Read the interview with the Ford CEO. Who drives a Xiaomi SU7, imported from China and he refuses to give it up.
It is the arrogance of car makers all over the world. No one is matching the innovation of the Chinese car makers. This includes European giants like Volkswagen and BMW who are suffering in China.
http://autofreak.com/vw-bmw-mercedes-china-sales-collapse-q2/
Plus the price is outrageous here. I was reading china has electric cars for like 15k
Yes. You can get cheap EV’s here for this price, like the BYD seagull. But most standard EV’s like a sedan or SUV start more around the 200000 RMB mark or 30.000 US$.
Like the Xiaomi SU7 that the Ford CEO is driving, is around the US$45.000. But it’s an amazing car. There is nothing in the US or Europe that can compare. I personally prefer the Xiaomi YU7.
Last month I was in Europe and rented an Audi A3 sport, and that didn’t even have rear view cameras or GPS!! The newest Maestro (car brand from Huawei), has an espresso machine built in.
I’ll have to deep dive into the Xiaomi, thanks for the breakdown
You’re welcome. You should also check out the other major car brands like Xpeng, BYD (the largest EV car maker in the world) , Li, Nio, Geely (who owns Volvo and Polestar)
Will do!
Despite having cases of car makers that receive
subsidieshandouts from EU countries and then leave anyway to produce in China or elsewhere, Belgium just gave Volkswagen 119 million.
Let’s see how long it lasts.
Not in America they’re not.
Which fucking sucks! The selection of electric cars on sale in America is terrible!
US admin and auto industry: “We’re digging our own graves? Let’s double down!”
I don’t understand. Using Elon in charge of Tesla? How can it be failing? I thought he was a genius and not just some guy that had a profitable company partly in thanks to all the carbon credits being sold?
Remember when Tesla was just a play to sell more batteries? This is now BYDs business model.
I don’t remember that ever being a thing, actually. (Edit: as in “it completely went under my radar”)
It was related to Tesla giving away it’s electric motor payments, Elon said he did it to encourage battery sales.
Opening patents could help facilitate the expansion of battery charging infrastructure and ultimately create customers for Tesla’s future battery factories, Kallo said.
Tesla has a goal of producing a mass-market electric car in about three years, and the company hopes a large-scale factory will leverage its projected demand for lithium ion batteries to reduce their cost. https://abcnews.com/Business/elon-musk-gain-giving-teslas-patents/story?id=24111407
Ohhhh I vaguely remember the patents being opened, yes. That rings a bell
Oh no! Is it time for the auto industry to collapse, get 81 billion dollars, change nothing, and berate the American consumer for being too poor to buy their cars that now cost twice as much for no specific reason other than capitalism again?
After getting that $88 billion bailout They’ll bring back sedans and start researching EVs…for about 4 years and switch back to gas guzzling jacked up overcompensating trucks for the men and big suburbans/yukons for the moms who pay more attention to their phones than the road.
Rinse repeat
they’ll bring back sedans
Dodge: here’s your Dart
Chevy: here’s another Cobalt clone that uses a worse motor
Ford: We’ll make any Sedan you want as long as it’s a Mustang and not a sedan
“th-thanks…” 😕
It sure as hell isn’t time to ride the bus or build a train. So I guess we’re doing your thing.
public transportation is pretty lacking in teh us, even “funded blue area” they are usually neglected too.
In the states, certainly. Countries in Europe have done a much better job, and they’ve even reaped a dividend as a result. Spain, Germany, France, even Italy generate economic growth when they roll out new lines where they want to see more development or expand traffic into popular city centers.
Biggest self-inflicted wound the UK did to itself to date was nixing the HS2 Northern Leg. Similarly, in the states, Houston/Dallas got royally fucked when the HSR connecting those two big metropoles got axed. Dallas is supposed to be gearing up as the NYC of the Gulf Coast. But it’s impossible to get people into or out of town except through their maxed-out airports and clogged highways.
Noice. Schedule another for 2041?
That’s optimistic, better pencil in 2029
I’ll hold the date, thank you.
Have they tried CLOSING more EV Plants and DISCONTINUING More EV Models? That MIGHT help!
-CEOS!
Nah. When reelecting Trump, America acknowledged that our country will collapse with the oil industry. We’ll fight a war to preserve our hegemony over oil, and the resultant oil crisis will be the final straw that gets everybody else in the rest of the world that have money to buy a new vehicle committed to electrification.
