And, a recent tour of one of the Asian powerhouse’s vehicle plants has proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt, at least to Honda President and CEO Toshihiro Mibe.
“We have no chance against this,” Mibe said upon a visit to a Shanghai parts factory, commenting on its seamless automation across all levels of production. Logistics, procurement and all aspects of the process were so automated, in fact, that he did not spot a single human worker on the supplier’s floor.
Ford executives saying even three years ago that China was way ahead of the game
Toyota’s CEO has likewise said regarding not just his company, but the industry in general, “unless things change, we will not survive”
Got to used to not having to compete
Back in the 80s, American cars got really, really crappy, and that’s when Honda, and Toyota, and later Hyundai, Daiwoo, and Kia were able to get market share. American car companies got their shit together, and started making cars that could compete again. So here we are a few decades later, in the same spot.
These scummy Capitalists get a taste of luxury, and they start getting lazy, while the Asians continue to crank away like they’re in last place. In the past, the Capitalists finally wised up, and got back into the game, but the current crop are so breath-takingly ignorant, that I doubt they could even recognize that they’re in trouble. If someone were to try to explain it to them, they’d probably just attack back.
The Japanese and Koreans will get their shit together. America won’t.
They know they are in trouble but they think it’s because labor is lazy and needs more exploiting.
Part of getting Americas shit together is closing off immigration. The people doing this to us are mostly not American. It’s rich immigrants from various countries exploiting regular Americans. Thiel isn’t ours. Musk isn’t ours. Fucking murdoch… Why the fuck do they all move here? At some point it feels like an attack from other nations. From our own Allies. Who fucking needs enemies?
Weren’t some auto companies bailed out before? Why wouldn’t they expect the same thing again? Just get bailed out by the government again if things get bad enough.
“we’ve built a model based on charging an assload of money for features that barely work and China is making cheap cars that do the job better. Because, you know, the cheap bullshit we’ve been building. If you force us to compete again we’ll lose!”
Okay, but have you considered that the Chinese Communist Party is ontologically evil? And therefore any amount of business (direct retail sale to consumers that sidesteps US rent-seekers) is in support of a genocidal regime of highly corrupt madmen who want to destroy liberty and justice across the entire planet?
We need to STOP CHINA NOW before they take over the damned world and ruin everything sweet and honest and pure that our glorious nation has created.
You got me in the first half. Ngl.
Why don’t you try, I don’t know, making a better and more affordable product?
That’s the problem with disrupters, people are so involved with dismissing them that they don’t see what’s happening. For years it was all about cheap Chinese labour then turn around and discover that it’s really all about robotic factories and slick organisation. Throw in EVs and it’s the same but worse.
People always point out that China “isn’t really a Communist country.” And while they certainly are different from the days of Mao, they forget that, from the beginning, the goal was to treat the market economy as a means to an end. The CCP values market economics because it allowed China to quickly industrialize. They don’t value capitalism for its own sake; they view it as a necessary evil.
Because of this, they’re able to do the kind of long term industrial planning that is unthinkable in the US. And there’s ultimately likely to be a lot less resistance to mass automation in China than in the US. If the state owns all the automated factories and distributes their goods fairly to all, why oppose automation? Automation is only a bad thing if it represents losing your livelihood, your method for keeping a roof over your head.
China doesn’t distribute automatically produced goods fairly.
Social services are quite limited in China compared to European countries for example.
Long term planning and strategic thinking is truly their strength. For decades they have stolen and copied to catch up. Western countries and businesses only saw the profit margins of this huge market and went in.
It worked pretty well for China overall. Nowadays they can make pretty much everything.
Well that’s capitalism. It’s what you wanted right? Competition to keep you on your toes?
Looks like the invisible hand of the market favors what the people want more than what bosses think we can take.
Please keep buying our shitty cars, we won’t survive otherwise.
To be fair to Honda or, here, Toyota…
Worth finding a clip if anyone isn’t familiar
TBH, Chinese cars are pretty shitty. Their EVs have thermal runaway at an incredibly higher rate. BYDs storage facility just went up because a car sitting there caught fire.
As far as price, yeah it’s not competitive when they pay their workers 10% what Western countries do and give them a coffin apartment to stay in. Then steal the IP from other countries so they have nothing in R&D.
Here’s their clone of a Taycan, which also finished dead last in reliability tests because people were burning alive in them and crashing because systems would go nuts causing crashes. You enjoy your Chinese EV you saved money on, just keep that shit a mile from my house or “crappy non Chinese car” https://autopostglobal.com/electric-future/article/51496/
This is not capitalism as China is net-lossing market acquisition.
