So when we only have a choice of a vehicle made that excessively pollutes our land, water and air while those building it spend most of their lives in a factory for a pittance, that's just fine?? No wonder the world is ####ed.
China is actually about to hit a wall in demographics and economy because their cost of living and consequently their standard of living has risen dramatically in the past 20 years. The image of Chinese sweat shops is no-longer accurate as western countries have moved their actual sweat shops to places like Vietnam as Chinese workers are now too expensive. Chinese companies are probably moving their sweat shops down to Africa through belt & road.
Speaking of auto workers making a pittance, the UAW just won a landmark labor action against US automakers. I think I read a report that the average UAW salary is now north of $100,000 USD/year with staggering benefits and fully funded healthcare and this is going to add ~$800 to a cost of each vehicle next year. To be fair, I do need to enter a clarifying remark based on recent documentaries I watched that most of the money is heavily tilted to seniority with younger UAW workers entering the industry getting shafted.
In any case, the continued heavy unionization of the American auto industry is going to make them uncompetitive in the global economy in upcoming years. I don't think import tariffs and protectionism is the right choice and its bad for consumers. I want to be able to buy the best car for the best price. Not an artificial one to prop up a political bloc of Eastern auto workers that would otherwise not be competitive in a global economy. I don't want a Chevy Bolt. I don't even want my Tesla. I want to buy a Xiao Peng.
China is actually about to hit a wall in demographics and economy because their cost of living and consequently their standard of living has risen dramatically in the past 20 years. The image of Chinese sweat shops is no-longer accurate as western countries have moved their actual sweat shops to places like Vietnam as Chinese workers are now too expensive. Chinese companies are probably moving their sweat shops down to Africa through belt & road.
Speaking of auto workers making a pittance, the UAW just won a landmark labor action against US automakers. I think I read a report that the average UAW salary is now north of $100,000 USD/year with staggering benefits and fully funded healthcare and this is going to add ~$800 to a cost of each vehicle next year. To be fair, I do need to enter a clarifying remark based on recent documentaries I watched that most of the money is heavily tilted to seniority with younger UAW workers entering the industry getting shafted.
In any case, the continued heavy unionization of the American auto industry is going to make them uncompetitive in the global economy in upcoming years. I don't think import tariffs and protectionism is the right choice and its bad for consumers. I want to be able to buy the best car for the best price. Not an artificial one to prop up a political bloc of Eastern auto workers that would otherwise not be competitive in a global economy. I don't want a Chevy Bolt. I don't even want my Tesla. I want to buy a Xiao Peng.
But you are if you buy from China. It's the opposite of what you describe, China can undercut most other countries becuase it's a lot cheaper to make a car when you don't have to treat hazardous chemicals like you do in North America, or have cheap energy supplied by dirty coal, and workers who are poorly treated.
Quote:
China's auto workers bear the brunt of price war as fallout widens
As Shanghai sweltered in a heatwave in June, the car factory where Mike Chen works switched production to night shifts and dialled down the air-conditioning.
For Chen, toiling through the early hours in his sweat-soaked uniform, it was the latest slap in the face after cuts in bonuses and overtime slashed his monthly pay this year to little more than a third of what he earned when he was hired in 2016.
Chen, 32, who works for a joint venture between China's state-owned car giant SAIC (600104.SS) and Germany's Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE), is far from alone. Millions of auto workers and suppliers in China are feeling the heat as an electric vehicle price war forces carmakers to shave costs anywhere they can.
"SAIC-VW used to be the best employer and I felt honoured to work here," said Chen. "Now I just feel angry and sad."
So ya, I mean, if you don't care how you get cheap stuff, well, I guess that's up to you. I tend to think abandoning even more manufacturing, particularity as it moves to higher technology, is a dumb plan and can only work against Canada in the long term. What will be left, growing wheat and pigs to feed the Chinese industrial machine?
