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
80s: You wouldn’t buy a Japanese car!
90s: you wouldn’t buy a Korean car!
00s: you wouldn’t buy a small Italian car!
…I’d still never buy an Italian car of any size. Not then and not now.
It’s not the country of origin, it’s the brand that matters
Not scary for the auto workers who want to work on them, build them, supply parts for them, etc or the families who want affordable EVs. More scary for the wealth class who didn’t reinvest enough into updating their facilities and processes to stay competitive businesses. The government already gave them extra time with the embargo but that isn’t going to last forever.
Yes I think that’s the part where you have to, you know, compete or whatever.
“We hear you, American consumer! You say you want a sub-$40k, small, basic EV. So here’s another luxury SUV/pickup truck/yacht crossover starting at $90,000.”
You have to be capitalistic, no not like that!
They’ll just ban them from being imported. Far cheaper to pay off some politicians than it is to compete or whatever. Kinda like the tariffs on the solar panels ‘flooding the market’ they just announced.
It’s difficult to compete with Chinese companies that operate at a loss and are subsidized by the Chinese government.
Fucking lol. Good thing we don’t subsidize ANYTHING AT ALL and never export anything either. Boy. You’d have to be EVIL to want your country to have AFFORDABLE CARS. What’s next, AFFORDABLE HOUSING?
Why can’t we subsidize American carmakers more?
We do. They just send the windfall to exec salary and shareholders rather than to tax paying customers.
Why would we?
Subsidies are an incredible tool when used well, like when they funded a bunch of utility cooperatives that electrified rural US. Maybe you’re asking why we should because propping up the car industry when public transit and bike infrastructure should be subsidized instead, rather than challenging subsidies, though.
Yeah, I meant specifically for the car industry, given the rampant price gouging they’re obviously doing. They’ve clearly demonstrated any amount of profit they get will simply go right into the C suite and shareholder’s pockets rather than innovation.
Nooooo, you have to buy local, get our new Chevro-laid Mountain Dew 16x16 for only 250k (Tips not included)
Everyone is broke as fuck we are open to cheap everything. People are living in literal sheds
No, most of us are broke because we insist on ensuring that suburban mcmansions are the only places to really live. When you spend 30% on driving and 40% on housing, suddenly you are broke.
I wish I could afford a shed.
it’s like you’ve never heard of roommates. If you get a third job and find a couple people, i’m sure you could afford to rent a shed
Just stop spending so much money on food. Sheds will feel bigger if you are starving to death
I mean fuck, if only we could get shit like kei trucks.
Some of us have been open to foreign vehicles you can’t really get in the US for a long time. Oh well.
Absolutely. So many sensible sized European cars aren’t sold in the US because bullshit market research says small car bad big truck good.
Nope, it’s the government’s mileage standards. If you make a truck with a shorter wheelbase and track, it has to hit higher gas mileage standards. Easier to make a big truck that’s allowed worse mileage.
Also, I did a brief stint selling cars in the 90s. One of the salesmen explained it like this, "What’s the real difference in a big truck and a small truck? Same engineering effort, same production work, all that. Hell, same parts for most systems.
More steel on the big one, and steel is cheap. We can charge a premium for the larger truck."
But the European market is also pushing bigger cars and SUV.
The smart is now a 4 meters SUV
The Volkswagen up (small 4 person car) is out of production and they’re selling nothing under 4 meters
The fiat panda (another small 4 person car) is in the process of being redesigned and the mockups look like a huge range rover SUV
Skoda, after retiring the citigo, has the Fabia that’s relatively small (almost 4 meters) and the rest are huge
Most automakers are giving up on the cheap and small compact car segment, leaving a big gap for Chinese automakers
The smart is now a 4 meters SUV
Is it? I haven’t heard about it, I’ve seen some weird concept picture, but the Fortwo as currently being manufactured is still the same 2.6m long car as it was in 2014 as per Wikipedia.
The Volkswagen up (small 4 person car) is out of production and they’re selling nothing under 4 meters Skoda, after retiring the citigo, has the Fabia that’s relatively small (almost 4 meters) and the rest are huge
They are the same company. The Skoda Citigo and the Seat Mii are both just rebadged Volkswagen Up cars.
The fiat panda (another small 4 person car) is in the process of being redesigned and the mockups look like a huge range rover SUV
Those mockups are actually the redesign of the Panda Cross, which was an SUV-ish thing they introduced in 2014. Fiat still makes the subcompact 500, having recently made an electric version.
