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There is a legitimate reason to not want Chinese government subsidized cars to undercut American auto makers, but it’s also correct to say that American automakers can’t compete with Chinese automakers right now even if they were in a similar cost footing.
It’s hard to feel bad when GM intentionally killed electrics back in the 90s, the ship where America leads the world in EV production may have already sailed then. We may yet see the American auto industry have its Kodak moment.
It’s nuts how the phrase “Kodak moment” has changed.
There’s no reason to be protective over the auto industry. The years where auto plants could transition to weapons fabrication are over; the manufacturing process has become specialized to chase efficiency. If anything, it’s justice should American car brands go out of business, because they were subsidized and propped up time and time again and stole the money given to them to afford innovation. Most recently in 2010, when American cars lost in the marketplace because they didn’t match hybrid efficiency, they simply did not meet or exceed their competition. Instead, they sat on their asses, took the bailouts, and the Japanese sold better cars. Now, Japanese cars are losing to Chinese cars, while still maintaining superiority over American cars.
Anecdotally, the newest gen Ford Bronco, Explorer, and F150 ICE cars are terrible. I got to daily drive all of them while my Lightning was in the shop for repairs because they couldn’t loan an EV. Those cars were noisy, slow, awfully designed interiors, inefficient, and just plain cost more than the competition.
America has a toxic masculinity problem. Americans keep buying giant trucks and SUV and Jeeps. GM did put out some legit hybrids and EVs like Volt, Bolt EV, EUVs. But didn't sell enough. So we are stuck with shitty gas guzzling cars that keeps getting bigger and bigger.
America has a toxic masculinity problem.
Yeah the “manly dude” starter pack’s cornerstone is a f-150 or silverado. It’s just a baseline requirement.
Also though, mom has to have a canyonero to get groceries and shuttle the kids because “mama bear needs to keep her kids safe from all those giant cars out there”.
Can you give me that legitimate reason beyond hurting poor Ford Chevy and GM's pockets?
For starters the 300,000+ people employed by those two companies (Chevy is GM). Perhaps you meant to include Stellantis (Chrysler) which would make that number closer to 600,000 people. The auto industry was a big driver of the 2008 crash.
That’s before we even start to get into the issues stemming from a Chinese monopoly on the auto industry. What happens if American, Japanese, and European auto makers go out of business and then China stops the subsidies? We will literally be in the same situation we are now but with money going to China instead of paying domestic workers.
America's somehow STILL in the fucking around phase.
So what.
Protecting them from china and bailing them out multiple times hasn't done anything.
It's almost like poorly run businesses SHOULD FAIL.
Are we a free market capitalist society or not?
It's sad watching the U.S. and Japanese auto industry self-destruct in slow motion. There are a lot of smart and capable people in the auto industry, but the management are stuck in an 80s design and manufacturing process.
The oil lobby has been actively encouraging this for decades. Automakers are lock step with the oil lobby. This is so people have to stay reliant on petrol.
There's no EV infrastructure here where I live. The amount of scam solar is like 10:1 here as well.
As sad as this is, this is all the fault of the current automakers. The EV1 showed great promise but it was killed off despite the pleas of their drivers. It was just too cheap and convenient to keep making ICE cars and ripping off their customer base. When the innovations of Chinese manufacturers started looming over the horizon, the US did what it always does and wall off the domestic market with tariffs. Content with their captive market, they did token efforts for EVs but kept pumping out $80k+ gas powered behemoths. I'm aware of Tesla being the exception but frankly fuck that company, Elon Musk's Nazi shit ruined it and I wish it'll go under.
I wish he would just sell it and let it actually become a worthwhile company. If he would just fuck himself out of the equation I think Tesla would be a lot better.
It is known as the Nazi car brand now which is wild when Volkswagen still exists.
And the oil industry. Also, nobody wanted to spend the money to build EV infrastructure.
Oh no! Is it time for the auto industry to collapse, get 81 billion dollars, change nothing, and berate the American consumer for being too poor to buy their cars that now cost twice as much for no specific reason other than capitalism again?
It sure as hell isn't time to ride the bus or build a train. So I guess we're doing your thing.
There just aren't that many domestic automakers actually attempting the market the way China is. I think part of the reason for that is the adoption rate of American drivers of EV's. Especially without the tax credits to subsidize the cost. The US is struggling to sell new cars and EV's make up only 10% of new cars sold.
Especially without the tax credits to subsidize the cost.
Too bad the US doesn't have access to cheaper non-US made EVs.
Yep. Politics is part of the reason too. But only part of it. Most Americans can't afford a new car even if it's cheap. That's why new car sales are so low. The tax credits helped a lot of people buy EV's. Now that the current Admin has gotten rid of the credit people aren't buying or leasing them but people can't afford the pre-owned vehicles either.
So what I'm saying is, people can't afford to buy used EV's either.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a70020914/why-2026-will-be-a-great-time-to-buy-a-used-ev/
Just saying, but people not being able to afford a new vehicle is because of politics. Not Republican vs Democrat politics, but capitalist vs worker politics.
The US is struggling to sell new cars and EV's make up only 10% of new cars sold.
