And, a recent tour of one of the Asian powerhouse’s vehicle plants has proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt, at least to Honda President and CEO Toshihiro Mibe.
“We have no chance against this,” Mibe said upon a visit to a Shanghai parts factory, commenting on its seamless automation across all levels of production. Logistics, procurement and all aspects of the process were so automated, in fact, that he did not spot a single human worker on the supplier’s floor.
Ford executives saying even three years ago that China was way ahead of the game
Toyota’s CEO has likewise said regarding not just his company, but the industry in general, “unless things change, we will not survive”
“We took zero action to compete and relied on protectionism and other forms of corruption to stay in business knowing that China was pulling ahead, we refused to plan for the future and harvested all the money for our owners instead and now we’re fucked unless you bail us out! Not the owners, of course, who could afford to bail us out, they will continue siphoning money even though they’re clearly incompetent, we need your taxes” … How about no?
Capitalists sound strange when they are faced with actual competition. That’s… kinda the whole point guys.
That’s capitalism.
¯\(ツ)/¯
“We insisted on fossil fuels and now Chinese electric car companies are eating our lunch, boo hoo”
Cry more fat capitalists
I just rented a car while on vacation and they gave me a perfectly fine Nissan Qashqai, except there was a problem with the car so I could not use it. The rental agency only had one car left, a BYD Seal hybrid.
What a fun car to drive. Had a lot of power, great handling, cameras and sensors everywhere for navigating tight spots, and since I was driving on the wrong side of the road, those came in handy.
I am sure that driving a brand new RAV-4 would be a similar experience, but after I was done with that car I searched its price range and competition, and the #1 car was in fact the Toyota Rav 4, and the comparison had that car out ahead due to resale value and initial quality, with the BYD Seal leading on price point, standard features, and battery range (which was significantly higher) among other categories.
I have a feeling that resale value and initial quality might be a shifting category, as well. Really impressed by that car.
Not my portfolio!
I mean, they’ll survive on brand name alone. I personally wouldn’t buy a Chinese EV, they’re too new to the market and I don’t know how well they last. I know that Toyotas and Hondas last well (if you buy the correct model)
Cold Take:
Good. They don’t deserve to survive. Demand will ensure industry bounceback and stability long term, at least nationally as new buniesses fill the void and labour recovers. Mind you, the US industry will probably never compete globally again having collectively chosen to just lag behind technological trends toward efficiency and sustainability to appease fossil fuel entanglements. These companies made the decisions they did not to adapt at a critical turning point and this is the result, and their current rhetoric is an artifact of decades of coddling by a lopsided nanny state spoon-feeding subsidies and bailouts to shitty investors and executives with garbage management practices at the expense of public services and infrastructure. There is no too big to fail, that’s capitalist coping propped up by a corrupt and captured economy that THEY lobbied for.In short, get fucked, and take your CEOs with you.
This depends on the strategy. If China lowered the prices and waited for the US car makers to go bust, they could then raise the prices as high as they want. US manufacturers would eventually continue production, but things would need to be automated for them to be competitive.
Personally, I think they should allow China to sell small cars in the United States. It’s a product that isn’t currently sold on our market.
I completely agree, and frankly I think most working class people would welcome the access regardless of where the manufacturing is being done, because the need of transportation isn’t going away. In an actual free market Chinese EVs simply would be adopted due to the compltete lack of a comparable product with reasonable pricing, or alternatives, which is part of why you’re seeing the market shifting in Canada, not that it’s an actual free market either but it is being helped by a response to aggressive US imperialism. The US market is artifically ‘free’ and constantly manipulated, so I’d think it’s more likely administrators will cling to the albatross of legacy manufacturing and prop it up to the detriment of the economy and general quality of life for the working class to appease fossil fuel interests. This is what extreme isolationism gets you I guess; The big auto manufacturers bought in to the regime selling tarrifs as some kind of cheat code to their industry dominance extending eternally, which to me suggests their leaders and inverstors are desperate or delusional. I’d like to see more of a move toward mass transport systems investment and infrastructure personally, but the required shift in ideology in the political and governing space is definitely not there right now. Change can come fast, but hope is also scarce in this current staus quo.
China will soon, or prolly has already, be the number 1 country. US oligarchs are just focussed on getting richer instead of trying to advance humanity technologically.
A nation can enrich it’s elites in the short term at the expense of its people, or it can invest in its people (education, commons, etc) at the expense of its elites.
The west, and especially my cesspool the US has made its choice.
China has been heavily building up its commons and infrastructure in the same 40 year span the US has let its commons and education fall into utter ruin in order to sell economically segregated education and gated communities for private profit.
The US is culturally indoctrinated to be hostile towards the very concept of society. Imagine resenting paying into universal healthcare because you don’t want to accidentally pay for your countrymen’s “bad decisions” like… Eating food.