Some EU automakers are doing weird stuff, but if you look at the electric car market for example, at lest where I live, locally produced electric kei trucks actually outsold Tesla at some point.
My absolute favorite vehicle, based on looks alone
The massive size of vehicles in the U.S. is ridiculous. I think a lot of people would buy smaller, cheaper cars if they were on the market.
The EPA makes really tight emissions targets for vehicles under a certain size or the auto makers have to pay a fee iirc. Pretty sure they the medium sized stuff out of existance, an unfortunately I’m guessing the same fees would apply to imports too.
I think folks bought into SUVs since they were bigger & selfishly less likely to take more damage in a crash. As such, with SUV tanks everywhere, being a pedestrian or in a small car on the road on in an SUV’s trajectory can often lead to lethal injury.
Don’t cram touchscreens and smart features into every fucking aspect of your car. Keep your costs low, keep prices low, and believe it or not, you’ll tap into the “bottom” 60% of the market that has been forced to buy used for the last 10 years. I don’t want a base trim 10 year old Honda Accord with 150k miles, but it’s all I can find for under $20k.
Wut? I bought a brand new car for €11k three years ago. Right enough the same car is 15k now but still
I keep getting shit on for wanting an EV with manual roll-up windows where you have to use your hands, a super basic FM stereo kit, and a dash clock being the most advanced shit inside. I don’t need rear-view cameras and sensors and other shit that complicates and increases repair and insurance costs. I don’t get it. Give me dead simple, please and thank you.
Back up cameras are mandatory in the US, and apparently Automatic Emergency Braking will be mandatory starting in 2029, so you’ll be stuck with some sensors whether you like it or not as well.
But otherwise I agree that buttons and dials are better for controlling AC and radio than a touchscreen ever will be.
Yeesh. I’m still driving a vehicle from 1999. Guess I’m out of the loop on the backup camera thing.
Backup cameras are useless for many people. I can either wear glasses so that I can see where I’m driving, or I can take them off to see the fisheyed backup screen. Not both.
Backup cameras are pretty good imo because they let you see the small things you wouldn’t be able to see out of a mirror. Helps prevent needless accidents. If you don’t wanna use it, just don’t look at it. Most cars should still have rear view mirrors
Good thing glasses are permanently superglued to your face and thus it’s impossible to swap between having them on and off when swapping between going backwards and forwards…
Except for those of us who, you know, like to see where we’re going rather than relying on a limited FOV camera. Of course, if I could learn to remove and replace them while keeping both hands engaged in actually, you know, steering the damn car, that’d be great.
I better have both hands on the wheel for all those times I’m mid turn and shift while still moving into reverse……
It’s… for when you’re backing up. You’ve come to a complete stop. You’re going to stop before you start moving forward again. It’s not hard to tilt glasses onto the top of your head while you stop or flip them back down when you stop.
A MUCH bigger issue would be the rear view mirrors which are just cameras and screens.
Are you mixing the two up?
That’s not a reasonable thing to expect to have to do while driving. Sounds like the “you’re holding it wrong” of cars
the backup camera is useful when the rear window is obstructed (such as from mud/dust) and for comically large vehicles where a short pole wouldn’t be visible if it was less than 3ft behind it.
Touchscreens and “smart” features don’t add enough cost to justify the premium you pay for them.
This. Removing the $200 Android tablet from the dash isn’t going to make cars suddenly $5,000 cheaper.
but they love charging 5k for it though.
Touch screens in cars are a massive safety issue. I’m not saying they don’t have some benefits but the fact that many newer cars have basically no physical buttons to perform basic functions is a problem. I can feel for the dial to adjust the volume or change the radio station. But a touch screen encourages the driver to take their focus off the road. That’s a serious problem.
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If they want our loyalty, make fucking better cars
I mean, in the spirit of the post, make fucking cheaper cars
Cars have been getting expensive AF
Cars has been so poorly made dor 1 or 2 decades now, that I respect most people who drives late 90’s to early 00’s cars.
Electric cars are a joke in terms of quality. How they don’t have self-dignity at all?
The biggest con is the industry’s war to make Kei trucks illegal in the US.
I’d rather walk than spend money on an ‘American’ car. Fuck, I’d rather walk period but you can catch my drift.
