Good, let’s do it. I’m tired of our tax money keeping shitty car companies floating.
Capitalism is all about competition unless it’s not.
Tariffs be damned, I will not buy an American brand car. They’ve been mediocre my whole life and it’s always been easier to source parts for Hondas and Toyotas. I’m not sure how repairable any EV is, but I doubt American brands will top the charts of value in repairability in my lifetime
Got a subaru as my first non-american car. The old CVT torque converter is wearing out after 120k miles, but she survived being lightly t-boned with just a door repair
After 25 years of other brands I finally went Honda and I can’t believe how happy I am with it. I never have problems.
Over the years I think Honda and Toyota are the two brands I most commonly see an old guy managing to keep running well for 30+ years and hyper focused on wanting to break 500k miles or dreaming of hitting 1 million miles someday
I’m not sure how repairable EVs are either, since my 2013 Leaf never needed repairs in 12 years. Just tires and wiper blades.
Yeah that’s a good point in a sense. Mechanically I think they’re a lot less repairable (or at least a lot less at home repairable), but from the angle of needing repairs, they also need less repairs because most of what tends to fail on ICE vehicles is all the mechanical stuff attached to the engine. Even on my hybrid I repair a ton less and my mechanic said that because all the accessories are electronic since they can’t be belt/chain driven because the engine is off half the time that they’re ultimately more reliable in the end - it’s the mechanical aspects of them that fail on ICE vehicles.
American made car? Ya, I own a Toyota Sienna. And ya, I don’t think I’d buy an American brand again.
How do you like it? It’s on my short list for my next car.
Overall, love it. We had a hybrid RAV 4 and wanted to move to a larger vehicle. When we discovered that Toyota was releasing a hybrid Sienna for 2021, we jumped at it. We get ~35mpg on average. And we’ve put just a bit over 55k miles on it since we got it. Maintenance has mostly been routine, though we did have an odd issue with one of the sliding doors filling up with water. According to the tech at the service center, there is a drain which was clogged and needed to be cleared. This was likely exacerbated by the fact that it’s parked outside, in a wooded area. So, it sees a lot of leaf litter. And that is one down side, the back hatch can accumulate leaves and crap in the space between the top of the door and the body of the vehicle. Annoying, but you just have to clean it out on the regular. The adjustment rails for the rear seats are also hard to clean, if anything gets in them. So, that can be annoying.
As for performance, it moves well enough. It’s a mini-van, so you’re not going to beat a small car off the line, but you do get up to speed at a good clip. The turning radius is surprisingly narrow for such a large vehicle. At speed, the vehicle feels stable and handles ok. I’ll also say that the adaptive cruise control is insanely addictive. I’ve been driving in traffic this week and I can go a long time without touching the pedals. I’d also recommend getting to the trim level where you get the backup camera with the false overview of the vehicle, makes parking super simple.
We mostly use it for routine tasks like getting groceries or taking the kids places. We also go camping regularly and we can pack all our stuff into the back and put the kayaks on top. Its not a vehicle I’d take off road on anything challenging, but it handles unpaved roads ok.
So ya, we’ve been happy with it and I’d give it a recommendation.
Sienna’s are great! I’ve owned 4 of them (because I tend to total cars), and been happy with all of them. Gets decent mileage for a van, and they hold value better than just about any other mini van. Never felt safer when ramming into the back of a semi while going 70mph! The van was totaled, but me and the kids were perfectly fine.
But it would also help american people. Which is more important, I wonder.
Stop giving them more reasons not to allow it
Oh no! The type of capitalism where we have to compete!
Make it go away, Daddy Trump!
Sadly, I think it was Biden that put a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs. Fuck Trump, but come on, Biden, don’t do this shit for them. I really like that new Xiaomi YU7.
The issue is not so simple. Blocking BYD has a lot to do with protecting American manufacturing jobs. That’s not to say Biden’s tariff was the right answer. But it is a more complicated problem to solve than it appears from the perspective of a single car buyer.
