0, https://www.carscoops.com/2026/08/chinese-automakers-lauchin...
https://totallossgap.co.uk/blog/post/why-do-modern-cars-not-...
I've rusted through multiple cars (also in the North East) in the last 20 years while a friend still has his 2006 model year car in pristine condition with regards to that and is debating whether to buy a new one coz he finally wants to take advantage of some of the advances since then but he can't justify it coz it's still fine and costs him just a few hundred bucks in normal maintenance.
But, like clockwork, that 10 year marks and everything just starts rusting out. While I could be religious about washing, that’s a huge pain.
[0] https://www.volkswagen-newsroom.com/de/pressemitteilungen/st...
Though they won't, because I imagine recycling/refurbishing is not nearly as profitable as selling new models that lose 25% of their value the moment they're driven off the lot.
And no exec wants to explain to shareholders why their revenue from new model year sales are down 20% because they've cannibalized it with a new but lower-margin revenue stream.
That said... many of the different EVs sit on the same base, so maybe it won't actually be as hard to get parts as it seems.
Oil changes, timing belts, spark plugs etc. It really helps if you have no metal touching metal
If you're talking about ac, sure. The rest, no? I've been driving an electric car for over a decade and have been replacing tires, and nothing else.
Sure it is anecdata with n of 1 but in over a decade I've probably spent ~4k on maintenance while driving 120k miles electrically? The bulk of that on tires and fixing that ac I mentioned.
Heck, I just dumped an 8 year old BMW because the interior stitching was coming apart. Nothing mechanically wrong, just yellow fluff poking out of the seams. Easier to sell it than try to get it fixed.
Prophylacticly changed the spark plugs... but I think they were fine.
Had to change the wheel bearings which was a pain to diag and even more of a struggle to remove in the rust belt... which an EV won't get around.
EV might have saved me from a couple welder repairs on the exhaust and Macgyvering heat shields. And that $10 intake manifold gasket that always fails (2h shadetree job). Transmission ran dry a few times after a metal line rusted out. Bypassed with rubber hose and runs again like a champ.
I love it but will crumble like a cracker in a collision because rust (but still drive because 1zz-fe).
My similarly aged German car is way ahead on factory corrosion protection. Maybe the Japanese manufacturers have caught up but I won't know if/how far behind the Chinese manufacturers are for a decade or two.
All else equal, a range that degrades from 300 to 230 miles is better than a range that starts at 210 miles and stays there forever.
Never change Ford, never change.
Yeah, duh. EVs still have fewer maintenance items than ICE vehicles. How is this even a talking point anymore?
I'm not saying that will happen with cars, but it is something to think about.
Not being able to repair something isn't the same as not needing repair. Had lots of CRT Sony TVs over the yeasr and they definitely had issues.
You stated your comment in the future tense. What are you anticipating?
I'm not gonna buy a car that doesn't have a dealer network. Being able to go in person and complain when shit hits the fan is a requirement.
https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2026/05/14/autoauth-certi...
You now need to be a "certified AutoAuth technician" using a "certified AutoAuth tool" (sure, like a $3000 SnapOn).
Or - some manufacturers ALSO require you to have NASTF Vehicle Security Professional access, which is another whole can of worms with insurance and business requirements.
https://support.nastf.org/support/solutions/articles/4300076...
Hyundai now requires you to have this stupid security professional certification if you dare try to service a modern Hyundai with a (lower cost) J2534 passthru tool instead of the official Hyundai service tool.
All of this still doesn't stop someone from sending packets direct on the CANbus to make a new key to someone's car, but it just makes it more miserable for the rest of us trying to work on the diagnostics of it all.
It's more important that we protect domestic industry and good union jobs than it is for us to import EVs at lower prices.
Here's a great article I shared elsewhere: https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/china-cars-domestic-sale-...
"The number of Chinese EV brands selling at least one product rose to a record 143 at the end of 2025, according to a tally by management consultant AlixPartners.”
"Now, in a country with a shrinking population, reliable big-city mass transit and a growing robotaxi industry, sales of passenger cars to regular Chinese families are unlikely to ever again record a sustained surge, analysts said. But cities and their private-sector partners are reluctant to admit that their lofty ambitions won’t be fulfilled, which would result in factory closures and lost jobs.”
"In recent months, Germany’s once-towering trade surplus with China in automotive products has turned into a deficit. Germany—the country widely credited with inventing the automobile—is embracing Chinese brands, while German automakers are struggling in China.”
