autotldr@lemmings.world
on 10 Dec 2023 07:25
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
LONDON/DETROIT, Dec 8 (Reuters) - The rise of inexpensive Chinese electric vehicles has upped the pressure on legacy automakers who have turned to suppliers, from battery materials makers to chipmakers, to squeeze out costs and develop affordable EVs quicker than previously planned.
“Automakers are really now only turning to affordable vehicles, knowing they’ve got to or they will lose out to Chinese manufacturers,” said Andy Palmer, chairman of UK startup Brill Power, which has developed hardware and software to boost EV battery management system performance.
Palmer, formerly Aston Martin’s CEO, said Brill Power’s products could boost EV range by 60% and enable smaller batteries.
Stellantis (STLAM.MI) is building a European plant with China’s CATL (300750.SZ) to make cheaper LFP batteries and recently unveiled the Citroen electric e-C3 SUV, which starts at 23,300 euros ($24,540).
Vincent Pluvinage, CEO of Palo Alto, California-based OneD Battery Sciences, said that on his recent visits with European automaker customers, every meeting started with the same refrain: “‘Reducing costs is now more important than anything else.’”
Veekim CEO Peter Siegle said using cheaper ferrite and low-cost processes - including 3D-printed copper wiring - can cut an EV motor’s price by 20%.
The original article contains 809 words, the summary contains 195 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
bufalo1973@lemmy.ml
on 10 Dec 2023 07:29
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“We can’t lower the prices, it’s impossible so soon”
DrunkenPirate@feddit.de
on 10 Dec 2023 07:36
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There‘s a word for that „Greedflation.“ This is what western car makers do. Luckily, the Cinese car makers grasp their chance and disrupt the market
alvvayson@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 08:18
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While that is part of it, the other, bigger part is that Western countries actually do have higher labour costs: better salaries and conditions for our workers.
When China was outcompeting us on undesirable, low productivity, jobs, we accepted that. It was better to raise a billion Chinese out of poverty than to protect our lowest productivity factory workers. And those workers mostly transitioned to other jobs with higher productivity.
But now China is richer and their labour force is shrinking, so they will compete with highly productive factory jobs.
Politically, it is unlikely that car workers will accept unemployment. Nor will other highly paid workers.
So a trade war is brewing, you better brace yourself for it.
hark@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 08:35
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China wasn’t “outcompeting us on undesirable, low productivity, jobs”. Corporations were shipping jobs to China to undercut highly productive factory jobs back then, too, so they could save on labor costs. It’s only now that China is undercutting corporate profits that these same corporations come crying and shitting their pants. That’s also why you see a ramping up of negative media pieces on China. It was never about charitably raising people out of poverty. It was always about corporations undercutting labor to gain greater profits. Fuck 'em, bring on the cheap cars.
alvvayson@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 09:22
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Dude, I’m old enough to have lived through it.
Making toys and other plastic shit was never a high paying job in the West.
And no, it wasn’t charity, it was a win-win that increased living standards on both sides.
But it did have an impact on low paying manufacturing jobs in the West and that impact was accepted by Labour unions for the two reasons I gave: we (rightfully) concluded there were enough other, better jobs available and didn’t want to keep Chinese workers poor.
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 10 Dec 2023 09:36
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Yeah I’m confused by the charity argument. When have American corporations ever done anything out of the kindness of their hearts?
alvvayson@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 09:53
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Read what I said. Labour Unions, not corporations.
Aceticon@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 12:31
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The “good for people” argument (which has been misportrayed here as “charity”) was made by politicians to justify tearing down the trade barriers that allowed wealthiest countries such as the US to be a higher-income bubble.
Once those trade barriers were down, all those jobs which had no other price protections than said trade barriers (jobs like, for example, assembly workers, but not things like Legal professions specialized in a country’s Law and which require registering with a local Law Society to practice) were suddenly competing with similar people all over the World, and a lot of countries in the World are full of people who would sell their work in those areas much cheaper than equivalent workers in high-income nations.
The people it was good for were people in those “open to competition” occupations in Low Income but reasonably safe countries like China (whose income went up as manufacturing moved there) and the people who owned the means of production (who got higher dividends due to the higher profits being made by paying low-income country manpower costs and receiving high-income country prices for products and services) but nobody else as even the eventual fall in prices that occurred (over the years, as all those companies with China costs started competing on price because they could thanks to the bigger profit margins due to much lower manpower costs) was not enough to make up for the faster and deeper downwards pressure on salaries in high-income countries that happenned due to said manpower competition with workers in countries with much cheaper salaries (for example, in the mid-70s about 23% of corporate revenue in American went to salaries, whilst by 2012 it was down to 7%).
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
on 11 Dec 2023 04:11
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Heres the problem with the talking point of needing to bring manufacturing jobs back: we can’t fill the manufacturing jobs that we have
I work for a company that sells services to warehouses and industrial facilities. We can’t fully staff our locations, we can’t keep most of the people we hire and neither can our customers, and it comes down to the fact that the jobs absolutely suck. Who wants to work in a loud, poorly temperature controlled factory with heavy equipment and a high risk of injury while doing backbreaking work when you could work at a store or resteraunt for not much less and put far less risk to your life, limb and sanity? Bring the automation on, these jobs need to become a thing of the past.
Aceticon@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 09:26
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Sounds like the one thing you’re not mentioning - pay - is probably shit.
If the salary offered was enough for a whole family of 5 to live of it, including a good house and a car, like in the old days, I bet you would have trouble keeping candidates away.
The “people don’t want to work nowadays” arguments invariably forget to include the little detail that even a “competitive” salary in industry today is in real terms (of what it actually buys) nowhere as much as it was 50 years ago.
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
on 11 Dec 2023 13:23
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Most industrial jobs start at around 50-60k and in many cases it’s the best paying work someone can get without a college degree.
Also I’m not saying “people don’t want to work” I’m saying people have standards now and don’t want to work in factories, because really, who would?
Aceticon@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 14:43
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Right, two points:
Industrial job salaries relative to cost of living are still way less than back in the 60s. Even the “best paying work” in that domain still pays comparativelly crap given the real cost of living in the US in the present day. My point is that there has been a sistemic fall - across the board - in pay for all such jobs when compared with cost of living, and that’s due to Globalization.
Office work in open-office or even cubicle environments isn’t really better (at many levels) than factory work, and in some countries that kind of work tends to slip into personal time (such as getting calls about work when at home in the evening and weekends) - the kind of harm suffered by employees is different, not less, so people end up having strokes, hearth attacks or simply die from overwork (the latter more of a Japanese phenomenon) rather than the more physical kind of accident or consequences of physical overwork. Office work does, however, tend to pay more than factory work, so lots of people invest in higher education to work in an office doing mindless work and they’re not going to apply for factory work.
Whilst office work pay has also been falling in the last decade or so, and now is actually not that much more than pay in a good industrial job, those people who invested in higher education are highly unlikely to admit to themselves their degree is worthless (and hence their time and money was wasted) and hence are unlikely to apply for the kind of work that doesn’t require a degree even though sometimes they would be better of doing it, plus still now at least theoretically there are more opportunities for promotion and income growth in a shit office job than a well paid industrial job.
Manufacturing and union membership took such massive hits in the US over that period of time. It was win-win for the corporations who greatly expanded profit margins, and the Chinese government, who were happy to use their citizens as sweatshop labor to get ahead. You lived through the propaganda at the time and decided to accept it as the truth.
Holyhandgrenade@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 09:36
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I hate it when corpos use the “oh we can’t lower prices because our staff is getting paid too much”-narrative. What about the CEO who takes half the profits for himself?
It’s the workers who create value for a company, they don’t take it away by getting paid for their work.
alvvayson@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 09:57
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The sad fact of the matter is… math
A corporation might have 10 C-level guys dividing $50 million amongst themselves and 10.000 workers earning $70K, which costs about $100K due to overheads (health insurance, retirement, etc). Together, that’s a billion, which is 20x more than the C level guys.
The C level guys aren’t the big expense, not by a long shot.
Labour, government and shareholders divide most of the earnings amongst themselves.
For the record, I do think we need to tax the wealthy more and the workers less.
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 11:39
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Without the workers there’s no product, no income. The C-suite is dispensable. The workers aren’t.
Besides, worker productivity has been skyrocketing for the last 50 years, as has cost of living, but worker wages have been stagnant. C-suite pay has kept up with the increase in productivity, though, if not outpaced it.
alvvayson@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 12:08
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I have no disagreement on this argument.
But C-suite compensation is not a significant part of prices.
Energy prices, tax, labour costs and the cost of capital (i.e. returns to shareholders and creditors) are what drives prices.
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 12:19
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alvvayson@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 12:33
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You are literally contradicting yourself.
And it’s childish to downvote someone who is actually responding to you.
I’m not going to waste my time on someone who can’t be reasonable and civil.
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 13:11
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Saying that the C-suite are paid too much compared to workers isn’t contradicting that greedflation is the main reason for higher prices. The two are in no way mutually exclusive.
I’m not downvoting you for responding. I’m downvoting you for spreading commonly believed pro-corporate apologia.
I’m not going to waste my time
Too late.
DrunkenPirate@feddit.de
on 10 Dec 2023 08:39
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Don’t think labor costs is a big factor. Car production is the sector that is most automated. Just think of this endless bands of hanging cars with robot arms working on it. Tesla even topped this.
It’s mainly the unwillingness to design and sell cheap cars due to less profits. In Germany we had electric cars for 20k€ or even combustion cars under 15k€. But they stopped building it. Although it was sold out in weeks.
In my region there was a Startup by the Aachen University RWTH (which is an elite university in Germany) bulding small EVs for around 20k€. They simply bought all parts from suppliers and just assembled it. And engineered and designed it first. Unionized and still competitive. Unfortunately, they didn’t fly.
EV building is rather simple. The software is key. And this is the missing part at car makers capabilities.
I second your thoughts on trade war. However, I guess it will be much simpler with high taxes, high quality regulations, and may be less support by car workshops. We will see…
IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social
on 10 Dec 2023 10:12
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There is still a shit ton of people working in a car factory. Tesla had to scale back their amount of robot workers since humans could work much faster. Tesla expects to have 60,000 people working in their Gigafactory in Texas when the production of the Cybertruck ramps up.
EvergreenGuru@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 10:23
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They're trying to kill off our domestic car industries.
Maggoty@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 09:36
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Selling at a loss to enter a market or gain market share is a time honored tradition at this point.
Hyperreality@kbin.social
on 10 Dec 2023 09:45
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It is, but as the article mentions some manufacturers are making a loss of 35k per car.
If those cars are then sold for 5k less than the US/EU/Japanese equivalent, despite lower wages and environmental standards, you have to ask yourself questions.
Yes you just described the business model. Everyone from Walmart to Amazon to Uber uses it. They take a loss in the short term, relying on new investor money or other products.
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
on 10 Dec 2023 15:20
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Or they could be building economies ot scale? You can’t drive down costs making thousands, you need to make millions.
That’s possible too. It’s not like the US doesn’t give businesses loans and grants for upscaling.
Molecular0079@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 09:54
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No reason why western countries also can’t subsidize EV car companies to remain competitive.
Like…what are we supposed to do? Be content with ridiculously priced EVs and be willing to pay a small fortune for them? Fuck off with that noise.
Western corporations have had no problems fucking over the average consumer for decades or laying off thousands of employees at the first sign of trouble. Let them adapt or die I say. Competition is always good. Western corporations have the smarts and the resources to compete, they just need to be forced to.
Hyperreality@kbin.social
on 10 Dec 2023 10:05
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Controversial take: the problem isn't car prices. They haven't increased that much when compared to inflation, and you're getting far more and far better cars for your money when adjusted for inflation.
The problem is wages haven't risen and housing prices have risen too much, meaning people have less to spend on a car.
E: I googled. In the US the cost of a median house was 18k in 1953. An average car cost 3.5k.
Now, the median house costs 400k.
400k/18k x 3.5k = If car prices had risen as much as house prices, the median car would cost 77k.
Molecular0079@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 10:15
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Not a controversial take at all IMHO. You’re not wrong. Housing is absolutely ridiculous right now.
MonkderZweite@feddit.ch
on 10 Dec 2023 14:39
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and you’re getting far more and far better cars for your money when adjusted for inflation.
Yes… cars now are faster, safer, and more efficient than they were in the 50s.
Even if you discount all the “features” they’ve added the bare necessities of a car are tons better than mid-20th century cars or even late 20th century cars
MonkderZweite@feddit.ch
on 10 Dec 2023 15:05
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Well, most of it are now needlessly oversized, diminishing the better efficiency.
