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Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

theguardian.com

131–140 of 370 posts

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, you’re wrong. There’s not much else to say bout that. That's an opinion, not a fact. > Because it prices the vehicles below points where others can compete. This is way too expensive for something like that to last. The rush to the bottom is already killing so many chinese automakers locally. The idea that they can sustain such a money bleed globally is hard to believe.

> That's an opinion, not a fact. It’s not an opinion. You’re welcome to go read China’s own self-published strategic plans on this or a litany of news and policy journals discussing this. > This is way too expensive for something like that to last. How can you claim it’s too expensive if you’re claiming you don’t even buy that it’s happening?? > The rush to the bottom is already killing so many chinese automakers loc…

> It’s not an opinion. You’re welcome to go read China’s own self-published strategic plans on this or a litany of news and policy journals discussing this.

I didn't say they don't prop their carmaking, battery or ev industries. I said that I don't buy the argument it's bad for us.

> They don’t need to sustain it really, globally they’re already poised to win which is why US, EU, Japan are going to have a lot of import controls, tariffs, and will utilize other tools to protect domestic industries.

Protectionism historically only helps industries in their earliest stages when you need to kickstart them, never when they are mature.

At the end of the day western consumers and workers are always left with the bill if they cannot compete. It's us who will end up paying twice the amount for cars that aren't competitive, and don't have incentives to compete because they are protected anyway.

You also need to understand I'm European. Not American.

German/Italian economies are strongly export dependent. Exports amount for 50% of german economy and 30%+ of Italian one.

Protecting internal markets achieves little to nothing, which is why Germany and Italy were among those less willing to tariff chinese cars.

US has a giant internal market and is not a good exporting economy, it's core exports are financial and IT services.

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

98% of new car sales in Norway are EV at this point. How do you admit something that is not true?

A wealthy nation with a small population that has plenty of money to update their infrastructure is not comparable to upgrading the grid and converting the fleet of 250M cars in the US, which is a mess of 50 states who spend varying amounts of money on their infrastructure. The US grid is already stressed by all these new data centers, where is the power to send 10kW of power minimum to tens to hundreds of millions o…

If they could find the power for the data centers, why can’t we find it for EVs?

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Tesla is priced high for anyone that is even moderately price sensitive. Even the base model of their cheapest car.

Sure if $37k is a lot for a car I’ll agree with you. Then I think Tesla is now just joining Rivian and Lucid by being too expensive. The infrastructure would be besides the point then because you don’t care about that if you can’t even afford the car.

> Sure if $37k is a lot for a car

37k with 20% down payment means you borrow $29k at say, a 4.79% interest rate for 60 months so... $556/month. I know we're on HN with high salaried tech workers but c'mon, that's a lot of money and doesn't even include insurance.

That and their base model 3 is RWD which makes it a non-starter for anyone who drives in snow/ice. The AWD model starts at $47k.

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#134
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ive seen plenty of fords in Europe but they have evs

Here in the Netherlands ford sales seem to have completely consumed by Kia sales. Around me houses that typically had Fords now have Kia’s, Toyota, Tesla or small Volvo like EX30/40. After the huge hits of the focus and to some extend Mondeo, the Kuga has sold subpar. There were only a few new ones around here. Now you see some new EV Ford Explorer SUV and just a tiny account of the big old Explorer. (Yes, the tradit…

> the Kuga has sold subpar.

I own a Plugin one, I completely understand why. It's "meh", plus all the recalls because Ford cheaped out on the battery production and Samsung (the battery cells) can't do inventory management. For the US audience: it's the Escape (they are identical in all but numbering).

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#135
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Totyota is still one of the EV leaders. Alongside Kia and Hyundai?

lol no. They have been dragged kicking and screaming into offering just one model, the bz4x. They also spend a lot of money lobbying against electrification regulation, because they really don’t want to make EVs.

They were late to the game but are definitely investing more now.

They have three full EV's, in rough order of size: CH-R, BZ (previously called BZ4x), and BZ Woodland (basically a long station wagon version of the former).

Subaru is also selling a tweaked and rebadged version of each. I believe these are all made in Subaru factories with Toyota power-train components.

They're also priced pretty competitively.

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#136
post #82

I've had a rough time with the last two EVs I've owned. I bought a Honda e in 2020 because of its retro-future charm, but ended up being disappointed by several things: - the range was miserable - the software quality was bad - no OTA updates ever (despite Honda's promises) - slow charging - poor public charging infrastructure in Germany I should have known that a 35 kW battery wouldn't deliver great range or chargin…

Basically there's an adoption curve. "Western carmakers retreat" is showing they pushed ahead of the curve and got bitten so they're correcting.

THIS is where public subsidies makes the difference, finding and spending the way out of the pain points to make the adoption curve steeper.

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#137
post #90

The other day I was joking with friends about how I'd love to have a car with a deployable surveillance drone to help with parking and so if I'm stuck in traffic I could have my drone scout ahead and see what's up. Turns out BYD have one of those already! https://www.theverge.com/news/622963/byd-dji-vehicle-mounted...

Make the drone carry a couple of orange cones (or just look like an orange cone itself) and you can even have it save the spot it finds until you get there.

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ive seen plenty of fords in Europe but they have evs

Ford of Europe has succeeded because its direction and leadership are completely different to its American outfit, and has released models targeting European sensibilities. You will probably not find Mondeos or Focuses in the North American market. Nor will you (easily) find an F-150 in Europe. A Ranger, perhaps, but not the F-150.

You've shown your words to be meaningless. You said the U.S. car brands were "completely irrelevant" outside the U.S., here you admit that's wrong. You move the goalpost and change your assertion to something entirely different. But there is no reason to think this statement has any factual basis either. You're just talking out of your &ss.

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#140
post #130
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe will change their mind when protests start that many people can’t buy a car that they can charge because their home doesn’t have the capacity and public charging scarcity and congestion makes the 1970s gas rationing look convenient. Nearly all these carmakers already do make plenty of EVs. If I’m very wrong and people there wish to buy EVs exclusively, that’s what will sell and what will get made.

Their homes don't have electricity?

A standard wall socket doesn't provide enough amperage to charge an EV at reasonable rate if you use your car more than once or twice a week. Maybe this is less of a problem in the EU where people generally have shorter commutes, but I could definitely still see it being an issue.

I know multiple people that have had to upgrade the main electrical panel in their home to support an EV charger, because their older building did not have enough capacity.

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