Sucks to suck, our car companies suck and they absolutely should loose and be forced to fire people if they can’t compete. Give me my cheap and decent Chinese cars please. I live in a capitalist country so lets act like it instead of being fucking pussys
But the Chinese government could be spying on you if you bought a Chinese manufactured car!!
P.S. for bonus points, does anyone know where most GM automobiles are currently being manufactured?
Tbf notoriously China subsidizes BYD to net loss so its not exactly capitalism.
Did you forget all the bailouts US car manufacturers received?
To clarify, the bailouts of US car companies were Chrysler around 1980 and GM and Chrysler around 2008. To help them avoid bankruptcy and the resulting loss of jobs, they received loan guarantees (like having a cosigner) and direct loans, all of which they paid back. I think the public generally has a misconception that a corporate “bailout” means they just giving them money, but it doesn’t.
Note - I’m not trying to convince you not to hate corporations, and there’s no need for a lecture on how evil they are, I know they are. Just clarifying that one topic.
The program started under W and ended under Obama and I think at the end the government actually made money off the deal.
Don’t confuse this with the COVID PPP loans that were given out by Trump, forgiven by Trump, and then had a lot of the records about them destroyed by Trump.
No confusion at all, I was talking about car company bailouts only, since the other person mentioned “all the bailouts US car manufacturers received”. I think the Bush/Obama thing you’re referring to was TARP, which was for financial institutions.
Not the same thing?
Sadly, ever since “too big to fail”, any large corporation is now nearly indistinguishable from the federal government. Just another example of socialism for the rich, capitalism for the rest of us.
The US subsidizes farms and petroleum.
What do you think Walmart does when they enter a new market, the eat losses till the local competition folds and they are the only option left
Well don’t forget that Walmart itself is literally government subsidized when the people employed there still need food stamps or other welfare programs.
Your point is? They are both shit, agreed. The fact that we have asshole corps here, doesn’t mean we need more of them. We need to fight Walmart, not bring in the Walmart of cars.
All car manufacturers world wide are subsidized.
https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent-totals
Of course China can make cheaper cars, because most car manufacturers get their parts produced in China anyway.
They phased out their subsidies in 2022
They still have a trade in program to get ICE vehicles off the road.
A lot of these subsidies (both in the US and China) are implicit. Chinese state rail networks operate at cost, allowing cheap transportation of materials and labor. American borrowing is heavily subsidized through the Fed Credit Window, which keeps rates in the low single digits while corporate bonds and consumer loans can be 2x-30x as high. Both countries cut corners on environmental enforcement and subsidize waste management. Both countries subsidize education and incentive R&D through their university systems.
The real benefit BYD enjoys - even above its Chinese peers - is vertical integration. They own everything from mining interests to technology patents to dealerships. This is a deliberate consequence of Chinese trade policy, which requires foreign investors to partner with Chinese nationals in order to own and operate capital. Consequently, Berkshire Hathaway - a large early investor in BYD - cannot dictate Chinese vehicle manufacturing policy from a private office in Omaha. Chinese locals benefit from the innovation, the domestic capital, the experienced labor force (which can migrate to local competitors), and the increased economic activity it produces.
China is insourcing it’s wealth aggregation, which has a cyclical compound benefit over time.
requires foreign investors to partner with Chinese nationals in order to own and operate capital
this also means that chinese companies are notorious for stealing IP. it’s easy to be cheap when you don’t do the R&D - you just fast track to producing the product
chinese companies are notorious for stealing IP
American companies sell the ip to China in exchange for access to capital and labor, then claim they’ve been robbed when the Chinese firms innovate and expand on the patents they’ve acquired.
The end result is a car company that produces better vehicles than anything an American or Japanese or German company can manage.
Curiously, these superior vehicles are “stolen” while the Teslas keep exploding under home grown technology.
It’s state sponsored capitalism and China has pumped a ton of money into BYD to get them to where they are.
I can see them giving larger tax breaks to companies in the US, but current administration is all in on tariffs as the way to increase our domestic production. It doesn’t make ours any better or cheaper, just everything else more expensive.
