The world’s car makers struggled to compete with Japan back in the '70s, but I would argue that struggle gave people access to better vehicles.
Turned out the winning move was to make affordable cars that were fuel efficient to operate and people would rush to buy them.
Maybe they should try practical and repairaible cars for a change?
Alternate headline: “The World’s Carmakers Have Become Too Fat And Bloated To Compete With China”.
This is my take too.
It’s not that America and Europe can’t compete. It’s that they’ve got their fat asses propped up on piles of misbegotten cash and are too fucking lazy and greedy to make a good product.
Then don’t. Make cities walkable and invest in public transport.
China is also doing that, believe it or not.
In my experience, the best we can do is change the bus schedules so you have to walk further to a bus stop and wait longer for a bus that never arrives at the scheduled time…
This would be ideal.
You mean China has a comparative advantage? Maybe the West should make more port instead.
They don’t even need cars to do it. The BBSHD kit from Bafang I’m gonna throw on the bike I’m building will save me thousands of miles on my existing car.
China is keeping me from buying a new car by helping not need to use one.
is there a tina from china community on here…
They go for next quarter profits instead of value for consumers . Stopped building affordable cars favoring trucks. Shipped car industry to China. The end
Went for trucks for greater profit margin and lower regulations but lost the volume game. For capitalists, they sure suck at it.
Even if you ignore the US obsession with trucks, western manufacturers labour costs are much higher and there aren’t subsidies on manufacturing EVs, only buying them. Chinese EVs get manufacturing subsidies and then in many countries they also get a local subsidy at the point of purchase. It’s an underhanded tactic, the Chinese government is essentially paying people outside of China to buy Chinese EVs so western competiton would die.
It’s an underhanded tactic
It’s a normal tactic
US car makers get tax incentives and bailouts, effectively subsidized by the government as well.
The US government doesn’t pay Ford to make me, an Estonian, a car so I wouldn’t want to buy a Volkswagen.
That’s what china does.
they have all the manufacturing there, I’m sure all the parts are dirt cheap for them if you don’t ship em cross ocean.
I’m not sure about china paying for you to buy them, many countries counter that with tariffs. I think those prices are close to natural prices given the enormous scale of china and nearby markets.
Yes, the tariffs counter the artificially low price. At least on the more expensive models, as tariffs aren’t a flat fee per car like the subsidies. You’re then still left with a workforce that’s paid about a third if not a quarter of what they’d be paid in some European countries that manufacture cars.
If we really wanted European EVs to be competitive with Chinese, unions need to be abolished and wages lowered. Unfortunately, we ALSO want people to have good living conditions, so that’s sort of a no-go.
ChatGPT says 10-15% of the cost of a typical car is labor
a workforce that’s paid about a third
So that would give Chinese manufactured vehicles a 6-10% price advantage
We wish
Are you implying Chinese people do not have good living conditions?
I have been in China only a few months working on the assembly line. Work was long and tough, but the pay was good and they’d give you free housing and food. Plenty other workplaces were available if you wanted to work less hours.
How many hours is that about? They don’t have 40 hr limit? How about work safety and health insurance? Free healthcare right?
That was 14 hours a day 6 days a week. It was non specialized jobs mostly filled by people getting their first job moving from the farms to the cities. Many people changed job within the first year. 40 hours work weeks were available. Regarding work safety, factories I visited were quite good, modern equipment and practices. I have seen machinery being used quite commonly which would elsewhere be considered highly specialized. Not sure about free healthcare, I did not get to need the hospital.
I’m not saying it’s the best country in the world, but in general the people I met were happy and enjoyed a good life without many problems.
Eu should have taken on Putin’s offer while it was being offered - Europe from Lisbon till Vladivostok. Free energy in exchange for technology. Is my opinion. And now it’s just too late for both. China is one global winner in all areas .
Yea sorry, most of us don’t want to live under Russian rule.
I wonder if the fact that most American and European carmakers are stubbornly clinging to the 1800s technology known as the internal combustion engine while Chinese ones are actively embracing the modern technology that car buyers actually want has anything to do with it 🤔
What? Rubbish. Total incomprehensible rubbish.
Right, time to get the coal burning in my steam tractor!!It probably has more to do with the cost of labour in China.
And also the fact that they control all the resources (like rare earth minerals) needed to make EV batteries while every other manufacturer is forced to buy them at a markup from China. They even have their own slave labor force to work the mines so that they can keep prices low for themselves.
That’s another part of it, sure, but DEFINITELY not the whole or even main reason.
