cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/15089465
Americans Are Open To Cheap Chinese Cars. That’s ‘Scary’ For The Rest Of The Auto Industry
American Automobile industry decided back in the 1970’s they were going to pull as much value out of the consumer as they possibly could, which destroyed the reputation of American cars being the best made vehicles in the world.
Americans want value, and to stop being screwed by more and more expensive cars which suck and break down, so are open to alternatives which is why the Japanese car imports exploded in popularity.
China is looking for influence, and so the “value” the CCP wants, is other than monetary to exploit the American populace, and this is one way they’re looking to achieve that.
destroyed the reputation of American cars being the best made vehicles in the world.
This was always pure propaganda and if that argument were being made, that downfall would’ve happened way before the '70s. Like, beginning of the 20th century, at latest.
Well, they were the best when we were the only ones making them.
We never were. Europe was making production, ICE cars decades before Henry Ford told the world that he invented the process
Well, shit
Ford didn’t even claim that he invented the automobile. However, he did make the manufacturing process a lot faster, and therefore cheaper, so he was the first to sell them at a price that most people could afford.
He was also a turbo-racist who Hitler saw as an inspiration, but that’s a different subject.
“Foreign oligarchs are taking over!” - domestic oligarchs probably
This! This! This! Goliaths like GM could make competitive affordable cars tomorrow if they decided they’re were going to make money off building good cars instead of ripping off consumers, financialization and oligopolistic tactics.
So instead of expensive cars that suck and break down, we’d have cheap cars that suck and break down. Which is technically better, I guess.
Americans, like most people, are open to just about anything if you hit them with enough marketing or propaganda.
I have yet to see a single ad for a Chinese EV I am constantly seeing ads for trucks. I don’t own a truck, I highly doubt I will ever own a truck. So either I am special (very doubtful) or no amount of effort will convince me that black is white and white is black.
Now sell me a low cost EV already and not some penis compensation device that guzzles fuel.
You don’t need a lot of marketing to prefer a basic but decent car for a third (or less) of the price of the average American car (read: truck). American cars are bloating like crazy, and even if the tracking is insane on a chinese car, it’s no better on a domestic car. The American (and European) auto industry needs to get its act together and stop blaming consumers for not happily donating them stupid amounts of money and data
You mean TikTok. He means TikTok.
Make small trucks you stupid pieces of shit! Make them SMALL.
Fuck the chicken tax, I want my Toyota helix.
Capitalists hate competition.
Yes! I hate how the ‘small’ trucks nowdays are still full fucking size.
I used to have an old ass ford ranger and that beast was great.
Fairly fuel efficient considering it’s age. Fitted perfectly on the road.
It wasn’t 17 feet off the ground for no reason. You could easily load and unload the bed.
I got so excited when I heard they were bringing it back.
Then of course it’s a full size (aka oversized) pickup that got worse mileage than the 30 year old version.
The Ford Maverick gives me hope. If something like that came out in a full EV format my Model 3 will know its days are numbered.
Aside from the chicken tax, Trump also slapped another 25% tariff on Chinese cars specifically because fuck you if you want a small cheap EV.
And it’s not only about tariffs. Many regulations benefit big cars. There’s CAFE, which ties emissions limits to a car’s footprint: the larger the car, the less stringent the emission standard is. General Motors average fuel economy has actually gotten worse in the past 5 years. And, there’s a $30k tax break for small businesses that buy a vehicle for work that weighs over 6,000 lbs. fully loaded.
Did you know the US has had a “gas guzzler tax” since 1978? It applies to every car that gets less than 22.5 mpg. Except for SUVs and pickups, those are for some reason exempt. The US also has some of the lowest gasoline taxes among rich nations, giving very little incentive to buy a car that consumes less fuel.
US federal safety regulations and crash tests, contrary to European ones, do not consider anything other than the occupant of the car. The risks to pedestrians or cyclists are not a consideration at all when evaluating the safety of the car.
Consider that car makers make substantially bigger margins on the large vehicle segment, and the reasons for all these nonsensical regulations start becoming clear.
https://minitrucks.net/collections/vehicles
I don’t see any hiluxs, but there are some good deals there
I have a 1998 toyota tacoma that I use daily only because there is no other new vehicle on the market that’s like it. It’s built on a car frame, and its tiny, and handles just like a car - it’s amazing.