I would love to buy an EV but a brand new car is too expensive and there’s not much in the way of reasonably priced, used EVs available so I’m currently sticking with the internal combustion engine.
I’m sticking with my ICE cars because they have buttons and switches and only a tiny screen and won’t be selling my data to my insurance company and aren’t SUVs.
Though I did put a deposit down on a Slate truck.
I put a deposit down too. Living somewhere kind of remote, I do worry about how far away a trained service shop will be. They’ll have less maintenance requirements for sure, but there will still be maintenance required.
FWIW, my local shop claim they can handle state Inspection, brakes, tires, and suspension work on my Tesla. The most likely to wear items are also more generic.
Of course an accident or some other breakdown is an entirely different story
One of the main reason a country's government will subsidize or otherwise encourage green energy and EV adoption is as a geopolitical strategy to reduce dependence on oil, due to the fact that most oil-producing nations are deeply unstable for one reason or another. The USA's problem is that it is one of those deeply unstable oil-producing nations, and so it wants to keep the renewables market suppressed and the oil and oil derivatives market boosted.
Here in Ireland we don't have one jot of domestic oil production, so renewables are seen as a way to not be held hostage by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (and idiotically unnecessary wars in the Middle East, and idiotically random tariff wars) because we do have our own water, wind and sunshine. America doesn't have that natural incentive to the same extent that we do.
US auto makers were too busy doing stock buybacks and building Canyoneros while the Chinese were building next gen factories and investing in battery technology. The Chinese government has subsidized their auto industry to dominate the EV market while the USA subsidizes their auto industry but with wild and often stupid swings in expectations.
That may be true, but do Chinese EVs smell like steak and seat 35?
Didn't think so.
Read the interview with the Ford CEO. Who drives a Xiaomi SU7, imported from China and he refuses to give it up.
It is the arrogance of car makers all over the world. No one is matching the innovation of the Chinese car makers. This includes European giants like Volkswagen and BMW who are suffering in China.
http://autofreak.com/vw-bmw-mercedes-china-sales-collapse-q2/
Have they tried CLOSING more EV Plants and DISCONTINUING More EV Models? That MIGHT help!
-CEOS!
US admin and auto industry: "We're digging our own graves? Let's double down!"
Good. They are overpriced and full of shit that supports the fascists.
China has subsidized the shit out of their car industry. Dumping trillions of renminbi across every vertical and then ramping up production to flood every market with a deluge of cheap EVs will do that.To their credit they are also willing to let bad car companies die and the good ones take their place.
Not that we couldn’t have done the same but the people elected a party which has a walking orange disaster of a president into power and they are doing their very best to hand the future to the Chinese.
Does it really matter? Won't the government just block all Chinese vehicles from being sold here so carmakers in this country don't have to compete?
Still doesn't help with the fact that not a single person outside the US will buy a Tesla or a Ford.
Sooner or later Americans will stumble onto TikToks and see how cool BYDs or Beijings are, and they'll wonder why their Chevrolet is a piece of shit.
The iron curtain only gets you so far when the internet exists. And when a government is too incompetent to even try to censor it.
Don't forget union busting and a general failure to pay workers enough to afford their products. Billionaires' greed always fucks us over.
End of the day, I can't afford a new car no matter who makes it. $30,000 for a DRM'ed shitbox that will shut itself down if I'm 30 minutes late on a payment? No, thanks.
They did it to themselves. By limiting competition in a lazy move to maintain dominance they have lost.
Oh, they haven't lost. It's us who have lost. Government is protecting their profits.
I don't understand. Using Elon in charge of Tesla? How can it be failing? I thought he was a genius and not just some guy that had a profitable company partly in thanks to all the carbon credits being sold?
I'm guessing a big part of the problem isn't even the Tesla politics or the right-wing perception of EVs.. it's probably close to 100% cost. They're expensive AF and everyone in America is poor. Most EVs are touted as a luxury ordeal with luxury prices. China can do cheap EVs, but that doesn't work with American business's demand for profit margin.
Maybe it's time the corporations go through some austerity measures?
Think of it like Kodak with digital cameras. Even knowing the market is being disrupted, even having the technology, there is never a short term reason for self disruption. If the company can’t consider the longer term while a market is being disrupted, they will not survive. Of course selling a couple thousand EVs is not going to earn back the cost of entirely new factories and supply chains after two years. Duh. Of course it’s easier to sell hundreds of thousands of legacy vehicles built in legacy factories that are already paid for using supply chains that already exist. But one of those approaches is on a decline to the grave while the other is a paradigm shift for the entire global industry
Doesn’t help the US is so anti-competitive, so protectionist, so many policies favoring excessively large inefficient vehicles. By the time we emerge from this smog of political chaos, legacy American car companies will no longer be able to survive independently nor compete globally.
But the car companies certainly lay deserve a lot of blame- across the entire car market preferring to sell fewer more expensive vehicles, rather than more vehicle that are more affordable.
And China's moat is the ecosystem that they are building around EVs. The mining and refining tech for lithium, battery tech, motors, drivers and manufacturing that will be impossible for any other country to replicate.
The auto industry collapsed a long time ago and they stopped listening to consumers about the same time. Now only foreign cars are manufactured in the US.