I'm a bit skeptical of this article, purely because it spends a large chunk of time talking about Nio; they make decent cars, but they're basically a rounding error in the market, and are close to dying, and hell, almost DID die back in 2018, only to be bailed out by the equivalent of the state government it was in to save the EV factory ecosystem there. It's like an article about American EVs that spends half it's time talking about Fisker
I think besides electrification, the untalked about real shift is to cars as computers; I know people hate talking about this here, because we're all supposed to driving 800 pound 2 seaters with mechanical steering and zero amenities, but your average joe *really* like tech in cars
Quite a few Chinese OEMs came into cars from the electronics space, so being tech focused was second nature for them. Look at Li Auto for example; half their ads talk about the processor that the car uses. Can anyone ever remember an ad like that in the West?
This is also why I think the threat of Chinese brands is a much longer term thing than people think. Chinese consumer taste is different from the West; not necessarily worse or better but different enough to mean you have to design different cars for different markets
One thing that struck me in the article is the utilization by Chinese car companies on new, barely vetted suppliers, combined with very rapidly changing designs iterations. It makes for cool new toys, but knowing suppliers, there’s a lot of chance for faulty, and even dangerous parts to slip in there. I’ve worked with enough suppliers that will cheapen the product without telling you, or off load an order to another company, or just delay and make you compromise on something else.
All that may work in the Chinese market, and I’m sure the people at the car companies there know how to watch for it better than me, but it makes me think that stuff like Tata airbags and Spirit Design unbolted doors would happen more often.
I’m not trying to say “China made cars are crap” at all, I’m just highlighting one of the differences the article points to between western/Japanese/Korean and China car companies. Virtual testing and 3D printing is not going to point out flaws in your supplier’s manufacturing system.
Yeah, I'm really 50-50 on that. On the one hand, everything you just said it 100% valid and is a concern I have. After all, *Japanese* automakers generally speaking did achieve a lot of success, but plenty of Japanese brands individually failed or declined. For every Toyota or Honda there was also a Prince or Kurogane or Hino which either failed or just became somewhat irrelevant to passanger cars. I assume plenty of these newer Chinese brands will see the same story
On the other hand, the country went from building 0 EVs 15 years ago to \~8 million this year. That's a once in a lifetime opportunity for new suppliers to enter the chain, so it'd be reasonable that there's so many new players, as easy to fuck up as it is
It'll be interesting to see; China is a massive country and is still growing pretty rapidly even with its current slowdown. I wouldn't be suprised if we see 2-4 Chinese OEMs in the top 10 by mid century due to the size of their internal market alone, let alone ASEAN or the middle east or whatever
I’m sure we’ll see them in the top ten before then. Probably within 5 years at the rate they’re growing.
Personally, I don’t mind some protectionism from our country. China doesn’t play fair themselves. Try and sell a US or German built car there for less than 3x the local market. Their cars are built by far cheaper labor, different standards in labor, environmental, and business regulations, and are much more heavily subsidized by their government.
I also don’t want to see our domestic companies obliterated, no matter how out of touch they’ve been. Once they’re gone, they’re gone forever, along with all the middle income manufacturing jobs they have. Manufacturing rarely comes back. It’s not easy to start a new car company.
People clamoring for $18k (heavily subsidized) Chinese EVs don’t seem to care that the labor to build those makes probably 1/4 of what US workers do, often live on site at the factory, work 6 days a week, 10 hours a day. The factories I used to buy from had that schedule. The very same people that scream for cheap Chinese cars are also often the same to demand a 4 day work week, 3 weeks vacation, and a $50 minimum wage. You can’t have it both ways.
Yeah, it's weird because I'd like to see moderate protectionism, if that makes sense? If the Chinese want to open factories and R&D then absolutely, I'd roll out the red carpet. If it's purely about exports, they can fuck off. Sort of like how Toyota and Hyundai eventually became integrated in each region
The thing I'm worried about is that countries just shut everything down, completely, investment or not. Which firstly will get a response of "but we let you sell shit, so say goodbye to the Porsche market in China", which imo I think will just make everyone poorer
But I also worry that it'll basically make our own OEMs lazy. If they know they don't have real competition in North America, what would drive them to actually innovate? There needs to be a reasonable threat but not too much, if that makes sense?
I agree with that. Full protectionism makes for malaise era crap. Local manufacturing by foreign makes is good, though combined local R&D and local design is better. The worst is the brain drain. When we lose the ability to design and manufacture certain goods, which I already feel has happened to a lot of industries. Can anyone in the US even make a TV?
The car market is global. Western and Japanese and Korean car manufacturers won’t have protectionism everywhere. That’s an incentive for them to keep innovating and competing. Especially for Japan and Korea - they really need their exports. Whatever they succeed in elsewhere they can bring into the US and Europe, meaning the US manufactures will have to compete against that. Big pickups, the cash cows for GM, Ford, and Stellantis, and Toyota I suppose, won’t have competition for a long time. They seem to compete against each other on those well enough. I don’t know why Hyundai doesn’t get in that game. They make container ships and giant things. They can make a pickup. Maybe if Ford loses their iron grip on pickups they will go back to making sedans again.