I dunno, maybe put out not stupid bloated trash?
They should do what meta did and lobby for a competition ban. Oh wait I am positive they are already.
Yes I want a cheap EV. I don’t need all that infotainment garbage, I don’t need to have a machine too big to park. I want a small fuel efficient car that just works and just works off electricity instead of gas. Not freaken hard
Cheap doesn’t have to mean stripped of all features. That’s just the way that American automakers have done market segmentation. The cheap Chinese cars will certainly not be luxury models, but they will have infotainment and a few bells and whistles (or, gimmicks).
For many chinese devices you get infotainment cheaper, and other extra things. But from my experience they lack in the steel quality compared to Möre refined auto makers. This is just my observation so it isn’t necessarily always true.
Old auto makers are slow to roll out changes that actually are cheap and easy to implement, status quo and all that
There are already huge arbitrary tariffs on these. That’s why you can’t get one in the US. The manufacturers don’t even bother with our bullshit market.
That almost feels like a challenge. Probably going to have to replace my car in a decade or so (yes it is a Honda) so got plenty of time to figure out how to import an EV.
They’re bound to come to the US eventually, certainly within the decade. Chinese auto makers have their hands full with Europe now, but they’ll jump through a few hoops for the chance to squash the US market, too. Hopefully right on time for my next car, as well.
But at the end of the day, he told InsideEVs, “if you have a compelling product and it’s cheaper, it’s tough from an economic sense to keep those vehicles out.”
“hold my beer!”
- congress and the current and next 4 presidential administrations
Whatever their quality, which seem to be below American but above European in terms of reliability, they’re still going to be cheaper and better then a chewed up Altima on it’s 12th owner at a usurious 15% APR being sold at predatory “buy here, pay here” lot that plague low income American neighborhoods like a herpes infection.
All current automakers selling cars in the use including Koreans, have been happy to screw over American customers with oligopolistic pricing for decades.
To quote a great philosopher “There’s not a damn thing funny. You gotta have a car in the land of milk and honey.”. An automobile is a critical tool for economic mobility in the states and the US has been happy leave a auto underclass forced to buy garbage used cars at eye watering APRs. Loans all backed by Wall Street criminals.
A car maker like BYD could not come soon enough.
Cheap EV coupe… gimme! Anyone? Bueller?
DOT approved…? Maybe. We need to beef up regulators ability to screen out deathtraps.
If they can pass the crash tests and get over other regulatory issues then sure make them available and let the market decide. I recall when Hyundai first entered the US market and the Yugo. One was able to change to meet US market demands but it took a decade and the other died.
Chinese brands compete in other markets against US, Japanese, EU, and Korean brands. In my experience, most folks are choosing non-Chinese brands because the quality, performance and features are not competitive.
Sounds like boot kissing, nobody I know doesn’t give a fuck about features other than air conditioning and maybe a sunroof if they’re fancy. They certainly don’t give a fuck about performance we aren’t a bunch of teenagers trying to wave our dicks around with a sports car anymore.
I’m honestly quite confident if Chinese cars were allowed to compete and drag the prices down they would actually be quite popular. I know a lot of people that would love one of those little Japanese tiny trucks if they could get their hands on one without all the bullshit of importing it
Performance isn’t “high performance racing stuff”, it is ride comfort, normal cornering stability, stopping stability, general safety, etc.
I lived in China for 12 years. Folks there bought foreign brands even though they cost more because they were just better.
Now I live in Vietnam, as people here transition from motorcycles to cars, they have plenty of choices and most choose non-Chinese brands. Toyota and Hyundai are the biggest sellers for sedans, they and Ford are the biggest sellers for SUVs, Toyota, Mitsubishi, and Ford are the biggest sellers for the light trucks (Ranger, Hilux, etc).
That’s great for legacy manufacturers to be able to compete in those segments. However it might be completely different with EVs, where legacy manufacturers only have a small number of a few high priced models, and are backing off from them.t. Theyre not even trying to compete. They have no history of good vehicles. They don’t have any ready alternatives. Maybe things are different outside the US, but legacy manufacturers are ceding the market to whoever comes
If they can pass the crash tests and get over other regulatory issues
Including labor conditions.
