Calling it now: Safe for any potential major conflicts or crises creating full isolation and destroying all trade with China (e.g. a Taiwan escalation), traditional western vehicle makers are gonna get completely wrecked. Their shift to electric is far too slow and too far behind already. And it's also too late for another industry disrupting startup like Tesla.
> Their shift to electric is far too slow and too far behind already. And it's also too late for another industry disrupting startup like Tesla.
Is it? At this point I’ve driven electric Audis and BMWs, VWs, Kia’s and also BYDs.
While the BYDs are certainly cars and are also relatively affordable compared to other options (of course it’s impossible to compare a BYD car to a BMW), it is not a very nice car in my experience.
Wether or not that is enough of a difference to sway consumer sentiment remains to be seen, but I don’t think it is as over as you make it out to be.
"Wether or not that is enough of a difference to sway consumer sentiment remains to be seen."
I think the biggest advantage from cars not from china are, that they are not from china.
No Huawei risk. No dead car in a major escalation.
Cars have gotten too smart and too connected for me to feel safe with a direct control line to Peking. (I also don't feel safe with a control line to Musk's HQ)
I know the VW ID3 got a lot of critique early on. But after seeing a lot of reviews I got the chance to test drive a newer model myself and it is a pretty cool car all things considered. Granted, we're still looking at a 35k MSRP, but in the EV space that is a relatively entry level vehicle.
The Renault Megane E Tech is a also a pretty cool vehicle hitting the same pricepoint (haven't driven that one yet tho). Citroen is also hitting very accessible pricepoints with their E3 starting at 23k MSRP
Car companies did make some compliance cars (I own one - Ford Focus 2017) and honestly it's a great city car. My wife prefers it to our more expensive SUV EV.
In addition to the spark EV, Fiat 500 EV, etc these are all no longer sold here. You might be able to pick one up used.
If the price of a new base clio starts at 20k€ and a Fiat panda at 15k€, than 40k€ is around the correct ballpark price for an eGolf I would argue, relatively speaking.
We could considered the Chinese cars as cheap, but we are than comparing the cost of a price-dumped car from China, to a slightly overpriced car from Germany.
The outlier here is considering a 10k€ car something normal. 10 years ago I would have argued yes, but after the inflation wave of the last few years, that is no longer a reality.
The problem for many consumers, and France is a good example of this, is that the salaries haven't followed. The second problem for France is that a large part of the population is stuck in minimum-wage or close to minimum-wage salaries, putting those goods out of reach as their prices increase with inflation. (Leaving the debate about whether the price increase is the cause or the consequence of inflation aside)
> than 40k€ is around the correct ballpark price for an eGolf I would argue, relatively speaking.
Only if these cars are only intended for the affluent. Then sure. It's totally the right place for them. But I thought the point of EVs was saving our environment. What's the point if only a small fraction of any given population can afford one?
what constitute "nice"? from all of the reviews i've seen, they're well built. The common misconception that chinese electronics products are made cheap and poorly is no longer true today (hasn't been true for the past decade).
"I just need to get from point a to point b without getting hurt"
I also enjoy being comfortable while doing so. Meaning sitting nice, good climate control, no bad smells, good sound isolation, ... being able to use the trunk.
Also a "nice" car also drives nice. If I like driving a car, it means I can handle it better - which is critical in critical situations - to not get hurt.
I think you are right. BYD and other companies won't stay in China either. They'll be opening up factories in Turkey, Mexico, etc. This will start creating issues for incumbents in most markets. The US and EU might protect their domestic markets with tariffs for a while. But their exports are going to suffer. And short of imposing tariffs on lots of other countries and suspending related trade agreements, cars will still come into domestic markets via those new factories. And inevitably, some companies will start falling over and might fall in the hands of foreign investors or disappear completely.
It's a repeat of the emergence of Japanese car manufacturers in the eighties. The same dynamics are at play here: the Chinese products are simply better and cheaper. And contrary to the popular believe that's not just subsidies. Those foreign factories in Turkey, Mexico, and elsewhere will be producing low cost vehicles. The cost difference is the competitive advantage Chinese companies now have. They might have gotten there via subsidies but now that they have this cost advantage, it's there to stay. To compete, other companies will have to address their cost issues and their R&D deficit. There's no way around it. Producing more costly vehicles is just going to continue to price them out of the market.
Delay tactics don't work. Tariffs don't work. Delaying investments, doesn't work either. That about sums up the current attitude of a lot of the legacy companies. Dragging their feet, reducing investments, and lobbying for tariffs to protect their businesses. To survive, they would need to reverse their strategy and shift all effort towards producing low cost EVs. There's plenty of demand. But not for overpriced products.
Something interesting I heard from a chip company that's huge in the space and work intimately with many automotive companies - why Chinese companies grow so fast is because their development cycle for a car is ~2-3 years, compared to traditional manufacturers who take 5-7 years. This is a massive edge in pushing out new features and exploiting the very rapid new tech - batteries, self driving, etc.
