And, a recent tour of one of the Asian powerhouse’s vehicle plants has proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt, at least to Honda President and CEO Toshihiro Mibe.
“We have no chance against this,” Mibe said upon a visit to a Shanghai parts factory, commenting on its seamless automation across all levels of production. Logistics, procurement and all aspects of the process were so automated, in fact, that he did not spot a single human worker on the supplier’s floor.
Ford executives saying even three years ago that China was way ahead of the game
Toyota’s CEO has likewise said regarding not just his company, but the industry in general, “unless things change, we will not survive”
Aw, Capitalism not working out for you car manufacturers? Awww, that’s too bad.
Well that’s capitalism. It’s what you wanted right? Competition to keep you on your toes?
Looks like the invisible hand of the market favors what the people want more than what bosses think we can take.
Please keep buying our shitty cars, we won’t survive otherwise.
To be fair to Honda or, here, Toyota…
Worth finding a clip if anyone isn’t familiar
TBH, Chinese cars are pretty shitty. Their EVs have thermal runaway at an incredibly higher rate. BYDs storage facility just went up because a car sitting there caught fire.
As far as price, yeah it’s not competitive when they pay their workers 10% what Western countries do and give them a coffin apartment to stay in. Then steal the IP from other countries so they have nothing in R&D.
Here’s their clone of a Taycan, which also finished dead last in reliability tests because people were burning alive in them and crashing because systems would go nuts causing crashes. You enjoy your Chinese EV you saved money on, just keep that shit a mile from my house or “crappy non Chinese car” https://autopostglobal.com/electric-future/article/51496/
market favors what the people want
not really
This is not capitalism as China is net-lossing market acquisition.
This is called “dumping” and is not a feature of capitalism in any way. In fact, every single economic school that likes capitalism is against it. Generally net-loss market acquisition is very bad thing for our society as it privatizes gains and socializes losses. i.e. if EV market suddenly implodes many people would be holding the bag and if EV market succeeds then only a few people profit.
Marxists themselves classify net-loss acquisition as a failure of late-stage capitalism (which is fair) but when .ml’s favorite flavor of authoritarians do it then it’s ok lmao
Dumping is the natural end of overproduction or under consumption. It’s also a tool to secure new markets. Capitalists employ it to get new customers and minimize losses. That’s why Walmart exists in small towns and why previous season’s stock goes on sale.
What we see here is a state capitalist entity participating in a global capitalist market using the tools available to them to secure new markets. There’s more than one tool at play here too: the article talks of the advanced state of automaton as the differentiator with domestic producers. At the scale of automation described, even if not sold at a subsidized loss that’s still gonna produce a cheaper product.
Dumping is the natural end of overproduction or under consumption
This doesn’t make sense in this context of dumping. It’s intentional overproduction for market capture not some inbalance in the market.
It’s also a tool to secure new markets. Capitalists employ it to get new customers and minimize losses. That’s why Walmart exists in small towns and why previous season’s stock goes on sale.
This is fundamentally opposite of capitalism, in fact as I said in the original comment market capture is inheritly anti-capitalist. Walmart, China etc. use abuse of power for an unnatural capture of markets. This is closer to authoritaniasm than capitalism.
Most capitalism haters fundamentally misunderstand what they’re hating it for. It’s valid to hate capitalism for it’s insufficiencies (it can be gamed and needs intervention) but it’s silly to attribute everything to some magical all powerful capitalism in the sky - this just reeks of low brow scare tactics like the red-scare.
Market capture is one of the major goals of capitalism because it allows for continuing, unconstrained profits.
When you control the market people have no choice but to turn to you if they need what you sell–regardless of quality.
Securing markets through control of supply doesn’t stop being capitalism just cause it’s done (perceivably) unfairly.
Market capture is one of the major goals of capitalism because it allows for continuing, unconstrained profits.
I feel like you’re going a bit into the weeds here. That’s goal of any participant in game theory - capture and win as much as possible. So it doesn’t matter what economic framework you’re using every participant will try to claim the biggest piece of the pie. At least capitalism tries to address this with “checks and balances” of competition while other systems just blindly work on faith that human virtue will be stronger than game-theory which it absolutely might be, at some point?
To be fair, the kind of capitalism you’re talking about is/would be heavily regulated. In a free-market, which most people refer to when referring to capitalism due to messaging from Republicans, dumping is a perfectly fine tool. Is it ethical? No. But who cares? It’s a free-market.
