Now there are two Chinese automakers on the top list
daoinsights.com
daoinsights.com
Staying dependent upon the US and having prohibitive tariffs on China while we are being pummelled by the US is not smart. We should be turning away from the US in response to this behaviour.
[1] https://www.cfr.org/article/how-does-fentanyl-reach-united-s... "Canada plays virtually no role in the U.S. fentanyl influx, especially compared to the other countries. The country contributes less than 1 percent to its southern neighbor’s street fentanyl supply, as both the Canadian government and data from the DEA report."
I don't trust China to produce good-quality cars at the moment (although I expect I'll have eaten my words in ten years' time), but if most of the world gets on fine without American cars, I'm sure the Canadians will too.
BTW other commenters on the story are saying they had great experiences with the latest Chinese cars: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43279753
Other Chinese manufacturers, don't know probably lower quality, often direct copies of mostly premium German cars for fraction of the price.
I used to trash everything Chinese, but years ago I got my first drone, it was from DJI. Miles ahead of anything else in that segment including both software and hardware quality and reliability. Don't judge quality of output of entire country based on some 1 dollar USB cables, they are smart and have great work ethics, plus a billion and a half headcount.
I am not ready for a EV yet, but when it is time, I would consider those.
> There're only few countries with full sovereignty in this world, and Canada is not one of them
This sounds like the start of a discussion premised on the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman fallacy.
just wait and see what will happen next
There are strategic reasons why you may not want to help increase the manufacturing base of a national "competitor":
> Democratic countries’ economies are mainly set up as free market economies with redistribution, because this is what maximizes living standards in peacetime. In a free market economy, if a foreign country wants to sell you cheap cars, you let them do it, and you allocate your own productive resources to something more profitable instead. If China is willing to sell you brand-new electric vehicles for $10,000, why should you turn them down? Just make B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps, sell them for a high profit margin, and drive a Chinese car.
> Except then a war comes, and suddenly you find that B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps aren’t very useful for defending your freedoms. Oops! The right time to worry about manufacturing would have been years before the war, except you weren’t able to anticipate and prepare for the future. Manufacturing doesn’t just support war — in a very real way, it’s a war in and of itself.
From what I can tell, the US is repositioning itself as a national "competitor" to Canada. Thus based on the article you linked, Canada should significant curtail its trade with the US and start to rely upon its own industries and that of its reliable allies (looking at Europe) for military and critical infrastructure. That said, trading non critical goods with China and other countries who have not taken an aggressive war posture with us makes sense as well.
Say what you will about China and their spying, but they have not actually treated to remove our sovereignty as the current leader of the US has [1]. In fact, China hasn't done anything even close to that.
[1] https://time.com/7214321/trump-canada-51st-state-fox-super-b...
You are right, but I suspect you didn't realize its in completely opposite way if I understood you correctly. China isn't enemy of most if not all western countries in a way that it doesn't feel the need to export their system elsewhere and feeling as superior uber race, unlike russia for example. China never threatened Europe, zero zilch 0 nothing, it just wants to do business with us. US on the other hand...
Maybe China is enemy of the US (not really seeing it but mkay, your fight your problem), maybe it will become enemy of US with recent potus and his a-lickers actions, but rest of the world is stopping caring about US tantrums and US-first is only about US, which is what, 4% of global population?
Those that attack are our enemies. Those that don't aren't, rest are details.
Speaking as a Canadian, China is no friend of Canada:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Michael_Spavor_an...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_government_interferenc...
Did they ever threatened to annex Canada? Sort of more important than some minor bribes or espionage IMHO.
You need to put things in perspective here. I am no fan of China but we have to turn away from the US.
US tariffs are expected to cut our GDP by 3% / $63B [1], enter us into a recession, and increase unemployment by 2% / 440K jobs [2].
[1] https://www.edwardjones.ca/ca-en/market-news-insights/stock-...
[2] https://thoughtleadership.rbc.com/u-s-tariffs-on-canada-take...
These are serious economic effects. And if Trump stays focused on annexation, it is likely to get worse if he really does want to bring us to our knees.
How could it be otherwise?