And ya, I'm realistic about components being made in China and that truly avoiding all Chinese produced goods is difficult to impossible. But a purchase on the scale of a vehicle? That's just giving up, and endorsing China's vision of low wages, lax environmental standards, massive government subsidies, and funnelling money to a government that runs interment camps and is girding for war in the South China Sea. I'm not going to go out of my way to support that, and it's kind of sad reading how many Canadians just don't care.
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The cars being made in China are both cheaper and better already than what North American companies make and they have no legacy supply chain or work force transition to fund. Here's a chart that sums up what's happening that very few auto executives have noticed edit: oops, missing graph labels
Dumb question... but is Korea supposed to be a category? Or is it combined with some other country?
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That's missing the context that US sales are shrinking faster than global vehicle sales. Just 7 years ago there were 17.5M cars sold in the US. Last year there were 13.7M cars sold and it's expected to keep dropping. GM sells the majority of it's vehicles outside the US where that protection won't help. Like it or not, it's a global commodity that the US consumers don't dominate anymore. That leaves precious little leverage to control production.
Japan had nowhere else to sell cars back then. The world's a different place
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Sure, but the post I was responding to was talking about "breaking into the North American market" and disrupting it. That's unlikely to ever happen, and they're already starting to run into regulatory issues in the EU as well. If they're going to be produced that much cheaper than North American cars, they'll just have tariffs put on them to make them far less viable.
But you are if you buy from China. It's the opposite of what you describe, China can undercut most other countries becuase it's a lot cheaper to make a car when you don't have to treat hazardous chemicals like you do in North America, or have cheap energy supplied by dirty coal, and workers who are poorly treated.
So ya, I mean, if you don't care how you get cheap stuff, well, I guess that's up to you. I tend to think abandoning even more manufacturing, particularity as it moves to higher technology, is a dumb plan and can only work against Canada in the long term. What will be left, growing wheat and pigs to feed the Chinese industrial machine?
And ya, I'm realistic about components being made in China and that truly avoiding all Chinese produced goods is difficult to impossible. But a purchase on the scale of a vehicle? That's just giving up, and endorsing China's vision of low wages, lax environmental standards, massive government subsidies, and funnelling money to a government that runs interment camps and is girding for war in the South China Sea. I'm not going to go out of my way to support that, and it's kind of sad reading how many Canadians just don't care.
I get your viewpoint on this. There is an ethical and moral responsibility to how we are getting our goods manufactured but I believe in our globalized economy, that's unavoidable. Some part of most consumer goods you consume are produced in such conditions whether it be China, Vietnam, Thailand, Bangladesh (especially our clothing), etc. To stop at cars is not realistic, pretty much our entire consumer goods economy is done like this.
On the other hand, we have the Ontario and Federal governments giving $30 billion to big companies (Stellantis and Volkswagon) to build EV battery plants out east. Government giving handouts to private & rich multinationals to benefit only eastern auto workers disturbs me quite a bit. They also marketed it as paying back in 5 years when the parliamentary watchdog's critical analysis said it would be 20 years. https://globalnews.ca/news/9955027/c...-ev-subsidies/
I don't like subsidies, I don't like protectionism, I don't like tariffs. Don't get me started on Supply Managment for the Ontario Dairy Industry which incentivizes Ontario farmers to overproduce and dump milk because their Cheese racket is protected and Canadian consumers get stuck with higher dairy costs for bad product and expensive Cheese imports due to tariffs. I'm not just picking on the East. Alberta essentially buying a stake in Keystone XL was a huge waste of money as well.
If the gigapress concept works for Tesla, that's basically like stamping out a hotwheels car in a giant press. It's going to further reduce the actual blue collar workforce involved in manufacturing. If anything, car manufacturing is moving more and more to robotics/automation and it won't be realistic to have a large workforce anymore. The real benefit is engineering, technology, and supply chain companies who will be essential to this and those higher order skills and not the average auto worker.
OK, and to your last point, we'd be turning that all over to China and other companies. We need to stop the industry drain at some point, and "protectionism" is more of an evening of the playing field. I'm a strong believer in if we are going to restrain our industries with environmental protections and worker regulations, that those industries also need to maintain a way to compete. And by putting those tariffs in, perhaps it eventually motives countries that do want to trade with us to match our standards.