This is called “dumping” and is not a feature of capitalism in any way. In fact, every single economic school that likes capitalism is against it. Generally net-loss market acquisition is very bad thing for our society as it privatizes gains and socializes losses. i.e. if EV market suddenly implodes many people would be holding the bag and if EV market succeeds then only a few people profit.
Marxists themselves classify net-loss acquisition as a failure of late-stage capitalism (which is fair) but when .ml’s favorite flavor of authoritarians do it then it’s ok lmao
And yet here we are, in a capitalist society, and it’s the current reality.
Wild.
We are not in “capitalist society” that’s a bit of an immature take as we have many ideologies and systems at play. We should identify weaknesses of all systems and use a buffet style policy making not subscribe to religion of specific rule. There are many great things in capitalism, there are many great things in controlled markets, there are even some great things in authoritarianism (i.e. wartime readiness).
Personally I don’t believe system design is all that important — it’s human virtue that drives all of this. A sufficently virtuous society would thrive under any policy framework as it would be capable of identifying faults and self correcting towards a more balanced interpretation and enforcement of any rule.
You have been eating from the garbage can of pure ideology.
Capitalism is destroying our planet. You can only spin that as positive if you don’t care about our species continued existence.
nope, shitty people and authoritaniasm is destroying our planet. Often quite literally too.
Shitty people don’t get to run everything into the ground unless we let them. That’s a feature of capitalism.
Besides, authoritarianism and capitalism aren’t mutually exclusive.
We’ve been ruining the environment for a very long time, and that started with the industrial revolution precipitated by, you guessed it, our very own U.S.
They’re the same picture.
I’m glad the US doesn’t privatize gains and socialize loses.
Dumping is the natural end of overproduction or under consumption. It’s also a tool to secure new markets. Capitalists employ it to get new customers and minimize losses. That’s why Walmart exists in small towns and why previous season’s stock goes on sale.
What we see here is a state capitalist entity participating in a global capitalist market using the tools available to them to secure new markets. There’s more than one tool at play here too: the article talks of the advanced state of automaton as the differentiator with domestic producers. At the scale of automation described, even if not sold at a subsidized loss that’s still gonna produce a cheaper product.
Dumping is the natural end of overproduction or under consumption
This doesn’t make sense in this context of dumping. It’s intentional overproduction for market capture not some inbalance in the market.
It’s also a tool to secure new markets. Capitalists employ it to get new customers and minimize losses. That’s why Walmart exists in small towns and why previous season’s stock goes on sale.
This is fundamentally opposite of capitalism, in fact as I said in the original comment market capture is inheritly anti-capitalist. Walmart, China etc. use abuse of power for an unnatural capture of markets. This is closer to authoritaniasm than capitalism.
Most capitalism haters fundamentally misunderstand what they’re hating it for. It’s valid to hate capitalism for it’s insufficiencies (it can be gamed and needs intervention) but it’s silly to attribute everything to some magical all powerful capitalism in the sky - this just reeks of low brow scare tactics like the red-scare.
To be fair, the kind of capitalism you’re talking about is/would be heavily regulated. In a free-market, which most people refer to when referring to capitalism due to messaging from Republicans, dumping is a perfectly fine tool. Is it ethical? No. But who cares? It’s a free-market.
To be fair, the kind of capitalism you’re talking about is/would be heavily regulated
Any system ought to be. There’s no system that you can just let loose and have it self correct for itself, that’s a fairy-level of a delusion. People are very smart and will always figure out how to game a system.
In other words, a non-intelligent system will always be conquered by an intelligent participant, always.
Where capitalism extremists do delude themselves here is that “capitalism can be a sufficiently intelligent system” (the invisible hand) if it defers intelligence to game-theory level competition: because we all check ourselves we end up low-key giving intelligence to the system. Unfortunately this is just impossible to stabilize without unified borg-like society where everyone plays under this unified system but it also doesn’t mean there isn’t value of introducing some intelligence to the markets under intelligent supervision.
I believe any intelligent system will be corrupted, or manipulated for greed. It’s why I believe in complete anarchy. A complete lack of state and authority. All beings equal, all provided what they need. And everyone works with their unique skills for a better future.
Adding intelligence doesn’t make it any better. It just makes the system more exclusive for the powerful. It’s a higher barrier to entry. But the entry is still there.
We both believe in utopias. And we both hope for systems in which human beings aren’t the most vile creatures on earth.
It was a pleasure conversing with you and many blessings to you.
Cheers! I’m a fan of anarchy as well :)
Market capture is one of the major goals of capitalism because it allows for continuing, unconstrained profits.
When you control the market people have no choice but to turn to you if they need what you sell–regardless of quality.