“American companies are scared of the open market when it works against them, yet refuse to make better products”
The issue was that Chinese EVs are ahead of Western EVs due to aggressive subsidy and investment by the Chinese government to get ahead. So the market has been distorted which is what was “scary” according to the quite in the article that spawned the headline.
Having said that, I’m not sure I believe that Chinese EVs will be better quality. They may be cheaper and they may even have technically advanced but from experience of other Chinese products, quality is not a word I’d associate with them.
BYD is so ahead because they were making batteries for a long time before going into ev business. Also I would not say tesla quality is high either
Look into Harley Davidson, they should have gone bankrupt multiple times but were saved by high tarrifs placed on imported bikes.
Harleys are so ridiculously overpriced it’s hard to believe tariffs on the competition would make any difference
I definitely wouldn’t waste my money on one, much better bang for buck out there.
The US government can do the same, and they do bailouts for companies often too. Isn’t that also meddling in the free market? Why didn’t the US government incentivize EV then?
Pretty sure that’s a core part of Tesla’s growth model.
One of the ways they have are through CAFE credits - incentives for higher fuel efficiency and electric vehicles, since at least 2012. However the credits are tradeable, so legacy manufacturers instead bought credits from Tesla, and other EV manufacturers
American cars have their own subsidies as well. I mean the government bailed them out of dying several years ago.
We shouldn’t have bailed them out. We should have bought a public controlling interest in them.
All the best and worst shit you own is made in China. If you don’t want cheap shit don’t buy cheap shit, but these cars are really nice and inexpensive.
These cars are in tons of countries outside of China and they are very well received.
I agree with you. China is manufacturing cheap products because that’s what (a lot of) consumers want as well. They also make expensive quality products, too. I have friends who like to rag on Made In China products but they love the quality of their iPhones which are just Designed in California.
What do you do when you need something fixed? Can parts be had?
You can order them and then have a mechanic fix it for you. It’s the same way in America.
due to aggressive subsidy and investment by the Chinese government
yes. similar to a lot of western products.
I don’t know about other countries but US has both pretty strong incentives and protectionist barriers. However they’re meant to be temporary. This is legacy automaker’s chance. A few years for the government to help them transition, but they need to be willing to come out of the closet. They’re throwing that opportunity away
If anything, American companies have a massive resistance to change. Change has a risk and a price, and they’re determined to stick with what works. Like the movie industry…why make brave and risky moves to make a unique movie when you can retread old ones or wring every penny out of a franchise?
Anyway, the US auto industry has a long history of institutionalized exceptionalism, I can’t find it right now but there’s a quote from one automaker that, when confronted with a suggestion that change is needed, the response is essentially “you’ll buy what we tell you you’re going to buy”. IOW they dictate what the consumer wants and gets. And maybe they’re gambling on more protections against Chinese companies so they don’t have to change and can maintain their control. Incentives just seem to be soaked up and disappear. They jack up the prices to the consumer so there’s no real help, like Tesla raised their price to match buying incentives offered by the government to consumers. Straight up greed.
short sighted greed. That behavior makes sense only if you’re focused on the short term and don’t care about the future of your company
Time and again the quarterly report has taken precedence over the long-term wellbeing of a company. Think of the value for the shareholders.
American Cars look like relics from the last century when compared to Chinese design and capabilities, that is why the American car companies do not want Chinese brands in their market because there is no way they can compete with them.
Chinese brands just arrived in Mexico and it has been a massacre for american and European brands, a lot of car dealers have been closing lately and you can see in the streets that most new cars are Chinese. The Chinese dealers have impeccable service and the architecture is impressive. Prices are 1/3 of the European cars and 1/2 of the American Cars. The only ones that might be able to compete are japanese and Korean car companies.
Americans aren’t going to care about quality that much if their monthly payment is only $200. As long as a Chinese EV is reliable long enough to make it’s total cost of ownership much lower than American EVs or ICEs they will line up to buy them.
The American market has been desperate for a cheap and reliable car, a role Japanese automakers used to fill, and both US and Japanese makers know it.
i wanna Datsun
Every country does this that is a red herring. Does your country have public schools that produce people who work in the automotive sector? Congrats you live in a country that has an agressive subsidy and investment in the automotive sector.
deleted by creator
Cheap labour under a command economy is hard to beat, I’ll grant you that. But the best counter to that is to focus on high quality construction, like Toyota does, for example
People were saying the same thing on quality about Japanese car when they first arrived on the market.
