Just wait till Trump hits 'em with tariffs. That'll fix 'em --- NOT!
China is rapidly de-carbonizing and leaving the West behind.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-07-16/chinas-renewa...
China is rapidly de-carbonizing and leaving the West behind.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-07-16/chinas-renewa...
For reference, England consumed 1 billion tons of coal during it's peak coal consumption decade.
So please stop with the "China is decarbonizing" crap, because they are not. A more accurate statement is "China understands the importance of energy and is applying an as-much-of-everything-approach to achieve its industrial goals"
In order to build renewable infrastructure, you do need to expend a lot of energy: mining, processing, transporting. China is using coal to build up that infrastructure and converting that dirty energy into clean.
And if you want to count the population consuming industrial goods as the population that "causes" those emissions, then China looks even better, because they are producing goods consumed by literally billions of people.
Most of those did not use coal in most of the empire in the year of peak consumption: 1913.
It was providing a lot of raw materials.
More details are in this comment [1].
The reality is that China is emitting much less CO2 per capita than the US or Canada, and just a bit more than the more industrious EU countries like Germany. And this is territorial emissions: if you take into account what percentage of those emissions is going into goods produced in China but bought by those very countries, it's probably around the EU average if not lower.
Is China anywhere near a net 0 goal? No, not even close. But among industrial powers, it is one of the ones that went by far the most into green power.
https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/china/
Just to underline, this is not notional capacity (which inflates solar/wind), but actual power generation. This is all the more impressive because China's total consumption is simultaneously increasing rapidly.
However, BYD still has the entire rest of the world to sell to. They will be fine.
And they know this is --- hence they are doubling the size of their already massive factory.
Guess who won't be fine? US auto manufacturers. They won't be able to compete anywhere other than the USA. And China loves it.
When people started wanting just practical small reliable affordable cars as the price of gas increased and cars became just an appliance they didn’t respond to that market and the Japanese did. It’s been either sideways or downhill since. The only thing keeping them alive now is unnecessarily large status symbol trucks and that is a limited market that will be trashed if oil spikes again. There’s got to be a limit somewhere to how much people will pay to show off or own the libs or whatever motivates one to buy an F-5000 Super Chungus.
They are still mostly missing the EV boat. First Tesla caught them asleep and now China. Culturally they still are not crazy about EVs because they do not go vroom vroom.
Trump might string them along a bit longer with protectionism and a pull back on EVs to push more vroom vroom but meanwhile BYD will eat the entire world.
I expect that acting like all American's want are $60K+ luxury cars is what is going to take the US auto industry into the next massive downward spiral.
The 2008 bailout had some strings attached to modernize. I believe the Chevrolet Spark was one of these strings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Spark#Third_generati.... It was eventually discontinued.
The “malaise era” started in the early 70s as a perfect storm of fuel economy restrictions and more widespread US economic woes. This lead to decades of low quality cars being made.
US automakers not only lost out on consumers looking for simple appliances to drive, but ALSO the enthusiasts that liked driving and cars. The car guys that came of age in this era have two choices: chase after the same American muscle cars your dad liked, or switch over to imported hot hatches and the JDM tuner scene
Really, it was only a bit over one decade. Taking GM as an example, their last great cars were produced for the 1973 model year, after which point the economy, emissions, and efficiency requirements resulted in drastic (bad) changes. It only took until the late 1980s for them to make some genuinely good vehicles though. For instance, the Buick Regal/Oldsmobile Cutlass/Pontiac Grand Prix from 1988 were well built, comfortable, handled (relatively) well, and were very reliable - especially from 1990 with the introduction of the 3.8L V6, what is likely GM’s most reliable engine ever built (second possibly only to the small block V8). The same was tru for their sports cars (while not making much power out of the displacement, the TPI V8 firebird and corvette were similarly efficient to European sports cars at the time). Many GM cars from that era (late 1980s until early 2000s) are some of the most reliable American cars ever built.
The same is true for Ford; for example, the 1988 Probe, while not the most popular vehicle, was very reliable, comfortable, efficient, and well-built, likely in part due to their partnership with Mazda. It could reasonably be argued that as early as 1980, Ford was making pretty good vehicles, with the Mercury Grand Marquis/LTD Crown Victoria being well-built and reliable, if very down on power with questionable efficiency.
Not worth talking about Chrysler because they didn’t know how to make good/reliable cars before the fuel crisis and they certainly didn’t figure out how to afterwards.