To be fair, the kind of capitalism you’re talking about is/would be heavily regulated
Any system ought to be. There’s no system that you can just let loose and have it self correct for itself, that’s a fairy-level of a delusion. People are very smart and will always figure out how to game a system.
In other words, a non-intelligent system will always be conquered by an intelligent participant, always.
Where capitalism extremists do delude themselves here is that “capitalism can be a sufficiently intelligent system” (the invisible hand) if it defers intelligence to game-theory level competition: because we all check ourselves we end up low-key giving intelligence to the system. Unfortunately this is just impossible to stabilize without unified borg-like society where everyone plays under this unified system but it also doesn’t mean there isn’t value of introducing some intelligence to the markets under intelligent supervision.
I believe any intelligent system will be corrupted, or manipulated for greed. It’s why I believe in complete anarchy. A complete lack of state and authority. All beings equal, all provided what they need. And everyone works with their unique skills for a better future.
Adding intelligence doesn’t make it any better. It just makes the system more exclusive for the powerful. It’s a higher barrier to entry. But the entry is still there.
We both believe in utopias. And we both hope for systems in which human beings aren’t the most vile creatures on earth.
It was a pleasure conversing with you and many blessings to you.
Cheers! I’m a fan of anarchy as well :)
Thoughts on what I think is the standout from their comment?:
the advanced state of automaton
And yet here we are, in a capitalist society, and it’s the current reality.
Wild.
We are not in “capitalist society” that’s a bit of an immature take as we have many ideologies and systems at play. We should identify weaknesses of all systems and use a buffet style policy making not subscribe to religion of specific rule. There are many great things in capitalism, there are many great things in controlled markets, there are even some great things in authoritarianism (i.e. wartime readiness).
Personally I don’t believe system design is all that important — it’s human virtue that drives all of this. A sufficently virtuous society would thrive under any policy framework as it would be capable of identifying faults and self correcting towards a more balanced interpretation and enforcement of any rule.
Capitalism is destroying our planet. You can only spin that as positive if you don’t care about our species continued existence.
nope, shitty people and authoritaniasm is destroying our planet. Often quite literally too.
They’re the same picture.
Shitty people don’t get to run everything into the ground unless we let them. That’s a feature of capitalism.
Besides, authoritarianism and capitalism aren’t mutually exclusive.
We’ve been ruining the environment for a very long time, and that started with the industrial revolution precipitated by, you guessed it, our very own U.S.
You have been eating from the garbage can of pure ideology.
I’m glad the US doesn’t privatize gains and socialize loses.
That’s all true and China needs to be actively worked against to prevent their market manipulation but we can’t forget the reason American auto makers can’t compete is because America has manipulated the the markets so much they are uncompetitive also not capitalism, now they are trying to reverse course 180 before china is unstoppable by letting in a bunch of cheap labor, a lost cause if you ask me America will never be a manufacturing center again but you don’t need to beat China just create competition and they will fall eg stabilize and incentive Mexico to create manufacturing and hope the tech industrys in America remains a monopoly or we’re SOL.
This is not about pure capitalism, though. The reason Chinese EVs are so successful is that the Chinese government heavily subsidizes those companies. I would not be surprised if they sell cars at a loss. So the issue is exactly the opposite of capitalism. It’s pure capitalism being crushed by big government
The government investing in infrastructure upgrades instead of forever bring lobbied by the fossil fuel industry is big government now?
Not saying CCP isn’t big government, but “crushed by big government” is very strong imagery
What do you think Walmart does when they go to a new market?
Or what amazon did for many years, or Uber, OpenAI, etc. Most startups really.
What you’re describing is capitalism, whether you like it or not
Good these are companies that fought the transition to EVs every step of the way. Toyota in particular. Which was ironic after releasing the Prius
Toyota is way too conservative. After nailing hybrid tech early on, it seems like they wasted the opportunity to put it on every vehicle they make which would have been such an amazing step forward, instead of treating it as a weird niche for so long.
Also that bz4x or whatever deserves a spot on the worst cars of all time list, just straight up ewaste.
How will you know its electric if it doesn’t look like shit otherwise?
Yeah. Spot on. And the Busy Forks not only has an awful name, not only has awful styling, but it is an extraordinarily bad EV by any measure. E-waste indeed
Wait, I haven’t read up about it. What makes it so bad?
