LOL, capitalism my ass.

They can push laws rapidly when they want to (i.e., being paid by lobbyists), but when it comes to picking up rubbish, making the water drinkable, or holding pedo billionaires accountable, suddenly the gears of government are slow and need thorough “debate”.

Right? These cunts love to tell us of the benefits of capitalism and the free market such as lower prices from competition driving the market, but then they cut off said competition that is not in their price fixing enshitification club. Can’t wait for them to tell us we do not own the vehicles we purchase because the software on them is a license. Basically like a mobile phone or a console.

This sentiment is why I use Linux, build my own PCs, and use aftermarket OS on phones…I hate it too, and wouldn’t be surprised if somehow they’re already doing this or will soon if not.

I am a 100% FOSS boy-oh. Down with corpo greed!

The free market is when you jam your invisible hand on the lobbying scale, right?

They only want free markets when it benefits them.

Sort of like socialism

"Them" is different in the two cases. In this case it's to benefit a few oligarchs. In the case of socialism it's to benefit the general public.

That’s the way it’s supposed to be until the wealthy cunts need something, it’s their profits, and our losses wgen we have to bail them out, c’mon man get it together, that’s what I was implying at least

In a socialist system the "wealthy cunts" are not in charge. If they are then the label "socialist" isn't really correct any more.

Though in some circles the label "socialist" actually corresponds to "a political structure or philosophy that changes based on context but always means whatever I don't like", in which case I guess go ahead and use it. I find this definition to be somewhat less useful, however.

Do you know how many times they say we need your money so together we can beat socialism. I know wtf it means numb nuts, sorry reading too much doom scrolling and my patience is wearing thin, very thin. So don’t reply numb nuts I’ve said for years prior to this hell on earth (I’m atheist fyi) that I make Democrats look like Republicans, I’m for helping people not hurting, and everyone one with over 500mil should be [redacted] and that ia a good start.

There's that nebulous "they" again. And now childish ad hominems too, and a demand that I "don't reply." I get the impression that continuing to discuss would be pretty pointless, yeah.

So are you defending the wealthy? cause if so you’d be correct, this no longer needs to be a conversion to have. I’m probably older than you, I’m not like a majority of my peers, but if I’m older then yeah I got an education before they started to dumb it down. Smartest guy no, but not an average nor below average intelligence. There’s the old saying you might be better educated than me aka college but you’re not smarter than me. So again eat the wealthy, fuck gop and a majority of the democrats

No, I'm suggesting that you're not very knowledgeable about socialism.

I read that comment completely differently. The “socialism” in “Sorta like socialism” is supposed to replace “free markets” in the previous comment.

“They” only want “socialism” when it’s corporate bailouts. Privatized profits, socialized losses.

wtf! their party is supposed to be all about capitalism and globalism.

Bruh. Where have you been?

yeah I know I should know but they just keep on beating their dead sacred cows.

It makes sense. The investment in and development of EVs and EV manufacturing has been fully kneecapped by the American auto and oil industries.

If China came in, the American auto industry would be destroyed overnight due to the lack of competitive vehicles.

The propaganda of “Chinese vehicles are cheap and dangerous” only works when people don’t have the product in front of them.

businessinsider.com/ford-ceo-jim-farley-xiaomi-te…

I live in a country with Chinese vehicles, and I would say that they were, initially, a bit crappy, a little less technically safe but cheaper.

Now though they’re pretty much even, especially BYD.

This is the confident opinion of one who has never owned a Chinese vehicle!

It’s too bad they can’t just let them into the USA. I believe US car manufacturers would learn to compete over time.

The propaganda of “Chinese vehicles are cheap and dangerous” only works when people don’t have the product in front of them.

Plus they’d have to pass whatever requirements in the US to be sold, the same ones that the ‘domestic’ manufacturers do.

Is this even a concern anymore? Haven’t we pretty much gutted any requirements that would actually matter / wouldn’t already exist in Chinese cars?

There are some American safety requirements that are based on protecting the safety of the driver at the expense of everything else that cheaper vehicles might not meet.

Could you give us some examples?

One example is a strong A-Pillar on a car–the metal post to the left and right of the windshield. Most manufacturers meet the standard by making it really beefy and wide. It protects the driver from collision but makes collision more likely by obstructing the driver’s vision.

