Anthropic in particular seem to be in a weird place where on the one hand they fund some real research, which is often not all roses and sunshine for them, but on the other hand, like all AI companies, they feel the need to make absurdly over-the-top claims about what's coming up Real Soon Now(TM).
I mean, maybe things have changed (I finished college about 20 years ago), but I don't remember producing large volumes of stuff as being a particularly important part of a CS degree.
Between a challenging job market, increasing new frontiers of learning (AI, MLops, parallel hardware) and an average mind like mine, a tool that increases throughput is likely to be adopted by masses, whether you like it or not and quality is not a concern for most, passing and getting an A is (most of my professors actively encourage to use LLMs for reports/code generation/presentations)
> You are correct that China is the number one market in terms of BEV sales, but the US is number two, selling more than 3-5 combined.
This is incorrect, unless you're viewing the US as a single market but the EU as multiple (which, I mean, ah, you do you, but that doesn't make any sense from an industry perspective). Last year about 1.3 million BEVs were sold in the US (a minor decline from 2024), 1.9 million BEVs were sold in the EU (up 33% YoY). In Europe more broadly defined, 2.5 million BEVs were sold (in practice, the industry largely treats EU+EFTA+UK as one market). In China, 8 million were sold, up about 25% YoY.
You can, ah, perhaps see why the US is not a top-priority market for the industry. In practice, the US _will_ get many of these Toyota models, or some variant thereof, but later. You mention VW, but they, too, treat the US as a second priority BEV market; their electric cars generally come out about a year late there if at all. Hyundai does release in the US at the same time as elsewhere (when they release at all; the Ioniq 3 will not be available in the US, for instance, because the US does not buy small cars in significant numbers).
Nation-based segmentation makes the most sense to me because as I understand it (coming from a US-centric perspective, so I may have misunderstandings) there may be additional friction (fees, regulations, etc) buying from another EU country as opposed to someone in the US buying a vehicle from a different state. In many cases, you don't even have to go to another state; dealerships regularly transfer inventory (with a shipping fee, but not anything at the government level)
From the point of view of the manufacturers, the Single Market is, ah, a single market; they only have to get type approval once, and then they can sell anywhere. The only real complicating factor is Ireland and Malta, which drive on the left side of the road (and some niche cars will never be released there as a consequence; for instance Tesla stopped selling Model S/X in a left hand drive configuration a while back, though they now seem to have stopped selling both in Europe entirely, in any case).
Post-Brexit, the UK has its own type certification (and of course it also has the left hand drive problem), and, again, some niche car models may be available in the EU but not the UK. But in practice, for mainstream stuff, the manufacturers tend to treat it as just part of the European market.
The entire point of the European Union is to eliminate all of that friction. Most of the rules and regulations have been pushed to the EU level, just like the USA pushed most of its rules and regulations to the federal level. A car only needs a single type approval granted by a single member state, and it can be sold across the entire EU.
There are of course still some tax differences and importing from another member state might be slightly trickier for a consumer than buying it from a dealership in their own country, but I don't see how that is any different from dealing with different kinds of sales tax in the various US states, or having to transfer your car title to another state.
The European single market operates as, well, a single market.
> I got marked down for using singular "they" in any writing I did in school in the 1980s.
And your teacher would presumably have marked down Shakespeare for the same thing. If it was good enough for Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Austin, you'd think it would be good enough for your teacher, but we went through a particularly prescriptive period in the early to mid 20th century (though your teacher was maybe slightly behind the times even in the 80s).
While support _is_ higher amongst young people, most polling, when asked as a yes/no question, shows majority support in most or all age cohorts for rejoining.
LOL. Have you read that paper? And do you believe the BLS is lying about inflation data?
Let's take a look at the latest EU-consensus reinforcing pamphlet pushed out by Kiehl, because when Mahlkow wrote about tarrifs in 2022, he was all for them. At that time the EU was debating imposing tariffs on Russia, and here Mahlkov insisted that there would be massive economic long term contraction for Russia - which did not happen -- yet simultaneously, Mahlkow predict no meaningful effect of the EU's tariffs on the EU itself. You see, at that time, Mahlkov insisted that because the EU GDP was larger, there would be no impact on the EU itself as a result of tariffs.
Now let's dig into the crazy assumptions of Mahlkow's model. Does he use sophisticated econometric analysis? No, what he does is look at shipping containers and published tariff rates. What he assumes is that if, before the tariffs, there were 100 units shipped, but after the tariffs, there were also 100 units shipped, then it must be that 100% of the cost was passed onto the consumer.
You see, some tariffs (which the EU bureaucracy and it's various patronage organizations like Kiehl) support don't cause any harm to the nation levying the tariff, but other tariffs are deadly, and fortunately Mahlkov will pick the right model to reach the right conclusion. No looking at pallet data in 2022!
Now what is wrong with looking at pallet data for a brief period of time. It never occurs to Mahlkov that the corporations importing the goods have to absorb some of the cost. Mahlkov just assumes 100% is passed through to consumers and the importers pay nothing.
This must mean the BLS is committing some kind of fraud as this has not been showing up in CPI data.
I'll leave you to decide whether this is warranted or not, but let's just say there is a reason this remains a "brief" available to download and is not a published paper.
Meanwhile, real economists, even though the profession is politicized, nevertheless understand that they missed the boat on estimating tariff effects, and that the models need updating. To a real researcher, it's actually a great opportunity. But to someone like Mahlkov, who is trotted out whenever there needs to be economic support for or against the same policy, he will gladly write a paper. And then others will cite it.
reply