Well the wheels fall off, that’s not ideal. (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM)
Other than that it has poor battery size for the cost, slow charging, and poor efficiency (burns more kW per mile/km).
There are more criticisms, but they’re the big ones. It is just not a good EV.
And the wheels really did fall off initially, they had to do a recall. Was a design error.
Now recalls happen very often to all companies but for straight up safety issues they’re rare. They tend to be a lot smaller issues.
The thing with the wheels though is just indicative of how little care they took with it, Toyota are renowned for quality, sure they’re boring designs but they’re built to last right ? Well this one seems to be been designed by the work experience kid and a punishment detail who clearly didnt want to be on a BEV.
Oh, shoot, yeah, I do now remember about the wheel recall! You’re right; Toyota has fallen in quality. I’m now recalling Genesis overtaking them in JD Powers’ reliability ratings… I’ve gotta review this stuff more. So sad, but we really should never have brand loyalty.
You can just buy a JD Power award btw. The auto manufacturers pay to play. Its a marketing company.
Oh? TIL…
Also that bz4x or whatever deserves a spot on the worst cars of all time list, just straight up ewaste.
What makes you say that? I don’t really know much about cars, why is that one particularly bad?
Compared to everything else on the market it had big problems with reliability, range, charging speed, and it was overpriced.
I think everyone expected that Toyota, with its hybrid experience and the benefits of seeing all other EVs on the market wouldn’t make such a poor attempt. It felt like they were poisoning the well, as if not wanting to compete in the EV space in the first place.
I never owned one so I can’t say this is true, but from what I read over the years, those early hybrids weren’t great for performance/driving feel compared to other vehicles. They worked, they were efficient, but at the time turning all their cars into it probably wasn’t a winning path.
I do agree about the early hybrids, The OG prius was a dog. But I feel that they sorted it out quickly enough, engineered out the potential reliability issues of a more complex drive train, brought down the price of batteries and motor tech, etc.
They had a huge advantage in solving these problems before anyone else was touching hybrid tech, and then largely squandered the lead, and a chance to make everything they sell cleaner and more efficient.
Toyota is way too conservative.
Because unlike Tesla, they need to sell cars and make money.
I’ve been wanting Honda to make an affordable all-electric car for years. Based on how BYD is selling, I’m guessing I’m not the only one.
Instead they keep making bigger and bigger, gas-guzzling vehicles, with bells and whistles we don’t need, saying that’s what sells and they can’t make an electric vehicle they’re happy with.
Well, too bad. It seems I’ve bought my last Honda, sadly, because my next vehicle will not burn gasoline.
On the same boat and yes it’s depressing. It’s also depressing that nobody seems to be thinking about all electric small cars, or even normal width cars, at least where I live. Teslas and BYDs here are about as wide as buses. I can only dream of Honda or Toyota making an electric vehicle no wider than 70% of the lanes they’re supposed to drive on.
They did. The Honda e was the perfect tiny EV, except for its massive price tag and small-ish range. And of course, in classic Honda fashion, as a promising but flawed attempt didn’t succeed immediately, they promptly abandoned the segment instead of capitalizing on acquired knowledge, battery technology advances and price drops. Given how successful the Renault 5 is, I’m pretty sure a 2nd gen e at half the price would have been a massive success.
Of course, being Honda, they changed their mind and came back with a significantly worse SUV.
They would probably not have managed to slash the price in half with one generation.
The original Honda E was € 35.330 in 2020, which was a difficult sell given the small 170km range.
Half price would mean an electric car for ~€ 18.000Looking at other Western manufacturers (e.g. Peugeot, Citroen, Volkswagen, Dacia) for a fair comparison, that is a stretch even today. Most EVs don’t really go below 20k, and 25k seems to be the current range for affordable EVs.
The issue is largely the cost of the battery. That cost has come down over the years, but not to the extent that Honda could have suddenly slashed the price of their EV in half.
Edit: That is not to say Honda shouldn’t have kept releasing more EVs.
I’m just pointing out that they probably would follow the same path as the other Western automakers that have pretty consistently been releasing EVs over the past decade orso.
The Honda e was the perfect tiny EV, except for its massive price tag and small-ish range.
So it wasn’t even close to being perfect was it? Those are like the two most important aspects
No perfect in a cute little way
Renault seem to offer quite a few these days that are fairly small.
