I’ve been struggling describe the world that’s forming in response to the burst of the EV hype bubble in the West, the rise of China, and the return of protectionism. The best I can come up with is that we’re entering an Ice Age.
Today’s Morning Dump is going to try to center this all in the Late Pleistocene era, which means that some people are going to do very well, while others struggle. Mostly, it’s the giants that are going to suffer and, in particular, the ones that aren’t well represented in the United States.
Up top is Bosch, the massive supplier that was once one of the world’s leaders in engineering. It just laid off 13,000 people in a massive hit to the European economy. Do we blame the extinction of large mammals in this period on humans or on some sort of comet? Jaguar Land Rover definitely feels like it got nuked from space, though it’s definitely a human cause.
Companies with a large footprint in North America will almost certainly do better, though it remains to be seen where Canada and Mexico fit into all of this. And, finally, how does this impact the market next year?
Okay campers, rise and shine, and don’t forget your booties ’cause it’s cold out there…
Robert Bosch And The Late Pleistocene
There have been too many Ice Ages to just say that we’re entering an Ice Age. Which one? It’s also important to state clearly that I don’t think this means things are going to be cold and bleak for everyone. Humans eventually flourished in this period, and I think there will be a lot of species/companies that will do extremely well.
I’m talking about the last one, aka the Pleistocene epoch. More specifically, the Late Pleistocene into the Holocene epoch. You see, 2.6 million years ago, it got cold, and there was an ice age. Our planet is a mighty big place, and not all of it was covered in ice, but it was a big change for all living organisms. Towards the end, homo sapiens got great at hunting, then planting things, which resulted in the rise of our period of control over the planet. We developed civilization, which led to computers, which led to The Autopian.
Though many will prosper, there will be other companies and whole sub-industries that probably suffer. The causes are many, and I think what will happen is a period of cooling/freezing in some parts of the auto industry and a rapid expansion in other parts.
What are the causes?
- The rise of Chinese automotive independence
- The false start of EV and self-driving in the West
- The resulting new protectionism
If only there were one company that represented all of these issues at once. Ah, I know: Robert Bosch GmbH. Large mammals like the woolly mammoth were wiped out during the late ice age, and Bosch looks to me a lot like a woolly mammoth.
The company just announced a massive layoff on the order of 13,000 positions, mostly in the automotive and self-driving sectors.
From Bosch itself:
The economic environment, which has already been under great pressure for some time, as well as the market conditions for Bosch Mobility have recently become even more challenging. The global vehicle market continues to see subdued development. The lack of a regulatory framework is making it difficult to establish new technologies, such as hydrogen. Moreover, the market penetration of emerging technologies such as electromobility and automated driving is also experiencing considerable delays and demand in Bosch’s sales markets is shifting extensively to regions outside Europe. Added to this are the ongoing structural changes and very high price and competitive pressures in the global automotive industry. At the same time, in this challenging market environment, Bosch Mobility also has to make very substantial investments in its future and finance these largely from its own resources. As already communicated, all this is resulting in an annual cost gap of around 2.5 billion euros worldwide in our Mobility business.
Bosch intends to take various measures using all levers to reduce costs at all levels as quickly as possible in order to close the cost gap in the near future. The company sees great potential to reduce costs by achieving productivity gains through the use of artificial intelligence in manufacturing and engineering, reducing material and equipment costs, reducing capital expenditure, and making logistics and global supply chains more efficient. In addition, structural and personnel adjustment measures are unavoidable – the company anticipates a further reduction of around 13,000 jobs, particularly at its Mobility locations in Germany. The time frames for the necessary adjustments vary and extend until the end of 2030.
What’s not mentioned there is China, but Bosch is a major supplier for German automakers, and those German automakers are getting kicked in the teeth by China. This Bloomberg article brings the two together:
Carmakers and their suppliers are struggling with waning demand, high labor and energy costs and intensifying competition from fast-moving Chinese manufacturers. They’ve poured billions of euros into battery technology only to find out that the shift to electric vehicles will be slower than expected.
The pressures are forcing manufacturers to make painful cutbacks. Bosch’s peers Continental, Schaeffler and ZF Friedrichshafen are also slashing jobs and expenses, while VW, Porsche AG and Ford Motor Co. are reducing staff and output to offset weak sales and President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which are intended to boost manufacturing in the US. Trump’s newly announced duties on heavy trucks on Friday dragged down the shares of Daimler Truck and VW’s Traton.
There is actually a lot of debate over what caused the major disruptions at the end of this last Ice Age, though everyone agrees that it brought along the extinction of the last of the Megafauna (giant animals). It’s generally thought that climate change played a massive role, unsurprisingly, but also human overhunting seems to be a factor.
As North America transitioned to more open woods, it was much better to be an animal that’s smaller and quicker, like deer. But being smaller and quicker wasn’t always enough, as even the jaguars eventually didn’t make it.
Humans Definitely Caused The Jaguar Land Rover Cyberattack
Jaguar Land Rover will start to build cars soon, but the company and the British car industry simply aren’t big enough to absorb the impact of human hunting (in the form of a massive cyberattack) on its own.
Again, from Bloomberg:
Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Plc is set to start making cars again after securing £3.5 billion ($4.7 billion) in loan commitments as it continues to grapple with the fallout from a crippling cyberattack.
Britain’s largest carmaker said some sections of its production operations will resume “in the coming days,” as it works to get all its systems back up and running. The Range Rover maker — whose plants in the UK, Slovakia, India and Brazil have been out of action since the start of the month — had been targeting a Wednesday restart.
The move comes as JLR got a £1.5 billion loan guarantee from the UK government and sought to raise a further £2 billion from banks to shore up its finances during the shutdown. The carmaker, owned by India’s Tata Motors Ltd., is a key part of the UK’s auto industry, with some small suppliers reliant on it for business. The government stepped in over the weekend to avoid a wave of collapses in the supply chain.
If only the giant sloths had a modern democratic government to prop them up, eh?
The British car industry has largely been hollowed out and sold off over the years, so what’s there needs help to be protected. In spite of this, JLR specifically, and the UK, generally, are not in the worst position.
When it comes to China, no longer being part of the EU is actually probably helpful in terms of being able to import a larger range of cars and set its own trade deal without having to worry about protecting the VWs and Bosches of the world. The UK also scored a great trade deal with the United States, having survived protectionism in that sense.
The EV transition might impact Jaguar, but the UK has barely been a leader on either self-driving or electrification. Why build cars when laundering money seems so much easier? Now that’s what I call adaptation!
What Happens To North American Companies?
The protectionism of Trump’s first term continued into Biden’s single term, which leads me to believe that some of this is inevitable. Unless the unlikely happens and we get a new President who can convince the world of the merits of MMT, I think even a fully Democratic/left government in Washington in 2028 would look at the deficit and probably decide to keep some tariffs in place. A Republican one definitely will.
Evolution and migration are messy and rarely happen in a straight line. The end of the last Ice Age brought the first people from Asia (though there’s a lot of debate about exactly when/how) through what is now Canada, into the United States, and then south to Mexico and South America.
I think that the question in this period is: Do automakers with exposure to Mexico and Canada continue to do well? With the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) up for renegotiation soon, is the United States going to be flooded with a bunch of new plants?
The goal of the Trump Administration is to bring all sorts of factories to the USA from those places, and some of this is happening, though the degree to which this is bringing new plants here and merely balancing global portfolios to avoid tariff impacts is not yet clear.
From the CBC, a few doubts remain:
David Adams, president of Global Automakers of Canada, disputed Trump’s claims that automakers are leaving Canada for U.S. plants, and said jobs are holding steady.
“The notion that everybody is vacating Canada to produce in the U.S. doesn’t jibe with reality on the ground,” he said.
