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.

This is the slavery they are refrencing i think.

BYD did get caught using slave labor.

Prosecutors find workers in 'slavery like' conditions at Chinese car company site in Brazil

A task force led by Brazilian prosecutors says it has rescued 163 Chinese nationals working in “slavery-like” conditions at a construction site in northeastern Brazil, where Chinese electric vehicle company BYD is building a factory.

AP News (apnews.com)

Are you trying to be funny or something? Used electric cars aren‘t exactly going up in price. What a bunch of nonsense. Talking about cope.

Detroit is easy to hate but there’s more wrong here than how much can-do energy they wake up in the morning with. If they competed on features and quality they could never compete on price. Everything we do to keep the dollar strong makes it impossible to manufacture here.

I think that's kind of the point. What the current case industry is doing is getting them smoked. They need to let go of the past the "institutional knowledge" that's exactly why Ford and Chevy won't compete with Chinese EV. Those are built from the ground up for the modern era with modern leadership modern supply chains building institutional knowledge that matters today and into the future. I would love nothing more than to drive a Ford EV. I am considering the f150 lightning but in comparison to things I see online it's really far behind.

You are wrong. American manufacturers are captured by the oil conglomerates to sell fuel. That's why you have giant behemoths barrelling down the highways. F150s have almost doubled in size over the last two decades.

Ok

We will put that on their headstone.

So build them here, like every other foreign auto maker.

They accomplish two completely different effects by two completely different mechanisms. The former being available to every manufacturer.

Well they'd have to cut c-suite and shareholder's cut because everything else that could be squeezed out has already been squeezed out, so the c-suite and shareholder will convert their money into the political power it takes to just block out the competition.

Ford stopped making cars because they can't compete with the current crop of cars coming from Japan/Korea and Europe regardless of how much money they throw at the problem. They have their niche with trucks and SUVs and are happy to stay there. China builds cars using massive government subsidies, slave labor, and local resources that aren't available to anyone else in the world which is why I think it's right to fight against them because it's impossible to compete against them just like a small local grocery store can't compete against Walmart.

When Americans of all political stripes finally wake up to global realty, they'll most likely do it lying on a sidewalk, naked in the rain, with their fingers in their ears saying na-na-na-na-na-na...

People will eventually have to face that the economic golden age of the 1950s and 60s wasn't a normal state we can return to if greedy billionaires just let us. The rich definitely grabbed the biggest share of the prosperity, but that brief era of prosperity wasn't normal, it was entirely abnormal, and it's been over for quite a while. We've been fooling ourselves and keeping it going for the last half century by living on credit, and that's about to end. I don't know what new era is about to start, but the American era is over.

defects galore

A friend of mine from high school attended the GM Institute and became an engineer for them. One of his first projects was on a team that bought a Lexus and an Infiniti when they first came on the market and took them apart to see how many production defects they had. He said a typical American car at the time (and this was in the '90s after quality had rebounded somewhat from its disastrous nadir) had 300-400 defects. The Infiniti they took apart had 2. The Lexus had 0.