Just as an example, Tesla’s 2024 Q1 deliveries where below 2023’s Q1 deliveries hardly a sign of rapid growth. https://www.statista.com/statistics/502208/tesla-quarterly-v...
SpaceX is facing the limits of how much people want to send into orbit. Plenty of growth in the next few years, but Starlink is only generating ~6 billion a year in revenue and not much else really wants to put that much stuff into orbit. Worse, Starlink is facing ever increasing competition from cheaper ground based providers especially cellular internet, so that business may start to shrink.
https://x.com/teslaxander/status/1864202319925035083
Is it any wonder that the German car industry is imploding?
I also don't share your pessimism about Starlink. Right now it's unclear what the killer application for Starlink will be, but it's awesome technology and even if it's only used in very remote areas it will still be worth it. When you only invest in technology that is immediately valuable you lose out on the technological revolutions that take a while to play out. Imagine having the capability of building something like Starlink but not doing it because the bean counters don't see the point.
VW saw a 12% increase in sales in 2023, the’re currently #2 globally behind Toyota.
But that’s not really the narrative people have about European car companies. (Ed: Not that the nominal nationality of a company with global manufacturing and significant international ownership is telling the whole story.)
> In October, the German automaker reported that its third-quarter sales in China had fallen by a third.
> Rival German automakers Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz are also struggling with falling sales in China caused by a weak economy and intense competition.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/bmw-re...
> "I don't like talking about the competition so much but I drive the Xiaomi – we flew one from Shanghai to Chicago and I've been driving it for six month now and I don't want to give it up", Ford CEO Jim Farley
Chinese cars are getting better every year and nobody can match them on price. That's the real story here. The narrative is shifting because more and more people realize that the EU doesn't have an answer except for tariffs and other protectionist measures.
It’s a little early to say they can’t compete rather than this being a brander situation as overall Chinese customer demand is down and they’re a luxury brand. So sure, profits are down significantly but it’s still a very profitable company.
You can't have an answer if you're competing with a labor force that's working 9-9-6 while your labor force is working 35h weeks on paper (much less in practice), gets 40 vacation days per year, get paid sick leave whenever they don't feel like coming to work, and highly paid underperformers are unable to be fired due to unions.
German workers could afford that cushy lifestyle when their auto industry was the most cutting edge and valuable in the world, but once it's not anymore, they'll have to accept a new reality of more work for less pay if they want to have jobs or an industry.
Fast food is filled with part time employees because those companies benefit from doing so, it’s one way to keep their costs down.
Rather than competition the larger story is companies trying to managing the EV transition. It’s inherently difficult when most buyers are still choosing ICE but EV’s need huge R&D investments and are generally unprofitable. We just entered the territory where sales aren’t small enough to simply absorb per unit losses as irrelevant.
I never said the dead weight is on the assembly line, because it's never there, it's in the offices and board rooms. VW for example is full of useless employee swinging their nutsacks (German expression for doing nothing) and cashing in near six figure wages and being unfireable. Meanwhile the workers on the assembly lines will have to loose their jobs.
As crazy as it sounds if you know anything about the industry, better management and increasing wages in China.
Chinese firms are generally extremely dysfunctional internally. That didn’t matter when they paid people a small fraction of western wages, but significant wage growth for years adds up. Continue ~9%/year wage growth and things would be at near parity in a little over a decade.
Obviously, that’s no guarantee but rapidly developing countries eventually develop. Things are about to get really interesting.
I don't think you realize what's going on in the EU (failing into a third world continent at an alarming rate) or in China (where "little" cities of 30 million inhabitants are all about tech and feeling like you live in the future: not that everything is rosy in China).
EU carmakers are all in big trouble while Chinese EVs and Tesla are soaring. The EU has nothing to answer the mag 7, let alone SpaceX (the ESA was already way behind NASA).
That the US is growing at a faster rate than most other nation and continents is a fact and it's got nothing to do whether you or a care assistant goes to visit your grandma.