Affordable - made cheaply - is equated in this article heavily as “better” but that is not always the case. I would still hesitate to buy a Chinese vehicle over safety and quality.
New tariffs will probably stop this completely
Ford had run down their reputation by forcing penny pinching cheap designs, but there was still a lot of engineering prowess in-house that had gone underutilized and made them a tech-team to catch up the Chineese tech, design and manufacturing to concurrent standards.
The only lingering worry is if they're gonna find themselves content with the amount of technology transfer and move on (because Volvo standards requires a high price point and non neglible market share).
[0] https://www.motortrend.com/news/lincoln-nautilus-2025-suv-of...
Any discussion of the topic of product origin and quality is always heavily oversimplified.
There are many variables at play here: target marketing, design, manufacture, regulatory environment, etc.
BYD's 4 model entered in euroNCAP have 5 stars.
The thing is though, those '70s and '80s cars were simple. They could be repaired. And any workshop could do it, you didn't have to rely on the dealership. With not much more than a basic set of wrenches you could repair many things yourself if you wanted to. That's not the same today. Many systems are effectively unrepairable, they are not designed to be repairable. Especially on EVs. Is there any EV that has been designed for easy battery replacement? Once these cars are out of warranty, any major problems will scrap the car.
Yes, it is. My last car was a 2015 model that lasted until 2019, so I don't think my information is out-of-date, but it was a Mazda and was very easy to repair (which pretty much never happened anyway aside from regular maintenance). Any my cars before that were easy too.
>Many systems are effectively unrepairable, they are not designed to be repairable.
Citation needed. People like you always make claims like this, but I think they're all myths. I've never seen any evidence of this myself. Perhaps it's because I didn't have American cars, and only Japanese ones? I don't know.
>Especially on EVs.
This is a different issue, and I can't speak to it as I've never had one. The vast majority of cars were and still are ICE cars, and your claim is about all cars.
>those '70s and '80s cars were simple
You obviously never looked under the hood of a 1980s car, with its maze of vacuum tubing.
I'm not surprised that a 2015 Mazda is a decent car. Mazda make good cars. But I'm speaking of cars made today. 2015 was almost 10 years ago. Cars have only gotten more complicated and less repairable since then.
Yeah wires and vacuum hoses look messy. But you can replace a vacuum hose by cutting a new piece to length with a pair of scissors. Good luck in a modern car when that same function is a digital signal in a circuit board.
Again, citation needed. I simply do not believe you. Outside of EV powertrains, car design has not changed much in 10 years.
Compared to them, my Wrangler is a square death machine, although almost anything is safer than a Wrangler.
I don't know whether the off-roading safety philosophy applies to your car though, as many SUVs and crossover cars are only designed to look the part, and are in fact more similar to ordinary road cars in safety design.
All countries that get into car manufacture seem to follow a similar path. 10-15 years of crap cars while building scale and expertise, then maturity with much higher quality. I think we are seeing the mature Chinese car industry now and it’s frankly impressive.