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The first Geely was a fake Mercedes-Benz E-Class based on a real Audi 100
- pcurve 4y agoGotta start somewhere. No one is laughing at Chinese cars any anymore
- number6 4y agoNot? They are still laughing at Tesla
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y agoThat's because Tesla is a company that advertises itself as saving the world, curing cancer, crafting a backup plan for humanity... Then you see the thing and it's ugly as sin outside, you get inside and it's cheap and empty with an iPad sticked there to save money on components. The richest country on Earth can't possibly have that as their flagship car brand. China however considering where they were just 15 years ago, you look at a 2022 Geely and it feels like it's attacking the Japanese brands positioning and by the end of the decade they could take on the Germans. They will never be able to attack the Italians but Ferrari and Lamborghini are special and nobody can touch them anyway.
- phlipski 4y agoLamborghini is German through and through now. VW owns them.
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago> Lamborghini is German through and through now Just because VW has a controlling stake in Lamborghini doesn't make Wolfsburg the capital of supercar design. For a whole bunch of reasons, mostly cultural, it will always be that triangle between Florence, Milan and Turin. Foxxcon might become big enough to buy Apple one day. Still if you were to visit the 2 HQs, and the 2 cities you'd understand where the devices are designed, regardless of the cap table and who owns who
- Dextro 4y agoWolfsburg? Doubt it. But Ingolstadt? A bit more likely. The Audi R8 shared quite a bit with one of the Lamborghini models (can't remember the name). And don't forget the SUVs
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y agoI don't know, when I look at an R8 I can sense that it was designed in Germany, whereas if I look at a Lamborghini Aventador it's clear it was designed in Italy. The new Corvette C8 feels like it comes from Italy as well. In fact the Corvette has been Ferrari-zed both in external design as well as engine positioning
- djpr 4y agoStylings and interior obviously differ, but R8 has long shared engines, drive trains, and chasis with Lambos. Engine is from Lambo, but I believe the drive train might be Audi-first?
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y agoDesign is the most important thing for a supercar. The Ferrari 250 GTO is getting smoked by Hyundais and Subarus nowadays. Of course once you are done showing off you have the small inconvenience that you have to drop down and look at your car near the 250GTO. Same thing for Teslas
- astrange 4y agoWhere does Tesla advertise itself at all?
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y agoVia the loudmouth of the fraudster at the helm
- wazoox 4y agoThey're building Teslas in China. Almost all Teslas sold in Europe come from China, because they're of a much better build quality than US-built Teslas.
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- quakeguy 4y agoThe ones from the Brandenburg fab sure are.
- extrememacaroni 4y agoMainly because they're nowhere to be found outside China?
- msworddebugger 4y agoYou see them in some MENA with loose import laws. They’re ugly as sin but they’re the cheapest new cars you can buy.
- MikePlacid 4y agoThey are rather popular in Russia, especially trucks. And their market share will only increase now.
- VBprogrammer 4y agoDon't know where you are from but in the UK MG are outselling a whole bunch of the big car makers. I think possibly even the 3rd biggest by sales volume at the moment. The age of the Chinese car is coming. I think in the transition to electric cars they are going to take a big chunk of the lower end of the market. I get a feeling this is why a lot of mid market brands like Mazda and Volvo are trying to push into the upper end of the market. Cars like the MG4 are getting rave reviews for example.
- NicoJuicy 4y agoVolvo is bought by the Chinese
- thedrbrian 4y agoCheap shit outsells expensive stuff. News at 11
- xbmcuser 4y agoJapanese cars were cheap shit till they took over the world. Korean tv/devices were shit till they took over the world. Same is going to happen with China made stuff.
- dclowd9901 4y agoReally? When did we stop?
- rippercushions 4y agoCheck out Polestar. Also a Geely brand, as it happens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polestar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polestar
- fakedang 4y agoPolestar is still Volvo-style engineering. On the other hand, most Chinese-style engineered cars are pretty shite (Geely, GAC, Hong Qi, etc). Edit:- shite, not white
- tpmx 4y agoPolestar cars are designed (at a component level) in Gothenburg, Sweden and manufactured in Chengdu, China.
- porphyra 4y agoMaybe you haven't seen the newer cars like the Zeekr 001 which is amazing (Zeekr is one of Geely's sub brands). Nio ET5, Xpeng P5, BYD Seal, are also very attractive cars aimed squarely at Tesla.
- dclowd9901 4y agoI had a polestar v60, sir, and that thing is no Polestar.
- this_steve_j 4y agoI had a Volvo V90 with the Polestar software upgrade, and I’d say we are both fortunate. It became much more driveable with extra power in all the modes. Perhaps Volvo would have sold more units if it was standard instead of $1500, but at least it wasn’t a monthly subscription.