Just a brief comment on the gigapress, while it does allow rapid production, it also has drawbacks. Repairability is non-existent. A small accident in the right spot writes off the vehicle. Tesla insurance rates are climbing rapidly as insurance companies come to grips with this. I'm not so sure this is a great strategy until we all have self driving cars that don't crash. I'd like to see them do smaller castings that can be swapped. They are currently structurally glued to the rest of the vehicle making it impossible to replace the front or back casting, and cast aluminum fractures very easily in an impact.
thanks for this. Yeah, forgot Volvo was Chinese owned. The polestar seems pretty cool and, if they still have historic Volvo quality, should be a good car. My only fear would be, as with Tesla, build quality. I guess time will tell how all of these hold up.
Volvo quality is a myth.
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OK, and to your last point, we'd be turning that all over to China and other companies. We need to stop the industry drain at some point, and "protectionism" is more of an evening of the playing field. I'm a strong believer in if we are going to restrain our industries with environmental protections and worker regulations, that those industries also need to maintain a way to compete. And by putting those tariffs in, perhaps it eventually motives countries that do want to trade with us to match our standards.
Just a brief comment on the gigapress, while it does allow rapid production, it also has drawbacks. Repairability is non-existent. A small accident in the right spot writes off the vehicle. Tesla insurance rates are climbing rapidly as insurance companies come to grips with this. I'm not so sure this is a great strategy until we all have self driving cars that don't crash. I'd like to see them do smaller castings that can be swapped. They are currently structurally glued to the rest of the vehicle making it impossible to replace the front or back casting, and cast aluminum fractures very easily in an impact.
I don't think the entire country of Canada at a population of 30 miilion can compete with China which has a city with 30 million people. In any scenario, we are giving large incentives to foreign companies to come in and set up shop.
I just don't see any realistic way for Canada to develop and produce any home grown vehicle industry that could succeed internationally. We've always just been a proxy for Detroit by giving out handouts. We do have some Canadian supply chain giants like Magna but I think companies like Magna, Mopar, etc. are going to feel the crunch when the complexities of internal combustion cars goes out the window and fewer parts are needed.
I'm big into cycling as well and all the new exciting and affordable for consumer stuff is coming out of China as well. They just have the population, manufacturing, and supply chain to create these innovations and support the investment into products that we don't have. I want a Chinese EV because I want choice.
If anything, its clear that Chinese standard of living has risen dramatically and is continuing to rise to the point where the cheap labor is being driven out to Southeast Asia. Workers in China are also amongst a small group globally who will receive the highest rates of real salary growth this by about 6% a year. The living standard is increasing and improving as they move into a fully developed country.
I'm not a China apologist by any means. My distant roots are Hong Kong. I hate the CPC deeply but I also want choice as a consumer.
But you want free choice as a consumer without externalizes priced in. Tarriffs help price those things into the product. It helps Canada compete on a more level playing field.
I don't think the entire country of Canada at a population of 30 miilion can compete with China which has a city with 30 million people. In any scenario, we are giving large incentives to foreign companies to come in and set up shop.
I just don't see any realistic way for Canada to develop and produce any home grown vehicle industry that could succeed internationally. We've always just been a proxy for Detroit by giving out handouts. We do have some Canadian supply chain giants like Magna but I think companies like Magna, Mopar, etc. are going to feel the crunch when the complexities of internal combustion cars goes out the window and fewer parts are needed.
I'm big into cycling as well and all the new exciting and affordable for consumer stuff is coming out of China as well. They just have the population, manufacturing, and supply chain to create these innovations and support the investment into products that we don't have. I want a Chinese EV because I want choice.
If anything, its clear that Chinese standard of living has risen dramatically and is continuing to rise to the point where the cheap labor is being driven out to Southeast Asia. Workers in China are also amongst a small group globally who will receive the highest rates of real salary growth this by about 6% a year. The living standard is increasing and improving as they move into a fully developed country.
