Ten years ago I’m not sure I’d have said this, but now: fuck it. We should just get into bed with China. They seem totally uninterested in wars at all unless you’re Taiwan, which we’re not. Trade matters. They seem stable. Sure there are some human rights issues but given all the human rights issues fucking everywhere right now, like. I dunno. I’m for it.
This is exactly the mentality that caused WW1 and WW2 AND the upcoming (or ongoing) WW3. You probably did not aware how many IP theft happened to Canadian local firms and institutions.
Not only am I not aware, I also don’t care.
IP theft
lol. lmao.
What IP? How to dig holes with oxycontin addicts? Hilarious, Canada spends fuck all in R&D.
Who the fuck cares about IP theft lmao. They can have it, ideas should be free.
Sure there are some human rights issues
They only kill people I don’t care about in mines and factories, so it’s cool!
My point is more that there are few countries I can think of that are viable trading partners that aren’t committing appalling human rights abuses Joe.
I don’t even think China is interested in any wars over Taiwan. I’m fairly certain it will be a peaceful rejoining once the US crumbles, akin to East and West Germany during the fall of the Soviet Union.
I say we do this. The ONLY reason Canada put tariffs on Chinese EVs is because of the US - back when the US was our friend. Those days are well over.
From what I understand, Chinese EVs out perform the US ones (charge quicker with longer range) and are way cheaper.
I have a security concern with Chinese EVs.
They’re far too computerized, and connected, at this point.
The last thing I want is the ability for the Chinese government to disable a quarter of the Canadian vehicle fleet if they decided they wanted to. Or potentially even worse than disabling them in some cases.
This is possible with most modern vehicles today. They nearly all have cellular modems built in and very few have the driving related systems separated from the ‘infotainment’ crapware. 2014ish jeeps could be bricked by OTA updates to the fucking radio, there’s a good Defcon talk about it
Yes, but I’d much rather have the company controlling the official switch not be directly under the control of China.
The US is only marginally better right now, but they have less incentive to do it and less control of their car companies.
A vulnerability was found this year in an undisclosed major car manufacture in the USA that gave total control to an attacker over all vehicles sold by that manufacture’s dealerships. Remote start/shutoff, unlock doors, GPS tracking, even transferring the ownership to another person. All modern vehicles are a security nightmare, the chinese are no better, no worse. https://eaton-works.com/2025/10/13/def-con-33/
They are worse, because the Chinese government has direct access to an official kill switch if they want it.
Just because there can be other problems doesn’t make that any less of a problem
American cars are the same, and China hasn’t joked about making us their 24th province.
I’m far less concerned about the American government disabling vehicles in Canada. If America wanted to take us over we couldn’t even dream of stopping them.
China could benefit from causing problems though.
At this point it’s not even inconceivable for Americans to do something as retaliation for, say, Dougie Ford shutting down electricity. Or use it as a bargain chip as part of playing it tough in a negotiation.
Or forget the taking us over bit. It’s not the taking over that is hard for them, it’s keeping control. We can very effectively resist and make the occupation extremely costly for them. Every bit of leverage they have makes this harder.
Fuck, is it that inconceivable that if they go full Gilead they wouldn’t start shit like controlling whether you can drive your car to an abortion clinic?
No, China hasn’t joked about that, but they will do so if they can.
Canada should not buy those american F35’s for exactly the same reason(s).
I don’t disagree with that.
China isn’t Canada’s friend. Spending money on Chinese goods means you are funding Russia’s war against Ukraine.
If you need to import something, why not import it from the EU? They make EVs. As does South Korea.
This reasoning is weird. Was buying American goods or UK goods or German goods funding Israel’s genocide in Gaza??
Why buying Chinese goods funding Chinese genocide in Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia?
Pure projection, I thought that Xinjiang “genocide” was already old news but seeing Tibet here is laughable. Please stop being an USA asset lol
Are you asking me or the person I’m responding to? They are the one that started talking about buying things as funding genocides. I merely questioned the consistency of applying the principle.
Hey, remember when China was operating their own police force in Canada? Maybe we should be doing less business with them.
You really want an isolationist economy like the USA?
Send some mounties to Beijing
I remember people saying that but I don’t recall ever seeing any evidence of it actually happening
Sounds like an easy decision; we sell our rapeseed and get non-American cars.
If Chinese manufactures can exceed Canadian standards, provide spare parts for a minimum of 10 years from the date of manufacture, provide a minimum of 10 years of software support/updates, AND allow all software to be audited for both safe function and security. Then sure. Bring on the cheap EVs.
(But not even our current domestically produced vehicles meet those requirements)
It’s a serious security hole cause the software can be updated through network, the version gets audit and all the follow up update can be good, but the moment it needs to go rogue you just need 1 malicious update to have serious and wide spread harm/attack on a button.
IMO for any vehicles to allow over the network update is beyond stupid. (yes, that includes Tesla.)