Adams said Trump’s aggressive tariffs could eventually reshape North American auto production, but added, “we’re not there yet.”
It’s going to take a while to know what exactly happens, and a lot will depend on what kind of deal Canada and Mexico can get out of the United States.
The Ice Age Is Also The ICE Age
I’m sorry, I couldn’t avoid the wordplay. The Automotive Ice Age is also an ICE Age, at least in the United States. The walking back of environmental regulations means that it’s going to be easier, for a time, for automakers with large internal combustion engine portfolios to do well (especially those with hybrid technology).
It’s not hard to think of companies that could do quite well in this new paradigm. Ford has both hybrid technology and the biggest manufacturing footprint in the United States. Honda and Toyota, as well, both have hybrid technology and a lot of manufacturing stateside.
For others, it’s going to be tougher. It’s why some analysts see a slower 2026 as the industry adjusts to all this uncertainty.
Per Wards Auto:
Cox Automotive expects U.S. auto sales to drop by low single-digit percentages in late 2025 and into 2026, mainly driven by price increases, driven in turn by new tariffs on auto imports and metals – an outcome Jonathan Smoke, chief economist for Cox Automotive, describes as “not so bad,” considering the circumstances.
“Prices will rise, and volumes will decline,” Smoke says during a recent webinar during which Cox Automotive reviews auto sales in the third quarter, fine-tunes its sales forecast for full-year 2025 and hints about the U.S. auto sales forecast for 2026.
Smoke also lists some reasons for business optimism going forward, including lower interest rates, lower taxes and less regulation. “Any of those alone would be considered stimulative” to the economy and auto sales, Smoke says.
Again, the late Ice Age was bad for some and good for others. It’s clear that Stellantis sees upside for itself in this new world where it can sell all the Hemis it can build, and has less pressure to sell an electric truck.
I’m hopeful for Stellantis in the short term, but I’m not sure where the company goes over the longer period.
General Motors may lack hybrids, but it has a robust EV lineup it can lean on if/when EV sales come back, as well as trucks. Ford has a big moonshot EV project for the long run, hybrids for the interim, and the ability to build trucks forever. Stellantis has… Hemi V8s.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
This week is going to be all songs that make me feel some sort of way, and right up top is “Up The Junction” by Squeeze. Hits me in the feels every time.
The Big Question
What’s the outcome here? Is this a terrible metaphor? Who does well?
Top photo: Acura
On the subject of Bosch:
“The lack of a regulatory framework is making it difficult to establish new technologies, such as hydrogen.”
Pfft… Hydrogen never made any sense and it was never gonna have any future on any large scale regardless of the regulatory framework.
Anyone who thinks Hydrogen has any future is someone who lacks basic understanding of science and economics.
“What’s not mentioned there is China, but Bosch is a major supplier for German automakers, and those German automakers are getting kicked in the teeth by China.”
It’s actually worse than that in my view.
Not only is China a factor but also a shift away from gas and diesel engines also hurting them.
How so? Well let’s look at all the ICE-specific things Bosch makes:
Spark plugs, fuel injectors, fuel pumps, engine air filters, alternators, fuel filters, ignition coils, O2 sensors, camshaft sensors… all things that BEVs DON’T NEED.
So the real issue is that Bosch is heavily invested in selling ICE-related parts.
That’s what’s killing them more than the China factor.
“What’s the outcome here? Is this a terrible metaphor? Who does well?”
The outcome will be a major shift to BEV and BEV-related tech and parts… not that different from the 1970s era malaise as we shifted from mostly unregulated vehicles to vehicles that had to start complying with safety and emissions standards.
And who does well are the companies that handle the shift to BEVs and BEV-adjacent tech.
I see Ford, GM, Hyundai-Kia, Rivian and VAG doing well. I think Toyota and Honda will do well after some rough years.
In the past, I would have said that Tesla has a bright future. But these days, I’m not sure.
Tesla will probably do okay… but Elon Musk has become Tesla’s own worst enemy. What Tesla needs is a new CEO (JB Straubel would likely be a great choice) OR Elon Musk needs to do a complete 180 politically and he needs to stop publicly posting provocative BS and bring back a proper PR department.
I don’t see any of these things happening anytime soon.
It’s important to remember that the primary push to BEV production was government edicts in large markets, the EU, California, New York and China all required an increasing proportion of vehicles sold to be electric, and in some cases encouraged this by subsidies or tax breaks. The current slump in US EV sales can be almost directly attributed to ending the tax credit. I have always been skeptical of both BEV monomania, and the related fad for wind and solar. These are answers but should not be the only answers. The only silver lining is the revival of nuclear power for data centers. Once the AI bubble bursts all that grid capacity will be available for more productive uses.
As for companies and suppliers, some of the big global car makers have the technology and depth to make it, others will falter. Stellantis is the sick man of Europe and needs restructuring and better product ASAP, this goes double for Nissan. While anecdote!=data our local Nissan dealer abruptly closed several months ago, and is being used as parking for the CJD dealer, who has removed any Fiat signage but is currently selling lots of Wranglers and Rams. I also see JLR in trouble, both from the cyber attack and product concerns. Finally Tesla is a bubble waiting to pop. They are losing the income stream of selling energy credits and they are also losing sales because of aging products, improving competitive products, and the polarizing behavior of Elon Musk.
Finally the first Squeeze song I ever heard was “If I Didn’t Love You I’d Hate You” and that’s still my favorite
At the same time as Bosch is having trouble, the single company that owns Fram, Trico, Raybestos, and many other parts brands is filing for bankruptcy.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/auto-parts-maker-first-brands-files-bankruptcy-protection-2025-09-29/
Liabilities ranging from $10 billion to $50 billion
Assets between $1 billion and $10 billion in latest filing
That math isn’t good but I think it’s often how billionaires and corporations operate/gamble.
“Vhut killed zee dinosaurs?! ZEE ICE AGE!!!!”
– former governor of California
Honor the agreements already made. Drop the childish tariffs. Get rid of the chicken tax. Adopt or at least accept the international UNECE standards.
Replace all Big 3 executive board members with engineers, unless the UAW wants a works-council where half the board is labor, then do that, and the rest engineers.
Toyota will be fine.
I like your spirit
If you were alive in the late 70s to mid 80s, you remember a time when getting a “bargain” on a car loan rate meant you were paying 16%. Manufacturers – including the ones famous for making huge cars – responded by creating small and cheap cars. Sadly, this won’t happen again. Carmakers would rather sell high profit margin vehicles at lower volumes. Working class people be damned.
I think the winners will be whichever world-class manufacturers can reintroduce a cheap car to the US market.
Then they’re going to have a smaller and smaller pool of potential future buyers. The current trend is not sustainable.
You are correct, but that is irrelevant to people who only look at short-term profits, which is everyone.
china is looking at the 100 year marathon while American CEOs concentrate on “The Next Quarter”, to the exclusion of all else. Product planning for the future, changed conditions be damned.
Sure it is. They are still selling 16M cars a year in the US alone, even with a median price close to $50K.
There is NO money in cheap cars. The ONLY reason they made cheap cars for a long time was CAFE. Lose money on the Escorts and Omnirizons of the world so you can make bank on Exploders and pickup trucks. Footprint-based CAFE has killed that stone dead. The only way to sell a cheap car is not care about profit and/or built it with slave labor.
I’ve heard that argument before. Yet Toyota and Honda did quite well growing through the 80’s by selling small cars.
That was then, this is now. And while those were small cars, they weren’t actually *cheap* cars. In fact, in the “Voluntary Import Quota” era, Toyotas and Hondas were actually pretty damned expensive.
yet they still sold every one they could make.
Detroit would’ve had an advantage with lower prices, but of course they got greedy and raised their prices, making it even worse!