State sponsored capitalism is what everyone does. The only reason Tesla even exists is because of US government support
there. too bad Musk lost interest after he completed SEX + Cyber truck
It doesn’t make ours any better or cheaper, just everything else more expensive.
it also makes your domestic products more expensive because cars etc still have to source components and industrial machines from internationally so it’s tariffs all the way down
And if they didn’t source internationally, they’d have to pay local labor prices, so it’s more expensive regardless of the direction they choose to go. If you make imports expensive enough, local goods will become more attractive, sure, but not cheaper.
So do a lot of other governments, to be fair. It’s one of those industries that employs a lot of people, and it’s always bad press to close it when a bit of money could have kept it. Certainly cheaper than putting thousands of people on benefits.
Plus there’s subsidies for domestic sales as well. The UK at least had a grant for plug in cars that they ended a few years ago, presumably just to get the infrastructure up and running.
But then the new vehicle price is neither here nor there in the long term, since most people drive used vehicles anyway. What matters is how many vehicles trickle down to the masses, and whether wear on the battery is a concern. Some of the early smaller models didn’t have great batteries to start with, but as a daily driver to the shops and work it’d probably be fine. For some reason the conversation always drifts over to “but what about that one time you drove across the state” or “remember that time you transported a fridge”, as if that’s something people can’t work around for the once a year they do it.
fair game IMHO. if you look at china as one big agent, then they can indeed act like that.
Good. Fuckem. They make shitty, oversized trucks that are a danger to pedestrians and people who drive reasonably sized cars anyway.
The Chinese too know how to make unnecessary large cars, unfortunately.
My boss in the UK got one. In bright red. It looks like he’s driving a fucking fire engine.
My old boss was a huge man who went around in a little yellow convertible. We called him Noddy.
May I suggest calling him Fireman Sam?
Yeah, our VP rides around in a 2-door coupe and he’s very tall, while my coworker (who is shorter) drives a big SUV because “he doesn’t fit in smaller cars.” I’m also tall and drive a Toyota Prius, which is small.
At the end of the day, none of that’s legitimate, it’s just an excuse to buy the car you prefer.
Larger cars should cost more because they take up more space, wear out the roads faster, and impact the environment more.
At the end of the day, none of that’s legitimate, it’s just an excuse to buy the car you prefer.
Since when is buying what we prefer considered negative? Calling it an excuse seems short-sighted.
Buying what you prefer itself isn’t an issue, but that should be the reason instead of “I need it because X, Y, Z.” Most truck/SUV owners don’t need a truck/SUV, they just want one.
My issue with trucks and SUVs are that they make the road more dangerous, since there’s only so much a car manufacturer can do to protect against a vehicle more than twice as massive. That, and they’re artificially cheap here in the US because of stupid regulations intended for farmers that got applied to them to reduce emissions standards.
His old one was very similar, but a darker colour so we called him The Fall Guy.
Or rather the few of us in the office old enough to remember that show did.
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.
We have the technologies for direct democracy
Wish I could upvote twice. As far as I’m aware there’s about 5 American politicians who actually care about more than just lining their pockets.
One from the list, yes.
Maybe GM could, I don’t know, innovate?
As an European living in Asia and can’t help but cringe at American cars. They’re so far behind. And it’s the car country. Japan has better cars and better rail. Embarassing.
Agreed. I’m American and think American manufacturers make the ugliest and worst cars. Outside of the Corvette, which remains the best spots car in it’s price range.
Targeted tariffs and protectionism can help a situation like this, combined with subsidies like the ones Trump cancelled, to give legacy manufacturers a temporary respite to retool and innovate. However backtracking on your transition, reverting to the tried and true short term profits is just hiding your head in the sand. GM will find itself increasingly marginalized and more years behind. You can’t hide behind trumps skirt forever
They have some wonderful new finamcial products released just this quarter!
BYD?
The number 1 electric car company, they passed Tesla recently
Giant chinese car manufacturer. They’re the most popular PHEV Manufacturer in Australia and is rapidly growing in Europe.
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.
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.
