Fear of cheap Chinese EVs spurs automaker dash for affordable cars
fear of competition spurs automakers to make competitive products. FTFY
Asians bad, especially big C /s
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What you did was typical pro-CCP misdirection
Idk, I didn’t feel like they were pushing an agenda, can’t say the same about you.
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More like lobby for anticompetitive import laws.
FOCO
Honestly, just take a basic normal car, and replace its engine with an electric one. No on screen entertainment, no cameras, no AI bull shit, no self driving. Just as basic as it gets.
Backup cameras are required on all 2018 or newer vehicles in the US and Canada, so you will need at least one in the back and a small screen for that, maybe hide that screen in the review.
This imaginary basic car should also come with a double-din radio so it can be upgraded like the old days.
I wish they sold me just a double din hole with cables ready for connection. All stock radios single or double din suck ballsack for what they are charging.
With more and more cars these days, you’ve got more than radio controls in the OSD.
The steering wheel heater of all things can only be accessed through the infotainment system on my Dad’s F-150. It’s beneath the Bluetooth button.
Yes, the absolute basic required technology to make it road legal, physical switches and either physical gauges or a non-touch screen for gauges if that’s cheaper.
The reason everything is on a touch screen now is that it’s cheaper than physical switches, as ridiculous as that seems. And yes, I greatly prefer physical switches.
Buy and wire multiple switches on every car, requiring wiring harnesses, ECM IO pins etc. or pay an intern a minimal sum once so he can put “designed Chevrolet in-dash console” on his resume. Then never update it even though it supports OTA updates and is a glitchy mess, Chevy
This is the same reason so many products come with a stupid Bluetooth app now rather than more than one button. Pay once rather than pay on every unit.
Hmm. In that case, physical buttons is the one luxury I’d pay a premium for.
Maybe something like the SEXY buttons for Teslas actually become a more common thing. Wireless buttons that you can stick almost anywhere you want and set up to control what you want.
Physical switches > screens. It’s much harder to develop the muscle memory for a screen. I don’t have to look away from the road with switches.
Absolutely, they’re so much better
The problem is you can’t efficiently electrify a vehicle designed for fossil fuels. The requirements differ too much.
Actually EV conversions were common before we got intentionally designed EVs and the original Tesla roadster was built on a standard Lotus body and frame, but luckily we’re beyond that now.
You can still choose to electrify a vehicle now but you get poor performance and range, unbalanced handling, and pay way too much for a mediocre vehicle. It’s bot worth it
The Citroen ec3 would be the car for you, but Stelantis doesn’t sell it in the US… Just the overpriced Fiat 500e that is pretty worthless
What’s the incentive? Most people will have to buy a car anyways, so without a different incentive, it’s better for every manufacturer to sell you a 60k+ car where the margins are way higher. If profit is the sole motive it’s a no brainer.
The incentive is going to be undercutting the competition. It’s going to happen someday, might as well be you, car company.
If you see that European car makers sell the same car in China for less than half than they charge at home, you know they are basically milking us just for extra profit.
Not true. Most products aren’t the cost of the materials. There are a lot of included expenses in the price of a product like the cost of labor. They’re also not the same cars.
I am well aware that there are costs beside materials and labor. In my company, I’m part of those other costs - I’m R&D. The point is still: Why shall we bear all those costs and others don’t? Don’t expect people being happy about being handled gross unfair.
They’re also not the same cars.
Yes, there are differences. But they are small, and could be incorporated in a low-cost version of European cars, too - if they actually want a low cost version here.
Except it’s rarely the “same car”. For example a Tesla Model 3 manufactured in China has an LFP lithium-ion battery, while the US manufactured ones use an NCA lithium-ion battery. It’s by far the most expensive component of the car and LFP batteries are much cheaper.
There are often other differences too - such as optional extras being standard in one market. And warranties vary (those are not free - it costs money to fix faulty cars and they factor it into the sale price).
actually they’ve been selling the LFP version in North America for a while now. Even with the extra import costs and reduced government grant due to a Chinese battery, it still ends up cheaper.
