And, a recent tour of one of the Asian powerhouse’s vehicle plants has proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt, at least to Honda President and CEO Toshihiro Mibe.
“We have no chance against this,” Mibe said upon a visit to a Shanghai parts factory, commenting on its seamless automation across all levels of production. Logistics, procurement and all aspects of the process were so automated, in fact, that he did not spot a single human worker on the supplier’s floor.
Ford executives saying even three years ago that China was way ahead of the game
Toyota’s CEO has likewise said regarding not just his company, but the industry in general, “unless things change, we will not survive”
OH NO! THE FREE MARKET IS WORKING BUT NOT IN OUR FAVOR!!!
Genuine question is this the free market?
Is the CCP subsidizing these super cheap cars?
Which isn’t to say the US isn’t doing the same. 2008 should’ve meant the death of much of the American auto industry
Oh they likely are, just like the us does for their own auto industry. The free market part is simply a cheaper car that appeals to more people, it coming from China is the only thing really holding it back. Well and maybe the spying, but I don’t know how bad these are on that front.
“Detroit Motor City”. I.e subsidizing losses.
Of course you could apply protectionism, but that wouldn’t be fair and would set a public precedent on the global markets.
But yeah, the petroleum lobby really managed to screw us sideways. All those anti EV, anti solar and anti wind campaigns.
It is perhaps the biggest, oldest, slowest moving and most fraudulent of bailouts in all of history.
We are just that stupid.
'Murica!
How many of those companies spent literal billions of dollars on stock buybacks to inflate share market price over the last decade instead of investing in the people and facilities and products to remain competitive. Even if there is dumping I doubt it’s anywhere near the combined spent on share price inflation buybacks & savings instead of investing in the workers and business, these companies enjoy unjustified tax breaks and subsidies from their governments as well.
This is a the economy being equated to wealth/investor class problem. Workers in and around cities want cheap affordable evs & charging infrastructure for renters, mechanics and parts producers want to build and work on affordable evs. People who own stocks expecting growth returns and executive compensation want to sell 10 cars a year for a trillion dollars each if they could.
Yeah, this is what bad leadership is. Lack of leadership really. China and the US both found themselves the manufacturers of the world.
China took the money and built an infrastructure. The US took the money and destroyed unions…
It all went up oil subsidies…
GOOD.
automation across all levels of production
Maybe its true. Regardless, article sounds like anti-worker propaganda to me. China is gonna eat our lunch! Better take a pay cut, and be glad you’re not laid off!
I get your perspective, but complete automation with as little human input as possible is exactly how you make cheap products.
This has been reported on by multiple sources outside of the automotive industry about the rise of dark factories in China.
It’s not a secret that China has heavily invested in automation in part due to the necessity thanks to unforeseen consequences of the one child policy. There’s a very much lack of labor workers because the current generation are full of people who ultra emphasized education, even in rural areas, and this generation has no intention of working labor jobs. I don’t think Western countries, especially America with their abysmal education and having the average citizen reading at a sixth grade level wouldn’t be able to absorb that level of automation without tanking the economy unlike China’s unique situation.
Now what I’m going to probably find interesting is what’s going to happen when inevitably with the revocation of the one child policy and you see the next generation of young adults that may not have the same level of education since you now can’t pump all your resources in the singular kid and how that’s going to affect them. I do wonder how long this competitive advantage will last.
The one child policy was revoked a decade ago.
You need to update your China bad talking points.
Guess how old the children are from a policy that was ended 11 years ago.
Now, guess how old the people are who would be working in a car factory if it weren’t automated.
Finally, take 30 seconds to really understand why your post was idiotic.
And yet, the birth rate has only declined further.
I see you have no reading comprehension skills.
While Toyota and Honda at least have an acclaimed history in low cost and efficient vehicles, Ford is literally 1/3rd the the reason the US doesn’t manufacture sedans anymore, with the other 2/3rds being GM and Chrysler.
I actually witnesses them layoff their entire sedan division in real time when they announced the end of the fusion. I’m pretty sure it was mostly liquidated by the time covid hit.
Because trucks are made with safety loopholes and have higher profit margins, and Ford shit the bed with the Fusion, Festiva and Focus with a garbage transmission they knowingly sold for 7 years.
