Management and shareholders care about today; in 10 years, it’ll be someone else’s problem. Just like the first wave of US deindustrialization.

Well then, just add a tax for selling within less than 10 years.

Tesla?

BYD is almost half the price and doesn't come with Musk attached

Half the price sounds good but I'm not sure about other part: Xi attached instead of Musk

Almost 50% the price with 100% tariffs means more expensive, and they can keep raising tariffs.

They do no handle like a Porsche. Too heavy.

Claiming Toyota reliability is pretty bold for cars that have been on the market for a year.

Yeah, I came to the same exact conclusion last year. Heck, even Ford’s CEO drives a BYD and thinks their a major threat.

This administration seems set on demolishing American industries though. Such a shame, but maybe we can finally get decent rail once all the car lobby’s are dead. (But probably not)

He drives a Xiaomi SU7, which seems like the best car out there for the price.

Honestly, it amazes me that Xiaomi built the car that you would expect Apple to come up with after all these years they spent researching and coming up with nothing.

According to Wikipedia, the Xiaomi SU7 Max has 1,784 hp and is priced at 73,000 USD. In some YouTube videos, they raced against Ferraris and Bugattis, and it fared better than much more expensive cars. I have no idea how they did it.

This is the point that The Economist made this week about Xiaomi. It looks like Lei Jun, the CEO, has a bit of a cult following in China.

"With the successful release of the YU7—its second electric vehicle (EV) after the SU7, a sporty sedan launched in March last year—Xiaomi has pulled off a feat that eluded Apple, which ditched plans to make its own EV after burning billions of dollars on the effort over a decade."

There's also a brutal price war going on over there. Those cars will be exported worldwide. Western countries are in a bind: protect the local manufacturer or allow the (much) cheaper and environmentally sound EV in from China?

"China’s smartphone champion has triumphed where Apple failed" [1]

https://archive.is/4o8hM

> According to Wikipedia, the Xiaomi SU7 Max has 1,784 hp and is priced at 73,000 USD. In some YouTube videos, they raced against Ferraris and Bugattis, and it fared better than much more expensive cars. I have no idea how they did it.

A Cybertruck may look clumsy, but it can been a Lamborghini. Instant torque.

The highest horsepower in a Ferrari road car is 1,200 in the F80. Though, I’m pretty confident you got the HP wrong for the Xiaomi.

Xiaomo SU7 Ultra - 1,138 kW (1,547 PS; 1,526 hp). OP quoted max battery power. Xiaomi on tracks is faster than Ferraris and Bugattis.

Nürburgring times.

7:04.957 Xiaomi SU7 Ultra

6:22.091 Xiaomi SU7 Ultra Prototype

It's very impressive really, more so give the SU7 Ultra is a normal four seater car you you can drive to the supermarket in and then go beat Ferraris on the Nürburgring or maybe set a record on your local track.

I mean that's just electric cars, right, they're ludicrously overpowered for their price point (even if they're spendy in other ways).

Even my parents' Leaf leaps like a salmon outside of eco-mode despite that being the last reason anyone would buy a Leaf.

> Xiaomo SU7 Ultra - 1,138 kW (1,547 PS; 1,526 hp). OP quoted max battery power.

OP talked about the Xiaomi SU7 Max, not Ultra. Looked it up now, the Max has just shy of 700 horsepower.

OP mixed data from Ultra and Max, also used battery max power not engine power.

Max is 495 kW (673 PS; 664 hp) for 299,900 yuan (US$42,239)

I mean, say what you will about third world mafia states, they do generally have trains. Mostly because the citizens couldn't imagine owning a personal vehicle. Post-soviet Russia, here we come!!

No this administration is set on protecting industry. Tesla is still around largely because byd is kept out.

I mean the policies you see you like to think are bad are literally helping Americans out, it’s just hard to look at those policies.

Because the policies represents American inferiority. America needs a leg up because their industry is inferior to China. These policies are not fair at all.

> No this administration is set on protecting industry

No, this administration ostensibly wants to Make America Great Again, but that requires policy that is focused on the greater good -- with a long term vision on the investment.

The reality is that they are actually interested in is actually a kakistocracy and has the following concerns: self-enrichment, staying in power, and oppressing its enemies.

All of what you said is true. But you implied making America great is not part of that.

Trust me. The kakistocracy requires America to be great. The tariffs are part of that.

