China has already hit 50%+ new sales of plugin electric and plugin hybrid. The sticker price of electric cars has almost reached parity with ice even without any kind of subsidy then fuel savings are an additional bonus. Japan and other legacy car manufacturers have an extremely limited time left to catch up but they and their governments dragging their feet trying to protect an industry that is about to crash.
This is a huge problem. US automakers treated electric cars as a premium product. This is very clear for vehicles available in both electric and IC.[1] That premium has been decreasing rapidly. There's now a glut of used Teslas.
In the commercial sector, though, the Ford Transit is slightly cheaper in electric than in IC.[2]
The American market was swallowing the same hubris back in the 70s when Japan exports started flooding domestic soil. Then the narrative flipped from "cheap quality" to "affordable" and "reliable", eventually forcing Detroit onto its knees and into bankruptcy.
Yes, but American cars back then really were total junk. The Japanese imports were not only smaller and much more fuel-efficient, they performed better and lasted much longer and were more reliable.
These days, Chinese stuff still isn't really known for top quality, and Japanese cars haven't lost their quality edge, though you could argue they've fallen behind on adopting the latest technologies (electronic systems, and EV) because of their conservatism.
I really don’t get the purpose of a comment like this, who is this for? Have you ridden in a Chinese EV? They don’t “feel” cheap. This type of rhetoric is pretty much the reason other companies are lagging behind. After all, why compete with a “cheap” competitor? There may have been a time when quality of Chinese vehicles was questionable but I’m not sure that’s still the case.
If it weren’t for the protectionist tariffs the west has imposed on them, I would seriously consider a Chinese EV, maybe a Zeeker or Byd.
Even if a car doesn't "feel" cheap, that doesn't mean it's reliable. AFAIK, that's still a big unknown for the Chinese brands, and long-term reliability isn't something Chinese brands are known for.
online marking bots are incredibly sophisticated and long reaching.
this was just one of the low effort, "chorus effect" ones. the real opinion movers will be with accounts that have a lot more traffic and look legitimate.
Yes but the success of BYD also comes from big government subsidies. I'm aware that Tesla also received government money but what China is doing is unfair trade (at least that's the justification for tariffs). Also it's not like there's no competition. A Hyundai Inster costs 27000$ while a BYD c-segment atto 3 goes for 44172$. The BYD is a better car but not by that much imho.
That's just what I gathered from three minutes' Googling. Feel free to look at Tesla, GM, Ford etc. on Subsidy Tracker. Then search for subsidies to German auto makers.
Stop falling for this "they subsidize their businesses!!!" geopolitical nonsense.
BYD received 'subsidies to the tune of “at least” $3.7 billion' [0]. That is 1200 USD per vehicle. China subsides EVs way less than the US or EU. Atto 3 price in China is 119,800 yuan ($16,644) [1], in Thailand 799,900 baht(23,674 USD) 8% tariff and 7% tax included [2]
Dude this is the way the game is played, all the talk of free markets is just rhetoric. Look at Boeing vs Airbus, oil companies, tax breaks etc. For any country - when it suits them they'll talk about tariffs, and when it suits them they'll talk about incentives, and when it suits them they'll talk about the shining beauty of the free market.
Japan's main problem is that they are stubborn - the Koreans and Chinese bought in european designers and made cars look to Western tastes. Japanese cars look like Japanese cars.
I definitely agree on your last point, big fan of a lot of the recent designs that have come out of Korea. A sort of boxy, cyberpunk look in models like the Hyundai Grandeur and IONIQ 5 - and the Hyundai N Vision 74 concept looks amazing.
Lexus would for example - far more reliable and engineered than the European premium ones but, in my opinon, have never looked the part. Even the Lexus performance coupe's.
Japan's wary about making their automotive industry critically dependant on Chinese industries. The Chinese already proved twice that they're willing to use supply chain dependency as political means to punish Japan, once with rare earth minerals and again recently with graphite in retaliation for the semi conductor exports ban.
And it's not just batteries. The supply chain of mineral mining, purification processing, to sub component manufacturing is dominated by Chinese companies. I think it's something like 98% of the global purified graphite needed for battery cathodes comes from Chinese refineries; everywhere else multiple times more expensive. For procuring one of the most common elements on the planet; carbon.