And SUV’s are just treated as trucks. this is 100% correct.
and we ignore EV’s because… we won’t do the work to make EV’s work, like charging infrastructure. It’s all so painfully stupid and transparently to benefit the fossil fuel cartel
I’m still mad we lost sport sedans for this EPA bs.
Everything is a crossover or SUV to gg ez the emission laws because of the weight class.
Random 5 seater SUV will be producing more emissions than a WRX or Evo Lancer.
Okay, so you’re getting out-competed in the market. Pay proper wages, invest in innovation instead of executive salaries, and take a slimmer profit margin to help your customers.
Did you not read the story? The reason why they can’t compete is because China has NO wages to pay. Their plants are fully automated.
Paying proper wages would make Toyota and Honda even LESS competitive.
It is way bigger than that.
The traditional model of manufacturing has been multiplied by 10, “traditional” auto makers will not be able to afford retooling to even produce anything close to the volume of byd and their ilk.
The trouble is the opposition is subsidised so they can pretty much run negative margins and still turn a profit.
Paying proper wages is the opposite of what would help here.
All auto makers are heavily subsidized, US automakers most of all.
Don’t charge $100,000 for a regular fucking vehicle?
Seriously, all the useless expensive shit they add to vehicles to make them unmaintainable data miners is why they’re going to get slaughtered.
Give me an electric pickup with 4WD and crank up windows. Preferably no radio. I’d buy one of those Slates in a heartbeat if it were 4WD, as much as I hate Jeff Bezos.
yeah hoping the Slate can turn this shit show around.
And if I WANT a radio, I’ll go to a local business and get one that meets my needs installed. I don’t want some POS touchscreen with clunky, badly written software.
I don’t think that’s why they are too expensive.
China is pumping out nice cars for like 15k and I guarantee you it has all sorts of data mining. China could probably make one of those Slate things for like $5k.
They all have data mining, regardless of country. China subsidises EVs even when they’re sold abroad, to kill the competition. Of course most legacy manufacturers have also lost the plot when it comes to affordability. To make matters worse, many of them also have to deal with expensive union labour. Chinese labour is still much cheaper.
“They’re just heavily subsidized, not actually beating us!!”
Pure cope.
China could probably make one of those Slate things for like $5k.
That’s dumb.
No, Chinese EVs are not $15K in export markets, they are over $25K.
Don’t charge $100,000 for a regular fucking vehicle?
Chevy Bolt was under $25,000. No one bought them. Total sales in Q2 2025: 33.
But they sold hundreds of thousands on $100K pickup trucks.
The Bolt was discontinued in 2023 and won’t be made again until 2026. Not really surprising that a vehicle that is no longer being made isn’t selling a lot.
I didn’t even know the Bolt was around in 2025. Perhaps they should’ve done a little more to let the public know about them. I think they really wanted to use them for tax purposes, not take away sales from vehicles that make them much more money.
It kind of wasn’t. While you could buy a Bolt in 2025, they stopped making new ones in 2023. Anything on the lots was just leftover inventory, so not surprising nobody was buying a vehicle that wasn’t current.
especially EVs, who need recharging to keep batteries at healthy levels… I wouldn’t want one that’s sat on a lot for 14 months.
I love EVs, but we can’t treat them exactly the same as ICE vehicles and the Bolt never had the range to be a really popular contender with americans.
I see. The whole 33 thing was very misleading.
This continues to baffle me. Europe, the US, and likely even Japan was never going to be able to win the race to the bottom on price. China understands its supply chain and mineral strengths and has optimized its entire production towards churning out good (or good enough) EVs at scale.
Still, the US could continue to wall China out of its market with massive tariffs while also promoting alternative cheaper vehicle options, a large portion of which should and could be EVs. But the US hasn’t even done that… Domestic manufacturers have run screaming from EVs, seemingly ceding the entire field to China.
But the US hasn’t even done that…
And continues to stubbornly refuse to.
This is a repeat of the '70s when fuel prices shot up, and people started buying fuel efficient Japanese cars.
The American manufacturers just continued making their land yachts and muscle cars until they came up with such innovations as the Ford Pinto or the AMC Gremlin…
And even those weren’t as fuel efficient as the average Toyota or Honda or Datsun of the era.
Ford, GM and Stelantis are going to just keep pumping out SUVs as fast as they can with only the occational token EV that doesn’t meet what the market demands.
Mustang drivers or pickup truck drivers aren’t the ones most actively seeking an EV.
