American cars have sucked compared to Asian cars since the 1970s. I don’t understand why people are acting all surprised that this is true in respect to BYD. Sure in the past products designed in China were stereotyped as poor quality knock offs of western designed goods, but in the past decade Chinese engineers have increasingly proven themselves as perfectly capable of making solid, innovative designs that improve upon those of their competitors. I think it’s kind of fucked up that everyone is so suddenly upset about China’s role in the world economy since everyone was completely fine using them for cheap labor over the past several decades and are just mad that Chinese companies are beating them at high skill labor and technology. Chinese companies do have an “unfair advantage” given how much they are backed by the Chinese government but American companies receive all sorts of money from the government for all sorts of things as well.
The “unfair advantage” bit has been incredibly funny to me ever since I sat in a call to prepare a joint research proposal and the representative of a certain large euro automotive supplier told us that their company would only participate in any project if they got at least a certain amount of government funding.
They went through a period in the 90s where they had a huge leap in quality and almost matched Japanese imports of the time. I’d say GM is the only one who’s drivetrain quality is still on any comparable level with Asian imports. Ford gets some parts really right but then their beancounters make really dumb cuts to critical components that make many of their vehicles near lemons. I can’t think of a worse car manufacturer in the world right now than Stellantis, and they aren’t an American company anyway.
Americans have come to think of Chinese products as bad quality because of the American companies who engage them for cheaper labor. Walmart was known to order products made to a certain spec one year, then the next year demand the company increase production, but for the same amount paid as the previous year. The Chinese company, not wanting to lose the contract, obliges, but corners have to be cut. It should be called Americanesium, not Chineseum.
Derek Guy (Die, Workwear!) posted a thread a while back (I think about 6 months ago) about how the Chinese can and do make great quality products, pointing out high quality fabrics. Give them money to buy good raw materials, give them a decent wage, and they’ll put out a good product. Honestly, they probably have a more fair work ethic than some American companies that just feed their CEOs massive salaries or are owned by private equity.
Its largely american cope that they are not that good at manufacturing anymore. Chinese factories build things to spec, and the customer asks for cheap, so they get cheap.
Exactly!
Honestly, there’s a wide range of quality of stuff produced in China, but the expensive stuff isn’t getting brought over. The better stuff is either being used domestically or exported to India/SEA. From my limited experience importing stuff, the biggest common factor is the lack of final quality control. I ordered some small diesel engines because no else makes those but Yanmar and Yanmar prices themselves way out of my range. Even Yanmar doesn’t sell a 5hp engine. The 196cc Chinese diesel was well designed, the parts well built, but final assembly lacks consistence on the bolt torque spec and there was metal shaving left in the crank case. The bigger, more expensive diesel made by a different company had much better quality control, although it’s still necessary to flush the crank case. No one over there seems to do that.
I am pretty sure there is some financial fuckery going on with BYD. My parents own two, and they are very nice, but way under priced compared to every other EV manufacturer.
Can’t prove anything of course, but there is something odd going on when everyone else is 20-30k more expensive.
Hard to feel sorry for GM though, they suckled at our governments (Australia) teet for decades before giving up and leaving entirely. At least if BYD is being propped up we are at least getting good cheap cars from it.
Brazil shuts BYD factory site over ‘slavery’ conditions
From 2016 and still true today:
Chinese Government Subsidies Play Major Part In Electric Car Maker BYD’s Rise
Yeah, subsidies and other benefits from governments exist but China is going all in.
My only point of confusion is that a 20k loss on every car is insane. I’m guessing its a bit of BYD is subsidised somewhat, and everyone else is price gouging somewhat. No idea the ratio.
Also odd that other Chinese brands (really only tried MG) dont seem to have the same high quality, high pricing that suggests the same level of crazy subsidies.
Honestly, there is just so much fuckery going I just have no idea what is what.
The financial fuckery is that they’re very heavily subsidized by the CCP. It’s not sustainable.
I’d argue it is.
Just look how Amazon got where it is now: Sell way under market price, till local competition closed shop, then squeeze.
