The slave labor saves at most like 20-30% of the price. China’s cornered the world on lithium. Nowhere else can you get batteries made that cheap. Tons of vertical integration and I believe more than half of the world’s lithium goes through China.

As long as we need lithium batteries for our EVs, China’s going to beat everyone else in pricing.

And of course there’s the insidious subsidies which are applied to all manufactured NEVs, not just the ones sold in China. Most countries can’t afford to do this for their industries and in general it’s considered to be kind of a dick move (enabling your manufacturers to sell for under manufacturing cost globally to drive out competitors)