Renaults are rare in Australia (and for some reason also disliked by aussies in general ). I would say the most popular brands are BYD, Tesla, Honda, Toyota, Kia, and Hyundai, easily more than half the cars you see in circulation today. I can probably count with my fingers the amount of times I’ve seen a Renault while driving.
nobody seems to be thinking about all electric small cars, or even normal width cars,
Hey ? There’s dozens, if not hundreds of them, Chinese, European, Korean…
at least where I live
Oh. In the USA huh ? Damn, shame about your govt blocking them all. Maybe you’ll change things up at the mid terms, good luck with it.
Oh. In the USA huh ?
No
At a 30 sec glance at your history and based on your reference to Renaults in Oz then first question - WTF - it’s 3am over there, go to bed !
Then 2nd question, what exactly are you lacking in the way of small car options ? Another 30 sec dig suggests Oz has any number of small BEVs available all of the usual culprits from China, Korea and Europe are available (as they are in most countries, Canada being 1 exception for a few more months, and obviously the US).
https://www.cars24.com.au/car-guide/best-selling-bev-models-australia-2025/
Nissan Leaf, MG4 and BMW iX1 are not exactly F150s - they’re all reasonable sized hatches.
Yes there are plenty of people driving large cars in Oz (I’m from there originally) and they’re now feeling the pain of the fuel prices, it will shape their behaviour, particularly the city folk driving Ford Rangers etc without ever taking them off road.
If I’ve guessed wrong on the country whatever. There’s very few countries outside of North America that don’t have small and medium BEVs easily available
You got the country right. What’s your idea of a small car? When was the last time you drove in Australia? How large are the lanes where you live?
Of the cars you listed (or better said the website listed) only the Nissan Leaf is under 1800 mm width ( 1780 mm ). With a length of 4490 mm it’s not exactly a small car though, but I’ll grant you it’s within an acceptable size range for a vehicle. I haven’t seen many around tbh. The MG zs EV follows closely at 1809 x 4323, acceptable sizes but not small.
The Tesla T3, TY (you see these two a lot), Kia EV5, and BMW ix1 are well above 1900mm width. The T3, by far the most popular, is exactly 1933mm W x 4720cm L, the TY only 3cm longer. Hardly, hardly what I’d call a small car.
The other models listed are all above 1800cm width, and their lengths are over 4200 mm.
Let’s compare these sizes against popular PICKUP models. Ford Ranger: 1910 mm x 5225, Volkswagen Amarok: 1910x 5350, Mitsubishi Triton 1815x5305, BYD Shark3 1994x 5195, Nissan Navara 1850 x 5120.
TESLAS ARE WIDER THAN PICKUPS. Why??? Most other EVs have comparable widths to those of a pickup. Is that small?
Examples of actually small cars: Honda Jazz 1694mm x 3996, Toyota Yaris 1710x 3940, Suzuki Swift 1735x 3840, Nissan Micra 1665x 3780, Fiat Mini Cooper 1744 x 3876. These are relatively recent models. If you look for older ones, before 2020, you’ll find even more under 1600mm. Before the 2000s, you get cars even narrower than that.
New roads might take the current average car sizes into account, but nobody is broadening already existing streets.
Mate, you’re all over the shop.
So to address the initial point, I’m now in the UK where roads are much narrower than Oz, and yes I’m driving in Oz every few years.
The basic issue is not that small cars aren’t available in Australia, it’s that no one buys them. A holden or ford ute, or a Volvo station wagon was a large car in the 80s, now the supersized Yank trucks (and the Jap ones made for the American market) are everywhere. A Toyota Hilux now is massively bigger than it was 25-30 years ago. If people didn’t buy them, they’d stop selling them. The traditional ute was selling at the same time as the 4wds that got bigger and bigger - and wiped out their market share even before the Libs killed the car industry.
So. You can buy small cars in Oz, and you can buy small EVs - it’s just that no one actually buys them.
BYD Atto is small even by Euro standards,
https://bydautomotive.com.au/atto-1
ditto the Fiat 500
https://www.fiat.com.au/fiat/500e-electric
There’s probably more I can’t be arsed looking up.
Bottom line your issue is with your fellow drivers buying tanks instead of smaller cars, they exist, and many are in fact sold to city buyers, both in dino juice and electric versions
The new Honda Super-N looks pretty small and is way better value than the Honda E was.
I don’t need a car, but if I did that would be what I’d get.