Car safety standards in the US are actively hostile to anyone outside a car.

As they sell them in Europe we can be sure that that meet the more stringent European standards too. The idea that Chinese vehicles are all crap has passed its use by date.

Yeah from a performance and safety standpoint I don’t think there’s much difference. There is some argument that repair parts availability might be worse with Chinese vehicles, but the usual domestic manufacturers are also actively hostile to repairs now anyway so I don’t know how different that will really be.

Let’s do that imo

i have a BYD at home in Australia, i charge it 90% of the time off the solar panels on my roof. I travel SE Asia a fair bit (and work remotely) I am astounded by the number of Chinese EVs in Phnom Penh (I’m currently in Cambodia) as well as quite a few Mazda EVs (sedan and SUV) which i think are made in China anyway. So many brands, actually competitive :) I have seen one Toyota EV and lots and lots of used Prius.

Another thing is so many Bentley’s and Lamborghinis.

[China’s auto industry has] grown from holding 16 percent of global market share to 25 percent—with automotive analysts predicting that this value could reach one-third by 2030.

I would imagine that global market share would explode if they were allowed access to the American market. Especially with oil prices being what they are.

itif.org/…/explaining-the-relative-competitive-de…

chicken tax 2.0

you will buy your 90% markup unrepairable slop cars and learn to like it

Are the Chinese EVs repairable though? And what I’ve seen of them is a bunch of gimmicky features that I don’t want.

They are in the way that you can purchase the parts for them from sources including the manufacturer, but also third parties. Until I have that I will not be buying EV in the US. If that expands to ICE vehicles then I will not purchase those either.

That’s at least better than modern US cars.

Still don’t want all the crazy electronics that are gonna break.

It’s better than many US cars yeah, but not most ICE cars currently on the road today. Most ICE vehicles can have a vast majority of their internal components replaced with a stop to advanced auto parts or a specialist store to buy things like an ECU. Not with Tesla however or pretty much any EV we can get here. So for EV cars here yeah that’s absolutely better than any we have here.

Try repairing any modern car. Try repairing a six year old car. Without the proprietary software to interface with the car computers, there aren’t a lot.of repairs you can do on your own.

I have a 19 Volvo and a 13 Volvo. You can’t do much of anything to either without the software and a cryptographic PIN that locks the central electronics module. The only way you can access the cem is buy “renting” Volvo software. Even then, they charge for individual transactions. Want to make a key for your car? Pay for the software then pay another $250 for access to the key making module. BTW, that only permits you to make ONE key.

You’ve been locked out of your own cars for a long time now. More and more goes behind the dealer paywall over time.

Exactly.

Do the Chinese make a car that’s not like that?

lmao

I was in Spain and many of the Ubers i used ended up being electric BYD seals. They felt way better than Tesla.

I also like the bBYD taxis. The roads where I am in China are a mix of local electric and Tesla. I did are a Ford explorer and that was weird…

I thought BYD was already banned from selling cars in the USA? Am I allowed to buy a BYD???

Technically yes. They haven’t been banned yet. The reason you don’t see them around is they’re heavily tariffed so nobody other than Waymo is buying any.

LOL… Capitalism and Competition!.. unless it’s applied in Murica, there corporate communism is the law

Eventually the US auto market will be eaten alive. Lower cost vehicles cannibalize US manufacturers revenue and their business model requires large revenues, even when profits are low or nill.

The reason to be concerned is Chinese vehicles are equipped with all the sensors necessary for a distributed spy network. I don’t think there’s any way to guarantee data stays in the US. Chevy, Ford, etc will use this for reason to not change, given the government has an interest in keeping out Chinese vehicles.

I’m more okay with China spying on me than US companies. China doesn’t really have a way or motive to effect my life.

They (say they are) are worried about national security. Like they don’t want it being able to somehow map all military bases or whatever.

That’s really a tall tale they are trying to sell though.

They don’t want a cheap competitor in the American markets and they don’t have a guarantee that Chinese companies will hand over data on a whim the way they can force American manufacturers to do.

At this point, the current clown government has been hacked by every adversary America has due to the gutting of all the people who managed opsec… wouldn’t really make much difference if Chinese EVs were sold here. Just don’t allow them on military bases is all you have to do.

