alt Hacker NewsHow much is this car merely a rabble of Chinese parts made to look like an indigenous Mexican car? I see this as a Chinese ploy to work around the American import tariffs by praying on Mexican national pride for a so-called "national car industry."
If this ploy works you'll see larger versions of this car hitting the roads which look suspiciously like Chinese BYD and SAIC EVs. All these will of course be exported North of the Border, courtesy of NAFTA.
I hope the government stops this attempt dead in its tracks before it starts to hurt our car industry.
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Detroit doesn't change its ways until it's been hit in the balls with a baseball bat once or twice. The baseball bat is smaller, cheaper, more efficient cars in the 70s and smaller, cheaper EVs today.
The American car industry has had over 50 years since the oil embargo to get its act together. How much more time do you want?
America has no leverage at this time ban Mexico/China if you want only Americans will be hurt in the crossfire.
Canada and Mexico are both allowing Chinese EVs in. US automaker export TAM will only decrease over time, and eventually, they will be boutique automakers serving only the US market. BYD intends to be the world's largest automaker in five years, and China currently has the capacity to produce ~25M EVs per year (~25% of global annual light vehicle sales, as of this comment). The US built ~1M EVs last year, for comparison.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jun/10/china-byd-c...
> I hope the government stops this attempt dead in its tracks before it starts to hurt our car industry.
There is literally nothing the US gov can do to stop this. On the contrary, their actions have accelerated this. Masterful gambit.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/seekin...
https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/electric-vehicl...
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-07-15/china-... | https://archive.today/CXhGr
The US killed its own auto industry by shielding it from Chinese competition and rolling back EV incentive policy, to protect its profits of large combustion SUVs and trucks.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/15/magazine/electric-cars-am... | https://archive.today/sENe1
> “We’ve reached a genuinely existential moment,” Ezell told me. In a best-case scenario, Detroit manages to meet it by crafting a viable, long-term E.V. strategy while also servicing the still dependably lucrative existing market for ICE trucks. In the worst, it retreats onto what the economist Susan Helper calls a “shrinking island of ICE,” churning out outlandishly large trucks and not much else. At which point, the obsolescence of the mighty U.S. automobile industry — a sector once inextricably associated with American know-how and economic might — would be all but guaranteed. As Ford’s chief executive, Jim Farley, recently acknowledged in a statement that could apply to any member of the Big Three, “If we don’t put our chips on the right number and the right color, Ford could maybe not exist.”
> How much is this car merely a rabble of Chinese parts made to look like an indigenous Mexican car? I see this as a Chinese ploy to work around the American import tariffs by praying on Mexican national pride for a so-called "national car industry."
Isn't a lot of the Mexican car industry foreign brands building their cars in Mexico with parts from wherever they come from? Lots of parts would be sourced in Mexico, but certainly not everything.
If you can get a high volume car assembled in your country, that's a win. Some, but not all of the parts production will move towards where assembly happens, because it simplifies logistics. That's a win too.
Would it be a bigger win for everything to be designed and made in your country? Yeah, probably, but it's not likely to happen, so take what you can get?