Posted by segasaturn 10/24/2024
When I lost power for 48 hours this past summer, I spent about 2 gallons of gasoline (already in my Camry Hybrid) to keep my refrigerator and computers running (using a 12VDC->120VAC inverter). Despite owning a beastmode 9000W propane/gasoline generator, the only reason I'd need it would be to run air conditioners...
Using the SDS+ hammer drill off of an extension cord sourced from my car [instead of a flatbed w/ generator]... makes for great jobsite conversation topics.
As a rarely-political American, I do think the tarriffs on BYD are unnecessary and ultimately bad for most of us "just citizens."
So the complete opposite of modularity and repairability, and therefore, sustainability. When anything on the e-axle breaks, you'll likely have to replace the entire thing, which might well be uneconomical, so you'll scrap the entire car. Maybe part of the low cost is all the savings they make on repair documentation, etc.
Now they are the mercy of their vendors, with limited knowledge of how to do things any other way than to keep depending on them.
Sometimes there are only 1 or 2 vendors they can pick from, with so little competition, it is no wonder the prices keep going up.
If Tesla actually focused on making a cheap car, I am sure it would cost far less, but instead they need the Model 3 to be a cash cow to make up for all the other dumb decisions being made.
In the 1970s my dad had the worst time trying to buy compact cars from US dealerships, in the 2000s I thought US automakers were as bad but Japanese brands were better, by 2018 or so Japanese dealers were using the same toolbox (“You’re saying I can’t buy a Honda Fit because the factory washed out in a flood but you have 100 SUVs in a row that nobody wants to buy made in the same factory?”)
Then I got home and I am sure to read some article in the auto press which repeats, like the brainwash soldiers from The Manchurian Candidate that Americans only want to drive huge vehicles. Sure, an American might want a size L vehicle on average but from their point of view it is a disaster that somebody would could possibly buy a $50k vehicle walks out with a $25k vehicle (that Sales Manager won’t be able to work you over for another decade) so they will try to sell you an XXL vehicle.
Tesla, GM, Toyota and many others have refused to make affordable EVs, it’s that simple. Their hope is that a 100% tariff on BYD means they’ll never have to service the affordable vehicle market.
Manufacturers in turn (except Tesla) have no one to sell these vehicles, and would have to take a risk that they could make up the lost margin on volume. They don't have the cultures to do that either.
I think GM is at least trying, with the sub-$35,000 Equinox EV. And the rumor is that the 2026 Bolt will be ~$30,000. Definitely going to be interesting to see what comes around in the next couple of years with battery prices falling.
Jim Farley (Ford CEO): $26.5 million
Mary Barra (GM CEO): $27.8 million
Koji Sato (Toyota CEO): $3.88 million
Atsushi Osaki (Subaru CEO): $1.05 million
Makoto Uchida (Nissan CEO): $4.5 million
No idea what the compensation for auto executives in China is, but probably even smaller than Japan's.
Sources:
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20230925-uaw-auto-strik...
https://www.automotivedive.com/news/gm-ceo-compensation-fall...
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/ford/2024/0...
EDIT: Fixed the math, thanks mperham, I had $1.35 earlier.
[1] https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North%20America...
Hybrids have become increasingly popular as the charging infrastructure is still lacklustre in many parts of the world. And that's not a problem that can be solved overnight.
At least we have BYD and Tesla, just gotta scale up faster. Global light vehicle TAM is 90M units/year. 20% of all vehicles sold globally last year were BEVs or PHEVs, onward and upward.
https://fortune.com/2024/06/19/elon-musk-tesla-china-carmake... (“Bank of America tells Detroit’s Big 3 they can’t make money in China and should just leave the hypercompetitive car market ‘as soon as they possibly can’”)
Honestly same goes for EVs, though the BYD stuff is starting to fill that niche quite nicely. And compact + decent range is sort of at odds with itself.
This is badly misinformed. They make the market. When you buy a car, do you have it custom made, or do you select one that actually exists?
That's exactly what happened with SUVs. SUVs didn't happen because people were begging car companies to make them something big, dangerous, and wasteful. They happened because car companies in the US found a legal loophole where they could cut costs by skirting safety and emissions regulations, while simultaneously marking up the product as a premium one. Then they ran ads to tell people SUVs were super safe [for the passengers]. So when people started buying SUVs en masse, that wasn't organic demand, it was the result of a successful national misinformation campaign (because modern SUVs and other "light trucks" are so large you're more likely to just drive over your own child without seeing them than even get in a crash).
I am thinking about getting a third car for the farm if I could get an inexpensive low range EV. If I am only driving to work with it or to go shopping or see a sports game at my Uni I can just it when I get home. If I need to go see a game in a distant city, well, I’ll take one of the gas cars so my son will take the EV and not the Buick to work one morning.
So is global warming. This excuse rang hollow 30 years ago and it still rings hollow today.
No, probably not.
That said, the lowest pricing point is a massive competitive advantage.
I thought GP was talking more about the safety standards for workers in the factories - which do cost more to meet.