The domestic automakers all have the same shit. Why would the Chinese go to all the trouble to build and sell cars here to run espionage, when they can just compromise a prebuilt distributed mobile camera and microphone service (aka all modern cars)?

Such bullshit. You’re buying into exactly what the American propaganda bubble wants you to believe. The US is now pretty much the only country in the world banning Chinese EV’s.

It has been proven that there is no distributed spy network. Unlike the kill switch in the F35 which is why most European countries are moving away from any American tech. Talk about spyware.

But please keep buying outdated American combustion cars with no innovation. Or Teslas that don’t even pass the basic safety tests in Europe and can’t be sold anywhere outside the US. I’m loving my Xiaomi SU7, just like Ford CEO who refuses to give it up.

What is stopping someone from flying to mexico, buying an EV there, and driving it back and getting it registered?
Some states may have safety regs, but some mid-america states don't seem to give a shit about what you drive where.

Registration. If they haven’t gone through all the National Highway Safety Administration tests, it’s not able to be registered (or was a while ago, I haven’t kept up). A couple of decades ago, there was a billionaire who bought a couple extra supercars and had them destroyed by testing, so that his would be road-legal.

But aren’t Waymos all BYD? If it meets all safety standards for Waymo to register it, it should meet them for the rest of us …… in a sane world

No, Waymos are Jaguar i-Pace (Indian owned), Ojai (Chinese Geely/Zeekr) and in the future also a version of Hyundai Ioniq (South Korea).

Thanks

That specific model, sure.

You would have to pay the 100% tarriff on a Chinese EV because you’d be “importing” it. You likely wouldn’t be able to register it in any state without proving the import duty had been paid.

And assuming you flew under the radar and somehow registered it without paying, the Feds would get access to the registration records and the CBP would eventually come after you.

• fly to Mexico with $50k in gold in your pocket
• buy car
• request bill of sale to state the car was $5.00
• bribe the salesman with gold
• drive back to the US

100% tariff on my bill of sale of $5.00 is $5.00.

totally legit and totally the way every rich asshole does business.

In other news, Coke asks Congress to ban Pepsi.

I ask congress to ban congress. Anarchy is preferable to fascism.

Hey, since they Big keeping saying cars don’t matter, and nobody buys them, and nobody buys EVs, they should just ban Chinese SUVs and trucks, right? Right?!

Save their asses again, taxpayers

I paid a 15% baked in tariff on my non us manufactured electric car. Worth every penny.

GM has never made a good car. Ford forgot they are a car company. Fuck em all.

Ford’s CEO thinks they are off-road Porsche. Delusional all around.

US can ban Chinese cars from the US market. But all other markets are still lost.

Just call it “planet america” and you’ll be fine. It just works…

The US is trying to get other economies to keep rules against Chinese EVs as well.

The Chinese are dumping EVs, but the cars are better value than any American/European option - often just straight up better. Tue only reason I have avoided buying one is lack of confidence in the long term stability of the manufacturers; that s evej considering that import duties where I live put them in the same price category as regionally manufactured models.

I waited quite a while before buying an EV. The wife wanted a Tesla but I couldn’t stomach buying from Musk so we have a Chinese one. Cheaper so it wasn’t that much of an investment and comparable to most non EV alternatives.

Big Autos is bribing Congress to kill anything they deem as competition.

-Ftfy

Exactly. If you look at videos of what Chinese EVs are like. There’s no competition to them now.

Oh, China recently took the top speed record from Bugatti in an EV even, with the Yangwang U9 Extreme outsprinting the Chiron SS 300+ last year, so gas cars don’t even have the top speed card to play anymore. EVs are now more efficient than gas cars, are at least theoretically cheaper to maintain, and now they’re officially faster too.

These guys ain’t playing.

Something tells me the hypercar makers are gonna hit an upper limit in how fast they can go before catastrophic failures occur due to physics intervening though; you can bend physics, as Koenigsegg and Bugatti have proven in practice for 20+ years, constantly pushing the envelope for how fast you can go in a land vehicle and setting a new top speed record every time, but you can’t break physics; at some point it’s gonna snap back and that’s when bad things can happen, and that’ll be the physical upper limit for how fast you can go in a land vehicle.

