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Swing state, if they have to ban Chinese (or indeed all third world) car imports they will.
Of course, abandoning the “ban all cars that aren’t pure EV” plan will handily accomplish this without the need for tariffs simply because pure EVs are inferior to everything else.
Doesn’t matter, Chinese EVs at $6000 new would still dominate among the bottom 50% of Americans by income when US built cars are $30k+.
If and only if a dealership keeps them in stock and offers financing for those suffering from irregular income and limited credit, that is. And that probably means they're $12k, not six, at a minimum.
The American poor don't know how to order a car from China. They won't sit and wait on one. And they need financing to spend thousands of dollars, even six thousand.
There's ways to do this without a dealership (see Tesla).
It still involves a middleman to make it doable for the American poor, who are broadly not great at planning or coming up with six thousand dollars. That middleman is going to drive costs up because that’s what middlemen do.
Selling the same used car more than once is a lucrative business. Replacing them with electric cars is a risk, albeit one that could easily pay off, but it’s going to double costs to where it’s not actually that much cheaper than used ICE cars(which is what poor people drive today).
Looking at cars under 12k in my area, I see a bunch of Mirais, a few cars very susly priced thousands under market, rental cars with multiple previous owners, 200k miles or more, etc.
If it were actually possible to deliver a $12k brand new chinesium car, that would be a better deal than a lot of the crap on the market (especially since the new car will have at least some warranty).
That exists already; it’s called the Mitsubishi Mirage.
They don’t sell very well, to the point that Mitsubishi was giving up on them.
If Mitsubishi can’t move units, what hope do the even shittier Chinese cars have? Other than “ban all non-EVs”, that is, at which point there’ll be no choice and it’ll be more workable to just be careless. Which was the entire point all along, of course.
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If only the 7500-dollar Elio had not been a scam…
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As one of those sub-normal poors, can confirm I've actually been looking at $5k electric kit cars on Alibaba, but no way I'm pushing that button without a test drive.
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