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What will be your next vehicle then?
I honestly don’t know. Probably BYD, based on how things are going…
Maybe the Honda Prologue, which I only just found out about. But I’ll keep driving my gas guzzler Honda for a while, since ei don’t drive it a lot so it will last a long time.
But really my point is that they’ve had a lot of chances to get ahead of this and they keep sticking to gas and hydrogen and not moving forward on electric.
Oh, I totally agree; I was just wondering. I really love the look of the Hyundai Casper but I think a nice, solid sodium-battery vehicle with great reviews would be amazing…
“We took zero action to compete and relied on protectionism and other forms of corruption to stay in business knowing that China was pulling ahead, we refused to plan for the future and harvested all the money for our owners instead and now we’re fucked unless you bail us out! Not the owners, of course, who could afford to bail us out, they will continue siphoning money even though they’re clearly incompetent, we need your taxes” … How about no?
Capitalists sound strange when they are faced with actual competition. That’s… kinda the whole point guys.
Yes, but there also is a legitimate issue related to staffing.
Everyone should be in unions, but unions ARE going to fight this level of automation to the bitter, as it will result in job cuts. In this particular instance, I think if you cut the CRO compensation to 0 they’d still be in trouble against some of these factories that automate almost the entire process.
This is the kind of “machines coming for your jobs” that’s realistic. AI may be a bunch of vaporware, but this stuff is different.
How many of those companies spent literal billions of dollars on stock buybacks to inflate share market price over the last decade instead of investing in the people and facilities and products to remain competitive. Even if there is dumping I doubt it’s anywhere near the combined spent on share price inflation buybacks & savings instead of investing in the workers and business, these companies enjoy unjustified tax breaks and subsidies from their governments as well.
This is a the economy being equated to wealth/investor class problem. Workers in and around cities want cheap affordable evs & charging infrastructure for renters, mechanics and parts producers want to build and work on affordable evs. People who own stocks expecting growth returns and executive compensation want to sell 10 cars a year for a trillion dollars each if they could.
Yeah, this is what bad leadership is. Lack of leadership really. China and the US both found themselves the manufacturers of the world.
China took the money and built an infrastructure. The US took the money and destroyed unions…
It all went up oil subsidies…
OH NO! THE FREE MARKET IS WORKING BUT NOT IN OUR FAVOR!!!
Genuine question is this the free market?
Is the CCP subsidizing these super cheap cars?
Which isn’t to say the US isn’t doing the same. 2008 should’ve meant the death of much of the American auto industry
Oh they likely are, just like the us does for their own auto industry. The free market part is simply a cheaper car that appeals to more people, it coming from China is the only thing really holding it back. Well and maybe the spying, but I don’t know how bad these are on that front.
Well and maybe the spying
Don’t forget the headline that came out the other day about how new US cars post-2027 model year are required to have federal surveillance installed.
We’re already being spied on, and I’d much rather China be doing it than fucking Palantir.
We are not being spyed on as long as we are not american or don’t buy new cars.
Every state does internal espionage on its citizens, and external espionage on other states.
Just because you don’t live in USA or China doesn’t excuse this.
Yes, but that is no reason to invite more of it. And this is not even government spying (they get the data I am sure) but corpo. A bad thing happening does not make it OK or normal.
invite more of it
You’re not inviting more of it. You’re trading spying done by one nation/corp with spying done by another.
Unless you think European espionage is somehow better than Chinese espionage.
The CCP didn’t just subsidize cheap cars. They built out the manufacturing capacity to produce them at scale.
As China’s demographics shifted and long-term labor supply came into question, they leaned heavily into automation and industrial efficiency.
That’s the real reason these cars are so inexpensive. It’s not just lower prices, it’s a fundamentally different cost structure driven by scale, integration, and advanced manufacturing.
What’s unsettling competitors isn’t cheap cars themselves.
It’s the ability to consistently produce cars more cheaply than anyone else.
Well I guess your high paid CEOs and executives really fucked up then, right? That’s exactly what you were saying? Because everyone else saw this coming from miles away, and we have been clamoring for these kinds of cars for a long ass time, even small gas cars are hard to find now. So what are those guys paid such high salaries for if they are so completely dense…?
They thought they had captured the market and could get away with anything because there were no other options.
Now there are options. They fucked around, now they find out.
The stock markets have turned every company into a bunch of myopic dipshits.