If end user does not care about these moral high grounds, then yes it is a bad thing for business.
Or in a crude analogy, USA sells EVs like iPhones, China sells them like Androids.
I don't think that's fair to Android phones. Android phones come in a huge range of prices and feature levels, from cheap-o $40 phones with crappy displays but that will do everything you need, albeit with crappy photos, to $1500 phones with much better specs than the top-end iPhone and camera lenses from Switzerland.
Perhaps you mean "utilitarian, budget model Androids".
Check out the Xiaomi car the CEO of Ford drives as just one example.
Chinese EVs are more focused on what people need, and brands have a wider range of offers, similar to how you can find budget or flagship Androids to suit your tastes. They behave similar to traditional auto makers.
I'm not sure what the reality is, but this "Japan is special" delusion needs to go. Yes, they have stuff that is top-notch, but this is not a given (just like in China).
For instance, in India, the top auto-manufacturer Suzuki (like other Japanese/Korean manufacturers) is known to skimp on construction quality and fares quite poorly in terms of safety rating etc. This while Indian manufacturers like Tata/Mahindra are coming out with solidly built models that achieve top-scores in safety.
If you look for videos on Indian Social media, you'll almost always find them pan on Suzuki for its flimsy construction - which is esp. concerning since road safety in India is quite poor.
This story is so old, here’s how it goes: Germany used to manufacture the cheap vehicles after ww2 ended, then Japan started getting their shit together and they started undercutting german cars, then German car manufacturers, noticed they were losing market, so they started marketing their vehicles as more premium, better quality and more exclusive, with a higher price tag. They can’t compete in the same market as Japanese cars so they go to a new market, and they genuinely had been manufacturing for longer so maybe the cars were better quality. Then Japanese cars build a reputation as the manufacturing improves and South Korea starts producing cheap cars as well so now the Japanese manufacturers have to market their cars higher up in the market. Then china comes along… next is India, after that Africa. Along with this , in each of those countries goes the increasing number of middle class citizens and rising costs due to better pay and standards for those citizens… Alright this is a oversimplified version but like dude, of course indian social media is going to praise indian cars.
New tariffs will probably stop this completely
Ford had run down their reputation by forcing penny pinching cheap designs, but there was still a lot of engineering prowess in-house that had gone underutilized and made them a tech-team to catch up the Chineese tech, design and manufacturing to concurrent standards.
The only lingering worry is if they're gonna find themselves content with the amount of technology transfer and move on (because Volvo standards requires a high price point and non neglible market share).
[0] https://www.motortrend.com/news/lincoln-nautilus-2025-suv-of...
Any discussion of the topic of product origin and quality is always heavily oversimplified.
There are many variables at play here: target marketing, design, manufacture, regulatory environment, etc.
BYD's 4 model entered in euroNCAP have 5 stars.
The thing is though, those '70s and '80s cars were simple. They could be repaired. And any workshop could do it, you didn't have to rely on the dealership. With not much more than a basic set of wrenches you could repair many things yourself if you wanted to. That's not the same today. Many systems are effectively unrepairable, they are not designed to be repairable. Especially on EVs. Is there any EV that has been designed for easy battery replacement? Once these cars are out of warranty, any major problems will scrap the car.
Yes, it is. My last car was a 2015 model that lasted until 2019, so I don't think my information is out-of-date, but it was a Mazda and was very easy to repair (which pretty much never happened anyway aside from regular maintenance). Any my cars before that were easy too.
>Many systems are effectively unrepairable, they are not designed to be repairable.
Citation needed. People like you always make claims like this, but I think they're all myths. I've never seen any evidence of this myself. Perhaps it's because I didn't have American cars, and only Japanese ones? I don't know.
>Especially on EVs.
This is a different issue, and I can't speak to it as I've never had one. The vast majority of cars were and still are ICE cars, and your claim is about all cars.
>those '70s and '80s cars were simple
You obviously never looked under the hood of a 1980s car, with its maze of vacuum tubing.
I'm not surprised that a 2015 Mazda is a decent car. Mazda make good cars. But I'm speaking of cars made today. 2015 was almost 10 years ago. Cars have only gotten more complicated and less repairable since then.
Yeah wires and vacuum hoses look messy. But you can replace a vacuum hose by cutting a new piece to length with a pair of scissors. Good luck in a modern car when that same function is a digital signal in a circuit board.
Again, citation needed. I simply do not believe you. Outside of EV powertrains, car design has not changed much in 10 years.
Compared to them, my Wrangler is a square death machine, although almost anything is safer than a Wrangler.
I don't know whether the off-roading safety philosophy applies to your car though, as many SUVs and crossover cars are only designed to look the part, and are in fact more similar to ordinary road cars in safety design.
All countries that get into car manufacture seem to follow a similar path. 10-15 years of crap cars while building scale and expertise, then maturity with much higher quality. I think we are seeing the mature Chinese car industry now and it’s frankly impressive.
Sounds like that if one of those ever needs replacement you might as well just replace the whole car.
I avoid buying cars with low volumes and custom parts: if anything is broken then it is expensive and slow to fix.