EVs and PHEVs leaving traditional manufacturers behind?

I think so, and I think this is a big deal for European industry. Its not just car OEM's, its the huge number of jobs in manufacturing and servicing everything along the whole value chain, that stand to be lost. ZF employes 170,000 people for example. And while I believe European made EV's will be better made, with better quality (paint/interiors etc), and especially safety than many of the Chinese cars in particular, Europe is not a powerhouse of battery or electric motor manufacturing. And nothing made here is cheap. Range and cost are the main things people fret about when they decide to go EV, so yes I think it will be a bloodbath of European companies and jobs. 

I think it needs wider debate as well. I'm not normally a fan of import duties, but free trade only works when everyone is playing by the same rules. The large (Japanese) automotive company I work for trains us endlessly about human rights, the need to comply with the UN declaration of human rights, anti bribery and bullying rules, and so on. They clearly mean it. Many EV's on the market now, are not built by people who are treated fairly. And in the West we pay through our nose for taxes related to reducing environmental impact - EV's are being made in a way elsewhere that gives zero f***s about the planet. Personally, I do care about these things, I do not want to enjoy my consumption of things in blatant diregard for other humans, or the planet. 

Then there are issues like State intervention in industry (subsidies and so on) - except in places like China and Russia, state support goes as far as using national spy agencies to spy on commercial companies and give the findings to their own companies, which in the case of China cannot legally be separated from the state. Supposedly private companies in China have no right to any form of data privacy. Working for software companies / divisions of companies as I have done most of my life, I find it incredible the West will trade so freely with parts of the world that steal our intellectual property and freely distribute the pirated versions.

There is also blatant disregard for the most basic regulations in many places - and again I don't want to pick on China alone, but - even through supposedly reputable retailers and websites - a lot of the products you can buy from China are simply mis-represented in a fraulent way (battery and memory card capacities for example) and fake reviews used to make it impossible to find better quality. How do we know the capabilities, safety, and materials/environmental impact of things made there, are as they are marketed? 

And finally you have the fact that countries like Russia and China (and to quite an extent India) either expressly help, or ignore, things like ransomware attacks and large scale fraud against the West. Call centres in India employ a lot of people making vast sums of money in various types of fraud perpetuated against vulnerable individuals in the West, no one cares. Worse, in China, NK, Russia (and probably more places) hackers - very possibly with full state support (cyber attacks being a key part of modern warfare) - hack into systems routinely. They cause damage and disruption  - and cost Western lives - with their ransomware attacks on things like hospitals, which has been happening this month in the NHS. Sometimes this is collateral damage, sometimes targetted (I personally think the NHS one probably targetted after all the declarations of more weapons for Ukraine). 

Most individuals either don't know this, don't care, believe so many crappy conspiracy theories they think everyone is out to get them, or sort of care but will still buy a Chinese car if its cheaper and goes further. Hence I would like to see wider, honest public debate about this, and import duties. The US has big import duties on EV's from many places, their domestic EV production is not doing so badly. Unfortunately Western industry is much, much more closely intertwined with China than it was with Russia, so doing the right thing is much much harder. Especially for places like Germany, that make the machines, that then make all the stuff we buy from China. So we just kick the can down the road while well paid jobs here are lost to people being treated like slaves there, wrecking the planet (see pic), and who at a state level are actively seeking to damage us while we fund them by buying their stuff.

Sorry for the rant, but as you can probably tell, this is something I have been thinking about a lot!!

I think it is partly due to the proliferation of tax-efficient salary sacrifice car schemes. If you've been on any of them, then you'll see that the lease rates on cars of what I might terms the "Asian electrodomestic white goods" variety are usually comfortably the most keenly priced and therefore, if all you want (and it seems to be all many people want) is a shiny new car every 2-3 yrs to get around in for the minimum fuss and outlay, it's something of a no-brainer from a consumer perspective.

Which simply brings into question whether tariffs are required. China isn't renowned for throwing its arms open to imports and imports on cars made outside China are subject to a 15% tariff, whereas the UK and EU currently levy a 10% tariff. As a minimum there should be parity there.

The thing about putting tariffs on Chinese EVs is that the Chinese don’t pay the tariff, we the consumer do. It’s just another tax on us.

^
Ah yes, I well remember that.
ALso wasn't the warehouse located miles from any logical place of import.... near Poitiers IIRC, so that there was a significant cost in time and money to get the goods through the entry point?