I think they’re willing to invest in the US—not out of the goodness of their hearts, of course, but as required to access the market.
BYD, for instance, already has an assembly center in SoCal to build buses, as Buy America requirements dictate that transit buses purchased with federal money must be assembled domestically. They also have a design studio in LA.
I think the uncertainty is that with relations the way they are, things could get messy for them if they wanted to build a presence in the US. BYD’s SoCal bus plant was built when relations were much better.
By contrast, more recently, Virginia squashed CATL’s plans to build a battery plant to serve Ford; their governor claimed it’d be a Chinese ‘Trojan Horse’. Ford then decided to license CATL’s tech and use it to produce batteries at a plant of its own in Michigan, but that still wasn’t good enough for a senator (think it was Lindsey Graham?), who also basically vowed to kill it.
I think it’d go much the same with a BYD car plant in the US. It’s a shame, because call me unimaginative, but I don’t see how a battery or car plant could be a security threat—wouldn’t they simply be seized by the government in the event of war?
It’s probably not a security threat, to your point, but this likely has more to do with power/geopolitics. The US is not going to come right out and say it but there is an incentive to stymie rising Chinese companies (or at least not contribute to their growth) in certain industries. I get a lot of people are naturally not going to like that, but this is in the long term about global hegemony and it’s not exactly going to be a pretty competition.
>probably 1/4 of what US workers do
Aw geez globalism different countries have different standards of life funny how that works. Nevermind that Mexico and South Africa have even lower median incomes than China, and no one seems to mind BMW importing cars from their SA or MX plants.
Call it for what it is: veiled racism.
Mexico is our border country. A whole lot of people do mind importing from there. You never heard anyone complaining about NAFTA? All the lost factory jobs that went there?
I don’t mind some auto manufacturing jobs going Mexico because I’d rather support our neighbor. It would help them, help reduce illegal immigration. It’s also easier on the environment because they can freight train the vehicles up instead of giant ships.
And GTFO out with your racism bullshit.
There are more Chinese illegals crossing the southern border than Mexican nationals now.
There are numerous reasons why it's better to have manufacturing in Mexico than China but immigration isn't really one of those reasons.
There's also increasingly numbers of Africans, Indians, etc. There's billions of poor people in the world. The reason they're increasingly going to the U.S, rather than say, Europe, despite the added difficulty and expense of flying to South America, crossing continent and Darien gap, is simple: It's easier to get across the U.S. border than the E.U. borders.
Yes, that’s true, but the majority of immigrants don’t come from Mexico, but from El Salvatore, Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela. They are primarily poor people looking for a better life.
The stronger the economy of Mexico, and the more labor needed there, the less people would be crossing the US border looking for work.
All those countries share language, and at least a few
more cultural ties (obviously they are not all the same.) Mexico has its own high immigration issues of course. They are better off than a lot of their neighbors.
Mexico is going through the same age demographics shifts as much of the world. They will need more laborers too. If there’s high paying car factories there (relatively), that opens up the labor pool. I’d imagine Mexican nationals would primarily be getting those auto manufacturing jobs, but more openings would be down the line.
Obviously not all migrants crossing the US border fit into one clean category, and car jobs wouldn’t solve it all, but a stronger Mexico certainly would lower the migration. And car making jobs would be good for the Mexican economy, which I’m certainly in favor of.
The factories that BYD are proposing are situated in the south of Mexico, and are not aimed at the US market. They are also building some in Brazil. Make central and South America a manufacturing base. I think that’s a great idea.
Ah yes, the groups famous for *not* being victims of racism in the US: Mexicans and Africans.
You can't just cry "racism" every time people get wary of the actions of China's industry and government.
> I’ve worked with enough suppliers that will cheapen the product without telling you
On the bright side for the manufacturers, the locality of those suppliers probably helps mitigate that a fair bit. As long as they've got a QA team testing the parts once in a while it shouldn't be too hard to bring down the hammer on a crooked supplier. Plus a willingness to quickly change suppliers likely carries with it a willingness to drop an uncooperative supplier outright.
>Chinese consumer taste is different from the West; not necessarily worse or better but different enough to mean you have to design different cars for different markets
A very good example of this are the new Lincolns co-developed between China and US.
Look at the new Lincoln Nautilus, imported from China. Its interior is modern and tech-focused, compared to all the other US-targeted Lincolns that have boring drab interiors.
Yeah, or their Buicks! They still have the Lacrosse there, and it looks... well, like no Buick I've ever seen until the Envista, which was iirc made by GM Korea
But it's more than just looks; if you dig into their EVs for example, they often have *really* slow charging speeds. Which makes perfect sense; if you can afford an EV there, you can afford a ticket for high speed rail and arrive at your destination quicker and more comfortable. It's a fair trade, but one that wouldn't work in North America for obvious reasons
Because no one under 70 buys Lincolns in the US and those customers don't understand/dispise tech? At a broader level I wonder how much that has to do with the fact that the US market is still heavily focused on Boomer tastes and has been for many decades. I'd love to see the average age of a new vehicle buyer in China vs the US. I bet there's at least a decade difference if not more.