I know this isn’t your main point but it’s worth considering that the US did actually figure out how to build really good cars again, and it didn’t take them that long. Mid-90s to early-00s American cars were, in my opinion, at the perfect point of technological advancement: CAD and high-precision/low-tolerance manufacturing resulting in engines that last well over 300k miles without major servicing; enough computer advancement to have high precision per-cylinder fuel and spark control with accurate air metering leading to better power, efficiency, and reliability; and enough material advancement to have interior and exterior build quality that makes the car look like it wasn’t built in a shed. But most importantly, they hadn’t figured out how or where to cheap out on components, so you end up with the “unreliable” components (like the 4L60e and 4T60e transmissions) “only” lasting 200k miles before requiring a rebuild - which in today’s money is still less than $1000, let alone 20-30 years ago.
From the birth of the US auto industry until about 2010, the only period where there wasn’t a single American car worth buying brand new was probably 1974-1981. The “malaise era” itself was by the loosest definitions only about 13 years, from 1974-1987.
Off the top of my head, there’s:
- fox body mustang
- fiero
- gnx
- bronco
Anything else would be selected primarily for idiosyncratic nostalgia reasons (eg “this is the faux-wood station wagon I grew up with”)
Foxbodies are the most accessible especially when it comes to parts availability, community knowledge, and to a lesser extent these days, price. Except for maybe Fieros, and they have the benefit of being cheap too, for the most part. The GNX is absurdly expensive now, for what it is, but Cutlass Supremes and regular Regals aren't - they're popular conversion and modification targets.
And of course, there's the DeLorean. Probably the car with the single largest cult following. They're terrible cars - unreliable, slow, poorly built, but people love them.
If it were me and money were no object, I'd be going for the C4 ZR1. I've driven every other car mentioned above, except the GNX, and the standard TPI C4s making 250HP/LT1 C4s making 300HP are a lot of fun. I don't think you can get much more 80s America than a nearly 400HP Corvette with a top speed of over 180MPH. The Foxbodies are fun, but they definitely feel sketchy once you start making any more power than stock unless you spend a lot of money on suspension work.
Of course if it were really up to me there were no time constraints, I'd own a 1990s Buick Roadmaster with the same LT1 as the standard corvette and a T56 manual conversion (insert something witty about "faux wood that I grew up with"). But I already do, so that's kinda moot ;)
Without a doubt.
In about 2000 the US automakers sued the EPA because their proposed clean air regulations for about 2009 were "impossible".
They were actually more lax than what Japanese automakers were already selling cars for in the year 2000.
So the automakers sued the US government to admit that in 2009 they couldn't build cars that were as clean as cars Japan was already making in 2000. That says a lot.
Cars from Japan, 2000 or current that are clean aren't street legal here because they don't meet the safety standards. Those safety features add weight, which in turn drive down the efficiency.
I've seen this repeated for 25 years now, and to be honest I think it's simply not true.
Can you list one safety standard they don't meet?
The GT-R is identical as sold in Japan and the USA (well, actually, the US version has wider seats - true story).
Even when that one guy homologated the R32 Skyline into the USA he barely modified the front bumper at all and it met crash safety standards as it was.
https://gearshifters.org/nissan/how-to-import-a-nissan-silvi...
>Beginning in January 2024, the 1999 Nissan Silvia S15 will turn 25 years old. It will no longer be subject to NHTSA regulations after it turns 25 and can be legally imported into the USA.
>Because it did not adhere to federal safety and environmental regulations and featured a right-hand steering column, like cars in England, this particular vehicle was deemed unlawful in the United States. However, some Silvia vehicles have been registered in the US after being modified to comply with US laws.
GM for all intents and purposes died (remember we funded a whole new GM, a completely new business entity, during the 2008 financial crisis timeframe) and yet new GM just 'invested' 6 billion dollars in stock buybacks, millions in management bonuses while conducting employee layoffs. But they will have no problem coming and asking the government for billions 'to remain competitive' soon. F'm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_dealerships_in_the_United_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_dealership https://caredge.com/guides/how-did-car-dealerships-become-so...
The US is trying to do industrial policy (like now in China, and previously in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, and in Germany before that), but without the key aspect -- export discipline -- that makes industrial policy work. I'm thinking about Joe Studwell's How Asia Works. Everything I'm seeing in the US reminds me more of the failures in Indonesia and India than of the successes in Japan and Korea. With the exceptions of -- "say what you will about Elon, but" -- Tesla and SpaceX. Bidenonics will take time to bear fruit, though, and could yet yield some successes.
Point is, using tariffs to protect "infant industry" is the opposite of export discipline.
(As a side note, most of those countries also had major land reform, whereas property rights -- sorry, "rule of law" -- are pretty sacred in the US )