"In the U.K., BYD is selling its flagship Seal hybrid sedan for the equivalent of around $44,000, more than $10,000 less than a similarly equipped Volkswagen Passat. These vehicles are sold at Chinese price points we cannot match with European cost structures,” said Volkswagen Chief Executive Oliver Blume in an August memo to staff."
"About the only major market where Chinese automakers aren’t causing upheaval is the U.S., where tariffs and restrictions on Chinese vehicle technology have all but locked out the country’s automakers. General Motors and Ford are among the few automakers still pumping out relatively healthy profits.” Government subsidies in China — while 5 to 10 percent of Chinese automakers’ capital spending, estimated O’Donovan, compared to about 1.5 percent in Europe — are no longer the Chinese auto sector’s primary advantage. Chinese carmakers now enjoy deeper structural advantages from their enormous scale, dense supply chains, high factory utilization and automated production.
There are a few other things to note here. First is time - so even if the subsidies which still exist and are rather significant (Imagine at like Google's scale if they're making $100bn/year and the government was paying them or subsidizing $10bn of that - that's a lot of $$$) matter less so now, they still were used to spring up the industry and many of these automakers which has downstream effects on viability of the company and in what has been widely reported as over-building of industrial capacity. Coupled with a declining Chinese market, no access to the American market, and soon to be little to no access to the European market China could build cars for $5 but if there are no buyers and they're not making a profit it doesn't matter. Plus China of course artificially devalues its currency to boost exports.
My point here isn't that China is bad or that Chinese automakers aren't or can't be great, but that there's a good reason we have protected our domestic markets and even if Chinese companies were eventually just the best, fastest, cheapest, most advanced in the world we would just protect our markets until we catch up because having a domestic industry and those jobs and the capability to produce wheeled vehicles is more important than having the cheapest possible EVs. Ergo that's why we have tariffs. Disagreeing with that direction is a failure of understanding. The policy is a must-have.
Other countries may not care or their people may not understand why we do what we do, but those countries aren't relevant players on the global stage and their industrial capacity if it ever existed doesn't matter. American industrial capacity, Chinese industrial capacity, and probably German, Japanese, Korea, and maybe a few other select countries are the only ones that matter in this regard.
The Atlantic ran a story a week or so ago which over-indexes a bit but I think is directionally accurate and is relevant here[1].
"According to the London-based research firm Capital Economics, the share of Chinese industrial firms that are losing money has doubled since 2018 to 30 percent this year."
“But as the economy has slumped in recent years, the strain on Chinese companies has increased and their finances have deteriorated. Total net profit at 5,400 Chinese companies listed on local stock exchanges fell for the third consecutive year in 2025, according to data from Nikkei Asia, a Japanese business news outlet. Excess factory capacity and weak domestic demand have created a brutal competition for shoppers, and the resulting price wars have narrowed profit margins.”
"Facing an unstable job market and slumping property prices, Chinese consumers are reluctant to shop—car sales, for instance, in China have plunged by more than 20 percent so far this year."
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2026/10/chinese-co...
Domestic production is good but sometimes big companies need to taste failure. We should lower the level of protection they're getting, at least for a while.
The key piece I think is missing here is reciprocity.
We can’t have “China subsidies its industries until they are super competitive and then they get to sell in our market but we don’t get to sell in theirs”. Europe does a little of the same with regulatory lawfare.
The problem with lowering the level of protectionism is that it doesn’t really serve anyone’s best interest besides Chinese automakers. American companies lose out, American workers lose out, and we wind up in a worse position than before.
The big US car companies don't need subsidies. They can afford plenty of development costs but they don't want to advance into the cheaper electric space, they want to extract as much value as they can by pushing car prices as high as possible.
The problem with keeping this level of protectionism is that it encourages them to keep doing the same thing. The companies don't lose out but everyone in the US that needs to buy a car loses out. We need something to motivate them, and dropping their protection from "infinite" to "medium" or "medium-high" might do the trick.
I think it's fine that cars are expensive and getting more expensive. More people should be walking or using alternative means anyway because we spend way too much money and are dealing with a number of negative externalities from our car-only infrastructure. Having competition in terms of method of transportation itself can solve many of our problems, no artificially cheap Chinese cars required.
I drive an EV and generally prefer that to ICE vehicles but we have to acknowledge that there are still emissions that go in to EV manufacturing and mining rare earths, which China created a strong monopoly on the processing of so we'll have to do more ICE to compensate, sucks. There seems to be a desire to push cheaper EVs on to the American market, but it's even cheaper to build sidewalks and live closer to your place of employment or where you do the majority of your daily activities. It's better for the environment too.