I suspect part of the reason why Japan not so hesitant anymore is because of the US Japan Critical Minerals Agreement covering cobalt, graphite, lithium, manganese, and nickel.
Maybe it's not the best place to ask in a sub-comment but I keep wondering, what's the big deal with hydrogen cars? They're not anything greener than electric (actually less, as you lose more in the intermediate steps), safety also has its question marks, range improvement is still on the theoretical side, gas stations have to be retrofitted anyway, mechanically they have as many moving parts as an ICE so it's actually a disadvantage... I mean okay we're researching, but today it still looks to me very far from better.
>mechanically they have as many moving parts as an ICE so it's actually a disadvantage
I'm not sure this is true. They're talking about hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles here, not hydrogen-burning ICEs. So a fuel cell (which I believe has no moving parts at all) converts hydrogen to electricity, and from there the rest of the drivetrain is basically like an EV. In effect, you're using a tank of hydrogen gas as a crappy battery that can only discharge.
>what's the big deal with hydrogen cars?
Oil companies like them because it means that they stay relevant: you can generate hydrogen from fossil fuels pretty easily, plus this keeps them in position as necessary for fueling your car: instead of having to go to a Chevron station for gasoline, now you go to that same station for hydrogen. You don't get power from your electric utility to run your car, which makes the oil companies obsolete.
It's about the supply chain and patents. Japanese companies have cornered the world in both -- if they get traction on these technologies, they are poised to profit much more than they would if say Toyota succeeds at selling full evs.
They never fully committed to ev or they intentionally ignored the development. Otherwise you would see low price Japanese ev flooding the market instead of the Chinese ev
I don’t understand how is that not obvious. Of course it is about good guys vs bad guys.
Japan is a strategic ally and doesn’t hold nuclear gun to US head while trying to “establish new world order” or what the hell commies/kleptocrats been spewing recently.
Our culture has reached a point where there are no good guys or bad guys. Just look at Star Wars, where the latest director and actors try to argue that it's just a matter of perspective, the Empire isn't necessarily evil (despite good vs evil being the whole point of the original trilogy). So people are somehow unable and unwilling to consider anybody a good guy or anybody a bad guy. Like all the handwringing about how Putin must've been forced to invade Ukraine by NATO, it must be the US's fault, because the US has done bad things too.
I wonder how much of this is because of GWB's disastrous and illegitimate invasion of Iraq in 2004. It really really no more justified than Putin's invasion of Ukraine, though it was handled far more competently from a military perspective so it ended much quicker.
I'm sure it's due to plenty of things the US has done. In the end, people are often unable to hold conflicting ideas in their head. So it ends up being "the US invaded Iraq so the US is always bad and Russia isn't bad because they aren't the US". There are clear differences between Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the invasion of Iraq. Even if they are both illegitimate that doesn't make them in any way alike, and the invasion of Iraq simply doesn't justify the invasion of Ukraine in any shape or form.
I also attribute much of this to Chomsky, who spent the past 50 years railing on US imperialism, but never updated his world views when the cold war ended. I used to devour everything he said and wrote until I realized, you know, maybe there are other bad guys too and it's not all the US's fault (like Russia).
>Even if they are both illegitimate that doesn't make them in any way alike, and the invasion of Iraq simply doesn't justify the invasion of Ukraine in any shape or form.
I never said it does. It certainly doesn't. But to outsiders, having the US say how bad and evil Russia is for illegally invading Ukraine sounds ridiculous when the US illegally invaded Iraq only 20 years ago with equally absurd justification.
>There are clear differences between Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the invasion of Iraq.
Like what? The only thing I can see is that Iraq was run by a crappy dictator, while Ukraine was a troubled and corrupt democracy. Otherwise, it was really just as bad. The US's claim that Saddam was working with Al Qaeda on a WMD program is probably even more absurd than Russia's claim that Nazis are running Ukraine.
>maybe there are other bad guys too
Basically all the major powers are bad guys. Some are just worse than others. In the mid-2000s, the US was the worst; today, Russia is the worst with China a close 2nd (constantly threatening an invasion of Taiwan and bullying their SCS neighbors).
