Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

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Export markets for European cars are cratering. The Chinese and Koreans are taking over with really decent, affordable EVs. And while the likes of VW are producing good EVs, it's at the cost of their ICE vehicles and those losses aren't offset by their EV sales.

In general the ICE car market is not just car manufacturers but many thousands of companies all over the place that make parts and components. Quite a few of those are becoming redundant and quite a few more are facing stiff competition from abroad. Anything to do with components for petrol or diesel engines is going to face year on year declines.

What's currently happening in the market is price parity before incentives, before considering benefits from lower maintenance, and before considering benefits from lower energy cost. An EV is simply becoming the cheaper vehicle to buy. And with all that included, EVs are far cheaper overall. That's not a trend that's ever going to revert. It's only going to get worse and it's going to have some obvious effects.

A lot of this applies to US car manufacturers as well BTW. The current tariffs are distorting the market dynamics. But that's unlikely to last very long. GM and Ford will need to keep up internationally if they want to stay relevant in foreign markets.

Germany is merely ripping off the band-aid right now (or having it ripped off for them). Short term disruptive but it needs to happen at some point.

German cars have always been slightly more expensive, but buyers (internal and export) thought this was a good deal because of higher (perceived) value and quality.

Nowadays quality has become an issue, where you could, back in the day, drive your Mercedes for 500.000km over a 30years lifetime, nowadays you are lucky to make it past the factory warranty. Along with quality, repairability, tuneability and parts availability and prices have worsened significantly. So German cars are no longer a safe bet on longevity and low lifetime cost, which is what drives away export customers as well as German private customers.

The only thing that has so far kept the German car industry afloat is tax subsidies towards German corporate customers: If your employer offers you a car as part of your salary, you only pay monthly taxes on a flat 1% of the sales price of the car, and for that, the employer can freely give you the car, maintenance, fuel for private and company use, all included. While the employer pays cheap company leasing rates and discounted gross fuel prices, and can offset all that whole spending against the company tax bill. So overall a good deal for employer and employee, and a huge boon to the German car industry (because practically all company vehicles have to be some German brand for prestige).

However, nowadays, the full tax deduction is only available for plug-in-hybrid and electric cars, ICE vehicles only get half the deduction. And the plug-in-hybrids will soon be classed down to ICE status. All the while German car makers struggle to offer proper electric cars at acceptable prices. All the while their plug-in-hybrids suffer from poor quality and life expectancy, expensive repairs and therefore expensive insurance and low resale value.

This means that German car makers will continue to lose their last reliable customer base.

Not just quality but luxury as well.

Look at a brand new, not cheap Audi Q3 with it's hard plastic grey on grey interior and then compare it to something like a Zeekr X or Xpeng G6 et al. It's night and day quality and feel.

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