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USA, Japan and Europe can make cars 90% as good for 110% the price. If protectionism is heaped on, then consumers really won't notice much difference in being denied Chinese cars. But if the floodgates are opened then there's going to be a bloodbath in domestic manufacturing. Who is gonna pay slightly more for a slightly worse car? It seems like Europe is ready to accept the deluge of Chinese cars and just let VW friends keel over and die.
With labor relations in the west as well as a smaller market (meaning smaller economies of scale) it's unlikely for westerners to actually beat the Chinese automakers outright.
New Chinese cars are about 1/4 of US prices and significantly nicer. Reliability seems roughly equal (newer cars in the US seem to break way more than 2 decades ago), but we'll need some years to tell. Either way, these $8000 Chinese electric cars are quite nice for many purposes. This is all 2nd hand though - I don't like cars much. But for heavy vehicles, you can get a Chinese fire truck for $100k instead of 1.5 million in the US. In Mexico, Chinese semis like Shacman seem to already have 1/3 market share. A mine I work with is considering buying 200 (originally 40 but they can get this many more and hire drivers for the same price as they expected for 40).
I don't see how Western industry can compete without actively improving infrastructure to drive cost reductions. At the moment, it's more expensive by pure energy expenditure to move parts around the US etc. than in China, besides higher technical competency, faster turn around times etc. For a while, I was curious whether the Great Lakes could compete with the Yellow River Delta but without immediate ocean access, barges down the rivers or canals are 1/3 as efficient as cargo ships in the sea.
US economic complexity has been decreasing and the largest Western nations aren't doing much better. I'm partly to blame, provisioning tools for extractive industries - but in the short-medium term I don't know what else small Christian societies can out compete on. @Shrike N.b. I am not a China booster (what freedom does the Gospel have there?) but coherent economic planing, growth and improved standards of living are good and emulatable. Western stagnation is recent, but deep - and in these conversations, we tend to embrace the worse possible choices; for less short term pain guaranteeing great pain later.
My understanding is that China heavily subsidizes their auto industry. I don't know that this is necessarily a bad thing, particularly if you are getting something off of the ground, but it's not necessarily clear to me that Chinese cars will be able to compete at this level long-term. The strategy here is perhaps similar to that once practiced in the US by monopolies: undercut hostile industry to kill it, then raise prices to whatever you want.
Noted, although do forgive me if I forget (I don't always track usernames well...)
Yes, I do think this is a huge problem. But it's not unique to the West and it's not clear to me that China's coherent planning is actually going to be a win for them over the medium and long term.
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Absolutely not even close. Spend a week daily driving a Chinese car and you'll see every corner they cut. Standard features in the west like vents in the back, digital climate control and lock/unlock buttons on every door aren't even standard on luxury cars in China like Audi and Mercedes, let alone Chinese brands. Even the shittiest car sold new in the US has all these features.
Of course the top tier Chinese cars can compete with western cars, but in absolutely no way are the cheap ass basic Chinese cars better than western cars.
Yeah but you can buy a BYD for 18k USD that has all those features and is fully gas and fully electric (not a hybrid). Has stuff like auto parking and a remote app interface. No US manufacture can provide that quality at that price. I've owned it for two years now and it's definitely not the cut corner shit box you describe.
Those do exist but American companies also can't provide a cut cornered shitbox for $7000.
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People forget that Europe is 16% of global GDP and that the rest of the world is most of it. A huge portion of the global economy is outside the west.
Europe can either go down the war path and ban Chinese cars from the European market and risk losing Chinese parts making the price of European cars skyrocket or accept competition. Drivers in Indonesia, Bahrain or Mexico aren't going to buy a Renault with every component made outside of China that will cost far more than a current Renault when they can buy a BYD. The middle east is heavily car dependent. Losing a Chinese supply chain means European companies would be shooting themselves in the foot.
Do European cars actually have a huge Chinese supply chain? I thought most of the parts were made domestically.
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Are you familiar with the Nexperia affair that is currently taking place?
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The EU exports about 5 million cars a year and imports 4 million. Tariffs can be adjusted and are unlikely to provoke some kind of Chinese ban on…Chinese exporters selling car components (the recent Dutch case was very different). The manufacturing workforce in places like Germany is also ageing rapidly. The car industry is just a very emotive thing. There are other far larger problems with the European economy, but they won’t be solved until either the EU falls apart or the Germans naturally reassert themselves once more.
Could you describe the problems with the European economy? And how would Germany reasserting itself or the EU breaking apart solve them?
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