As much as I hate Elon, this is a terrible idea. Cheap Chinese trash mobiles built by Uyghur slave labor are not the answer.

How about we build cars in Canada instead?

I have a better alternative: invest in viable alternatives to driving! expand protected bike lanes, build the damn high speed rail, more trains, trams and bus lines. One more asphalt lane for cars wont solve traffic problems :)

Replacing nazi cars with slave labor cars is a pretty fucked up idea.

i would find amusing if countries retaliate US tariffs by singling out Musk and Trump companies

Or just fix public transit for fucks sake. Evs are a distraction from the problemm

Top that with copyrights removal on Tesla tech.

Yes, more Chinese infrastructure, that phones home and can be turned off remotely, with a switch, is definitely what the West need.

Why not both

Someone's doing the happy hunny dance....

I think we should build them ourselves.

Canada has the same incentive to not open the door to Chinese EVs that the US does.

Why would they shoot themselves in the face just to splash some blood on someone else?

I obviously don't understand the economics of it and I realize that China will always have the upper hand on price but is there a reason every western EV has to be $40,000+? Like surely it's possible to build a barebones model for less than 30k right - especially if I don't need or even want touch screens or fancy interior materials or heated seats or anything.

I dont think there is a single privacy friendly EV on the market.

If a Canadian company could build and export an EV that wasn't loaded with invasive sensors and where the data recording and uploading was opt-in (or non existent), loads of US Americans and Europeans would import them from Canada.

Why would Canadians want cheaper EVs that may or may not be reliable when they can have American assembled ones that are more expensive and may or may not work?

That feels like "robbing Peter to pay Paul". We don't want to be dependent on either nationalist autocracy.

Ban the fucking things.

Offer loan forgiveness to any Tesla owner. Tell musk to fuck off.

I hope EVs don't get a bad name out of all this. EVs are one of the few good things to come out of the last decade or so.

Why just a tariff? Just ban all Tesla vehicle imports and all sales of new Tesla vehicles. For owners of existing vehicles they should be offered a generous buyback and equally generous loan terms for a new or used car. That would encourage most Tesla owners to trade-in their vehicles.

now canada needs to invest in proper public transportation, so in the future people wouldn't need to buy a car just for day to day life.

The world needs to tariff ALL elon companies and move away from American products/offerings in general. We need something to replace AWS in the worst way. The world needs to remember the corporations foreign and domestic that helped faciliate this and freeze them out because if they do it here in the US they WILL do it in your countries too. Toyota helped fund 1/6 for example. I will never buy a toyota because of it and elons companies will never get any patronage from me either.

Seize all Musk and Trump-owned assets.

Electrek (the publisher of the article) seems to be a bit of a shill for Chinese EV companies, or he's getting some kind of commission. He's repeatedly promoted Chinese factories, goes on Chinese factory tours, etc... I don't know what the angle is, but it's vastly different from similar sources like Electroheads out of the UK.

That said, fuck Tesla.

Also, Canada should invest in building more micromobility devices here, like e-bikes, e-scooters, etc. The future isn't cars, and we need more affordable, accessible modes of transportation.

The thing is, if Trump wants to kill Canada's role in US car manufacturing, then it will cost him the car markets in Mexico and Canada. If there's no jobs here to protect, then we'll just drop the tariffs on Chinese EVs. (This is speaking like 20 years down the road). We'll all be driving Chinese cars in that scenario. The tariffs are a total lose-lose situation, so dumb.