Considering the Europeans are currently hollowing out their industrial base by importing Chinese EVs instead of building their own, I don't see a nuclear reactor being a bridge too far.
People are buying BYD because they're better cars, not because they're forced to.
Or Mercedes, where they decided to build extremely expensive EVs that departed from their core design so much their core audience didn't want to buy them, then they were surprised EVs don't sell.
Or Audi who were probably a masterclass in offering the worst possible value for money you could imagine with their EVs - £50k Q4 that still had manual seats, like what are you competing with exactly?
Only Skoda could really kinda buck the trend with the Enyaq, which proves that VW could be competive if they wanted to, but they actively decided not to.
And don't start me on the Peugeot/Renault/Opel cars, which initially looked incredibly interesting and actually competitive, but I can only guess that Stellantis told them to tone it down because again - have to protect their core business of ICE cars, can't be too good.
And then MG came in with very well specced working EVs, and then other Chinese brands moved in, and big european manufacturers are crying that they are eating their lunch. Like, you guys had literally years to address this, but you decided to protect your legacy product over investing in the future = you're reaping the results now.
Building out a new production line for vehicles is insanely expensive. Billions upon billions of dollars. You need the old cars to sell well enough to pay for this and all of your other expenses.
China got to get into the EV space with a mostly-clean slate. Their domestic manufacturers made absolutely horrid products at the turn of the century. They did what they do best: copy successful people with investment from the successful people.
They only let Western manufacturers sell in China with the cooperation of a local vehicle manufacturer. That necessitated a bunch of investment and IP transfers to Chinese manufacturers who didn't have to shell out themselves, and when they did, it was with the complete backing of the state.
When EV technology really became something viable in the last 10-15 years, they just used that capacity, lower wages, and lax environmental regulations around mining, to undercut the rest of the world on EVs.
It's easy to act like the rest of the world just isn't competent enough, but there are layers to this.
I can just tell you as a person from the Midwestern US that the whole "we'll get lower prices that justify unemploying a bunch of people" doesn't work out like they said it would, and that empowering a potential geopolitical rival doesn't really help either.
isn't this proven to be true? better for the country, worse for a small amount of directly affected people?
In practice though Westinghouse still bids lowest out of the politically viable options these days. Korean and French reactors are rather expensive.