I go on Rednote quite a bit. The US attitude towards China, just like non pure crony capitalism is “they are evil and from hell” for being a society. Their people, not their politicians, their people, are sweet, intelligent, and mostly treat Americans with an “are you guys OK? We’ve heard (true) horror stories.”
Thats humanity. Why would I want my schaudenfreude and greed ruled cesspool to “win?” It’s not about winning, it’s about the wellbeing of ALL your people. If the US dominates the world culturally, all that would mean is that humanity stands for “fuck you I got mine” at which point I have no comradery with my species whatsoever.
Actual human worth/value is measured in empathy for one another, which makes the US destitude in what matters.
But I thought super capitalism would allow markets to self regulate, motivate competition, and weed out low performer. Isn’t that a good thing anymore?
Also, I’m laughing at “unless things change, we will not survive”. That might be the change happening, buddy.
Back in the 80s, American cars got really, really crappy, and that’s when Honda, and Toyota, and later Hyundai, Daiwoo, and Kia were able to get market share. American car companies got their shit together, and started making cars that could compete again. So here we are a few decades later, in the same spot.
These scummy Capitalists get a taste of luxury, and they start getting lazy, while the Asians continue to crank away like they’re in last place. In the past, the Capitalists finally wised up, and got back into the game, but the current crop are so breath-takingly ignorant, that I doubt they could even recognize that they’re in trouble. If someone were to try to explain it to them, they’d probably just attack back.
The Japanese and Koreans will get their shit together. America won’t.
“we’ve built a model based on charging an assload of money for features that barely work and China is making cheap cars that do the job better. Because, you know, the cheap bullshit we’ve been building. If you force us to compete again we’ll lose!”
Okay, but have you considered that the Chinese Communist Party is ontologically evil? And therefore any amount of business (direct retail sale to consumers that sidesteps US rent-seekers) is in support of a genocidal regime of highly corrupt madmen who want to destroy liberty and justice across the entire planet?
We need to STOP CHINA NOW before they take over the damned world and ruin everything sweet and honest and pure that our glorious nation has created.
Weren’t some auto companies bailed out before? Why wouldn’t they expect the same thing again? Just get bailed out by the government again if things get bad enough.
They know they are in trouble but they think it’s because labor is lazy and needs more exploiting.
Part of getting Americas shit together is closing off immigration. The people doing this to us are mostly not American. It’s rich immigrants from various countries exploiting regular Americans. Thiel isn’t ours. Musk isn’t ours. Fucking murdoch… Why the fuck do they all move here? At some point it feels like an attack from other nations. From our own Allies. Who fucking needs enemies?
I dunno how the Japanese and Koreans will do, but I 100% guarantee that the American companies will do absolutely nothing, whine about it to their child rapist in chief and then get a massive government bailout paid for by ordinary Americans.
In the US they’ll just keep banning Chinese cars, not sure how that’ll pan out elsewhere though since other countries have started or had existing import agreements.
I dunno how the Japanese and Koreans will do
They’re equally freaked out, as they’ve been lashed to the same Wall Street piloted sinking ship as the rest of the US periphery. If you check out the politics in Japan and Korea over the last fifteen years, its been on a reactionary bent of increasing domestic militarization amid a continuous “Why aren’t our naturally superior native peoples making more babies?!” eugenics freak-out.
You can throw in The Philippines, Taiwan, India, and Australia while you’re at it. None of these countries seem to have a serious long term plan for their economic futures. Everything revolves around “containment” of the Chinese super-economy, even as individual plutocrats demand carve outs for their own supply lines and revenue streams.
I would bet that Chinese auto manufacturers aren’t taking 6 billion a month out of their company to pay shareholders in stock buybacks. Maybe reinvesting in the company to remain competitive is in fact, a good strategy.
Got to used to not having to compete
Legacy car makers have become complacent. They wouldn’t survive doing the same thing they have been doing. They will adapt or die, competition is good.
Oh no my portfolio… Seriously, there’s something called competition, it’s been around for a long time. If Chinese companies continue pushing ahead while US companies remain complacent then that’s just what will happen. These older car manufacturers have had DECADES to prepare for the newer battery tech to design and build good affordable BEVs, but they just didn’t.
This is what happens when billionaires try to steal the future. Read about the General Motors EV1. Oil companies have fought against the development of EV charging infrastructure in the US.
It’s not about EV vs ICE, it’s about automation in production, which really is important, if you like to talk about billionaires stealing the future, then from Marx to, eh, Norbert Wiener many people wrote that eventually heavy industries won’t need low qualification labor anymore, and where the society turns at that point is a political problem.
It’s those conceptually capital “means of production” right here. Or you can look at TSMC, though. Or Windows, or Linux, or Firefox. All capital things.
But yes, those who can’t make the transition are at a disadvantage. Unless the gap is reduced in some way, it’s political again.
Anyway, those unfit dying have been a thing for a long time.