Let me spell it out. The ceo of tsmc has clearly stated many times. The economics of building a fab in the US don’t make sense. Everything will be massively more expensive. The reason why it’s being done is simply to give a leg up to the US so the US can perform better at something that they are inferior at to Taiwan.

All of these policies are done to produce better outcomes in the long term but be massively painful in the short term.

I hate trump but the reality is that politics and taking sides is a cartoonish attitude. People are complex and the administration is made up multitudes of people. The reason for why they do what they do aren’t simply black and white and always in favor of just funneling more power to the upper class.

Maybe you’re right that they don’t give a shit about anyone other than self enrichment. But improving America in general doesn’t go against self enrichment, in fact improving America in general has massive long term upsides for trump. Don’t fall into the trope of taking a political side and thinking in terms of caricatures that trump is just pure evil.

I do think that they want America to be great, but only in the sense of "we're number one!" (chanted incessantly). Day after day I see nothing that shows that they know what they're doing (other than following the Project 2025 playbook).

I abhor partisan politics and would have no issue pointing out the plentitude of failures that happened under Dem leadership. But the Right has this One Weird Trick where they make everything political (in a partisan sense) and the act of criticizing a policy or whatnot on its merits then becomes a "biased political opinion".

Tariffs are being used in an attempt to replace income tax (Trump has been clear about that), with a benefit of being a weapon to punish perceived enemies and with a bonus of being yet another thing he can be bribed on.

I do think that Trump is pure evil -- there's zero redeeming qualities about him. Please correct my assumption if you have anything.

Tesla is still competing reasonably well with BYD in China.

BYD is dominating. Tesla is doing reasonably well. That’s correct.

But Tesla is not dominating China.

Tesla dominates the US. The only reason for that is because the administration is helping Tesla. The administration helps Tesla but they do so also by harming consumers. They restrict consumer choice to an inferior choice and thus preserve industry in the US.

The US automakers built an oligopoly when foreign competitors were technologically behind, and they developed a burdensome cost-structure based on expensive labor and multi-layered supply chains. To compete, they would need to vertically integrate (which would be very capital intensive, and is discouraged by the tax code), and cut their (unionized) Union labor costs.

GM announced a $10 billion stock buyback in November 2023, literally weeks after claiming they couldn't afford worker raises during the UAW strike that cost them $1.1 billion. Since 2015, GM has authorized $37.7 billion in total buybacks while their new UAW contract costs $9.3 billion over four years. When you can find $10 billion for buybacks immediately after settling a strike, the problem isn't "expensive labor". It's management that chose financial engineering over building competitive manufacturing capabilities.

Thank you for providing another example for me to use when arguing against stock buybacks[0], it's an absurdity of perverse incentives.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44590826

Yes, but companies run for investors will always have to pay investors, so it would have either been a buyback or dividends. When interest rates go up, companies end up competing with government bonds, and they must give dividends that keep them competitive, and in 2023 that was something like 4.3%.

For investing in the future to be possible interest rates must essentially be low.

I've thought a little about this problem, because recently we had situations where we simultaneously had inflation and needed investments to produce products in new ways to counter that inflation, and this obviously leads to a situation where it's difficult to get out of the problem. If we increase the interest rates then we stop the inflation, but the interest rates will be too high for investments to counter them. Concretely: Northvolt was trying to do American-style doomscaling and then interest rates went up, so they went under.

I believe that there is a solution: giving the central banks the additional tool to set a mandatory savings fraction of wages-- that is, that the central banks are allowed to set a fraction of wages that must be saved, and which may be invested or used to start a company but which isn't allowed to be used for consumption.

If you then have inflation and consumers are bidding over each other for goods and driving up the prices the central bank can increase the savings fraction without changing the interest rate. So plausible, in case of inflation you'd look at the need for capital to get out of it: if there's no need for capital to build new things and get out of it, then you just increase the interest rate, if there is, you increase the mandatory savings rate.

I thought about voluntary solutions, but suppose that we consider a savings pacts-- i.e. ordinary people get together and agree to all save a certain fraction of their income, then this drives down prices, so whoever deviates from the pact gets so much goods that he's really happy with what he gets for his money. Consequently such savings pacts are unstable and the savings pact must be mandatory.