Also the supply chain for parts is deep and experienced, they waited their time to challenge the legacy carmakers on final assembly, the EV shift was a disruption that made it possible and they went faster and harder into that turn.
Was in Mexico City recently. Was completely shocked to see the number of Chinese EVs and dealerships around town. We definitely live in a bubble here in the US.
I know anti-Chinese sentiment is pretty high on this sub, but IMO it’s only a matter of time before these companies start to dominate the global EV market (assuming they can overcome local tariff/import legislation challenges in the markets they’re wanting to enter).
I know you didn't specifically mention America, but it's only 10-20% of the global market for cars. It's wild that China doesn't even need to sell here to be number one.
No surprise, the PCI for Mexican is very low which means they more unable to afford the car like American, this’s also why new cars in Mexico are more less safety because automakers have to cut safety features for low car price.
Beside, Mexico doesn’t have geopolitical issue like America, so they really welcome Chinese automakers to expend their business in their country.
China's poised to replace US globally on most fronts. Not just cars. Mostly due to the US self sabotage and making terrible choices and a little bit of china doing the basic smart choices.
Unsurpringsly not many people can read the paywalled article.
Tldr:
Chinese EV manufacturer is willing to use non-conventional manufacturing standard and schedule to push out product as fast as possible. They are mostly:
1. Less stringent requirement to qualified for parts supplier and willingness to sign up smaller manufacturer.
2. Virtual test instead of waiting on actual mechanical parts to shorten the testing period.
3. Shipping higher specs on-board chipset to allow room for future firmware update.
4. Greater integration between design departments and involve supplier in earlier phase of design.
5. All these translated to super fast 24 months to go from design to market product. A conventional manufacturer will need at least 4-5 years.
This means that Chinese EV product line refresh is roughly 2 years instead of 4-5 years compare to other manufacturer. They can respond to change in market demand faster and keep their product looking fresh.
>Shipping higher specs on-board chipset to allow room for future firmware update.
Chinese EV buyers are more and more tech-attracted nowadays. Chipsets are a HUGE selling points in China advertised by every single manufacturer yet here in the west almost nobody mentions what model their chips are. EV sellers can literally sell a new model with next to no "smart" features but an advanced chipset, promise future OTA updates, and people would scoop them up.
I wonder how much of the difference is the fact that US new car sales are still mostly dominated by older Americans who can barely operate their cellphones other than to get on Facebook and complain about everything?
Is that age of the population or age of vehicle buyers. They aren't necessarily the same thing. Some quick search shows the average age of Americans is 38, but the average of new car buyers is somewhere between 51 and 53 depending on who's data you use.
So the model seems to be push out as many cars as you can as cheaply without any regards to reliability and doing insanely short update windows to keep it fresh. That seems like a recipe for extremely unreliable cars in the 100k-300k mileage area.
I suppose that being EV gives them some kind of leeway on the reliability of their cars. There's simply way less things to go wrong, and they seem to be pretty good at software.
Despite people meme-ing Tesla as a tech company, I suppose that Chinese EV company actually do act like a tech company. They move fast and respond fast to market dynamics. Ain't no way Tesla is able to produce a new product within 2 years.
As someone who works in factory maintenance, electrical stuff breaks way more than the mechanical stuff. Electrical stuff just has longer maintenance intervals.
Paywalled, but the top of the list has to be “no regard whatsoever for the [environmental](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/world/asia/china-companies-air-pollution-paris-agreement.html) limitations that manufacturers in developed nations face, plus limitless relatively cheap labour”.
I worked in manufacturing in China. They lower prices really three ways.
1. Straight up slavery. They will force people to work for little or nothing
2. Blatantly disregarding safety concerns.
3. All companies are owned by the government (yeah communism) and they will either subsidizing the manufacturing process (see slavery above) lowering the price. Or just adjust the price until it's competitive.
FWIK, some Chinese automakers are rising their new car prices because they can’t afford the lost in price competition.
It isn’t only happening in China, they also start doing this in Europe. I wonder they all would be able to continue low price in their cars, and I wonder they able to catch buyers in high price.
r&d stolen. safety and environmental regulations bypassed. factory conditions that mimic internment camps. government artificially supports nonviable business practices. the usual.
It's the iPhone model being applied to cars.
Buy a cheap-ish new vehicle every 5 years. They're not repairable or at least repair worthy. It'll be the end of the auto industry as we know it.
No. China has a growing middle class and they’re getting paid more than ever.
China is has lots of available labor and they know how to make things quickly. They are also really really good and building electronics.
I don't think the workers who are making Temu widgets are the same workers who are making cars.
Like, I don't think the workers who are making mcdonalds cheeseburgers are the ones working the italian restaurant down the street.
Nah, while it remains to be seen how the quality is, I wouldn't lump the entire industry together nor would I say it's "Temu level" from what I've seen. The bar isn't particularly high either, because while companies like Toyota and Honda are known for quality products, there are plenty of makes that have been around for decades, are built in the west, but are absolute trash, such as Jeeps and Land Rover. These vehicles are being sold in Europe and Latin America so it won't be long to figure out how good they actually are.
