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In less than 10 years the entire US automotive industry is gonna go bust. I just… can’t understand how anyone can look at the progress being made by BYD/Huawei
by pm90 1y ago
In less than 10 years the entire US automotive industry is gonna go bust. I just… can’t understand how anyone can look at the progress being made by BYD/Huawei and not be compelled to completely reorient the American economy to build/run EVs. Bot only would it help the US compete but would likely create massive numbers of jobs too… instead the US will deindustrialize while China takes over the world.
- toomuchtodo 1y agoManagement and shareholders care about today; in 10 years, it’ll be someone else’s problem. Just like the first wave of US deindustrialization.
- 6510 1y agoWell then, just add a tax for selling within less than 10 years.
- kortilla 1y agoTesla?
- cenamus 1y agoBYD is almost half the price and doesn't come with Musk attached
- chrini3930 1y ago> Tesla? Next time you’re in Asia (hell, anywhere outside USA) sit inside a BYD vehicle. Tesla-like acceleration with Porsche handling with Italian interior with Toyota reliability for HALF the god damn price of Tesla. US government does not want Americans to know China already won at EVs. It will hurt national pride. Just like how the space station is going down in 2030 with no plans to replace. Meanwhile China already has their own manned space station live today. Would not be surprised if NASA is abolished in the next few years.
- kortilla 1y agoThey do no handle like a Porsche. Too heavy. Claiming Toyota reliability is pretty bold for cars that have been on the market for a year.
- Afforess 1y agoYeah, I came to the same exact conclusion last year. Heck, even Ford’s CEO drives a BYD and thinks their a major threat. This administration seems set on demolishing American industries though. Such a shame, but maybe we can finally get decent rail once all the car lobby’s are dead. (But probably not)
- idiotsecant 1y agoI mean, say what you will about third world mafia states, they do generally have trains. Mostly because the citizens couldn't imagine owning a personal vehicle. Post-soviet Russia, here we come!!
- ninetyninenine 1y agoNo this administration is set on protecting industry. Tesla is still around largely because byd is kept out. I mean the policies you see you like to think are bad are literally helping Americans out, it’s just hard to look at those policies. Because the policies represents American inferiority. America needs a leg up because their industry is inferior to China. These policies are not fair at all.
- pstuart 1y ago> No this administration is set on protecting industry No, this administration ostensibly wants to Make America Great Again, but that requires policy that is focused on the greater good -- with a long term vision on the investment. The reality is that they are actually interested in is actually a kakistocracy and has the following concerns: self-enrichment, staying in power, and oppressing its enemies.
- ninetyninenine 1y agoAll of what you said is true. But you implied making America great is not part of that. Trust me. The kakistocracy requires America to be great. The tariffs are part of that. Let me spell it out. The ceo of tsmc has clearly stated many times. The economics of building a fab in the US don’t make sense. Everything will be massively more expensive. The reason why it’s being done is simply to give a leg up to the US so the US can perform better at something that they are inferior at to Taiwan. All of these policies are done to produce better outcomes in the long term but be massively painful in the short term. I hate trump but the reality is that politics and taking sides is a cartoonish attitude. People are complex and the administration is made up multitudes of people. The reason for why they do what they do aren’t simply black and white and always in favor of just funneling more power to the upper class. Maybe you’re right that they don’t give a shit about anyone other than self enrichment. But improving America in general doesn’t go against self enrichment, in fact improving America in general has massive long term upsides for trump. Don’t fall into the trope of taking a political side and thinking in terms of caricatures that trump is just pure evil.
- nickff 1y agoThe US automakers built an oligopoly when foreign competitors were technologically behind, and they developed a burdensome cost-structure based on expensive labor and multi-layered supply chains. To compete, they would need to vertically integrate (which would be very capital intensive, and is discouraged by the tax code), and cut their (unionized) Union labor costs.
- postpawl 1y agoGM announced a $10 billion stock buyback in November 2023, literally weeks after claiming they couldn't afford worker raises during the UAW strike that cost them $1.1 billion. Since 2015, GM has authorized $37.7 billion in total buybacks while their new UAW contract costs $9.3 billion over four years. When you can find $10 billion for buybacks immediately after settling a strike, the problem isn't "expensive labor". It's management that chose financial engineering over building competitive manufacturing capabilities.