There’s all kinds of wacky taxes, regulations, and barriers to prevent the US industry from having to compete with the world. One such example is the Chicken Tax:
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/chicken-tax.asp
That one keeps the Toyota Hilux out of the US.
Toyota Hilux: the middle-east terrorist’s truck of choice.
But seriously, those things are everywhere in the Middle East and Africa.
I guess you need a cheap, reliable, relatively high performance truck with good off-road capabilities with a large bed to mount weaponry on.
What else would they use?
Half your fleet experiencing engine failure around 110,000 miles really puts a wrinkle in the jihad so I guess that rules out Chevrolet.
This.
If automakers were truly scared, Ford wouldn’t be scaling back it’s EV plans.
The world doesn’t need an EV Mustang or $99K F150, it needs an EV Focus or Escort oor Fiesta level car that normal people can afford.
Which we won’t get with Ford deciding instead to focus on hybrids.
Instead, the Blue Oval wants to focus on making more hybrids instead and says it will have hybrid options for all its internal combustion engine-powered vehicles by 2030.
Also, apparently, people quite like the EV Mustang.
But with Mustang Mach-E sales up 77 percent to 9,589 sold, and a 148 percent growth for the E-Transit, Ford is the country’s second-bestselling EV brand.
Lemmy:
Go UAW, fight for higher wages and better working conditions
Also Lemmy:
I demand the cheapest car possible, I don’t care if its built by slave labor in xinjiang. If western companies can’t compete with third world labor costs then they’re obviously inefficient and don’t deserve to exist.
If the price of labor was what determined the price, then why have prices gone up, when labor prices have not?
Car prices haven’t gone up, the average purchase prices of cars has gone up but that’s because people are buying more expensive cars, Large trucks, SUVs, luxury sedans, higher trims etc.
If you look at lower end sedans there price hasn’t changed much and has even gone down. For example if you look at the Chevy Malibu the current base price is $25,100 , in 2014 the base price was $22,340 or $29,400 adjusted for inflation, in 2004 it was $18,700 or $31,067
Auto workers wages have gone down but they’ve steadied in recent years in 2004 hourly wage was $21.71 or $36.07 adjusted for inflation, in 2014 it was $21.38 or $28.17 adjusted for inflation now they are around $30.
So since 2004 the price for a car has gone down 24% and auto wages have also gone down 20%. The recent UAW contract wage increases with little to no increase in price shows there is some room for workers to get more out of that $25,000 cost pie, but there would be no room if that pie is shrunk to $10,000 to compete with Chinese manufacturers.
I mean I’d argue there’s some serious room to help out the consumer since the price of cars has been outpacing inflation pretty handily since around 2014 (and been beating it into a bloody pulp since 2020). There is some insanely obvious price gouging going on when the average price of a new car in 2024 is over 49k. There is room for BOTH higher wages and at least semi reasonable car prices for the American consumer. In my eyes if you clearly aren’t willing to help me as an everyday clearly struggling American today, then goooo right ahead and kiss my ass as I buy foreign if it’s cheaper.
The average purchase price has gone up because people are buying more expensive cars, eg. Large trucks, SUVs, luxury sedans, high end trims etc. not because cars are getting more expensive.
If you look at lower end sedans there price hasn’t changed much. For example if you look at the Chevy Malibu the current base price is $25,100 , in 2014 the base price was $22,340 or $29,400 adjusted for inflation, in 2004 it was $18,700 or $31,067
None of those are close to the $10,000 cars coming out of China because you just can’t make a car for that cheap in a country with high labor costs like the u.s., or even Japan or Germany.
That added cost came in the form of dealer markups during COVID that never went away since theyre still selling. The manufacturers don’t have much control over what the dealerships do.
Now look at how much the executives are being paid in the US compared to the coat of the vehicles…
It ain’t the welders and wrench turners who are adding the most to the cost of vehicles.
As opposed to China where there totally isn’t a massive wealth gap between factory workers and their executives! Not like the CEO of Xpeng is worth 1.4 billion or anything…
It’s true, China Has Billionaires.
Income inequality rhetoric ignores that a class can reap the benefits of work via public investment (e.g. a bullet train), even if bosses make more as individuals. Working Chinese people are seeing the fruits of their labour despite billionaires and inequality. To recriminate them for not demanding more is recriminating the virtue of patience.