They need to come up with an EV that competes with a Corolla. Or one that is in the same ballpark as the BYD cars. Not on price alone - no North America based manufacturer can compete directly on price against a subsidizd Chinese company, but on the being a car part.
The Ford Pinto killed 38 people
Tesla has burned over 80 people to death.
And yet the “Pinto” is the punchline.
Are we supposed to feel bad about corporations ?
See the last word. They want you to think of
your portfoliotHE eCoNoMy.They literally can’t comprehend that you don’t only think of their one true God: $$$
No.
Lmfao at the pro capitalism crybabies in this thread
- Free market is superior
- We’re getting steamrolled by a planned economy
Pick one.
You won’t survive because you made your vehicles too big and expensive for the average consumer. I welcome China’s BVD’s as an option for the lower middle-class, the class which North American manufacturers have forgotten.
Aww man, China is dumping to gain market share for EVs? That’s crazy. If only car manufacturers had adapted to EVs sooner and researched more into better battery technologies, they might not be in this position. Get fucked. This whole, every car has to be super luxorious in America is getting ridiculous. I looked at a rav4 last year and the “features” they included in the base model was mental. I just want my car to go when I press the pedal. Brake. And a CD Player. I don’t need half the shit they put in American market cars. Doesn’t help that I have a large family that needs to travel far, frequently. So, my hands are tied with getting an SUV. I’d kill for a better train transit in America. Next car gets to be an EV though. Cause that’s the sedan.
In my area last year I was legitimately looking at all options. Toyota lot was the biggest disappointment. They had 1 RAV4 that was completely stripped, cloth seats, barely any features etc. but somehow the payments were still $150 more per month than leases on better equipped EVs at that point (prior to the federal tax credit expiration). I asked the Toyota guy if he had any other competitive options and he tried to tell me I should get a massive truck (Tundra).
The guy at my lot said, “you won’t be able to find what you’re looking for; cause even if we stripped everything out, it would still be the MSRP base price.” And I was just floored by that. I walked off the lot, went home and got a PHEV from Mazda and ended up $2000 under asking; had to stay for hours though. Best I could do cause the only comparable cargo and seat size EV was a KIA EV7 (the suburban looking one). I wanted the Ioniq5, but a buddy of mine had a problem with his and Hyundai was terrible to him. Everything else in that size was just too expensive because all the EVs at that level have so many useless features.
Source on China “dumping”? All I see are unsupported accusations that are wholly explainable by the power the lobby of the automotive industry has
Source on China “dumping”?
Illegal Storage at Jamberoo: BYD was caught storing more than 1,600 vehicles at Jamberoo Action Park without the necessary council approvals. The storage facility was discovered as the water park attempted to reopen for the summer season while its car parks remained filled with new EVs.
Inventory vs. Sales Gap: As of late 2025, BYD had reportedly imported approximately 51,000 cars to Australia but had sold only about 38,000 units, leaving a significant surplus of inventory.
Carbon Credit Strategy: Some analysts believe the stockpiling is linked to a government loophole that allows manufacturers to accumulate carbon credits based on the number of electric vehicles imported, rather than just those sold.
The plan was China was going to sell cars like legacy auto has been doing for the past 120 years. USA said no. USA created China’s over capacity. Not China.
I will fully admit my only data is anectodal evidence from friends overseas.
Edit: I’ll also add, I distinctly remember reading abouy China selling zero mileage used EVs. Which lines up with dumping practices.
That one was less dumping and more subsidies fraud, IIRC
Ah, fair enough then. I concede.
Wouldn’t they still be in the samw situation as China can afford to dump indefinitely?
They cannot dump indefinitely. That is impossible with current global circumstances. Also, if companies actually invested in EVs sooner, costs would be down already and China would have a harder time dumping. The biggest issue currently is, China can dump for longer than manufacturers can catch up. You reap what you sow, though.
They can. China has near limitless funds lol. It’s like the US with military spending except they’re doing a trade war rather than conventional war.
But they cannot sell them all. Eventually the well runs dry and they will have overstock and the wave will come to shore. The cracks in the foundation seem to be there. But I may be, and probably am, wrong. I studied engineering, not geopolitical based economics.
Simple affordable vehicles if they want to keep the factories busy and and sell a lot of vehicles. Greatly reduce the massive trucks and SUVs. I don’t know how many people need to tell them that before they finally listen.
Not my portfolio!
