Former GM Executive: BYD cars are good in terms of design, features, price, quality. If we let BYD into the U.S. market, it could end up destroying american manufacturers
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So here is the thing.
U lost. The moment I need American people to bail you out, you need to treat American people way way the fuck better.Worker rights, mandatory vacations, work protections, pensions, guaranteed healthcare etc.
Okay but see none of tjose are stock buybacks or exec bonuses, so...
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I'd argue it is.
Just look how Amazon got where it is now: Sell way under market price, till local competition closed shop, then squeeze.
It might just be that, since BYD is serving such a large domestic market/population, that allows them to have cheaper cars? Something something, economies of scale. I'm no expert though.
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Alternatively we could start subsiding local car makers
We have been. Bailout after bailout. For the longest fucking time, and have had insane trade rules and tarrigs in place for decades and decades. I'd argue this is what it looks like to have another country finally being able to play on a level playing field.
GM received more than $7 billions of subsidies and around $50 billions of "Federal loans, loan guarantees and bailout assistance".
US auto manufacturers are getting their fair share of subsidies.
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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.
The average new truck costs 50% more. Every small car they sell is a lost truck sale.
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Even if they changed how would they win?
They're just too expensive to manufacture as compared to chinese ones.
Tesla somehow manages to do well(at least prior to the nazi events). Still at a good price in Norway.
But all other manufacturers have dragged their feet with EVs, and that price cost of starting is large enough that they are in trouble. I'm not a huge fan of China, but they did the investment and are ahead exactly because of that (and crazy subsidies). Being left behind is their own fault imo, and I think that applies a lot to EU as well. Eg. WV.
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I mean, didn’t Japanese and Korean automakers already do that?
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the Chinese are really good at low cost manufacturing
They're not "good" at it, they just have no minimum wage and no semblance of annoying things like worker protections or unions to be concerned with.
They actually have a problem with workers or the lack of them and they have invested heavily in robotics. They aren’t the China of the 70s and 90s. It’s really something that we need to face up to if we want to compete but our political class isn’t really ready for that sort of reality. Years behind because of smugness.
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Even if they changed how would they win?
They're just too expensive to manufacture as compared to chinese ones.
I am union so don’t misunderstand the comment, but doesn’t BYD rely heavily on terribly paid non-union labor to reach it’s price advantage?
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Did Japan back then pay their assembly line workers the equivalent of $5k USD/year (in today's dollars) and have nearly no worker protections? Not a rhetorical question; I just don't know. Seems like Japan had a better standard of living back then compared to Chinese workers now, so I would guess their workers were compensated and treated better.
Not defending US auto corps (or any corp for that matter). The regulatory capture in the US is insane, and workers aren't treated as well as most of the rest of the first world.
Japan used state capitalism to promote it’s auto industry and other key sectors to sustain strong growth. America’s weakened billionaire owned government system is just being strip mined into the ground. We won’t be able to compete in an economy that’s only product is wealth extraction because of our massive corruption.
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Yes but after they win they have to raise prices...
Yes, and so may BYD. I have no idea what are you arguing for.
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Good. Fuckem. They make shitty, oversized trucks that are a danger to pedestrians and people who drive reasonably sized cars anyway.
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Where free market? It will regulate itself /s
Well China did subsidize that industry massively, to a point were their domestic market is flooded with very low margins. So the market is already very distorted. But I find it hard to hate on that because flooding the market with electric vehicles and solar panels is better than anything economists are coming up with.
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I mean, what is the reason those Indian engineers chose the US over India?
and Trump is destroying all of it
The way things are going for you, nobody with a half a choice would decide to migrate to the USA for work
Adjust to your new reality pal
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Six months ago I moved from the US to a country where BYD and other Chinese brands are available. In the past I owned GM cars. The former GM executive is correct. After trying Chinese cars I find it extremely difficult to justify paying 40-60% more for a car made by GM or anyone else. GM’s best selling cars here are made by its Chinese joint ventures and aren’t available for sale in the US, and they are the only GM cars I would buy.
They're pretty well known here for low quality flashy vehicles, with premiums for luxury not quality.
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I am union so don’t misunderstand the comment, but doesn’t BYD rely heavily on terribly paid non-union labor to reach it’s price advantage?