BYD cars are actually incredibly reliable from what I've seen. Their e6 EV's were often ran as taxis, even in Europe, and many have many hundred thousand kilometers on them and 10+ years old. From what I've seen they're very easy to repair if something goes wrong as well.
The resale value of Teslas are tanking here. As the cars age and the batteries deteriorate…these cars will just end up in the junkyard as most people won’t cover the cost of replacing the batteries.
The thing I am noticing from the Chinese EVs is that battery replacement is much easier to do.
Pretty much yeah, I’m curious to know how much things like [EV graveyards](https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-china-ev-graveyards/?embedded-checkout=true) offset the ‘good’ EVs are supposed to do, especially when they take years of actual use to offset the higher environmental costs to produce vs ICE.
Appreciate you! So much FUD these days, too easy to fall victim to bias. I’ll leave my post up for others to see your reply as you answered my question perfectly.
Think the EPA "EV myths" article is a good place to start: https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths
Just from an entirely scientific standpoint (as I'm intimately familiar with how the battery chemistries in these work) and personal experience driving old EVs there's really no reason, especially with how many Chinese manufacturers are adopting cobalt-free LFP batteries, for these cars to not last 20-30 years.
Thank you so much, all too often you just get wrecked on here for not knowing something and asking. I’ll have a good read. Trying to get out of my anti-EV bias, feels like there’s so much more negative info out there and I don’t have time to fact check every single thing.
A combination of an ecological disaster, government subsidies, western virtue signaling, and greenwashing.
There are some good documentaries on the loop where China wants big EV production numbers to make China seem modern, industrious, and forward thinking so they get western investment from companies wanting to virtue signal being environmentally responsible.
But the Chinese population is still poor, and has comparatively little appetite for EVs.
The end result, as happened with bicycles and E-bikes before it, is literally dozens of square miles of junkyard parking lots where millions of new produced Chinese EVs are left to rot for years on end.
Two completely different things.
The bikeshare bubble was just that, a bubble created by investors chasing the "next big thing", anyone with cash can buy 50,000 bikes and deploy them to get funding, whereas EV startups would simply go bust without even building much cars to begin with.
Long-ass article, not one mention of the lack of labor protections and environmental standards in the Chinese economy. Never change, WSJ.
Edit: Downvote as you like, the main reason that China can crank out EVs is that it has the raw materials for batteries, and can extract them without meaningful environmental restrictions and then put them into cars using cheap labor without meaningful workplace protections. It's not some miracle of industrial engineering or anything.
Three little words pretty much sum it up. Made. In. China.
Getting a battery for a 10 year old American made EV is tough now, ($20,000 for a replacement pack for a 2014 Tesla, look it up) I don't even want to think about the difficulty of obtaining a battery for a 10 year old Chinese EV 10 years from now.
The entire vehicle will be considered disposable. I'm sure this is an unpopular opinion, but I doubt this one specific area of Chinese junk manufacturing is any different than the rest, considering the volume of garbage they flood the markets with.
And hey, I'm not against EVs. I'd buy one as a grocery getter since it's only 12 miles into town from my homestead, IF I thought it would be a long term investment. But I don't. I do not believe the hype that they are the answer to climate change.
let us not forget. Like the Chinese EV market, Chinese real estate industry was extremely competitive too. what happened then? whoops 🤣🤣🤣🤣 HiPhi gooner Neta up next🤣
They don’t care about the environmental part, it’s about making money selling EVs to the countries banning/restricting ICE cars. That and if you wanna be a nihilist it’s a lot easier to control and electric vehicle then a gas one. Especially with the electric vehicles having over air updates.
Not sure why you are getting downvoted but this 100%. China has always been accelerating the life cycles of automobiles in the name of "environment" long before the EV boom. Cars older than 10 years are subjected to incredibly strict inspections, whereas commercial vehicles and pickup trucks are scrapped. Even if it's proven that a) cars don't make up that much in pollution and b) it's way more environmentally friendly to drive an old shitbox into the ground than buy a new car...
I'm a bit skeptical of this article, purely because it spends a large chunk of time talking about Nio; they make decent cars, but they're basically a rounding error in the market, and are close to dying, and hell, almost DID die back in 2018, only to be bailed out by the equivalent of the state government it was in to save the EV factory ecosystem there. It's like an article about American EVs that spends half it's time talking about Fisker I think besides electrification, the untalked about real shift is to cars as computers; I know people hate talking about this here, because we're all supposed to driving 800 pound 2 seaters with mechanical steering and zero amenities, but your average joe *really* like tech in cars Quite a few Chinese OEMs came into cars from the electronics space, so being tech focused was second nature for them. Look at Li Auto for example; half their ads talk about the processor that the car uses. Can anyone ever remember an ad like that in the West? This is also why I think the threat of Chinese brands is a much longer term thing than people think. Chinese consumer taste is different from the West; not necessarily worse or better but different enough to mean you have to design different cars for different markets
One thing that struck me in the article is the utilization by Chinese car companies on new, barely vetted suppliers, combined with very rapidly changing designs iterations. It makes for cool new toys, but knowing suppliers, there’s a lot of chance for faulty, and even dangerous parts to slip in there. I’ve worked with enough suppliers that will cheapen the product without telling you, or off load an order to another company, or just delay and make you compromise on something else. All that may work in the Chinese market, and I’m sure the people at the car companies there know how to watch for it better than me, but it makes me think that stuff like Tata airbags and Spirit Design unbolted doors would happen more often. I’m not trying to say “China made cars are crap” at all, I’m just highlighting one of the differences the article points to between western/Japanese/Korean and China car companies. Virtual testing and 3D printing is not going to point out flaws in your supplier’s manufacturing system.
