people who own cars, and across the portfolio of friends with EVs I have Tesla, BYD, Geely, Polestar, Volvo, Renault, GM Opel, BMW, Skoda, Audi and Cupra. Polestar and Cupra are over represented as they work out well for novated leases tax wise. The most recent AAA call by my friends was the Opel Corsair, but that was the 12V battery fault, apparently GM hasn't figured out you need to trickle charge your 12V battery from your HV battery if the person doesn't drive it.

Turds exist everywhere though, and they aren't specifically "China". e.g. People heap shit on Volkswagen for the EX30 disaster, but that was a design issue and the car wasn't designed in China and the same problems exist for the cars rolling off their Belgian factory. Likewise the ever reliable Toyota is still ever reliable even when we're talking about those manufactured at GAC.

You don't hear about Chinese reliability because it simply doesn't stand out and when you look to actual reliability rankings, these days the difference between the top and the bottom is really a wash (In Europe one index ranked MG (Chinese) as the worst with a score of 89% and Honda the best with a ranking of 94%. The MG is within a rounding error of Nissan, Ford and Audi).

Amazon may not have received direct subsidies, but it very much abused local state government rule in an effort to avoid collecting sales tax in the entire country which gave them a huge advantage.

Subsidies are only one level of government support for policy.

Don't accuse sock puppets for shilling. Most people latch on to something they don't like about X and then assume Y, Z and A, B, C, must be better than X without ever having a clue about them.

BYD isn't a car company. In fact they existed a decade before entering the car industry. Most of those engineers have nothing to do with developing cars. In fact you can thank BYD for your Apple Magic Keyboard, and the touch sensor in your iPhone.

If you're going to compare R&D engineers you'll need to lump together Ford with Micron with Pansonic's battery division, with Crown Equipment (yeah BYD is a forklift company) with Siemens mobility (yep they make trains too).

Indeed, this isn't related to cares or even recent history. Subsidies is a lever government has to enact policy, and every emerging industry has benefitted from it the world over. And selling at a loss to build consumer confidence is a well known and well understood business strategy.

The USA (and to a far lesser extent, but still significantly enough Europe) ignored the EV industry despite literally the world calling them out on it, and now the west is having a temper tantrum because China didn't.

even overtaken the Apple tax? Their infamously charge a metric fuckton for machines with extra memory. Their base machines may be competitive, but individual spec boosts or their separate components certainly weren't. Just look back a few years to see articles talking about just how insanely expensive Apple RAM was:

https://wccftech.com/apple-sel...

700% higher than comparable Corsair back in 2019.
Memory is currently 400% higher than it was in 2024.

Almost. Self-imposed regulations becoming standards enforceable by the government agencies cease being "self regulation". But if your point is that laws and regulations may be industry driven then yes absolutely. The fuckups who fuckup are usually in the best position to determine why and their fuckups are the basis for so many regulations out there.

Apple is doing the meme.

Damnit! Shouldn't read Slashdot in order. Ignore my post, I don't think I'm telling you anything new given the context :-)

It's far from it. Once you declare compliance to a common standard, even if it is self regulated, you create a legally binding requirement to follow it under existing advertising, marketing, and general contract law.

If I sell you a burger and say it's veganish, and there's meat in it, well fuck you no recourse for you.
If I sell you a burger, throw the standard vegan logo on it, declare on my website we follow ISO 23662, and there's meat in it, well I can reasonably expect you to find a lawyer to fuck me instead.

Threat of punishment is reasonably effective.

I think you missed the point. The fact that anyone is following ISO 23662 at all is my point. Also self-declared compliance is far from useless, since if you have a common standard to which you self-declare compliance you create a legal anchor - usually under existing false marketing laws for your customers.

There's no legal definition of vegan, yet the industry adopts ISO 23662. That is industry self regulation. If you take one of those labelled products to a lab and find meat in it, you can sue the company thanks to this industry self regulation.