5 ms·
I am an automotive components supplier and I’ve always wondered how automotive giants are staying open or even turning any profit at all (1) Between this, Niss
by aetherspawn 1y ago
I am an automotive components supplier and I’ve always wondered how automotive giants are staying open or even turning any profit at all (1)
Between this, Nissan and a dozen others, I guess there’s a lot of running-on-debt going on.
1: it’s so difficult with the latest round of laws making a very high level of ADAS mandatory. Huge spend in R+D, particularly software and vertical integration, and then again huge spend on the physical car electronics.
- deepsun 1y agoNew cars prices doubled in the last 20 years. If anything, I would expect them to make record profits actually.
- lynx97 1y agoThat is called inflation. Almost everything doubled its price in the last 20 years. My rent, for instance...
- thrwaway55 1y agoThis is honestly tighter then you might think accounting for inflation. A 2000 1$ is 1.87$ today. 2005 seems like they should be doing a lot better since it's 1.65$ but it's not nearly as gangbusters as this comes across.
- epolanski 1y agoThat doesn't cope with less vehicles being sold overall and inflation, even if margins on a single car have never been higher I think (at least in US).
- metaphor 1y ago> New cars prices doubled in the last 20 years. In the US, authoritative data sources[1] suggest otherwise. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1KzJF https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1KzJF
- Mindless2112 1y agoThe CPI's hedonic quality adjustment means that this graph doesn't mean what you think it means.
- UltraSane 1y agoCars HAVE gotten a LOT better over time.
- slaw 1y agoCars today are better than 50 years ago, but not much better than 15 years ago.
- reaperducer 1y agoCars today are better than 50 years ago, but not much better than 15 years ago. You must be young. Cars used to last five years before falling apart. It helped drive the whole auto leasing industry, because nobody wanted something that turned into an old rust bucket in half a decade. The reliable Japanese cars came in, and every marker suddenly started offering five, eight, and even ten year partial warranties. Today, a ten-year-old car is very common. I kept mine until it was 12-years-old, and in that time it never had a breakdown. Just tires, oil changes, and many lightbulbs. My previous cars (Volkswagen, Isuzu, Ford, Ford, Mercury) had long been scrapped by then.
- msgodel 1y agoI don't know if you're aware but y2k was almost 30 years ago. My 2006 Corolla was going pretty strong up until a few years ago.
- UltraSane 1y agoI own a 2002 Saturn and cars made in the last 5 years feel like space shuttles by comparison.
- 1y ago
- adrianN 1y agoSo prices have roughly kept up with inflation?
- metaphor 1y agoNo[1], far from it in the US...thank goodness. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1KzKj https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1KzKj
- anon191928 1y agothat number is lie, good luck believing tho. printer will not share truth, it's always higher
- mrighele 1y agoAt least in Europe, car are more expensive to make than 20 years ago, even inflation adjusted, as the EU keeps adding new and stricter regulations. * Lower emissions, requiring more expensive engines. * Making cars easier to recycle (but more expensive to build) * Adding mandatory accessories for safety reasons. Here you can find an example of what that has been recently added. [1]. Nice stuff, but it doesn't come for free. [1] https://autovista24.autovistagroup.com/news/what-is-the-general-safety-regulation/ https://autovista24.autovistagroup.com/news/what-is-the-gene...
- morsch 1y agoCars have also gotten much bigger, heavier and more powerful.
- eptcyka 1y agoDifficult to make a small car that has all the safety and matches the price. It is easier to justify the bigger car at its price than the smaller car, since 2x bigger car will not be 2x more expensive to make.
- zihotki 1y agoThat's not the case in EU if we put EVs into separate category since they all have a battery weight toll.
- morsch 1y agoIt's true even if you don't consider EVs. People buy more SUVs, for one thing, but a 2025 VW Golf is also larger and heavier than a 2005 Golf, which is larger and heavier than a 1985 Golf. Compact cars in 2025 are the size mid size cars used to be a couple of decades ago. Meanwhile, the average family size is getting smaller and smaller and the average occupancy is ever closer to 1.
- giingyui 1y ago[dead]
- 1y ago
- dmix 1y agoIt helps markets like US and Canada have essentially banned competition from Chinese car makers and tightly controlled automotive trade in general from many other countries.
- rafaelmn 1y agoEU also tariffed Chinese cars out of the market.
- vkou 1y agoIt's difficult to compete with automation.
- mjmas 1y agoOr slave labour
- newsclues 1y agoOr IP theft
- jaggs 1y agoYeah because the Western auto makers were developing advanced electric cars for decades before the Chinese started their program. Good catch. /s
- patrickhogan1 1y agoWe need to move past these debates or we’ll slip further behind. China is repeating Japan’s trajectory: early products may have been rough, but Toyota grew into an innovation powerhouse. No one questions the Prius’s impact today. At some point, we need to stop talking about what we did in high school 10 years ago and start figuring out how to make everything we interact with better by tapping into the collective intelligence of 8 billion people.
- 1y ago
- jandrewrogers 1y agoThey aren’t turning a profit on the hardware in many cases. They hope to make it up by selling financing and data from the platforms.
- arresin 1y agoI really don’t want my car to be a “platform”.
- charcircuit 1y agoNo one is forcing you to upgrade the trim on your car. That such an upgrade is available is beneficial. For something so expensive one would hope that it is extendable and you would not have to buy a whole new car if you wanted something different.
- rsynnott 1y agoAstonishingly, Stellantis (the global business, not the Chinese subsidiary) is profitable, somehow. Pays a dividend, and everything.
- v5v3 1y ago2024 revenue down 17% Net profit down 70% at a meagre 5billion. https://www.stellantis.com/en/news/press-releases/2025/february/full-year-2024-results https://www.stellantis.com/en/news/press-releases/2025/febru... They need to spend billions on an ongoing basis in R&D
- zihotki 1y agoPast performance is not indicative of current/future. See https://s3-prod.autonews.com/2024-09/Dealer%20letter%20to%20Stellantis%20CEO.pdf https://s3-prod.autonews.com/2024-09/Dealer%20letter%20to%20... for more details why it was profitable in previous few years.