In international trade, what you want is a partner who lets both of you ground through comparative advantage. They make what they are good at, you make what you are good at, goods made in both countries get cheaper and so you both get stronger.
The USA has in the blink of an eye gone a champion of free trade to a tariffed island. If the USA starts dumping and you protect your local industries with tariffs, the USA will retaliate with more tariffs. The trust needed for comparative advantage to work has gone.
The only sane response to this is to walk away from the USA as a trade partner. The only reason you wouldn't do that is you think it might be a passing phase, or you're in the denial stage of grief.
It's been less than 100 days so not much has changed yet. But as you can see from this thread, people are looking around, assessing their options. Maybe Canada investing in shipping so it can trade products with Europe or India makes more sense now. Both need the raw materials Canada produces. That will mean less trade are done in the US dollar, and it's unlikely it will remain as stable as it has been for instance (it's already bouncing around a lot), so maybe it makes sense to denominate everything is another currency. Euro's perhaps?
If you think that's unlikely consider this: a long while ago Australia's major trading partners was the UK. Then the UK joined the EU, and now it does far most of it's business in the Asia pacific. These transitions do happen when they make economic sense.
That said, what you describe does make a lot of sense. While a country should keep some level of local industries to avoid getting completely deindustrialized, it does make sense to look for new trade partners in situation such as this.
Isolationism just doesn't work in this day and age. Advanced economies are very complex beasts, and international trade makes it possible. No one country can produce everything an advanced economy needs.
They also messed up with waiting for too long to revise the computers and electronics in their cars, firing up a 1000 people strong engineering company (or was it 3000?) to rebuild car software from the ground up, naturally causing a lot of issues.
But, the ID cars are doing well, the ID 4 overtaking Tesla's model 3 in popularity. And I really like that bus they have now, it's super cute.
At ~60k a pop who can spend that on a small bus? Maybe rich Californians. VW forgot they're a peoples' car and is trying to become a status brand for the wealthy qurky suburbanites.
They seem to be super popular among trades people and as commercial vehicles. I have to admit I hardly ever see them in 'passenger' configuration.
[1] https://www.ratwell.com/technical/MSRP.html
Investigate what exactly? This is a known accounting fact.
Where do you think the money comes from that gets every German VW factory worker 30+ vacation days per year, paid sick days whenever they don't feel like coming to work, great pension plans, inflation beating Yearly raises, unions that keep unproductive people from getting fired and best severance packages in the industry in case they do.
All those perks they have get priced into the final product. You can't manufacture cheap commodity goods while treating your workers so lavishly when competing with Asia and how they treat their manufacturing labor.
This was economically feasible when European cars had no foreign competition in terms of quality and technology, but this is not the case anymore and something will have to give.
Lower cost than Bulgaria, Turkey or China? I doubt it.
Also, the high costs for VW aren't just from factory workers, but also from overpaid managers making six figure just because they're old, not because they add much value, which is less of an issue at Chinese automakers that don't overpay managers to such an extent.
Geely bought 20% of the company that makes London’s cabs in 2006, then all of Volvo in 2009, the. A controlling interest in Lotus in 2017.
They’ve used increasing scale to create shared platforms across brands (including new brands like Polestar).
It’s really a classic well-executed capitalist play of rolling up smaller companies into larger enterprises with greater scale economies and deeper expertise and vertical integration.
It’s great to see, and gives me in the sometimes-dubious capitalist claim that incumbents at a sufficient level of complacency get eaten.
Reddit discussion https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/1j2d118/xiaomi_su7_ul...
Chinese EVs seem like they’re operating a notch above the competition right now - very little in the market with the same value for money
“Detroit auto engineers tear down BYD's Seagull: "An extinction-level event"”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGgo_wpV1ug
is one such example. I recommend a deep dive of his vids to understand what's actually going on.
Recommend watching a bunch of
so i am thinking.. if chinese EVs are better while being much cheaper, what would be if they did not have to be cheaper?
Given Geely's various acquisitions, it makes sense that their cars would benefit from shared technologies so I wouldn't expect their vehicles to be much worse than westerns.
Seems like the main problem if you dislike China taking over the industry is that the automobile companies keep voluntarily selling their brands to them.
- German and French automakers