It seems like every other week, there’s a headline about how Western automakers’ plans for China haven’t worked out as expected. If it makes you feel any better, many global brands have experienced trouble in the Chinese market. The whole entire thing is down year-over-year by a massive amount, and this should result in two things: domain expansion and survival of the fittest.
At the same time, the Audi A8 is sticking around in America, Russia’s in the midst of an alternative fuel craze, and Ford just recalled the Mustang for an annoying but mildly amusing reason. Welcome back to The Morning Dump, where we do the baby-bird thing of chewing the fat on this morning’s big car news stories so they’re easier for you to digest. Look, I only had three days of taking over this from Matt, so less ridiculous metaphors will return soon.
Big Trouble In High-Tech China
It’s all too easy to look at China’s automobile industry as a monolith. After all, with hundreds of brands on sale, distinction becomes a bit of a challenge. Over the past decade or so, favorable policy (like what we previously saw in the U.S., but even more so) has fueled a new car boom, but now it seems that the chickens are coming home to roost. Overall sales in China are not doing so great, as Bloomberg reports:
Retail sales of passenger vehicles fell 23.2% from the year before to 1.6 million units, China’s Passenger Car Association said on Wednesday. New-energy vehicle sales, including plug-in hybrids and pure-electric vehicles, slipped 9% year-over-year, though the segment still accounted for over 60% of the market for a third straight month.
This marks a continued decline over the last monthly report’s year-over-year drop of 21 percent, and sales of electrified vehicles slipping to near-2024 levels indicates that this isn’t just a matter of only gasoline-powered cars becoming undesirable. When we’re looking at this scale of domestic sales slump on top of massive excess capacity, the next step for many automakers from China is clear: Export or die.
Manufacturers leaned heavily on exports to offset the slowdown. Exports of new-energy vehicles surged over 150% to 499,000 units, signaling that foreign markets are absorbing excess production. Despite a one-fifth drop in domestic sales, BYD Co.’s total shipments rose 5.5%, driven by exports that almost doubled from a year ago.
Indeed, we’re on the cusp of seeing Chinese OEMs venture into markets unimaginable even three years ago. BYD is already listed on Transport Canada’s Appendix G list of recognized foreign vehicle manufacturers, and Chery is testing multiple vehicles in the Greater Toronto Area. At the same time, Europe’s still receiving new-to-them Chinese brands like Aion and Lepas, seeing deeper market penetration. Market conditions in China mean we’re about to see an export push like we’ve never seen before, and it could break either way.
It won’t go well for every brand. Skywell’s U.K. importer has recently waved the white flag, leaving that brand’s British sales future in purgatory. Likewise, HiPhi did try exporting its futuristic EVs but ultimately ended up filing for bankruptcy in China. In some ways, the market’s a lot like the Western car market of 100 years ago. Loads and loads of brands, not all of which will make it. A rationalization is likely coming, but not before a whole bunch of models make it abroad. How confident are you in parts support?
Not Dead Yet
Earlier this year, it seemed certain that the Audi A8 was about to waltz off into the sunset. In the marque’s home market of Germany, it stopped taking orders for its flagship sedan, and there’s no official immediate replacement on the horizon. It felt like everyone was waiting for the bell to toll, yet it hasn’t quite sounded yet. Audi just announced changes to its 2027 U.S. lineup, and guess what’s still here?
Yep, it’s the A8 and its twin-turbocharged V8-powered S8 variant too. The A8 L gains two new wheel options, the S8 gains a new wheel option and standard heated rear seats, but these executive machines are otherwise unchanged from last year. Pricing for 2027 starts at 96,395 for the A8 L and 131,295 for the S8 in case you’re feeling particularly bold.
This continuation is particularly unusual because when was the last time America got a flagship German luxury sedan that the Germans didn’t get? For the past five decades or so, we’ve either seen global models or the really good stuff stay in Europe. Think Mercedes-Benz 500SEL in the days when America only got a 380SEL. While the A8 and S8 probably aren’t long for this world in their current forms, they’ll continue to roll into American showrooms for the foreseeable future, and that’s noteworthy.
From Russia, With Propane And Propane Accessories
It goes without saying that Russia’s car market has been weirder than usual lately. Economic sanctions and other factors have produced fake BMW X5s made from real parts, new cars without catalytic converters, and now the return of a fuel that seemed generally obsolete in North America. It’s LPG, Liquified Petroleum Gas, and Russian drivers allegedly can’t get enough of it. As Reuters reports:
Egor Popov, whose Garant-Gas company fits equipment to convert cars to run on LPG in Moscow, said demand had multiplied.
“We have a waiting list until September,” he said.