That was 40+ years ago and much simpler times. And no the didn’t. They sold every one they bothered to import under the voluntary quota system. Sure, they were good cars in many ways (if you didn’t live in the salt belt anyway). And the high prices they could get for them were part of the reason they were good cars – they were actually profitable, unlike the American small car competition. But everybody makes pretty good cars today, the differences are nowhere near as pronounced in any given class of car.
The Japanese were selling small cars that met emissions with miles of vacuum tubing and carburetors that couldn’t be rebuilt(but seldom need it) and still got decent fuel mileage (due to the light weight). They seldom rattled and had tight handling (compared to American cars of the era designed to absorb the potholes of lackadaisical road maintenance). The Germans were selling small cars with fuel injection that overcame the crappy arbitration of American cars at at price point higher than the Americans and Japanese, but rewarded with good handling and an engine that ran better than carbureted cars. The fact that they turned to crap if not carefully maintained (and sometimes even if they were) wasn’t realized until the payment book was finished.
In my neck of the woods, Japanese cars had “added natural flow through ventilation” in about four years. They didn’t last long enough to develop the reliability reputation they did in other parts of the country, as annual inspection (actually twice a year until I was in high school) was very efficient at removing them from the road. I prefer a car that may need a little mechanical work now and again, but doesn’t dissolve around me.
Different strokes for different folks. None of them were perfect, pick the compromise that works for you. And utlimately, the “good old days” weren’t actually all that good, even if some of the cars were subjectively pretty cool.
Oh, I agree that Japanese and European cars of the 60s were even less resistant to the tinworm than American cars (probably due to thinner metal). None were great then and not many are great now. Every time I return to Omaha, I see not-that-old trucks w/bedsides flapping in the breeze and easily drained doors due to rusting at the bottoms. My sister had 3 (American) vans rust to the point of being dangerously damaged in less than 20 years. My brother still laments the loss of his Sentra that had the rear of the body let the struts poke into the trunk (he drove it to the wrecking yard).
Detroit never took small cars seriously, always seeing them as an afterthought.
Toyota and Honda (and the Japanese and Euros in general) see small cars as a core part of their lineups.
The Tercel, Echo, and Yaris all turned a profit even being made in Japan (later France).
Step in an Aveo, Sonic, Cobalt, or Cavalier/Sunfire, then check out an Echo or Yaris or Fit.
Even the Korean rebadges of the 90s (Festiva/Aspire, LeMans, etc) were better than ‘real’ American cars.
That was then, this is now. Nobody wants that sort of barebones hairshirt anymore, and the reality is that modern emissions and safety standards make even small cars very expensive to design and manufacture.
Roll back standards to the ’90s and we will get cheap cars again. Good luck with that.
They were an afterthought. With Detroit’s cost structure, there was zero money in small cars, which had to be cheap cars. Once CAFE debuted, they only bothered so they could offset the big thirsty vehicles they could make money one. Footprint CAFE made that go away, and so have the cheap money-losing cars pretty much across the board. The entry-level car is a used car – Porsche nailed that a couple decades ago.
Now that is *everybody’s* problem. There is no such thing as a cheap car anymore if you actually want to make money selling cars in the First World. Costs too much to engineer and build the things, and there is too much required content due to regulations. And of course, EVs are *stupendously* expensive when the engineering costs are amortized. The forced migration to them that is failing did the automakers no favors at all.
Oh, come on. Detroit learns absolutely NOTHING. They NEVER learn from their mistakes.
Toyota taught GM everything (NUMMI), yet they learned NOTHING.
The CEO of Ford has Toyota on his resume, yet he learned nothing from his time there.
I think VW would disagree with you and present a bunch of beetles and buses as proof. Also lesser known workhorses making money across the world: Peugeot (once the default city car in Middle East capitals) these days Dacia etc. Volume is good business.
That isn’t the USA of 2025. Our standards are much higher here. The only people who would buy a brand-new 1970 VW Beetle or bus are all here on Autopian. Times have well and truly changed, and they are not going back.
I predict that even as hyped as the Slate truck is, it won’t actually sell in much volume absent the big tax credits making it actually cheap. People SAY they want cheap barebones cars, but they don’t BUY cheap barebones cars in any meaningful numbers. They either buy used, or they just stretch the loan to a longer term to get something nicer. And given how long cars of today last compared to cars of the past, there really isn’t much wrong with longer loan terms per se, within reason.
I wanted a cheap barebones truck, but nobody sells one in the US anymore. So we bought a 2024 Chevrolet Trax LS last year specifically because it did not have a large screen behind the steering wheel, it did not have black wheels, and you could start it by putting an actual key in the ignition and turning it.
And it was less than $24K out the door.
I wouldn’t call a Trax particularly cheap. It’s $5K more than a Mirage. $22kish is about the bottom of the market at this point. Just a few decent cars that are a little cheaper, like the KIA Soul. I figure that when people around here say “cheap car” they mean well sub-$20K.
For me a GM product with a tiny turbo triple would be a hard sell over whatever the same money would get me in a used Toyota though. I feel like a 5-6yo RAV4 with 50-70K on it’s ax-simple powertrain is a much safer bet for a long and trouble-free ownership experience, if all you want is “car”. Even with the Toyota Tax.
Looking a little deeper in Autotrader, $23K will get you a 2023 RAV4 with 33K on it if you want pauper spec. Or a practically new Corolla, or a very nice low miles Camry if you can do without the 2-boxness (much as I loath CUVs, I would still take one over a useless sedan).
Euro standards are first-world standards.
Chinese and Latin American standards are catching up and even use the Euro standards now.
Japan also uses the UNECE standards.
US standards weren’t made to be better. They were made to be different.
Barriers to entry
Doesn’t matter, they still have to meet US standards to be sold here, different or not.
Reality is if there was a market for cheap cars to be sold here profitably, then there would be lots of cheap cars sold here. Like I said, people love the idea of cheap cars, but they never seem to like the reality of cheap cars when you can just buy something much better used. There are always a few weirdos with no money who just crave that new car smell, but not very many.
I admit when it comes to cars I am horribly spoiled, but there is no universe in which I would buy a new Mirage over a 3yo used Corolla for the same money. Of course reality is I would buy a 15yo BMW in mint condition over either one for the same money.
Detroit is just insecure and jealous because they think a new Spark would steal sales from a new Cruze, for example.
However, the smallest/cheapest cars don’t compete with new cars; they compete with used cars, so they’re just free sales they wouldn’t otherwise have.
New cars have lower interest rates and more room for negotiation on price. Plus, you can spec it exactly how you want with any combination they offer.
The Mirage’s price effectively doubled as its competition disappeared.
Lack of competition and the separate standards are the reason why they cost more! If we accepted the UNECE standards, it would cost less to make a car that can be sold in all markets due to scale.
They aren’t free sales if you lose money on every one. Sales are EXPENSIVE. And at the end of the day, that’s the problem. Small cars are not actually much cheaper to build than bigger cars. They certainly aren’t any cheaper to sell than larger cars. And to keep the price down, they won’t offer very many variations. See the Slate pickup for the ultimate example of that. Cheap cars don’t come in very many variations as a rule. You are lucky if you get a choice of a couple of trim levels and a smattering of colors.
It wouldn’t hurt, and I am all for homogenized standards, but the cost to setup a sales and service organization in the US is actually the bigger barrier to entry than the modest differences in standards. And as I keep saying but you keep not hearing, relatively speaking, NOBODY in the US wants small cars to start with. They don’t even scratch the sales charts in a 16M car market, and they are BY FAR the least profitable corner of it. Corporations are not charities, and the world owes you nothing.
I keep wondering why you’re arguing in favour of the automakers having higher margins, and therefore, charging us, the consumer, more money for them.
I’d much rather they built on a value model.