- piva00 1y agoThank you for providing another example for me to use when arguing against stock buybacks[0], it's an absurdity of perverse incentives. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44590826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44590826
- impossiblefork 1y agoYes, but companies run for investors will always have to pay investors, so it would have either been a buyback or dividends. When interest rates go up, companies end up competing with government bonds, and they must give dividends that keep them competitive, and in 2023 that was something like 4.3%. For investing in the future to be possible interest rates must essentially be low. I've thought a little about this problem, because recently we had situations where we simultaneously had inflation and needed investments to produce products in new ways to counter that inflation, and this obviously leads to a situation where it's difficult to get out of the problem. If we increase the interest rates then we stop the inflation, but the interest rates will be too high for investments to counter them. Concretely: Northvolt was trying to do American-style doomscaling and then interest rates went up, so they went under. I believe that there is a solution: giving the central banks the additional tool to set a mandatory savings fraction of wages-- that is, that the central banks are allowed to set a fraction of wages that must be saved, and which may be invested or used to start a company but which isn't allowed to be used for consumption. If you then have inflation and consumers are bidding over each other for goods and driving up the prices the central bank can increase the savings fraction without changing the interest rate. So plausible, in case of inflation you'd look at the need for capital to get out of it: if there's no need for capital to build new things and get out of it, then you just increase the interest rate, if there is, you increase the mandatory savings rate. I thought about voluntary solutions, but suppose that we consider a savings pacts-- i.e. ordinary people get together and agree to all save a certain fraction of their income, then this drives down prices, so whoever deviates from the pact gets so much goods that he's really happy with what he gets for his money. Consequently such savings pacts are unstable and the savings pact must be mandatory. I also think this is especially right for Europe. I calculated that if the central banks set this at 5% then this is enough for Draghi's €800B of needed investment, but it's obviously also applicable to the US if the US wants to transition to EVs, and now you have even higher interest rates than we do, so this policy might actually be the right thing for you too.
- echelon 1y agoAmerican consumers want expensive and big cars, not cheap and tiny cars. BYD margins in America would be razor thin. BYD is going to kill in developing and emerging markets, but it doesn't stand a chance in the American SUV / truck / sports car market. It'll also push America out of international markets, but it won't be able to edge into American consumer markets. It's not big auto that's the problem. It's the American consumer. US automotive regulations have pushed for lighter, smaller, more fuel efficient coupes. Yet people keep buying the big and heavy trucks and SUVs. It's cultural.
- Afforess 1y agoWrong. American car choice has everything to do with government subsidies, car safety standards and fuel standards. Consumer choice doesn’t matter in the US Auto market.
- echelon 1y agoLook at what consumers buy. You can't dispute the actual sales data. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g64457986/bestselling-cars-2025/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g64457986/bestselling-cars... It's trucks and SUVs. It doesn't matter if regulations favor small and fuel efficient. That's not what consumers buy. In fact, they flock to the exact opposite. Occam's razor here is that American auto isn't stupid. It's just building what the consumers want. American preferences don't match that of the broader world.
- Afforess 1y agoYou are missing the point. I don’t dispute the sales data, I agree with it, it supports my point. It’s not out of preference, it’s enforced by regulations and encouraged by the tax code. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24139147/suvs-trucks-popularity-federal-policy-pollution https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24139147/suvs-trucks-popu...
- echelon 1y agoThere are plenty of cheaper cars people can buy, but they're not buying them.
- atlanticfire 1y agoThere is one path though, the US automotive industry can start disregarding human rights like BYD (which ranks last now): https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/human-rights-ranking-electric-vehicle-industry/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/human-rights-...
- chrini3930 1y ago> There is one path though, the US automotive industry can start disregarding human rights like BYD (which ranks last now) US consumers already disregard human rights. They keep buying Nike and iPhones. EU cares more about human rights than the US.
- est 1y agoFord tried to introduce Chinese suppliers into North America, the congress scrapped that. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-lawmakers-demand-documents-ford-battery-partnership-with-catl-2023-09-27/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-law...
- KeplerBoy 1y agoSure because having domestic industry is a strategic decision. Also the reason why US carmakers won't go bust. Chinese competition simply won't be allowed. Easy as that.
- trhway 1y ago>Chinese competition simply won't be allowed. Easy as that. Then the domestic industry will just rot from inside. It is usually a worse outcome than if the domestic industry were competing in the open market. Tariffs and other protectionist measures result in the low quality high priced product of the protected industry being sellable only in the domestic market. Where is China is going to sell to the rest of the world. 340M vs. almost 8B of addressable market. It is a writing on the wall.
