The Chinese are making some pretty funky cars these days. I was just reading about the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra. 1527 hp and $73k. So you can go down the shops and then pop to your local race track to try to beat the record lap time. I don't think any of the top Porsche/Ferrari/Lambos match that.
If the US is going to tariff heavily Canada for made up reasons [1], Canada should negotiate a more free trade agreement with China. Not completely open, but significantly more open than it is now - and encourage bilateral exchanges to make up for the surplus we will have because of the US tariffs. And then instead of importing Teslas from the US we should be importing BYD and Greelys from China.
Staying dependent upon the US and having prohibitive tariffs on China while we are being pummelled by the US is not smart. We should be turning away from the US in response to this behaviour.
[1] https://www.cfr.org/article/how-does-fentanyl-reach-united-s... "Canada plays virtually no role in the U.S. fentanyl influx, especially compared to the other countries. The country contributes less than 1 percent to its southern neighbor’s street fentanyl supply, as both the Canadian government and data from the DEA report."
Now that General Motors has shut down Holden and sold off Opel and Vauxhall to Stellantis, Ford is the only US car manufacturer that sells vehicles in significant numbers outside the Americas, and it does this by having completely different vehicle ranges on other continents. (Jeep also sells outside the Americas, but exclusively to the 'Gee, I wish I were American' crowd.)
I don't trust China to produce good-quality cars at the moment (although I expect I'll have eaten my words in ten years' time), but if most of the world gets on fine without American cars, I'm sure the Canadians will too.
> I don't trust China to produce good-quality cars at the moment (although I expect I'll have eaten my words in ten years' time), but if most of the world gets on fine without American cars, I'm sure the Canadians will too.
BYD = Tesla, sort of. Both have their issues. In Europe price will win, or hate for elon and if pushed enough everything-US.
Other Chinese manufacturers, don't know probably lower quality, often direct copies of mostly premium German cars for fraction of the price.
I used to trash everything Chinese, but years ago I got my first drone, it was from DJI. Miles ahead of anything else in that segment including both software and hardware quality and reliability. Don't judge quality of output of entire country based on some 1 dollar USB cables, they are smart and have great work ethics, plus a billion and a half headcount.
> And then instead of importing Teslas from the US we should be importing BYD and Greelys from China.
There are strategic reasons why you may not want to help increase the manufacturing base of a national "competitor":
> Democratic countries’ economies are mainly set up as free market economies with redistribution, because this is what maximizes living standards in peacetime. In a free market economy, if a foreign country wants to sell you cheap cars, you let them do it, and you allocate your own productive resources to something more profitable instead. If China is willing to sell you brand-new electric vehicles for $10,000, why should you turn them down? Just make B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps, sell them for a high profit margin, and drive a Chinese car.
> Except then a war comes, and suddenly you find that B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps aren’t very useful for defending your freedoms. Oops! The right time to worry about manufacturing would have been years before the war, except you weren’t able to anticipate and prepare for the future. Manufacturing doesn’t just support war — in a very real way, it’s a war in and of itself.
> There are strategic reasons why you may not want to help increase the manufacturing base of a national "competitor"
From what I can tell, the US is repositioning itself as a national "competitor" to Canada. Thus based on the article you linked, Canada should significant curtail its trade with the US and start to rely upon its own industries and that of its reliable allies (looking at Europe) for military and critical infrastructure. That said, trading non critical goods with China and other countries who have not taken an aggressive war posture with us makes sense as well.
Say what you will about China and their spying, but they have not actually treated to remove our sovereignty as the current leader of the US has [1]. In fact, China hasn't done anything even close to that.
How many times has China threatened Canada with invasion, taking over whole country? And US? Something about infinity.
You are right, but I suspect you didn't realize its in completely opposite way if I understood you correctly. China isn't enemy of most if not all western countries in a way that it doesn't feel the need to export their system elsewhere and feeling as superior uber race, unlike russia for example. China never threatened Europe, zero zilch 0 nothing, it just wants to do business with us. US on the other hand...
Maybe China is enemy of the US (not really seeing it but mkay, your fight your problem), maybe it will become enemy of US with recent potus and his a-lickers actions, but rest of the world is stopping caring about US tantrums and US-first is only about US, which is what, 4% of global population?
Those that attack are our enemies. Those that don't aren't, rest are details.
These are serious economic effects. And if Trump stays focused on annexation, it is likely to get worse if he really does want to bring us to our knees.
I wasn't claiming they are saint, but almost if not every country in the world could have same wikipedia with US meddling. Or russian. That's the core of secret services work.
Did they ever threatened to annex Canada? Sort of more important than some minor bribes or espionage IMHO.
That's not going to work. China can sell cars to Canada but Canada can't sell cars to China even if there are no tariffs. Canada pulls profit from the automotive trade and that's why they are freaking out. If they were competitive on the world stage, they could divert their production somewhere else.
Canada is probably more interested in selling products like wheat, beef and pork to China which currently face significant tariff and non-tariff barriers.
Even better would be for each Canadian province to become a state, bringing sanity to the US Senate and perhaps restoring the US to decency and the rule of law.
But I don’t see why Canadians would be interested in hitching their wagon to a rapidly failing country that’s antagonizing them and their allies. Why get in bed with crazy when they’re doing just fine as is?
When the US annexes or gains new territory it generally doesn't give them federal representation for a while.
Alaska was acquired in 1884, but didn't get "statehood" until 1959. Hawaii was annexed in 1900, but didn't get "statehood" until 1959. Puerto Rico was acquired in 1898, but still doesn't have "statehood."
If Canada is annexed by the US there is a good chance I will be dead of old age before it gets a vote in US elections.