CosmoNova@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 10:51
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That‘s a terrible idea. Just because China throws irresponsible amounts of cash at cars doesn‘t mean we have to do the same mistake. We can simply say it‘s not OK to sell products under manufacturing costs to gain market share and that‘s that. Let‘s not inflate the already oversized car market even more.
silentknyght@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 12:54
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I agree it’s a bad first step. I’d keep trying idea on the table, but I’d start by working with the European car manufacturers to create huge tariffs on those cars. Make it impossible for them to be sold at those prices in Western markets
eltrain123@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 13:18
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They can simply say they don’t subsidize their manufacturing and operate profitably at those prices.
Just saying something doesn’t make it work unless there are legal things that back up the position. And in foreign trade, that means tariffs… which economists have been screaming about (for decades) having negative ramifications that ripple through the economy.
eltrain123@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 13:09
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A lot of western countries are subsidizing EV sales. Most western auto companies just waited a decade longer than they should have to start making EVs and are in the thick of developing technology when the early movers are hitting maturity.
On top of subsidies at the national level, most legacy automakers are selling their EVs at a significant loss, but that is because they haven’t reached economies of scale yet… not because they are trying to undercut competition. It’s hard to develop new products and even harder to get them to scale production. Ford has been making cars for 120 years, but that isn’t the same thing as making an EV. They effectively have to start over in a new field… a decade behind companies that invested early.
A lot of the press you hear about EV manufacturers cutting back because demand is low has to do with them cutting back because they are losing $50-70k per vehicle they are selling and can’t stomach the losses. The demand is there, they just can’t make an EV at a price that generates profit. They trim commissions at dealerships to try to help defray cost, but that minimizes incentive for sales teams to try to move them and exacerbates the problem. On top of that, their ICE sales are diminished due to high interest rates and an overall market slowdown in large purchases so every vehicle they sell at a loss hurts the bottom line that much more.
They’re trying to wait to push the cost involved in getting to scale until interest rates go down and it’s more affordable to invest in new technology. They are fucked. Tesla is currently the only American company that is profitable at scale and Elon can’t shut the fuck up on eX-Twitter long enough to stop pissing off the marketplace. The table is set for Chinese EVs to flood the US market, but I don’t think people will be as open to Chinese vehicles with the current data privacy issues and the tense geo-political position between the US and China.
I’m thinking that, if it gets bad enough, the federal government will disincentivize Chinese EVs with tariffs to offset the Chinese gov’t subsidies… if the current US EV tax incentives don’t do enough to spur legacy automakers to kick it into high gear… which it doesn’t seem to be doing. It’s going to be a rough decade for legacy automakers.
Or just let those who can’t compete die, which is totally fine.
I don’t have any loyalty to some specific car brand.
Reality_Suit@lemmy.one
on 10 Dec 2023 10:20
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Good
CosmoNova@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 10:47
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Yep. They‘re doing exactly what we usually call hostile underbidding to heavily inflate prices later when they‘re a top dog. A practice that is not quite legal in most parts of the west. And whoever wants to know when things still don‘t work out for the car maker because subsidies dry up: Search for Chinese manufacturer ‚Weltmeister‘. That will make you think thrice about ever coming near a Chinese EV.
Hyperreality@kbin.social
on 10 Dec 2023 11:03
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The kind of thing usually results in a trade war, sanctions and tariffs.
The problem in Europe, is that our manufacturers are so reliant on Chinese parts and manufacturing, that they've asked our government NOT to intervene. China has them by the nuts, because they've outsourced too much. IRC they can't even make batteries without using Chinese parts.
doublejay1999@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 17:03
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Greedflation is when you checks notes compete in a market by offering cheaper products?
vivadanang@lemm.ee
on 10 Dec 2023 08:00
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gee the market has been clamoring for a decade while the auto industry said “BIG TRUCKS AND SUV’S!”
BruceTwarzen@kbin.social
on 10 Dec 2023 08:54
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I mean people also eat it up like good luttle piggies.
ExLisper@linux.community
on 10 Dec 2023 09:17
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Yes, people being dumb is the real source of all issues.
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca
on 10 Dec 2023 09:16
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I mean there’s still a good amount of people in my position where you can’t fit 3 car seats in any ev in the market. Haven’t checked in the past year, maybe it’s changed but I also can’t afford to waste 60k+
jennwiththesea@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 09:32
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Or in a five-seater car or crossover. It’s ridiculous. Carseats and boosters are massive, even the ones with the smallest bases. Then after that you need space for sports equipment, musical instruments, other friends, etc. I’m not sure what the solution is here, other than acknowledging that for a few years in a family’s life they’re going to need a bigger vehicle, and it would be great if manufacturers offered a hybrid or EV solution for them, too.
Mazda is finally coming out with a PHEV three row next year, starting around $55k. Not sure who else, besides Rivian with their new fully EV three row at $75k+, which is completely unaffordable for most families.
IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social
on 10 Dec 2023 10:00
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Kia EV9 has three rows and starts at $55k still expensive but definitely in range for a middle class family
jennwiththesea@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 10:06
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Oh, nice! I didn’t have that one on my radar. Our next family car needs to be either hybrid or EV, and I’ve just started looking.
Delta_V@midwest.social
on 10 Dec 2023 13:57
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There were two hybrid minivans on the market a couple years ago when I went shopping for one. One plug-in from Chrysler and a non-plug-in from Toyota. Both cost about as much as a Model 3.
NounsAndWords@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 09:32
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Safety and reliability are two of the biggest factors in family cars. You would think they would want to make larger family vehicles with those selling points.
I just looked it up and the only minivan EV is 114k…
buzz86us@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 10:51
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Yeah and that is part of my point on being pro-Chinese EV… Not only affordability, but the fact that there is simply no choices for certain segments. Our automakers are so conglomerated that there is very minuscule choice in EV since each puts out maybe 2 or 3 models.
There is also proof that competition is causing local builders to step up… With Citroen offering the ec3 with LFP, and 200 miles of range for $20k… Meanwhile Stelantis is releasing absolute trash in the US because they can get away with it.
You can get a Pacifica PHEV with a whole 40 miles of electric range… that is like your one choice… Though the Canoo could meet that need if it ever comes to market.
There is a similar issue for cargo vans the US has like 3 choices for electric…
Meanwhile even European buyers have far more choice.
kameecoding@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 16:30
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cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca
on 11 Dec 2023 03:20
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I did, I tried to fit my seats in one actually. Before making a snarky comment, you should do your research and know that not all car seats conform to a size. Some are bigger than others and the front seats cannot touch the car seat in a rear facing configuration. I’m tall enough there was no way I could drive the car.
kameecoding@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 10:06
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what sized seats do you have that it doesn’t fit into a fucking Ioniq5?
maybe you will need the Kia EV9 then, because that is a ridiculously sized thing.
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca
on 12 Dec 2023 04:54
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They also can’t touch side to side. I think you must just not know a lot about the safety requirements of car seats. All EVs were typically very narrow too.
kameecoding@lemmy.world
on 12 Dec 2023 09:05
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I have a Hyundai i40 CW, IT’S A huge car, by eruopean standards anyway.
the Ioniq l5 is wider by 7.5 cms and has a longer wheelbase by 23 cms
if you can’t fit inside that thing then you simply have oversized shit, the fuck do you drive now?
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
on 11 Dec 2023 04:19
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Honestly it feels like most companies producing child seats and strollers and whatnot (as well as the stores that stock and sell them) have stopped putting any focus on solutions for 2 or more children and instead only produce solutions for only children. I’ve got 2 young kids 2 years apart and we had a heck of a time finding a double stroller among other things
silencioso@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 09:21
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Hear me out: a bare minimum electronics car extremely reliable, no screens no bells and whistles and with the smallest possible engine battery that costs less than $5.000 💥
IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social
on 10 Dec 2023 09:56
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You can get an electric motorcycle for that price. Even electric microcars cost more than $5000. Unless you want to buy a Chinese tin can death machine on four wheels that aren’t street legal.
“Why is this $8,000 car so terrible,” he lamented, without a trace of irony.
oatscoop@midwest.social
on 11 Dec 2023 14:59
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It isn’t “terrible”, it’s ugly because of purely aesthetic design choices: specifically that Fiat Multipla style “forehead ridge”. It’s a styling problem – not a form factor or price point one.
SlopppyEngineer@discuss.tchncs.de
on 14 Dec 2023 17:18
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Turns out there are after market mods for that. Spoiler, other front, flame paint job
The Chinese government is subsidising their car industry, so they can engage in dumping, and decimate our car industries. When our domestic car industries are dead, they'll raise prices. It's like Amazon or any other scummy megacorp that kills local businesses.
This being said, it's hard to feel sorry for companies who also receive plenty of government subsidies and tax breaks, broke the law on emissions testing and likely killed a lot of people because of it, and refused to innovate or lower prices out of sheer greed.
zurohki@aussie.zone
on 10 Dec 2023 11:48
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Selling at a loss is how you build volume and reach the economies of scale that drive down costs.
If you fiddle around half-heartedly putting out small numbers of EVs, you’ll never come close to competing with a company that puts out over a million a year. A lot of automakers still aren’t willing to commit, and they’re whining about the position they chose to put themselves in.
Squizzy@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 11:55
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I truly don’t care if China destroy the car industry, it’s fucking ridiculous how expensive some basic shit is. In my opinion if you introduce a feature into your cars, you have ten years before it should become standard.
sir_reginald@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 19:08
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a comment in the article you linked says this better than I ever could:
This whole narrative about alleged “subsidies” to Chinese EV makers and them “losing $35,000 per vehicle” is pure propaganda. Firstly, that company - Nio - is a relatively new one and it is still ramping up its production. A year ago when they were not selling EVs yet but invested a lot in R&D it could be said that they were losing infinite amount of money per vehicle - because infinity is what you get from dividing by zero. Both this logic and this math are erroneous. Tesla was losing money for years even after it started making and selling its cars.It kept going by taking money from investors in exchange for shares. That is exactly what the Chinese EV companies do. So secondly, those are not “subsidies” but investments, even if the money comes from Chinese government entities. This article states itself that local governments take stock in companies in exchange for investment - exactly the same thing Tesla investors did.
The article also talks about BYD, a more established manufacturer than Nio, that is making profits selling electric cars.
The $2,000 price was legit, but that didn’t include batteries. It was another $300 or so for heavy lead acid batteries, $500 if I wanted a lithium-ion battery pack (3 kWh), $710 for a bigger lithium pack (5 kWh), and $1,050 if I wanted a giant lithium battery (6 kWh).
The article goes on to say that shipping is a big deal, too. It requires thousands for a space in a container. But the total clocked under $9K IIRC
tagliatelle@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 12:15
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giant, 6 kWh…
BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca
on 10 Dec 2023 15:42
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No problem for people who work from home and only need to go shopping once a week.
topinambour_rex@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 12:21
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How much for a sodium battery ?
venoft@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 13:48
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The “giant” battery should be at least 10x bigger to call it “medium sized”.
altima_neo@lemmy.zip
on 11 Dec 2023 00:28
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Fake4000@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 12:23
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Honestly, just take a basic normal car, and replace its engine with an electric one. No on screen entertainment, no cameras, no AI bull shit, no self driving. Just as basic as it gets.
AnneBonny@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 10 Dec 2023 13:09
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They don’t know how to market something that doesn’t have a bunch of gimmicky bullshit.
“Get your cheap, reliable EVs here!” Done. You can pay me that $100k marketing salary whenever it’s convenient.
netburnr@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 13:45
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Backup cameras are required on all 2018 or newer vehicles in the US and Canada, so you will need at least one in the back and a small screen for that, maybe hide that screen in the review.
This imaginary basic car should also come with a double-din radio so it can be upgraded like the old days.
madcaesar@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 13:07
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I wish they sold me just a double din hole with cables ready for connection. All stock radios single or double din suck ballsack for what they are charging.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 19:54
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With more and more cars these days, you’ve got more than radio controls in the OSD.
The steering wheel heater of all things can only be accessed through the infotainment system on my Dad’s F-150. It’s beneath the Bluetooth button.
Usernameblankface@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 14:34
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Yes, the absolute basic required technology to make it road legal, physical switches and either physical gauges or a non-touch screen for gauges if that’s cheaper.
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 15:08
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Physical switches > screens. It’s much harder to develop the muscle memory for a screen. I don’t have to look away from the road with switches.
Usernameblankface@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 17:51
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The reason everything is on a touch screen now is that it’s cheaper than physical switches, as ridiculous as that seems. And yes, I greatly prefer physical switches.