I also think this is especially right for Europe. I calculated that if the central banks set this at 5% then this is enough for Draghi's €800B of needed investment, but it's obviously also applicable to the US if the US wants to transition to EVs, and now you have even higher interest rates than we do, so this policy might actually be the right thing for you too.

> Yes, but companies run for investors will always have to pay investors

> I believe that there is a solution

If changing the first is not your solution, you have no solution.

OP was saying that US companies will keep losing market until they are completely outcompeted. Finding a way to win this competition while keeping "investors" pockets full is impossible.

Yes, but in this case the investors will be ordinary people, and the payment will effectively be the products that ordinary people want.

Suppose that cheap electric car mass production is possible with new production technology, and that there's inflation because of high petrol costs. Suppose that interest rates are 5% to prevent inflation. Even if the automobile manufacturers understand that it has to be done and is feasible with some for them to survive they won't be able to do it.

However, with this interest rates can be lower because inflation is prevented by the mandatory savings. The resources to build the cheap thing will actually be available.

If done internationally this will also greatly reduce the profits of oil producing countries: suppose that the US, the EU, China and India, all big consumers of oil, agreed on a mandatory savings rate of at least 1%. Then the ordinary people have less money to bid up the price of oil against each other, but do have money to invest in businesses that substitute for oil production. The co-ordination allows ordinary people and non-resource extracting countries to get more of the pie.

You are describing socialism. The US won't ever be socialist. And it works, China is proving that.

How is it socialism? There's no löntagarfonder, there's no requirement to sell parts of companies-- wage labour still exists and while this would create a force which would lead to ordinary people owning a lot of capital, since the fact that companies would be making less profit on some goods would thus end up with reduced value, thus a reduced price, and that these people who are now required to be capital owners would likely buy at this reduced price, but it is not a socialist idea.

It's a patch on the floating-exchange-rate-and-policy-by-interest-rate of monetarist and Keynsianism to make it function in situations where there's both inflation and a need for investment.

I think the transition to this sort of as the US decision to decouple the dollar from gold. A way to get things more sensible.

> How is it socialism? ... There's no löntagarfonder

And yet that's also you:

> Yes, but in this case the investors will be ordinary people, and the payment will effectively be the products that ordinary people want.

Well, this is essentially löntagarfonder but worse because it's funded by the people under the threat of violence (mandatory savings), not from corporate profits.

> that these people who are now required to be capital owners would likely buy at this reduced price, but it is not a socialist idea.

So, the people are forced to buy the ridiculously inflated marked at ridiculously inflated prices for the faint hope that "likely" they'll get lower prices on something far in the "glorious bright future" (tm). And that's not socialism?

Well, a careful analysis reveals that "likely" is quite unlikely, the people forced to "invest" are going to lose their shirts and inflation will actually accelerate, only the well connected will benefit because they will be in control of this devious scam.

You are obviously not familier with the many forms of socialism and you argue about irrelevant details. Mandatory savings equals socialism, monopolization equals socialism - it's not Stalin's socialism, it's Mussolini's socialism - lets not forget, he was the Duce of the Italian Social Republic. As Hitler was the head of the National Socialist German Workers Party.

>Well, this is essentially löntagarfonder but worse because it's funded by the people under the threat of violence (mandatory savings), not from corporate profits.

Eveything is done under the threat of violence, including things like land ownership. We're not running some kind of country-sized anarcho-syndicalist commune, so presumably we must operate on some other basis of morality, where we don't really care about this threat of violence stuff.

>So, the people are forced to buy the ridiculously inflated marked at ridiculously inflated prices for the faint hope that "likely" they'll get lower prices on something far in the "glorious bright future" (tm). And that's not socialism?

No, the people aren't forced to buy any stock. They keep the money uninvested or whatever they want, as long as they don't spend it. They'll invest it in order to achieve returns, to use at the point when they do get to spend it.

>Well, a careful analysis reveals that "likely" is quite unlikely, the people forced to "invest" are going to lose their shirts and inflation will actually accelerate, only the well connected will benefit because they will be in control of this devious scam.

Only if they're bad at investing, but many will joint together to form funds and try to hire professionals. Presumably banks would offer services to help people deal with their mandatory savings sensibly.

