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GreenSalem 55 minutes ago [-]
Or in most of the civilised world, you can just buy a BYD Shark 6 instead.
Far superior to American made rubbish.
One must admit that Jiaqi Liang, senior director of electrical hardware at Ford's Advanced EV team went to Tsinghua University.
So the Ford design is probably nearly as good as a purely Chinese design.
The problem is going to be the rubbish American MAGA manufacturing.
cbg0 24 minutes ago [-]
China, being a superpower, has a vested interest in bringing other superpowers down a peg as well as increasing other countries' dependence on China.
Their state has a serious incentive to ship out cheap cars to destroy the automotive industry in the US and the EU for example. When that happens they can double the price on all their vehicles and you can't restart your car factories to compete with them again until years down the line.
With Huawei its about telecom equipment which is essential in today's age, with TikTok it's about controlling the narrative, also essential.
Yes, US and EU manufacturers need to innovate and be less greedy but the cost to make things will always be higher than in China so even though protectionism sounds bad, you'll always have some of that around to even the playing field.
mcdonje 8 minutes ago [-]
US companies outsourcing all of their manufacturing to countries with cheaper labor and laxer environmental & labor laws led to this. What did those titans of industry think would happen down the road? "I'll be retired." Corporations have way too much power in the US, and that has considerably weakened it.
seydor 13 minutes ago [-]
How come this hasn't happened with solar panels, inverters, telecom equipment, batteries etc. It's been a while that such industries in europe have become obsolete
pjc50 2 minutes ago [-]
Really this is conspiracy level thinking. It's not like there's no car industry in the EU, it's just that it's grown in the low-COL areas like Slovakia and not in high-COL areas like Germany.
Chinese imports and local manufacture should be able to compete in the "free market". It's just that that term has been heavily debased by idiots misusing it, like everything else.
cbg0 5 minutes ago [-]
Solar panels, inverters and batteries are not critical infrastructure and I'd wager the jobs impacted are considerably lower than the automotive industry.
cjrp 10 minutes ago [-]
I guess it's a bit like the nuclear deterrent. The threat of them raising prices or refusing to sell to other countries might be enough.
mschuster91 7 minutes ago [-]
> How come this hasn't happened with solar panels, inverters, telecom equipment, batteries etc.
It actually began a few months ago regarding solar panels and batteries [1].
How is that different from what the US and (to a lesser degree) the EU tried to do? Both are examples of capitalism.
Actually I know why it's different, I was just doing an online knee jerk response the difference is that western capitalism has a hands-off (but regulated) approach, letting the companies do their own thing. China and their companies are much more involved. I'm sure the US was a lot more directly involved in setting the directions of its industry in decades past, but since then the industry and stock market took over the reins.
Another factor may be that in the west, workers have more rights, unionized, and set their own boundaries. But they were also constrained - what would've happened if someone at Ford 10, 15 years ago said "I want to develop an EV?". In the US, it took a new company (Tesla with a heap of investor money) to make strides in that area. But because Tesla didn't have any actual experience in making cars, they reinvented the wheel and are (from what I gathered) still building sub-standard cars.
If an experienced company like Ford or VAG set aside money and resources to reinvent the car every once in a while they would've been able to keep up. As it stands, all the existing car companies bolted a battery and engine to their existing models, turning their cars into some weird frankenstein of 20+ year old car electronics, electric drives, and entertainment systems because they didn't have what it takes to design a car from scratch.
They also tried to min/max and moved a lot of production to China; short-term that was a benefit, especially VAG was the biggest car manufacturer / seller over there, until they caught up and overtook them in very short order.
vsgherzi 43 minutes ago [-]
The US is concerned about Chinese EVs taking over the market. For good reason they’re not happy bad and they’re extremely cheap. I’m no economist nor moralist so I can’t say if banning Chinese evs are the right move or not but I can understand the US wanting to try to create its own market before getting destroyed by the competitor. I don’t think it’s fair to say that speaks to the quality of the US alternatives. There’s plenty of smart people trying to put this together to create affordable domestic electric cars. Personally I applaud that and am happy that competition is getting legacy auto manufacturers to finally make some interesting cars.
pepperoni_pizza 11 minutes ago [-]
Ultimately China and US (and anyone else in the world for that matter) are doing the same thing - helping their domestic industry compete domestically and internationally, because they want prosperity for their country. They do it via different means - China via massive subsidies and US via bans and tariffs, but the end is the same.