But, perhaps, the real story is that Detroit simply isn’t capable to competing against a Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla – wether at price, performance, or otherwise. So they lobby for things like the footprint rule so they can go back to gouging us on larger vehicles and trucks.
Why would you wonder why ANY business wants to make as much money as possible? Do YOU work for free? I have explained the main reason the Detroit 3 even bothered with small cars at all for many years despite them losing money on every one of them. When that reason went away, so did the small cars. It’s also the same reason that various European makes who really just made slightly nicer than average family cars like Volvo are now trying very, very hard to be luxury brands. The only way to make money on cheap cars is to sell a crapload of them – and if there is no market for craploads of cheap cars, plus you can’t actually make cars cheaply, you are screwed. You can’t even make money on mid-size cars today – which is one of the reasons the industry very consciously has embraced the CUV. A RAV4 costs pretty much the same to build as a Camry, but sells for rather more money. A marketing triumph, that.
No, Detroit cannot nor ever have been able to really compete with those particular cars for a variety of legacy reasons. Saturn was a decent attempt, but was doomed from the start. Though these days the playing field is a LOT more level than it was in the past. There is a reason even the Asians are dropping small cars left and right, and as the field narrows, the remaining players get more volume and can charge higher prices for the few that remain. And ultimately, even Toyota and Honda are only selling a fraction of as many Corollas and Civics as they once did, and at rather higher prices. Volume DOES matter, you have to amortize costs over each unit sold.
Some days I swear I am the only guy with a business degree who hangs out here. Were most of you English majors or something?
I think if something like Renault Dacia opens up shop here they WILL sell like hotcakes if they’re left to be competitive (I.e. not tariffed out of existence). Folks will get their choice where to spend their extra savings, either on fancy rear passenger ventilated seats or a new furnace for their house. Kia is kinda doing this already and are crushing it.
I predict that if they did, it would be nowhere near as cheap as you think it would be, AND they wouldn’t sell in any amazingly huge numbers. After all, there really isn’t much difference between a Dacia and a KIA Soul, which is about the cheapest decent car you can buy in the US at barely over $20K for the base model. The cheapest Sandero is more than that in dollars. And while they sell OK (~50K a year), they are hardly best sellers. And most of them sold are the much more expensive mid and top trims, not the base trim. If there was wild demand for $20K cars, the Soul should be a sales leader – it’s spacious, economical, practical, even reasonably quiet and comfortable, if completely and utterly a snore to drive.
50K is barely worth bothering with in today’s US marketplace, and wouldn’t keep the lights on for a small player like Dacia – which is why they don’t sell them here. And the costs to setup a sales and service organization in the US are horrendous. Telsa and the other EV makers have managed it by selling EXPENSIVE cars with big profit margins – goooood luck trying to do it to sell cheap penalty boxes with low profit margins. It’s a chicken and egg problem. You can’t sell the cars without that, and without it, you won’t sell any cars. And if you think you can sell any serious number of cars online via a website only or Amazon or whatever you are *dreaming*.
You’re correct about the specifics. Entry barriers are high and I shot myself in the foot by not mentioning the Maverick. My general point though was that everyone talks about high volume and affordability but no one ends up doing it because the costs must be balanced out by higher margins. For all we know, Ford had to increase their Maverick cost to pay for their endless recalls.
I will take your Sandero example (boring but they made 3M of them already), and raise you the Duster which sold about 250,000 in 2024 alone. That one could sell well here and they moved over 2M cars globally without the US. That’s pretty healthy and yes we’ll never see it here as US barriers are too damn high for entry.
But my whole point was, why hasn’t a major manufacturer here done the equivalent of a Duster? They could apparently have exported 2 million of them worldwide in addition to the US market. Because they’re too focused on greedy margins that’s why. And Matt is right that they may be the ones to go first if frugality is not something they’re used to.
How is the Soul NOT the equivalent of the Duster? Or any of the other front-wheel-drive smaller tall hatches that sell for cheap in the US in relatively small quantities? They are all about the same price the Duster would be in the US, and there is zero reason to think that the Dacia would sell any better here. It is NOT going to be a sub $20K car in this market with the costs involved in entering this market. The cost of building the thing is only the beginning. Sales are EXPENSIVE, which is something people here just don’t seem to understand, at all.
It’s not greed, it’s reality. As I also keep saying, corporations are not charities, they exist to make a profit. And the profits in the automotive industry are actually very, very small compared to the capital costs involved (second only to the airline industry really). They are spending tens of billions to make a few tens of millions in a good year, and they can lose hundreds of millions in the bad years. And there is VERY little profit in cheap cars.
If you think you can do better, I invite you to found a car company. Hope you have lots of dot-com bubble cash and snake oil salesman charisma to raise the money to do it though, ala Elon Musk. And even then, he very rightly had to start selling VERY expensive cars to get to the point where he can sell merely average to expensive cars. Slate MIGHT succeed with Jeff Bezos behind them – but a friend of mine just got laid off from there, and with the tax credits going away, their future doesn’t look particularly bright. I just can’t see enough people being interested in a vehicle that will come in the Model T’s choice of color pallet and level of amenities that is likely to cost the best part of $30K without subsidies (and I am not a big fan of my tax dollars subsidizing your personal transportation choice).
Have you never been on the inside of a base model Dacia model?
In pictures. Looks the same as every other cheap car. https://www.motorpoint.co.uk/car-reviews/dacia/duster/interior
Have you been in a Soul?
https://www.lousobhkia.com/kia-research/kia-soul-interior/
Same old same old. A screen or two, a sea of hard plastic, some buttons, knobs, and levers. The Soul probably has more toys for the price than the Dacia does, given basically everything is standard on them. Electric windows and remote door locks, cruise control, air con, an autotragic transmission, the usual modern infotainment options, etc. That stuff tends to be extra cost on the other side of the pond. $500 gets you all the modern active safety bleep and boop nonsense. A few grand more gets you fancier trim, bigger wheels, a sunroof, and electric seats and other added frippary. The base Soul gets a power level that requires a mid-spec Duster to achieve. There is no point in offering anything less in the US, nobody would buy it.
Pretty much the same as every other car up to about $30K. As the price goes up, maybe you get some actual fabric on the door panels and nicer feeling materials.
IIRC, the big pull of the Dacias was simply that they were BIG for the price – but we don’t really get actually small cars in the US to start with. So saying you can get a Duster for the price of a supermini is meaningless here. All but the couple of smallest cars sold here are pretty big by European standards. What is considered a largish family car in Europe is considered to be rather small here.
Well Disney is now notoriously going for less visitors at much higher revenue per person, working class and Walt’s vision be damned. So companies will definitely try that approach to its fullest if it makes money until they are proven wrong. I also think it’s wrong, but I am the concerned middle class, so biased.
Except people in the US don’t want cheap cars in any meaningful quantity – they SAY they do, but they don’t buy them. Cheap cars barely sell in the US even when they are offered. There is no reason to buy a new hairshirt when you can just get a used/CPO much nicer car for the same or less that still has a couple hundred thousand miles of life left in it.
And reality is there just isn’t anything much to cut out of a modern car to make it cheaper without ending up with a complete hairshirt like a Mitsubishi Mirage (and why anyone would want a new one of those vs. a used Corolla et al. completely baffles me). The “tinsel” costs basically nothing today, but the crash structure and drivetrain cost a fortune, and don’t scale down much at all. And then you get into the whole problem that people equate small with cheap, and small cars aren’t actually much cheaper to produce. They tend to need more expensive engineering to meet safety standards, and the difference in size is mostly air, not materials.
The primary issue is that the used car market is under the separate control of equally greedy people.
When I was shopping for a used SUV, most 36k mile lease returns were priced dangerously close to the MSRP for a new one. Without a special APR and considerable down payment, you are guaranteed to be underwater on that loan.
So you automatically get pushed toward a cheaper new car.