- jasonsb 1y agoWe’re now trapped in a new capitalist-globalist paradigm: when one country produces goods faster and cheaper, the response isn’t to compete, but to isolate them. And the world’s oligarchs couldn’t be happier.
- KeplerBoy 1y agoThat's hardly a new situation. There are no American cars on European roads with the exception of occasional Fords. Also the Chinese aren't selling to the rest of the World. The EU has also imposed harsh tariffs on BYD and others to protect its industry.
- ZeroGravitas 1y ago
- dyauspitr 1y agoTrump is a regressive. Short term profits for his buddies over 5-10 years then it’s night night to the US.
- joules77 1y ago> can't understand how Check out what year Michael Crichton's Rising Sun was released. Ask ChatGPT for a summary of the predictions. And then checkout what actually happened to Japan.
- ninetyninenine 1y agoThis is like what you hope will happen. It happened to Japan. Doesn’t mean it will happen to the US. When you look at some European country like Russia and see how fucked up it is. Then you say well Russia is full of white ppl like the US so the future of the US will be like Russia, doesn’t that sound massively stupid to you? So why do you think what happened to Japan applies to China? Like is it because the people in Japan look like the people in China? You know the countries hate each other right?
- jabiko 1y agoEven though there is some overlap of the European continent and Russia's territory, I don't think that Russia qualifies as an example for the average European country. Also, why are you mentioning the look of people in a discussion about cars and manufacturing?
- andsoitis 1y agoRussia is a European power. Geographically, linguistically, culturally, religions-wise, artistically, musically, etc.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bigbadfeline 1y agoRight but not politically! The Russian leadership went for self-isolation and nationalism. I used to hope for that mindset to remain limited to Russia, but I'm not so sure now.
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- pj_mukh 1y agoQuestion: What is stopping from a new or old entrant from creating a $10-15K electric car? American mfg may be slightly better at automation than China.
- StopDisinfo910 1y ago> American mfg may be slightly better at automation than China Doubtful. It’s hard for a country which has been consistently outsourcing the production of anything remotely complex to do better than one which has been the top producer of manufactured goods for decades. Tesla tried and mostly failed. Plus automation is expensive and require large volume to be profitable. American cars historically have limited appeal abroad and the market is extremely competitive which doesn’t help.
- apelapan 1y agoTesla seems to be doing pretty OK on the manufacturing side. These days quality of the physical product is decent enough and the price of their different models are highly competitive in their respective segments. The flaws in Teslas cars are mostly design choices (plastic seats instead of cloth/leather, bad ergonomics due to focus on minimalist aesthetic, uncomfortable suspension setup etc, etc). Some of it is following trends, some of it is Elons stupid ideas. Financially it seems like Teslas big problem is the AI-investments. Burning unfathomable amounts of cash on useless software, instead of putting that money towards developing their model lineup and improving quality on things that matter.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoTesla learned how to do manufacturing from the Chinese. The first plant they built themselves was designed, built and run by the Chinese, and then basically copied to Germany. The Texas plant is an evolution of that. That manufacturing edge is the reason Tesla is still profitable despite its massive drop in sales.
- StopDisinfo910 1y ago> These days quality of the physical product is decent enough and the price of their different models are highly competitive in their respective segments. [...] The flaws in Teslas cars are mostly design choices These two parts don't really go together from my point of view. Tesla is often pricing a car with mid-range quality as a premium model. Personally, I think they are not very competitive anymore in the segments they operate in. They used to have first mover advantage but now historic manufacturers have similar cars on offer. At the entry level, in as much as they have a vehicle there, they are not competitive at all compared to the Asian manufacturers. I am more worried about the plummeting sales than the AI investments.
- torginus 1y agoWhy? Once you go beyond how cheap these cars are - (they are not cheap in Europe), what's the standout feature they have the US (or any other) cars lack?
- WithinReason 1y ago> they are not cheap in Europe only due to large tariffs
- bryanlarsen 1y agoPeople point at the tariffs to say that those will protect US manufacturers. Wrong. They'll protect US manufacturing, not US manufacturers. Toyota, VW, Honda and Hyundai et al sell globally. They have to compete against China. Some of them will learn how to do so, then dominate the American market with their American factories.
- nodejs_in_2025 1y agoGood ridance.