That’s astounding because by-and-large, LPG as fuel for cars is generally considered old hat in the west. There was a craze for it decades ago due to its lower running costs and cleaner emissions compared to gasoline, but over the past decade, it’s really fallen by the wayside. Pumps have been closing down, taxi operators seem to be satiated with hybrids, you know the drill. However, the people of Russia face different conditions. Their supply of propane and butane is plentiful, but their supply of oil isn’t the steadiest it’s ever been for obvious reasons. Another installer whom Reuters interviewed stated that at-the-pump propane prices are less than half those of gasoline, and given the circumstances, that makes sense.
Granted, LPG isn’t as energy-dense as gasoline. You’re looking at an energy deficit of around 27 percent per gallon, but when the fuel costs half as much as gasoline or less, actual real-world savings-per-mile are there.
Wipe It Down
The Ford Mustang GTD is a $327,960 exercise in just how far you can take a pony car. It may one of the fastest production cars the Nürburgring has ever seen, but it’s still a Mustang, so it’s caught up in an incredibly weird new recall shared with its non-supercar sibling. When it gets really cold outside, the windscreen wipers might only operate at their absolute maximum speed. As the recall report states:
In cold temperatures of 0 degrees Celsius or less, the vehicle’s wiper motor may lose Local Interconnect Network (LIN) communication with the vehicle’s steering column control module. As a result of this communication loss, customers may experience front windshield wipers that only operate at their high-speed setting and an inoperable windshield washing system in these cold temperatures.
Man, not being able to clean your windscreen on the go would suck during winter in salt country [Ed Note: I doubt anyone is driving a GTD in the winter. -DT], to say nothing of the annoyance of blades that wipe either too quickly or not at all. Normally, a LIN communication fault can be traced back to shorts, corrosion, bad grounding, bad voltage, module failure, or just a programming issue. Unsurprisingly, the Mustang’s wiper problem falls under the last category.
The supplier of a semiconductor chip on the wiper motor’s printed circuit board assembly erroneously used a 32-kilobyte programming equipment setting for the 16-kilobyte chip to be programmed with a mismatched 32-kiloybte algorithm. This erroneous equipment setting may result in the LIN communication issue at cold temperatures.
Ah yes, that is quite the oversight. Thankfully, the fix for the 67,842 potentially affected 2024-to-2026 Mustang and 2025-to-2026 Mustang GTD models is just a new wiper motor that’s already in Ford’s parts catalog, so it should be an easy swap with relatively little downtime. Automotive software. Isn’t it lovely sometimes?
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Guys, look, listen. It’s summer, the sky’s clear, I have the keys to a drop-top in my pocket, the vibes are surprisingly good. You know what can make it even better? “U Sure Do” by Strike. What a tune.
The Big Question:
Who will survive in China’s car market?
Top graphic image: Xiaomi
On monday I spent 10 mins or so scraping the frost of my windscreen and other windows. Hopped in the car. Pulled the spray I dunno why but it immediately froze and I had to do it all again. Very dumb.
One morning I came out to find that one of my neighbours had scraped about 90% of my windscreen, before realising that it wasn’t their car. Very helpful 🙂
(There was 3-4 Peugeot 206’s all parking on the same small stretch of street, and when they were covered in frost/snow, they were hard to tell apart)
I’m sure you returned the favour at some point. How did you like your deux-cent-six? I thought they where such a cool car when they came out but sort of missed the boat on cheap GTIs (I did drive a friends second generation 206 GTI it was kinda fun).
I still love the look of them, it was mostly reliable, parts were cheap, but somehow I never fell in love with it (mine wasn’t a GTI).
It should have been, it had all the ingredients of cars I like (small, weird, cheap), and I kind of miss it now, but it just never found a place in my heart.Weird how that happens eh?
Who will survive in China’s car market?
I can’t help but feel whoever wins, we lose.
I foresee Beau handing David his Guinness Zero (I’m assuming Beau is smart enough not to drink and drive) and terrorizing the LA highways (i.e., driving like every other Californian) in his Beauberry GTD this January. Granted, winter is just a reminder to get a new calendar in LA.
What do you mean ‘going to get weird’?
Chinese automakers in both the ICE and EV space have propelled exports to >7 million units annually within a decade. In an approximately 90 million vehicle market globally, where several blocs have politically powerful automotive industries furiously trying to keep a moat around their fiefdoms, this is unprecedented.
It’s like Blackberry trying to keep up the facade in 2014 when the iPhone and Samsung Android phones have been eating their market share.
If I’m a global automaker, I’m wondering if I have a future in China at all (see: SAIC-GM implosion from ~2 million sales in 2017 to ~500k in 2025), and how much am I going to lose in the battle of places where there’s really no reason for the local government to favour one foreign automaker over another.
The older I get, the more I think Europe/North America/Japan are stuck in some weird 1990s to pre-Great Recession mindset. Maybe it’s our demographic structure. The babbling of our leaders seems to evoke this mindset.
But man, when the world eventually reminds us how much things have changed, hoo boy are we in for a surprise.
Which is a long fancy way of saying ‘The rest of the world’s going to look upon us as the weird ones stuck in a bygone era.’