So buy one that is five years old. Or ten for that matter. My newest daily driver at the moment is 11.
I’ve never seen much point in “almost new” used cars. Either buy actually new, or buy well-depreciated.
No way. Safety standards are making a huge leap now that bigger, heavier vehicles cover the roads. A 10 year old car is unsafe.
On top of that you’re still paying a sizable sum in cash or getting a bank loan only now you have to worry about repair bills.
Been there. Done that. Never again.
There is no universe in which I would rather crash a new Mirage than a 5-6 or even 10yo RAV4. And I would rather crash my 15yo BMW than any of them. If you want to be “safe” on a budget, buy an older luxury car, not a new penalty box.
what is a hairshirt
Let me Google that for you:
A hairshirt is a cilice, an uncomfortable shirt worn by some Catholics and, earlier, by Jews as a sign of penance
AKA a penalty box, pauper spec, base model, no frills, basic transportation device. With as much cost cut out of it as possible.
thanks for googling it for me bro
Smilodons make a comeback?
Probably the smilodons if they make a comeback.
Can we talk about the fact whatever changes have been done to this website now have the video embedded at the top of this page now pops up at the top corner before you even start to scroll down?
In this case, it is the Toyota Taco chassis video. First off, why even have these videos on EVERY page? They aren’t related to the articles. But at least before the video wouldn’t go up to the top corner and block most of the Autopian logo. Why are you guys making these changes?
I am on the latest version of Firefox for Windows, if that means anything.
This explains a lot:
https://www.theautopian.com/online-media-is-at-a-fork-in-the-road-so-were-removing-ads-for-members/
We need to make money and video advertising is one way. If you become a member you won’t see the little pop-up.
A request, could The Autopian add PayPal to the list of payment options?
Just a note to say again that I enjoy your TMD very much Matt. 🙂
I’ve seen Squeeze live twice (well, once as Difford and Tilbrook when Squeeze itself disbanded/was on hiatus). Many, many years ago of course (the Ritz in NYC can’t still be there, right?) back when I was driving an ’84 GTI and had a healthy spine and libido.
And yes, Andie MacDowell was (is?) a delight and a rare, charming beauty.
I want (but definitely don’t need) a new car, even though there’s nothing that truly excites me and of course, it’s an awful time to buy a depreciating asset filled with plastic engine parts and lots of lines of code. I tend to agree that the next few years will continue as the past few have been in terms of high prices, protectionism, and probably nothing that exciting on offer.
Similar, want a new daily vehicle now that Jeep is paid off, but nothing out there excites me, and the prices continue to jump for mediocre offerings. Add in economic uncertainty and I’ll park that money elsewhere (or more likely burn it up and live the hedonistic lifestyle I know I’m capable of before we all crash and burn).
I got the last two tickets to Squeeze at the Ritz in 1980(?) for my then new love and still today my BFF (he and I just had lunch earlier today). We likely were in the same crowd.
I was married briefly one time in my 20s and learned that we had been at the same Rolling Stones ‘Steel Wheels’ concert at (then) Shea Stadium in New York on the same night. Glad fate worked out better for you. 🙂
It all blew up because of 1 thing, and 1 thing only, IMHO…
Solar, wind, and hydro are not resources that can be exploited and manipulated like oil and gas(es). If you can’t “drill baby drill”, you can’t exploit to the same level.
They’re also far less reliable.
But renewable, which means they are not finite. Oil is getting more difficult to extract and find, so there is an end that is visible, unless we switch to another power source.
That’s right: sun and wind are so ephemeral. Plus, wind turbines cause cancer and kill whales and whatnot, right? 😉
I haven’t bought a single net kilowatthour of electricity in 30 years, thanks to a bunch of PV panels I put on the roof right after I bought the house that I’m sitting in as I type this. Sure, the panels took energy and raw materials to produce, and doing so created some pollution of course (as does the creation of pretty much any manufactured tech/product) but since that install, it’s a teeny tiny fraction of the pollution that would have been generated to supply kWh to my house from the grid over all those years.
I don’t understand the hate for sustainable/renewable energy. Or for EVs for that matter. Sure, there’s some pollution created to create them (though ICE Ford F-150s don’t grow out of the earth like potatoes you know) but every study I’ve ever seen tracking cradle to grave lifetime metrics shows both renewable energy and EVs to be less harmful than fossil fuel/traditional ICE equivalents.
Wind turbines cause ear cancer specifically due to the sound, that’s what Dr. Trump says so it’s probably true.
Is that the same sound that drives whales crazy? 😉
Not sure, everything I know about whales I learned from Star Trek IV, and I don’t recall them touching on the wind turbine issue during that particular adventure. There wasn’t time, the universe was imperiled!
That one, and Wrath of Khan, were my favorites. 🙂
WOK, The Voyage Home, and FC are such high water marks for Trek movies.
Pretty much all other Trek movies stink, though I have a soft spot for Nemesis.
No love for Christopher Plummer chewing the scenery in Undiscovered Country?
To be…or not to be.
I have no respect for those who commit crimes against humanity.
The crime against humanity otherwise known as The Sound of Music.
It’s not everyone’s taste, for sure, but no points for Mr. Plummer angrily ripping the Nazi flag?
I kind of like Nemesis as well, though clone Picard had no reason to be bald. The starship battle was also pretty epic. Sadly I died.
No love for The Undiscovered Country (theatrical, not the Scooby Doo unmasking in the Director’s Cut).
II didn’t even know they did a director’s cut. I’m gonna have to watch…
The Director’s Cut was the home video version going all the way back to VHS. I think the first time ST6 released the theatrical cut on home video was the UHD 4k release a few years ago.
The big difference is in the Director’s Cut, they unmask the Klingon assassin at the end a reveal it was a human (aka the Scooby Doo unmasking).
I always preferred the theatrical cut where to me it appeared that Klingon and Federation factions couldn’t let go of their animosity toward each other for peace.
I don’t ever remember seeing that. I watched it in theaters, and then had it taped off of HBO for ages. I’m sure I had it on DVD, but damned if I recall that sequence.
I have no idea what you guys are talking about but this is the longest reply thread I’ve seen on here and I’m fascinated to know how narrow the comment box will get.
Huh, it appears we hit the limit. My “reply” didn’t get any narrower than the parent comment. Neat!
But I’m pretty sure you can just inject bleach and cure yourself of it, right?
Yes, if you get ear cancer from the sound of a wind turbine, I believe the cure is to put bleach in your ear. It will probably hurt, but you can take invermectin for that (also works good on COVID). You can pick some up at your local vet or feed store.
Hate from political parties and leaders? It’s easy to solicit campaign donations from oil & gas extractors, refiners, distributors and retailers. It’s easy to strong-arm campaign donations from electric utilities.
Consumer power generation is an existential threat to the industries just mentioned, hence anti-renewable policies.
Disclaimer: I worked in the renewable industry and saw the impacts, for good and ill, on government policies aimed at renewable installation.
Hydro is pretty reliable until a prolonged drought or the reservoir fills with silt over time. Wind and solar are a losing proposition. Not many of the big turbines have made it to their supposed 20 year lifespan and solar panels (sold by china at a great profit) start deteriorating soon after installation. My neighbors w/ solar are not realizing the reductions in commercial energy consumption they were promised.
When was the last time land was flooded to create a new reservoir in the US? Hydro is something we did 100 years ago that we still use, not really something we are still trying to do. Lots of exploitation potential around how much the people losing their land through imminent domain because it is getting flooded get paid.
Hydro is fully flexible because there is a valve controlling the flow. When the valve is closed the reservoir just fills up a little more.