No, it relies on massive automation. Similary their solar industry etc
For example
Automation, Not Cheap Labour, Drives China’s Solar and Battery Edge: Ritchie
A new analysis counters the “outdated” claim that China’s low solar panel and battery costs rely on cheap labour, pointing instead to automation and optimized production as the main drivers.
The Energy Mix (www.theenergymix.com)
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China builds cars using massive government subsidies
The federal government ended the the EV subsidy a few years ago.
slave labor
lmao. We know what slavery looks like, you can see it in the cotton fields outside Angola Prison, rows of enslaved people, and overseer on a horse, all behind barbed wire. In Xinjiang I saw farmers driving combine harvesters in roadside fields.
local resources that arent available
You're getting closer. Through 1 and 5 year plans, the CPC uses SoEs (and sometimes just asks private companies "nicely") to ensure the foundational inputs, steel, rubber, chips, college graduates, etc are all available to industry at the specific price point and volume that competing private firms need to produce say, 100m EVs or a million more apartments.
Any country can do a little central planning to make sure private industry has what it needs, but this only works if you're able to take action against companies that exploit the system.
The federal government ended the the EV subsidy a few years ago.
Buyers of any EV not just American EVs.
lmao. We know what slavery looks like, you can see it in the cotton fields outside Angola Prison, rows of enslaved people, and overseer on a horse, all behind barbed wire.
I'm glad you find slavery so comical.
Were these inmates enslaved for their religious beliefs being different than the official party line? We they imprisoned for not wanting to be controlled by a dictatorship? No. No they weren't.
Through 1 and 5 year plans, the CPC uses SoEs (and sometimes just asks private companies "nicely") to ensure the foundational inputs, steel, rubber, chips, college graduates, etc are all available to industry at the specific price point and volume that competing private firms need to produce say, 100m EV or a million more apartments.
Gee, it sure sounds like you're listing even more slavery than I mentioned. Imagine Trump declaring that every college grad needs to make themselves available to build a border wall.
Any country can do a little central planning to make sure private industry has what it needs, but this only works if you're able to take action against companies that exploit the system.
The only exploitation mentioned here is the government exploiting the people. It seems your argument is based on your warped belief that if the US is committing atrocities than it's okay for everyone else to do so, yet your examples are in stark contrast to what's happening here. Your views are frankly quite disgusting and proof of how absurd the Chinese government's propaganda arm is.
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I mean, didn’t Japanese and Korean automakers already do that?
Yes. They did. That's called competition. It forces companies to improve by destroying them, except they don't want that. And politicians don't want that, cause it makes corruption unstable.
Killed Detroit too, though. But, eh, helped other parts. It's life.
Thus already in the 90s with the TRON OS a different approach was chosen by US regulators - threaten Japan with sanctions if it's allowed to compete with Windows inside Japan .
They can't threaten China, but they can prevent Chinese competitive goods from entering US market and improving its economy again.
Bad economy - poor and stressed people, poor and stressed people - worse political decisions, worse political decisions - good for middlemen which in our age shouldn't exist frankly. We have the technologies for direct democracy, it's not 1920s.
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Where free market? It will regulate itself /s
It will. It really does regulate itself, no /s needed.
Except that happens via some businesses going bankrupt and some adjusting.
And either it's free enough for monopolies to crash, or regulated enough for monopolies to be killed, or both.
If it's neither, then you have today's tech industry.
EDIT: And here the fears are that big companies will go down with their shareholders whining and their political cronies suffering and so on. Whether you want free market or literal socialism, the main problem is in separating private narrow interests from the state machine.
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Even if they changed how would they win?
They're just too expensive to manufacture as compared to chinese ones.
If they are too expensive due to cost of labor, they can do, look at other comments, increased automation.
With automation China's advantages over US are mostly in the bureaucratic efficiency area. Both in the government's parts interacting with big companies and in the companies themselves.
US big companies are just too used to preferential treatment and solving market problems with lobbying, which worked when they were the spearhead of progress or something.
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No, it relies on massive automation. Similary their solar industry etc
For example
Automation, Not Cheap Labour, Drives China’s Solar and Battery Edge: Ritchie
A new analysis counters the “outdated” claim that China’s low solar panel and battery costs rely on cheap labour, pointing instead to automation and optimized production as the main drivers.
The Energy Mix (www.theenergymix.com)
It brings up a valid point. Assembly line manufacturing will soon require massive automation lines to remain profitable, and without massive government assistance in not just money, but education and training, these kinds of automation factories will likely never be fully realized here.
