China is doing to the global car market today, what Japan did in the 70’s.
Japanese cars had huge gains from having better fuel economy than other brands.
Today China is gaining from having a wide variety of cheap Electric cars, and being the global leader on batteries.
Ironically Japanese brands are now the ones that are most behind on electric cars.
I am pretty sure that within a few years a couple of well known western brands will disappear. Most likely shrinkage of Stelantis and maybe Nissan will be first to go as I see it. But in China the competition is also so tough, that we may se a couple of Chinese brands disappear too.
It is probably not much fun to be a car manufacturer today, the market is in turmoil requiring about twice the models having both ICE and EV, this is increasing costs both of development and smaller production lines, and at the same time the competition is tougher than ever, making it harder than ever to make profitable models.
This situation will take at least a decade to settle.
Ironically Japanese brands are now the ones that are most behind on electric cars.
I’m not surprised that European brands have dropped the ball, after all, the British car makers back in the day showed how its done. But I’m baffled that the Japanese dropped it. How is it possible that the Nissan Leaf is among the best EV’s from Japan? How is it possible that Honda is completely lost with all sorts of things, they are nearly extinct on the European market as a whole. You have to really search for a dealer if you want one and if you find one, you have option of a Civic and whatever that SUV thing is, was it the Starion or Ecplipse? On of the two. Anyway…
Then theres Toyota. I guess they wasted all their money with hydrogen and only focused on hybrids. One would have thought that they would have been on the forefront of EV’s etc but… I don’t even know what was going on there. Do they even have full electric cars? Or is it just sporty Yarises and hybrid Corollas all the way down?
I’m German and I’ve worked in the automotive industry for years (software though) and I’m beyond pissed how dumb they all keep behaving. I’m glad I ran before it all got seriously bad.
I’m not surprised that European brands have dropped the ball,
How exactly do you figure European car makers dropped the ball?
IMO European car makers didn’t drop the ball. VW, Mercedes, BMW and Renault are doing pretty well considering the circumstances.
You can’t have a major new industrial power house like China enter the industry without it causing disruption, China is 10 times bigger a manufacturer than Japan was back in the day.
And China has been supporting their EV and battery makers as strategic industries.
If you compare European car industry to Japanese and Korean battery industry, China has taken just as much market share from them.
Then theres Toyota. I guess they wasted all their money with hydrogen and only focused on hybrids.
Yes, when you compare with Japanese manufacturers like Toyota and Honda, Europe has been stellar, even Stelantis is ahead of them on EV. The Stelantis problems date a bit further back, and is not so much about dropping the ball on EV, but alienating their customers with declining value of their products for higher profits.
It’s easy to say the big European manufacturers dropped the ball when looking at Tesla that got enormous government support, from the tax credit system that funneled enormous amounts of cash into Tesla, and in direct support from many states in building the Tesla charging network. Obviously the other American makers scrambled to make electric cars too, so they didn’t have to pay their entire quota to Tesla. And obviously the Chinese EV and battery industry have been directly state subsidized.
European manufacturers have not received comparable government subsidies, when an electric car sold in EU has subsidies, it’s the same subsidy for American made and Chinese made cars. But where Chinese cars have a 13% import tax, to compensate for the subsidies in China.
Edit PS:
UK carmakers didn’t manage to compete in the increased competition when Japan arrived on the market. The problems in the UK car industry date back to early 70’s. So now there are no UK owned big carmakers left. They are all subsidies of manufacturers from other countries, mostly Germany, but also India and China.
Perhaps my original comment was too doom, gloom and harsh. But you can’t really say the Euro car industry is doing well. VAG having factories running on minimum or not at all, lay offs, BMW shooting themself in the foot with all the subscription nonsense… And the price. That’s the big one. Obviously the cheaper chinese things are nastier than a high end BMW, obviously the chinese makers are subsidized by the government… but perhaps the Euro car makers should have lobbied their governments/EU to subsidize their EV production lines, instead of wasting time and effort on moving the 0 Carbon goalposts further away. Though I’ll admit that the EU was moronic with deciding that we should do that in the time window that they did, that whole thing was done ass backwards and on a too tight schedule.
The subsidies they do in China and USA are illegal in EU.
I agree on the subscription nonsense, but that VW group had to cut workers is a result of steep competition from China, and tariffs and other anti competitive messures in USA.
You simply can’t claim they dropped the ball, when they managed 50% market share for EV in EU, and managed to still turn a profit.
It’s not like everything stayed the same, and they lost money from making shitty products that customers don’t want.
I don’t really see anything in what you write, that validates saying they dropped the ball.
Being able to resist being squeezed from outside seems to me to be the opposite of dropping the ball.
No doubt almost all global car manufacturers will lose some market share to China, I don’t see any way around that. It seems many here on Lemmy, think that we should be able to stave off China completely, which is obviously completely unrealistic.
But I agree on subscription, and really hope the subscription model fails badly.
Intel tried something similar with their CPU business, and that failed completely.
For me it would be a major reason to hack my car. And get ALL the subscriptions for free.
OK, I’ve just seen that criticism a lot. But it’s not all well and good if you are a European car maker, because as I mentioned, there is steep competition from China, and tariffs in USA.
So what I stated was that all things considered, they’ve done about as well as could be expected, and also as I mentioned, we will very likely see a couple of makers that simply can’t manage this increased competition and hostile markets in China and USA.
Anyways, sorry that I ended the conversation abruptly and like a dick, I haven’t slept very well and having some other issues. I’ll see if I can make more sense tomorrow, I do have more to say about this, but not enough energy etc lol
China is doing to the global car market today, what Japan did in the 70’s.
Japanese cars had huge gains from having better fuel economy than other brands.