Other countries will continue to move toward China and insulate themselves from the insanity that has overtaken the U.S. In conversations in most places in Canada and Europe, the U.S. is openly considered a fascist state at this point, and people are planning accordingly. Since the current policy in the U.S. is actively working to quickly destroy the middle class, there will be less and less incentive for companies elsewhere to meet the bloated requirements for access to the U.S. market. It is just going to take time for all of this to manifest.
The flip side is that U.S. makers are going to lose access to other markets as the domestic market gets poorer and poorer. The products made for the domestic market already don’t fit the needs elsewhere, and that is quickly becoming an even bigger issue with the removal of many existing standards. To sell cars elsewhere, domestic makers will need to develop two completely different product lines, and they already have an issue developing one.
I also don’t think there is really any chance of recovery at this point. Even in the off-chance that something changes for the better here, other countries and their companies won’t want to invest in a country that is so clearly insane.
“In conversations in most places in Canada and Europe, the U.S. is openly considered a fascist state at this point, and people are planning accordingly.”
To quote the Princess Bride: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Well, what do you think it means?
From Merriam-Webster: “ a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition”
To break it down:
Populist? I’d probably agree
Exalts Nation? Yes
Exalts Race? No
Autocratic Gov’t? No
Dictator? No
Severe Economic/Social Regimentation? No
Forcible Suppression of Opposition? No, that’s actually the Political Left as of late.
Realistically, the current government is populist at best, with a president who sends mean Tweets.
The Political Left as a faction is a fiction invented by the right. The political left can’t agree on *anything*
Also I’d doublecheck your assumptions on the “Exalts Race (there’s a lot of white nationalists in the current govt)”, “Autocratic Gov’t (there’s a lot of ignoring court orders going on)”, and if the current economic landscape isn’t severe economic and social regimentation I’m not sure what is.
Wow, I try to refrain from politics, but, to my surprise, your list proves the Fascist claim
Populist? Yes
Exalts Nation? Yes
Exalts Race? Absolutely
Autocratic Gov’t? Yes (see below) The president/executive branch is completely in control of policy with no input / oversight from congress
Dictator? Yes. When you pump out executive orders for policy changes that are outside Congressionally authorized authority on a daily basis, which are invariably found to be illegal in lower and appeals courts (that are then ignored), but which will, unfortunately, be reversed by the supreme court – that is a dictatorship / autocracy
Severe Economic/Social Regimentation? Yes. You can’t criticize the president for fear of boycotts, lawsuits, license revocation and jail time (ABC, FCC, and Comey and possibly Cook, etc)
Forcible Suppression of Opposition? Yes. See above
Read the room, dude. We all saw what Trump tried to do to Kimmel. Nobody’s buying this BS.
I’m going to rebut some of your points here, in the same order you presented them.
Populist? Absolutely
Exalts Nation? Yes, very much so.
Exalts Race? Absolutely yes, ICE has been instructed to detain anyone who even appears hispanic in order to violently and systematically flush out “foreigners” Also see H1B crackdowns, etc.
Autocratic Gov’t? YES asbolutely, Autocrats rule on their own, above all others, and with impunity. The near entirety of the GOP in congress and much of the supreme court, DOJ, etc, are all lock-step with what Trump demands.
Dictator? Not yet, but nearing that, claiming he will run again, rig elections, use force somehow, it’s not good.
Severe Economic/Social Regimentation? Absolutely where we are heading. Thinking counter to Trump is being attacked violently, unilateral Economic meddling via Executive orders, using big events to suppress opposing speech.
Forcible Suppression of Opposition? Absolutely yes, see above comments, but Trump is blatantly using the DOJ “AS his personal lawyers” (his/DOJ’s words) which is NOT what it is set up to be. He is using to actively attempt to imprison everyone who he disagrees with.
Populist? Yes, for his people.
Exalts nation? Yes, a very narrow definition of it, anyway.
Exalts race? Ask any brown person, citizen or not, detained by ICE their opinion on that one.
Autocratic government? Well, he sticks his name on everything and renamed the Gulf of Mexico, so YMMV.
Dictator? Ummm, only on day one?
Severe economic/social regimentation? I mean, we’re not queuing up for turnips yet but it hasn’t quite been a year. Give it time.
Forcible suppression of opposition? Well, General Bone Spurs just sent a “mean tweet” for the military to use “full force” in Portland. Sounds pretty forcible and suppressive to me.
From a European perspective:
Populist? Yup
Exalts Nation? Yes (not that this is a new thing for the US)
Exalts Race? Yup
Autocratic Gov’t? Mostly yes, but currently being held back by some remaining democratic institutions
Dictator? Not yet
Severe Economic/Social Regimentation? Massive split between rich and poor
Forcible Suppression of Opposition? Some attempts, but nothing has stuck yet
From this side of the pond, it seems like the US is in a similar place to Germany in 1932-3. I think a lot will come down to how hard Trump tries to hang onto power when his term is up.
“In conversations in most places in Canada and Europe, the U.S. is openly considered a fascist state at this point, and people are planning accordingly”
I really think you can add the United States to the places where those conversations are taking place, just (currently) not as publicly.
For sure. It isn’t a question among any of the folks with whom I choose to spend time. There are a few in “the middle” that don’t want to deal with the facts because they can’t stand being uncomfortable. The fascists don’t like the label, but seem to be completely fine with the actual fascism. It is always funny that the meaning behind renaming ships and military bases after traitorous white supremacists doesn’t register at all with them. But then, this is a group that was happy to see violent insurrections who thought the holocaust wasn’t big enough pardoned and felt a pedophile rapist was an appropriate representative of their values. They ain’t right in the head.
Personally, I believe that when Chinese EV products make it to US shores our domestic production of anything automotive will begin serious decline ala British Leyland.
I don’t see that happening…in that way. If the Chinese are coming over here, I see it as a partnership with another company that sells well here. It will have Chinese bones but with styling to American tastes. Many Chinese-market cars look a little…off. I cannot be alone in thinking this.
If the way things are going for Europe is any precedent, protectionism will be high against Chinese EVs coming to the US market – and it won’t just be the US domestic companies pushing for it either. Foreign makes with large presence don’t want to lose market share.
All it takes is for a US OEM to start really getting close to bankruptcy (again). This time, they will partner with a chinese OEM to stary afloat but then chine will have its in to the market and slowly start tearing things down. Unless the Chinese auto industry implodes completely, which I don’t see their govt allowing for that.
Bosch better not go out of business.
If my Bosch dishwasher breaks, who’s gonna make the replacement parts?
Should have bought a Whirlpool.
I have a suite of Whirlpool appliances. Multiple repairs (the fridge won’t stop pissing itself still), and now rust, all within 11 years. Not the slightest chance I’ll even breath their name when I replace them, which may be prematurely soon.
That sucks. I have generally had better luck with them than with comparable brands.
Whirlpool fridge owner here.Found out that the piss puddle and layer of ice on the bottom freezer was from a drip gasket that is supposed to regulate the flow of condensed water to a little heat plate that returns the condensation to the room. Problem was the gasket was too narrow and got clogged up and didn’t drop fast enough to keep up. I trimmed off less than a quarter inch of the bottom of the (funnel might be a better term) and haven’t had an issue since. That was 8 or so years ago.
Ice maker died within a year and I knew it would. That is the my life in ice makers.
China most likely does and will probably even more so now.
I assumed the aliens would have fantastic future tech for cleaning dishes and could easily replicate replacement parts for their mundane earth tech.
My mission requires me to assimilate with the local population. Ergo, I use human tools at my primary domicile.
Sorry, it’s my fault. I just bought a fancy Bosch dishwasher and jinxed it.
I did too, and less than 6 months later one of the racks started rusting through! Also, why do I need an app to control most of the features and settings of my dishwasher?!
The user interface is the worst thing. Touch sensitive, so I accidentally turn it on all the time just because I grabbed the door in the wrong place, and it frequently decides to start paused for some reason. Not a problem if I have my phone and can unpause it, but utterly baffling otherwise.
