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Comment by vlovich123 | Hacker News Reader

Are the Chinese cars somehow really doing manufacturing more efficiently or is it a flooding of the market to capture the market and drive out encumbants (whether government subsidized or otherwise)?

I just don’t understand how the Chinese are making cars at half the price or more since afaik they also manufacture them in China and ship rather than build locally.

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I worked in the industry. It would have been really hard for China not to do better. Like really hard. They allocated 2 years, 150 people for a device that already existed but needed to be adapted to a different customer. It took 2.5 years. No improvements added. Every single manager in those companies is very political, no skills, technical or otherwise. So if chinese hired 20 competent people, gave them training on the industry's specific tools, they are already ahead.

>I worked in the industry. It would have been really hard for China not to do better.

Same. Major German car company I used to work for was so incompetent, slow and inefficient that it was inevitable they'd get shown off by Chinese cars, since Tesla did it before so it was a matter of time.

But even Teslas are 2-3x the price of equivalent Chinese EVs.

Apparently a Tesla model 3 has about 10-15 hours of human labor in it, so higher wages can't even begin to explain the price difference.

>But even Tesla's are 2-3x the price of equivalent Chinese EVs.

Well Tesla want to turn a nice profit.

Chinese EVs are sold on thin margins to capture marketshare.

They have dark factories ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCBdcNA_FsI

Look at the population of your country. Look at the population of China.

What argument is this? We're talking about advanced industry, not building pyramids, where having more slave labor gets you to win. India has an even bigger population yet their car industry isn't remotely as advanced.

Switzerland is a small country but has some of the most advanced manufacturing in the world.

'Economies of scale'.

S. can have all the 'advanced manufacturing' in the world but there is only ~250k new car sales a year. Compare to 34M in China it's 250k+ sales a month.

"Crash programs fail; because they assume that with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby in a month."

Some things don't scale.

You are free too look at the numbers above and explain them with some other witty comment.

Sure.

"“Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.” — Steve Jobs

India has an even larger consumer base than China.

sigh

Yes. It's also differs on a bazillion of other things with China.

Which means population isn't the factor of making great cars. Take Sweden as the example. They have great innovative cars and a small population and small market.

Yes, a small market, not the low prices.

The size of the market is directly related to the population size.

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