Today China is gaining from having a wide variety of cheap Electric cars, and being the global leader on batteries.
Ironically Japanese brands are now the ones that are most behind on electric cars.
I am pretty sure that within a few years a couple of well known western brands will disappear. Most likely shrinkage of Stelantis and maybe Nissan will be first to go as I see it. But in China the competition is also so tough, that we may se a couple of Chinese brands disappear too.
It is probably not much fun to be a car manufacturer today, the market is in turmoil requiring about twice the models having both ICE and EV, this is increasing costs both of development and smaller production lines, and at the same time the competition is tougher than ever, making it harder than ever to make profitable models.
This situation will take at least a decade to settle.
I’m not surprised that European brands have dropped the ball, after all, the British car makers back in the day showed how its done. But I’m baffled that the Japanese dropped it. How is it possible that the Nissan Leaf is among the best EV’s from Japan? How is it possible that Honda is completely lost with all sorts of things, they are nearly extinct on the European market as a whole. You have to really search for a dealer if you want one and if you find one, you have option of a Civic and whatever that SUV thing is, was it the Starion or Ecplipse? On of the two. Anyway…
Then theres Toyota. I guess they wasted all their money with hydrogen and only focused on hybrids. One would have thought that they would have been on the forefront of EV’s etc but… I don’t even know what was going on there. Do they even have full electric cars? Or is it just sporty Yarises and hybrid Corollas all the way down?
I’m German and I’ve worked in the automotive industry for years (software though) and I’m beyond pissed how dumb they all keep behaving. I’m glad I ran before it all got seriously bad.
How exactly do you figure European car makers dropped the ball?
IMO European car makers didn’t drop the ball. VW, Mercedes, BMW and Renault are doing pretty well considering the circumstances.
You can’t have a major new industrial power house like China enter the industry without it causing disruption, China is 10 times bigger a manufacturer than Japan was back in the day.
And China has been supporting their EV and battery makers as strategic industries.
If you compare European car industry to Japanese and Korean battery industry, China has taken just as much market share from them.
Yes, when you compare with Japanese manufacturers like Toyota and Honda, Europe has been stellar, even Stelantis is ahead of them on EV. The Stelantis problems date a bit further back, and is not so much about dropping the ball on EV, but alienating their customers with declining value of their products for higher profits.
It’s easy to say the big European manufacturers dropped the ball when looking at Tesla that got enormous government support, from the tax credit system that funneled enormous amounts of cash into Tesla, and in direct support from many states in building the Tesla charging network. Obviously the other American makers scrambled to make electric cars too, so they didn’t have to pay their entire quota to Tesla. And obviously the Chinese EV and battery industry have been directly state subsidized.
European manufacturers have not received comparable government subsidies, when an electric car sold in EU has subsidies, it’s the same subsidy for American made and Chinese made cars. But where Chinese cars have a 13% import tax, to compensate for the subsidies in China.
Edit PS:
UK carmakers didn’t manage to compete in the increased competition when Japan arrived on the market. The problems in the UK car industry date back to early 70’s. So now there are no UK owned big carmakers left. They are all subsidies of manufacturers from other countries, mostly Germany, but also India and China.
Perhaps my original comment was too doom, gloom and harsh. But you can’t really say the Euro car industry is doing well. VAG having factories running on minimum or not at all, lay offs, BMW shooting themself in the foot with all the subscription nonsense… And the price. That’s the big one. Obviously the cheaper chinese things are nastier than a high end BMW, obviously the chinese makers are subsidized by the government… but perhaps the Euro car makers should have lobbied their governments/EU to subsidize their EV production lines, instead of wasting time and effort on moving the 0 Carbon goalposts further away. Though I’ll admit that the EU was moronic with deciding that we should do that in the time window that they did, that whole thing was done ass backwards and on a too tight schedule.
The subsidies they do in China and USA are illegal in EU.
I agree on the subscription nonsense, but that VW group had to cut workers is a result of steep competition from China, and tariffs and other anti competitive messures in USA.
You simply can’t claim they dropped the ball, when they managed 50% market share for EV in EU, and managed to still turn a profit.
It’s not like everything stayed the same, and they lost money from making shitty products that customers don’t want.
I don’t really see anything in what you write, that validates saying they dropped the ball.
Being able to resist being squeezed from outside seems to me to be the opposite of dropping the ball.
No doubt almost all global car manufacturers will lose some market share to China, I don’t see any way around that. It seems many here on Lemmy, think that we should be able to stave off China completely, which is obviously completely unrealistic.
But I agree on subscription, and really hope the subscription model fails badly.
Intel tried something similar with their CPU business, and that failed completely.
For me it would be a major reason to hack my car. And get ALL the subscriptions for free.
Like I said, I was perhaps a bit too harsh with the original comment. I take back the dropping the ball part. I guess things are going well and good.
OK, I’ve just seen that criticism a lot. But it’s not all well and good if you are a European car maker, because as I mentioned, there is steep competition from China, and tariffs in USA.
So what I stated was that all things considered, they’ve done about as well as could be expected, and also as I mentioned, we will very likely see a couple of makers that simply can’t manage this increased competition and hostile markets in China and USA.
It is quite funny how I refreshed the page, saw this:
https://piefed.social/c/europe/p/1903466/its-stupid-why-western-carmakers-retreat-from-electric-risks-dooming-them-to-irrelevanc
and then saw a notification to your comment :D
Anyways, sorry that I ended the conversation abruptly and like a dick, I haven’t slept very well and having some other issues. I’ll see if I can make more sense tomorrow, I do have more to say about this, but not enough energy etc lol
OK, the content of the article isn’t news to me, but I’ll let it rest, so that you can rest. Sleep well.