But to outsiders, having the US say how bad and evil Russia is for illegally invading Ukraine sounds ridiculous when the US illegally invaded Iraq only 20 years ago with equally absurd justification.
You know, you can also just completely ignore whatever "the US says" about the topic (or supposedly says based on whatever news feeds seem to be bubbling up for you in the last 10 minutes). Both its narratives and its moral posturing. In fact, you basically go on with most of your life if the big bad ole' USA never existed at all. Even if you happen to be stuck living there for some dumb reason.
And instead just do your own research -- ideally grounded in lots and lots of solid history, but also along other axes, such as talking to people actually from either of these other much more fascinating places, and even (if it seems safe for you to do so) visiting them yourself. And then come to your own views about how bad and evil Russia (or whichever putatively evil thing) is or is not, on its own merits (or lack thereof). Completely without reference to whatever "the US" supposedly has to say about anything.
In general this whole emphasis on "hypocrisy" is really not useful in terms of making useful judgements about what actually happened in the world, or why. On the whole it seems to serve no other purpose than to cloud people's minds, promote anxiety ... and get them to start ruminating, fulminating and devoting way too much energy on the topic of whether a certain person (or an entire country, allegedly) is "hypocritical" about a certain putatively evil thing on the world -- rather than the actual facts and etiology of the actual putatively evil thing in itself.
This is a great argument. One just has to go to countries like Ukraine and the Baltic states to see what people think about Russia. Russia is an existential threat for these people. Not just some ideological opponent in global politics. The illegal invasion of Iraq doesn't change this. It doesn't change how Ukrainians are affected by Russia's war on them.
> But to outsiders, having the US say how bad and evil Russia is for illegally invading Ukraine sounds ridiculous when the US illegally invaded Iraq only 20 years ago with equally absurd justification.
I don’t remember US trying to re-establish its long gone failed empire that collapsed under its own weight.
> The only thing I can see is that Iraq was run by a crappy dictator, while Ukraine was a troubled and corrupt democracy.
And the war isn’t over yet! I can’t imagine how much more shitshow is happening in the background in occupied territories and how much has already happened in 10 years.
> The US's claim that Saddam was working with Al Qaeda on a WMD program is probably even more absurd than Russia's claim that Nazis are running Ukraine.
For an outside viewer, first one looks far more plausible than the second one.
> Basically all the major powers are bad guys. Some are just worse than others. In the mid-2000s, the US was the worst; today, Russia is the worst with China a close 2nd (constantly threatening an invasion of Taiwan and bullying their SCS neighbors).
>I don’t remember US trying to re-establish its long gone failed empire that collapsed under its own weight.
No, it was trying to maintain an empire of sorts.
>“The only”
What difference do you see in the justification for these wars?
>Just as bad? Don’t be ridiculous, Jesus.
I'm not. It's just as bad. I'm not talking about war crimes; if you had bothered to read more carefully, you'd see I was talking about justifications for the wars, not how the wars were actually conducted once underway. Of course, the US did far better.
>For an outside viewer, first one looks far more plausible than the second one.
How so? Any fool could see at the time that there were no WMD, that the US was rushing to a war on flimsy evidence, and the whole idea that Saddam was in league with Al Qaeda was simply made up, when all the hijackers were actually from Saudi Arabia. I could see it was all BS at the time, and I was just someone watching the news.
>No, US wasn’t the worst in 2000s.
I'm pretty sure the US invasion of Iraq resulted in more civilian deaths than Russia's actions in the 2000s.
And how is the Kursk incident evidence of some kind of evil? It was incompetence and stupidity, sure, but it was an accident: it's not like Russia's government wanted a disaster on their own submarine. What a bizarre comment.
> No, it was trying to maintain an empire of sorts.
You can call it whatever you want. If we compare Russia to US in terms of "empireness" then US is nowhere near Russia.
> What difference do you see in the justification for these wars?