I agree. Even in a Korea EV I tried out, I was surprised how much fun it was. Definitely not a car for me, I need something very throttled. As in this idiot drove cars at 140+ mph, don’t worry safely except for the potential of deer.

It’d be very interesting to see Rimac and Yangwang duke it out for top speed similar to how Koenigsegg and Bugatti have been doing with gas cars since '05, assuming physics doesn’t stop them first, because like I said, at some point physics is gonna intervene in the top speed wars and it ain’t gonna end well when it does. I mean, we as a species have already broken the 300mph barrier for land vehicles, at some point there’s gotta be a line which can’t be crossed without bad things happening to the car for any number of reasons from the tires blowing up past a certain speed to the chassis getting crushed by excessive G-forces past a certain speed.

I think at this point the acceleration is the fun part, graying out or even reding out isn’t out of the question now. Odds are the tests might be done with auto pilot. I’m sure there’s some firmware hacks that already exist to remove the current limiters. I bet higher speeds will be reached with more complicated transmissions.

Were Biden’s tariffs not enough?

Isn’t it just that when the Chinese recognised that they needed to dominate and innovate in the car market all the other manufacturers doubled down on doing business as usual? That the Chinese have a dynamic, robotic car industry with a 1 billion person market is really going to make it difficult to compete.

The Chinese market isn’t perfect by a long stretch as they don’t respond to market signals very well hence the over supply of ICE vehicles because their population has gone EV. That means they have a lot of ICE vehicles on their hands. Especially since Trump closed the Straight of Hormuz.

It’s not just that, but yeah, some changes aren’t incentivized by quarterly profits. The Chinese government did help with planning and incentives to help manufacturers transition to new technology and to build out the supply chains they would need.

Now they’ve made the transition to new technology, established supply chains, scaled up, and have strong competition to keep progressing rapidly.

US government tried at various points, only to have progress thrown away by the next administration. So now we have protectionism. Consumers pay more while legacy manufacturers milk obsolete technology for a few more quarters of profit……. While losing any hope of competing globally

The captive market at work.

But this is supposed to be fixed by the free market, anything else is communism.

The USA is Capitalistic Communism. Drug Companies do research with taxpayer money then reap profits.

Bailouts and market manipulation like not allowing Chinese cars.

AI is gonna crash hard and the companies already have their hands out.

Only the profits are private.

YEAH CAPITALISM - no competition allowed. Protect us from those damn commies …… and their free market competition

If they paid us fairly, then we could afford to buy their expensive cars. Then, the competition from cheap Chinese cars wouldn’t be nearly so big a problem for them.

Their greed keeps coming back to bite them in the ass, but they’ll do anything at all to avoid sharing the wealth.

And if we had universal healthcare it would actually be cheaper to produce those cars. Canada is proof of this.

The CEO of Ford drives a Xaomi. He could have any car he wanted, and he chooses a Chinese car. It’s ostensibly for market research but he’s said he really doesn’t want to give it up. So yeah they’re cheap, and also I think China might just genuinely make better cars at this point. While China has been investing into manufacturing and consumer tech the big three have been dragging their heels and kicking and screaming because they see engineers as cost centers and that is biting them in the ass as well.

he wouldnt drive his own companies car, which are likely hazardous on the road.

Ah yes, competition makes capitalism help everyone!

Fuck them. The car company middleman is noting good for the consumer. The relationship should be directly with the product wherever possible. They have a vested interest in your investment not bein a lemon. Them being able to blame bad service through a third party is a nice for name and shaming random problems.

Free market in action

How about you people actually make competitive vehicles?

Legacy pensions funds make them unable to compete. Or atleast it used to, not deep diving on that

Of course they do

gotta keep the strangling going, after all

I want a Chinese car

Sorry capitalism can’t do that. Only the glorious PRC can have electric Chinese cars.

Plenty of capitalist countries can have electric cars, including but not limited to Chinese cars. The problem isn’t capitalism here, it is the US.

There are several different problems here and banning Chinese cars is possibly the worst solution. And with Trump and magats in charge, a better solution is off the table anyway.

Problem 1: American automakers don’t make anything good and it’s all expensive.