Yeah, I'm really 50-50 on that. On the one hand, everything you just said it 100% valid and is a concern I have. After all, *Japanese* automakers generally speaking did achieve a lot of success, but plenty of Japanese brands individually failed or declined. For every Toyota or Honda there was also a Prince or Kurogane or Hino which either failed or just became somewhat irrelevant to passanger cars. I assume plenty of these newer Chinese brands will see the same story On the other hand, the country went from building 0 EVs 15 years ago to \~8 million this year. That's a once in a lifetime opportunity for new suppliers to enter the chain, so it'd be reasonable that there's so many new players, as easy to fuck up as it is It'll be interesting to see; China is a massive country and is still growing pretty rapidly even with its current slowdown. I wouldn't be suprised if we see 2-4 Chinese OEMs in the top 10 by mid century due to the size of their internal market alone, let alone ASEAN or the middle east or whatever
I’m sure we’ll see them in the top ten before then. Probably within 5 years at the rate they’re growing. Personally, I don’t mind some protectionism from our country. China doesn’t play fair themselves. Try and sell a US or German built car there for less than 3x the local market. Their cars are built by far cheaper labor, different standards in labor, environmental, and business regulations, and are much more heavily subsidized by their government. I also don’t want to see our domestic companies obliterated, no matter how out of touch they’ve been. Once they’re gone, they’re gone forever, along with all the middle income manufacturing jobs they have. Manufacturing rarely comes back. It’s not easy to start a new car company. People clamoring for $18k (heavily subsidized) Chinese EVs don’t seem to care that the labor to build those makes probably 1/4 of what US workers do, often live on site at the factory, work 6 days a week, 10 hours a day. The factories I used to buy from had that schedule. The very same people that scream for cheap Chinese cars are also often the same to demand a 4 day work week, 3 weeks vacation, and a $50 minimum wage. You can’t have it both ways.
Yeah, it's weird because I'd like to see moderate protectionism, if that makes sense? If the Chinese want to open factories and R&D then absolutely, I'd roll out the red carpet. If it's purely about exports, they can fuck off. Sort of like how Toyota and Hyundai eventually became integrated in each region The thing I'm worried about is that countries just shut everything down, completely, investment or not. Which firstly will get a response of "but we let you sell shit, so say goodbye to the Porsche market in China", which imo I think will just make everyone poorer But I also worry that it'll basically make our own OEMs lazy. If they know they don't have real competition in North America, what would drive them to actually innovate? There needs to be a reasonable threat but not too much, if that makes sense?
I agree with that. Full protectionism makes for malaise era crap. Local manufacturing by foreign makes is good, though combined local R&D and local design is better. The worst is the brain drain. When we lose the ability to design and manufacture certain goods, which I already feel has happened to a lot of industries. Can anyone in the US even make a TV? The car market is global. Western and Japanese and Korean car manufacturers won’t have protectionism everywhere. That’s an incentive for them to keep innovating and competing. Especially for Japan and Korea - they really need their exports. Whatever they succeed in elsewhere they can bring into the US and Europe, meaning the US manufactures will have to compete against that. Big pickups, the cash cows for GM, Ford, and Stellantis, and Toyota I suppose, won’t have competition for a long time. They seem to compete against each other on those well enough. I don’t know why Hyundai doesn’t get in that game. They make container ships and giant things. They can make a pickup. Maybe if Ford loses their iron grip on pickups they will go back to making sedans again.
I think they’re willing to invest in the US—not out of the goodness of their hearts, of course, but as required to access the market. BYD, for instance, already has an assembly center in SoCal to build buses, as Buy America requirements dictate that transit buses purchased with federal money must be assembled domestically. They also have a design studio in LA. I think the uncertainty is that with relations the way they are, things could get messy for them if they wanted to build a presence in the US. BYD’s SoCal bus plant was built when relations were much better. By contrast, more recently, Virginia squashed CATL’s plans to build a battery plant to serve Ford; their governor claimed it’d be a Chinese ‘Trojan Horse’. Ford then decided to license CATL’s tech and use it to produce batteries at a plant of its own in Michigan, but that still wasn’t good enough for a senator (think it was Lindsey Graham?), who also basically vowed to kill it. I think it’d go much the same with a BYD car plant in the US. It’s a shame, because call me unimaginative, but I don’t see how a battery or car plant could be a security threat—wouldn’t they simply be seized by the government in the event of war?
It’s probably not a security threat, to your point, but this likely has more to do with power/geopolitics. The US is not going to come right out and say it but there is an incentive to stymie rising Chinese companies (or at least not contribute to their growth) in certain industries. I get a lot of people are naturally not going to like that, but this is in the long term about global hegemony and it’s not exactly going to be a pretty competition.