Buy and wire multiple switches on every car, requiring wiring harnesses, ECM IO pins etc. or pay an intern a minimal sum once so he can put “designed Chevrolet in-dash console” on his resume. Then never update it even though it supports OTA updates and is a glitchy mess, Chevy
This is the same reason so many products come with a stupid Bluetooth app now rather than more than one button. Pay once rather than pay on every unit.
Usernameblankface@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 16:38
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Hmm. In that case, physical buttons is the one luxury I’d pay a premium for.
Maybe something like the SEXY buttons for Teslas actually become a more common thing. Wireless buttons that you can stick almost anywhere you want and set up to control what you want.
lolcatnip@reddthat.com
on 10 Dec 2023 23:40
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Wireless implies batteries. Hell no.
IIRC one of the issues with the 737 Max was that it had wireless internal components whose lithium ion batteries could catch fire. If you can’t even get batteries right on a product constantly maintained by a professional crew, what are the odds of it working out well in a car?
If it’s BLE, it could last years on a coincell battery. I don’t find that to be a problem if it can give a warning in advance of running out.
slumberlust@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 16:06
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What’s the incentive? Most people will have to buy a car anyways, so without a different incentive, it’s better for every manufacturer to sell you a 60k+ car where the margins are way higher. If profit is the sole motive it’s a no brainer.
HankMardukas@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 18:49
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The incentive is going to be undercutting the competition. It’s going to happen someday, might as well be you, car company.
AA5B@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 17:04
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The problem is you can’t efficiently electrify a vehicle designed for fossil fuels. The requirements differ too much.
Actually EV conversions were common before we got intentionally designed EVs and the original Tesla roadster was built on a standard Lotus body and frame, but luckily we’re beyond that now.
You can still choose to electrify a vehicle now but you get poor performance and range, unbalanced handling, and pay way too much for a mediocre vehicle. It’s bot worth it
They mean at the design/manufacturing level, not retrofitting.
They mean just creat a simple ev car with only the needed designs to house the battery, controller and electric motor(s).
They mean discard all ideas of “futuristic” interiors, techs, or anything. Just build a modest car with an electric powerplant and battery storage. Then stop.
Fire any designer who tells you AI could improve the product.
lolcatnip@reddthat.com
on 10 Dec 2023 23:37
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Fire any designer who tells you AI could improve the product.
That would be pretty dumb. It’s entirely possible to use AI in the design and engineering phase without AI being in the product that’s delivered to the customer. It’s also entirely possible for AI to be used in areas like crash mitigation, improving the handling in poor road conditions, or optimizing charging speed to improve battery life. Those uses of AI are largely invisible but offer a tangible improvement to the vehicle without being what anyone would consider luxurious. Choosing to ignore a design option because it sounds like something trendy is a great way to design a product that’s a worse value for the money.
c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 01:28
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AI in the vehicle, he means. Obviously ML models are useful for crash data, don’t be a pedant.
lolcatnip@reddthat.com
on 11 Dec 2023 02:08
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I mean, I interpreted it the way they seem to have as well. Not being a pedant, I literally just read it different.
c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 18:00
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OP could have been more clear, but it’s not unusual for people to take the worst possible interpretation in order to debate something no one was arguing.
What this entire thread is about is just giving us a 2005-2010 era car that’s electric. An audio deck with B/T only. No wifi, no Internet connectivity to the manufacturer, all the Laas nonsense with the updates and shit.
Just a vehicle that happens to be electric, not a computer on wheels.
Think this is the idea behind the GM Ultium platform (and probably others). They always held out “skateboard” as the goal, although I don’t know if that’s still a thing. Create essentially wheels and a plank that include all the power and drive components, modify to a small set of sizes, and crank them out by the millions. Then each car is a unique body and interior on top of the “skateboard”. As the platform gets to scale, you can drive the cost down, while still making unique cars on top of it - including low end cars
dQw4w9WgXcQ@lemm.ee
on 11 Dec 2023 04:37
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Its a nice idea which probably has a lot of complex implications. It would probably be a huge pain to figure out dimensions and compatible electric motors for every brand of non-electric vehicle, so the production of replacements would become very wide. Typically, the battery of an EV isn’t just a brick in the engine room, but it’s a whole range of cells along the length of the vehicle. Using the same space as the combustion engine might leave you with a vehicle with terrible range. Also, the safety of a car takes the engine into account. Replacing a combustion engine with an electrical engine would likely require a whole new safety overview for each individual model.
I honestly really hope that your suggestion would work, but I’m not expecting to see this becoming a wide solution before EVs dominate the market anyway.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 15:39
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I don’t think he meant to literally take the ice out of a camera and replace it with a motor and battery.
But rather he meant, make a new ev, on an EV chassis, but without all the nonsense that drives up costs without adding significant value.
I don’t need touch screen everything with 3d gaming built in, gull wing doors, and custom flush door handles that don’t work if you have a hand injury or any type of disability.
ArdMacha@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 18:45
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You can buy aftermarket android touch screen headunits with cameras for £150, they are not expensive at all, just a basic android tablet with a few extra ports
JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
on 11 Dec 2023 06:44
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Batteries will need a frame change if you don’t want to sacrifice the trunk or something. And range will be bad unless you improve areo dynamics and heating. But I think the Bolt and the Nero are pretty close to their ice counterparts.
Yeah that was the problem with the Nissan Leaf. It basically used the same frame as an ICE car, (and it wasn’t like it was a big SUV either) so all the batteries had to go in the back, and you had no storage and also there wasn’t really enough space in the back to have enough batteries to make it have decent range.
They did make the leaf plus that has decent range with the same formfactor though. Also I’m quite sure the batteries are not in the trunk, unless that’s where they put the extras in the plus version or something? Our 2015 leaf had significantly more trunk space than our brand new bolt despite being of similar dimensions. The bolt does have better rear leg room though.
The main issues with the leaf stem from not having any active heating/cooling for the battery and using an uncommon plug for level 3 charging that is going the way of the dodo. If you live in a temporate climate and don’t need to fast charge for road trips the leaf is a totally acceptable car IMO.
buzz86us@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 07:16
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The Citroen ec3 would be the car for you, but Stelantis doesn’t sell it in the US… Just the overpriced Fiat 500e that is pretty worthless
PraiseTheSoup@lemm.ee
on 11 Dec 2023 17:36
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Everything Stelantis does sell in the US is junk, and has been for 20 years. Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat…all junk.
frezik@midwest.social
on 11 Dec 2023 14:29
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That’s basically the Mini Cooper EV. Took the guts of a BMW i3 and dropped it in the shell of a Cooper S. They even left the engine vent on the hood.
It’s a fun car, and relatively inexpensive for the current crop of EVs, but its range is limited. We’re already moving past the era where this is a good idea.
lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee
on 10 Dec 2023 14:13
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Nooooo anything but more environmentally friendly vehicles that people can actually afford. Won’t somebody think of the profits?
kameecoding@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 16:26
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not sure about environmentally friendly,friendlier sure, but a well developed public transit system and biking infrastructure beats any kind of car based infrastructure
AA5B@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 16:58
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Complements. The reason we’re stuck in this auto-dystopia (are we auto-asphyxiating? ;-) is people wanting one size fits all infrastructure. Let’s apply this more intelligently this time - recognize that some areas are more built up than others and different solutions scale differently . In general that can be a good thing, but we need interconnected services for everyone. That does include cars in many areas, although I agree a worthwhile goal for cities/town centers is that people not need a car
Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 23:15
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Holy based someone on Lemmy not blindly advocating for public transport literally everywhere.
mightyfoolish@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 23:38
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I also want to add that if public transit was more more common; it would EVENTUALLY spread to the rural areas just in a more limited fashion. Also, towns do build up as they age, it’s not like they are static.
kameecoding@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 09:11
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public transport should be literally everywhere, why shouldn’t it?
Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 09:47
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It’s really efficient in densely populated areas but inefficient in sparsely populated areas.
While it should be everywhere eventually , the focus should definitely be on cities first.
kameecoding@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 10:04
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how is connecting smaller towns/villages to bigger placed by train inefficient?
Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 12:25
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The last miles are a huge problem in villages. Train stops and you then walk 5 miles every time? The bus needs to ride every 30 minutes to bring along 5 people that’s super expensive.
Also everyone there already has a car anyways since it’s basically required there.
Cities however can use public transport far more efficiently.
kameecoding@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 13:28
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you do realize trains are part of the public transport and no reasonable person would think you can’t take a car to the train station?
what do you think I am talking about? a bus going every 30 minutes to every house in bumfuck nowhere on the off chance they get a passenger?
Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
on 12 Dec 2023 00:01
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Yes but then you already have the car.
And if you already have the car then that’s usually far more practical than public transport.
Public transport works well in cities because it can completely eliminate the need for someone to own a car.
frezik@midwest.social
on 11 Dec 2023 14:38
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The more stops you have for a train, the slower, more expensive, and less efficient it is. They like hauling for long distances without stopping.
kameecoding@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 16:11
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still more efficient than anything else…
and then usually how it works is that some trains go local and stop everywhere and others are intercity and stuff and stop at less stations etc.
frezik@midwest.social
on 11 Dec 2023 16:20
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“Efficient” covers a lot of things. There are often reasons to avoid what is technically the most efficient solution by some measure. For trains, their high up front cost has to be made up by low marginal cost, which typically means having a high number of passengers for each stop.
And before you say it, no, I’m not demanding they be profitable, just that they be cost effective.
kameecoding@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 17:41
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Trains and good public transport are one of the most productive things economically and the best tools for rising economically for individuals, it might have a higher up front cost (which I don’t think it has, I highly doubt a mile of tracks costs more than a mile of road, especially long term), but it’s absolutely worth it long term.
pretty sure a lot of US towns spawned from being railroad stops or railroad adjacent, if they can make that happen, they can also revitalize the local economy, meanwhile cars are woefully inefficient and serve more as a gatekeeping device, if you need a car to function you have basically put an entry fee on society.
frezik@midwest.social
on 11 Dec 2023 17:58
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which I don’t think it has, I highly doubt a mile of tracks costs more than a mile of road, especially long term
It does. Highway costs around $10M/mile, and rail (without tunnels) close to $120M/mile. We also don’t need to build many new highways, while our aging rail infrastructure needs a lot of work just to get what we have up to snuff before we even talk about new rail.
Mostly, this comes down to things that go away with experience. Get rail projects going en mass and the problem will go away. That said, hooking up every town along the route is only going to make the initial build out worse.
kameecoding@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 19:04
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mile? see that’s your problem.
rail doesn’t cost that much in Europe.
frezik@midwest.social
on 11 Dec 2023 19:06
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Yes, I’m aware. That doesn’t actually address the problem.
kameecoding@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 19:11
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well the good news is that while you accounted for costs going down once projects are built, you also failed to consider the difference in capacity between railroad tracks and roads and also the maintenance costs that are gonna be much higher for roads.
so even if it’s more expensive upfront which it really isn’t, it’s so much better long term
frezik@midwest.social
on 11 Dec 2023 19:15
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Of course it’s more expensive up front. That’s trivially true when we have highways and not high speed rail.
Zink@programming.dev
on 11 Dec 2023 19:35
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They may have been talking about economic inefficiency, if you don’t have a busy enough route to justify the initial investment.
And in the US at least, there is a LOT of land, and huge amounts of it are sparsely populated. But that still adds up to a lot of people.
kameecoding@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 09:15
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The reason we’re stuck in this auto-dystopia (are we auto-asphyxiating? ;-) is people wanting one size fits all infrastructure.
The reason the US is a car dependent dystopia is because they let the auto industry dismantle a shitton of public infrastructure.
Just because you build public transport infrastructure doesn’t mean you can’t have your car, look at switzerland, netherlands, they have good public transport/bike infrastructure and still have cars.
Having great public transportation actually makes it better for people who only want to use cars, because it takes off a lot of people from the road who now have alternative options.
kameecoding@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 09:16
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which is?
systemglitch@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 23:29
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Says someone who lives exclusively in a city
franklin@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 00:42
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Trains and trans are a more cost effective and environmentally friendly way to transport the masses. It can work to a surprisingly small populations as evidenced by all of the small disparate towns in Switzerland, Norway and Denmark that depend on them.
Of course no solution works everywhere but cars should never be our first option.
AnAngryAlpaca@feddit.de
on 11 Dec 2023 02:26
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People seem to forget that there was a time before cars, where people had to rely on public transport alone.
buzz86us@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 07:13
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The US used to have robust systems of transit, but they’ve largely been demolished
I’m sorry but if maglev trains are an option I want my damn maglev train.