Stellantis is the perfect illustration: they kept putting all efforts into pushing their flawed ICE engine (PureTech) because they wanted to make profits from it for at least 10 years. And now the efforts are still not on making a good affordable car but on lobbying to revoke the EU ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars.
The writing has been on the wall for a while now. Traditional automakers have tens of billions of R&D sunk in ICE vehicles they were planning to payback in decades. Now they have to spend that again on EVs and they just have no desire.
They’re also extremely slow to react, and can’t fathom that people don’t really want what they’ve been selling the last couple of decades, they just didn’t have an alternative. Now they do.
Europe is already talking heavy tariffs to protect it's automakers, with Trump winning and his stance on the issue - doubtful they will let this happen.
they go thru the soft underbelly of mexico. And with that method, entrench mexico's economic interests with chinese manufacturers, and by indirection, give the CCP soft power over them.
You might be thinking of "POTUS" rather than "politician".
eg:
Mitch McConnell, senior United States senator from Kentucky since 1985, the longest serving senator in his state's history. McConnell has been the leader of the Senate Republican Conference since 2007, including as majority leader from 2015 to 2021, making him the longest serving Senate party leader in U.S. history.
> after 2 consecutive terms.
Even for POTUS it's a two term, under ten year total limit, doesn't have to be consectutive terms.
Assuming the incumbent doesn't push through legislation to change that. Not sure how enshrined in constitution that is so can't comment on the feasibility of it.
That ignores the rest of the world though. Trump can’t prevent China from selling to Africa, South America, India, Southeast Asia, Australia, … many of those countries (Aus) don’t even have domestic auto producers to worry about. Yes, the USA, South Korea, Japan, and Western Europe can protect their own markets, but the world is huge and China can easily dominate EVs everywhere else.
What EV markets outside the US/EU? Australia and maybe Thailand? Otherwise, it's difficult to find infrastructure that supports EVs elsewhere.
BYD is already in Japan, but it's quite limited. China has shadow-banned Korean automaker Hyundai/Kia since 2017 (THAAD) and battery makers LG, Samsung, SK since 2016 -- not sure if China would be warmly received there.
south americans, the african continent, just to name a few.
> it's difficult to find infrastructure to support EVs.
sure, but it doesn't mean it won't get built. What if china goes all in, and do the belt-and-road initiative v2, and build out those countries' infrastructure (and conveniently eliminate the soft power that the US would have there, such as financial power)?
China has no real "defense" against financial power of the US (vis a vi sanctions), but they're surely doing something about it. And given the CCP's long term planning (for which they can, since they're authoritarian and don't need to cater for an election every few years), they can press for policies that play out long term.
There is a huge market outside of the US/EU. Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Brazil, Russia, etc…all they need is to provide a better value and they’ll own the market, nothing the US can do about it.
EV infra and is a lot easier to realize than importing/refining oil. Electricity can be generated in a variety of ways and, oh, hey, China is exporting that also.
I don’t know. There are plenty of places where you don’t have gasoline to fill up a plastic bottle (which is how they do it in most of the developing world), but a water wheel generating electricity from glacier run off.
The biggest hindrance to EV cars in the US is the lack of public charging.
Until every WalMart, Target, 7-11, and government agency have charging stations on 1/3 of their parking lot, public EV vehicles are a pipe dream.
Detroit is, sadly, calling this 100% correctly. There is no point in doing heavy public EV rollouts until there is a demonstrated political will to roll out the charging infrastructure.
Over 60% of US families live in single family detached houses and would be able to charge an EV at home to cover all their normal day to day driving. They'd only need to use public charges on the occasional long trip.
For large parts of suburban areas with single or dual family homes this is just wrong. Even a wall socket charger (no wall box) will keep most commuters charged.
Yes, charging infrastructure needs to develop but for many this is a no issue to adopt.
That is only partially correct. The charging infrastructure can become self rolling out.
As in a robot driven cabledrum comes feom a central place to your car. The whole "it has to mimick a petrol station" idea is evaporating fast.
That’s only true in western markets because legacy auto are treating EVs as luxury goods and don’t offer any model <30k. The Chinese car market is already over 50% BEV, NEV. It’s clearly the future.
Musk is very keen on criticizing the US and other governments. But can you find for me a single criticism of the Chinese government from Musk? I'd like to see one.
I think it's just the cost of doing business in China. A lot of American CEOs including Elon Musk, Tim Apple have to sing and dance to the CCP's piping. And China is still the biggest EV market with 2/3 of the global EV market share.
> American CEOs including Elon Musk, Tim Apple have to sing and dance to the CCP's piping
They don't have to, they choose to. Oligarchs usually submit to authoritarians because profit comes before principle. They get their short term gain and others will have to pay the long term cost.
> Their shift to electric is far too slow and too far behind already.
when a push comes to a shove, the goal of electrification of cars can be merely postponed. climate change is a far-off future problem, where as geopolitical rivalry and such are close-by problems.