I also have yet to find a good way to load bowls where they won’t take up absurd amounts of space.
I do really like some things about it, but considering how much they cost I understand why some people don’t like them.
Needing to use my phone at all while interacting with my dishwasher sounds like a nightmare.
It’s a bit like touchscreens in cars – I don’t hate it for configuring advanced features, but I hate when I have to use it to do basic things like start a load of dishes or change the temperature of my climate control.
They really aren’t adapted for deep bowls.
Haier already owns GE Appliances. Bosch won’t be that big a pill to swallow.
Bosch is incredibly diversified. BSH, the appliance division, and Power Tools, are completely separate from the Mobility division. Likewise to other products like HVAC, which just bought all of Johnson Controls’s consumer and commercial HVAC products, and their manufacturing systems arm, Rexroth. While Mobility can take a hit, the other ones will have other fortunes.
Divisionified all they want. The Bosch CP4 fuel pumps in my Jeep and Ram are both know to implode through the fuel system then engine, but Bosch Mobility can’t seem to come up with a long-term fix for those either.
Love the quote from Groundhog Day. It’s one of my all-time favorite movies. Bill Murray at his best and of course the beautiful and talented Andie McDowell.
I worry about the companies that always suck up to whatever administration is in place. If they start backtracking on emissions and development of new technologies just because of the current administration’s policies, they are going to be in for some serious hurt when things change. And they will change. The companies should emulate Bill Murray in Groundhog day and just try to be the best corporate citizens they can be if they want to come out strong on the other side.
The delay in EV adoption is a big part of it. As I see it, here’s the sequence of events that lead us here-
So the automakers dove in before checking the pool’s temperature. That pool is getting warmer by the day, but “full-EV adoption Day”- that day when the last ICE or hybrid car is discontinued- is still many years off. 2050? 2060? Who knows.
It doesn’t help when world governments mandate changeovers – requiring massive reinvestment – then someone else comes along and sabotages their own industries by eliminating the mandate like nothing ever happened.
Missing the climate change issues as the reason for the change?
Oh, I didn’t miss it.
Climate change is real and getting worse.
This was the very legitimate reason for governments mandating the change.
Now we have an illegitimate government rolling back the mandate because of hurt feelings and gas/oil lobbyists.
***Somewhere between point 2 and 3: The Political Left mandates ICE bans to force people into greener cars. The political Right doesn’t like this.
4)
Many consumers who would like an EV say, “Hey Automakers, build EVs and I’ll buy them!”The Political Left threatened Automakers to make EV’s or be fined out of existence. Most Automakers reluctantly agree with half-baked EVs.I think you’re missing an important step in the 3-4 region which was Governments said “oh hey, these work now, so we’ll mandate their adoption” which caused the step 5 massive investment, but consumers were not yet ready, so sales slowed, and now those that dumped entire R&D budgets into EV tech are not getting rewarded.
Also of note, Step 2 Profits were widely and largely driven by selling credits to automakers that fell afoul of CAFE regs, without them, Tesla profitability would have been much delayed, and much smaller in magnitude.
2.5 Tesla has a P:E ratio of 200 and GM has a P:E of 4. GM exec’s think: how am I going to boost my share price (and hence my personal wealth)? Answer: Better follow the Tesla example into EVs to get that 3 digit P:E ratio.
Previewing new product, taking deposits and never delivering is a great way to boost profits too.
Sure it’s Fraud – but when you have a felon/friend in the White House, who cares about rules and ethics?
I don’t think reasonable large companies are going to make any big changes until they see a long-term future with a bit of stability. If the world is turned on its head every Tuesday, they’ll batten down the hatches and wait out the storm.
There was no premature EV hype bubble in the US. It was political interference that just threw a roadblock up, and political tribalism keeping adoption from moving forward…certain individuals willingly became the foot soldiers for the petroleum industry, afraid of losing market share. Look only to global markets to see the future. You can keep up with that, utilizing the concept of the ‘economies of scale’ to bring prices down, or using an Ice Age term, go extinct making a niche product with a narrow consumer base.
Some people don’t like being “mandated” to buy something that they don’t want. People don’t like their freedom of choice being taken away; especially if it costs more while being worse.
Absolutely. If the “big 3” offered a sub-$25K sedan they could not make enough of them to save their life. $100k behemoths only have very limited marketshare regardless of their propulsion systems.
Especially when they have massive depreciation. No EV really holds it’s value incredibly well.
You’ve never experienced German or British Luxury Depreciation, have you?
Developers don’t like the fact that apartment buildings need to have emergency lighting and sprinklers either. Lots of people want the choice to screw over other people. Calling it “freedom of choice” doesn’t change the fact that those people are pieces of shit.
I don’t see how your point about building safety codes relates to consumers being forced to buy cars they don’t want.
If the results of your choice are harming everyone by destroying the environment, it is a choice that impacts everyone, not just you.
Except both ICE and EV harm the environment. Building codes are a really poor comparison as they aren’t harm vs less harm.
Both do, but one does less, at least over the life of the vehicle.
The building code analogy is perfectly appropriate. The building code could be much more strict to save even more lives, but there was an attempt to find a balance between lives saved and the cost to implement the rules. Housing would be a lot less expensive if there were no regulations.
It’s not the best analogy since building to code is more of an addition to their previous process rather than a complete change in approach. A better analogy would be if apartment developers were mandated to build only with concrete. It would mean abandoning previous suppliers while negotiating with new ones and require a different standard of overall architecture. Moreover, most people prefer not to live in a concrete-only environment so the consumer demand wouldn’t be as supportive.
There are lots of codes in which massive changes were required. The ADA is one. The analogy is fine, it shows the issue with the idiotic idea that “freedom of choice” is the right to fuck people over if you feel like it.
I maintain it could have been better but I understand your intention.
Cars today are cleaner than ever. If you want to make a difference in tons of greenhouse gas, maybe work on cleaning up Aviation or Ships? It’s bananas to me that AvGas still mostly uses fuel with lead.
Changing all of it is perfectly fine by me.
Governments…all governments, setting safety, environmental regulations, other laws, for the good of its people is their core function.
There was no mandate, anywhere. Find me one, quote the law, act or EO. I see business decisions made by various global auto manufacturing entities to continuously head in the direction of increasingly cleaner and more efficient transportation. This is what you have an issue with?
Seriously?
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/barcu/regact/2022/accii/isor.pdf
https://www.atlasevhub.com/weekly-digest/advanced-clean-cars-goes-national/
https://www.atlasevhub.com/weekly-digest/12-states-have-formally-adopted-advanced-clean-cars-ii/
This has since been overturned, because our government is capricious, but saying there were no mandates is absurd.
80% EV, 20% PHEV were mandated by law, no ICE-only vehicles sold in CA and other states by 2035
I believe you have it exactly wrong.
Larger companies have larger credit lines, more employees to fire, more company-owned stock and real assets to sell and/or leverage.
Smaller companies have very little economic cushion when things go sideways.
Watch for smaller companies of all types, larger companies which are already overleveraged, and JLR to go belly up in the coming months.
Meanwhile – Look for the rest of the planet to move forward with China in lieu of the US – economically and politically. While the US continues to turn inward and atrophy politically and economically.
People are going to find out fast that the US needs the rest of the world more than the rest of the world needs the US.
Agreed except I can easily see the British gov’t keeping JLR afloat.
We can make all kinds of “National Security” jokes, but it represents a significant core of its manufacturing knowledge/experience and maintains a production base important to other industries.
Yes – The British are so good about preserving elements of their former glory….
We found out during the Time of Covid that way too much of the US manufacturing was outsourced for the sake of profits. If, heaven forbid, the nation were to be in a situation like WWII, the “Arsenal of Democracy that saved the world’s bacon would not be available.
