6 ms·

Fear of cheap Chinese EVs spurs automaker dash for affordable cars

40 points by lxm 3y ago

fnordpiglet 3y ago
There’s about zero bad news here. A race to the bottom in price for EVs will reduce fossil fuels use mire than line after line of Tesla priced cars.
- umeshunni 3y ago
  It's not bad news for the consumer or for climate change. It's only bad news for legacy automakers.
  - grecy 3y ago
    And the oil companies
    - okasaki 3y ago
      I guess they'll be ok Following further discoveries of oil and gas fields,[34] on 19 September 2023, Guyana authorized six foreign oil companies including ExxonMobil to drill in the waters claimed by Venezuela.[35][36] In October, ExxonMobil Guyana Limited (EMGL) President, Alistair Routledge, told reporters that "we have not been scared away by Venezuela…that’s why we’re still working in Guyana. That’s why we anticipate continuing to do so for decades to come".[37] ... The United States Southern Command said on 7 December that its forces would participate in joint operations beside the Guyana Defense Force (GDF) in an effort to improve collaboration with security measures. US statements also said that the United States "will continue its collaboration with the GDF in the areas of disaster preparedness, aerial and maritime security, and countering transnational criminal organizations" and that the North American nation "will continue its commitment as Guyana’s trusted security partner and promoting regional cooperation and interoperability."[96]
    - SubiculumCode 3y ago
      Plastic
  - belltaco 3y ago
    Toyota is sinking a lot of money and effort into anti-EV lobbying because they somehow missed the EV bus. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/07/toyota-bet-wrong-on-evs-so-now-its-lobbying-to-slow-the-transition/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/07/toyota-bet-wrong-on-evs...
    - _aavaa_ 3y ago
      That somehow was by being busy smoking their hydrogen pipe.
    - nxm 3y ago
      And yet are looking like the winners at the moment with the EV market slowing down due to demand and offering hybrids which the market can’t get enough
      - dalyons 3y ago
        The EV market is slowing down in the US only because manufacturers refuse to make affordable EVs. Ie, the point of the article. Toyota is going to get obliterated globally by Chinese EVs unless they change course very soon. Maybe they’ll hang on in the US for longer due to protectionism
        Incipient 3y ago
        The US protects Japanese car manufacturers?
        seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        The USA has tariffs on Chinese cars, and vice versa. Actually, China does the same thing with Japan, so I expect protectionism to make Chinese cars more expensive there also. But it’s primarily rules china put in place to protect their car market and encourage domestic production, and the rules in Japan and the USA are in retaliation to Chinese tariffs (which ironically are protecting them now instead).
      - 3y ago
- autocanopener 3y ago
  It's crazy that this Chinese EV push will decimate global oil demand, which will collapse Russia's economy faster. But China then has to support/supply Russia with even more war supplies/materials, which I guess make Russia super dependent on China? But then at some point, Europe (if they're not stupid) will say no more to being economically attacked by China and military attacked by Russia, and Chinese EV sales to Europe collapses...
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    The answer to competition is competition. Want Chinese EV sales to collapse? It won’t happen based on emotional or nationalistic appeal if they’re 50% the price of European and American cars. The answer will be making cars that are higher quality and cheaper.
    - Incipient 3y ago
      Quality isn't really rewarded in sales. To the upper end up society, sure, but China is generally "good enough" on the quality side that prefer cheaper in the main. The Chinese govt supporting new markets to enhance competitiveness and have abuseable labour basically makes them unbeatable.
      - fnordpiglet 3y ago
        I would say Toyota proved that isn’t true. American car makers tried a price only strategy and it led to a terrible reputation for low quality and opened the door to being totally pwned by Toyota, who offered more expensive but vastly higher quality products. The real test will be if Chinese car makers can leverage the ill gotten IP sufficiently to develop high quality products that are reliable and have high quality service experiences. I suspect they can meet quality standards, as quality control has met western standards in Chinese manufacturing of western products for some time. But establishing a service infrastructure will be a challenge in European and American markets that meets expectations. There is also a trend of corner cutting for domestic Chinese companies akin to 1980’s American car makers that will be interesting to watch, especially as time goes on and the initial focus on expansion wanes and BAU sets in. Hopefully though this will ultimately lead to more domestic research and less industrial espionage and forced transfer agreement based businesses, and all boats will rise from more competitive and research pressure globally.