Is it though? In Europe if they want to crack the market they are going to need to build a car to suit our tastes. BYD has already started to go down that route.
In the same way that US and European manufacturers are building China-specific models.
With the tariffs in the US don’t know if that is the case too, but I guess sooner or later we will find out too.
In a sense.
The median American car of the 1950s-70s was pulled towards a more Euro/Japan idea of a car by the 1990s/2000s, except for archaic examples (Caprice/Crown Vic) or a distinct ‘niche’ that only exists in a certain region (North American pickup truck).
I don’t see why outside influence won’t work that way again. Indeed, Euro manufacturers now sell more Ford Puma-like crossover vehicles (as an example) – the lineage of the North American SUV interpreted for Europe.
I don’t see why cross-pollination from China via third markets (i.e. those without any reason to protect a domestic auto industry) wouldn’t result in something kind of new and unexpected, when fused with local taste.
The rest of the world is a big, very populated, and very not-Western place. It may be kind of a shock to the rest of us when that reality comes to us.
Whether you think the PRC dominating this industry is a good thing is another debate completely.
Why why why why won’t Ford sell the Puma here in the US.?
Not very, because I haven’t seen evidence to show it will be good. While I don’t own a CFMoto bike, I have been somewhat keeping up with them. Parts support has been spotty, but reports seem to vary greatly. They also make, in my opinion, too many models. I’m sure there’s some decent parts sharing between them, but this isn’t Honda we’re talking about here. They just don’t have the history of support behind them, and most Americans have only dealt with low-budget Chinese stuff on Amazon, where new sellers pop up daily and support is non-existent.
Always happy to have not-country music, and U Sure Do is a certified classic. But I definitely have a thing for 90s house music. It’s almost like my formative years were spent in that decade and defined a lot of my musical taste. Weird.
Who survives the Chinese car market: BYD, Geely, Chery, Changan, SAIC, and Wuling are the giants that should make it fairly easily.
GAC is trying very hard with their Aion brand, but it’s not going that well in China anymore but I don’t know how well their EU sales are doing. Dongfeng isn’t very good, but cars are just a side hustle to their truck business, so they can hang on as long as they want with their Voyah brand. FAW seems the most screwed out of the former Big 4, they don’t have much going for them except for heritage, but patriotic buyers go for Huawei/HIMA (mostly Aito) cars for that rather than Hongqi. Great Wall Motor will probably only survive as a somewhat niche BoF SUV maker with a few MPVs.
Leapmotor and Xiaomi (and Aito if it counts as one) are the only startups that I can say with confidence will survive, and even Xiaomi is struggling lately. XPeng will probably make it as they’re building out a lineup of good budget models, and they’re keepingnup in the ADAS race despite abandoning expensive LiDARs. However their parts commonality situation is kind of a mess, the new G7 and P7 (not P7+) were immediate sales flops in China, and the higher end of their lineup doesn’t seem to quite resonate with consumers. Nio is in a far better place than it was a year or two ago because of their fresh high margin product, but it’s hard to know if they can really maintain that into next year; their attempts at a mainstream brand have had mixed results, and the plan for their firefly brand got delayed by EU tariffs. Li Auto invented the 3-row EREV craze a few years back, but now that everyone has brought competitors to the market theirs aren’t selling anymore, and the mid-cycle refreshes of their EREVs have been widely panned. Their EV lineup’s MPV and 3-row has been mired in controversy and scandals, but somehow the new 2-row i6 EV is selling extremely well and is the only real bright spot for the company. The brand is currently carried by its brand recognition within China, and if the EREV refreshes aren’t good enough then I fear for their future.
There’ll probably be a few small niche brands that make it that are backed by big companies, like Maextro (JAC-Huawei) and the vacuum companies (Rox Auto and Dreame).
I will take your word on this. you could replace all the company names with different words and i would not know the difference.
Reminds me of:
I ain’t seen nothing since I stepped on that landmine in Vietnam.
You were in ‘Nam? So were we, where?
I was in…. Sang Bang… Dang Gong. I was all over the place. I was everywhere.
“GAC is trying very hard with their Aion brand, but it’s not going that well in China anymore but I don’t know how well their EU sales are doing.”
I don’t think they have any relevance at all.
It’s amusing that Greater Toronto Area and Grand Theft Auto have the same acronym.
Another reason why Toronto is one of the best cities in the world.
We even have an auto theft problem just like in the game!!!
I live in the Greater Seattle metroplex and did a lot of work in Canada. I loved every city I visited except Edmonton. And maybe I just caught them on a bad week. I still need to go see the Maritimes. Quebec City is the farthest east I’ve been in your wonderful country.
Also, we saw a Chinese car explosion here in Russia back in 2023. A flood of new brands with no history. This past year, the shakedown has finally happened. Skywell, Kiyai, Dongfeng, SWM, Ocla, Ayito, all those weird low-hanging single-car style brands have slowly evaporated from the market. Nice to finally see some settling of the Cambrian explosion.