There is a good reason why American companies are scared. It almost never works out for them. Sony vs Zenith TVs is a great example about how a foreign company improved on a technology (color tv) and made zenith look like a stingy dinosaur overnight. Instead of selling color TV’s zenith just doubled down and sold cheaper shittier TV’s. By the time color was standard, their reputation was ruined and no one wanted a Zenith when Sony was the best. Sony however wouldn’t have been able to get into the market without help from zenith in the first place.
They should stop choosing the “double down on making products shittier part”.
You could’ve been telling the story of the 80s automotive industry. Or really any American manufacturer.
And part of the reason why I am not on speaking terms with our regional sales teams. I gave up trying to explain what integrity and continuous improvement is.
True
deleted by creator
“Americans Are Open To Cheap
ChineseCars”“People don’t have money. That’s scary for companies selling expensive products.”
Best to make being poor illegal. That’ll light a fire under the lazy asses of the working class! /$
Is it possible that Americans just don’t have any good domestic options for an adorable EV…
Hey, the Eggasus is plenty adorable.
Still waiting for someone to make a Catbus EV though.
If I hadn’t made a spelling error I would have never heard of the Eggasus, which looks terrible but definitely adorable.
Pretty sure you mean affordable, but I think adorable fits because the cars are smaller for which we also don’t have good options!
I’m just going to leave the typo in because it’s funny
Most Americans are open to cheap anything without caring about quality, or slave labor, or giving their money to people who will use it against them. See also WalMart and Dollar General.
You say that like Ford, Stellantis, and GM aren’t building their cars out of the same slave-built components as BYD, just with a +80% price increase because they’re Amerikkkan.
No, they don’t. They say it as though it’s a universal regardless of country of origin.
The big three are asking for the least amount of “made in China” as possible. Sure, some chips are impossible to get elsewhere but they are moving to near shoring and SE Asia as much as possible
I wanted my car made in America. So, I bought a Toyota.
Joking aside, even if someone goes through all the “effort” to buy an “American Made” car, a lot of the components are probably made in China anyway. With the very long tail of logistical chains these days, it’s almost impossible to know the providence of all the pieces of anything. And even the suppliers have no clue about all the places their parts are ending up.
Whoever sells the EV version of a Toyota Corolla or Camry in the US will get filthy fucking rich.
Right now, I’m guessing it will be Volvo: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/how-volvo-landed-cheap-chinese-ev-us-shores-trade-war-2024-04-24/
The EX30 is currently manufactured at parent company Geely’s facility in Zhangjiakou, China
https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a45723828/2025-volvo-ex30-drive/
VW simply said “no thanks we don’t want to print money” by refusing to sell the ID3 in the US or Canada.
The ID.3 is almost exclusively operated using touch-sensitive buttons and surfaces or the intelligent Natural Voice control.
Gross touch buttons!
VW has already announced they’re getting away from touch controls. They weren’t very popular with customers.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a41754493/volkswagen-car-controls-changed/
VW is also working on an ID.2 (smaller and cheaper) but again won’t sell it in the US.
Yay VW!Dammit VW!
Volvo Chads stay winning. I’ve owned 30+ years of Volvo cars and hope to make it 50+ with a EX30 sometime within the next few years.
*Geely Geometry C
Volvo, please, in our darkest hour, save us with an affordable EV station wagon
The clowns at Toyota already make an EV Corolla called the BZ3
Shocker. People don’t want to pay $40k + to commute to work.
A lot of people want a reasonably priced car that can commute, have enough range for something fun on the weekend, and have a stereo that isn’t total shit.
But the rub here is that it’ll be like a new Walmart opening in your town. Before too long everyone is shopping at Walmart and all the small local businesses shut down because they can’t compete with the prices and purchasing power of one of the largest corporations in the world.
Once that happens, all those workers get jobs at Walmart and then spend 80% of their paycheck buying products from Walmart. This leaves the town poor as a majority of the money circulating around gets sent out to Bentonville Arkansas where it goes into the Walton’s bank accounts to be used to hire more lawyers to get them out of yet another vehicular manslaughter charge.
This shit is how the US wound up like we are today with rampant homelessness and shit wages, but all people care about are seeing those low prices on the store shelves.