I'm not a China apologist by any means. My distant roots are Hong Kong. I hate the CPC deeply but I also want choice as a consumer.
Sure, but it's not going to happen for something as important as vehicle manufacturing. It's the same reason there are tariffs on Chinese steel and why the US is so hell bent on protecting Taiwan; they don't want processor production to be controlled by an adversary. Comparisons to Japan which has been a US ally for 80 years don't make a lot of sense given the geopolitical tensions between the US and China right now.
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Not really, the build quality is really quite good, the fit and finish is lovely, the materials are durable.
The problem is, as we've talked about on this forum before, one of vehicle complexity. More points of failure mean a higher likelihood that something will, and brands with a more conservative approach to new features tend to have fewer issues. Volvo tends to have a good bit of new technology in their cars.
Not to mention the expectations of the owners who -- having paid more money for a 'premium brand' -- have higher expectations that everything is perfect and will bring it in to be fixed. It's not quite to the level of 'I paid $200k for a Range Rover' type of expectation, but pretty up there with your usual luxury brands.
I wonder how how the EV market is slowing is because customers are now being patient and waiting for the NACS plugs to be on the vehicles (2025 model year)?
If I was in the market right now, buying a vehicles without NACS, while knowing that everyone is switching to NACS in a year would give me hesitation to purchase.
I think some people had poor Volvo experiences during the Ford days. Didn't they have a really bad engine for awhile?
I owned a Ford era Volvo S40 T5 AWD. It was FULL of Ford Focus and Mazda 3 parts. It was hilarious how much money you could save on things like fluids if you bought the ford variant.
That said, the 2.5L 5 cylinder turbo was an awesome engine. They had a naturally aspirated 4 cylinder I think, and a bunch of smaller options in Europe, but I didn't pay any attention to those.
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Volvo is in the bottom 1/3 of both JD Power and Consumer reports reliability studies and they have been there for a long time. Not the worst but below average at best.
A neighbour of mine had one of those Ford/Mazda-based V50s: all the Volvo-built parts were failing and nickle-and-diming him. It was a pile of crap he regretted ever buying. He replaced it with a Mazda CX-5.
I wonder how how the EV market is slowing is because customers are now being patient and waiting for the NACS plugs to be on the vehicles (2025 model year)?
If I was in the market right now, buying a vehicles without NACS, while knowing that everyone is switching to NACS in a year would give me hesitation to purchase.
I wish this narrative would die. It's not that EV sales are slowing. September was up 23% YOY for EVs and October should be the same. What was down is TOTAL vehicle sales as ICE vehicle sales are really tumbling. The only segment with any growth is EVs. No one is buying large items with interest rates what they are. This is true for home sales, vehicle sales, appliances, etc
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A neighbour of mine had one of those Ford/Mazda-based V50s: all the Volvo-built parts were failing and nickle-and-diming him. It was a pile of crap he regretted ever buying. He replaced it with a Mazda CX-5.
The Volvo dealer wanted over $1000 for a half shaft for that car. I got it for $600 from the US, including some insane shipping. Volvo parts and service are a total racket. I think they wanted almost $2G if they were going to do it.
New Ramcharger truck coming 2025, interesting concept. Its powered by electric motors but also has an on board V6 engine as a generator, extending the range to over 1,000km. The gas engine will kick in to charge the battery when it gets to a certain level.
New Ramcharger truck coming 2025, interesting concept. Its powered by electric motors but also has an on board V6 engine as a generator, extending the range to over 1,000km. The gas engine will kick in to charge the battery when it gets to a certain level.
I watched a YouTube video on this truck last night and it looks pretty awesome. I don't really want a truck but I would love this type of setup in a midsize/full size SUV. I'm certain the Ramcharger will be ridiculously expensive because trucks are already brutally expensive plus an EV premium will easily make this $100k plus.
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thanks for this. Yeah, forgot Volvo was Chinese owned. The polestar seems pretty cool and, if they still have historic Volvo quality, should be a good car. My only fear would be, as with Tesla, build quality. I guess time will tell how all of these hold up.
