You're off by a notable amount I think, but that doesn't account for the meat of the price difference anyway.

Chinese manufacturers have an average labour cost per vehicle of $585. American manufacturers have an average cost of $1341.

You can't buy an equivalent American EV for an extra $756.

Source: https://afia.pt/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/labor-cost-per-ve...

Your salary information is out of date. Average Annual Salary for a Chinese working in an auto factory: ¥102,173 CNY (approx. $14,000–$15,000 USD based on projected exchange rates).

Also, Chinese auto factories are heavily automated now, even when compared to American auto factories.

Around 9? years ago, Chinese salaries without qualification in coastal city industries were between 600 and 800€/month + lodging (that caused issues in the countryside and less affluent areas that can't offer salaries as competitive), so at worst 7k, at best 10k. Auto workers should be somewhat qualified, so it should be a bit higher. Also the salaries might have grown since

Workers at the General Motors factories in Mexico make between $3-7 an hour. So half to a third of what starting wages are in the USA.

China buys and deploys more robotics for manufacturing than any other country in the world. Automate or die as a business [1] [2]. It's not "cheap China labor" vs "expensive union labor"; it's labor vs automation.

And, to be clear, that does not mean you need to get rid of union US labor. It just means the existing folks can do more with the same number of folks they have today, and the pipeline for new workers can shrink while maintaining productivity (and we're going to need those folks for other jobs automation cannot do; trades, electrical grid and renewables infra, nursing and care, etc). This does require both unions and corporations to partner in good faith and share in the gains from this operating model, versus the traditional "squeeze labor as hard as you can for shareholder gains and management comp." If we get to the point where a just transition is needed (like coal mining and generation), that is a policy problem; make good policy, be humane to the human, package them out appropriately if we scale automation faster than expected.

This is simply smart policy as the world reaches peak working age population and heads towards depopulation over the next century [3] [4]. Labor will only get more expensive over time as demand exceeds supply [5]. The capital is there, simply look at annual legacy auto profits; they choose profits over investing in the business, and that is a choice.

[1] Inside China's 'dark factories' where robots run the production lines [video] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftY-MH5mdbw - December 4th, 2025

[2] Chinese EV makers accelerate robotics drive for ‘game-changing’ edge over US - https://www.scmp.com/business/china-evs/article/3333310/chin... | https://archive.today/sJKKv - November 19th, 2025

[3] The Demographic Future of Humanity: Facts and Consequences - https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf - May 31st, 2025

[4] Mapped: Every Country by Total Fertility Rate - https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/mapped-countries-by-fert... - December 22nd, 2025

[5] HN Search: labor shortages - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

(TLDR Increase productivity with automation to compete with others who already have, buy robots, not share buybacks)