Anyways since we already don’t have public transport we might as well not have magic magnetic levitating public transport.
dQw4w9WgXcQ@lemm.ee
on 11 Dec 2023 04:19
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We need the incrementally more eco-friendly options as well. Most pickup truck driving office workers won’t suddenly get a bike and change their ways, so a more eco friendly personal vehicle is probably a lot more likely to reduce emissions for that demography.
kameecoding@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 09:08
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I am not sure that buying a brand new car offsets more than just using your existing car, so there is time to make those people change their ways
Don’t forget working from home. Proven by the lockdown air quality to be the most environmentally friendly option. Remember this when you’re employer is asking you to “return to the office”.
trackcharlie@lemmynsfw.com
on 10 Dec 2023 15:49
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… the same ‘cheap chinese evs’ that keep spontaneously combusting all over china?
Wow. Can’t wait…
onlinepersona@programming.dev
on 10 Dec 2023 16:33
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Somewhat unrelated: IINM most Europeans don’t drive even a quarter of the max range of EVs on most of their trips. The current range of EVs should be just fine it you plug it in every day like your phone.
Getting an EV that can get you to work and back or to a friend and back without charging should already allow to buy an EV that’s quite affordable.
MoodyRaincloud@feddit.nl
on 10 Dec 2023 20:14
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Most Europeans have one, max 2 cars per household. A fuckton of Europeans also go on holiday with their cars once or twice a year.
One car needs to work for most use cases. It’s fine if you have more cars than people in the house that one of them is a 100 mile range commuter, but a different kettle of fish if the same car needs to do an 800+ mile trip to the Mediterranean in summer and a 500 mile ski trip in winter.
Infinitus@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 20:30
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Also, I know a lot of people who do more than 100 km per day - and that is important. When you are buying a car, you aren’t looking only at what you need now, but what you might need in the future.
midnight@kbin.social
on 11 Dec 2023 14:28
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Then a plug in hybrid or elecric car with range extender motor makes more sense. I think it's pretty dumb to be carrying around expensive, heavy batteries everywhere you go that only get used fully twice a year.
lolcatnip@reddthat.com
on 10 Dec 2023 23:26
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IINM
That’s a new one to me. I’m surprised because I thought abbreviations in that style are starting to die out.
onlinepersona@programming.dev
on 11 Dec 2023 20:18
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If I’m Not Mistaken. IDK, I’ve seen it quite often 🤔 It’s not esoteric.
Treczoks@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 19:11
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If you see that European car makers sell the same car in China for less than half than they charge at home, you know they are basically milking us just for extra profit.
abhibeckert@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 22:37
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Except it’s rarely the “same car”. For example a Tesla Model 3 manufactured in China has an LFP lithium-ion battery, while the US manufactured ones use an NCA lithium-ion battery. It’s by far the most expensive component of the car and LFP batteries are much cheaper.
There are often other differences too - such as optional extras being standard in one market. And warranties vary (those are not free - it costs money to fix faulty cars and they factor it into the sale price).
actually they’ve been selling the LFP version in North America for a while now. Even with the extra import costs and reduced government grant due to a Chinese battery, it still ends up cheaper.
buzz86us@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 07:09
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Not true. Most products aren’t the cost of the materials. There are a lot of included expenses in the price of a product like the cost of labor. They’re also not the same cars.
Treczoks@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 10:00
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I am well aware that there are costs beside materials and labor. In my company, I’m part of those other costs - I’m R&D. The point is still: Why shall we bear all those costs and others don’t? Don’t expect people being happy about being handled gross unfair.
They’re also not the same cars.
Yes, there are differences. But they are small, and could be incorporated in a low-cost version of European cars, too - if they actually want a low cost version here.
Why shall we bear all those costs and others don’t
That sounds like standard supply demand. If you can bear it, and there is no alternative, you will. But moreover as was mentioned there are reasons that may require a product being different prices in different markets as operating expenses are not the same. The simple cost of launching a product in different markets incurs different costs, and thus different prices. That’s a trivial example, and with vehicles it gets really complex at the regulatory level, especially in regulatory-rich countries which are common in the EU.
Treczoks@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 14:16
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If you can bear it, and there is no alternative, you will.
And that is the point that will break the European car makers necks. The Chinese just start being alternatives, just like Japanese cars were in the 80s and 90s.
To give it credit, Japanese cars are now among the best in class, and can be enjoyed on a global market at a “reasonable” price. Took them a few decades to get there though. When/if Chinese manufacturers get to that level - that would be a win for the common consumer anywhere. And European companies with their trend to sell less, but more expensive, cars, will likely be outcompeted.
MrSilkworm@lemmy.world
on 10 Dec 2023 21:20
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Fear of cheap Chinese EVs spurs automaker dash for affordable cars
fear of competition spurs automakers to make competitive products. FTFY
arin@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 01:19
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Not “Asians”. Companies that follow the CCP’s policies and ways of doing business.
What you did was typical pro-CCP misdirection. You took “fear of cheap Chinese EVs” and ran with that to “Asians bad”. Chinese are not all Asians and the CCP is not a race.
Idk, I didn’t feel like they were pushing an agenda
The conflation of “Asians” being always applied to China is a common CCP propaganda tactic. There are many Asian countries, like Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, etc. These places are known for good quality products. They are all Asian. So yes, pushing the racism angle on commentary of products coming from a country not known for quality is an agenda. And to be clear, I didn’t say “China doesn’t make quality products”, I said it’s not known for quality. Which is different from say bad quality outright.
The mere use of the words “cheap Chinese” in the title here is meant to inspire racism though. It’s intentional too. Our government encourages and spreads it to encourage Americans to view themselves as better or more valuable than Chinese people. It works.
HaggierRapscallier@feddit.nl
on 11 Dec 2023 13:24
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China is just the new Japan. And on copyright, the US was big on intellectual piracy for decades and even had government department dedicated to stealing intellectual property from the British Empire.
abbotsbury@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 14:40
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That’s right, everyone that disagrees with you is a paid Chinese shill; you see very well adjusted.
StuffYouFear@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 15:18
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Nah, more like people are tired of the “whataboutism”
abbotsbury@lemmy.world
on 12 Dec 2023 04:00
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Idk what whataboutism you’re referring to, this comment chain started with someone referencing yellow peril and someone else getting triggered about it.
HaggierRapscallier@feddit.nl
on 11 Dec 2023 15:36
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The downvote bots are out in force. No more Ukraine discourse to target for now I suppose.
Yup. Once you go down the rabbit hole of what kind of CCP propaganda gets pushed constantly, it’s eye watering. I’ve been to China at its peak (2011), and I have multiple Chinese family members born and raised in China. The propaganda is no joke. It’s subtle and everywhere. You say “I think Chinese EVs aren’t safe”, then you’ll start getting accused of attacking “Asians”, which is a classic technique to push the argument from “manufacturing practices” right over to racism.
I’ve never seen anyone get accused of attacking Asians for such a thing but I’ve seen “Chinese propaganda” to dismiss comments often.
I think the main discussion right now is that western car companies are stalling the transition out of greed and getting the government to help them by banning the competition. This seems like oil company meddling to me.
Your hate boner is causing you to completely miss the picture. For all this talk about propaganda, you are literally spewing out oil industry talking points.
you are literally spewing out oil industry talking points.
Not at all. My original comment in this thread was replying to a comment that made it seem another person was vilifying “Asians” as opposed to talking about the technology.
If you’re talking about my other comments in this post, then that’s still not true. I’m not saying, and haven’t said, that EVs are bad. I’m saying China is contributing to massive amounts of ecological damage. They produce massive amounts of of e-bikes and EVs, and then throw them into a field never to be used. This is being done to meet quotas so they can get government subsidies, and to boost numbers.
It’s not about the damage of making batteries and other components, it’s the damage being done by creating those things at such a scale that a lot of it is wasteful and unnecessary. And to top it off, there’s going to be even more damage as those vehicles rot in those huge fields and leach harmful stuff into the ground.
So no, I’m not “spewing out oil industry talking points”. I hate that people just assume what you’re saying without taking a moment to understand the context. The oil industry is among the nastiest groups of people to ever live, but that doesn’t give EV makers a free pass to do whatever. The reality is that, right now, making EVs is a dirty process. So it has to be done right and carefully, otherwise we won’t be around to see the benefits.
mx_smith@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 17:26
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FOCO
Jake_Farm@sopuli.xyz
on 11 Dec 2023 19:59
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Fear of automakers from country where slave labor is legal. FTFY
macrocephalic@lemmy.world
on 12 Dec 2023 07:43
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Unregulated capitalism loves slavery, we just like to pretend it’s not there because it’s in a country with people who speak a different language (mostly).
nutsack@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 09:33
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My God the Chinese are at it again beating the United States at capitalism
echodot@feddit.uk
on 11 Dec 2023 11:45
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It’s not on, it really isn’t, the Chinese shouldn’t be allowed to engage in the free market. They’re supposed to be the enemy.
They should be sanctioned so that Western car makers can continue to put out vehicles for ludicrous prices, the way God intends.
Ardiente@ttrpg.network
on 11 Dec 2023 12:36
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I know someone is going to read that and not get the implied /s
echodot@feddit.uk
on 11 Dec 2023 12:39
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I don’t know, I feel like it works on both levels really. There are actual people that think like that and it’s insane. The US trade war doesn’t really help, It paints China as the bad guy even though they’re only doing the same thing as every other country in the world.
By all means demand China improves in areas which makes sense such as blatant copyright violation and human rights abuses but not this. Making cheap cars is hardly nefarious.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 15:30
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It depends on how it’s done. If the Chinese government is directly subsidizing the cheap cars then it’s a problem.
Kind of like the US subsidizing farmers and then dumping the cheap corn on other countries such that their local farmers go out of business.
echodot@feddit.uk
on 11 Dec 2023 16:06
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That’s capitalism. You don’t get to complain because someone else gets a better deal.
China will always be able to produce cheaper products because the cost of living is lower there. But that is hardly a major revelation.
You forgot the uyghurs and slave labour…
Convenient.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 17:45
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Well the US has 1.2 million prisoners who get paid on average 86 cents a day. So effectively slave labor. That they aren’t directly building cars doesn’t matter because money is fungible. Every dollar saved not paying prisoners is more money elsewhere in the economy.
Ugh I can’t believe I’m wading into a “who’s worse” thing on the internet, but here we go! Are the imprisoned Uyghurs all convicted criminals? Not that it makes it ok that the US prisoners are effectively slave labor but they did do something to get there (yeah yeah unfair justice system sure but I want to believe most are there for a legit reason). Maybe the Uyghurs broke the law of “don’t be a Uyghur” and the US prisoners all jaywalked. I don’t know. Even if we can say one is worse, everybody sucks. Why did I say something here? I feel gross now. I have to go take a shower. Look what you’ve made me do! It looks like I’ve defended effective slave labor and somehow endorsed the US’ incarceration system!
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 19:16
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Maybe the Uyghurs broke the law of “don’t be a Uyghur” and the US prisoners all jaywalked.
I suspect “don’t be Uyghur” in China is equivalent to “driving while Black” in the US.
CeeBee@lemmy.world
on 12 Dec 2023 00:43
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I can’t believe I’m wading into a “who’s worse” thing on the internet,
China. China is way worse. It’s not even a fair comparison.
China has a near 99% conviction rate of all “trials”. People get disappeared all the time at an alarming rate. Criticizing the government is illegal and silenced immediately. Buying a woman (trafficking) is punishable by three years in prison. Importing an invasive species of plant is punishable by 7 years in prison. Buying/owning an airsoft rifle can land you life in prison.
They are currently violating the maritime borders of many countries, to the point where they are deploying nets as a way to “claim” the waters well beyond what they’re entitled to by international law.
During covid they welded shut the entrance to buildings to forcibly keep people inside. And many of those people died from starvation or being ill and not receiving care. Then there were those buildings that caught fire and the occupants couldn’t get out.
Then again during covid it was mandated that “foreigners” were not allowed into grocery stores, restaurants, hospitals, etc. And it didn’t matter if you lived their for decades, or your whole life, of you weren’t Han Chinese you’re a foreigner. Some people even had signs up that said “blacks are not allowed inside”.
And this isn’t the people’s fault. They’re working off of information and mandates given to them by their government. A government that has a death grip on all communication in the country.
And this doesn’t even get into the allegations of organ harvesting of the Uyghurs (and others). And yes, “only allegations” because that kind of thing would be done in very dark and secure basements. Although there are first hand accounts of people who witnessed such things who managed to get out, it’s anecdotal but there are more than one account.
