Who could have ever foreseen this result when we outsourced all of our manufacturing and skilled labour to China???
It's almost like chasing thoughtless, short-term profit gains is a horrible idea.
this post was submitted on 31 May 2026
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Our design engineering is lacking too. I read not long ago how the president of Ford said how they tore down a Chinese EV and said “we got it all wrong.” I’m in the automotive manufacturing industry and we source some parts from China. The factories I work with are all IATF/ISO certified and they can make parts for 10x less AND not require a minimum production that would last me 5 years. And the comment about working around the tariff is absolutely true. One of our Chinese suppliers started building a plant in Thailand not long after the election. State of the art. less tariff. Quality parts. My first order is shipping this week.
Chinese industry knows how to manufacture at scale. With a hundred year head start, US auto manufacturing is still a joke.
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The world's car makers struggled to compete with Japan back in the '70s, but I would argue that struggle gave people access to better vehicles.
Turned out the winning move was to make affordable cars that were fuel efficient to operate and people would rush to buy them.
Japan even failed to learn from Japan judging by everything I see here. Not necessarily as badly as the US mfgs did, but still. Especially for those chasing hydrogen right now and Nissan going through its thing (and I drive a Nissan kei car).
Nissan/Honda/Toyota/Subaru have the worst EVs on the market. They learned nothing lol.
Bad screens, tiny screens, bad software, uncompetitive range, bad interior, zero competitive features above the competition.
Japan is an insular society that discourages talking out against your superiors in the work environment, so this was bound to happen in the days of the aging-out boomers holding onto leadership positions. With the head start that Japan had, they should’ve produced a 1:1 Tesla in 5 years, but they didn’t. It’s been 15 years since the best cars hit the market, and now China leapfrogged Tesla to be the best like Japan did to American car makers 40 years ago.
All of this was made possible by Chinese government cash infusions and social programs to invest in car manufacturing/ecosystems. The west did that in 2010, but let the companies spend the money how they wanted (the top executives were allowed to get away with embezzling all of it. surprise!) with no stipulations, and that’s how we got to where we are today.
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But that requires R&D, and that means hiring and paying more engineers! And maintaining multiple production lines! And paying people to work on those! Can't we just make a law that all Americans have to buy an F-150 by the time they turn 30???
I mean, from what I can see half of them aren't even trying.
Alternate headline: "The World's Carmakers Have Become Too Fat And Bloated To Compete With China".
This is my take too.
It's not that America and Europe can't compete. It's that they've got their fat asses propped up on piles of misbegotten cash and are too fucking lazy and greedy to make a good product.
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I wonder if the fact that most American and European carmakers are stubbornly clinging to the 1800s technology known as the internal combustion engine while Chinese ones are actively embracing the modern technology that car buyers actually want has anything to do with it 🤔
What? Rubbish. Total incomprehensible rubbish.
Right, time to get the coal burning in my steam tractor!!
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It probably has more to do with the cost of labour in China.
That's another part of it, sure, but DEFINITELY not the whole or even main reason.
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Many brands are assembling their cars in China. https://www.thecarexpert.co.uk/which-new-cars-are-built-in-china/
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And also the fact that they control all the resources (like rare earth minerals) needed to make EV batteries while every other manufacturer is forced to buy them at a markup from China. They even have their own slave labor force to work the mines so that they can keep prices low for themselves.
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Then don't. Make cities walkable and invest in public transport.
China is also doing that, believe it or not.
In my experience, the best we can do is change the bus schedules so you have to walk further to a bus stop and wait longer for a bus that never arrives at the scheduled time...
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They go for next quarter profits instead of value for consumers . Stopped building affordable cars favoring trucks. Shipped car industry to China. The end
Went for trucks for greater profit margin and lower regulations but lost the volume game. For capitalists, they sure suck at it.
Even if you ignore the US obsession with trucks, western manufacturers labour costs are much higher and there aren't subsidies on manufacturing EVs, only buying them. Chinese EVs get manufacturing subsidies and then in many countries they also get a local subsidy at the point of purchase. It's an underhanded tactic, the Chinese government is essentially paying people outside of China to buy Chinese EVs so western competiton would die.
they have all the manufacturing there, I'm sure all the parts are dirt cheap for them if you don't ship em cross ocean.
I'm not sure about china paying for you to buy them, many countries counter that with tariffs. I think those prices are close to natural prices given the enormous scale of china and nearby markets.
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US car makers get tax incentives and bailouts, effectively subsidized by the government as well.
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Maybe they should try practical and repairaible cars for a change?
Think U.S. car manufacturers did a couple billion of of stock buybacks over the last few years. If only they had invested that money back into the business to make better vehicles.
Short term profit and doing compliance cars and half assed attempts with certain irrelevance in a decade or so, or choosing to forgo profit and really go for converting to EV.
Every board room figuring a golden parachute in 10 years sounds really good.
They don't even need cars to do it. The BBSHD kit from Bafang I'm gonna throw on the bike I'm building will save me thousands of miles on my existing car.
China is keeping me from buying a new car by helping not need to use one.
- Lobby to become the default mode of transportation in the postwar period
- Get dragged kicking and screaming towards efficiency
- Successfully lobby to gut regulations and manufacture demand for SUVs and crew cab pickups
- Stop building cars altogether
- Help get a fascist elected who kicks off another oil crisis
- Cry about China eating your lunch
For years it was all about cheap labour in China but what it really is about is innovation and robots. Western car makers have largely missed the warnings by assuming the Chinese market was like our own.
The other point is that capitalism has been whinging about market distortion while the Chinese government was planning for dominance.
China funds all these companies and their projects, that's why China is pushing forward.
So like you think us and Europe not prepping their manufacturing by combination of loans and tax breaks?
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Good, maybe it'll stir them from their oligopolist stupor.
The days of fat, dumb and happy are gone. The options are to get tough or to get driven out of business.
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