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"Americans only want trucks and SUVs." (I hear people say.) Cool. Then allow BYD non-trucks, non-SUVs into the U.S. then. The Japanese back in the 70's showed
by JKCalhoun 11mo ago
"Americans only want trucks and SUVs." (I hear people say.)
Cool. Then allow BYD non-trucks, non-SUVs into the U.S. then.
The Japanese back in the 70's showed U.S. automakers that price and mileage (in that decade anyway) were important to Americans. I suspect price is still important.
- lifty 11mo agoWhy would they allow it? It would destroy the remaining car industry in the US. Better to at least maintain a car industry, even if it’s inefficient.
- newAccount2025 11mo agoWhy is that better?
- epistasis 11mo agoA jobs subsidy program that focused on more productive industries would be better than subsidizing an auto industry that never aimed for international competitiveness. We have exceptionally productive fields in the US tumor are the envy of the world. If we can't be productive in auto manufacturing, devoting a ton of our workforce too it is a misallocation of our limited resources. If we are going to be subsidizing unprofitable industry fro national security purposes, we need to either 1) ruthlessly cut the least productive manufacturers from access to subsidies, or 2) nationalize it. Any other choices would be very inefficient.
- Animats 11mo agoThe historical track record of that kind of thing is terrible. You end up with a bloated, inefficient industry that produces bad products. Britain, pre-EU, did a lot of that. British Steel, British Rail, British Overseas Airways Corporation, British Petroleum, English Electric computers, etc. Then they needed bailouts. This resulted in what's called "lemon socialism" - the state owns all the dud industries.
- khannn 11mo agoI wish I could get a BYD Dolphin hatch for ~10k USD. Somehow my 12 year old Prius is worth 9k on KBB and that's insane.
- vel0city 11mo agoDolphins don't sell for $10k outside of China. Dolphins in South/Central America are ~$22k. Even if there weren't tariffs on them I wouldn't expect to see them out the door for less than $25k in the US.
- energy123 11mo agoWhy the 120% price difference between China and South America?
- vel0city 11mo agoDifferent government subsidies, different manufacturing costs, different regulatory requirements, and different markets have different market competition. Think about this concept. It costs you $1 to make a widget. It costs your competitors $1.25 to make a similar widget. They sell theirs for $5. Do you sell yours for $1.50 or $4.75? Obviously, other things could be in play for the market for widgets, but if you could sell all your widgets for $4.75 wouldn't you do that? If the cheapest car in the US is about $20k and is a complete POS, why would you sell your better car for $10k when you could still sell it for $22k and still sell just about all the ones you build?
- energy123 11mo agoA lot of this makes sense. But why would South America's consumer market be less competitive than China? If China's low prices are caused by, say, 3 Chinese brands competing with each other, why can't those 3 Chinese brands also compete with each other in South America?
- seanmcdirmid 11mo ago
- cmxch 11mo agoWhen BYD makes an affordable clone of the Crown Vic that doesn’t phone home to the PRC, I’ll look at them.
- fragmede 11mo agoWhy the Crown Vic? Even Ford doesn't make them anymore!
- baranul 11mo agoThe statement is likely to be justification propaganda from those companies that have focused on trucks and SUVs. There is still a car market in the U.S., and for that matter, in South America and Canada. Something else that is not being told in the mainstream media, is the U.S. bias and negative attitude towards South American countries has left the door wide open to China. And China is firmly establishing itself there, where it is unlikely that the U.S. can compete for at least a decade, if not a generation.