The cost of cars went up dramatically during this last period of greedflation. I’m not going to cry for the domestic car makers. They’ll get a bunch of government money to continue being shitty.
Sounds like capitalism isn’t the most stable way to structure civilization.
But for the most part are American cars bringing that much more value for the price? If the average American car lasted 250,000 miles with little maintenance, maybe that would be worth the price.
BYD and other Chinese manufacturers are only able to sell at these low prices because the government is paying a portion of the manufacturing costs which isn’t sustainable long term. What will happen is that they’ll continue to subsidize them until they put a bunch of competitors out of business and then end the subsidies. Their prices will shoot up, and we’ll be right back in the same situation we are now with high purchase prices. The only difference is that a lot of American manufacturing (union) jobs will have disappeared because of it.
In other words they are doing the exact same thing the US government is doing. Remember the stock swap?
I have no idea what you’re referring to with “the stock swap.”
The US government does provide subsidies for EVs, but it is different in that it doesn’t solely apply to US companies or companies directly controlled by the US government and they aren’t being used for cars sold in other nation’s markets. Any player in the industry can receive them provided they meet the criteria which is why American, South Korean, Japanese, and various EU-based companies are currently receiving them.
2008 Stock swap with GM. Thanks for admitting the hypocrisy of everyone defending the big 3.
Big 3 shills: give me tax dollars
Also Big 3 shills: our competition gets tax dollars and it is unfair
The CEO of GM could personally blow me and I still won’t give them a dollar.
I think this argument must have been written in 2008 because nobody here is defending the “big 3” and the “big 3” doesn’t even exist anymore as Dodge/Chrysler is owned by a European company and Ford/GM manufacture most of their cars in Canada and Mexico. The most American vehicles these days are Tesla, Toyota and Honda. I even specifically pointed out that US EV subsidies apply to manufacturers from multiple countries…
If you think this is some sort of “gotcha,” I have bad news for you.
The US government can and should be directly financing mining and making lithium batteries. There’s enough lithium and cobalt scattered around the world to not give China full control over the price. The perfect is the enemy of the good. Until a more energy-dense battery chemistry goes mainstream: lithium is our only option to stop burning (some) oil. Batteries needs to be fully embraced regardless of who’s currently setup to profit. China just thought ahead and the US wants to throw a tantrum.
Great but this had nothing to do with selling cars with massive, unsustainable subsidies as the price of lithium is just one part of the cost to manufacture a car. Furthermore, their goal isn’t to get more people into EVs. It’s to increase power and influence by selling their product at prices so low, nobody can compete against them. Once the competition is gone, a monopoly forms, subsidies end, prices skyrocket, and ideas and innovation stagnate.
Your approach is akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Who’s going to develop a more energy dense, climate friendly solution if the entire market is controlled by a single entity?
The batteries are about half the cost of making an EV. A $30k car literally has $15k+ worth of batteries inside. The Chinese are prepared to produce batteries today. China will not be able to arbitrarily limit global supply in the future. Global lithium supply is not analogous to oil prices and OPEC.
Lithium ion batteries are not produced by 1 entity and the tech has been around a few decades. People are absolutely innovating better, more sustainable, and less toxic battery chemistry. Lithium is just the best option we have now.
You keep focusing on the lithium market while I’m speaking about the automotive market. If China makes EVs unprofitable for the rest of the market by selling them at an artificially low price, who is going to be left to build them once the dust settles?
The US government can and should be directly financing mining and making lithium batteries.
It is. My employer is making bank on it right now.
I think we ended up with rampant homelessness because banks turned housing into an investment instead of asset and your local Karen made zoning laws to keep POC. Shit wages are also pretty simple to explain stock buybacks were allowed and encouraged allowing.
Also your comment feels like it is from 2003 you have to update your propaganda periodically.
No it’s more like Aldi and Lidl coming and opening up next to the big supermarket of the town. The local shops have already been killed by Walmart or in my country Tesco. Aldi and Lidl come in and undercut the giant and skim off a portion of the trade, and a portion of the people work there instead. The big supermarket can’t muscle them out because they’re far bigger companies than they look.
I would love to have an Aldi nearby instead of whatever Kroger behemoth I’m stuck with.
Aldis is the reason I can barely tread water with all my part time jobs.