With that said, Changan does make a nice looking car. I rented a UNI-Z sports sedan a couple years back and threw her into the curves in the mountains around Sochi. Fun car, but super Chinese. Only the driver seat had heated seats (and only high/low) and the car had a FART symphony easter egg in the infotainment system, which was awful. Other than that, decent car. Kia K5 still steals the show over here in that segment.
I think it was a combination of Russia’s new auto tariffs on Chinese cars, plus China cracking down on grey-market 0km used car exports that reduced some of the craziness. I’m pretty sure Ayito is Aito in China, and they have 0 official export markets AFAIK.
Thanks for the spelling correction on Aito.
And yes, the crackdown is from both sides. Russia implemented an insanely high SCRAP fee (Utilization fee, if you would) which is really just a tax tool used to force mainly Chinese companies to ‘build’ (assemble) knock down kits in the numerous underutilized auto plants left over from when western manufacturers left in 2022. Our local Hyundai plant was still producing “Solaris” models (aka: Hyundais and Kias with a different sticker on front, but still had Hyundai logos on the wheels and steering wheels!! Lol). That really halted the gray market import and make it near impossible for the smaller Chinese brands that could not afford to make the localization investment like Havel, Voyah/Evolute, Chery (TENET), Geely (Volga), GAC and a handful of others.
It’s a damn shame too. I love my Palisade (gray market, of course), but it’s now irreplaceable. A 2020 Calligraphy KDM spec and the insurance company values it at $65k over here. Utter insanity!!!
The US car market has gotten expensive, but ours is even worse if you scale it by local buying power. The average new car here is about 3.6m RUB. Average annual salary in Saint Petersburg is 1.5m RUB.
In Saint Petersburg, Russia here.
This has become a very big problem over the last week.
7-10 days ago it was just getting started. Now I only see about 1/3 of the gas stations open and usually by 8pm only 1 in 5 are operating. Some run out of gas and only sell diesel. Thankfully, my Palisade is diesel, so I still haven’t felt the brunt of it, but my wife’s car uses gas. As I drive, I’m always scoping out a station with no wait, but this week I haven’t been so lucky. Every line I drive by is 1-2 hours long. I’m now down to 1/2 a tank in her little hatchback. This is going to become a big problem real fast.
If anyone has any questions, please feel free to DM me.
No ill will to you personally, but it’s fantastic news for the world that shortages are hitting St. Petersburg. Hopefully the war ends soon with the restoration of Ukraine’s 1991 borders and your life goes back to normal.
Please keep us updated. Genuine news from Russia is not plentiful in the Americas.
Not sure why the main article dances around this, but Russians don’t have gasoline because Ukraine is blowing up all their refineries to make it more difficult for Russians to continue their invasion of Ukraine.
Geely. It’s too happy a brand to die.
“the market’s a lot like the Western car market of 100 years ago“
The term for that is ‘Cambrian Explosion’, for that wonderful period 500 million years ago when large animals with unfeasible numbers of eyes, teeth, and limbs for which we have no names developed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion
Sounds like the German car market is also in… whatever the German phrase for ‘the shitter’ is.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jul/08/german-car-industry-job-collapse-bold-decisions-address-chinese-threat
Scheisshaus?
The German car market is right in the middle of the automotive version of the K-T boundary.
That’s a helluva boundary that K-T Boundary!
I saw it once when I was in Drumheller, Alberta and I hear there’s some places in California where you can see it so I might ride the motorbike ou to one of them.
Also, they changed the name to K-Pg Boundary, because geology changes all the time.
Propane may not be the most convenient fuel for vehicles when gasoline is available, but it’s great for IC engines in fixed locations. I fuel my small backup generator with propane and run it when I exceed the capacity of my batteries. Propane doesn’t go bad or gum up carburetors, and its exhaust odor is akin to a propane barbecue, which isn’t as offensive as gasoline or diesel odor.
As for the energy density of gasoline vs propane, the argument hinges on the gasoline type available.
My generator mechanic told me propane runs much hotter than gasoline. Not a concern where I live as it’s never over 75 degrees F.
‘…when was the last time America got a flagship German luxury sedan that the Germans didn’t get?”
Back to your Mercedes-Benz reference – The 300SD/300SDL/350SDL were not among the W126 S Class variants sold in Europe, nor was the successor W140 300SD.
As far as QOTD: Larger companies with foreign investment and sales channels such as BYD, Great Wall and Chery and Geely will do just fine.
It’s not surprising that Chinese home market sales are dropping off. When the larger part of your market have bought a long-lasting product new, who is going to be left in that market to buy when demand is satisfied?
Who will survive in China’s car market?
Whichever company has the closest ties to the CCP and/or does the best job of kissing the CCP’s collective ass. A big problem with the Chinese auto industry is that it exists in an environment where market factors don’t determine success or failure. I’m not saying all Chinese car companies would fail if left to typical market forces, but it is hard to tell which ones have the ability to succeed on their own merit.