>You are obviously not familier with the many forms of socialism and you argue about irrelevant details. Mandatory savings equals socialism, monopolization equals socialism - it's not Stalin's socialism, it's Mussolini's socialism - lets not forget, he was the Duce of the Italian Social Republic. As Hitler was the head of the National Socialist German Workers Party.

That's the everything-is-socialism, including capitalism is socialism. I prefer the Marxist view: socialism is to each-according-to-his-contribution.

The only thing that is like that in our society is copyright, and this proposed policy isn't either.

> No, the people aren't forced to buy any stock. They keep the money uninvested or whatever they want, as long as they don't spend it.

There's no such thing as "uninvested", unless the money is in the form of currency under a mattress but this would create such a mess that if Keynes hears about it he won't stop spinning in the long term.

And what the fresh hell is to use money for "whatever they want, as long as they don't spend it"... excluding the mattress, what else can you do with money?

You're simply throwing ideas at the wall without understanding their implications, if you're human you've got to take some econ classes and find an example that is close to what you propose - everything has been tried at some point or another - then we'll have something real to discuss.

They can start a company, they can put it in the stock market, they can invest it in a friend's company, they can invest in land, or in developing land, they can invest it in a fund, etc.

So you say, they can spend it on any of these assets. It's still spending and it's forced spending on the asset market for the benefit of rich asset owners with the associated risk of lost shirts - I've already addressed it before.

You're moving in circles and not providing the historical example I asked for. Let's get real, shall we?

Not to pick on you, but you stared your pay with a series of trivia steak arguments - but all examples of things I see repeated with little consideration.

> Yes, but companies run for investors will always have to pay investors, so it would have either been a buyback or dividends.

Your argument here is that the pivot two things companies can spend money on is dividends or stock buybacks? An incredibly false choice. They can also clearly invest in staying competitive.

> When interest rates go up, companies end up competing with government bonds, and they must give dividends that keep them competitive,

Why do you think they must do this? These aren't bonds - people aren't looking to park money at a risk free rate. They are stocks - different investments with different expectations. Setting the expectation of one based on the other is false. They should be ensuring the can keep with with short term growth of more than 4% per year non adjusted, which should be easy in an inflationary environment.

And let's dig further into what you said about this "must". Must implies no other reasonable option - the consequences of anything else would be to negative. So when you say they must do buy backs or higher dividends, I ask "or else what?". Simply put, what hairband is they don't? The company doesn't fold. Consumers don't suddenly stop buying their products. What actually happens that they need to avoid?

Not much really much of note really. They say/signal "instead of giving you this money right now, we're going to invest it to remain competitive and more productive in the future".

If some investors don't believe them or doubt want to wait the stock price dips for some period of time and then rebounds as those investments become realized with increased efficiency and superior products.

> For investing in the future to be possible interest rates must essentially be low.

Finally this is wrong. It doesn't require low interest rates is you're flush with cash. If you've given away all of your cash then yes you need to borrow to invest. But if you have tons of cash you don't need to borrow to have cash.

GM's stock price is below inflation since new-GM went public 15y ago, and that's with 37B in buybacks. What do you think would've happened to the stock without them?

Do you think investors, especially institutional ones that manage retirement funds etc. would just ignore the CEO/board and not receive any returns?

Yes, they can also invest in staying competitive, but when interest rates are high this is often not practical. Especially if there are competitors.

My observation is that great care is taken to keep companies competitive with government bonds when taking risk into account.

> and is discouraged by the tax code

How is vertical integration disincentivized?

US automakers typically spend more per car on advertising than they spend on labor to build. Labor costs are often under 15% of total cost depending on the model. So even if they paid workers 50% more than today's wages, the cost of the car would "balloon" less than dealer markup.

Unions are not making American cars uncompetitive.

Automakers need labor to build cars, they don’t need expensive management and share buybacks. The problem is the corporate structure, not the people doing the actual work and their cost.

American consumers want expensive and big cars, not cheap and tiny cars.

BYD margins in America would be razor thin.

BYD is going to kill in developing and emerging markets, but it doesn't stand a chance in the American SUV / truck / sports car market. It'll also push America out of international markets, but it won't be able to edge into American consumer markets.

It's not big auto that's the problem. It's the American consumer.

US automotive regulations have pushed for lighter, smaller, more fuel efficient coupes. Yet people keep buying the big and heavy trucks and SUVs.

It's cultural.

It is not cultural, the automotive manufacturers PUSH(1) for people to buy expensive and big cars because it makes them a lot more money.

