Not enough Americans will buy small euro cars. Do you seriously think they wouldn't just do that if they could justify the cost of switching off a f150 assembly line to make a small car they would. Ford and Chevy both had a ton of small cars throughout the years but the sales aren't there anymore.

Have you seen those byd cars on YouTube. Their mid price cars look like high end Mercedes over here. Meanwhile Ford and Chevy will sell you a $75000 pickup with all plastic interior.

None of the legacy companies are competing. Ever. The best we can hope for is rivian and other new players filling the gap.

I hate that the US is like this. People would EASILY pay more for American if the quality was there. But ffs they don’t even try anymore. They just make slop and expect us to pay more for it.

Must be a pricing issue.

What Ford European line? They discontinued the Mondeo and their minivans. Now it's hatch or crappy SUV. Or Mustang. Oh wait. Focus is end of life too now. It's mustang or crappy crossover SUVs only.

I've test driven a few BYD models here in Australia. 50 thousand dollarydoos for an electric car that goes 400+km, can power your house in a blackout, has all the normal electric car performance (6 seconds to 100kmhr) and is chock full of user comforts and safety features.

There are a LOT of these getting around in Brisbane, and for good reason. I didn't get one this time round, but by the time the lease expires on my Volvo EX30 in 4 years, I'll be looking pretty hard at BYD. Especially if they get their new solid state batteries going by then.

They also iterate very quickly.

First car design - "functional" is being polite about it.

Fifteen years later when they are on their tenth revision - pretty damn good.

Meanwhile US car manufacturers can squeeze in a revision/refresh every 5 years if they're lucky.

Well, nearly half a million mostly union jobs would also be lost, causing a minor recession at the very least. Even if the jobs partially come back in the form of BYD plants, they probably wouldn't be union jobs.

That’s true, but we could subsidize the cost of labor too. People make a living wage, but the company pays less than that because government covers the difference.

Maybe they should advocate for better fuel regulations and densification

Which sucks because I did use to think that “Made in the USA” meant better quality.

Even big companies ran gigantic losses for years, just to undercut the competition and emerge as the only winner.

Some do it because they have other cash cows Epic store milking Fortnite), others have VC funding, like Uber.

That's what Chinese propagandists want you to think, there are way more people living in (borderline) poverty (per capita) than in the US.

Social media is being fed with a slice of mainland China, but anything beyond that is people struggling to keep ends meet.

Yes but after they win they have to raise prices...

The US actually heavily tariffs foreign-made vehicles that could skirt the CAFE requirements the way American trucks do. Light trucks suffer the Chicken Tax and can only be made in Canada, US or Mexico to bypass that. Been that way since the UAW boss asked LJB to do something about the German imports growing.

The same thing happened in the 80s with Japan. The Japanese were no longer making crappy cars but small and very reliable, affordable cars. Detroit was still making rust buckets, obsessing over powerful engines with bodies that rotted out and defects galore. Detroit got beaten up badly (Chrysler had to get a gov bailout) until they cleaned up their act and improved their products. Protecting Detroit from competition would've just saddled US consumers with decades more of crappy, overpriced, low quality, cars.

How Detroit’s Automakers Went from Kings of the Road to Roadkill

What has happened to GM is essentially bankruptcy by other means, and that is an extraordinary event in the political and economic history of our country.

Imprimis (imprimis.hillsdale.edu)

We still don't let in the small pickups the rest of the world enjoys.

That would require companies roll profits back into development and their employees instead of pocketing it all, schemes like stock buybacks and wall st traders.

China subsidises industries it wants to dominate in, allowing them to sell for less than cost. It's why the EU also tariffs Chinese cars.

Also for anything the big 3 make in the US, I believe they use union labor? Not sure if they did for Aussie market cars.

Dam maybe some of the American automakers who took billions in subsidies should have built cheaper cars instead of the largest trucks possible to skirt regulations.

I literally can't afford an American car, i can afford a BYD tho.

Rivian’s financial statements provide insight into its per-unit losses, though calculating an exact figure requires analyzing multiple variables. The company’s cost of goods sold (COGS), which includes direct production expenses, regularly exceeds revenue, leading to negative gross margins. According to its latest SEC filings, Rivian reported a gross loss per vehicle of approximately $39,000 in 2023, though this figure fluctuates based on production volume and operational efficiencies.

Not exactly a number they put in a press release, but as a publicly traded company it is published quarterly.