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- tpmx 4y agoAs a Swede, I say: Sweden needs to deal with the Chinese majority ownership of Volvo Cars for strategical reasons. Conflict is brewing between US/EU and China. It will be cheaper to deal with it sooner than later. The newly installed Swedish PM has a strong hands-on understanding of the issues at hand - he spent years working in China. He's also strongly critical of China's policies. (Geely is the majority owner of the now public Volvo Cars company. Volvo Cars AB is one of the largest Swedish companies in terms of number of employees.)
- rippercushions 4y agoUnlike eg Huawei, Volvo is not exactly a strategic target for anybody though.
- tpmx 4y agoIt's strategical to Sweden because of the branding, the number of employees and the dependencies on a very large number of component suppliers in Sweden. At one point the PRC will decide to just pull the design part of Volvo Cars out of Sweden. It would be incredibly naive to not think this would happen. Hence there needs to be an intelligently designed government intervention.
- timidiceball 4y agoSomething like one third of new vehicles sold in Norway last month were Chinese EVs. All internet connected, always on like all new EVs
- slaw 4y ago> the Model Y is ahead with 3,063 units, followed by the ID.4 (903), Enyaq (629) and Model 3 (602). Also well placed are the Polestar 2 (343) and the Volvo C40 (338) – with the electric version of the Volvo XC40 adding another 239 new registrations. The BMX iX establishes itself with 296 units ahead of models such as the Hyundai Ioniq 5 (262), Audi Q4 e-tron (250) and VW ID.5 (237). It looks like 80% of cars were made in China. Tesla, Volvo, Polestar. https://www.electrive.com/2022/10/04/bevs-reach-77-market-share-in-norway-over-september/ https://www.electrive.com/2022/10/04/bevs-reach-77-market-sh...
- fumar 4y agoI hope the American auto companies can respond quick enough. Rivian, Tesla, Canoo and similar are exciting to watch. American car companies didn't have the industry's attention until recently.
- perardi 4y agoYup, real exciting to watch Rivian trading at $100 less than its IPO. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/RIVN?p=RIVN&.tsrc=fin-srch https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/RIVN?p=RIVN&.tsrc=fin-srch
- fumar 4y agoHave you visited r/rivian lately? I think Rivian can sustain itself given the market opportunity and the end product is well received. Their R1 platform has won accolades across the auto community both established and new like Doug Demuro.
- nexuist 4y agoYou should take a look at $TSLA...
- slaw 4y agoTesla did IPO at $17 and it is now $194 after splits 1:15. So $2893 above IPO per original share.
- sokoloff 4y agoI had a 1998 W210 diesel Mercedes. The drivetrain and cabin were great; the body was painted with a new environmentally friendly primer/paint process that was an utter failure, resulting in many of those cars being driven early to the junkyard with a great drivetrain and terminally rusted chassis. It'd be a coin-toss for me to take an unknown Geely over the actual, known W210 in New England.
- themitigating 4y agoDo you have an articles about this? I'm curious what they changed. I did Google it but nothing obvious came up
- sokoloff 4y agoSome quick searching failed to turn up anything official from MB. I do know my car had both spring perches replaced at 5 and 7 years (an almost unheard of repair on other models at even 4x that age). One of those was covered by MB. It had both front fenders replaced, a quarter panel repair, and two outer rockers replaced, all out of pocket and all in the first 10 years. I ultimately scrapped the car rather than doing a full inner and outer rocker replacement to keep the car safe. This has a few more words about it, but is “just a web page”: https://eeuroparts.com/blog/common-mercedes-w210-e-class-problems/ https://eeuroparts.com/blog/common-mercedes-w210-e-class-pro... The next series (W211) changed the prep process to better galvanized panels and the rust problems returned to “the other cars of that age” level. Googling “w210 rust” will give you plenty of forum and owner experiences, but nothing about the particulars of the water-based primer/finishing process.
- pxmpxm 4y agoI think it was the new waterborne paint process or something that ruined an entire generation of those cars. If you see one today, it's guaranteed to have rust on the bottom of the doors, rear wheel well and especially surrounding the mid-door rub strips ... all with factory paint and no accident damage. https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lnMpF03D1ss/VZ2zs7CfPXI/AAAAAAAACeM/LiX-x4sNnd0/s1600/250426.jpg https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lnMpF03D1ss/VZ2zs7CfPXI/AAAAAAAAC... https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NLf8s6yX5kM/VZ2ztggMgEI/AAAAAAAACeU/I6UBbMuYW-0/s640/photo+(2).jpg https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NLf8s6yX5kM/VZ2ztggMgEI/AAAAAAAAC...