Also, weren’t a lot of commenters constantly talking about how China was “eating our lunch” a few short months ago???
They were doomed as soon as Jim Farley started singing their praises. 😉
Not true at all. Part of the reason behind the recent massive leaps in development is the crazy competitive environment there coupled with support from the state. But it is very much a survival of the fittest strategy. They know the way to make and ultimately export the best products is to support the ones who are performing best in the market. The ones who sell most will be supported, the rest will get absorbed/die out.
“Who will survive in China’s car market?”
Given all of the ties with the PLA, I assume it will be General’s Motors.
I think BYD is slated to become the ford of 100 years ago and the Toyota of recently. They will be everywhere.
The big old state sponsored Chery, Dongfeng , SAIC, BAIC, and GWM will survive. Along with Geely but they will all probably shed brands and consolidate.
The other state supported brands that have become or created to be western partnerships it’s hard to say but I expect they will live on in one form or another. Wuling, Changan are big enough they probably won’t fail. But might be merged into something else.
Xpeng will be fine and grow but might not remain independent. It used to be geely was the Honda of China now I think that’s a little more like Xpeng.
I’m not sure every Huawei partner will survive but bound to be one or two. Several may merge and it might all just turn into Huawei automotive.
Xionomi will survive and continue in cars.
What happens to Nio will be interesting. Catl already has their main asset. They will fail but might be propped up or merged into something else.
Zongshen will probably be fine not exactly a car company but they will probably lean on their engines for different industries and probably still have some kind of motorcycle.
It’s looking like several Chinese ebike / emoto manufacturers are slated to be household names. They already are for teens. Surron might be the new Kawasaki in that regard. I suspect more will follow. Tutio might be there and there are a few others that might be a flash in the pan or have staying power. They are like the 60s Japanese bikes. In 10 years it will probably be like the 80s for Japanese bikes for them. As all the kids riding them buy bigger and more in their 20s and 30s. I can’t see those kids going to ice bikes.
Well, great. Just last week I bought the Ford of 100 years ago and now you tell me:
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/55369439461_ac766f27d9_c.jpg
ok? how does temperature have anything to do with a mismatched algorithm?
The programmer is expecting to write 32K, but the chip only has 16K, so likely the initial 16k is overwritten by the second 16k being written to it, or the second 16k gets ignored because there is no where to store that code. This depends on the architecture and it’s endianness (order of how the data is read) either way, half of the code goes missing because it needs all 32K.
Didn’t finish my thought (ADD Is a hell of a drug) the failure mode likely relates to a change in operation due to temperature, and that is getting interpreted wrong because that’s what is missing.
Basically it’s the wrong firmware either it overwrote part of it or controllers are close enough it took it and sort of worked. Could be the pin outs of the controllers different as well. So they were telling it activate pins it didn’t have. Might have been firmware for a slightly more robust controller for something like heated wipers.
Much of the time when a chipmaker sells a family of parts (ie microcontrollers with different memory sizes) the wafer fab makes all the chips at the largest size, so they’re all physically the same. When the chip packaging line tests the parts, the ones with some failures but partial functionality get configured and labeled as the smaller member of the family, and sold and warranted that way.
Best practice is to ensure that the firmware fits the chosen part, that the board is stuffed with the matching part, and the programming pod on the product assembly line verifies it before passing. More rarely you get counterfeit or mislabeled chips. Since the parts are electrically very similar, you can sometimes produce a batch of product with the wrong settings.
Those products will pass factory test when new, but will fail at a much higher rate in the field, or when environmental factors put them outside their comfort zone. I’ve only seen it once in 25+ years in the field, and it’s doubly embarassing in a “functional safety” product like automotive, but it does happen.
“Who will survive in China’s car market?”
-BYD as they seem to be the BEV leader in China
-Leapmotor as well due to their association with Stellantis.
-SAIC will survive with the help of their association with GM/Wuling.
-Dongfeg because they also make a lot of commercial vehicles and they have partnerships with Nissan and Stellantis.
-Chery
-Geely because Volvo and other brands they have
-Great Wall because of their trucks and they make interesting vehicles like the Ora Ballet Cat
TIL I want to build an Ora Ballet Cat rally car.
537 combined horsepower in that little thing?!? That’s just ridiculous, and I am here for it. And, I see what they did there with that horsepower number and the styling. Replace the two tone with white, add some stripes and a round 537 sticker on each door. The 7 needs to be tiny, like what BMW is doing with the M-lite cars
Yeah the power numbers are staggering, I’d probably have to build the Black Swan edition based on the trim names. As much as I want a Herbie, a ballet themed rally car that has that much power is the stupidity I’m here for.
That is all kinds of ridiculous! I like it! Please say this can tank turn.