Problem 2: Americans need jobs, everyone buying their (second) most expensive belonging from abroad transfers manufacturing jobs abroad.

Problem 3: EV transition in the US isn’t going as strong as it should be.

Problem 4: China has EV subsidies for cars sold to other countries. This allows for dumping stock at below cost prices, after already having super low production costs (among other things China is the world’s battery manufacturer, Chinese EVs get batteries for much cheaper; also Chinese labor costs are at most a quarter of union labor in the US). Usually EV subsidies, if they exist, are on purchasing, not production.

The solution, to me, isn’t banning Chinese EVs. It’s a further increase of tariffs on cars made in China and then that tariff money should be used to fund an EV purchase subsidy so that all EVs get cheaper for the end user to buy (yes, said subsidies would also apply to Chinese EVs). Now if BYD or whoever wants to sell a ton of cars in the US, they have to manufacture in the US, which means they have similar costs to other manufacturers (minus the batteries of course, nothing to do about that without causing a ton of issues. You can’t just increase tariffs on Chinese batteries because non-Chinese manufacturers need them too).

My proposed solution would directly affect #2 and #4 in a positive manner, be better for #3 than outright banning Chinese EVs, but not as good as simply allowing them to dump nearly-free cars on Americans (which would of course increase in price once the competition is dead) and forces the American automakers themselves to sort out #1 because right now much of their competition is the German big 3 and Toyota, all of which are expensive too (shit, I consider Toyota more expensive than the Germans because I look at used cars, I love depreciation)

But what do I know, I’m not American and don’t know shit about economics and trade wars and don’t even own an EV.

It is pretty much what the EU is doing. Tariffs on Chinese cars to compensate for their subsidies and brand agnostic subsidies for EVs on the domestic market (also applicable to Chinese cars of course, but equally to everyone else, levelling the playing field).

We have yet to see if the European producers are going to survive but they at least appear to have gotten the memo on at least competing in the sector of not oversized, affordable EVs again. Renault is pretty successful with its R5 and I would think also the new Renault Twingo should sell well for example.

In the US the car industry has pushed itself into a corner it cannot get out anymore, except maybe Tesla, which does know how to build efficient and somewhat affordable cars. It just chooses to go the opposite way because the guy at the top is a lunatic. The rest of the sector doesn’t even know how to do it, even if they wanted. They are heading to their Kodak/Nokia end game. Except Nokia found a way out by offloading the damage to a foreign company stupid enough to purchase the doomed branch and consequently refocusing on the other branches that it could secure a future (for Nokia that was mobile communication infrastructure).

Lobbying for walling off the US market while making laws to postpone the death of oversized combustion engine vehicles, will postpone the inevitable but only by so much. At some point the US will be the only underdeveloped country left, still choking in traffic fumes, I don’t think it would even get that far before everything collapses among US car producers.

Yeah sorry I dropped this on that post “/s”

I want a Chinese car that isn’t a national security risk.

“The Art of the Deal”, chapter 5, “Ban Competition”.

I thought that competition was good for capitalism?

OH you meant WE have to compete with each other for resources to survive, but YOU and YOUR PROFITS are guaranteed in the Constitution?

That’s exactly what they meant this whole time. We are the rubes.

What happened to the free market?

It’s free in the sense that the wealthiest businessmen are free to decide how the rest of the country shound live.

Maximum freedom for the maximally wealthy.

And getting the big money out of politics is communism, according to these fascists.

It literally is communism, in the sense that capitalist states are always controlled by big money, and the only way to prevent that is to do a communist revolution.

Capitalism needs protection because the socialists are better at capitalism than the capitalists are. After all, capitalism only works long term with a strong state to ensure market competition. Who better than a bunch of literal communists to see this and actually try and create a long term functional market economy?

China is straight up capitalist. They produced more billionaires than the US for the third straight year. The people do not own the means of production. The government shares more in common with fascism than it does socialism.

Fuck off, American car makers who no longer make any cars except the mustang and the corvette

Promise?

Did you know that the C5 Corvette was one of the most fuel efficient 20th century GM products? It was so fucking aerodynamic that it made 30mpg on the highway, even with its pushrod 2 valve per cylinder 6 liter LS engine rated nearly 400 horsepower. The contemporary fish-eye Camaros were close to that figure as well, when equipped with the 3.6 liter Buick V6, because again they were very aerodynamic.