Edit: just to add. I’m not American, and don’t live in the US. I think that country is terribly broken in many, many ways. I would never want to ever live there, but I would choose the US in a heartbeat if it was down to that place or China.
buzz86us@lemmy.world
on 12 Dec 2023 01:02
collapse
they have dropped subsidies, and the companies making terrible product, and those with unsustainable business models are collapsing… Weltmeister, Lepin… all defunct.
I get your sarcasm, but Chinese products are life savers in 3rd world countries like mine. My brother bought a Chinese pickup truck for $3500 brand new. American trucks are at least 10 times that. People there work a whole month for $500 - $900. No one can and will never afford that shit. Same goes for other products like cellphones, computers… Etc. an iPhone there costs $1200 - $1400 and a Chinese one costs $300 max and it does the job no problem. People in those countries love China.
Iraq is where I’m originally from, and Chinese products are ubiquitous there. They even built schools and hospitals there. Sorry for misunderstanding at first.
OrteilGenou@lemmy.world
on 11 Dec 2023 23:27
nextcollapse
Yup. US could have taken all the contracts and became the good guy, but nope, they burnt it down to the ground and left.
Metatronz@lemmy.world
on 12 Dec 2023 10:41
collapse
Not that we should have the contracts and control a country like that, but I’d like to think there could have been a win/win. Would have been nice to have a friendly and supported Iraq, on its way to healing some, at the end of the day.
Overall, a failure of US leadership on all fronts. Any positive results may have just been a bridge too far in the minds of politicians and rallying the public just not worth it for them. Silly.
That’s exactly what I meant, a win win situation. “Hey, we know we fucked up, but here let us get you some very much discounted contracts to rebuild your country”. And don’t get me started on politicians. :/
Edit: I meant to say, you’ve worded it correctly/better than I did :)
BedSharkPal@lemmy.ca
on 11 Dec 2023 17:15
collapse
I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not…
MuuuaadDib@lemm.ee
on 11 Dec 2023 18:24
nextcollapse
In Southern Ca these are becoming popular, we also have the largest Viet population outside Vietnam I believe.
threaded - newest
This is the best summary I could come up with:
LONDON/DETROIT, Dec 8 (Reuters) - The rise of inexpensive Chinese electric vehicles has upped the pressure on legacy automakers who have turned to suppliers, from battery materials makers to chipmakers, to squeeze out costs and develop affordable EVs quicker than previously planned.
“Automakers are really now only turning to affordable vehicles, knowing they’ve got to or they will lose out to Chinese manufacturers,” said Andy Palmer, chairman of UK startup Brill Power, which has developed hardware and software to boost EV battery management system performance.
Palmer, formerly Aston Martin’s CEO, said Brill Power’s products could boost EV range by 60% and enable smaller batteries.
Stellantis (STLAM.MI) is building a European plant with China’s CATL (300750.SZ) to make cheaper LFP batteries and recently unveiled the Citroen electric e-C3 SUV, which starts at 23,300 euros ($24,540).
Vincent Pluvinage, CEO of Palo Alto, California-based OneD Battery Sciences, said that on his recent visits with European automaker customers, every meeting started with the same refrain: “‘Reducing costs is now more important than anything else.’”
Veekim CEO Peter Siegle said using cheaper ferrite and low-cost processes - including 3D-printed copper wiring - can cut an EV motor’s price by 20%.
The original article contains 809 words, the summary contains 195 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
“We can’t lower the prices, it’s impossible so soon”
There‘s a word for that „Greedflation.“ This is what western car makers do. Luckily, the Cinese car makers grasp their chance and disrupt the market
While that is part of it, the other, bigger part is that Western countries actually do have higher labour costs: better salaries and conditions for our workers.
When China was outcompeting us on undesirable, low productivity, jobs, we accepted that. It was better to raise a billion Chinese out of poverty than to protect our lowest productivity factory workers. And those workers mostly transitioned to other jobs with higher productivity.
But now China is richer and their labour force is shrinking, so they will compete with highly productive factory jobs.
Politically, it is unlikely that car workers will accept unemployment. Nor will other highly paid workers.
So a trade war is brewing, you better brace yourself for it.
China wasn’t “outcompeting us on undesirable, low productivity, jobs”. Corporations were shipping jobs to China to undercut highly productive factory jobs back then, too, so they could save on labor costs. It’s only now that China is undercutting corporate profits that these same corporations come crying and shitting their pants. That’s also why you see a ramping up of negative media pieces on China. It was never about charitably raising people out of poverty. It was always about corporations undercutting labor to gain greater profits. Fuck 'em, bring on the cheap cars.
Dude, I’m old enough to have lived through it.
Making toys and other plastic shit was never a high paying job in the West.
And no, it wasn’t charity, it was a win-win that increased living standards on both sides.
But it did have an impact on low paying manufacturing jobs in the West and that impact was accepted by Labour unions for the two reasons I gave: we (rightfully) concluded there were enough other, better jobs available and didn’t want to keep Chinese workers poor.
Yeah I’m confused by the charity argument. When have American corporations ever done anything out of the kindness of their hearts?
Read what I said. Labour Unions, not corporations.
The “good for people” argument (which has been misportrayed here as “charity”) was made by politicians to justify tearing down the trade barriers that allowed wealthiest countries such as the US to be a higher-income bubble.
Once those trade barriers were down, all those jobs which had no other price protections than said trade barriers (jobs like, for example, assembly workers, but not things like Legal professions specialized in a country’s Law and which require registering with a local Law Society to practice) were suddenly competing with similar people all over the World, and a lot of countries in the World are full of people who would sell their work in those areas much cheaper than equivalent workers in high-income nations.
The people it was good for were people in those “open to competition” occupations in Low Income but reasonably safe countries like China (whose income went up as manufacturing moved there) and the people who owned the means of production (who got higher dividends due to the higher profits being made by paying low-income country manpower costs and receiving high-income country prices for products and services) but nobody else as even the eventual fall in prices that occurred (over the years, as all those companies with China costs started competing on price because they could thanks to the bigger profit margins due to much lower manpower costs) was not enough to make up for the faster and deeper downwards pressure on salaries in high-income countries that happenned due to said manpower competition with workers in countries with much cheaper salaries (for example, in the mid-70s about 23% of corporate revenue in American went to salaries, whilst by 2012 it was down to 7%).
Heres the problem with the talking point of needing to bring manufacturing jobs back: we can’t fill the manufacturing jobs that we have
I work for a company that sells services to warehouses and industrial facilities. We can’t fully staff our locations, we can’t keep most of the people we hire and neither can our customers, and it comes down to the fact that the jobs absolutely suck. Who wants to work in a loud, poorly temperature controlled factory with heavy equipment and a high risk of injury while doing backbreaking work when you could work at a store or resteraunt for not much less and put far less risk to your life, limb and sanity? Bring the automation on, these jobs need to become a thing of the past.
Sounds like the one thing you’re not mentioning - pay - is probably shit.
If the salary offered was enough for a whole family of 5 to live of it, including a good house and a car, like in the old days, I bet you would have trouble keeping candidates away.
The “people don’t want to work nowadays” arguments invariably forget to include the little detail that even a “competitive” salary in industry today is in real terms (of what it actually buys) nowhere as much as it was 50 years ago.
Most industrial jobs start at around 50-60k and in many cases it’s the best paying work someone can get without a college degree.
Also I’m not saying “people don’t want to work” I’m saying people have standards now and don’t want to work in factories, because really, who would?
Right, two points:
Industrial job salaries relative to cost of living are still way less than back in the 60s. Even the “best paying work” in that domain still pays comparativelly crap given the real cost of living in the US in the present day. My point is that there has been a sistemic fall - across the board - in pay for all such jobs when compared with cost of living, and that’s due to Globalization.
Office work in open-office or even cubicle environments isn’t really better (at many levels) than factory work, and in some countries that kind of work tends to slip into personal time (such as getting calls about work when at home in the evening and weekends) - the kind of harm suffered by employees is different, not less, so people end up having strokes, hearth attacks or simply die from overwork (the latter more of a Japanese phenomenon) rather than the more physical kind of accident or consequences of physical overwork. Office work does, however, tend to pay more than factory work, so lots of people invest in higher education to work in an office doing mindless work and they’re not going to apply for factory work.
Whilst office work pay has also been falling in the last decade or so, and now is actually not that much more than pay in a good industrial job, those people who invested in higher education are highly unlikely to admit to themselves their degree is worthless (and hence their time and money was wasted) and hence are unlikely to apply for the kind of work that doesn’t require a degree even though sometimes they would be better of doing it, plus still now at least theoretically there are more opportunities for promotion and income growth in a shit office job than a well paid industrial job.
Manufacturing and union membership took such massive hits in the US over that period of time. It was win-win for the corporations who greatly expanded profit margins, and the Chinese government, who were happy to use their citizens as sweatshop labor to get ahead. You lived through the propaganda at the time and decided to accept it as the truth.
I hate it when corpos use the “oh we can’t lower prices because our staff is getting paid too much”-narrative. What about the CEO who takes half the profits for himself?
It’s the workers who create value for a company, they don’t take it away by getting paid for their work.
The sad fact of the matter is… math
A corporation might have 10 C-level guys dividing $50 million amongst themselves and 10.000 workers earning $70K, which costs about $100K due to overheads (health insurance, retirement, etc). Together, that’s a billion, which is 20x more than the C level guys.
The C level guys aren’t the big expense, not by a long shot.
Labour, government and shareholders divide most of the earnings amongst themselves.
For the record, I do think we need to tax the wealthy more and the workers less.
Without the workers there’s no product, no income. The C-suite is dispensable. The workers aren’t.
Besides, worker productivity has been skyrocketing for the last 50 years, as has cost of living, but worker wages have been stagnant. C-suite pay has kept up with the increase in productivity, though, if not outpaced it.
I have no disagreement on this argument.
But C-suite compensation is not a significant part of prices.
Energy prices, tax, labour costs and the cost of capital (i.e. returns to shareholders and creditors) are what drives prices.
Fixed that for you. They’re raking it in while blaming it on everything except their own profiteering. It’s greedflation , pure and simple.
You are literally contradicting yourself.
And it’s childish to downvote someone who is actually responding to you.
I’m not going to waste my time on someone who can’t be reasonable and civil.
Saying that the C-suite are paid too much compared to workers isn’t contradicting that greedflation is the main reason for higher prices. The two are in no way mutually exclusive.
I’m not downvoting you for responding. I’m downvoting you for spreading commonly believed pro-corporate apologia.
Too late.
Don’t think labor costs is a big factor. Car production is the sector that is most automated. Just think of this endless bands of hanging cars with robot arms working on it. Tesla even topped this.
It’s mainly the unwillingness to design and sell cheap cars due to less profits. In Germany we had electric cars for 20k€ or even combustion cars under 15k€. But they stopped building it. Although it was sold out in weeks.
In my region there was a Startup by the Aachen University RWTH (which is an elite university in Germany) bulding small EVs for around 20k€. They simply bought all parts from suppliers and just assembled it. And engineered and designed it first. Unionized and still competitive. Unfortunately, they didn’t fly.
EV building is rather simple. The software is key. And this is the missing part at car makers capabilities.
I second your thoughts on trade war. However, I guess it will be much simpler with high taxes, high quality regulations, and may be less support by car workshops. We will see…
There is still a shit ton of people working in a car factory. Tesla had to scale back their amount of robot workers since humans could work much faster. Tesla expects to have 60,000 people working in their Gigafactory in Texas when the production of the Cybertruck ramps up.
The cyber truck is a nightmare that won’t see mass market production.Since it doesn’t have a crumple zone, I doubt it even meets US safety standards.
Chinese manufacturers are being heavily subsidised and even making a loss on their cars.
They're trying to kill off our domestic car industries.
Selling at a loss to enter a market or gain market share is a time honored tradition at this point.
It is, but as the article mentions some manufacturers are making a loss of 35k per car.
If those cars are then sold for 5k less than the US/EU/Japanese equivalent, despite lower wages and environmental standards, you have to ask yourself questions.
Yes you just described the business model. Everyone from Walmart to Amazon to Uber uses it. They take a loss in the short term, relying on new investor money or other products.
Or they could be building economies ot scale? You can’t drive down costs making thousands, you need to make millions.
That’s possible too. It’s not like the US doesn’t give businesses loans and grants for upscaling.
No reason why western countries also can’t subsidize EV car companies to remain competitive.
Like…what are we supposed to do? Be content with ridiculously priced EVs and be willing to pay a small fortune for them? Fuck off with that noise.