It is the Iron Law of Institutions in macro scale. The oil industry and American car companies would rather see America suffer and lose its position in the world, than to help facilitate a transition to some other energy source that would threaten their own entrenched power.
When reelecting Trump, America acknowledged that our country will collapse with the oil industry.
If you look where Trump (really, any Republicans) win big, it’s inevitably an area with a big O&G footprint.
Of late, that’s shifted slightly to Tech Data Centers. But the nature of lucrative extractionary industry is that it gives you a ton of money to pay one half of the working class to restrain and abuse the other half.
It is the Iron Law of Institutions in macro scale. The oil industry and American car companies would rather see America suffer and lose its position in the world, than to help facilitate a transition to some other energy source that would threaten their own entrenched power.
My dad worked for Exxon. He used to joke that they had a big switch in the back of the HQ that read “Green Energy”. And as soon as fossil fuels stopped being profitable, they’d flip it and become a solar/wind giant overnight.
He died back in the 90s, so he never got to see the big milestones. But if you ever look up T. Boone Pickens, this oil billionaire was saying very much the same thing in the late '00s. Natural gas is temporary. Wind is where the real infinite money machine lives.
And now my own state of Texas leads the county in wind production and runs a tight second to California on solar.
So much of this is absolutely already happening. And it’s being financed by the same folks who said it was impossible twenty years ago.
People …READ. 75% of all EVs in the USA is a whopping 5% of total sales.
No one in most countries can fit US tanks on their roads.
23% of sales in Europe. 60% in Asia.
Would be a lot more if they didn’t plainly cheat with their protectionist measures keeping the better and cheaper Chinese cars of the market or make them expensive with tarriffs
Does it really matter? Won’t the government just block all Chinese vehicles from being sold here so carmakers in this country don’t have to compete?
Still doesn’t help with the fact that not a single person outside the US will buy a Tesla or a Ford.
Sooner or later Americans will stumble onto TikToks and see how cool BYDs or Beijings are, and they’ll wonder why their Chevrolet is a piece of shit.
The iron curtain only gets you so far when the internet exists. And when a government is too incompetent to even try to censor it.
Tesla stores are pretty common in China. They still buy the Tony Stark tech genius businessman schtick.
Tesla sales have been falling pretty badly in China for a few years now, ever since Chinese companies improved their cars. However, it looks like it had a good couple months at the beginning of 2026. I’d still expect Tesla China to go out of business in a few years.
For anyone interested:
I think I saw more Tesla stores than cars.
I def saw more jeep stores than jeeps.
Sadly Tesla is still 6% of the EV market in Europe (apparently because of inclusion in Uber Black and UberXL)
Ugh ffs why would anyone use Uber anyway when we have Bolt and I’m assuming some other services (but Bolt is the main one here since it’s an Estonian company and I’m Estonian)
I’m pretty sure there are even more Teslas in Bolt than in Uber. In my country most Tesla taxis are actually Bolts. Bolt in general seems to have more expensive cars than Uber, from what I’ve seen.
A lot of drivers had the idea of taking a loan for a Tesla, then paying it from driving for Uber/Bolt. Not sure how it’s going for the Uber ones with Uber’s declining driver rates.
Interesting. Most Bolts here in the homeland are Toyota or any of the German big 3 (including Škoda in that one since it’s owned by VW)
True but nobody can afford to buy American vehicles so it’s hurting the companies since they can’t sell anything
40-60k for a new EV, that may have some kinks as well.
There are more US auto workers working for foreign-owned companies than there are for American-owned companies. Eventually the Chinese EV companies will follow the path of Honda, Totota, etc. and just start opening factories in the US. Tariffs don’t apply to US-built cars.
american ones are pretty crappy, and alot of them are built in mexico anyways.
US auto makers were too busy doing stock buybacks and building Canyoneros while the Chinese were building next gen factories and investing in battery technology. The Chinese government has subsidized their auto industry to dominate the EV market while the USA subsidizes their auto industry but with wild and often stupid swings in expectations.
That may be true, but do Chinese EVs smell like steak and seat 35?
Didn’t think so.
Canyoneeerrrroooo!!!