The only reason these cars are so cheap is because they have no humans manufacturing them and have heavy subsidies from the government.
Are you really saying you would have been happy to hear that a CEO laid off all their blue collar workers and took government bailout money?
You think they have no employees at all? BYD had over five times the employees than Ford! And subsidies? In the US, we bailed out our auto sector during the Great Recession and heavily subsidize our auto sector via tariffs. Plus no car plant had been built in a generation without heavy state and local tax breaks and subsidies.
Seriously. What are you smoking? Cause I want some.
It’s right there in the blurb, you don’t even need to read the article:
““We have no chance against this,” Mibe said upon a visit to a Shanghai parts factory, commenting on its seamless automation across all levels of production. Logistics, procurement and all aspects of the process were so automated, in fact, that he did not spot a single human worker on the supplier’s floor.”
No, I don’t think they have no employees. But your five times the employees thing is misleading. BYD Corporation has 5 times the employees as Ford, but that is for the entire BYD corporation, including their batteries, cell phones, fork lifts, solar panels, semiconductors, and rail transit systems. BYD Automotive is closer to 2 times the size of Ford. BYD is also vertically integrated, meaning they build a lot of the parts/components that go into their cars. Ford outsources a lot of parts and components.
No of course I wouldn’t, but then, none of that would be necessary if they were listening to their customers instead of watching their profit margins, paid their workers and executives what they were worth (a lot more and a lot less), not spending a fortune on lobbying against the inevitable future, etc.
Aww man, China is dumping to gain market share for EVs? That’s crazy. If only car manufacturers had adapted to EVs sooner and researched more into better battery technologies, they might not be in this position. Get fucked. This whole, every car has to be super luxorious in America is getting ridiculous. I looked at a rav4 last year and the “features” they included in the base model was mental. I just want my car to go when I press the pedal. Brake. And a CD Player. I don’t need half the shit they put in American market cars. Doesn’t help that I have a large family that needs to travel far, frequently. So, my hands are tied with getting an SUV. I’d kill for a better train transit in America. Next car gets to be an EV though. Cause that’s the sedan.
In my area last year I was legitimately looking at all options. Toyota lot was the biggest disappointment. They had 1 RAV4 that was completely stripped, cloth seats, barely any features etc. but somehow the payments were still $150 more per month than leases on better equipped EVs at that point (prior to the federal tax credit expiration). I asked the Toyota guy if he had any other competitive options and he tried to tell me I should get a massive truck (Tundra).
The guy at my lot said, “you won’t be able to find what you’re looking for; cause even if we stripped everything out, it would still be the MSRP base price.” And I was just floored by that. I walked off the lot, went home and got a PHEV from Mazda and ended up $2000 under asking; had to stay for hours though. Best I could do cause the only comparable cargo and seat size EV was a KIA EV7 (the suburban looking one). I wanted the Ioniq5, but a buddy of mine had a problem with his and Hyundai was terrible to him. Everything else in that size was just too expensive because all the EVs at that level have so many useless features.
It’s worse than that- the Toyota distributors in my area have a regional monopoly and add a non-negotiable $2000 worth of useless crap to every car for 500 miles.
$129 screen protector for the radio $80 for a bag of red USB cables $700 for “enhanced warranty protection” $1200 for nano-ceramic-ionic-polymeric paint and underbody coating
Wouldn’t they still be in the samw situation as China can afford to dump indefinitely?
They cannot dump indefinitely. That is impossible with current global circumstances. Also, if companies actually invested in EVs sooner, costs would be down already and China would have a harder time dumping. The biggest issue currently is, China can dump for longer than manufacturers can catch up. You reap what you sow, though.
They can. China has near limitless funds lol. It’s like the US with military spending except they’re doing a trade war rather than conventional war.
But they cannot sell them all. Eventually the well runs dry and they will have overstock and the wave will come to shore. The cracks in the foundation seem to be there. But I may be, and probably am, wrong. I studied engineering, not geopolitical based economics.
Car buyers usually buy a new one every 5 years at most while the rest of us buy used. They can keep going for long enough to put at least a few western companies out of business.
Source on China “dumping”? All I see are unsupported accusations that are wholly explainable by the power the lobby of the automotive industry has
Source on China “dumping”?