- perardi 4y agoSeeing a fair number of comments about “Chinese cars aren’t just junk now”. Which is…not a shock? Japanese cars used to be jokes. And certainly, within my living memory, South Korean cars were regarded as abysmal little shitboxes—hence Kia’s 10-year warranty plan. But now those countries and corporate cultures produce fantastic cars, and compete at the highest levels. (Check out Genesis reviews, world-beating luxury cars from Hyundai.) But I’m not sure if Chinese cars will make a significant dent in the US market. The US, both by regulatory standards and consumer expectations, puts a lot of demands on the content of cars. Very strong safety standards on the regulatory end, and expectations on mileage and features and lots and lots of cupholders in pseudo-SUVs that never ever go anywhere near offroad on the consumer end of things. By the time you get all the laws covered, and by the time you design and manufacture a car that meets customer demand, you have a vehicle that’s pricey to make, and then has to compete in a saturated market. And that’s before any incipient trade wars.
- seanmcdirmid 4y agoChinese made cars are heavily tariffed into the USA, which is why polestars (and their sibling Volvo EVs) are so expensive. Geely will solve this by setting up a factory in the USA. The USA does the same (Tesla’s Shanghai factory).
- simplyaccont 4y agoVolvo already has factory in USA
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- yywwbbn 4y agoEU is the same
- qzw 4y agoMy personal take is that the Chinese car makers have somewhat missed their opportunity to introduce their own brands to the US market. Due to the pandemic and China's own policies, the tide is now against them. But Chinese companies do own a number of western brands (Volvo, MG, etc.) and those can continue to be viable or even grow and expand. > The US, both by regulatory standards and consumer expectations, puts a lot of demands on the content of cars. When Buick began selling a lot of cars in China, they had to improve the quality of their interiors in order to live up to the standards of the Chinese car buyers! It actually led to them also improving the interior quality of the cars they sold in the US. But it was too little, too late for them here, so the Buick brand now only exists in the Chinese market. They recently announced a 100K+ USD luxury minivan in China that would be ridiculous overkill in the US: https://jalopnik.com/buick-century-returns-as-an-ultra-luxury-minivan-for-c-1849780333 https://jalopnik.com/buick-century-returns-as-an-ultra-luxur... The mid/high end Chinese market is just as demanding as the rest of the world, and maybe more so in some respects. So many Chinese carmakers already know how to make cars that are up to US/EU standards.
- pwinwood 4y agoThe new Smart #1 EV is a joint venture between MB and Geely https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_1
- simonebrunozzi 4y agoGeely also owns Volvo cars.
- chihuahua 4y ago> He says he wanted to show that a Chinese company, his company, was able to produce a similar car. And therefore he decided to build a “Chinese Benz”. And then it turns out what he actually does is buy another Chinese car based on an Audi 100, and replace the body panels while keeping the drivetrain, suspension, and interior. As far as I can tell, that proves absolutely nothing. Am I missing something?
- wmf 4y agoMaybe the prototype allowed Geely to raise enough money to actually make cars.
- qzw 4y agoIf you want to prove you know how to program, and you take some well known open source software but change it substantially enough to make it a different product that’s useful to some customers. Does that prove you can write software? I think it’s arguable, but it does prove you’re at least not completely incompetent around software.
- brookst 4y agoI mean I learned programming typing in programs from printed magazines and then modifying them a tiny bit, then a lot, then just glancing at the source, and then not at all. There is nothing wrong with learning by disassembly and modification. Tesla outright sold Lotus rolling chassis for their first car. Learnings from that produced the model S.
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- wil421 4y agoNo this is more akin to you buying off the shelf software from a local reseller, slapping a new UI, and then reselling it as a look-a-like competitors software.
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y agoModern London taxis (the electric ones) are made by LEVC (1) which is "a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chinese automaker Geely." (2) And also an excellent real-world testbed for commercial electric vehicles. 1) https://levc.com/ https://levc.com/ 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Electric_Vehicle_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Electric_Vehicle_Compan...
- encoderer 4y agoI’ve bought nothing but Mercedes since I was 27. I’ve owned 4 of them. I would never buy a Chinese owned Benz.
- mertd 4y agoEV drivetrains are the iPhone moment of the car industry. The landscape of the dominant brands may be unrecognizable in ten years compared to today.
- yawnxyz 4y agoTalk about a Red Flag...
- rippercushions 4y agoFor those you missed the joke, the Hongqi used as the base of that first car literally means "Red Flag" in Chinese.