This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
It would be nice to be able to consider more asian brands than just japanese and korean when next replacing a car and ignoring everything American.
Thank the Lord in heaven! I'd buy a BYD right now if I could.
Let's take stock for a moment. A freaking Toyota Corolla is pushing $30,000. A Corolla.
A regular F-150 is $60,000+. The average new car sells for around $40,000, and the average monthly payment is close to $1,000.
And guess what? They're not selling. They're just too expensive. A Ford Raptor is over $100,000. Over $100,000. Dealerships are flooded with them, and they still aren't making meaningful deals.
From a purely economic perspective, we need competition from China to force this market back toward affordable vehicles, because there are no genuinely cheap, affordable new cars in this country anymore.
Why are Chinese cars so inexpensive?
That's a very difficult question to answer.
On one hand, there's a minimum price at which a product can be sold while still generating enough profit for a company to remain viable, pay its employees, and continue operating.
On the other hand, there's the American business practice of maximizing every possible fraction of a cent in pursuit of higher quarterly profits. As we all know from game theory, pure min-maxing doesn't always produce the best long-term outcome. There has to be a balance. Nevertheless, many American companies are driven primarily by maximizing shareholder returns. In doing so, they can end up shooting themselves in the foot, making decisions that inflate short-term financial results while ultimately reducing their long-term profitability.
China, by contrast, has a quasi-socialist market economy under a single-party government. It has invested heavily in developing strategic industries, including electric vehicles. The government sets national priorities and can exert enormous influence over companies. If corporate leadership fails to meet those objectives, it can be replaced far more easily than in Western economies.
In the United States, corporations instead spend enormous sums lobbying politicians to pass laws favorable to their interests. But, as discussed above, relentlessly optimizing for short-term gains doesn't always produce the best long-term results.
That's one reason Chinese cars are so inexpensive. Or rather, they're arguably priced closer to what cars should cost. The real question may be why cars in the United States have become so expensive. Automakers cite rising costs, regulations, technology, and financing practices, but prices seem to ratchet upward far more readily than they ever come back down.
Heavy jnvestment in battery industry and government steered subsidies into renewables vs endless money to bomb brown people.
The businessmen in China know they will be shot by the government if they are too exploitative.
Many reasons but two big ones are that they don't pay employees like North America does, and I'm fully convinced they're pulling the EEE technique to dominate the NA market once they're in.
Because they have invested heavily into automation. A couple years ago the ford ceo went over there and came back terrified. He didn’t think it here was any way that american companies had a chance of competing.
They should enter now
American cars suck.
"And instead of improving our offerings we will spend tens of millions "contributing" (bribing) politicians to make sure that doesn't happen."
They could do it tomorrow if it were legal
With this administration it is just takes a couple of bribes to enter the market.
Australia is currently saturated with cheap, shotty Chinese EV and ICE cars. Weird brands I'd never heard of last year.
I suspect many of them will probably pump and dump in 5 years, and exiting the AU market when their shit starts to break down and they become obligated to fix it under robust and well enforced Australian consumer law. If consumer law isn't nerfed by then.
It'll be very interesting to see the longevity of those new chinese cars. They certainly have saturated the market, and by all accounts appear to be reasonably good value, but who knows what their long-term reliability will be like
Jim Farley, CEO of Ford drives a fucking Xiaomi SU7. If he wont drive a Lincoln, then Ford deserves to die.
Instead of giving themselves buybacks when money was good, they should have been innovating.
Bye, Ford.
Oh no! Here comes capitalism from a communist country. It's like we built infrastructure to exploit cheap labor for short term gains and it's backfiring! Who could have ever seen this coming?
China is just state influences capitalism, the workers don't own the means of production, but it turns out if you invest in your means of production you can easily beat those that don't.
Except China has advantages in supply chain integration and way cheaper labor that's kept artificially low by it's government playing games with it's currency exchange rate.
Translation: our workers are paid better, our companies follow relatively strict environmental law (or used to) and our government hasn't helped spy on other countries' technology advancements and given it to private industry to beat the other guys.
That's a pretty steep advantage to China.
Your government hasn’t spied on other countries’ technological advancements?
The US government has:
And better pay? I mean, yea, but c’mon. The US is a dystopian nightmare dressed up in juuust enough personal comforts to keep most people from doing anything, and with so much of the country below the poverty line I would hardly call that a win. On the topic of artifical impacts to the cost labour, the governments of the US allow for all kinds of labour and human rights violations which keep people struggling and always playing catch-up.
Environmetal law is a huge nothing. How many people have been poisoned by US chemical companies, like 3M and Dupont, with barely any consequences handed out? The US doesn’t give a fuck about the environment and it never truly has. US-based oil companies release all kinds of highly doctored and misleading reports to try to greenwash their shitty behaviour while laughing behind closed doors(and sometimes out in the open).
I’m not going to say that China is a Utopia, or even decent by many standards, but if you think the US has anything to be proud of you need to sit down and shut up. Fuck the US.
Hey now, Werner Von Braun seemed like a nice enough guy and did some really cool work, even if it was all a front for ICBM development
Correct me if it's worth it to you. I am doing gut math, but isn't a Ford vehical only like 20% fewer made in China parts? They might even be equal parts, just 1 assembled in Mexico.
Can't think of a single US automaker I'd buy from and I doubt that would change within 10 years.
There is one, Slate. They are offering a small electric truck that lets you fully customize it. There is also no tracking built in at all, which no other manufacturer can say right now.
Yeah, but it's owned by Bezos, so fuck no.
It's not.
Bezos is one of the many investors that provided funding for it at the start, but he has a minority stake in the company.
At one point he had one board representative, but now even that isn't the case any more.
The Australian electric Cupra's (VW subsidiary ) have no connected services, it's the biggest grievances owners have.
I rent a lot of vehicles for work when traveling, I can't say I thought "I could see myself owning one of these" or even enjoyed driving Cadillacs, Jeeps, Chevy or Fords. The Jeeps were junk, the transmissions were way out of tune with the engine and the suspension felt like I was in a horse carriage. The Fords all had huge gas tanks, turned like boats, and the computer kept glitching. The Chevy had good performance but felt cheap. I couldn't figure out why anyone would think a Cadillac was a luxury vehicle, It was like driving a Kia but everything was loose.
Slate and Mutaniy Motors are the only ones to give me a lil hope.
Otherwise it's Edison Motors from Canada
Everyone else is stuck in the past or China looking to revolutionize the market with checks notes slavery and public investment.
What about swasticars and Bezos mobiles?
Don’t threaten me with a good time! I’d be driving a BYD right now if I could
I sure hope he's right.
Farley talks a good game but has always been full of shit. If he agrees that ford needs to turn around to compete with new technology, he should talk to the CEO about it
Where’s that conviction when you gave up on EVs instead of trying to improve your own technology? Where have their ever been ford EVs that normal people could buy? What about those for employees eager to jump to new technology when you shut down their factories?
And seriously, they’re competitive with Chinese cars in Europe because they resell Geelys (Chinese cars)? What kind of bs is that?
good. maybe people can afford to buy one. unlike overpriced ford ipads on wheels.