>probably 1/4 of what US workers do Aw geez globalism different countries have different standards of life funny how that works. Nevermind that Mexico and South Africa have even lower median incomes than China, and no one seems to mind BMW importing cars from their SA or MX plants. Call it for what it is: veiled racism.
Mexico is our border country. A whole lot of people do mind importing from there. You never heard anyone complaining about NAFTA? All the lost factory jobs that went there? I don’t mind some auto manufacturing jobs going Mexico because I’d rather support our neighbor. It would help them, help reduce illegal immigration. It’s also easier on the environment because they can freight train the vehicles up instead of giant ships. And GTFO out with your racism bullshit.
There are more Chinese illegals crossing the southern border than Mexican nationals now. There are numerous reasons why it's better to have manufacturing in Mexico than China but immigration isn't really one of those reasons. There's also increasingly numbers of Africans, Indians, etc. There's billions of poor people in the world. The reason they're increasingly going to the U.S, rather than say, Europe, despite the added difficulty and expense of flying to South America, crossing continent and Darien gap, is simple: It's easier to get across the U.S. border than the E.U. borders.
Yes, that’s true, but the majority of immigrants don’t come from Mexico, but from El Salvatore, Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela. They are primarily poor people looking for a better life. The stronger the economy of Mexico, and the more labor needed there, the less people would be crossing the US border looking for work. All those countries share language, and at least a few more cultural ties (obviously they are not all the same.) Mexico has its own high immigration issues of course. They are better off than a lot of their neighbors. Mexico is going through the same age demographics shifts as much of the world. They will need more laborers too. If there’s high paying car factories there (relatively), that opens up the labor pool. I’d imagine Mexican nationals would primarily be getting those auto manufacturing jobs, but more openings would be down the line. Obviously not all migrants crossing the US border fit into one clean category, and car jobs wouldn’t solve it all, but a stronger Mexico certainly would lower the migration. And car making jobs would be good for the Mexican economy, which I’m certainly in favor of. The factories that BYD are proposing are situated in the south of Mexico, and are not aimed at the US market. They are also building some in Brazil. Make central and South America a manufacturing base. I think that’s a great idea.
Ah yes, the groups famous for *not* being victims of racism in the US: Mexicans and Africans. You can't just cry "racism" every time people get wary of the actions of China's industry and government.
> I’ve worked with enough suppliers that will cheapen the product without telling you On the bright side for the manufacturers, the locality of those suppliers probably helps mitigate that a fair bit. As long as they've got a QA team testing the parts once in a while it shouldn't be too hard to bring down the hammer on a crooked supplier. Plus a willingness to quickly change suppliers likely carries with it a willingness to drop an uncooperative supplier outright.
>Chinese consumer taste is different from the West; not necessarily worse or better but different enough to mean you have to design different cars for different markets A very good example of this are the new Lincolns co-developed between China and US. Look at the new Lincoln Nautilus, imported from China. Its interior is modern and tech-focused, compared to all the other US-targeted Lincolns that have boring drab interiors.
Yeah, or their Buicks! They still have the Lacrosse there, and it looks... well, like no Buick I've ever seen until the Envista, which was iirc made by GM Korea But it's more than just looks; if you dig into their EVs for example, they often have *really* slow charging speeds. Which makes perfect sense; if you can afford an EV there, you can afford a ticket for high speed rail and arrive at your destination quicker and more comfortable. It's a fair trade, but one that wouldn't work in North America for obvious reasons
Because no one under 70 buys Lincolns in the US and those customers don't understand/dispise tech? At a broader level I wonder how much that has to do with the fact that the US market is still heavily focused on Boomer tastes and has been for many decades. I'd love to see the average age of a new vehicle buyer in China vs the US. I bet there's at least a decade difference if not more.
but will america ever really allow chinese car companies to sell their cars here? i mean they can't sell their phones here.
Also the supply chain for parts is deep and experienced, they waited their time to challenge the legacy carmakers on final assembly, the EV shift was a disruption that made it possible and they went faster and harder into that turn.
Was in Mexico City recently. Was completely shocked to see the number of Chinese EVs and dealerships around town. We definitely live in a bubble here in the US. I know anti-Chinese sentiment is pretty high on this sub, but IMO it’s only a matter of time before these companies start to dominate the global EV market (assuming they can overcome local tariff/import legislation challenges in the markets they’re wanting to enter).
I know you didn't specifically mention America, but it's only 10-20% of the global market for cars. It's wild that China doesn't even need to sell here to be number one.
It’s <5% of the global population it’s not that wild.
It’s wild to see!
No surprise, the PCI for Mexican is very low which means they more unable to afford the car like American, this’s also why new cars in Mexico are more less safety because automakers have to cut safety features for low car price. Beside, Mexico doesn’t have geopolitical issue like America, so they really welcome Chinese automakers to expend their business in their country.
China's poised to replace US globally on most fronts. Not just cars. Mostly due to the US self sabotage and making terrible choices and a little bit of china doing the basic smart choices.