Americans DO want cheap small and fuel efficient cars, but they are actually MORE expensive due to the government regulations and guess what? The "big expensive" cars have much looser regulations due to being classified as trucks. There are several articles and youtube videos about this topic, it is very well explored and nothing is being done about it.

1: Advertising, 'discounts', bonuses, 'free' accessories, loans.

if a new base model nissan versa was $40k and an F150 was $18k, then maybe I could agree with that. of course I don't even need to point out the reverse is true.

auto manufacturer lobbyists may have been successful at convincing the government to incentivize the production of more expensive, more profitable vehicles, but it's not like there aren't still cheap small cars that everyone knows about and would fulfill 90% of people's needs for half the money, yet they spend on average $50k for a 4,000lb SUV, to never carry more than 4 people and some groceries.

maybe lobbying got the price of SUVs down 10% relative to smaller cars, and sure some people considering a smaller car might upsize because of that. but I don't think it's possible to discount the cultural component when you look at what people in the US buy. and if people fall for that because of advertising, that's essentially cultural.

Sure, go ahead try to buy a 18k nissan and see how well that goes. I asked a friend that lives in the US and he said: "in your dreams lmao".

BYD makes a pickup truck (the BYD Shark) and SUVs (though none as large as a Tahoe or Suburban - yet)

The BYD Yangwang U8, a giant luxury SUV, is up there in size. They could easily build a gonzo pickup truck, but there's little market for those outside the US.

Sealion, Atto 3, M6, Tang, even Seal, are not small, let alone tiny, cars.

Wrong. American car choice has everything to do with government subsidies, car safety standards and fuel standards. Consumer choice doesn’t matter in the US Auto market.

Look at what consumers buy. You can't dispute the actual sales data.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g64457986/bestselling-cars...

It's trucks and SUVs.

It doesn't matter if regulations favor small and fuel efficient. That's not what consumers buy. In fact, they flock to the exact opposite.

Occam's razor here is that American auto isn't stupid. It's just building what the consumers want.

American preferences don't match that of the broader world.

You are missing the point. I don’t dispute the sales data, I agree with it, it supports my point. It’s not out of preference, it’s enforced by regulations and encouraged by the tax code.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24139147/suvs-trucks-popu...

There are plenty of cheaper cars people can buy, but they're not buying them.

But large cars are not cheap - they're significantly more expensive than the small cars available on the market.

Consumers aren't buying trucks because they're incentivized with money - because the truck is double the cost. Theyre buying trucks because they want them.

Does that make American consumers stupid? Yeah probably.

Id sooner blame marketing and advertising than regulations and tax codes. The reality is that when these gas guzzlers are priced outrageously, Americans still want them.

The Chinese people love big cars. A small car there is a poor person car. They sell well because China is still poorer than the US, but sales are shifting to larger cars rapidly.

There is one path though, the US automotive industry can start disregarding human rights like BYD (which ranks last now):

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/human-rights-...

Ford tried to introduce Chinese suppliers into North America, the congress scrapped that.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-law...

Sure because having domestic industry is a strategic decision. Also the reason why US carmakers won't go bust. Chinese competition simply won't be allowed. Easy as that.

Sure because having domestic industry is a strategic decision. Also the reason why Soviet carmakers won't go bust. American competition simply won't be allowed. Easy as that, comrade!

>Chinese competition simply won't be allowed. Easy as that.

Then the domestic industry will just rot from inside. It is usually a worse outcome than if the domestic industry were competing in the open market.

Tariffs and other protectionist measures result in the low quality high priced product of the protected industry being sellable only in the domestic market. Where is China is going to sell to the rest of the world. 340M vs. almost 8B of addressable market. It is a writing on the wall.

That's hardly a new situation. There are no American cars on European roads with the exception of occasional Fords.

Also the Chinese aren't selling to the rest of the World. The EU has also imposed harsh tariffs on BYD and others to protect its industry.

Tesla has a factory in Berlin.

BYD had had a bus factory for a while in Europe but is just about to roll the first cars off their plant in Hungary.

There are lots of BYDs, MGs, and I'm even starting to see some Xpeng cars around in Scandinavia. They are selling.

Jaecoo and Omoda are starting to show up in the UK

There are basically no American cars being sold outside America.