If someone tries to tell you that these are somehow morally different, and one of them is the good guy and the other is the bad guy, they are pushing propaganda, knowingly or unknowingly.
graemep 13 minutes ago [-]
There is a national security and sovereignty issue that the European countries (and others) not facing - its similar to dependence on American clouds etc.
A lot of these vehicles rely on OTA updates or are controlled through apps. This essentially means the manufacturer controls them. Imagine the consequences if half the vehicles in your country stopped working, or became unsafe? Do you really want to hand this power to a foreign country?
Cthulhu_ 6 minutes ago [-]
No, but at the same time, the established car manufacturers are very protective of their own stuff so they are disincentivised from e.g. building a car that works offline. John Deere is infamous for this, locking down their machines to the point that they would become scrap if the company ever went under (for example).
But it's all capitalist forces, because while in theory new companies could start that make basic / offline / affordable / maintainable / reliable cars (and tractors, and everything else), there is simply not enough demand making them non-starters.
It's like people (on here) asking for open phone platforms or phones with smaller screens; they're a minority. Most people do not care.
GreenSalem 41 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
vsgherzi 33 minutes ago [-]
China is definitely a manufacturing powerhouse. But if you think it’s morally superior to the USA I strongly recommend doing some reading. China is an authoritarian nation with extreme censorship as can be seen with the GFW. Criticism of the government is not taken well, LGBTQ content is forbidden, poor treatment of unsupported religions, poor acts of espionage, they have mongered plenty of wars and territory disputes themselves, and have been extremely poor stuwards of their corner of the internet onto the rest of the world.
China has no legs to stand on in a mortality debate. I’m not exactly of fan of things in the US recently either for the record
Edit: forgot to mention Taiwan as well as the Hong Kong protests. Recently individuals and an Artist were arrested in China for trying to remember those passed.
vsgherzi 27 minutes ago [-]
Above all I believe in a democratic system where the people’s voices can be heard and we can agree on things together with proper representation. The US definitely dosent always get it right and there’s tons of evidence of this, however I do encourage our effort and hope that one day we can achieve the full foundations of the promises of the US.
UltraSane 15 minutes ago [-]
If the US is shit, then the CCP is shit that has been eaten and puked back up.
verve_rat 36 minutes ago [-]
You know China is busy genociding its Uyghurs population, right?
Their cars are probably better than US ones, but they are not free of the taint of genocide.
Edit: and that's not counting their aggressive territorial expansion in the South China Sea and their threats against Taiwan.
kaon_2 15 minutes ago [-]
I don't want to come across as the China pisser because most big countries do scumbag things of have done them (cough colonialism). But some more of China's vices that are out of sight:
- Keep the war going in Myanmar with terrible results for the population of one of the biggest and most populous countries in the world. You just don't hear about it because no journalist goes there.
- Keeping North Korea in the saddle whereas they could have gently pushed for improvements.
- Keeping the war in Ukraine going. If Chinese leadership has any moral ambition, they could stop the war quickly. But they don't. Their own agenda comes first, as is the case with any superpower.
But yes man I would buy a BYD immediatey and it pisses me off to no end that hey are 5x more expensive in Europe than in China. I guess the whole morality of free trade was only 'good' as long as it benefited us.
32 minutes ago [-]
culopatin 29 minutes ago [-]
Even if objectively one could agree that currently the products from china are better than the US ones, all the “China so good now” stuff is starting to sound like straight up in your face propaganda.
ulfw 52 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
wongarsu 1 hours ago [-]
The list of 14 rules for running a skunkworks program and how they apply here is great and well worth reading the article, regardless of how you feel about the likelihood of Ford ever successfully executing on a $30k ev truck
59 minutes ago [-]
brikym 44 minutes ago [-]
#15 Don't tell anyone about it.
voxadam 33 minutes ago [-]
Kelly's 15th rule was actually "Starve before doing business with the damned Navy. They don't know what the hell they want and will drive you up a wall before they break either your heart or a more exposed part of your anatomy."
iNerdier 2 hours ago [-]
Who says you need Ford to do it? Aging Wheels tried a prototype of a small electric pickup a year ago from a team making one without the support of a huge car company. I have no dog in this fight, other than wanting more of transport to go electric but if Americans refuse to buy vans which probably make more sense for transporting goods this might be a good option.
You don't need Ford per se, but you do need an experienced manufacturer to take a concept car to mass production, and you need mass production to make something affordable.
mft_ 1 hours ago [-]
I'm watching Slate [0] with interest; they aren't following a path according to your assumptions.
Would be interesting to follow, but as of now they look to be in a startup phase still. Car companies take years to establish themselves. This one seems close though, they say they will do their first deliveries later this year.
tomrod 1 hours ago [-]
They have financial capital via Bezos, I thought?