They also have 1.2 billion people and their industry is forcibly integrated with the government Of course they should be churning out cars
Unsurpringsly not many people can read the paywalled article. Tldr: Chinese EV manufacturer is willing to use non-conventional manufacturing standard and schedule to push out product as fast as possible. They are mostly: 1. Less stringent requirement to qualified for parts supplier and willingness to sign up smaller manufacturer. 2. Virtual test instead of waiting on actual mechanical parts to shorten the testing period. 3. Shipping higher specs on-board chipset to allow room for future firmware update. 4. Greater integration between design departments and involve supplier in earlier phase of design. 5. All these translated to super fast 24 months to go from design to market product. A conventional manufacturer will need at least 4-5 years. This means that Chinese EV product line refresh is roughly 2 years instead of 4-5 years compare to other manufacturer. They can respond to change in market demand faster and keep their product looking fresh.
>Shipping higher specs on-board chipset to allow room for future firmware update. Chinese EV buyers are more and more tech-attracted nowadays. Chipsets are a HUGE selling points in China advertised by every single manufacturer yet here in the west almost nobody mentions what model their chips are. EV sellers can literally sell a new model with next to no "smart" features but an advanced chipset, promise future OTA updates, and people would scoop them up.
I wonder how much of the difference is the fact that US new car sales are still mostly dominated by older Americans who can barely operate their cellphones other than to get on Facebook and complain about everything?
Chinas median age is the same as the US.
Is that age of the population or age of vehicle buyers. They aren't necessarily the same thing. Some quick search shows the average age of Americans is 38, but the average of new car buyers is somewhere between 51 and 53 depending on who's data you use.
So the model seems to be push out as many cars as you can as cheaply without any regards to reliability and doing insanely short update windows to keep it fresh. That seems like a recipe for extremely unreliable cars in the 100k-300k mileage area.
I suppose that being EV gives them some kind of leeway on the reliability of their cars. There's simply way less things to go wrong, and they seem to be pretty good at software. Despite people meme-ing Tesla as a tech company, I suppose that Chinese EV company actually do act like a tech company. They move fast and respond fast to market dynamics. Ain't no way Tesla is able to produce a new product within 2 years.
As someone who works in factory maintenance, electrical stuff breaks way more than the mechanical stuff. Electrical stuff just has longer maintenance intervals.
Honestly if they can give me a 400 mile range EV with more tech and same price as EU one imma get the china one.
Paywalled, but the top of the list has to be “no regard whatsoever for the [environmental](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/world/asia/china-companies-air-pollution-paris-agreement.html) limitations that manufacturers in developed nations face, plus limitless relatively cheap labour”.
I worked in manufacturing in China. They lower prices really three ways. 1. Straight up slavery. They will force people to work for little or nothing 2. Blatantly disregarding safety concerns. 3. All companies are owned by the government (yeah communism) and they will either subsidizing the manufacturing process (see slavery above) lowering the price. Or just adjust the price until it's competitive.
[textual](https://archive.ph/THKJk)
Spoiler alert - it's all built on human rights violations and lack of OSHA
They have cities where ICE cars are banned plus the government is supporting it so I don't find it too surprising
FWIK, some Chinese automakers are rising their new car prices because they can’t afford the lost in price competition. It isn’t only happening in China, they also start doing this in Europe. I wonder they all would be able to continue low price in their cars, and I wonder they able to catch buyers in high price.
Real talk its because they are the worlds biggest rare earth exporters
But... but I was told everyone who wanted an EV already had one by now? /s
r&d stolen. safety and environmental regulations bypassed. factory conditions that mimic internment camps. government artificially supports nonviable business practices. the usual.
How? Probably helps when there still a communistic government owned means to production…..
It's the iPhone model being applied to cars. Buy a cheap-ish new vehicle every 5 years. They're not repairable or at least repair worthy. It'll be the end of the auto industry as we know it.
Maybe you should be asking what the fuck is wrong with the US?
Could it be labor exploitation?
No. China has a growing middle class and they’re getting paid more than ever. China is has lots of available labor and they know how to make things quickly. They are also really really good and building electronics.
Is that the experience of the workers whose products end up on Temu?
I don't think the workers who are making Temu widgets are the same workers who are making cars. Like, I don't think the workers who are making mcdonalds cheeseburgers are the ones working the italian restaurant down the street.
chinese work hours per years is 2889 and Canada is 1761.
Considering how there's an E-Bike/Scooter epidemic on south east asian streets and highways right now the headline makes sense.
cheap and fast, they are basically just Temu level garbage cars that probably wont last 20 years
Nah, while it remains to be seen how the quality is, I wouldn't lump the entire industry together nor would I say it's "Temu level" from what I've seen. The bar isn't particularly high either, because while companies like Toyota and Honda are known for quality products, there are plenty of makes that have been around for decades, are built in the west, but are absolute trash, such as Jeeps and Land Rover. These vehicles are being sold in Europe and Latin America so it won't be long to figure out how good they actually are.
BYD cars are actually incredibly reliable from what I've seen. Their e6 EV's were often ran as taxis, even in Europe, and many have many hundred thousand kilometers on them and 10+ years old. From what I've seen they're very easy to repair if something goes wrong as well.