This has nothing to do with EU rules and everything to do with the Big 3 deciding in the early to mid 2010s that SUVs sold in America were so profitable they really didn’t need to do business anywhere else.

Can vouch for that. Ford and GM (Chevrolet) used to have a big presence in Brazil but now Ford is almost gone and Chevrolet is going the same way

Sadly RAM seems to have a small market selling to manchildren in Australia.

We’re now trapped in a new capitalist-globalist paradigm: when one country produces goods faster and cheaper, the response isn’t to compete, but to isolate them. And the world’s oligarchs couldn’t be happier.

Protectionism does not work. Your plan was already tried with naval traffic, look at the effects of the jones act.

Trump is a regressive. Short term profits for his buddies over 5-10 years then it’s night night to the US.

> can't understand how

Check out what year Michael Crichton's Rising Sun was released. Ask ChatGPT for a summary of the predictions. And then checkout what actually happened to Japan.

That’s on Crichton. The Plaza Accord of 1985 had kneecapped Japan. The USA doesn’t have the same leverage on China.

I mean Toyota is now the #1 car manufacturer in the world and Japanese brands have about 1/3 of the US car market, so Japan didn't do too badly really.

This is like what you hope will happen. It happened to Japan. Doesn’t mean it will happen to the US.

When you look at some European country like Russia and see how fucked up it is. Then you say well Russia is full of white ppl like the US so the future of the US will be like Russia, doesn’t that sound massively stupid to you?

So why do you think what happened to Japan applies to China? Like is it because the people in Japan look like the people in China? You know the countries hate each other right?

Even though there is some overlap of the European continent and Russia's territory, I don't think that Russia qualifies as an example for the average European country.

Also, why are you mentioning the look of people in a discussion about cars and manufacturing?

Russia is a European power. Geographically, linguistically, culturally, religions-wise, artistically, musically, etc.

Right but not politically! The Russian leadership went for self-isolation and nationalism. I used to hope for that mindset to remain limited to Russia, but I'm not so sure now.

> doesn’t that sound massively stupid to you?

Also tangential? Economic development and demographic patterns might be more relevant than jumping straight to race like you did.

China and Japan couldn’t be more different culturally and economically, in a blind comparison the conclusion is that the distinction between these countries is night and day. Every single aspect is different.

It’s very very clear why he chose to compare Japan and China and expect that comparison to be like dropping the mic. Like he didn’t even say why Japan is an accurate model for China.

> couldn’t be

Well.. look how Japan’s economy developed between the 60s and 90s. If you don’t see any parallels that would be rather bizarre.

You mean massive growth? There are parallels between all countries that had massive economic growth. But growth in itself doesn't mean a guaranteed pattern of downfall. Clearly there's some subconscious bias in the comparison.

I mean you can draw parallels to any country that hit massive growth.

Almost entirely export driven massive growth and a looming demographic collapse (very little immigration compared to many rich developed countries).

> Clearly there's some subconscious bias in the comparison.

Not clear to me at all. Rather bizarre that you immediately jump to this conclusion and hand wave any further discussion

For that you have to read Chricton's other book Jurassic Park.

There the message is simple - chimps with 3 inch brains love to pretend they can control ever increasing complex systems and scale. And obviously they can't.

China's enemy is Complexity. Not the US which is too lost to talk about. Complexity goes on increasing and pressure to pretend they have control also increases. Mistakes will be made and multiply with time. So see Covid, Evergrande/Country Garden, techbro crackdown, young ppl checking out etc. Larger the system more the issues not less. More fragile. Not less.

I read that book and you’re just making up shit. There is no chimp with 3 brains.

You are correct that chinas enemy is not the US. But complexity isn’t the the issue either. The issues are complex but complexity isn’t inherently the causal source of there issues. It’s not like oh the complexity was so overwhelming that it confused people and covid formed and young people checked out.

Your comment is an aside. The point is Japan and China couldn’t be more different. The guy was obviously comparing the two because, hey a bunch of mongoloid Asians reaching prosperity! They must be the same. It’s stupid af.

I’m Asian myself but I will say I don’t care about him being racist. Not trying to raise some social justice garbage here. I don’t give a shit about stuff like that. I’m commenting about the raw stupidity of the comparison not the moralness of it.

> There is no chimp with 3 brains.

“Chimp with 3 inch brain” refers to humans.