I think your muddying sustainable and successful. It definitely can be successful, but its not sustainable.
Its also high risk, especially if you can’t crank up the prices enough later
Sustainable implies that they can keep doing it forever without changing. Switching later means what they are doing is not sustainable. It might be successful, but its not sustainable.
There’s sustainable practices and sustainable businesses. The latter is what others are arguing. Undercutting competition to take over a market is a sustainable practice IF you can hold out long enough. I’d wager the country of China can hold out longer than General Motors.
But the business model has to change in order to survive. The company cannot undercut forever, it actually needs to change in order to survive. The business model of today is not sustainable. They may have a large warchest, they may be able to crush GM, but once they do, or the warchest runs out, the business model must change.
If you want to make the argument that their overall plan with the later change is sustainable, thats fine, but this current phase is not sustainable.
BYD is already facing scrutiny for running Evergrande like accounting, and a lot of political pressures from other Chinese manufacturers. The risk is that they collapse like Evergrande, and that they drag public debt into it. The CCP might prop them up, so it light be safe. A car is different from a book, because you need lifetime service for it. If they go under, you might lose access to parts.
You forgot the part where they raised prices on everything.
It might just be that, since BYD is serving such a large domestic market/population, that allows them to have cheaper cars? Something something, economies of scale. I’m no expert though.
There is a limit to that effect, though. And most observers agree that the state is subsidizing heavily.
They have never considered actually competing have they?
They’ve actually done the exact opposite. The lobbying, the import laws, the absence of a foreign export market, and the manufacturing of cars that would never pass safety laws anywhere else, all resulted in the kind of dogshit that Americans have to experience now. Why improve if you’re the only player
Nah man, that’s not the purpose of unrestrained capitalism. The point is to get big enough that you can buy out all the competition, then make your product cheaper and cheaper once there’s no one to compete against. It’s a bit like an economical algae bloom.
They do. For example here. Just not in your country.
They don’t compete here either.
They’ve stopped producing passenger cars, and the Chicken Tax means they don’t have to compete on trucks.
Michael Dunne has been competing the entire time, for the Chinese. His statements here aren’t fear, they’re shillery.
Couldn’t have a thought further from his mind
Detroit is easy to hate but there’s more wrong here than how much can-do energy they wake up in the morning with. If they competed on features and quality they could never compete on price. Everything we do to keep the dollar strong makes it impossible to manufacture here.
But it would also help american people. Which is more important, I wonder.
Tariffs be damned, I will not buy an American brand car. They’ve been mediocre my whole life and it’s always been easier to source parts for Hondas and Toyotas. I’m not sure how repairable any EV is, but I doubt American brands will top the charts of value in repairability in my lifetime
I’m not sure how repairable EVs are either, since my 2013 Leaf never needed repairs in 12 years. Just tires and wiper blades.
Yeah that’s a good point in a sense. Mechanically I think they’re a lot less repairable (or at least a lot less at home repairable), but from the angle of needing repairs, they also need less repairs because most of what tends to fail on ICE vehicles is all the mechanical stuff attached to the engine. Even on my hybrid I repair a ton less and my mechanic said that because all the accessories are electronic since they can’t be belt/chain driven because the engine is off half the time that they’re ultimately more reliable in the end - it’s the mechanical aspects of them that fail on ICE vehicles.
American made car? Ya, I own a Toyota Sienna. And ya, I don’t think I’d buy an American brand again.
After 25 years of other brands I finally went Honda and I can’t believe how happy I am with it. I never have problems.
Over the years I think Honda and Toyota are the two brands I most commonly see an old guy managing to keep running well for 30+ years and hyper focused on wanting to break 500k miles or dreaming of hitting 1 million miles someday
Maybe GM could, I don’t know, innovate?
Targeted tariffs and protectionism can help a situation like this, combined with subsidies like the ones Trump cancelled, to give legacy manufacturers a temporary respite to retool and innovate. However backtracking on your transition, reverting to the tried and true short term profits is just hiding your head in the sand. GM will find itself increasingly marginalized and more years behind. You can’t hide behind trumps skirt forever
As an European living in Asia and can’t help but cringe at American cars. They’re so far behind. And it’s the car country. Japan has better cars and better rail. Embarassing.
