[gumby]

Perhaps dominance is not required, despite their beliefs? There is more than one huge car company and a bunch of medium sized ones too.

It's possible some investors are buying in because they think they are getting into a viable-when-dominance-not-required business on the cheap.

(Me, I don't understand any of these businesses (We, Blue Apron etc) and let someone else take the risk.)

[lotsofpulp]

At the returns the investors want, dominance is required.

Lots of consolidation happening in auto manufacturing too, along with most fields. Even of the car makers that exist, I wonder how many would be kept propped up by a country just to ensure they retain manufacturing capability in case of war.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-renault-m-a-fiatchrysler-...

[gumby]

The returns the original Investors want: definitely.

But everyone selling at a loss is getting their money from someone buying. Since the price of some of these companies is nonzero, someone must think they are a good deal at that price. Just speculating as to why.

As for war fighting capability: that is the legit justification for ag support, but modern factories can’t be repurposed that way. Nobody would expect IBM to be able to retool to build machine guns any more.

The right fix is many automated reconfigurable on-demand factories making goods close to point of consumption. But that’s a long way away, and wind use humans.