Cost of labor is much higher. Safety regulations are more strict. Environmental protections are more strict. It's more expensive across the board.
Hybrids have become increasingly popular as the charging infrastructure is still lacklustre in many parts of the world. And that's not a problem that can be solved overnight.
At least we have BYD and Tesla, just gotta scale up faster. Global light vehicle TAM is 90M units/year. 20% of all vehicles sold globally last year were BEVs or PHEVs, onward and upward.
https://fortune.com/2024/06/19/elon-musk-tesla-china-carmake... (“Bank of America tells Detroit’s Big 3 they can’t make money in China and should just leave the hypercompetitive car market ‘as soon as they possibly can’”)
So is global warming. This excuse rang hollow 30 years ago and it still rings hollow today.
I am thinking about getting a third car for the farm if I could get an inexpensive low range EV. If I am only driving to work with it or to go shopping or see a sports game at my Uni I can just it when I get home. If I need to go see a game in a distant city, well, I’ll take one of the gas cars so my son will take the EV and not the Buick to work one morning.
Honestly same goes for EVs, though the BYD stuff is starting to fill that niche quite nicely. And compact + decent range is sort of at odds with itself.
This is badly misinformed. They make the market. When you buy a car, do you have it custom made, or do you select one that actually exists?
That's exactly what happened with SUVs. SUVs didn't happen because people were begging car companies to make them something big, dangerous, and wasteful. They happened because car companies in the US found a legal loophole where they could cut costs by skirting safety and emissions regulations, while simultaneously marking up the product as a premium one. Then they ran ads to tell people SUVs were super safe [for the passengers]. So when people started buying SUVs en masse, that wasn't organic demand, it was the result of a successful national misinformation campaign (because modern SUVs and other "light trucks" are so large you're more likely to just drive over your own child without seeing them than even get in a crash).
Jim Farley (Ford CEO): $26.5 million
Mary Barra (GM CEO): $27.8 million
Koji Sato (Toyota CEO): $3.88 million
Atsushi Osaki (Subaru CEO): $1.05 million
Makoto Uchida (Nissan CEO): $4.5 million
No idea what the compensation for auto executives in China is, but probably even smaller than Japan's.
Sources:
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20230925-uaw-auto-strik...
https://www.automotivedive.com/news/gm-ceo-compensation-fall...
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/ford/2024/0...
EDIT: Fixed the math, thanks mperham, I had $1.35 earlier.
[1] https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North%20America...
In the 1970s my dad had the worst time trying to buy compact cars from US dealerships, in the 2000s I thought US automakers were as bad but Japanese brands were better, by 2018 or so Japanese dealers were using the same toolbox (“You’re saying I can’t buy a Honda Fit because the factory washed out in a flood but you have 100 SUVs in a row that nobody wants to buy made in the same factory?”)
Then I got home and I am sure to read some article in the auto press which repeats, like the brainwash soldiers from The Manchurian Candidate that Americans only want to drive huge vehicles. Sure, an American might want a size L vehicle on average but from their point of view it is a disaster that somebody would could possibly buy a $50k vehicle walks out with a $25k vehicle (that Sales Manager won’t be able to work you over for another decade) so they will try to sell you an XXL vehicle.
Tesla, GM, Toyota and many others have refused to make affordable EVs, it’s that simple. Their hope is that a 100% tariff on BYD means they’ll never have to service the affordable vehicle market.
Manufacturers in turn (except Tesla) have no one to sell these vehicles, and would have to take a risk that they could make up the lost margin on volume. They don't have the cultures to do that either.
I think GM is at least trying, with the sub-$35,000 Equinox EV. And the rumor is that the 2026 Bolt will be ~$30,000. Definitely going to be interesting to see what comes around in the next couple of years with battery prices falling.
No, probably not.
That said, the lowest pricing point is a massive competitive advantage.
I thought GP was talking more about the safety standards for workers in the factories - which do cost more to meet.
If end user does not care about these moral high grounds, then yes it is a bad thing for business.