blendo 3y ago
We seem to define “cars” as vehicles that can: 1: Carry a 1,000 lb payload (4 people plus luggage) 2: At a highway speed of 75-80 mph 3: For a non-stop duration of at least 2 hours 4: With enough armor and safety features to probably keep you alive during a crash at 50-60 mph. In that sense, a Honda Civic, a Tesla Model 3, and a 4 door pickup truck are all quite similar. I think it’s a shame there’s no market for a 45 mph, 400 lb payload vehicle. They’d probably only need a curb weight of 1000-1200 lbs, and if electric, only a cheaper 15-20 kWh battery.
- huytersd 3y ago
  45mph? Are you kidding me? So they can jam up all freeways?
  - eganist 3y ago
    I mean if freeways adjust to have minimum speeds of e.g 55mph instead of the current 45 (and even that's only in some states), it would solve this by constraining such a car to cities and backroads.
    - huytersd 3y ago
      You can’t really get anywhere in most of America if you stick to the backroads.
      - gpm 3y ago
        80% of the US lives in urban areas, in urban areas you can practically by definition. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/urban-rural-populations.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/urban-ru...
        huytersd 3y ago
        Urban areas in the US by definition means not just the downtown but all the surrounding suburbs and rural buffers. You definitely need the freeway to get downtown in most cases.
next_xibalba 3y ago
Given Chinas horrible record of reciprocity, why in gods name would any country allow Chinese companies to sell autos in their countries? Tesla is the only automaker that hasn’t been forced into an IP theft disguised as a minority JV in China.
- stefan_ 3y ago
  Oh the IP theft is happening anyway. But no, in their infinite wisdom, non-Chinese automakers oppose taxes and tariffs on Chinese dumping EVs because they fear retaliation against their China sales (such a big growing market!). But of course the party will cut them out anyway, they were just waiting for local companies to make somewhat competitive cars. It will probably not be in the nature of obvious import tariffs, but it will happen.
- nebula8804 3y ago
  Don't big auto companies have tons of plants in the China and are trying desperately to establish brand loyalty to all the newly middle class Chinese? Whats to stop China from seizing all these plants and outright kicking the companies out unless their parent countries let Chinese cars into their market?
- autocanopener 3y ago
  U.S seems to have adopted advanced protection against dumping of Chinese EV vehicles, via the signature climate law and languages in the inflation reduction act. Chinese EV have barely any market adoption in U.S. Europe is where the potential massacre could be. The Chinese EV still have a small share of the market, but it is gaining. Leave it to brainless Europe to allow China to dump their overproduced EV and kill Europe's entire car industry. Not to mention the profit then gets funneled back into China supplying Russia's war against Europe, making Europe even weaker to fend of China's economic attack. effectively win/win for them.
  - applied_heat 3y ago
    I think just the safety regulations are enough to prevent Chinese automotive entry in to the American market
nextworddev 3y ago
There’s a difference between affordable and “dumping”
morepork 3y ago
For years automakers have been pushing people towards bigger and bigger vehicles as they have higher margins, but saying that it's due to consumer preference. The Chinese automakers are showing that there certainly is demand in those segments if you actually make decent vehicles, and they don't mind operating on slim margins to take market share.
- davidw 3y ago
  The cost in human lives and misery of these larger vehicles is...staggering https://www.reuters.com/world/us/tall-trucks-suvs-are-45-deadlier-us-pedestrians-study-shows-2023-11-14/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/tall-trucks-suvs-are-45-dea... https://www.vox.com/23784549/pedestrian-deaths-traffic-safety-fatalities-governors-association https://www.vox.com/23784549/pedestrian-deaths-traffic-safet...
spaceman_2020 3y ago
Every time I visit America, I’m amazed by the sizes of the vehicles on the road. Entire living room sized cars carrying just one person. Wild!
trog 3y ago
This is great. Finally something forcing the hand of Mazda, Toyota, Honda etc to get serious about electric cars. The recent news that China is now outselling Germany and Japan in monthly car sales[1] should be making them quake in their boots. We're seeing a ton of Chinese made EVs here in Australia - BYD probably the most common where I am, aside from Teslas (which I think are now mostly China made for our market). Really want to see a Mazda 3 EV or similar!

