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- cross-posted to:
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/15089465
Americans Are Open To Cheap Chinese Cars. That’s ‘Scary’ For The Rest Of The Auto Industry
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“American companies are scared of the open market when it works against them, yet refuse to make better products”
There is a good reason why American companies are scared. It almost never works out for them. Sony vs Zenith TVs is a great example about how a foreign company improved on a technology (color tv) and made zenith look like a stingy dinosaur overnight. Instead of selling color TV’s zenith just doubled down and sold cheaper shittier TV’s. By the time color was standard, their reputation was ruined and no one wanted a Zenith when Sony was the best. Sony however wouldn’t have been able to get into the market without help from zenith in the first place.
They should stop choosing the “double down on making products shittier part”.
You could’ve been telling the story of the 80s automotive industry. Or really any American manufacturer.
The issue was that Chinese EVs are ahead of Western EVs due to aggressive subsidy and investment by the Chinese government to get ahead. So the market has been distorted which is what was “scary” according to the quite in the article that spawned the headline.
Having said that, I’m not sure I believe that Chinese EVs will be better quality. They may be cheaper and they may even have technically advanced but from experience of other Chinese products, quality is not a word I’d associate with them.
Look into Harley Davidson, they should have gone bankrupt multiple times but were saved by high tarrifs placed on imported bikes.
Harleys are so ridiculously overpriced it’s hard to believe tariffs on the competition would make any difference
Americans aren’t going to care about quality that much if their monthly payment is only $200. As long as a Chinese EV is reliable long enough to make it’s total cost of ownership much lower than American EVs or ICEs they will line up to buy them.
The American market has been desperate for a cheap and reliable car, a role Japanese automakers used to fill, and both US and Japanese makers know it.
i wanna Datsun
American cars have their own subsidies as well. I mean the government bailed them out of dying several years ago.
We shouldn’t have bailed them out. We should have bought a public controlling interest in them.
All the best and worst shit you own is made in China. If you don’t want cheap shit don’t buy cheap shit, but these cars are really nice and inexpensive.
These cars are in tons of countries outside of China and they are very well received.
I agree with you. China is manufacturing cheap products because that’s what (a lot of) consumers want as well. They also make expensive quality products, too. I have friends who like to rag on Made In China products but they love the quality of their iPhones which are just Designed in California.
What do you do when you need something fixed? Can parts be had?
You can order them and then have a mechanic fix it for you. It’s the same way in America.
The US government can do the same, and they do bailouts for companies often too. Isn’t that also meddling in the free market? Why didn’t the US government incentivize EV then?
One of the ways they have are through CAFE credits - incentives for higher fuel efficiency and electric vehicles, since at least 2012. However the credits are tradeable, so legacy manufacturers instead bought credits from Tesla, and other EV manufacturers
Pretty sure that’s a core part of Tesla’s growth model.
due to aggressive subsidy and investment by the Chinese government
yes. similar to a lot of western products.
Shocker. People don’t want to pay $40k + to commute to work.
A lot of people want a reasonably priced car that can commute, have enough range for something fun on the weekend, and have a stereo that isn’t total shit.
the U.S industry has up to the time when BYD finishes its factory in Mexico to design more sub 20k vehicles.
The issue is that there aren’t low cost cars anymore. Everything is over 25k and the used cars market is insane.
So yeah, no shit we want cheaper cars.
Whose fault is it?
Chinese EV manufacturers, on the other hand, are already five to 10 years ahead of their American and European rivals, Kumar said. A lot of that is thanks to aggressive investments in the EV industry from the Chinese government.
From the average American’s perspective? Probably still China. China always bad. Always.
Americans are also so lacking in moral consistency that they’ll throw their racism and xenophobia to the side just to save $1.
Have you ever handled anything made in China? It’ll be something invented somewhere else, implemented worse.
It’s amazing what kind of leaps you can make with government funding research.
Yet US has incentives, mandates, and protectionism. Why aren’t US manufacturers 5-10 years ahead?
Don’t forget the IP theft!
Everyone does that though. My favourite is the original Xbox and everything from around the same time having notoriously bad capacitors because a faulty electrolyte formula was chain stolen.
Stealing IP from SUV companies to make cheap EVs is insanely based
Make small trucks you stupid pieces of shit! Make them SMALL.
Fuck the chicken tax, I want my Toyota helix.
Capitalists hate competition.
Apparently when everything’s made in China, it gives China a bit of an advantage…
… who’d have thought, except everyone who said so when the west started outsourcing all their manufacturing work there.
Has anyone released an electric car which came with an extra battery for trip replacements, and gave you the ability to buy more batteries for longer trips?
Yes. Chaina even: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNZy603as5w
There’s trucks with swappable batteries but it all lacks a universal format.
American Automobile industry decided back in the 1970’s they were going to pull as much value out of the consumer as they possibly could, which destroyed the reputation of American cars being the best made vehicles in the world.
Americans want value, and to stop being screwed by more and more expensive cars which suck and break down, so are open to alternatives which is why the Japanese car imports exploded in popularity.
China is looking for influence, and so the “value” the CCP wants, is other than monetary to exploit the American populace, and this is one way they’re looking to achieve that.
“Foreign oligarchs are taking over!” - domestic oligarchs probably
