EU, China will look into setting minimum prices on electric vehicles, EU says
finance.yahoo.com
The European Union and China have agreed to look into setting minimum prices of Chinese-made electric vehicles instead of tariffs imposed by the EU last year, a European Commission spokesperson said on Thursday. EU trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic spoke with Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao in the last 24 hours and both sides agreed to look into setting minimum prices, the EU spokesperson said. China's Commerce Ministry said in a statement that negotiations were set to start immediately.

Minimum prices protect EU’s major auto nations from too much Chinese EV plants in new EU countries. There are still likely to be some, especially if they can sell below minimum price at least in home country.

Higher Chinese profits can be deployed into charging infrastructure, services, and more model imports. More EVs.

While tariffs in EU weren’t meant to be prohibitive (no EU models are at full tariff rate), the new policy would be friendlier, likely for purposes of having China make friendly EU business policies.

  • Wanpieserino@lemm.ee
    11·
    3 days ago

    So does this mean that the more expensive Chinese EVs will be sold at the same price in the EU as in China? Taking VAT and transport costs out of it.

    • humanspiralOP
      2·
      3 days ago

      I’m not sure they are now. But there would be a tendency to mark them up for more profit instead.

      The BYD dolphin is $23000 in Europe, but starts at $8000 in China. It is their highest end model, that they also add a ton of airbags to, to boost the cost/price. I’d assume that its “minimum price in each category”. Dolphin is about size of fiat 500. This instead of just competing in $100k+ market.

      End result is more Chinese profit, but hopefully means more EU investment too, or subsidized EVs elsewhere.