[echelon]

> Only reason they wouldn't take off outside China is the astronomical tariffs the West are putting on Chinese cars (100% in the US).

They're dumping domestic overproduction on foreign markets. You do that long enough and you can weaken your foreign competitors in their domestic strongholds. This can destroy high-value domestic jobs, lead to atrophy of expertise, and is especially bad to "strategic" sectors of the domestic industrial base.

Tariffs are a tool to protect domestic markets against dumping. Every other nation's automotive companies are free to compete in Western markets because they're not actively engaging in dumping. Their competition strengthens domestic rivals because it is fair and on equal footing.

Australia doesn't care because it doesn't have a domestic automotive industry to protect, so Chinese overproduction is essentially just foreign subsidized stimulus to the Australian population.

[Kon5ole]

VW's former boss mentioned in an interview that it took VW 3 times as long to make a car than it does for Tesla. So I think that while there may be some dumping as well, the main explanation is efficiency.

A company that builds a robotic factory from scratch and that only makes electric cars will be able to make cheaper cars than one who already has a huge headcount of combustion car workers. Auto workers are unionised and often working in factories bound by political agreements. You can't just close the combustion engine plant or reeducate everyone to make electric engines, it's years of negotiations.

If you start from scratch you don't have that problem, and you don't need to include that cost into the price of your cars.

That said, it makes perfect sense for a civilised society to protect their workers while they are reeducated and reassigned to new work by blocking foreign competition. But only for a while, while going all-in on the required changes.

Reality can't be ignored forever.

[bluGill]

VW has also learned a lot about making cars over the years. Fit and finish is reportedly better on VW vs Tesla. (this is very hard to measure though - once someone buys something as expensive as a car they are not emotionally willing to admit they made a mistake and so they will tend to ignore problems with their own while piling on perceived problems with the other)

[tonyedgecombe]

VW has become fat and lazy. It looks like they are just getting started on fixing that but they have a long way to go.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...

[churchill]

Western cope never gets old. Western automakers had the chance to dominate international markets, but they stayed back at home, making overpriced cars for their captive audience of local buyers.

Whenever competitors showed up, they laughed at them, before panicking when those upstarts starting challenging their market dominance. It happened with Japan, Korea, and now China.

So, if you feel China competes unfairly, close off your markets. Countries without a local auto industry will accept Chinese EVs readily. BYD & co. will snatch American & EU automakers' foreign markets before they come home to swallow you alive by building factories in low-cost countries like Bulgaria, Mexico, & Brazil.

Basically, the Toyota cycle will repeat itself because Western (esp. American) automakers spent hundreds of billions on share buybacks instead of R&D.

[echelon]

That is a vast oversimplification that discounts the incredible geopolitical changes over the past 40 years.

But at the end of the day, we're protecting our own interests.

[churchill]

I understand - I'm not wishing evil on the West. I want prosperity for all humanity. All I'm saying is that it's shortsightedness and hubris that even got Western automakers (and businesses at large) to this stage. Rest on their laurels, not learning from history, assuming the good times will continue unabated.

Just like Jack Welch and General Electric: financialize companies to the max, optimize for quarterly share increases, and earn billion-dollar bonuses. When the company inevitably collapses/shrinks after you retire, it's no longer your business.

Whether it's China's foray into nuclear, wind power, carmaking, solar, etc., they simply copy existing Western designs and keep developing them diligently while the incumbents optimize for quarterly earnings.

[IncreasePosts]

These complaints seem orthogonal to the question of China using dumping as a tactic to dominate a market. Even if you thought the US auto industry was very healthy and well run, it could still be existentially affected by a huge actor with near infinite money like the CCP dumping

[churchill]

Only one country can print the world's reserve currency from thin air and it's not China nor the CCP. Why doesn't the US counter-dump then? Spoil the rest of us with affordable EVs and hasten humanity's transition away from ICE vehicles.

[IncreasePosts]

How would you limit the blast radius to china? And still remain on good enough terms for all of the other trade that happens above-board?