There is a legitimate reason to not want Chinese government subsidized cars to undercut American auto makers, but it’s also correct to say that American automakers can’t compete with Chinese automakers right now even if they were in a similar cost footing.
It’s hard to feel bad when GM intentionally killed electrics back in the 90s, the ship where America leads the world in EV production may have already sailed then. We may yet see the American auto industry have its Kodak moment.
We’ve tried nothing and we are all out of ideas
There’s no reason to be protective over the auto industry. The years where auto plants could transition to weapons fabrication are over; the manufacturing process has become specialized to chase efficiency. If anything, it’s justice should American car brands go out of business, because they were subsidized and propped up time and time again and stole the money given to them to afford innovation. Most recently in 2010, when American cars lost in the marketplace because they didn’t match hybrid efficiency, they simply did not meet or exceed their competition. Instead, they sat on their asses, took the bailouts, and the Japanese sold better cars. Now, Japanese cars are losing to Chinese cars, while still maintaining superiority over American cars.
Anecdotally, the newest gen Ford Bronco, Explorer, and F150 ICE cars are terrible. I got to daily drive all of them while my Lightning was in the shop for repairs because they couldn’t loan an EV. Those cars were noisy, slow, awfully designed interiors, inefficient, and just plain cost more than the competition.
America has a toxic masculinity problem. Americans keep buying giant trucks and SUV and Jeeps. GM did put out some legit hybrids and EVs like Volt, Bolt EV, EUVs. But didn’t sell enough. So we are stuck with shitty gas guzzling cars that keeps getting bigger and bigger.
America has a toxic masculinity problem.
Yeah the “manly dude” starter pack’s cornerstone is a f-150 or silverado. It’s just a baseline requirement.
Also though, mom has to have a canyonero to get groceries and shuttle the kids because “mama bear needs to keep her kids safe from all those giant cars out there”.
I don’t even drive anymore, but I hate the American insistence on BIG vehicles. I loved my Prius, Prius V and Civics. They were all great cars. My kids have an older Fit and it’s a fantastic little car. If only it came in electric!! Or was sold at ALL in the USA, ffs
American vehicles are way too big even by my standards, but the cars you listed, I would have a hard time getting into or out of the rear seat. Gotta be at least mid-size and up for me.
Same in Germany. Took the money, took subsidies and did nothing to innovate. Now they earn to get out of business (but we’re fucked since the state owns some of it and made us dependant).
That is not entirely true. The new VW ID.Polo is a very nice new compact EV for a reasonable price for example.
Do you remember how vw betrayed us and the environment? You might argue everyone did that, which is true. Does not make it better though.
Too little too late.
I remember that very well. Doesn’t change anything about the ID.Polo being a great car for a competitive price tag. Chinese cars in Europe aren’t much better priced.
Fair point, I can agree on different opinion here. For me with that VW is not a company I will do any (direct) business with, as in deal breaker. In contrast to the US we also have not been reimbursed any loss (which I coincidentally directly had, selling a diesel).
Fair point as well.
If I were in Germany, I’d buy a Chinese car without even thinking about it.
It’s nuts how the phrase “Kodak moment” has changed.
Can you give me that legitimate reason beyond hurting poor Ford Chevy and GM’s pockets?
For starters the 300,000+ people employed by those two companies (Chevy is GM). Perhaps you meant to include Stellantis (Chrysler) which would make that number closer to 600,000 people. The auto industry was a big driver of the 2008 crash.
That’s before we even start to get into the issues stemming from a Chinese monopoly on the auto industry. What happens if American, Japanese, and European auto makers go out of business and then China stops the subsidies? We will literally be in the same situation we are now but with money going to China instead of paying domestic workers.
So what.
Protecting them from china and bailing them out multiple times hasn’t done anything.
It’s almost like poorly run businesses SHOULD FAIL.
Are we a free market capitalist society or not?
America’s somehow STILL in the fucking around phase.
Idk, as I said before sounds like everyone Big Mad because China is better at capitalism than the west. We could easily sell vehicles for cheaper costs by producing closer to local markets and making simpler cars. But then the corps wouldn’t keep their over inflated stock prices.
I agree, western automakers could easily lower prices.
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Get rid of unions
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Lower wages in auto manufacturing AND every industry in the supply chain (mining, etc).
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Every country that manufactures cars needs to mine and produce its own materials (may need to create more humans to work these industries)
The engineers and designers at BYD make less money than assembly line workers in Germany or the US.