Squeeze is very underrated. I had a cassette of “Singles” as a kid that I listened to till it was dramatically destroyed by a very temperamental tape deck.
You could say (and are saying) that many automakers will be Up the Junction.
On the Well Side – Toyota, GM, Hyundai and Kia, all have well diversified portfolios of products that hit most every market, with Toyota being the Hybrid King, while H/K and GM have great EV tech that can stand on it’s own fairly well, but most importantly, all three have great entry level products, broad varieties of powertrains within key segments, and a wide breadth of competitive vehicles in popular segments.
On the Not Well side – Nissan, Mercedes, VW, Stellantis. All listed have significant deficiencies in age of products, ill-conceived product plans made during Covid that have grown stale or flopped in the market. VW and Mercedes both made bets on electrification in the wrong way which has driven away buyers, while Nissan and Stellantis have updated their product lines too slowly, clung to poor powertrains, and failed to understand key markets. For more pointed examples, Nissan made a new Murano (Why?) and has stuck to the horrible VC-Turbo engines and is doing nothing about a new X-Terra while the 4Runner sells like crazy.
Stellantis meanwhile has disastrously bad PHEV (Jeep 4Xe) tech that is both unreliable and undesirable, made a completely foolhardy push to EVs in the worst segment possible, abandoned its luxury brand of Maserati, and has not adequately pursued a cohesive product portfolio for the future.
The real delineation of who is and will do well, versus those floundering, really seem to be divided along one clear line. Who threw their weight behind proposed EV mandates, and who did not. Those that either waited heavily on EVs (Toyota) or pushed for every technology at once (GM, Hyundai/Kia) are doing incredibly well as EV demand stalls, and those that put everything behind gimmick heavy, funky tech-laden EVs are finding out that the demand wasn’t guaranteed as they thought.
Good take
It’s a shame that Nissan is going into the shitter because I like Nissan vehicles I’ve driven.
gigantism is an advantage in polar climates – smaller ratio of surface area to volume helps preserve body temperature.
the extinction of macro-fauna at end of oligocene is often attributed to human predation.
so…not a great analogy from my perspective, especially imho as smaller manufacturers are less likely to survive the current chaos.
the caveat to that opinion is that technical innovation tends to move up-market, so a radical innovation by a small manufacturer in an adjacent market could upset the giants.
It’s the end of the Pleistocene that the megafauna extinctions happened, the Oligocene is much much older than that, long before humans.
Otherwise, spot on, because the big manufacturers can afford to lose much more money than the smaller ones in this weird transition period. The frustrating part is that there is not a stable regulatory framework to provide something for manufacturers to plan against but instead it’s all vibe-governing.
thanks, i went from (faulty) memory.
ya, tough to plan business strategy without a stable, predictable planning horizon…more uncertainty = more risk.
The larger the animal, the larger the food requirement. If the vegetation dies out or becomes too scarce, there’s only so many meals you can skip before you just erode away.
Smaller and more nimble creatures can survive on scraps a lot longer in a period of scarcity of resources.
Exactly. The asteroid impact that took out the larger dominant reptiles was a boon for the small mammals. The larger animals couldn’t find enough food, while the smaller, at the time, mammals needed very little to survive.
Glad you like Squeeze, though for early songs, I go to “Pulling Mussels From a Shell”
It’s hard not to look at Europe’s automakers and see some hard times ahead.
The domestics will be insulated from a lot of pressures because they have trucks to fall back on for profits, and the Asian automakers have the mainstream market on a pretty good lockdown.
At the same time, I remain very skeptical that Chinese dominance inside that country means much for the West. Everything I read seems like there’s a monstrous bubble going on there and while some of their vehicles look good on paper, the potential weakness of the companies, the reliability questions, and the general hostile attitude toward China from most of the West makes me wonder if they’ll ever achieve much success here.
Over priced trucks in a period of rising unemployment and consumers counting their pennies? Yeah, that’ll work well long term.
That’s Stellantis’ strategy.
But offer them 96month payment plans.
I will bet on the continued willingness of the American consumer to buy the large vehicles they want, as they have done almost uninterrupted for nearly 100 years now, over any short term economic fluctuations.
Just one more war or major incident is all it takes in the Middle East, to once again, spike fuel prices. Will they learn their lesson on this, what, 7th or 8th event? The definition of insanity comes to mind.
You seem to be implying that building, marketing, and selling products that Americans want to buy is some abnormal state of the world, and that one of these times we’ll “learn our lesson” or something and make a permanent change to the smaller vehicles that other countries purchase out of convenience or necessity.
The truth is that the US is a net oil exporter, that we need the Middle East less than ever, that previous oil crises have not displaced large vehicles from topping the sales charts over anything but the very short term, and that there is zero evidence of that ever changing. Many EVs and hybrids are also large SUVs and trucks.
In my opinion, insanity is expecting a century of revealed preferences to suddenly change based on nothing more than vibes.
Lol what OPEC does or doesn’t do has very little bearing on gas prices in the US anymore. The shale revolution pretty much ended their hold. We literally bombed Iran (which many decried at the time as the start of WWIII…) and gas prices didn’t budge.
As soon as prices go up, the shale producers spin back up and drive it down.
A lot is going to depend on how badly the AI bubble bursting (a “when” not an “if”) affects the real economy. If the Trough of Disappointment is deep and long enough Big Tech turns the servers off that’ll have downstream effects on not just chipmakers but electric utilities and governments that showered investments and tax breaks on them.
And thus far the only profitable use found for generative AI is scamming people. Every legit company calling itself “AI-powered” is tripping over it and only using it because of FOMO.
I’m right there with you in the AI Skeptics Club. The pop from that bubble is going to suck
I work in project management for a utility, this topic is near top of mind for me all the time.
Just ask AI to make self-driving cars. What could go wrong?
SAAB’s return to the auto market as a maker of AI-driven vehicles.
The same is true of crypto, but unfortunately so much money has now been sunk into it that attempting to course correct is going to have a huge implications even outside the crypto markets.
On the bright(-ish) side, all of this has prompted me to take a long, hard look at my investment mix and try to reduce my exposure to NVidia (it’s still larger than I’d like, but any index fund that includes them now is going to be overweight so there’s only so much you can do) and friends. I’m much better positioned for the crash now than I was a year ago. It’ll still hurt, but not as badly.
This was hard to follow as I never understood the different ages, I grew up with dinobots and that’s about as far as I could follow, also the movie Iceman but that was kinda dull, coolest thing about it was the biodome they had him in.
I think China does well, in Europe, In Mexico, in Canadia, in China. In the US Ford should do ok as they kinda went half-a$$ on EVs anyways. Tesla will still continue to have the majority of EVs as the other makes are backing down, maybe GM will come with a surprise in the new Bolt being cheap and good and put Carplay back in it but doubtful, probably be over $30k and at that price might as well get an Equinox, or Ioniq 3 if they bring it here.
It’ll be interesting to see if Chinese cars end up making it to Canada. The last I remember hearing, we had put some pretty punitive tariffs on them, and I don’t think there’s any here yet, but things could definitely change
The Canadian tariffs were put in place to protect American automakers under pressure from the US gov’t.
I don’t think the current US relationship has the same influence, and is short on any goodwill.
And to protect Canadian automakers (they’re the same automakers). If there weren’t Canadian jobs to protect, there wouldn’t be protective tariffs.
An argument could have been made to apply Tariffs the same as EU did.
But with EU production of EVs, and Canada-EU free trade, perhaps the Chinese brands will make it to Canada duty-free afterall.
Unintended consequences.
Yeah, that goodwill is definitely on the downswing, but we also seem to be in a position where it’s important to be able to look US-friendly for other economic negotiations, I guess?