I mean, didn’t Japanese and Korean automakers already do that?
Yes. They did. That’s called competition. It forces companies to improve by destroying them, except they don’t want that. And politicians don’t want that, cause it makes corruption unstable.
Killed Detroit too, though. But, eh, helped other parts. It’s life.
Thus already in the 90s with the TRON OS a different approach was chosen by US regulators - threaten Japan with sanctions if it’s allowed to compete with Windows inside Japan .
They can’t threaten China, but they can prevent Chinese competitive goods from entering US market and improving its economy again.
Bad economy - poor and stressed people, poor and stressed people - worse political decisions, worse political decisions - good for middlemen which in our age shouldn’t exist frankly. We have the technologies for direct democracy, it’s not 1920s.
We have the technologies for direct democracy
One from the list, yes.
Capitalism is all about competition unless it’s not.
So free markets are a terrible idea now and countries practicing import substitution weren’t impoverishing their people.
US hypocrisy at it’s finest.
Free markets were always a terrible idea, the USA economic system was basically founded on principles of regulation of goods like tea, tobacco, and alcohol.
It’s not a free market.
BYD is heavily subsidized .
Pretty sure big oil and car companies have been bailed out by the US government in the past. Plus america designs most of its cities so that you need to own a car. Seems like both markets are equally “free” at the end of the day.
A one time loan which made money is hardly a subsidy by comparison to China right now. That’s an absurd comparison. Apples to oranges. Hell apples to baseballs.
There is also CAFE standards that made small, effecient vehicles require extremely high emissions standards while allowing looser standards for larger, less effecient vehicles. Effectively limiting foriegn market influence while increasing both the price and size of the average vehicle on American roads.
That’s not a competitive subsidy though. Anyone can and don take advantage of those emissions. The US does not have access to China subsidized materials or labor to compete in that market.
BYD could build here and take advantage of that.
The majority shareholder at GM is the US treasury.
One of the majority holders at Stelantis is their workers’ union.
„Free market“? Speaking of hypocrisy. Chinese car brands are so heavily subsidized they probably cost the Chinese economy more than they make selling them at the moment. China is clearly trying to drown the global market with cheap cars so they can ramp up prices immensely once they have killed the competition and have become a monopoly. China hasn‘t been the extreme low income country to produce super cheaply for a long time and they couldn‘t produce cars this cheap in a free market situation.
Many countries and the EU have measures against such practices because state run operations with the sole purpose to destroy an industry (which this is) undermine the very idea of the free market or even trade relationships.
Alternatively we could start subsiding local car makers and play the same little game China is playing but more cars is honestly the last thing we need right now. Tariffs are a much smoother option to deal with this even when they have a bad rep.
Ideally we use that generated money from tariffs to subsidize public transport so we don‘t get cheaper cars but cheaper alternatives but that‘s still just a dream I‘m afraid.
Whatever the case, one should look at super cheap cars and what that means in the long run more critically.
We have subsidized the big three many times, and they return nothing back. At this point, they should be nationalized.
You have a very simple way of looking at things and are part of the problem that is going on.
Your ignorance is showing. Tuck it in.
You tankies really have a way with words.
If something is being so heavily subsidized, the correct market response is to buy as much as possible, and resell once the prices ramp up.
Setting up tariffs and complaining about subsidies? 100% not the “free market” response. It’s cope.
True, even Milton Friedman (barf) said we should be thankful if someone wants to subsides our lives. Besides these market extremists say all government intervention is bound to fail, so they should have nothing to fear letting the BYDs in. The socialist subsidy of BYD will collapse and we don’t want the government distorting our market either.
This isn’t really my personal take, but i like using their own logic to reach a conclusion they will hate.
Are you trying to be funny or something? Used electric cars aren‘t exactly going up in price. What a bunch of nonsense. Talking about cope.