Western corporations have had no problems fucking over the average consumer for decades or laying off thousands of employees at the first sign of trouble. Let them adapt or die I say. Competition is always good. Western corporations have the smarts and the resources to compete, they just need to be forced to.
Controversial take: the problem isn't car prices. They haven't increased that much when compared to inflation, and you're getting far more and far better cars for your money when adjusted for inflation.
The problem is wages haven't risen and housing prices have risen too much, meaning people have less to spend on a car.
E: I googled. In the US the cost of a median house was 18k in 1953. An average car cost 3.5k.
Now, the median house costs 400k.
400k/18k x 3.5k = If car prices had risen as much as house prices, the median car would cost 77k.
Not a controversial take at all IMHO. You’re not wrong. Housing is absolutely ridiculous right now.
Better at getting me from A to B?
Yes… cars now are faster, safer, and more efficient than they were in the 50s.
Even if you discount all the “features” they’ve added the bare necessities of a car are tons better than mid-20th century cars or even late 20th century cars
Well, most of it are now needlessly oversized, diminishing the better efficiency.
That‘s a terrible idea. Just because China throws irresponsible amounts of cash at cars doesn‘t mean we have to do the same mistake. We can simply say it‘s not OK to sell products under manufacturing costs to gain market share and that‘s that. Let‘s not inflate the already oversized car market even more.
I agree it’s a bad first step. I’d keep trying idea on the table, but I’d start by working with the European car manufacturers to create huge tariffs on those cars. Make it impossible for them to be sold at those prices in Western markets
They can simply say they don’t subsidize their manufacturing and operate profitably at those prices.
Just saying something doesn’t make it work unless there are legal things that back up the position. And in foreign trade, that means tariffs… which economists have been screaming about (for decades) having negative ramifications that ripple through the economy.
A lot of western countries are subsidizing EV sales. Most western auto companies just waited a decade longer than they should have to start making EVs and are in the thick of developing technology when the early movers are hitting maturity.
On top of subsidies at the national level, most legacy automakers are selling their EVs at a significant loss, but that is because they haven’t reached economies of scale yet… not because they are trying to undercut competition. It’s hard to develop new products and even harder to get them to scale production. Ford has been making cars for 120 years, but that isn’t the same thing as making an EV. They effectively have to start over in a new field… a decade behind companies that invested early.
A lot of the press you hear about EV manufacturers cutting back because demand is low has to do with them cutting back because they are losing $50-70k per vehicle they are selling and can’t stomach the losses. The demand is there, they just can’t make an EV at a price that generates profit. They trim commissions at dealerships to try to help defray cost, but that minimizes incentive for sales teams to try to move them and exacerbates the problem. On top of that, their ICE sales are diminished due to high interest rates and an overall market slowdown in large purchases so every vehicle they sell at a loss hurts the bottom line that much more.
They’re trying to wait to push the cost involved in getting to scale until interest rates go down and it’s more affordable to invest in new technology. They are fucked. Tesla is currently the only American company that is profitable at scale and Elon can’t shut the fuck up on eX-Twitter long enough to stop pissing off the marketplace. The table is set for Chinese EVs to flood the US market, but I don’t think people will be as open to Chinese vehicles with the current data privacy issues and the tense geo-political position between the US and China.
I’m thinking that, if it gets bad enough, the federal government will disincentivize Chinese EVs with tariffs to offset the Chinese gov’t subsidies… if the current US EV tax incentives don’t do enough to spur legacy automakers to kick it into high gear… which it doesn’t seem to be doing. It’s going to be a rough decade for legacy automakers.
Or just let those who can’t compete die, which is totally fine.
I don’t have any loyalty to some specific car brand.
Good
Yep. They‘re doing exactly what we usually call hostile underbidding to heavily inflate prices later when they‘re a top dog. A practice that is not quite legal in most parts of the west. And whoever wants to know when things still don‘t work out for the car maker because subsidies dry up: Search for Chinese manufacturer ‚Weltmeister‘. That will make you think thrice about ever coming near a Chinese EV.
It's also called dumping:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)
The kind of thing usually results in a trade war, sanctions and tariffs.
The problem in Europe, is that our manufacturers are so reliant on Chinese parts and manufacturing, that they've asked our government NOT to intervene. China has them by the nuts, because they've outsourced too much. IRC they can't even make batteries without using Chinese parts.
Everyone heavily subsidises their car industry
Sounds exactly like the rest of us
.
Greedflation is when you checks notes compete in a market by offering cheaper products?
gee the market has been clamoring for a decade while the auto industry said “BIG TRUCKS AND SUV’S!”
I mean people also eat it up like good luttle piggies.
Yes, people being dumb is the real source of all issues.
I mean there’s still a good amount of people in my position where you can’t fit 3 car seats in any ev in the market. Haven’t checked in the past year, maybe it’s changed but I also can’t afford to waste 60k+
Or in a five-seater car or crossover. It’s ridiculous. Carseats and boosters are massive, even the ones with the smallest bases. Then after that you need space for sports equipment, musical instruments, other friends, etc. I’m not sure what the solution is here, other than acknowledging that for a few years in a family’s life they’re going to need a bigger vehicle, and it would be great if manufacturers offered a hybrid or EV solution for them, too.
Mazda is finally coming out with a PHEV three row next year, starting around $55k. Not sure who else, besides Rivian with their new fully EV three row at $75k+, which is completely unaffordable for most families.
Kia EV9 has three rows and starts at $55k still expensive but definitely in range for a middle class family
Oh, nice! I didn’t have that one on my radar. Our next family car needs to be either hybrid or EV, and I’ve just started looking.
There were two hybrid minivans on the market a couple years ago when I went shopping for one. One plug-in from Chrysler and a non-plug-in from Toyota. Both cost about as much as a Model 3.
Safety and reliability are two of the biggest factors in family cars. You would think they would want to make larger family vehicles with those selling points.
I just looked it up and the only minivan EV is 114k…
Yeah and that is part of my point on being pro-Chinese EV… Not only affordability, but the fact that there is simply no choices for certain segments. Our automakers are so conglomerated that there is very minuscule choice in EV since each puts out maybe 2 or 3 models.
There is also proof that competition is causing local builders to step up… With Citroen offering the ec3 with LFP, and 200 miles of range for $20k… Meanwhile Stelantis is releasing absolute trash in the US because they can get away with it.
You can get a Pacifica PHEV with a whole 40 miles of electric range… that is like your one choice… Though the Canoo could meet that need if it ever comes to market.
There is a similar issue for cargo vans the US has like 3 choices for electric… Meanwhile even European buyers have far more choice.
if only you did your basic research
babydrive.com.au/…/2022-hyundai-ioniq-5-ev/
I did, I tried to fit my seats in one actually. Before making a snarky comment, you should do your research and know that not all car seats conform to a size. Some are bigger than others and the front seats cannot touch the car seat in a rear facing configuration. I’m tall enough there was no way I could drive the car.
what sized seats do you have that it doesn’t fit into a fucking Ioniq5?
maybe you will need the Kia EV9 then, because that is a ridiculously sized thing.
They also can’t touch side to side. I think you must just not know a lot about the safety requirements of car seats. All EVs were typically very narrow too.
I have a Hyundai i40 CW, IT’S A huge car, by eruopean standards anyway.
the Ioniq l5 is wider by 7.5 cms and has a longer wheelbase by 23 cms
if you can’t fit inside that thing then you simply have oversized shit, the fuck do you drive now?
Honestly it feels like most companies producing child seats and strollers and whatnot (as well as the stores that stock and sell them) have stopped putting any focus on solutions for 2 or more children and instead only produce solutions for only children. I’ve got 2 young kids 2 years apart and we had a heck of a time finding a double stroller among other things
Hear me out: a bare minimum electronics car extremely reliable, no screens no bells and whistles and with the smallest possible engine battery that costs less than $5.000 💥
You can get an electric motorcycle for that price. Even electric microcars cost more than $5000. Unless you want to buy a Chinese tin can death machine on four wheels that aren’t street legal.
I mean, it’s not like micro cars are safe
Citroën Ami is available. Closer to $8000 and technically a quadricycle. All bare minimum to make it street legal.
It’s great Citroën is making a small, cheap EV … but why did they make it look like a cross between a Fiat Multipla and a pug?
That thing is ugly.
All cheap cars are made ugly on purpose to make the expensive models more attractive to buy.
That thing’s front and back are exactly the same. It saves on fabrication costs to use the same part but it gives a weird look.
“Why is this $8,000 car so terrible,” he lamented, without a trace of irony.
It isn’t “terrible”, it’s ugly because of purely aesthetic design choices: specifically that Fiat Multipla style “forehead ridge”. It’s a styling problem – not a form factor or price point one.
Turns out there are after market mods for that. Spoiler, other front, flame paint job
What a compact thing, also charges to full in just 3 hours from a normal outlet 🤯
Chinese EVs are being sold at a loss of up to 35k per car:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/05/business/nio-china-electric-vehicles.html
The Chinese government is subsidising their car industry, so they can engage in dumping, and decimate our car industries. When our domestic car industries are dead, they'll raise prices. It's like Amazon or any other scummy megacorp that kills local businesses.
This being said, it's hard to feel sorry for companies who also receive plenty of government subsidies and tax breaks, broke the law on emissions testing and likely killed a lot of people because of it, and refused to innovate or lower prices out of sheer greed.
China is using subsidies to accelerate the green transition, exactly like the US is doing with the “Inflation Reduction Act” and other initiatives.
And just like China with cars, the IRA spurred other European countries to pass similar legislation to remain competitive.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDfLWFv3ixk
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEMtTtUZXEk
www.bloomberg.com/…/2023-china-ev-graveyards/
nytimes.com/…/china-fishing-south-america.html
theguardian.com/…/chinese-fishing-armada-plundere…
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LFCBTnrMow
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SEfwoqKRU8
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLFYChw5c0Y
Yup. Totally green.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=TDfLWFv3ixk
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=oEMtTtUZXEk
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=4LFCBTnrMow
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=1SEfwoqKRU8
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=bLFYChw5c0Y
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Selling at a loss is how you build volume and reach the economies of scale that drive down costs.
If you fiddle around half-heartedly putting out small numbers of EVs, you’ll never come close to competing with a company that puts out over a million a year. A lot of automakers still aren’t willing to commit, and they’re whining about the position they chose to put themselves in.
I truly don’t care if China destroy the car industry, it’s fucking ridiculous how expensive some basic shit is. In my opinion if you introduce a feature into your cars, you have ten years before it should become standard.
a comment in the article you linked says this better than I ever could:
The article also talks about BYD, a more established manufacturer than Nio, that is making profits selling electric cars.
just google chinese ev car graveyard i.imgur.com/vjtkj6J.png
not only are they selling at a loss, most of the sales aren’t even real
So they CAN make cars cheaper. I bet they still post profit while claiming they’re losing money.
Yeah but where can I get these cheap Chinese EVs? I’ve never seen any for sale in the States
electrek.co/…/i-bought-an-inexpensive-electric-pi…
The article goes on to say that shipping is a big deal, too. It requires thousands for a space in a container. But the total clocked under $9K IIRC
giant, 6 kWh…
No problem for people who work from home and only need to go shopping once a week.
How much for a sodium battery ?
The “giant” battery should be at least 10x bigger to call it “medium sized”.
Yeah but those aren’t street legal
www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRG0Wai4sR0
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=yRG0Wai4sR0
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Honestly, just take a basic normal car, and replace its engine with an electric one. No on screen entertainment, no cameras, no AI bull shit, no self driving. Just as basic as it gets.
They don’t know how to market something that doesn’t have a bunch of gimmicky bullshit.
“Get your cheap, reliable EVs here!” Done. You can pay me that $100k marketing salary whenever it’s convenient.
Backup cameras are required on all 2018 or newer vehicles in the US and Canada, so you will need at least one in the back and a small screen for that, maybe hide that screen in the review.
This imaginary basic car should also come with a double-din radio so it can be upgraded like the old days.
I wish they sold me just a double din hole with cables ready for connection. All stock radios single or double din suck ballsack for what they are charging.
With more and more cars these days, you’ve got more than radio controls in the OSD.
The steering wheel heater of all things can only be accessed through the infotainment system on my Dad’s F-150. It’s beneath the Bluetooth button.
Yes, the absolute basic required technology to make it road legal, physical switches and either physical gauges or a non-touch screen for gauges if that’s cheaper.
Physical switches > screens. It’s much harder to develop the muscle memory for a screen. I don’t have to look away from the road with switches.
Absolutely, they’re so much better
The reason everything is on a touch screen now is that it’s cheaper than physical switches, as ridiculous as that seems. And yes, I greatly prefer physical switches.