There are a few good defcon talks where it has been shown that the engine control and body control can be accessed and modified via the “infotainment” system (the one I saw specifically was Jeeps).
This happened for real at the weekend:
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/10/software-update-bricks-some-jeep-4xe-hybrids-over-the-weekend/
shocked_kirk.gif
Once you’re inside a car that’s on, there really isn’t any security*. The OBD2 port that every remotely modern car has is perfectly capable of accessing all the diagnostics and data streams the car has, and can also control/reconfigure the various computers.
IMO that doesn’t really matter, since the system isn’t powered until the key is in the ignition and the car turned on. You can’t do anything with the key off, and if your passenger wanted to sabotage the car, they’d just yank the wheel as you drive down the highway.
That said, yes OTA updates are a travesty. Specifically because cars have so little security, having any access to their computers from the outside is a massive risk… And if there’s a potential that the country the manufacturer is in turns hostile, that risk certainly isn’t reduced.
* A handful of manufacturers have “added” security to their systems by… (drumroll pls) restricting access to the systems and requiring a subscription for full access. That’s fucking evil and doesn’t even do anything (at least for a mechanic or tinkerer like me) since you can just google “FCA bypass cable” and skip right past the firewall.
Modern cars expose the engine/body control CAN bus through the fucking headlights. You don’t need to be in the car and it doesn’t need to be on for you to have the same or more access than the OBDII port.
It doesn’t matter what the country of origin is, someone is gonna find a way to break OTA updates, gain access via exposed wireless networks or just pop off a CAN bus controlled light and plug in. How long before someone pushes a malicious update that causes the ABS to disable or degrade braking to near 0%, or just throw the electronic power steering full left whenever the speed exceeds 101km/h?
But that would be silly, because the easiest way to kill someone without consequence is to get behind the wheel and run them over. People could also be putting bombs in product boxes and poison in medicine. A coherent society doesn’t have these problems.
Forgot about wanacrypt, stuxnet or the Ashley Madison breach? indiscriminate harm is the norm not the exception.
Let me say it this way, you propose some convoluted technological way to fuck with someone’s car, but you can already just go under and start cutting vital lines. But again, that’s extremely rare because most people aren’t inclined to doing that kind of harm.
Only Toyota was dumb enough to have a CAN bus run to the headlights. Edit: and use the same bus the keyless system runs on.
It’s in dodge vehicles now, the other manufactures will follow soon. It saves a fuck ton of wising when you only need to run a single power wire and data bus to each light cluster instead of power for high beams, low beams, fog lights, indicators and vanity wank lights.
Yes, but it is a different CAN bus than anything critical to the operation of the powertrain. A typical BMW will have five or six different, and completely separate, CAN bus.
Hey kinda like the F-35
It’s fine though when the Americans do it do is.
Carney is still buying those lemons the US Navy rejected. I guess elbows out means buying overpriced junk while cutting all services.
“how do I hold all these” meme but instead of his arms it’s just elbows
The issues is they are artificially cheap, which undercuts Canada’s auto component industry from serving as an EV hub.
The Chinese government paid for production and have lots (as in sites) of cars that are unsold. They offered huge discounts to unload last years production. Since there were laws about discounting new cars, they moved them (paperwork wise) through shell type arrangements to make them appear as used cars (with less than 5km on the odometer etc).That stuff undercuts any means of US and Canada EVs being viable.
Question, would you say that Teslas are artificially cheap?
Tesla has government assistance programs in US and Canada, but $35000 Tesla does not compete with $14000 Chinese car
Is that a yes or no?
Bye troll
Get a grip. So, assuming you realize that you just admitted Canada has a double standard for banning subsidized electric vehicles, why not force the US to offer you a better deal? Tesla has no issue operating in China. Where is your spine?
On October 8th, after Carney’s meeting with Trump, Lutnick said that the US is going to insist on dominating the North American auto market and have assembly all happen in the US with Canada being forced into a subordinate role.
We need alternatives.
I doubt we will make this deal with China, because the US will not tolerate that, but it would be much better for Canadians.
It would be a catastrophe for Canadians as China seeks to exploit trade opportunities with other countries while at the same time protect its home markets through a wide range of measures no Western country has ever done. Just look at China’s trade balances, for example, and you see what happens. But I guess not all people want to see the truth.
Sock puppet Scotty, at it again, joined by sock puppet randomname this time. What time are you two clocking off for the day?
I’d buy a Chinese EV. I need an inexpensive vehicle to go from A to B in a city. There doesn’t seem to be an inexpensive option anymore in North America.
“inexpensive vehicle” usually means a pre-owned vehicle and there are plenty of affordable pre-owned EVs and hybrids on the market. If you’re the kind who buys new cars, then Chevy Bolt and Nissan Leaf are the least expensive. If you compare with new ICE cars, don’t forget to account for gasoline cost.