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Yes, and? They’ve been propped up by the USA govt for decades. If they can’t compete with China or Japan, that’s their own damned fault.
Ford and GM are only a fraction of the auto industry in the US. The majority of sales are foreign brands, but none of them can compete as companies against the entire nation of China and its willingness to put them all out of business and takeover said auto industry. They own the mines, materials, and labor and have bottomless pockets to subsidize their vehicles and dell them well below cost.
How is any company supposed to compete against that?
Make better products?
Like every car from not China sucks hard, but they keep going on about prices.
None of them ever tried to make good cars.
Then yoy can get comparatively better cars for much cheaper? It’s not like you have much of a choice.
Lol this is a very naive, internet-brained take. Have you actually driven all these cars along with their Chinese counterparts? What makes every non-Chinese car suck so badly exactly? Is it because they’re not selling $60k cars for $15k?
Who wants 60k car full of surveillance and badly designed tech?
Slate had the right idea, but Bezos is involved, so we will see.
But every major brand has lost the plot a decade ago, they all took massive amounts of money from government and did fuck all with it and gobbled each other up. Now they act shocked that people prefer anything other than the 6 brands that remained.
I agree that Slate has an interesting idea but they have an uphill battle with the marketing. Unfortunately, the US, to a great extent, particularly the rural US, sees electric cars as being “more tech”, which they equate with more frustration. Naturally EVs actually could likely have simpler computer systems than ICE cars, but, for instance Tesla chose to slap a huge iPad in their cars when consumers want dials.
For all the technical superiority of EVs, it’s hard to convince the average person that they should drive a novel looking “high-tech” vehicle, when a Toyota Camry is an easily available, affordable option. Most people with F150s don’t need them, they want them. Slate isn’t competing for those people, it’s competing for the people who buy Impreza’s, Corollas, and Camrys. I’m not sure it’ll work out.
For an industrial on-site work truck for running errands, I’d bet they sell like hot cakes, but that’s a much smaller market.
By maybe not massively inflating the price of their cars and manufacturing their vehicles closer to local markets? Like idk what to tell you, it just sounds like youre mad because china is better at capitalism lol
How much should these cars be selling for then? Can you give me a breakdown with your expert knowledge? Can you also explain why it is that every automaker in the world outside of China is participating in this alleged price fixing scheme rather than undercutting each other?
How many cars are being built far outside their local markets? What ones specifically? How much is this adding to the cost of these vehicles?
Let’s see some actual facts.
From your lips to Milton Friedman’s ears…
Don’t forget union busting and a general failure to pay workers enough to afford their products. Billionaires’ greed always fucks us over.
End of the day, I can’t afford a new car no matter who makes it. $30,000 for a DRM’ed shitbox that will shut itself down if I’m 30 minutes late on a payment? No, thanks.
Seriously. I keep telling my dudes to hold onto their 2005-15 models. Good safety tech, maybe a Bluetooth audio connection and no fucking microphones or cameras.
As it stands I’ll just keep my 2012 bmw 128 running forever. It’s paid off, fun, and has never given me a problem.
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Some of those are even manual, which always seemed so bizarre yet cool!
Mine is like semi-manual or something? I can change from automatic to manual basically.
…I still havent learned how to actually use the manual driving BUT I COULD SOMEDAY
Yeah a lot of automatics have a manual shifting mode, but the crz actually has a 3 pedal manual option. It’s the only manual hybrid I’m aware of.
The auto industry collapsed a long time ago and they stopped listening to consumers about the same time. Now only foreign cars are manufactured in the US.
One of the most hubristic miscalculations of the 20th century was the Western managerial class in the 1980s and 1990s assuming that globalization would permanently consign developing nations to the manufacturing of cheap plastic junk while domestic blue collar jobs were offshore.
The higher ups in Western corporations operated under the arrogant delusion that their own expertise would forever remain insulated from global competition. They fundamentally failed to foresee that the very countries they relegated to the bottom of the ladder would inevitably ascend the complexity and cognitive value chains.
The same market forces that the managerial class so eagerly unleashed upon others starting in the 1980s are now beginning to affect their own bottom line, and suddenly what was once championed as “optimization” and “the future” as they dismantled the livelihood of the working class, has become a crisis. It serves them right, how it bites back.