Securing markets through control of supply doesn’t stop being capitalism just cause it’s done (perceivably) unfairly.
Market capture is one of the major goals of capitalism because it allows for continuing, unconstrained profits.
I feel like you’re going a bit into the weeds here. That’s goal of any participant in game theory - capture and win as much as possible. So it doesn’t matter what economic framework you’re using every participant will try to claim the biggest piece of the pie. At least capitalism tries to address this with “checks and balances” of competition while other systems just blindly work on faith that human virtue will be stronger than game-theory which it absolutely might be, at some point?
This is not about pure capitalism, though. The reason Chinese EVs are so successful is that the Chinese government heavily subsidizes those companies. I would not be surprised if they sell cars at a loss. So the issue is exactly the opposite of capitalism. It’s pure capitalism being crushed by big government
The government investing in infrastructure upgrades instead of forever bring lobbied by the fossil fuel industry is big government now?
Not saying CCP isn’t big government, but “crushed by big government” is very strong imagery
What you’re describing is capitalism, whether you like it or not
What do you think Walmart does when they go to a new market?
Or what amazon did for many years, or Uber, OpenAI, etc. Most startups really.
market favors what the people want
not really
Good these are companies that fought the transition to EVs every step of the way. Toyota in particular. Which was ironic after releasing the Prius
Toyota is way too conservative. After nailing hybrid tech early on, it seems like they wasted the opportunity to put it on every vehicle they make which would have been such an amazing step forward, instead of treating it as a weird niche for so long.
Also that bz4x or whatever deserves a spot on the worst cars of all time list, just straight up ewaste.
I never owned one so I can’t say this is true, but from what I read over the years, those early hybrids weren’t great for performance/driving feel compared to other vehicles. They worked, they were efficient, but at the time turning all their cars into it probably wasn’t a winning path.
Yeah. Spot on. And the Busy Forks not only has an awful name, not only has awful styling, but it is an extraordinarily bad EV by any measure. E-waste indeed
Wait, I haven’t read up about it. What makes it so bad?
Well the wheels fall off, that’s not ideal. (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM)
Other than that it has poor battery size for the cost, slow charging, and poor efficiency (burns more kW per mile/km).
There are more criticisms, but they’re the big ones. It is just not a good EV.
And the wheels really did fall off initially, they had to do a recall. Was a design error.
Now recalls happen very often to all companies but for straight up safety issues they’re rare. They tend to be a lot smaller issues.
The thing with the wheels though is just indicative of how little care they took with it, Toyota are renowned for quality, sure they’re boring designs but they’re built to last right ? Well this one seems to be been designed by the work experience kid and a punishment detail who clearly didnt want to be on a BEV.
Oh, shoot, yeah, I do now remember about the wheel recall! You’re right; Toyota has fallen in quality. I’m now recalling Genesis overtaking them in JD Powers’ reliability ratings… I’ve gotta review this stuff more. So sad, but we really should never have brand loyalty.
You can just buy a JD Power award btw. The auto manufacturers pay to play. Its a marketing company.
Toyota is way too conservative.
Because unlike Tesla, they need to sell cars and make money.
Also that bz4x or whatever deserves a spot on the worst cars of all time list, just straight up ewaste.
What makes you say that? I don’t really know much about cars, why is that one particularly bad?
Compared to everything else on the market it had big problems with reliability, range, charging speed, and it was overpriced.
I think everyone expected that Toyota, with its hybrid experience and the benefits of seeing all other EVs on the market wouldn’t make such a poor attempt. It felt like they were poisoning the well, as if not wanting to compete in the EV space in the first place.
How will you know its electric if it doesn’t look like shit otherwise?
Good morning. You old style car companies (and it is not just the US ones, count the European companies in, too) slept through the last decades. They tried everything in the book to supress EVs, and still keep developing fossil fuel cars to be released in ten years.
And now they start to wake up, seeing that the world moved onwithout them, and they cry.
I work in a USA manufacturing plant that has nine figures worth of EV motor manufacturing lines cancelled, sitting around collecting dust since the new administration changed all the regulations and incentives.
and people didn’t buy them. did everyone buy a Bolt or Leaf last year???
Ford sold 823,000 F150s JUST LAST YEAR. Then the ponytail and birkenstock crowd blames the companies.
Legacy car makers have become complacent. They wouldn’t survive doing the same thing they have been doing. They will adapt or die, competition is good.
Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the shareholders‽
yes I do think of the shareholders… in a dream… also involving woodchippers and guillotines
While Toyota and Honda at least have an acclaimed history in low cost and efficient vehicles, Ford is literally 1/3rd the the reason the US doesn’t manufacture sedans anymore, with the other 2/3rds being GM and Chrysler.