Buy and wire multiple switches on every car, requiring wiring harnesses, ECM IO pins etc. or pay an intern a minimal sum once so he can put “designed Chevrolet in-dash console” on his resume. Then never update it even though it supports OTA updates and is a glitchy mess, Chevy
This is the same reason so many products come with a stupid Bluetooth app now rather than more than one button. Pay once rather than pay on every unit.
Hmm. In that case, physical buttons is the one luxury I’d pay a premium for.
Maybe something like the SEXY buttons for Teslas actually become a more common thing. Wireless buttons that you can stick almost anywhere you want and set up to control what you want.
Wireless implies batteries. Hell no.
IIRC one of the issues with the 737 Max was that it had wireless internal components whose lithium ion batteries could catch fire. If you can’t even get batteries right on a product constantly maintained by a professional crew, what are the odds of it working out well in a car?
If it’s BLE, it could last years on a coincell battery. I don’t find that to be a problem if it can give a warning in advance of running out.
What’s the incentive? Most people will have to buy a car anyways, so without a different incentive, it’s better for every manufacturer to sell you a 60k+ car where the margins are way higher. If profit is the sole motive it’s a no brainer.
The incentive is going to be undercutting the competition. It’s going to happen someday, might as well be you, car company.
The problem is you can’t efficiently electrify a vehicle designed for fossil fuels. The requirements differ too much.
Actually EV conversions were common before we got intentionally designed EVs and the original Tesla roadster was built on a standard Lotus body and frame, but luckily we’re beyond that now.
You can still choose to electrify a vehicle now but you get poor performance and range, unbalanced handling, and pay way too much for a mediocre vehicle. It’s bot worth it
They mean at the design/manufacturing level, not retrofitting.
They mean just creat a simple ev car with only the needed designs to house the battery, controller and electric motor(s).
They mean discard all ideas of “futuristic” interiors, techs, or anything. Just build a modest car with an electric powerplant and battery storage. Then stop.
Fire any designer who tells you AI could improve the product.
That would be pretty dumb. It’s entirely possible to use AI in the design and engineering phase without AI being in the product that’s delivered to the customer. It’s also entirely possible for AI to be used in areas like crash mitigation, improving the handling in poor road conditions, or optimizing charging speed to improve battery life. Those uses of AI are largely invisible but offer a tangible improvement to the vehicle without being what anyone would consider luxurious. Choosing to ignore a design option because it sounds like something trendy is a great way to design a product that’s a worse value for the money.
AI in the vehicle, he means. Obviously ML models are useful for crash data, don’t be a pedant.
Sir, this is the internet.
I mean, I interpreted it the way they seem to have as well. Not being a pedant, I literally just read it different.
OP could have been more clear, but it’s not unusual for people to take the worst possible interpretation in order to debate something no one was arguing.
What this entire thread is about is just giving us a 2005-2010 era car that’s electric. An audio deck with B/T only. No wifi, no Internet connectivity to the manufacturer, all the Laas nonsense with the updates and shit.
Just a vehicle that happens to be electric, not a computer on wheels.
Ai is unnecessary in all those topics. Classical sensing, detection/ response algos are all sufficient.
An LLM or Siri is useless, which is what I’m saying to discard
Think this is the idea behind the GM Ultium platform (and probably others). They always held out “skateboard” as the goal, although I don’t know if that’s still a thing. Create essentially wheels and a plank that include all the power and drive components, modify to a small set of sizes, and crank them out by the millions. Then each car is a unique body and interior on top of the “skateboard”. As the platform gets to scale, you can drive the cost down, while still making unique cars on top of it - including low end cars
Its a nice idea which probably has a lot of complex implications. It would probably be a huge pain to figure out dimensions and compatible electric motors for every brand of non-electric vehicle, so the production of replacements would become very wide. Typically, the battery of an EV isn’t just a brick in the engine room, but it’s a whole range of cells along the length of the vehicle. Using the same space as the combustion engine might leave you with a vehicle with terrible range. Also, the safety of a car takes the engine into account. Replacing a combustion engine with an electrical engine would likely require a whole new safety overview for each individual model.
I honestly really hope that your suggestion would work, but I’m not expecting to see this becoming a wide solution before EVs dominate the market anyway.
I don’t think he meant to literally take the ice out of a camera and replace it with a motor and battery.
But rather he meant, make a new ev, on an EV chassis, but without all the nonsense that drives up costs without adding significant value.
I don’t need touch screen everything with 3d gaming built in, gull wing doors, and custom flush door handles that don’t work if you have a hand injury or any type of disability.
You can buy aftermarket android touch screen headunits with cameras for £150, they are not expensive at all, just a basic android tablet with a few extra ports
Batteries will need a frame change if you don’t want to sacrifice the trunk or something. And range will be bad unless you improve areo dynamics and heating. But I think the Bolt and the Nero are pretty close to their ice counterparts.
Yeah that was the problem with the Nissan Leaf. It basically used the same frame as an ICE car, (and it wasn’t like it was a big SUV either) so all the batteries had to go in the back, and you had no storage and also there wasn’t really enough space in the back to have enough batteries to make it have decent range.
They did make the leaf plus that has decent range with the same formfactor though. Also I’m quite sure the batteries are not in the trunk, unless that’s where they put the extras in the plus version or something? Our 2015 leaf had significantly more trunk space than our brand new bolt despite being of similar dimensions. The bolt does have better rear leg room though.
The main issues with the leaf stem from not having any active heating/cooling for the battery and using an uncommon plug for level 3 charging that is going the way of the dodo. If you live in a temporate climate and don’t need to fast charge for road trips the leaf is a totally acceptable car IMO.
The Citroen ec3 would be the car for you, but Stelantis doesn’t sell it in the US… Just the overpriced Fiat 500e that is pretty worthless
Everything Stelantis does sell in the US is junk, and has been for 20 years. Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat…all junk.
That’s basically the Mini Cooper EV. Took the guts of a BMW i3 and dropped it in the shell of a Cooper S. They even left the engine vent on the hood.
It’s a fun car, and relatively inexpensive for the current crop of EVs, but its range is limited. We’re already moving past the era where this is a good idea.
Nooooo anything but more environmentally friendly vehicles that people can actually afford. Won’t somebody think of the profits?
not sure about environmentally friendly,friendlier sure, but a well developed public transit system and biking infrastructure beats any kind of car based infrastructure
Complements. The reason we’re stuck in this auto-dystopia (are we auto-asphyxiating? ;-) is people wanting one size fits all infrastructure. Let’s apply this more intelligently this time - recognize that some areas are more built up than others and different solutions scale differently . In general that can be a good thing, but we need interconnected services for everyone. That does include cars in many areas, although I agree a worthwhile goal for cities/town centers is that people not need a car
Holy based someone on Lemmy not blindly advocating for public transport literally everywhere.
I also want to add that if public transit was more more common; it would EVENTUALLY spread to the rural areas just in a more limited fashion. Also, towns do build up as they age, it’s not like they are static.
public transport should be literally everywhere, why shouldn’t it?
It’s really efficient in densely populated areas but inefficient in sparsely populated areas.
While it should be everywhere eventually , the focus should definitely be on cities first.
how is connecting smaller towns/villages to bigger placed by train inefficient?
The last miles are a huge problem in villages. Train stops and you then walk 5 miles every time? The bus needs to ride every 30 minutes to bring along 5 people that’s super expensive.
Also everyone there already has a car anyways since it’s basically required there.
Cities however can use public transport far more efficiently.
you do realize trains are part of the public transport and no reasonable person would think you can’t take a car to the train station?
what do you think I am talking about? a bus going every 30 minutes to every house in bumfuck nowhere on the off chance they get a passenger?
Yes but then you already have the car.
And if you already have the car then that’s usually far more practical than public transport.
Public transport works well in cities because it can completely eliminate the need for someone to own a car.
The more stops you have for a train, the slower, more expensive, and less efficient it is. They like hauling for long distances without stopping.
still more efficient than anything else…
and then usually how it works is that some trains go local and stop everywhere and others are intercity and stuff and stop at less stations etc.
“Efficient” covers a lot of things. There are often reasons to avoid what is technically the most efficient solution by some measure. For trains, their high up front cost has to be made up by low marginal cost, which typically means having a high number of passengers for each stop.
And before you say it, no, I’m not demanding they be profitable, just that they be cost effective.
Trains and good public transport are one of the most productive things economically and the best tools for rising economically for individuals, it might have a higher up front cost (which I don’t think it has, I highly doubt a mile of tracks costs more than a mile of road, especially long term), but it’s absolutely worth it long term.
pretty sure a lot of US towns spawned from being railroad stops or railroad adjacent, if they can make that happen, they can also revitalize the local economy, meanwhile cars are woefully inefficient and serve more as a gatekeeping device, if you need a car to function you have basically put an entry fee on society.
It does. Highway costs around $10M/mile, and rail (without tunnels) close to $120M/mile. We also don’t need to build many new highways, while our aging rail infrastructure needs a lot of work just to get what we have up to snuff before we even talk about new rail.
Mostly, this comes down to things that go away with experience. Get rail projects going en mass and the problem will go away. That said, hooking up every town along the route is only going to make the initial build out worse.
mile? see that’s your problem.
rail doesn’t cost that much in Europe.
Yes, I’m aware. That doesn’t actually address the problem.
well the good news is that while you accounted for costs going down once projects are built, you also failed to consider the difference in capacity between railroad tracks and roads and also the maintenance costs that are gonna be much higher for roads.
so even if it’s more expensive upfront which it really isn’t, it’s so much better long term
Of course it’s more expensive up front. That’s trivially true when we have highways and not high speed rail.
They may have been talking about economic inefficiency, if you don’t have a busy enough route to justify the initial investment.
And in the US at least, there is a LOT of land, and huge amounts of it are sparsely populated. But that still adds up to a lot of people.
The reason the US is a car dependent dystopia is because they let the auto industry dismantle a shitton of public infrastructure.
Just because you build public transport infrastructure doesn’t mean you can’t have your car, look at switzerland, netherlands, they have good public transport/bike infrastructure and still have cars.
Having great public transportation actually makes it better for people who only want to use cars, because it takes off a lot of people from the road who now have alternative options.
You said the Lemmy catchphrase good job
which is?
Says someone who lives exclusively in a city
Trains and trans are a more cost effective and environmentally friendly way to transport the masses. It can work to a surprisingly small populations as evidenced by all of the small disparate towns in Switzerland, Norway and Denmark that depend on them.
Of course no solution works everywhere but cars should never be our first option.
People seem to forget that there was a time before cars, where people had to rely on public transport alone.
The US used to have robust systems of transit, but they’ve largely been demolished
Actually the US has plenty of robust rail connections but they’re almost exclusively used for cargo.
I was referring to trolleys…
Most people live in a city. In Australia and NZ it’s around 90%, in China, Europe and Canada for sure over 50%.
Man over 90% of the population is most countries lives in a fucking city.
Helping them get off cars would be a massive improvement.
I don’t actually, I live in a small town, and I see american style suburbs popping up and it’s fucking disgusting
MAGLEV TRAINS OR GTFO!!
way overkill and not needed in most places.
I’m sorry but if maglev trains are an option I want my damn maglev train.
Anyways since we already don’t have public transport we might as well not have magic magnetic levitating public transport.
We need the incrementally more eco-friendly options as well. Most pickup truck driving office workers won’t suddenly get a bike and change their ways, so a more eco friendly personal vehicle is probably a lot more likely to reduce emissions for that demography.
I am not sure that buying a brand new car offsets more than just using your existing car, so there is time to make those people change their ways
.
Don’t forget working from home. Proven by the lockdown air quality to be the most environmentally friendly option. Remember this when you’re employer is asking you to “return to the office”.
This article is literally about people doing this
I wouldn’t call what’s coming out of China environmentally friendly
youtu.be/yOA7qKMcjcE
youtu.be/1SEfwoqKRU8
youtu.be/oEMtTtUZXEk
Edit: youtu.be/qKa8mVOe5so
So much good news!
Non paywall:
archive.is/hniIc
… the same ‘cheap chinese evs’ that keep spontaneously combusting all over china?
Wow. Can’t wait…
Somewhat unrelated: IINM most Europeans don’t drive even a quarter of the max range of EVs on most of their trips. The current range of EVs should be just fine it you plug it in every day like your phone. Getting an EV that can get you to work and back or to a friend and back without charging should already allow to buy an EV that’s quite affordable.
Most Europeans have one, max 2 cars per household. A fuckton of Europeans also go on holiday with their cars once or twice a year.