Not denigrating them whatsoever, I would like to have one.
mft_ 16 minutes ago [-]
Yes; but they don't (AFAIK) have a track record or pre-existing facilities for car design or manufacturing, per the comment I was replying to.
da_chicken 1 hours ago [-]
Kelly's 14 points are still a great read and should resonate with a lot of people here.
That said, when they tried this in the past they did it by changing the sticker price to $65k+. So, color me skeptical.
Far superior to American made rubbish.
One must admit that Jiaqi Liang, senior director of electrical hardware at Ford's Advanced EV team went to Tsinghua University.
So the Ford design is probably nearly as good as a purely Chinese design.
The problem is going to be the rubbish American MAGA manufacturing.
Their state has a serious incentive to ship out cheap cars to destroy the automotive industry in the US and the EU for example. When that happens they can double the price on all their vehicles and you can't restart your car factories to compete with them again until years down the line.
With Huawei its about telecom equipment which is essential in today's age, with TikTok it's about controlling the narrative, also essential.
Yes, US and EU manufacturers need to innovate and be less greedy but the cost to make things will always be higher than in China so even though protectionism sounds bad, you'll always have some of that around to even the playing field.
Chinese imports and local manufacture should be able to compete in the "free market". It's just that that term has been heavily debased by idiots misusing it, like everything else.
It actually began a few months ago regarding solar panels and batteries [1].
[1] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/china-...
Actually I know why it's different, I was just doing an online knee jerk response the difference is that western capitalism has a hands-off (but regulated) approach, letting the companies do their own thing. China and their companies are much more involved. I'm sure the US was a lot more directly involved in setting the directions of its industry in decades past, but since then the industry and stock market took over the reins.
Another factor may be that in the west, workers have more rights, unionized, and set their own boundaries. But they were also constrained - what would've happened if someone at Ford 10, 15 years ago said "I want to develop an EV?". In the US, it took a new company (Tesla with a heap of investor money) to make strides in that area. But because Tesla didn't have any actual experience in making cars, they reinvented the wheel and are (from what I gathered) still building sub-standard cars.
If an experienced company like Ford or VAG set aside money and resources to reinvent the car every once in a while they would've been able to keep up. As it stands, all the existing car companies bolted a battery and engine to their existing models, turning their cars into some weird frankenstein of 20+ year old car electronics, electric drives, and entertainment systems because they didn't have what it takes to design a car from scratch.
They also tried to min/max and moved a lot of production to China; short-term that was a benefit, especially VAG was the biggest car manufacturer / seller over there, until they caught up and overtook them in very short order.
If someone tries to tell you that these are somehow morally different, and one of them is the good guy and the other is the bad guy, they are pushing propaganda, knowingly or unknowingly.
A lot of these vehicles rely on OTA updates or are controlled through apps. This essentially means the manufacturer controls them. Imagine the consequences if half the vehicles in your country stopped working, or became unsafe? Do you really want to hand this power to a foreign country?
But it's all capitalist forces, because while in theory new companies could start that make basic / offline / affordable / maintainable / reliable cars (and tractors, and everything else), there is simply not enough demand making them non-starters.
It's like people (on here) asking for open phone platforms or phones with smaller screens; they're a minority. Most people do not care.
China has no legs to stand on in a mortality debate. I’m not exactly of fan of things in the US recently either for the record
Edit: forgot to mention Taiwan as well as the Hong Kong protests. Recently individuals and an Artist were arrested in China for trying to remember those passed.
Their cars are probably better than US ones, but they are not free of the taint of genocide.
Edit: and that's not counting their aggressive territorial expansion in the South China Sea and their threats against Taiwan.
- Keep the war going in Myanmar with terrible results for the population of one of the biggest and most populous countries in the world. You just don't hear about it because no journalist goes there. - Keeping North Korea in the saddle whereas they could have gently pushed for improvements. - Keeping the war in Ukraine going. If Chinese leadership has any moral ambition, they could stop the war quickly. But they don't. Their own agenda comes first, as is the case with any superpower.
But yes man I would buy a BYD immediatey and it pisses me off to no end that hey are 5x more expensive in Europe than in China. I guess the whole morality of free trade was only 'good' as long as it benefited us.
Video: https://youtu.be/1OgN_qctcGs
[0] https://www.slate.auto/en
Not denigrating them whatsoever, I would like to have one.
That said, when they tried this in the past they did it by changing the sticker price to $65k+. So, color me skeptical.