Newsflash: American car manufacturer says “Our cars are crap and overpriced”
Michael Dunne is actually someone who worked in Chinese Automotive manufacturing. He’s the Chinese car manufacturer saying “Chinese cars are good and cheap.”
His word is basically meaningless.
Dam maybe some of the American automakers who took billions in subsidies should have built cheaper cars instead of the largest trucks possible to skirt regulations.
I literally can’t afford an American car, i can afford a BYD tho.
I can afford neither, but if I had to save up for one it would be the BYD.
American cars are just large, stupid and inefficient. Also the parts are very expensive here in New Zealand
I bought a used Chevrolet Bolt '23 which is the closest I could get, they’re still relatively cheap and mine has been working great.
The same thing happened in the 80s with Japan. The Japanese were no longer making crappy cars but small and very reliable, affordable cars. Detroit was still making rust buckets, obsessing over powerful engines with bodies that rotted out and defects galore. Detroit got beaten up badly (Chrysler had to get a gov bailout) until they cleaned up their act and improved their products. Protecting Detroit from competition would’ve just saddled US consumers with decades more of crappy, overpriced, low quality, cars.
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/how-detroits-automakers-went-from-kings-of-the-road-to-roadkill/
We still don’t let in the small pickups the rest of the world enjoys.
Did Japan back then pay their assembly line workers the equivalent of $5k USD/year (in today’s dollars) and have nearly no worker protections? Not a rhetorical question; I just don’t know. Seems like Japan had a better standard of living back then compared to Chinese workers now, so I would guess their workers were compensated and treated better.
Not defending US auto corps (or any corp for that matter). The regulatory capture in the US is insane, and workers aren’t treated as well as most of the rest of the first world.
Japan back then had (and still has) an interesting socioeconomic system, a bit similar to samurai clans went cartels, where workers are supposed to work all their life in one place (or close to that), don’t squeal about worker rights and such, but be covered by lots of company-provided social nets and guarantees.
5K/year isn’t exactly poverty when rent is <200, phone data is 20, and you can get pic for 1.50 USD. I too would like them to be treated better, but I dont know if their overall situation is worse than the average american worker making 50K, but spending 24K on rent, 12K on car payments, and 16USD if they eat out.
Japan used state capitalism to promote it’s auto industry and other key sectors to sustain strong growth. America’s weakened billionaire owned government system is just being strip mined into the ground. We won’t be able to compete in an economy that’s only product is wealth extraction because of our massive corruption.
Back then American industries were just complacent due to insufficient competition, and Japan’s industrial development was a bit of a miracle (that “living in year 2000 since 1980s” joke).
Protecting Detroit from competition would’ve just saddled US consumers with decades more of crappy, overpriced, low quality, cars.
And it did. Japanese companies maintained a solid portion of the market in the US, a notable lead in quality, and many consumers no longer willing to waste money on crappy overpriced low quality cars from American companies. American cars were forced to get better and they’re better off for it, but they resisted the entire time, just like today.
defects galore
A friend of mine from high school attended the GM Institute and became an engineer for them. One of his first projects was on a team that bought a Lexus and an Infiniti when they first came on the market and took them apart to see how many production defects they had. He said a typical American car at the time (and this was in the '90s after quality had rebounded somewhat from its disastrous nadir) had 300-400 defects. The Infiniti they took apart had 2. The Lexus had 0.
Six months ago I moved from the US to a country where BYD and other Chinese brands are available. In the past I owned GM cars. The former GM executive is correct. After trying Chinese cars I find it extremely difficult to justify paying 40-60% more for a car made by GM or anyone else. GM’s best selling cars here are made by its Chinese joint ventures and aren’t available for sale in the US, and they are the only GM cars I would buy.
They’re pretty well known here for low quality flashy vehicles, with premiums for luxury not quality.
Good, let’s do it. I’m tired of our tax money keeping shitty car companies floating.
And no competition. I’m pretty sure that they can shave some of the price off from that massive jump that came with COVID due to [checks list] “supply chain issues” and yet never went back down after…
That’s fine.