Nobody said “3 brains”

typo

Question: What is stopping from a new or old entrant from creating a $10-15K electric car? American mfg may be slightly better at automation than China.

There'd be no demand for it - the median American takes home about $40k a year, while a Civic (which is a very decent car all things considered), costs $25k, not to mention tons of cheaper options if you buy used.

There's just no one willing to buy these entry level cars, except as maybe second commuter cars.

> American mfg may be slightly better at automation than China

Doubtful. It’s hard for a country which has been consistently outsourcing the production of anything remotely complex to do better than one which has been the top producer of manufactured goods for decades. Tesla tried and mostly failed.

Plus automation is expensive and require large volume to be profitable. American cars historically have limited appeal abroad and the market is extremely competitive which doesn’t help.

Tesla seems to be doing pretty OK on the manufacturing side. These days quality of the physical product is decent enough and the price of their different models are highly competitive in their respective segments.

The flaws in Teslas cars are mostly design choices (plastic seats instead of cloth/leather, bad ergonomics due to focus on minimalist aesthetic, uncomfortable suspension setup etc, etc). Some of it is following trends, some of it is Elons stupid ideas.

Financially it seems like Teslas big problem is the AI-investments. Burning unfathomable amounts of cash on useless software, instead of putting that money towards developing their model lineup and improving quality on things that matter.

Tesla learned how to do manufacturing from the Chinese. The first plant they built themselves was designed, built and run by the Chinese, and then basically copied to Germany. The Texas plant is an evolution of that.

That manufacturing edge is the reason Tesla is still profitable despite its massive drop in sales.

> These days quality of the physical product is decent enough and the price of their different models are highly competitive in their respective segments. [...] The flaws in Teslas cars are mostly design choices

These two parts don't really go together from my point of view. Tesla is often pricing a car with mid-range quality as a premium model.

Personally, I think they are not very competitive anymore in the segments they operate in. They used to have first mover advantage but now historic manufacturers have similar cars on offer. At the entry level, in as much as they have a vehicle there, they are not competitive at all compared to the Asian manufacturers.

I am more worried about the plummeting sales than the AI investments.

When I picked my Model Y the main competition was Kia EV6 and VW ID7. The monthly lease+insurance was $600 for Tesla, $850 for Kia and $1000 for VW.

To get down to Model Y-level costs, I would have had to settle for a barebones ID4 or an MG. In that comparison the Model Y is a wonder of pace, space and grace.

I don't like my Model Y, I sort of hate it, but if I had to make the choice again and the relative prices (and my car-needs) were the same, it would be a tight race. I'm pretty sure there will be better options next time, though.

> if I had to make the choice again

The choices are different now, Tesla is no longer a winner. That despite the tariffs, without which nobody would buy Teslas.

Indirect and direct government support (exactly like in China). So this is unlikely when the government is going in the other direction.

Bolt EV was 20K after tax rebate (and that is an US car, ie. it has more safety and other required features than say a 12K car legal in many other countries). Not many people bought. Instead they buy more expensive EVs. While GM probably didn't make much money on each Bolt. Now Equinox EV, something like 28K after tax rebate. Not many people buying. Again they are buying more expensive EVs. And GM probably doesn't make much on the Equinox EVs. Talked with an owner of one - great car, very inexpensive lease, so while being price conscious he went for a pretty loaded config.

So, i think 10-15K car in US has no buyers, and no margin to make it worth for the manufacturer.

Equinox is selling very well.

I am following the development of a new company called Slate who are specifically trying to build low cost EV's by shunning gimmicky BS like "self driving" and selling them with only an extremely limited number of options from the factory.

https://www.slate.auto/

> American mfg may be slightly better at automation than China.

This is a common misconception. Chinese manufacturing is far more automated, and getting more automated, than American manufacturing.

Automation in American manufacturing basically stalled in the 2000s.

Why? Once you go beyond how cheap these cars are - (they are not cheap in Europe), what's the standout feature they have the US (or any other) cars lack?

> they are not cheap in Europe

only due to large tariffs

People point at the tariffs to say that those will protect US manufacturers. Wrong. They'll protect US manufacturing, not US manufacturers.

Toyota, VW, Honda and Hyundai et al sell globally. They have to compete against China. Some of them will learn how to do so, then dominate the American market with their American factories.

Good ridance.