One car needs to work for most use cases. It’s fine if you have more cars than people in the house that one of them is a 100 mile range commuter, but a different kettle of fish if the same car needs to do an 800+ mile trip to the Mediterranean in summer and a 500 mile ski trip in winter.
Also, I know a lot of people who do more than 100 km per day - and that is important. When you are buying a car, you aren’t looking only at what you need now, but what you might need in the future.
Then a plug in hybrid or elecric car with range extender motor makes more sense. I think it's pretty dumb to be carrying around expensive, heavy batteries everywhere you go that only get used fully twice a year.
That’s a new one to me. I’m surprised because I thought abbreviations in that style are starting to die out.
If I’m Not Mistaken. IDK, I’ve seen it quite often 🤔 It’s not esoteric.
If you see that European car makers sell the same car in China for less than half than they charge at home, you know they are basically milking us just for extra profit.
Except it’s rarely the “same car”. For example a Tesla Model 3 manufactured in China has an LFP lithium-ion battery, while the US manufactured ones use an NCA lithium-ion battery. It’s by far the most expensive component of the car and LFP batteries are much cheaper.
There are often other differences too - such as optional extras being standard in one market. And warranties vary (those are not free - it costs money to fix faulty cars and they factor it into the sale price).
Sounds like what I’d like is whatever options or differences that make the car half as cheap.
But with the American version you can have a janky mounted door and someone that forgets to install the brake disks
I think their implication is that whenever they’re selling in China is kind of trash, and you wouldn’t think it’s a good deal if you looked closely.
Furthermore regulations would prohibit said trash from being available in certain areas.
actually they’ve been selling the LFP version in North America for a while now. Even with the extra import costs and reduced government grant due to a Chinese battery, it still ends up cheaper.
Not true… The lower trims so in fact use LFP
Not true. Most products aren’t the cost of the materials. There are a lot of included expenses in the price of a product like the cost of labor. They’re also not the same cars.
I am well aware that there are costs beside materials and labor. In my company, I’m part of those other costs - I’m R&D. The point is still: Why shall we bear all those costs and others don’t? Don’t expect people being happy about being handled gross unfair.
Yes, there are differences. But they are small, and could be incorporated in a low-cost version of European cars, too - if they actually want a low cost version here.
That sounds like standard supply demand. If you can bear it, and there is no alternative, you will. But moreover as was mentioned there are reasons that may require a product being different prices in different markets as operating expenses are not the same. The simple cost of launching a product in different markets incurs different costs, and thus different prices. That’s a trivial example, and with vehicles it gets really complex at the regulatory level, especially in regulatory-rich countries which are common in the EU.
And that is the point that will break the European car makers necks. The Chinese just start being alternatives, just like Japanese cars were in the 80s and 90s.
To give it credit, Japanese cars are now among the best in class, and can be enjoyed on a global market at a “reasonable” price. Took them a few decades to get there though. When/if Chinese manufacturers get to that level - that would be a win for the common consumer anywhere. And European companies with their trend to sell less, but more expensive, cars, will likely be outcompeted.
fear of competition spurs automakers to make competitive products. FTFY
Asians bad, especially big C /s
Not “Asians”. Companies that follow the CCP’s policies and ways of doing business.
What you did was typical pro-CCP misdirection. You took “fear of cheap Chinese EVs” and ran with that to “Asians bad”. Chinese are not all Asians and the CCP is not a race.
youtu.be/yOA7qKMcjcE
Edit: youtu.be/qKa8mVOe5so
Idk, I didn’t feel like they were pushing an agenda, can’t say the same about you.
The generic application of “Asian” has been established as a habit of the ignorant. I have an example.
I don’t know how that’s a response to me but thanks for the funny clip
The conflation of “Asians” being always applied to China is a common CCP propaganda tactic. There are many Asian countries, like Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, etc. These places are known for good quality products. They are all Asian. So yes, pushing the racism angle on commentary of products coming from a country not known for quality is an agenda. And to be clear, I didn’t say “China doesn’t make quality products”, I said it’s not known for quality. Which is different from say bad quality outright.
The mere use of the words “cheap Chinese” in the title here is meant to inspire racism though. It’s intentional too. Our government encourages and spreads it to encourage Americans to view themselves as better or more valuable than Chinese people. It works.
China is just the new Japan. And on copyright, the US was big on intellectual piracy for decades and even had government department dedicated to stealing intellectual property from the British Empire.
Your cheque from the CCP is in the mail
Edit: I welcome the downvotes from the wumao
That’s right, everyone that disagrees with you is a paid Chinese shill; you see very well adjusted.
Nah, more like people are tired of the “whataboutism”
Idk what whataboutism you’re referring to, this comment chain started with someone referencing yellow peril and someone else getting triggered about it.
The downvote bots are out in force. No more Ukraine discourse to target for now I suppose.
Yup. Once you go down the rabbit hole of what kind of CCP propaganda gets pushed constantly, it’s eye watering. I’ve been to China at its peak (2011), and I have multiple Chinese family members born and raised in China. The propaganda is no joke. It’s subtle and everywhere. You say “I think Chinese EVs aren’t safe”, then you’ll start getting accused of attacking “Asians”, which is a classic technique to push the argument from “manufacturing practices” right over to racism.
I’ve never seen anyone get accused of attacking Asians for such a thing but I’ve seen “Chinese propaganda” to dismiss comments often.
I think the main discussion right now is that western car companies are stalling the transition out of greed and getting the government to help them by banning the competition. This seems like oil company meddling to me.
Your hate boner is causing you to completely miss the picture. For all this talk about propaganda, you are literally spewing out oil industry talking points.
Not at all. My original comment in this thread was replying to a comment that made it seem another person was vilifying “Asians” as opposed to talking about the technology.
If you’re talking about my other comments in this post, then that’s still not true. I’m not saying, and haven’t said, that EVs are bad. I’m saying China is contributing to massive amounts of ecological damage. They produce massive amounts of of e-bikes and EVs, and then throw them into a field never to be used. This is being done to meet quotas so they can get government subsidies, and to boost numbers.
It’s not about the damage of making batteries and other components, it’s the damage being done by creating those things at such a scale that a lot of it is wasteful and unnecessary. And to top it off, there’s going to be even more damage as those vehicles rot in those huge fields and leach harmful stuff into the ground.
So no, I’m not “spewing out oil industry talking points”. I hate that people just assume what you’re saying without taking a moment to understand the context. The oil industry is among the nastiest groups of people to ever live, but that doesn’t give EV makers a free pass to do whatever. The reality is that, right now, making EVs is a dirty process. So it has to be done right and carefully, otherwise we won’t be around to see the benefits.
.
FOCO
Fear of automakers from country where slave labor is legal. FTFY
Unregulated capitalism loves slavery, we just like to pretend it’s not there because it’s in a country with people who speak a different language (mostly).
My God the Chinese are at it again beating the United States at capitalism
It’s not on, it really isn’t, the Chinese shouldn’t be allowed to engage in the free market. They’re supposed to be the enemy.
They should be sanctioned so that Western car makers can continue to put out vehicles for ludicrous prices, the way God intends.
I know someone is going to read that and not get the implied /s
I don’t know, I feel like it works on both levels really. There are actual people that think like that and it’s insane. The US trade war doesn’t really help, It paints China as the bad guy even though they’re only doing the same thing as every other country in the world.
By all means demand China improves in areas which makes sense such as blatant copyright violation and human rights abuses but not this. Making cheap cars is hardly nefarious.
It depends on how it’s done. If the Chinese government is directly subsidizing the cheap cars then it’s a problem.
Kind of like the US subsidizing farmers and then dumping the cheap corn on other countries such that their local farmers go out of business.
That’s capitalism. You don’t get to complain because someone else gets a better deal.
China will always be able to produce cheaper products because the cost of living is lower there. But that is hardly a major revelation.
You forgot the uyghurs and slave labour…
Convenient.
Well the US has 1.2 million prisoners who get paid on average 86 cents a day. So effectively slave labor. That they aren’t directly building cars doesn’t matter because money is fungible. Every dollar saved not paying prisoners is more money elsewhere in the economy.
www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/
Ugh I can’t believe I’m wading into a “who’s worse” thing on the internet, but here we go! Are the imprisoned Uyghurs all convicted criminals? Not that it makes it ok that the US prisoners are effectively slave labor but they did do something to get there (yeah yeah unfair justice system sure but I want to believe most are there for a legit reason). Maybe the Uyghurs broke the law of “don’t be a Uyghur” and the US prisoners all jaywalked. I don’t know. Even if we can say one is worse, everybody sucks. Why did I say something here? I feel gross now. I have to go take a shower. Look what you’ve made me do! It looks like I’ve defended effective slave labor and somehow endorsed the US’ incarceration system!
I suspect “don’t be Uyghur” in China is equivalent to “driving while Black” in the US.
China. China is way worse. It’s not even a fair comparison.
China has a near 99% conviction rate of all “trials”. People get disappeared all the time at an alarming rate. Criticizing the government is illegal and silenced immediately. Buying a woman (trafficking) is punishable by three years in prison. Importing an invasive species of plant is punishable by 7 years in prison. Buying/owning an airsoft rifle can land you life in prison.
They are currently violating the maritime borders of many countries, to the point where they are deploying nets as a way to “claim” the waters well beyond what they’re entitled to by international law.
During covid they welded shut the entrance to buildings to forcibly keep people inside. And many of those people died from starvation or being ill and not receiving care. Then there were those buildings that caught fire and the occupants couldn’t get out.
Then again during covid it was mandated that “foreigners” were not allowed into grocery stores, restaurants, hospitals, etc. And it didn’t matter if you lived their for decades, or your whole life, of you weren’t Han Chinese you’re a foreigner. Some people even had signs up that said “blacks are not allowed inside”.
theglobeandmail.com/…/article-stay-away-from-here…
And this isn’t the people’s fault. They’re working off of information and mandates given to them by their government. A government that has a death grip on all communication in the country.
And this doesn’t even get into the allegations of organ harvesting of the Uyghurs (and others). And yes, “only allegations” because that kind of thing would be done in very dark and secure basements. Although there are first hand accounts of people who witnessed such things who managed to get out, it’s anecdotal but there are more than one account.
Edit: just to add. I’m not American, and don’t live in the US. I think that country is terribly broken in many, many ways. I would never want to ever live there, but I would choose the US in a heartbeat if it was down to that place or China.
The chinese dictatorship is worse
Yes I did, I mentioned human rights abusers, it’s right there in the comment that I made, I can still see it.
I find it’s always a good idea to actually read the comments before getting angry about them.
Where?
feddit.uk/comment/5127995
Like I said, it’s a good idea to read the comments.
Thats deleted. No comment there.
they have dropped subsidies, and the companies making terrible product, and those with unsustainable business models are collapsing… Weltmeister, Lepin… all defunct.
I don’t care about them
I get your sarcasm, but Chinese products are life savers in 3rd world countries like mine. My brother bought a Chinese pickup truck for $3500 brand new. American trucks are at least 10 times that. People there work a whole month for $500 - $900. No one can and will never afford that shit. Same goes for other products like cellphones, computers… Etc. an iPhone there costs $1200 - $1400 and a Chinese one costs $300 max and it does the job no problem. People in those countries love China.
Which countries?
3rd world countries. Or do you want specific names?
Yes, I asked “which countries”, not “what kind of countries”?
Guatemala
Iraq is where I’m originally from, and Chinese products are ubiquitous there. They even built schools and hospitals there. Sorry for misunderstanding at first.
Don’t apologize to that heifer
I had to look up heifer. Made me laugh. lol
Lord. The irony. Could have had a little US in Iraq after us essentially living there forever. Now it’s Chinatown
Yup. US could have taken all the contracts and became the good guy, but nope, they burnt it down to the ground and left.
Not that we should have the contracts and control a country like that, but I’d like to think there could have been a win/win. Would have been nice to have a friendly and supported Iraq, on its way to healing some, at the end of the day.
Overall, a failure of US leadership on all fronts. Any positive results may have just been a bridge too far in the minds of politicians and rallying the public just not worth it for them. Silly.
That’s exactly what I meant, a win win situation. “Hey, we know we fucked up, but here let us get you some very much discounted contracts to rebuild your country”. And don’t get me started on politicians. :/
Edit: I meant to say, you’ve worded it correctly/better than I did :)
I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not…
In Southern Ca these are becoming popular, we also have the largest Viet population outside Vietnam I believe.
vinfastauto.us
China isn’t making EVs for the sake of going green and the companies making them should have their manufacturing methods questioned.
www.youtube.com/shorts/CpO4zOwElY0
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/shorts/CpO4zOwElY0
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