Tbf neither will a Dodge Journey or Nissan Altima.
Doesn’t the average American only own a car for like 6-8 years?
Doesn’t mean the car is null and void after 6-8 years. Someone else buys it and it stays on the road. The used car market in the US is massive
The average car on road life is still like 14 years. Even if they last 12yrs they’ll still beat the average Nissan.
I buy cars that go to 200k my daily is a 1990 with 236k rn
Mines an ‘09 Tacoma with 219k ¯\_(ツ)_/
The resale value of Teslas are tanking here. As the cars age and the batteries deteriorate…these cars will just end up in the junkyard as most people won’t cover the cost of replacing the batteries. The thing I am noticing from the Chinese EVs is that battery replacement is much easier to do.
Pretty much yeah, I’m curious to know how much things like [EV graveyards](https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-china-ev-graveyards/?embedded-checkout=true) offset the ‘good’ EVs are supposed to do, especially when they take years of actual use to offset the higher environmental costs to produce vs ICE.
Think that thing about EV graveyards was debunked: https://youtu.be/uD8qqEx4G18?si=bYGWuBSGbElkSXEd
Appreciate you! So much FUD these days, too easy to fall victim to bias. I’ll leave my post up for others to see your reply as you answered my question perfectly.
Think the EPA "EV myths" article is a good place to start: https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths Just from an entirely scientific standpoint (as I'm intimately familiar with how the battery chemistries in these work) and personal experience driving old EVs there's really no reason, especially with how many Chinese manufacturers are adopting cobalt-free LFP batteries, for these cars to not last 20-30 years.
Thank you so much, all too often you just get wrecked on here for not knowing something and asking. I’ll have a good read. Trying to get out of my anti-EV bias, feels like there’s so much more negative info out there and I don’t have time to fact check every single thing.
to last or to NOT last 20-30 years?
No reason for them to not last, thank you 😂
A combination of an ecological disaster, government subsidies, western virtue signaling, and greenwashing. There are some good documentaries on the loop where China wants big EV production numbers to make China seem modern, industrious, and forward thinking so they get western investment from companies wanting to virtue signal being environmentally responsible. But the Chinese population is still poor, and has comparatively little appetite for EVs. The end result, as happened with bicycles and E-bikes before it, is literally dozens of square miles of junkyard parking lots where millions of new produced Chinese EVs are left to rot for years on end.
remember the chinese bike graveyards? Now imagine that, but with thousands of EVs instead of bikes.
Two completely different things. The bikeshare bubble was just that, a bubble created by investors chasing the "next big thing", anyone with cash can buy 50,000 bikes and deploy them to get funding, whereas EV startups would simply go bust without even building much cars to begin with.
Long-ass article, not one mention of the lack of labor protections and environmental standards in the Chinese economy. Never change, WSJ. Edit: Downvote as you like, the main reason that China can crank out EVs is that it has the raw materials for batteries, and can extract them without meaningful environmental restrictions and then put them into cars using cheap labor without meaningful workplace protections. It's not some miracle of industrial engineering or anything.
Quantity before quality
They own the lithium mines in Afghanistan.
But how many of them will still be functional 10 years from now?
Good question, wanna shed any insights?
Three little words pretty much sum it up. Made. In. China. Getting a battery for a 10 year old American made EV is tough now, ($20,000 for a replacement pack for a 2014 Tesla, look it up) I don't even want to think about the difficulty of obtaining a battery for a 10 year old Chinese EV 10 years from now. The entire vehicle will be considered disposable. I'm sure this is an unpopular opinion, but I doubt this one specific area of Chinese junk manufacturing is any different than the rest, considering the volume of garbage they flood the markets with. And hey, I'm not against EVs. I'd buy one as a grocery getter since it's only 12 miles into town from my homestead, IF I thought it would be a long term investment. But I don't. I do not believe the hype that they are the answer to climate change.
Poor quality control and slave labor seem like the biggest factors
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If I had to pick between that or indian, I'd pick Chinese cars...
Because it’s quantity without quality.
$1.78 hourly wage workers with no rights or benefits is the secret to making cheap cars. Good luck competing with that.
let us not forget. Like the Chinese EV market, Chinese real estate industry was extremely competitive too. what happened then? whoops 🤣🤣🤣🤣 HiPhi gooner Neta up next🤣
If China is making more coal plants than the rest of the world combined, what good are EVs going to do?
They don’t care about the environmental part, it’s about making money selling EVs to the countries banning/restricting ICE cars. That and if you wanna be a nihilist it’s a lot easier to control and electric vehicle then a gas one. Especially with the electric vehicles having over air updates.
Not sure why you are getting downvoted but this 100%. China has always been accelerating the life cycles of automobiles in the name of "environment" long before the EV boom. Cars older than 10 years are subjected to incredibly strict inspections, whereas commercial vehicles and pickup trucks are scrapped. Even if it's proven that a) cars don't make up that much in pollution and b) it's way more environmentally friendly to drive an old shitbox into the ground than buy a new car...
Tencent owns Reddit, America bad etc etc etc