Mostly the main reason. That and state subsidies to kill the foreign car market with long term goals. Someone always suffers with capitalism. Even state capitalism. 🤷♂️
Throwing more people at a design problem doesn’t often actually improve the rate of solving it.
Mostly the main reason
Apart from not being true, that doesn’t even make grammatical or mathematical sense 😄
That and state subsidies to kill the foreign car market with long term goals
Except that goes both ways, with Europe and the US subsidizing their automakers and disadvantaging the Chinese ones just as much if not even more.
Someone always suffers with capitalism.
True.
Even state capitalism
Also true, although protectionism ≠ state capitalism.
Capitalism is a philosophy/ideology where the maximum accumulation of capital possible is held up as the main goal of existence.
Protectionism DOESN’T maximize the capital of the state, or the majority of the people residing in it, only the companies benefitting from it and the politicians they bribe.
Europe and the US generally pay subsidies for EV purchases, not production.
If you buy a Chinese EV in most countries with an EV subsidy, you get two subsidies: the Chinese one for production and the local one for purchasing.
That’s kind of the point though, no?
Why aren’t US or other non-chinese car makers making more electric cars to compete?
Instead they take oil money to keep combustion engines around as the primary. Despite companies like Ford having been subsidised by the government to still exist with no real requirements.
Most countries have come all the told it needed to be able to do this and refused to adapt at the same time.
I’m the end it’s a race for the bottom which just sucks…
Most countries don’t subsidise goods sold into other countries. It’s literal economic warfare.
Most companies also have plenty of EV offerings. They’re just not as popular as ICE counterparts yet.
🤡🪙
Good comeback 🙄
No point saying anything else, and you know that.
Many brands are assembling their cars in China. https://www.thecarexpert.co.uk/which-new-cars-are-built-in-china/
European carmakers have dozens of EV models on the market, and they are dominating the EU market though selling poorly outside it.
While rapidly shrinking, the ICE market in the EU still accounts for about three quarters of the market. This is why some EU carmakers (notably Stellantis) have shifted to a Kodak strategy in an attempt to make short-term gains over the coming decade.
European carmakers have dozens of EV models on the market, and they are dominating the EU market
Yet the north American manufacturers have (at best) only 1 or 2 models of EV available, and those are priced in their luxury range, then they complain that nobody wants to buy EVs, so they double down on massive SUVs and unnecessary pickups.
European carmakers have dozens of EV models
Yes, but they make many times more ICE ones than that, despite the fact that consumers generally prefer EVs as long as the price is right.
and they are dominating the EU market though selling poorly outside it.
That’s probably heavily influenced by national and EU subsidies and other regulations designed to give them significant advantages over non-European competitors, rather than what European drivers want.
the ICE market in the EU still accounts for about three quarters of the market
Because of the aforementioned stubbornness and preferential treatment more than anything else.
The EU was going to ban new ICE cars by 2030, before lobbying from the major car making countries succeeded in pushing it back to 2040. I just hope they won’t succeed in their current efforts to push it back even farther if not repeal the regulation entirely 😮💨
I mean, from what I can see half of them aren’t even trying.
Who could have ever foreseen this result when we outsourced all of our manufacturing and skilled labour to China???
It’s almost like chasing thoughtless, short-term profit gains is a horrible idea.
Our design engineering is lacking too. I read not long ago how the president of Ford said how they tore down a Chinese EV and said “we got it all wrong.” I’m in the automotive manufacturing industry and we source some parts from China. The factories I work with are all IATF/ISO certified and they can make parts for 10x less AND not require a minimum production that would last me 5 years. And the comment about working around the tariff is absolutely true. One of our Chinese suppliers started building a plant in Thailand not long after the election. State of the art. less tariff. Quality parts. My first order is shipping this week.
China funds all these companies and their projects, that’s why China is pushing forward.
So like you think us and Europe not prepping their manufacturing by combination of loans and tax breaks?
Short term profit and doing compliance cars and half assed attempts with certain irrelevance in a decade or so, or choosing to forgo profit and really go for converting to EV.
Every board room figuring a golden parachute in 10 years sounds really good.
I’m partial to this explanation, what do you people think? I’m not an expert
Summary: Western car makers don’t make cars, they assemble cars from parts they buy. Their business is procurement and they don’t engineer the car from the ground up to meet a product vision. Rather, they’re trying to make something from the same old parts and suppliers of the internal combustion engine times.
It’s “nobody gets fired for buying IBM” but for cars