In fact, much of what passes for “socialist” idealism in the West turns out to be a mirror image of bog-standard liberal-capitalist entrepreneurship propaganda: “I will be my own boss! I will run my own business!” This idealism appears unaware that the necessity of management is foisted upon us by logistics, not capitalism. Denial of this reality results in fantasies of perfect synchrony between perfectly autonomous anarchists.
The “Fully Automated Luxury Communism” dream, embraced more by pundits with cushy lives than working people, also reveals a dark truth: western “socialists” have some awareness that a more equal world will mean losing first-world privileges. They cannot conceive of things getting better steadily and slowly, with hard work. And so they are forced to denigrate the Chinese road of self-sacrifice in favour of leisure-driven utopianism. The reality is that the victory of the working class over the capitalist class will usher in an era of hard but rewarding work, as opposed to hard work without reward.
United Nations, 2019: Helping 800 Million People Escape Poverty Was Greatest Such Effort in History, Says Secretary-General, on Seventieth Anniversary of China’s Founding
Sure man, I guess the nets on the sides of the factory buildings are there to catch workers who are jumping with joy because their work is so rewarding.
I don’t deny that China’s economic ascendancy has been remarkable and a big win against poverty, but now that people have gotten past the starvation phase, I don’t think you can use the “high tide raises all boats” analogy. It sounds a lot like tricke-down economics to me, with some hand-waving that things are different in China because the wealthy elites are actually generous patricians.
It’s the same thing the right does with government. It is a truism that there is all sorts of “inefficiencies” where the money is going to the wrong people for the wrong stuff.
In both cases, it’s sort of correct and sort of wrong. Corporations, governments, and any human institution beyond a certain scale (a few hundred people), will leak wealth into places it shouldn’t. It’s an unavoidable feature of our species as best I can tell.
It’s fine to accept it, it’s fine to be angry about it. It’s silly to blind yourself to it in some places and whinge about it in others.
slave labor in xinjiang
Oh no the CIA-backed terrorists got job training, the horror. https://lemmy.ml/comment/8175413
The actual slave labor is in the United States, thanks to the 13th amendment.
My worries are not that they can’t compete, it’s that they won’t even attempt to.
They managed to survive the Japanese/Korean car invasions (with some help). They will certainly try with China although it’s trickier for a lot of reasons.
If it pass safety standards without all those smart and data collection bs and being reliable for 7+ years with easy part sourcing I might give it a try.
The data collection thing is a big one for me.
Until they’re testing and pass NHTSA standards, fuckin nope.
Maybe people will change their minds once they see the aftermath of high speed crashes in these things. Or crashes with a MUCH heavier vehicle. With the weight of EVs these days you NEED a car that’s designed around safety.
According to Euro NCAP all Chinese cars from 2022–2024 got the 5 star safety rating. While many non Chinese models got 4 stars.
That’s interesting. I just watched a vid about how unreliable they are in China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtRk20GL_Gg (chinese audio, no eng sub)
Another chinese audio, no eng sub about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzv8mhhkcWo
I personally own Ioniq 5 but that is because Hyundai has better after sales support in my country than emerging Chinese OEMs.
Not to mention existing Chinese cars currently do not possess enough battery capacity and efficiency for my taste.
Once they fix that atrocious after sales support, I will reconsider them.
FYI, Wuling Air EV probably has the 2nd biggest sales number here in my country but people who own them complain alot about maintenance and spare part supplies.
You have to drive 250km to do your grocery shop then another 150km to drive your kids home? lmao
EVs are cheaper to fill up than internal combustion engine cars, even in oil rich countries - Changan Eado EV, 9 Saudi Riyal (2.4USD) to drive 460km (287.5miles) - . I want to get an EV eventually, I just want to know how well can they handle +50C temperatures.
Same, but I fear the risk of the car getting hacked giving the hacker the control or an EMP attack causing the electric car to shutdown indefinitely.
An EMP will brick any car from the past 3 decades. And also trigger ww3, so I’m not sure if you’ve got your priorities straight there.
ICE cars are just as reliant on computers. Have you seen the articles on “your car is spying on you” and BMWs heated seat monthly fee?
Plus, when you consider all the emissions controls required by the government versus the car companies trying to make the cars exciting for the consumer, the whole thing ends up one big giant mess of computer and sensors.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Changan Eado EV, 9 Saudi Riyal (2.4USD) to drive 460km (287.5miles)
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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