>> Along with Iraq's alleged development of weapons of mass destructions, another justification for invasion was the purported link between Saddam Hussein's government and terrorist organizations, in particular al-Qaeda.[83] In that sense, the Bush administration cast the Iraq war as part of the broader War on Terrorism. On February 11, 2003, FBI Director Robert Mueller testified to Congress that "seven countries designated as State Sponsors of Terrorism – Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, and North Korea – remain active in the US and continue to support terrorist groups that have targeted Americans".[33][34]
Which sounds far more "plausible" than whatever Russia has. 9/11 happened and linking Iraq to it is weak, but "kind of makes sense" if you get what I mean.
Russia, on the other hand, has a looong history of subjugating Ukraine, but let's focus on just after collapse of USSR.
Ever since USSR collapsed, Russia been trying to install pro-Russian puppets to rule Ukraine with 50% success rate. All the "accidental" military stockpile explosions, disinformation campaigns, corruption were part of hybrid war they waged for 30 years. In 2014, when Ukraine was in turmoil, they blatantly invaded and occupied Crimea and east of Ukraine. When Ukraine got its shit together and decided to kick out the occupiers, Russia used this as a pretext for further occupation because "Russia is in danger now". Just read the book I've linked in previous message, it gives broad overview of tactics Russia uses.
> I'm pretty sure the US invasion of Iraq resulted in more civilian deaths than Russia's actions in the 2000s.
They seem to be pretty comparable if you combine two Chechen wars and Georgian invasion.
> And how is the Kursk incident evidence of some kind of evil? It was incompetence and stupidity, sure, but it was an accident: it's not like Russia's government wanted a disaster on their own submarine.
They've accepted Norwegian and British help after 5 days of the disaster!
Does this look like a face of a person who is heartbroken after losing 120 people?
Solar panels were a good example. The fact that China absolutely dumped solar panels on the US completely crushed the domestic manufacturers.
Now the US solar cell supply is almost completely at the mercy of a geopolitical adversary. And US domestic manufacturers don't want to be bothered as they have no idea when China will dump panels on the market, and they'll get crushed again.
Because the US government failed to act, we lost both the manufacturing capability and the engineering research behind solar cells.
The world utopia has failed, and the world has become adversarial again. We need to add some support to local, domestic manufacturers.
I think it's less accurate to say that China dumped solar panels on the US, and more accurate to say a large portion of the US actively worked to block any sort of development and deployment of solar within US borders. A lot of people really wanted coal to be the world's energy for the next 500 years. You can blame it all on lobbying, but voters themselves made fossil fuel dependence part of their identity.
China caught up where the US should've had the lead, then flew past the US. Then the US was left with demand for a product and nobody but China could fill it.
It's like blaming wheelchair companies for filling a demand when people cut off their own legs.
And we're seeing the same with Japan and EVs. Japanese cars had probably the best reputation in the world. They could've switched over to 50% EV manufacturing, and even if they weren't cutting edge products, they'd be top sellers just because the country and its companies have a reputation that's that good. Instead the companies have been plugging their ears and covering their eyes and trying to pretend gas cars will be here forever until everyone decides burning coal/gas to produce hydrogen (???) will be the fuel of the future. Calling it a gamble that hasn't paid off is understating what a totally braindead move it has been.
In both the US and Japan's case, it's a case of people wanting to believe the thing that existed when they grew up can never change, should never be allowed to change, and that everyone else will agree with them. But the market moved on without them.
What's the better solution though? Tariffs, which end up just passing on the cost to consumers and do nothing about the competitiveness of the US's own industry, or subsidies, which can either incentivize waste or it can make US industry more competitive, or a combination of the two?
> We could just go back to the Cold War days and cut off trade and communications altogether.
Sorry, this is an absurd, bad faith argument and doesn't add to the conversation in any way. If you want to rejoin the conversation and discuss real options like a mature adult, go ahead. Otherwise, stop wasting everybody's time.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine suggests that Russia may be willing to go down that path. If China invades Taiwan, I can absolutely see a scenario where this happens. China, being export driven, would likely have a harder time than it expects. Russia’s petroleum exports are enough to disrupt global supplies, and the reason they’re still allowed to trade.
Look at the numbers outside the US. Only 10% of US new cars are electric, but worldwide, 20% are. Most of those are from China, and they're cheap.