Mext municipal election you should make sure to vote for the person who’s championing stronger public transit options. I still have my car from loving in Ottawa but I barely touch it these days(usually for going to Ottawa, because I can easily get to Gare Centrale with the metro here but once I get to Ottawa it starts getting rough fast if I try to leave the LRT(and before the LRT it was a complete impossibility). Not to mention that it costs more because of the mess we made of privatising CN and shooting VIA rail in both its feet.
It takes me 35min to drive to work, by public transit it would take me 2h. Ontario is fucked.
Yup. It’s not why I left but it is why I’m never moving back.
The timing seems suspicious. Crops are sold already, with tariffs, and now it’s 11 months with no sales.
Come back in 9 months and we can talk.
This would be a bad deal for Canada.
This would be a bad deal for
Canadathe big car companies that have been producing massive, dangerous, filthy, wasteful monster trucks instead of smaller EVs thanks to protectionist policies.FTFY
Accusing Canada or other Western countries of protectionism while defending China is a bit of hypocrisy, no?
In addition, look why these ChEaP cHiNeSe CaRs are that cheap. I don’t want to buy a car or anything else that is made by slave labor.
Oh I’m not defending China. They’re oppressive assholes who are jamming their populace into the gears of capitalism even faster than the Americans. Fuck those guys.
I just think it’s a bit rich to try to make the argument that we should defend an industry that profits from building things we don’t want so they can run over more kids, ruin more cities, and make a shittone of cash and then cry poor and demand a bailout.
Personally, I wouldn’t buy one myself, but then again I try to avoid cheap Chinese crap as much as possible and I don’t want a car. The “BuT sLaVe LaBoUr!” Argument would be great, if anyone seemed to care about that when buying phones, or solar panels, or basically anything else, but when it’s invoked to defend American car companies, it’s obviously not in good faith.
This is disinformation. They are cheap because of abundance in materials, easy/advanced factory construction, competition, and advanced leadership in robotics. It’s just pure smear, not only to baselessly say slave labour exists in Xinxiang, but that it also applies to more prosperous provinces where cars are made.
Yeah, kneecapping our canola industry to support the USA’s foreign policy, on the other hand, is a great deal for us.
This would be a bad deal for Canada.
Point out even a single Canadian-made EV that would be affected by this.
There are no negative effects, so long as the vehicles pass safety standards. Bonus if we can enter into partnerships that would see those EVs assembled here.
And the low cost of these EVs would make vehicle ownership far easier for our young people, who already have an environment 8× more expensive (compared to their median wage) than their parents experienced at the same age.
The entire Canadian economy would be negatively effected in the long-term by such a move.
The entire Canadian economy would be negatively effected in the long-term by such a move.
TIL a higher standard of living is a “negative effect”.
You may have (intentionally?) misunderstood my comment.
Yeah well… I’d like to do whatever Poland is doing.
Serious question; how much does China subsidize EV sales to glut markets and buy market share? I’m guessing it’s non-zero.
I’d love to see canola embargoes open because I have a bunch of bins full, but is this fair to other vendors, domestic and other foreign makers?
Serious question; how much does China subsidize EV sales to glut markets and buy market share? I’m guessing it’s non-zero.
Probably less than our subsidies.
Probably not.
I don’t drive, but that’d be cool if canola oil became even cheaper. :3
The oil would become more expensive, because it can now be exported cheaper.
Dang peacocks >:(
With Canada so obsessed with keeping vehicle manufacturing jobs to the detriment of every Canadian not wanting to buy American cars. Why does Canada drop the Chinese tarrifs but demand certain assembly and manufacturing of Chinese vehicles happen in Canada?
Sounds like a win win, but they are too stuck on the idea they should only manufacture cars from incumbent companies that are stuck in the past. Canada has significant geological resources like lithium and rare earth metals is an even better reason to be excited about EV production in Canada.
Because cars assembled in Canada cost more, a lot more compared to slave labour.
Between USA that has gone completely mad and this other superpower, China, that supports Russia, which wages war against its allies, this put Canada in a difficult situation. Canola and electric vehicles might just be entry level bargaining points … who knows, certainly not me.
There is/should be a lot of room for compromise.
A mix of “reasonable” tariffs and quotas to start, to make Chinese EVs competitive without destroying domestic manufacturing is a good path. Canada needs investment. Whether foreign auto makers do it, following through on previous commitments, shutting out China can be a reward for them.
Without choosing to provide value cars to Canadians, Canada could offer agriculture for Chinese (solar) energy trade. Pemitting them to boost capacity even more.
Instead of begging the US to buy (and own through investment) our resources, Chinese development would help significantly as well.
Corrupt ideology programmed into Canadians is bad for Canada. We need new friends instead of abusers, and the only reform of an abuser possible comes when they beg for forgiveness when you flirt with new friends.
We don’t even need to be “friends” with China, we just need to recognize the situation we’re in and work with them pragmatically. Rejecting China in the current economy is like rejecting gravity.
Do it. Canola is an important industry to Canada and we don’t make evs here anyway.