Illegal Storage at Jamberoo: BYD was caught storing more than 1,600 vehicles at Jamberoo Action Park without the necessary council approvals. The storage facility was discovered as the water park attempted to reopen for the summer season while its car parks remained filled with new EVs.
Inventory vs. Sales Gap: As of late 2025, BYD had reportedly imported approximately 51,000 cars to Australia but had sold only about 38,000 units, leaving a significant surplus of inventory.
Carbon Credit Strategy: Some analysts believe the stockpiling is linked to a government loophole that allows manufacturers to accumulate carbon credits based on the number of electric vehicles imported, rather than just those sold.
The plan was China was going to sell cars like legacy auto has been doing for the past 120 years. USA said no. USA created China’s over capacity. Not China.
I will fully admit my only data is anectodal evidence from friends overseas.
Edit: I’ll also add, I distinctly remember reading abouy China selling zero mileage used EVs. Which lines up with dumping practices.
That one was less dumping and more subsidies fraud, IIRC
Ah, fair enough then. I concede.
Good morning. You old style car companies (and it is not just the US ones, count the European companies in, too) slept through the last decades. They tried everything in the book to supress EVs, and still keep developing fossil fuel cars to be released in ten years.
And now they start to wake up, seeing that the world moved onwithout them, and they cry.
I work in a USA manufacturing plant that has nine figures worth of EV motor manufacturing lines cancelled, sitting around collecting dust since the new administration changed all the regulations and incentives.
and people didn’t buy them. did everyone buy a Bolt or Leaf last year???
Ford sold 823,000 F150s JUST LAST YEAR. Then the ponytail and birkenstock crowd blames the companies.
Don’t charge $100,000 for a regular fucking vehicle?
Seriously, all the useless expensive shit they add to vehicles to make them unmaintainable data miners is why they’re going to get slaughtered.
Give me an electric pickup with 4WD and crank up windows. Preferably no radio. I’d buy one of those Slates in a heartbeat if it were 4WD, as much as I hate Jeff Bezos.
I don’t think that’s why they are too expensive.
China is pumping out nice cars for like 15k and I guarantee you it has all sorts of data mining. China could probably make one of those Slate things for like $5k.
They all have data mining, regardless of country. China subsidises EVs even when they’re sold abroad, to kill the competition. Of course most legacy manufacturers have also lost the plot when it comes to affordability. To make matters worse, many of them also have to deal with expensive union labour. Chinese labour is still much cheaper.
“They’re just heavily subsidized, not actually beating us!!”
Pure cope.
This has been SOP for China for 2 decades.
Talk about cope.
China could probably make one of those Slate things for like $5k.
That’s dumb.
No, Chinese EVs are not $15K in export markets, they are over $25K.
And if I WANT a radio, I’ll go to a local business and get one that meets my needs installed. I don’t want some POS touchscreen with clunky, badly written software.
yeah hoping the Slate can turn this shit show around.
Don’t charge $100,000 for a regular fucking vehicle?
Chevy Bolt was under $25,000. No one bought them. Total sales in Q2 2025: 33.
But they sold hundreds of thousands on $100K pickup trucks.
The Bolt was discontinued in 2023 and won’t be made again until 2026. Not really surprising that a vehicle that is no longer being made isn’t selling a lot.
I didn’t even know the Bolt was around in 2025. Perhaps they should’ve done a little more to let the public know about them. I think they really wanted to use them for tax purposes, not take away sales from vehicles that make them much more money.
It kind of wasn’t. While you could buy a Bolt in 2025, they stopped making new ones in 2023. Anything on the lots was just leftover inventory, so not surprising nobody was buying a vehicle that wasn’t current.
especially EVs, who need recharging to keep batteries at healthy levels… I wouldn’t want one that’s sat on a lot for 14 months.
I love EVs, but we can’t treat them exactly the same as ICE vehicles and the Bolt never had the range to be a really popular contender with americans.
I see. The whole 33 thing was very misleading.
Well I need a vehicle, not a chevy bolt
Okay, so you’re getting out-competed in the market. Pay proper wages, invest in innovation instead of executive salaries, and take a slimmer profit margin to help your customers.
It is way bigger than that.
The traditional model of manufacturing has been multiplied by 10, “traditional” auto makers will not be able to afford retooling to even produce anything close to the volume of byd and their ilk.
Did you not read the story? The reason why they can’t compete is because China has NO wages to pay. Their plants are fully automated.
Paying proper wages would make Toyota and Honda even LESS competitive.