I don’t know that associations with western brands will help Chinese manufacturers. At this point we have little to offer in vehicle design or manufacturing and a western name no longer is a selling point for the domestic market.
They could make vehicle for export to western countries but that will face increasing pushback and Chinese brands take more and more market share.
“I don’t know that associations with western brands will help Chinese manufacturers.”
Not in China… but they will help in other markets in the form of partnerships to get around tariff walls.
Tariffs are written based on point of origin not the nationality of the company doing the importing.
Yes and the western brands and Chinese brands can partner up to get local production started and make use of the incumbant brand’s supply chain and distribution network.
You get around the tarifs with localized production. But it’s hard and expensive for a Chinese company to do that when they have little to no presence in a given market.
So Leapmotor uses their JV status with Stellantis to build their vehicles in an underutilized Fiat factory? I guess that could happen
I would rather go the BYD route and just build a greenfield factory in the target region.
“I would rather go the BYD route and just build a greenfield factory in the target region.”
It’s more feasible for BYD to do that compared to Leapmotor since BYD is a lot bigger.
“So Leapmotor uses their JV status with Stellantis to build their vehicles in an underutilized Fiat factory?”
And/or in one of the underutilized North American factories.
And then sell it as a Dodge, Chrysler, Fiat, Peugeot, Citroen, Opel, Vauxhall, Jeep, Ram, Lancia, Abarth, SRT, Maserati, Alfa Romeo, DS or any combo of those to make use of the existing dealers/distribution.
Just like how the Mitsubishi Colt was the Dodge/Plymouth Colt in Canada for years as Mitsubishi had no presence in Canada for the longest time.
Or how Mitsubishi built up their US operations with the help of the DSM joint venture.
Use a Stellantis factory in the USA and you get the UAW – not something that anyone trying to break into the market would want.
I really can’t think of a successful badge engineered JV in the US market. Yes, Mitsubishi made cars for US brands for awhile – it did nothing to help their actual brand and the existed the market.
“it did nothing to help their actual brand and the existed the market.”
It helped indirectly by sharing vehicle development and plant costs.
They still failed and exited the US market. Basically every US / foreign JV building cars in the USA has failed. Right up to the latest Honda / GM joint venture.
“They still failed and exited the US market.”
Wut?
Mitsubishi is still in the US market. Were you thinking of Suzuki?
“Basically every US / foreign JV building cars in the USA has failed.”
Really? I recall the Nissan-Ford (for minivans) and Mazda-Ford (Flat Rock plant and others) JVs to be very successful.
And the Chrysler-Mitsubishi partnerships were very successful for many years until Daimler messed it up.
It’s really only GM that had a habit of killing companies… GM-Suzuki, GM-Isuzu, GM-Lotus, GM-Saab, GM-Daewoo.
Though Subaru survived the GM partnership curse.
Yes, I completely flipped Suzuki and Mitsubishi. Mitsubishi is only almost dead in the USA and is going to turn it around badge engineering a Rogue for Nissan.
The Nissan / Ford and Mazda / Ford JV’s are dead. So is the Mercedes / Nissan partnership.
I can’t think of a counter culture JV that has actually worked. Europe / US – nope. Europe / Japanese – nope. US / Japanese – nope. The cultures always clash. The Japanese / Japanese pairing seem to work better. (Toyota and Subaru, Mazda, and Suzuki but I think it is only a matter of time before those companies are simply absorbed by Toyota)
As to GM. Only Saab died. Suzuki, Isuzu, and Lotus are still alive and kicking even if Suzuki no longer sells in the US market. Daewoo was renamed GM Korea and is still making cars for GM today and exporting them to the USA. (Trax, Trailblazer, Encore, Envista). Last year they made 461K vehicles but only sold 15K in Korea.
Saab was killed even though there were buyers because GM wanted to both keep the patent portfolio, and all the other IP. They sort of sold the brand, but by that time it was was less than worthless.
It’s like all those Russian oligarchs that died from heart failure after absent mindedly leaning against an open window.
I can’t say without more information, but it sure looked like GM moved a lot of expenses to Saabs, and undervalued the assets, so they could get a big writeoff.
Of course that’s not to deny that that the cross cultural acquisition very muck killed Saab in the end.
VW seems to do well with foreign acquisitions. Even the empty shell of a brand like Rolls Royce that was essentially a piece of paper.
Both Rolls Royce and Bentley have done well but they are both fully owned subsidiaries of their parent companies. In both cases the parent company is in charge.
The problem with joint ventures is two different companies, with two different cultures and ways of doing things trying to jointly design, test, and build a vehicle. Those very rarely work long term.
Never mind the product’s functionality or value, I want to daily something called an Ora Ballet Cat or (less so) the Ora Punk Cat.
The Chinese usually come up with dumb product names, but Great Wall consistently knocks it out of the park with its vehicle names.