I've watched a pretty interesting video that highlighted not only the Chinese automakers and their explosive growth, but how quickly Volkswagen was pushed out, their market share plummeting in China since 2020 or so.
They also messed up with waiting for too long to revise the computers and electronics in their cars, firing up a 1000 people strong engineering company (or was it 3000?) to rebuild car software from the ground up, naturally causing a lot of issues.
But, the ID cars are doing well, the ID 4 overtaking Tesla's model 3 in popularity. And I really like that bus they have now, it's super cute.
The ID range is actually great, and I'm hoping VW will be able to recover. I've driven the ID.3 a bunch of times, and it's vastly superior to a Tesla. More pragmatic and practical cars, real buttons, thoughtful design choices, as well as some advanced ones (the LED matrix headlights are magical).
VW (group) should do something about their sick prices. In my case model y was simply cheaper by €15k compared to Škoda Enyaq and ID.4. It’s a lot of money. Plus these drum brakes and low maximal speed in first generation cars. ID.7 is super cool car, but way to expensive. ID.Buzz as expensive as Tesla model X. VW should investigate why their cars are that expensive. Plus Tesla’s 4 year warranty with ranger coming to your parking lot. I remember all the drama with VW Autohaus and begging for the time to service a car there. Endless arrogance. Plus unbeatable electricity price at Tesla‘s supercharger network. Volkswagen and others have some homework to do. There is not really many cars that can match entry level model 3 at 41000€, just look how expensive the ID.3s are: https://www.volkswagen.de/de/konfigurator.html/__app/id-3.ap...
>VW should investigate why their cars are that expensive.
Investigate what exactly? This is a known accounting fact.
Where do you think the money comes from that gets every German VW factory worker 30+ vacation days per year, paid sick days whenever they don't feel like coming to work, great pension plans, inflation beating Yearly raises, unions that keep unproductive people from getting fired and best severance packages in the industry in case they do.
All those perks they have get priced into the final product. You can't manufacture cheap commodity goods while treating your workers so lavishly when competing with Asia and how they treat their manufacturing labor.
This was economically feasible when European cars had no foreign competition in terms of quality and technology, but this is not the case anymore and something will have to give.
But elsewhere it works fine: https://carnewschina.com/2024/01/03/the-updated-saic-vw-id-3... The prices are nothing comparable to European ones. And Zwickau (where ID.3 is apparently built) is also rather low cost area. Anyway I am curious about ID.1 and what Chinese car will VW re-label for this. VW eUp was more expensive.
China’s automakers are a “slowly, then suddenly” story.
Geely bought 20% of the company that makes London’s cabs in 2006, then all of Volvo in 2009, the. A controlling interest in Lotus in 2017.
They’ve used increasing scale to create shared platforms across brands (including new brands like Polestar).
It’s really a classic well-executed capitalist play of rolling up smaller companies into larger enterprises with greater scale economies and deeper expertise and vertical integration.
It’s great to see, and gives me in the sometimes-dubious capitalist claim that incumbents at a sufficient level of complacency get eaten.
> And I really like that bus they have now, it's super cute.
At ~60k a pop who can spend that on a small bus? Maybe rich Californians. VW forgot they're a peoples' car and is trying to become a status brand for the wealthy qurky suburbanites.
I looked at pricing original pricing info for Volkswagen Microbus [1] and I adjusted it for inflation. I came up with prices in the range of 20k~30k. 60k is definitely a lot but then I remember that most sedans are in the 20k, and the Toyota Sienna is in the 40k. The pricing of the bus compared to other cars makes sense but it's still too much. It makes more sense to buy used tbh.
I got a Seal for 40k EUR (after the subsidy), and it's a great car in general, but absolutely fantastic for that price. I don't think you can find a comparable car for anywhere near that amount of money.
Geely acquired Volvo Cars around 2010, and there is certainly not much wrong with modern Volvos (aside for the regular stuff that is wrong with all modern vehicles).
Given Geely's various acquisitions, it makes sense that their cars would benefit from shared technologies so I wouldn't expect their vehicles to be much worse than westerns.
Seems like the main problem if you dislike China taking over the industry is that the automobile companies keep voluntarily selling their brands to them.
My question is whether these new chinese EV makers are deliberately lowering their profit margins to push out competitors, or are they _actually_ super efficient at capital deployment and operations (as well as economies of scale) such that their value generation do come from their lowered costs compared to their western competitors.
Would assume its a bit of both. It would make sense that the country with deep expertise in manufacturing at scale AND battery tech would be able to offer EVs cheaper than the competition
long time ago ~80ies, when japanese Hi-fi brands were going strong, some mass-public so-called "cheapish" makers , like Technics and Kenwood, were makeing cheaper and cheaper amplifiers while being still-very-good.. then one day tried their hands at the high-end - like, how it would be, if, given all the engineering constraints, price is not a constraint anymore? And they made some simply fantastic devices from that time..
so i am thinking.. if chinese EVs are better while being much cheaper, what would be if they did not have to be cheaper?
this YouTube channel called “Inside Business China” by supply-chain specialist and industry analyst Kevin Walmsley has regular videos on how and why various Chinese industrial sectors are eating our lunch:
“Detroit auto engineers tear down BYD's Seagull: "An extinction-level event"”
Same thing should be asked about the whole American tech sector since the late 90s, the only difference being the USA had VCs throwing gobs of money for tech companies to do price dumping and capture market share while China has the State doing similarly.
Reddit discussion https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/1j2d118/xiaomi_su7_ul...
vid https://youtu.be/aQKKLMwSGHQ?t=27
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