So if we can't build EVs in a way that is advantageous to us and on our terms, we should avoid it and just walk and build transit and keep the ICE going.
Either way artificially cheaper cars from China doesn’t solve our problems in the long term. Obviously once your country loses its ability to build cars they just raise the prices and you’re back to where you started except now you have lost union jobs and manufacturing ability and know how.
Maybe we should subsidize some industries ourselves, probably a better investment than more war.
EU has been tariffing Chinese cars since 2024. They determined the unfair government subsidy to be between 17%-35% depending on the manufacturer. Starting this year they added an option for a price floor instead.
At one point, BYD was the top choice of EV buses in the U.S. They were blacklisted by every transit agency in America even before Trump's order because their vehicles were less reliable than the 40+ year old buses they were replacing.
I don’t want to give a cent to European manufacturers because of the prices they want to subject us to, but I’m sure Europe will eventually do something about the Chinese allowing poor people to own cars.
Also you have to add that cars sold in Europe (regardless of manufacturer) require by law much more expensive extras compared to other countries.
> "many households already own one vehicle," so the "automotive market must shift from the traditional era of increasing volume to one that considers growth based on the premise of existing vehicle ownership."
This sounds like companies trying to add subscriptions or other costs to get access to car features.
[0] https://insidechinaauto.com/2026/10/27/china-car-industry-pr...
You just throw them away. They are consumer electronics.
I don't say this happily.
A few weeks ago I was in a dealership and they had 5 cars that were basically abandoned by their owner because of problem with the transmission.
Not saying Chinese will behave differently, but big brands aren't as reliable as you think
I wouldn’t have the same concerns over buying a BYD or an MG Chinese electric car.
https://www.accc.gov.au/public-registers/undertakings-regist...
We’ll see how this plays out, but the industry definitely needs a calibration
most are leased.
> It’s like the wild west of Android phones 10-15 years ago
lifespan of the phone is much shorter than car (so is price), so not really a fair comparison and Xiaomi is still around and many other less known brands (actually that makes me realize I forgot Xiaomi cars, very nice design as well, nice Porsche copy), they just ditched export, but they are still present in China, even 10-15 years ago you had tier 1, tier 2 and other tiers of brands
With such a basic design error, I wonder how many frustrating flaws an actual owner has to put up with. I've driven chinese rental cars in Mexico (an MG SUV and a chevrolet small sized sedan) and both had electronic issues. For instance the rear window heating of the MG would startup on its own once every other time their was a significant bump on the road (which happens frequently in MX) and the actual touch sensitive non mechanical button buttons weren't very sensitive so it was a pain in the ass to turn it off. Both android systems were absolute crap with annoying bugs. Overall not a very pleasant experience.
The best option when it comes to cars is to not own one.
(Not that i judge or anything, i have a 10yo corolla but i drive it maybe once a month, between my ebike and public transit i have very little use for it)
Makes sense too as the average age of cars is going up.
Why was this not a problem in the past? I know covid and tariffs have changed the supply picture a lot but I was vaguely under the impression there was some kind of parts availability requirement for manufacturers.
But where did that replacement dash assembly come from? They just intentionally made it less granular because make number go up.
I see your point, but it's a slightly different one.
In comparison, the last two generations of ICE cars from Europe/US are the most mechanically complex in history in order to meet strict emissions laws.
The main point of contention is around support for the integrated cloud connectivity and continuous OTA software updates. Ultimately that will be clean-room decompiled or otherwise audited for PII/Security Compliance to the point where reverse-engineering for LTS is trivial.
Other than that, just as displayed with walled-garden Apple products, a robust, decentralized aftermarket will emerge from the legions of SEA hackers.
Since Q2 the Chinese domestic market has also moved away from European brand prestige toward advanced technology and user experience tailored to that demographic.
Many of the self-assist or park features are simply illegal for use in export markets - e.g. Huawei ADS Level 3 autonomous driving is not legally approved for public consumer use in either the European Union or the United States.
Similarly, the 800v charging architecture is more frequently skipping onboard converters and cannot charge at stations below 800v, ruling out 97% of public chargepoints in the EU.
Subsequently, the top-end stuff like the Maextro S800 is not officially sold by Huawei or JAC through a factory-backed dealer network in Europe.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/25/business/chinese-luxury-b...
Giant dumps of discarded electric cars in China would indicate that even if you live in China, you cannot get parts and service, or not in a way that is more financially sound than scrapping the vehicle.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/americ...
At what point is it no longer the same car if you’ve replaced all the parts ;)
This seems absurd on the face of it.