TBQ: The same answer it always is in China, from semiconductors to aerospace, it’s always the chosen few national champions who’s executives toe the party line the hardest. So SAIC (IM, Maxus, and hilariously- MG and Buick), Dongfeng and FAW.
Notable in their absence: BYD and Geely. Perhaps if their founders are brought to heel, they might be allowed to stay like Jack Ma and Alibaba.
On the other hand, that does explain why it seems to me like BYD and Geely both seem to be headlining most export stories: those two want to get established abroad and considered essential as fast as possible.
One thing I find odd about Chinese vs. Western cars. In the West, buyers tend to be brand loyal or choose from established brands with positive reputations. But Chinese buyers choose from 100+ different brands, and there seems to be new brands added every month.
It’s like going on Amazon to buy anything and you can get the same item from 100 different “brands” with names you’ve never heard of.
Actually that is not 100% true. Europe is a very loyal / chauvinist market.
But the US isn’t. I would say that of all large established markets it is one of the most (if not the most) open to new brands.
The average American buyer is absolutely not open to new brands or existing brands doing new things. Just ask Fiat, Maserati, Alfa Romeo, Polestar, Honda with the Ridgeline, Nissan with the Titan, the list goes on. the US market is dominated by a few established brands and models (F-150, Silverado, Tahoe/Suburban, Corolla, Camry, Accord, Civic. RAV4, CR-V), and the only new brand that’s been able to find widespread success has been Tesla. Brand loyalty here is passed down through GENERATIONS. Suggest to a Ford guy that he should try a Chevy truck and he might want to throw hands. Rivian and Lucid COULD catch on, but time will tell. Any European brand that wants into the US market will have a hard time because Americans generally associate European cars with being unreliable.
Europe also has a LOT more brands and models to choose from than we do in America. Renault, Dacia, Citroen/DS, Peugeot, Skoda, SEAT/Cupra, Alpine, all the good VWs and Fiats, not to mention all the wacky shit from China.
I am time and I am saying Lucid won’t catch up.
I don’t disagree with you. Lucid’s insistence on sticking with the high-end market is messing them up.
Is it there “insistence”, or do they not have the manufacturing capacity to go downmarket?
That’s a good question actually. I looked it up, and Lucid sold about 16k cars last year, and their factory has the production capacity to handle 90k cars a year. Obviously they’d need new tooling for a smaller model, but their factory can handle the volume.
It’s vastly easier to not sell down market cars, even Ferrari can do it.
People expect cheap cars to be cheap, and expensive cars to be expensive.
Pull a reverse-Genesis and create a less-expensive sub-brand?
Well Ferrari was playing with Maserati as a sub brand for a while, but decided to go for less reliability.
I wish they’d pull off a reset like Rivian did with the R2 and Hopefully 3, but I think they’re too far behind.
What I’d give for a Cupra and an Alipine. And an ID6 estate
Cases like Lexus, Acura, Inifiniti and Genesis sepak otherwise.
In Europe one is a niche player and the other 3 don’t exist pretty much at all.
I am not talking about whether someone can be successful or not, that depends on many factors. But in general Americans seem to be more open to new brands with no previous history.
Also of your list, Polestar is a niche player here too, as well as Honda.
Lexus and Acura had Toyota and Honda to bolster their credibility. People trusted them because of their relationship to their parent company. Infiniti has now stagnated to the point of irrelevance. Genesis I will concede has seen some success in the US, and that’s despite the attitude toward the parent company, rather than because of it.
Infiniti is Japanese for Renault, right?
Hyundai / Kia’s success shows that US buyers will give a new brand a try.
Chinese brands would do well if they were allowed in.
Hyundai/Kia also took 4 entire decades to build up to the point where the American public trusts their products. I don’t think Chinese brands would have quite the same struggle, but it would still take a long time for them to really take off.
Kia hasn’t even been selling cars in the USA for 4 decades. They started in 1994 and sales were BAD just like the cars. Then they offered a 10 year warranty and their sales jumped 5x. People were willing to take a chance on a cheap car with a long warranty.
Kia Sales:
1995 – 17K
2000 – 67K
2005 – 329K
2010 – 379K
2015 – 662K
2020 – 599K
2025 – 852K
I think that is mainly true, but is changing and there are always some people looking for value or something different maybe something more reliable.
I know some pretty stereotypical rural American Chevy buyers coming from generations of Chevy buyer that went to Ford because they didn’t agree with the GM bailout. Others that left gm because of reliability or repairability.
Ford buyers appear to me to be more loyal maybe the most loyal. Pricing and availability is the thing that gets them to switch if they must. Toyota buyers tend to be loyal but had to come from somewhere probably alot gm.
With younger people I’m not sure brands matter as much. Because they are so used to a brand being a flash in the pan. One week one brand is it and the next week it’s another.
The reliable European brands seem to have decided to get out of that market, because apparently reliable isn’t luxurious, and people who are seeking reliability are also interested in long term cost of ownership.