40 points by lxm 3y ago

There’s about zero bad news here. A race to the bottom in price for EVs will reduce fossil fuels use mire than line after line of Tesla priced cars.

umeshunni 3y ago
It's not bad news for the consumer or for climate change. It's only bad news for legacy automakers.
- grecy 3y ago
  And the oil companies
  - okasaki 3y ago
    I guess they'll be ok Following further discoveries of oil and gas fields,[34] on 19 September 2023, Guyana authorized six foreign oil companies including ExxonMobil to drill in the waters claimed by Venezuela.[35][36] In October, ExxonMobil Guyana Limited (EMGL) President, Alistair Routledge, told reporters that "we have not been scared away by Venezuela…that’s why we’re still working in Guyana. That’s why we anticipate continuing to do so for decades to come".[37] ... The United States Southern Command said on 7 December that its forces would participate in joint operations beside the Guyana Defense Force (GDF) in an effort to improve collaboration with security measures. US statements also said that the United States "will continue its collaboration with the GDF in the areas of disaster preparedness, aerial and maritime security, and countering transnational criminal organizations" and that the North American nation "will continue its commitment as Guyana’s trusted security partner and promoting regional cooperation and interoperability."[96]
  - SubiculumCode 3y ago
    Plastic
- belltaco 3y ago
  Toyota is sinking a lot of money and effort into anti-EV lobbying because they somehow missed the EV bus. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/07/toyota-bet-wrong-on-evs-so-now-its-lobbying-to-slow-the-transition/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/07/toyota-bet-wrong-on-evs...
  - _aavaa_ 3y ago
    That somehow was by being busy smoking their hydrogen pipe.
  - nxm 3y ago
    And yet are looking like the winners at the moment with the EV market slowing down due to demand and offering hybrids which the market can’t get enough
    - dalyons 3y ago
      The EV market is slowing down in the US only because manufacturers refuse to make affordable EVs. Ie, the point of the article. Toyota is going to get obliterated globally by Chinese EVs unless they change course very soon. Maybe they’ll hang on in the US for longer due to protectionism
      - Incipient 3y ago
        The US protects Japanese car manufacturers?
        seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        The USA has tariffs on Chinese cars, and vice versa. Actually, China does the same thing with Japan, so I expect protectionism to make Chinese cars more expensive there also. But it’s primarily rules china put in place to protect their car market and encourage domestic production, and the rules in Japan and the USA are in retaliation to Chinese tariffs (which ironically are protecting them now instead).
    - 3y ago
autocanopener 3y ago
It's crazy that this Chinese EV push will decimate global oil demand, which will collapse Russia's economy faster. But China then has to support/supply Russia with even more war supplies/materials, which I guess make Russia super dependent on China? But then at some point, Europe (if they're not stupid) will say no more to being economically attacked by China and military attacked by Russia, and Chinese EV sales to Europe collapses...
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  The answer to competition is competition. Want Chinese EV sales to collapse? It won’t happen based on emotional or nationalistic appeal if they’re 50% the price of European and American cars. The answer will be making cars that are higher quality and cheaper.
  - Incipient 3y ago
    Quality isn't really rewarded in sales. To the upper end up society, sure, but China is generally "good enough" on the quality side that prefer cheaper in the main. The Chinese govt supporting new markets to enhance competitiveness and have abuseable labour basically makes them unbeatable.
    - fnordpiglet 3y ago
      I would say Toyota proved that isn’t true. American car makers tried a price only strategy and it led to a terrible reputation for low quality and opened the door to being totally pwned by Toyota, who offered more expensive but vastly higher quality products. The real test will be if Chinese car makers can leverage the ill gotten IP sufficiently to develop high quality products that are reliable and have high quality service experiences. I suspect they can meet quality standards, as quality control has met western standards in Chinese manufacturing of western products for some time. But establishing a service infrastructure will be a challenge in European and American markets that meets expectations. There is also a trend of corner cutting for domestic Chinese companies akin to 1980’s American car makers that will be interesting to watch, especially as time goes on and the initial focus on expansion wanes and BAU sets in. Hopefully though this will ultimately lead to more domestic research and less industrial espionage and forced transfer agreement based businesses, and all boats will rise from more competitive and research pressure globally.