American manufacturing seems very incapable of change. If things worked this way for decades, why change it? Meanwhile the world moved on and they ask themselves why doesn’t anyone wanna buy american…?
You think Americans can’t change, just look at German Automakers. They are stuck in Perpetual denial. VW only moved electric because of the massive diesel scandal, otherwise they also would have been like every other car manufacturer.
Yes, but nobody ever expected Germany to be quick and adapt. Germany does not do that in general. It takes something that exists, perfects it, and then sells the perfection of the existing thing, ideally until really not a single person on the world needs it anymore. US on the other hand, has the reputation where innovation begins and does wonders. I am asking myself, where is the innovation in their autoindustry? Last thing was actually Tesla itself, when they started producing first electric cars.
It is the same situation, but the expectation is completely opposite.
Even if they changed how would they win?
They’re just too expensive to manufacture as compared to chinese ones.
Expensive is not a problem it it’s followed by the appropriate quality. Also, US should be far more able to use tech to automate and make efficient, same as China can use cheap labour. In the end, a robot is a one-time fee, doesn’t get sick, and can work 24/7, easy and fast to learn new processes. Long term a robot will always outpeform a human.
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.
They could try going for quality or features.
But instead they are only going for size, what 94% of the world does not care or want. (this includes the 5% of Americans)
American car companies are focusing on their highest profit center, massive trucks. Milking that market for the short term.
…… regardless of their long term survival. It seems extremely short sighted.
American companies exist to maximize shareholder value. Remember that. There is no company, doing anything, for the better of the world or humanity. At least not as the primary motivation.
Dunno, seems like a global problem. European car companies are scared too. And they don’t make those big cars.
The only issue I see is that china is very hostile with how it deals with other countries, otherwise this is just the trend of how things work out. In the 80s, it was the japanese car industry.
They’ve got to keep their profit margins, or the CEO’s and shareholders might need to take a paycut.
Oh no! Anyway…
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
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.
They don’t need any government assistance, they just need to take the millions they pay out to stakeholders, and invest them into automation. The money is there, just being handed out to a few people. Why should the government pay for something that sits on tons of cash but won’t use it?
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.
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.
Bailouts are unacceptable period. Trained workers, factories, factory hardware, logistics specialists, engineers, patents and so on - they all remain in the economy. That a company fails and goes bankrupt is not a bad thing. It’s just that company. Not the industry as a whole. If there are no additional mechanisms.
Somehow Americans seem to have forgotten that the kind of “capitalism” which gets defended is about this exactly - a company goes bankrupt, too bad. There are other companies which will hire its workers and buy its assets. Possibly new companies created by its former employees. Its shareholders have gambled and lost, well, their problem. That’s what an unregulated market is, by the way, and not bailouts to big fish and horse dicks for small fish.
If something works differently - workers don’t find a new place to work in, factories go to scrap metal, engineers go flip burgers, patents are collected by trolls, and new companies are not being created, - then something has been broken by an existing policy.
Patents are the worst of it, but also non-compete clauses, legal impediments for creating new businesses, legal expenses making it harder, - these things have to be removed.
I mean, people on Lemmy love to dream of something like what you list, those things are good, but maybe fixing some basic things about what you already have is no less useful. Especially since these fixes do not cost any money to maintain, while, well, pensions and healthcare do.
why bail out the companies and not the people?
(/s, i was joking, of course in US companies value more than human life)
Okay but see none of tjose are stock buybacks or exec bonuses, so…
So even Canada has lower labor costs because of universal healthcare.
Yeah it turns out having infrastru’ture wnd a society is, like, efficient and stuff.
So they dont care about making cars for the world market, they just want regulations to allow them to milk the american market…
Decoupling the market was them admitting their stuff is not as popular to the global market
As is tradition
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.
I can afford neither, but if I had to save up for one it would be the BYD.
American cars are just large, stupid and inefficient. Also the parts are very expensive here in New Zealand
I bought a used Chevrolet Bolt '23 which is the closest I could get, they’re still relatively cheap and mine has been working great.