There is no such thing as total automation, there are always people keeping the machines in order. Even then, it’s a skill issue on Toyota and Honda’s part. Labor will reorganize like it always does, and it’s not like any of these companies care more than they have to about labor.
The primary advantage China had was government subsidies prioritizing long term more than the private investors could. In theory the private investors could make most of the same decisions an industrial capitalist state can, but they are too self interested for that collective action. They don’t care about helping any individual state, their money moves freely across the globe, and they are only in it for themselves.
It’s a race to the bottom. But at this point, why even try to stop it?
The trouble is the opposition is subsidised so they can pretty much run negative margins and still turn a profit.
Paying proper wages is the opposite of what would help here.
All auto makers are heavily subsidized, US automakers most of all.
I don’t think Ford’s getting paid a 5 digit sum to sell me a Mondeo lol, not that they even make those anymore.
If we add up all their subsidies, bailouts and hand-waved fines, we probably end up pretty close to that amount
The majority of it is loans though. Any Chinese EV manufacturers literally get paid per car they sell.
As for the EV subsidies in most countries, those get paid out to buyers usually, not sellers. Germany’s not paying Mercedes for every car they sell in China or the US, etc.
automation across all levels of production
Maybe its true. Regardless, article sounds like anti-worker propaganda to me. China is gonna eat our lunch! Better take a pay cut, and be glad you’re not laid off!
I get your perspective, but complete automation with as little human input as possible is exactly how you make cheap products.
And it could enable UBI if we had a government that gave a shit about people…
This has been reported on by multiple sources outside of the automotive industry about the rise of dark factories in China.
It’s not a secret that China has heavily invested in automation in part due to the necessity thanks to unforeseen consequences of the one child policy. There’s a very much lack of labor workers because the current generation are full of people who ultra emphasized education, even in rural areas, and this generation has no intention of working labor jobs. I don’t think Western countries, especially America with their abysmal education and having the average citizen reading at a sixth grade level wouldn’t be able to absorb that level of automation without tanking the economy unlike China’s unique situation.
Now what I’m going to probably find interesting is what’s going to happen when inevitably with the revocation of the one child policy and you see the next generation of young adults that may not have the same level of education since you now can’t pump all your resources in the singular kid and how that’s going to affect them. I do wonder how long this competitive advantage will last.
China will only have a less educated population if they follow the same stupid playbook as America, but that strategy has almost nothing to do with family sizes and has not caused birthrates to drastically increase. Population growth has slowed in every industrialized capitalist country, and many of those countries have not gutted their education system like America. There is no way a modernized economy like China’s will see a population explosion without heavy government intervention, as that would go against the established global trend. The 1 child policy was a mistake, but only because the natural course of modern capitalist economies would’ve done the job for them.
America gutted education so the population would be easier to con and manipulate. The rich gave up on having a functional republican form of government, the very type of government that allowed America to modernize and become wealthy. That type of system provided motivation for Americans to support their own nation, convincing them that their liberal democracy was the superior system. Now China has done the same thing, earning the trust of its own people by improving their country’s wealth and international prominence.
China’s investment in automation is only another way to increase worker productivity, and as history has shown time and time again, that is never the real issue that undermines societies. Rising wealth inequality, centralization of power, mistreatment along ethnic and cultural groups can become problems for China in the future, but not automation. Anti intellectualism could fuck with China as it has in the past, but it won’t be because people have more kids to invest in.
China rising in power is scary and could easily cause problems in the future, but right now it is in a very powerful position and it will not fall anytime soon. It’s likely that countries across the globe will seek to emulate China’s strategies in the same way that they emulated America post WWII. They won’t be as dominant as America was, but they will likely be the most powerful player on the board.
plus there are too many Chinese with stem jobs, engineering but couldnt find jobs because its too saturated already.
The one child policy was revoked a decade ago.
You need to update your China bad talking points.
Guess how old the children are from a policy that was ended 11 years ago.
Now, guess how old the people are who would be working in a car factory if it weren’t automated.
Finally, take 30 seconds to really understand why your post was idiotic.
And yet, the birth rate has only declined further.
I see you have no reading comprehension skills.
Single child families are still common even if it’s not a law anymore.
Maybe you should have kept up and innovated instead of just trying to stifle your competition and enshittify your products idiots.
But think of the short-term shareholder value! Have you no decency?
I do not.
well, username checks out
