If I remember correctly VW makes 400 Euro per car they sell in Germany (pre covid). I believe its just another example of Parkinsons Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law) and hope the legacy oems go bust rather sooner than later to free up the massive ressources they allocated inefficiently all the time.
How is that Parkinson's law and not a success story of market competition? Isn't it that the highly competitive car market forces legacy manufacturers to accept lower margins? If anything, we should welcome greater competition to drive down the margins of electric car makers.
Yes, it's true that the margins were low, which is a strong indicator for competition. However, I think the weakness in electrification and software makes it clear that there's little true innovation. Legacy automotive turned into a stable market, and participants were happy to fight over pennies. Eventually US manufacturers realized they couldn't compete and needed to change, but even then decided to retreat into trucks and SUVs rather than truly innovate.
It seems like anyone that had over 50% of the market share of large SUVs and made 30% profit on each one would probably double down and ride that gravy train to the end?
I see ID.3s everywhere. They are more common than any other electric car. They also tends to blend in with other VW vehicles.
>However, I think the weakness in electrification and software makes it clear that there's little true innovation. Legacy automotive turned into a stable market, and participants were happy to fight over pennies
If you sell millions of cars you can hire a whole team of penny pinchers who will then save your business 10s of millions dollars. Every penny pays for a $100k salary.
If anything the semi conductor shortage is causing downstream issues in VW's ability to produce more ID.3s.
Budget car makers are more like gaming console manufacturers and SaaS subscription services every year. They make almost no money when they sell you the car but they make all of it back from overpriced optional extras, the maintenance services you have to take at the overpriced authorized dealer and through their financing services.
I live in Europe and keep pondering moving to a bigger city and downsize just to give up the need of a car since the maintenance and the rest of the costs are going up faster than my pay. I can see a lot of low-middle class people getting screwed by the rising costs of car ownership long term.