blendo 3y ago

We seem to define “cars” as vehicles that can: 1: Carry a 1,000 lb payload (4 people plus luggage) 2: At a highway speed of 75-80 mph 3: For a non-stop duration of at least 2 hours 4: With enough armor and safety features to probably keep you alive during a crash at 50-60 mph. In that sense, a Honda Civic, a Tesla Model 3, and a 4 door pickup truck are all quite similar. I think it’s a shame there’s no market for a 45 mph, 400 lb payload vehicle. They’d probably only need a curb weight of 1000-1200 lbs, and if electric, only a cheaper 15-20 kWh battery.

huytersd 3y ago
45mph? Are you kidding me? So they can jam up all freeways?
- eganist 3y ago
  I mean if freeways adjust to have minimum speeds of e.g 55mph instead of the current 45 (and even that's only in some states), it would solve this by constraining such a car to cities and backroads.
  - huytersd 3y ago
    You can’t really get anywhere in most of America if you stick to the backroads.
    - gpm 3y ago
      80% of the US lives in urban areas, in urban areas you can practically by definition. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/urban-rural-populations.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/urban-ru...
      - huytersd 3y ago
        Urban areas in the US by definition means not just the downtown but all the surrounding suburbs and rural buffers. You definitely need the freeway to get downtown in most cases.

next_xibalba 3y ago

Given Chinas horrible record of reciprocity, why in gods name would any country allow Chinese companies to sell autos in their countries? Tesla is the only automaker that hasn’t been forced into an IP theft disguised as a minority JV in China.

stefan_ 3y ago
Oh the IP theft is happening anyway. But no, in their infinite wisdom, non-Chinese automakers oppose taxes and tariffs on Chinese dumping EVs because they fear retaliation against their China sales (such a big growing market!). But of course the party will cut them out anyway, they were just waiting for local companies to make somewhat competitive cars. It will probably not be in the nature of obvious import tariffs, but it will happen.
nebula8804 3y ago
Don't big auto companies have tons of plants in the China and are trying desperately to establish brand loyalty to all the newly middle class Chinese? Whats to stop China from seizing all these plants and outright kicking the companies out unless their parent countries let Chinese cars into their market?
autocanopener 3y ago
U.S seems to have adopted advanced protection against dumping of Chinese EV vehicles, via the signature climate law and languages in the inflation reduction act. Chinese EV have barely any market adoption in U.S. Europe is where the potential massacre could be. The Chinese EV still have a small share of the market, but it is gaining. Leave it to brainless Europe to allow China to dump their overproduced EV and kill Europe's entire car industry. Not to mention the profit then gets funneled back into China supplying Russia's war against Europe, making Europe even weaker to fend of China's economic attack. effectively win/win for them.
- applied_heat 3y ago
  I think just the safety regulations are enough to prevent Chinese automotive entry in to the American market

nextworddev 3y ago

There’s a difference between affordable and “dumping”

morepork 3y ago

For years automakers have been pushing people towards bigger and bigger vehicles as they have higher margins, but saying that it's due to consumer preference. The Chinese automakers are showing that there certainly is demand in those segments if you actually make decent vehicles, and they don't mind operating on slim margins to take market share.

davidw 3y ago
The cost in human lives and misery of these larger vehicles is...staggering https://www.reuters.com/world/us/tall-trucks-suvs-are-45-deadlier-us-pedestrians-study-shows-2023-11-14/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/tall-trucks-suvs-are-45-dea... https://www.vox.com/23784549/pedestrian-deaths-traffic-safety-fatalities-governors-association https://www.vox.com/23784549/pedestrian-deaths-traffic-safet...

spaceman_2020 3y ago

Every time I visit America, I’m amazed by the sizes of the vehicles on the road. Entire living room sized cars carrying just one person. Wild!

trog 3y ago

This is great. Finally something forcing the hand of Mazda, Toyota, Honda etc to get serious about electric cars. The recent news that China is now outselling Germany and Japan in monthly car sales[1] should be making them quake in their boots. We're seeing a ton of Chinese made EVs here in Australia - BYD probably the most common where I am, aside from Teslas (which I think are now mostly China made for our market). Really want to see a Mazda 3 EV or similar!