By Nirmal P. Acharya
In previous years, Nepal, under pressure from the US ultimatum, said it would accept the MCC as a “gift” from the US. Now I do not know whether this gift is in place, and what social and economic benefits are being generated.
Recently, seeing the emergence of Chinese-made electric cars on our roads, I suddenly had a feeling: for Nepal, electric cars are a “gift”.
Nepal has no domestic oil resources or easy access to oil, so it has long suffered from high oil prices and anxiety about supply insecurity. But Nepal has extremely rich hydropower resources, so an electric car is tailored to Nepal.
In addition to eliminating the high cost of gasoline, electric vehicles have many advantages, such as low prices. At the same luxury level, electric cars sell for only a quarter to a third of the price of gasoline vehicles. Electric cars produce no exhaust at all, have low noise, reduce carbon footprints, and so on. With the advent of electric vehicles, we can look forward to a time when every Nepali family has a car.
But the US is not happy about it. US President Joe Biden has come forward to denigrate electric vehicles and will do everything possible to suppress Chinese electric vehicles. The US is said to be considering raising tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.
US Commerce Secretary Maria Raimondo went even further, saying that Chinese electric cars are phones on wheels that can collect information on millions of Americans anytime and anywhere. She added that if there were three million Chinese electric cars on American roads, Beijing could suddenly shut them all off at the same time.
US politicians and business leaders are constantly making disparaging remarks about electric cars that are insulting to human intelligence. This is because the US is far behind China in the field of electric vehicles and is probably funded by legacy autos, oil, and gas industries behind the scenes.
I would like to make the following prediction: More and more electric vehicles will be driving in our cities and villages, bringing benefits to our society and people. I also believe that MCC will work hard to prove that it is a worthy “gift” to the US.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect People’s Review’s editorial stance.
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