That, plus a bunch of dealers that were only interested in sales, pretty much doomed everyone but some German brands and Volvo. Then Chrysler and Ford happened.
The lux buyers seem to brag about their service bills.
Granted, someone probably stood up in a meeting and said that selling cars that the original owner would drive for 300000 miles was bad for business, when they coul lease cars for two years, then make a bundle servicing cars that independent shops can’t even diagnose or fix with parts that they can’t get.
Sales are down a quarter in China because everyone lost like a quarter of their net wealth due to the slow motion housing crash. It may get even worse
While I’m sure most headlines will center of the raw drop in new energy vehicle sales in China they are still rapidly increasing market share. Primarily it is the old state run companies making conventional and crappy ICE vehicles that are struggling the most. It is rapidly getting to the point where you can’t sell a car in China that isn’t at least a PHEV.
I can’t tell you who will survive – I can’t even tell you most of the brand names. BYD will be one of them though.
“…the vehicle’s wiper motor may lose Local Interconnect Network (LIN) communication with the vehicle’s steering column control module.”
Is anyone else worried about the future serviceability of these digitally controlled accessories?
All of these things ultimately have workarounds, but there needs to be the motivation to do so. I mean, how are people fixing their 80 year old analog gear? Most are just replacing entire units rather than servicing
Not really. Most of it will last the useful life of the vehicle and then the vehicle will be replaced. Same as today. People wrenching on 30 or 40 year old cars to keep them on the road are the exception not the rule.
People were afraid of CANBUS and OBD when it got introduced, it’s now largely understood and the cars are lasting longer than ever.
Imo, it’s only an issue if you’re not willing to learn about the new stuff. Old timers and luddites terrified of a multimeter will just start paying those who aren’t.
I’m seeing it in our EV transit bus program. Old hats are scared of it, so the younger guys are getting the clean, quiet and comparatively light work in temperature controlled bays, while the other guys keep getting coated in diesel and oil.
I tell techs all the time. Regardless of your stance on owning/driving EVs, you wanna be WORKING on them. It’s easy work once you learn the systems.
The problem is that canbus, safety systems, ECUs, and EVsoftware are controlled by copyright and the DCMCA. Even the equivalent of shop manuals are off limits and can get you in jail for unauthorized access.
In theory It’s vastly easier and simpler to repair. Throw some open source firmware on an ESP32 and it’s fixed for 5 bucks, but that would be illegal because pirates.
I tossed a perfectly fine Volvo S40 because all the major systems were encrypted and could only talk to the parts they had been married to. It would run fine for a wee or two, the.just turn off. I bypassed the brake and/or transmission interlock with the starter, a stupid idea to start with, so that when the engine stoped on the freeway I could restart it at least.
The whole stupid immobilizer where some component out of the blue can’t remember being part of the same car , much less replacing any of it.
Who asked for that?
Not particularly. For cars with an actual following or fanbase, there will pop up cottage industries that’ll keep these things running. For those inclined, control boards aren’t particularly hard to reverse engineer, and improvements will be made. Not car related, but I have an example. Since Micro-USB has largely been abandoned in favor of USB-C, and with Micro-USB also being kind of fragile, there’s a few guys out there making USB-C conversion kits for various Micro-USB applications. A couple years ago I picked up a conversion board for my Playstation 4 controller. The thing was 10 years old, and I was able to upgrade the battery and modernize the charging port .
I imagine there will be more and more ‘raspberry pi’ type options in coming years for nearly every application and more skilled programmers to make it happen.
Not at the rate their prices are escalating :.(…
My SBC hobby is suffering significantly these days.
Ehhhhhh. It’s TBD with the latest gen of connected cars. I do appreciate the continued software updates to fix issues or add features. My Mach E will be getting CarPlay preconditioning finally via OTA.
In my oversimplified mind, It’s like vacuum hoses. They’re kinda a B and a half to sort out when they do go wrong, on old and new cars alike, but they’re fixable. Similar good news is that a wiper motor on a Mustang is hopefully the wiper motor on an F150. I definitely think the Chinese aspect of “use one part for multiple things throughout the car and model line” is great for eventual parts availability. Not to mention it can offer cost savings.
Or they could brick your car by mistake, or on purpose.
Stick the update into an app or a usb stick. Fcuk OTA updates. Microsoft, a company with alleged expertise in software updates can’t get it right, why should Ford.
Or an adversary decides to do a rogue OTA that runs engines extremely lean with low oil pressure and shift in the first year at 70 miles an hour. Or runs the engines at WOT, shuts of the brakes and makes a hard left.
Or, when we have self driving cars, make them all drive as close to the local fire station as they can, then try to get another ten feet closer.
Nope no OTA updates for me. Might as well just start licking everyone with a last name divisible by three.
Somehow, Buick
Maybe. They are down to 436,729 sales in 2025 from a peak of 1,229,804 in 2016
-Cries in Chrysler-