I actually witnesses them layoff their entire sedan division in real time when they announced the end of the fusion. I’m pretty sure it was mostly liquidated by the time covid hit.
Because trucks are made with safety loopholes and have higher profit margins, and Ford shit the bed with the Fusion, Festiva and Focus with a garbage transmission they knowingly sold for 7 years.
And SUV’s are just treated as trucks. this is 100% correct.
and we ignore EV’s because… we won’t do the work to make EV’s work, like charging infrastructure. It’s all so painfully stupid and transparently to benefit the fossil fuel cartel
I’m still mad we lost sport sedans for this EPA bs.
Everything is a crossover or SUV to gg ez the emission laws because of the weight class.
Random 5 seater SUV will be producing more emissions than a WRX or Evo Lancer.
I wonder how much of the US problems stemmed from unionized labor pushing against extreme automation (dark factory).
There’s no doubt companies got complacent but I imagine foreign manufacturers are abliged contractually bound to employee American folks in their plants.
What is a union supposed to do when your entire industry is in a “adopt (by accepting automation) or die” situation?
I’m all for worker protection and rights but how else do you compete in this landscape?
The unions’ original demand was worker ownership, which actually fixes the problem. This is the compromise that the original owning class suggested, it’s not the unions’ failt that it was a fuckup.
Most automaker plants in southern states in the us are not unionized. That was the whole point: third world salaries in one of the largest markets
How many of those companies spent literal billions of dollars on stock buybacks to inflate share market price over the last decade instead of investing in the people and facilities and products to remain competitive. Even if there is dumping I doubt it’s anywhere near the combined spent on share price inflation buybacks & savings instead of investing in the workers and business, these companies enjoy unjustified tax breaks and subsidies from their governments as well.
This is a the economy being equated to wealth/investor class problem. Workers in and around cities want cheap affordable evs, mechanics and parts producers want to build and work on affordable evs. People who own stocks expecting growth returns and executive compensation want to sell 10 cars a year for a trillion dollars each if they could.
Yeah, this is what bad leadership is. Lack of leadership really. China and the US both found themselves the manufacturers of the world.
China took the money and built an infrastructure. The US took the money and destroyed unions…
It all went up oil subsidies…
Not my portfolio!
Don’t charge $100,000 for a regular fucking vehicle?
Seriously, all the useless expensive shit they add to vehicles to make them unmaintainable data miners is why they’re going to get slaughtered.
Give me an electric pickup with 4WD and crank up windows. Preferably no radio. I’d buy one of those Slates in a heartbeat if it were 4WD, as much as I hate Jeff Bezos.
And if I WANT a radio, I’ll go to a local business and get one that meets my needs installed. I don’t want some POS touchscreen with clunky, badly written software.
yeah hoping the Slate can turn this shit show around.
I don’t think that’s why they are too expensive.
China is pumping out nice cars for like 15k and I guarantee you it has all sorts of data mining. China could probably make one of those Slate things for like $5k.
They all have data mining, regardless of country. China subsidises EVs even when they’re sold abroad, to kill the competition. Of course most legacy manufacturers have also lost the plot when it comes to affordability. To make matters worse, many of them also have to deal with expensive union labour. Chinese labour is still much cheaper.
“They’re just heavily subsidized, not actually beating us!!”
Pure cope.
China could probably make one of those Slate things for like $5k.
That’s dumb.
No, Chinese EVs are not $15K in export markets, they are over $25K.
Don’t charge $100,000 for a regular fucking vehicle?
Chevy Bolt was under $25,000. No one bought them. Total sales in Q2 2025: 33.
But they sold hundreds of thousands on $100K pickup trucks.
I didn’t even know the Bolt was around in 2025. Perhaps they should’ve done a little more to let the public know about them. I think they really wanted to use them for tax purposes, not take away sales from vehicles that make them much more money.
It kind of wasn’t. While you could buy a Bolt in 2025, they stopped making new ones in 2023. Anything on the lots was just leftover inventory, so not surprising nobody was buying a vehicle that wasn’t current.
especially EVs, who need recharging to keep batteries at healthy levels… I wouldn’t want one that’s sat on a lot for 14 months.
I love EVs, but we can’t treat them exactly the same as ICE vehicles and the Bolt never had the range to be a really popular contender with americans.
I see. The whole 33 thing was very misleading.
Well I need a vehicle, not a chevy bolt
The Bolt was discontinued in 2023 and won’t be made again until 2026. Not really surprising that a vehicle that is no longer being made isn’t selling a lot.
Kinda think thats chinas plan