It’s illegal to build a car that aerodynamic these days because it doesn’t pass modern pedestrian safety laws. See, if you’re going to kill a pedestrian with a car, you’re legally required to make initial contact at thorax height like any of the bus-nosed pickup trucks on the market today, not at shin level like 90’s GM sports cars.

I don’t buy the “efficient cars aren’t buildable today” nonsense.
Civic, Accord, Nissan cars, Sports cars- all buildable, all pass safety regs. The “big 3” American companies simply DECIDED to not build them since their garbage pieces of shit can’t even begin to compete with something like a simple Civic. I hope the big three drown to death in their own stupidity.

Japanese cars, hybrids aside, aren’t efficient. They’re more efficient than American trucks of course, but they achieve low fuel consumption only through their small size.

I’m not kidding when I tell you that I achieved the same highway fuel consumption on my mate’s 2005 Mazda 3 1.6, 5 speed manual, as I did on my 1999 Chrysler 300M 3.5, 4 speed auto. The Chrysler had just over twice the power and it was a bigger car. And older. AND it was an old slushbox auto. The important considerations: Despite all the extra length, width and engine size, the weight difference somehow was only about 300 KG. And the big engine had a wide enough torque curve that they could allow for really tall gear ratios, it sat at about 1500-1600 rpm cruising at 90 km/h in 4th gear. The Mazda I believe was nearly 2500 rpm at 90 km/h in 5th, but I could be remembering that wrong.

Around town the Chrysler lost more of its fuel economy than the Mazda of course, but then it was a huge ass car with a huge engine - the difference was still nowhere near what one would expect it to be. And of course with a 3.5 exactly when the gas prices were at their lowest in ~2015-2016, well, I accelerated away from every light with a grin on my face so that probably makes up for much of the city fuel economy difference (which I honestly don’t remember the numbers for - it varies by traffic density anyway and I didn’t drive the Mazda in cities much, it wasn’t mine).

I then drove a ~2005 BMW 5 series diesel (E60 530d). Completely blew both of those out of the water with fuel economy. Think I got 4l/100km on the highway when the other two were 6-6.5.

You are right, though. Efficient cars are buildable today, there’s just close to no reason to do it in the US where gas is essentially free compared to, say, the EU. It’s the same reason people in Gulf states love driving their Nissan Patrols (Nissan Armada in Yank terms). The fuel’s so cheap, fuel economy doesn’t matter.

The brutally honest truth is that people are just willing to pay more for bigger cars and not just a little bit more, but more than the manufacturing cost increases with size. Make a car bigger, it gets 20% more expensive to produce but people will pay 50% more for it. It’s a no-brainer.

You can still buy cars that get <=4 l/100km on the highway, even with modern emissions requirements messing shit up for you (DPF regen cycles cause diesels to use more fuel for example).

My father’s 2017 Toyota Avalon gets 2 mpg better than my 2003 Chevrolet S10. How does a slickly shaped sports sedan make 20mpg when a 23 year old pickup with an engine that was primitive even then make 18? Meanwhile a 90’s Corvette can make 30.

Now that’s odd. The Avalon doesn’t fall into the trap the Mazda did where the engine was way underpowered. I wouldn’t call that engine or transmission super modern by any means, assuming the 2GR V6 and 6 speed auto, but not ancient tech either.

I don’t know, I have to wonder if it’s weight.

Lol, when you know, you know.

Land of the thief, home of the slave.

But enough about China.

Grand imperial guard, where the dollar is sacred

And power is god.

Banger fucking song

I’m fully in favor of banning not only Chinese vehicles, but ALL Chinese products of all kinds. Chinese cars are gonna be full of asbestos and lead, sitting in a Chinese car will give you genital cancer. If Canada imports them, I say mine the 49th parallel. Shoot anyone attempting to bring one into the country right in the children.

I want tiny Japanese trucks, byd cars, and every car in the world to be available for purchase in “the land of the free”

while you’re at it guys, could you force the current administration to release the remaining unredacted Epstein Files?

It is not a free market when you ban something. Just saying.