Not true… The lower trims so in fact use LFP
My God the Chinese are at it again beating the United States at capitalism
I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not…
There‘s a word for that „Greedflation.“ This is what western car makers do. Luckily, the Cinese car makers grasp their chance and disrupt the market
While that is part of it, the other, bigger part is that Western countries actually do have higher labour costs: better salaries and conditions for our workers.
When China was outcompeting us on undesirable, low productivity, jobs, we accepted that. It was better to raise a billion Chinese out of poverty than to protect our lowest productivity factory workers. And those workers mostly transitioned to other jobs with higher productivity.
But now China is richer and their labour force is shrinking, so they will compete with highly productive factory jobs.
Politically, it is unlikely that car workers will accept unemployment. Nor will other highly paid workers.
So a trade war is brewing, you better brace yourself for it.
China wasn’t “outcompeting us on undesirable, low productivity, jobs”. Corporations were shipping jobs to China to undercut highly productive factory jobs back then, too, so they could save on labor costs. It’s only now that China is undercutting corporate profits that these same corporations come crying and shitting their pants. That’s also why you see a ramping up of negative media pieces on China. It was never about charitably raising people out of poverty. It was always about corporations undercutting labor to gain greater profits. Fuck 'em, bring on the cheap cars.
I hate it when corpos use the “oh we can’t lower prices because our staff is getting paid too much”-narrative. What about the CEO who takes half the profits for himself?
It’s the workers who create value for a company, they don’t take it away by getting paid for their work.The sad fact of the matter is… math
A corporation might have 10 C-level guys dividing $50 million amongst themselves and 10.000 workers earning $70K, which costs about $100K due to overheads (health insurance, retirement, etc). Together, that’s a billion, which is 20x more than the C level guys.
The C level guys aren’t the big expense, not by a long shot.
Labour, government and shareholders divide most of the earnings amongst themselves.
For the record, I do think we need to tax the wealthy more and the workers less.
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I have no disagreement on this argument.
But C-suite compensation is not a significant part of prices.
Energy prices, tax, labour costs and the cost of capital (i.e. returns to shareholders and creditors) are what drives prices.
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Dude, I’m old enough to have lived through it.
Making toys and other plastic shit was never a high paying job in the West.
And no, it wasn’t charity, it was a win-win that increased living standards on both sides.
But it did have an impact on low paying manufacturing jobs in the West and that impact was accepted by Labour unions for the two reasons I gave: we (rightfully) concluded there were enough other, better jobs available and didn’t want to keep Chinese workers poor.
Manufacturing and union membership took such massive hits in the US over that period of time. It was win-win for the corporations who greatly expanded profit margins, and the Chinese government, who were happy to use their citizens as sweatshop labor to get ahead. You lived through the propaganda at the time and decided to accept it as the truth.
Don’t think labor costs is a big factor. Car production is the sector that is most automated. Just think of this endless bands of hanging cars with robot arms working on it. Tesla even topped this.
It’s mainly the unwillingness to design and sell cheap cars due to less profits. In Germany we had electric cars for 20k€ or even combustion cars under 15k€. But they stopped building it. Although it was sold out in weeks.
In my region there was a Startup by the Aachen University RWTH (which is an elite university in Germany) bulding small EVs for around 20k€. They simply bought all parts from suppliers and just assembled it. And engineered and designed it first. Unionized and still competitive. Unfortunately, they didn’t fly.
EV building is rather simple. The software is key. And this is the missing part at car makers capabilities.
I second your thoughts on trade war. However, I guess it will be much simpler with high taxes, high quality regulations, and may be less support by car workshops. We will see…
Greedflation is when you checks notes compete in a market by offering cheaper products?
Hear me out: a bare minimum electronics car extremely reliable, no screens no bells and whistles and with the smallest possible engine battery that costs less than $5.000 💥
“We can’t lower the prices, it’s impossible so soon”
Somewhat unrelated: IINM most Europeans don’t drive even a quarter of the max range of EVs on most of their trips. The current range of EVs should be just fine it you plug it in every day like your phone. Getting an EV that can get you to work and back or to a friend and back without charging should already allow to buy an EV that’s quite affordable.
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