Being in the EV business means having to compete with China. This market is dictated by manufacturing costs and so it is not where you want to be.
Everyone gets this backwards. Tesla isn't abandoning their low-margin auto manufacturing in order to switch to high-margin robotics tech; they want to capture the margin of robotics for themselves first. If their manufacturing half fails, that means their robotics half also failed at its primary task.
Techworld has an inductive bias towards expecting successful products to be luxury lifestyle products, because so much of past tech successes came from that. Most likely the first successful AI robotics aren't going to be iPhone-like consumer luxuries, laundry-folding novelties for bored techies. They'll rather continue the trend of robotics to focus on industrial processes in controlled settings, capturing value by lowering the costs of doing banal things.
Maybe the insight is that it is better to first sell the robots (the "shovels") and only later go into the gold business yourself (if ever).
Proofs? tesla exists in China and cable to compete there. There is no ford or GM in it's US shape, only sub brands that loosing ground.
If Chinese vehicles were allowed into the US, they would certainly eat all the other vehicle manufacturers, except for customers who care about quality. And that’s where Toyota would be able to continue to survive.
But even Toyota would lose a ton of sales, because prices here in the US are so, so much higher than they should be. You can just look at prices in Europe and Canada to see that.
I don't know what to make of these numbers. Are all defects the same? (I can't be bothered to look).
What I can tell you is we owned a Model Y in the US for 3+ years. It was great, we had one small seat problem (which mobile service promptly fixed). The news is full of customer horror stories from Tesla, and not only did we like ours, our wide network of friends had many with similar experience.
I now live in Australia and have a Zeekr 7x (Chinese EV). My in-laws have an MG. The place is swimming with BYDs, Geely's, GWMs, etc. The idea that Chinese cars are low quality and people won't like them is laughable. No - they are cars people like at a price they are willing to pay.
We've only had our Zeekr 4 months but so far its been great and the build quality seems MUCH higher than the MY. It's quieter, the trim is much nicer, its generally great.
Letting Chinese cars into the US will decimate the US auto industry. No question about it, they will be reduced to light trucks for a time but even that probably isn't defensible.
And on that criteria, at the time that survey was done, I do think that Tesla probably may well have been the best car manufacturer in China. But perhaps things have changed quickly there?
I also think that Tesla quality has significantly declined overall as time has progressed. They’ve been more about trying to be the new thing, whatever that is.
I am also convinced that if Chinese car manufacturers are let into this country, that will kill the low to midrange market for any of the traditional car manufacturers. People are willing to put up with a lot of crap, if they can get it at a lower price — witness the rise of Amazon, Walmart, and Temu. And China can guarantee that they will always have the lowest prices, with lower labor costs, lower government environmental scrutiny, and active government subsidization. Tariffs on Chinese cars will need to be super high — maybe 100% or more? And even that isn’t going to save the car manufacturers in this country.
China can attack the high-end luxury market, but they’re going to have a lot more friction there, simply because people buying cars in that bracket won’t want to be seen as being cheap. China is going to have a long road ahead of them, but when they can deliver Lexus and Mercedes quality at bargain basement prices, there will be some people that they can peel away from the more well-established brands.
Meanwhile, companies like Polstar will do well, because many people don’t realize (or care) that brand is largely owned by Geely and another Chinese company. It will really be about the branding and how transparent the Chinese parent companies are about their ownership of other brands that people are more open to exploring.
Even then, he is losing to Chinese competition. It's pure incompetence.