One of the most hubristic miscalculations of the 20th century was the Western managerial class in the 1980s and 1990s assuming that globalization would permanently consign developing nations to the manufacturing of cheap plastic junk while domestic blue collar jobs were offshore.
I don’t think it was a hubristic assumption so much as an engineered economic plan.
When you look at our history of sanction and regime change, the countries we love to target are the ones that won’t comply with this model. Doubly so, the ones we outright invade.
It’s sad watching the U.S. and Japanese auto industry self-destruct in slow motion. There are a lot of smart and capable people in the auto industry, but the management are stuck in an 80s design and manufacturing process.
The oil lobby has been actively encouraging this for decades. Automakers are lock step with the oil lobby. This is so people have to stay reliant on petrol.
There’s no EV infrastructure here where I live. The amount of scam solar is like 10:1 here as well.
What is scam solar?
Once or twice a month we get people crawling the neighborhood, 5 or 6 of them just walking down the road, no credentials and they wanna get me free state funded solar and all the need is a picture of my electric bill to prove I’m not already receiving the payment blah blah blah. Eventually a cop comes by a day later and asks about it because one of the old people got scammed.
So how does the actual scam work?
With the information on the bill they can actually sign you up for a different delivery provider or add stuff to your plan.
Some of them will install panels and you won’t see money for years if ever without litigation.
Sometimes it’s that picture of the bill; they use it it switch you to a more expensive energy provider.
Pretty straight forward, put them on as many rooftops as you can regardless of suitability or quality components. Collect government rebate +/- co contribution.
Idk. We put in solar 3+ years ago… We’re at roughly 1/3 paid off now. A pay an electric bill 2-4 months of the year. One or two low ($5-80), and one full ($300+), another somewhere in-between ($130-180).
Is the Japanese auto industry in as bad shape as the US? Where I live Nissan Leaf is everywhere, but that model might be an exception?
Toyota CEO: “Unless things change, we will not survive.”
This is Toyota though. So by, “unless things change” he just means, “unless the world turns their backs on EV and switches to hydrogen fuel on a traditional ICE package.” Toyota refuses to accept that people want EVs.
Yeah fuck Toyota, they have been actively steering consumers away from BEVs to their hybrids for decades so that they can keep that sweet replacement parts cash rolling in. Here in Australia when they finally launched an EV, they gave it a ridiculous alphanumeric name that nobody remembers (and I refuse to look out up) - almost like they wanted it to fail. I’ll never own a Toyota again.
I don’t think it’s done them any good to have trade restrictions trying to protect US sales. The increased pressure of better foreign car sales in the US would force more rapid adaptations.
As sad as this is, this is all the fault of the current automakers. The EV1 showed great promise but it was killed off despite the pleas of their drivers. It was just too cheap and convenient to keep making ICE cars and ripping off their customer base. When the innovations of Chinese manufacturers started looming over the horizon, the US did what it always does and wall off the domestic market with tariffs. Content with their captive market, they did token efforts for EVs but kept pumping out $80k+ gas powered behemoths. I’m aware of Tesla being the exception but frankly fuck that company, Elon Musk’s Nazi shit ruined it and I wish it’ll go under.
I wish he would just sell it and let it actually become a worthwhile company. If he would just fuck himself out of the equation I think Tesla would be a lot better.
It is known as the Nazi car brand now which is wild when Volkswagen still exists.
And the oil industry. Also, nobody wanted to spend the money to build EV infrastructure.
Yes. ‘EV infrastructure’ is just “reliable power” and successive conservatives in the administration and judicial interrupted only by shackled progressives for brief periods hasn’t done anything to maintain or grow any infrastructure in America, including a reliable power grid.
For example, I support a tiny company who happens to produce an additive required to make 75% of American water safe and palatable since the distro pipes are such shit.
(Honestly, I know why they posted feds at the gate, now, since if hillbillies or qanon took the plant out - they hate vaccines and fluoride, so it’s not a stretch - America would be super-fucked generationally)
Ironically, expansion and maintenance of infrastructure like the power grid become a voting issue only when it’s past breaking, and US car makers have staved off that crisis of Obvious proportions by their very meddling.
I’m just glad we’ve decided to keep feeding America their power … for the time being. Because in addition to being in a flood risk area, the only plant producing the chemical required for American drinking water happens to be powered redundantly from a Canadian feed.
