As an American it is not clear to me that I should care about US auto companies. I care about US auto workers but if they are working at a factory in the US owned by a non-US company making that company's cars that seems like it can take care of the workers.
Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Kia, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Nissan, Subaru, and Mazda all build cars in the US with US workers. Why not add some Chinese companies?
If there is a good reason to keep the big American companies around pass a law that makes any new non-US auto plants here be a joint venture with a big American company, with the American company having a minority ownership and getting a license to make their own version in their own factories of the cars made in the joint venture factory.
While kidnapping foreign head of states, threatening allies and launching wars in the middle east.
The only way the US is going to get better at manufacturing is to learn/steal from the best - which is China now. It was Japan a few decades ago and we made a GM/Toyota joint factory (NUMMI).
That said, there are a lot of reasons (environmental, regulatory, govt subsidies) why US companies can't imitate Chinese companies.
What a lot of people don't understand is that provincial governments in China do not have the ability to tax their citizens, but they are required to provide a host of social services. So what they do is start for profit companies, and use the profits of these companies to fund the state. This is the giant octopus of state owned companies in China. The same is also true of the central government, which does have the power to tax, but in practice is unable to collect income taxes from the vast majority of the population, which is why China's tax share of GDP is so abnormally low and the government is constantly cash-starved. Here, too, what happens is the government starts for profit companies whose revenue goes to the state. Sometimes a holding company is owned by the central government, but there are satellite ownership structures owned by provincial governments, with portions of these sold off to private investors.
Of course many of these state owned companies lose money, but they are subsidized by the central government in a hidden way, which is that state owned banks lend them money which is routinely forgiven, or stealth forgiven via artificially low lending rates and constantly rolling over loans. Effectively it is impossible for these companies to go bankrupt, which is why you ocassionally get huge scandals when the government allowed some real estate companies to go bankrupt in the past. People didn't think such a thing was possible.
So due to the quirks of taxation in China -- basically no one pays income tax -- the government is strongly aligned with for-profit businesses, as these are crucial to funding government operations. That could be anything from a cigarette company owned by a province to an airline, beer maker, construction companies, basically everything. Local officials sit on the board and have outsized ownership stakes, and profits go into the coffers of local and central governments as well as the personal bank accounts of officials.
As it is illegal to be a member of a non-government controlled union in China, the same officials can ensure harmonious labor relations. They also don't need to worry too much about environmental regulations because when the government inspectors arrive to check on the government steel mill, there is a strong incentive to make sure that this, too, is harmonious. And the state owned banks ensure cheap credit is available without too many questions asked.
This is how you can get enormous for profit companies in China that are not in any real danger from market competition, or from government regulation, or from labor strife, or from environmental regulations. Even energy consumption is subsidized.
But what you don't get is high levels of efficiency or labor productivity. This is the middle income trap that China is currently in, and it's not really a model that nations in the west can follow.
As a single example, let's look at China's largest steel maker, China Baowu Steel Group, since the parent brought up steel production and the need to "learn from the best". Baowu is a holding company 100% owned by the central government, but it owns child companies that are owned mostly by various provinces.
In terms of labor productivity, they produce about 550 tons of steel per worker per year (130 million tons of steel and 237,000 workers).
Let's compare that to, say, Nucor Steel in the US, which produces about 1000 tons of steep per worker. Or SSAB in Scandinavia which produces about 600 tons of steel per worker using non-fossil fuel processes. And both of these are under much stricter environmental regulations, and have real unions they need to deal with, and do not get the benefit of borrowing unlimited funds at interest rates that are well below the rate of inflation, and whose loans are routinely forgiven.
I thought that Chinese local governments receive central government tax revenue shares and sell/develop land property as main income source.
May I ask where you got some of the information from (e.g. re ownership and taxation structure in China)? Any sources?
I know, it's crazy. I am sure there are political/economic/historical reasons, but the central government does not share tax revenue with the provinces, putting the provincial government in a really tight spot.
Also, the inability of the central government to collect income taxes is something people in the West can't wrap their heads around.
For information about this, look at: https://china.ucsd.edu/_files/2023-report_shih_local-governm...
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28051/w280...
Here is a good explainer of the revenue issues and why China can't seem to collect taxes from households:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMaWegICQHA
In some sense, it's a nice problem to have -- sure you need to massively raise taxes, but you are only collecting 9% of GDP in taxes, so it's just a matter of getting up to the norm for advanced economies. It's not like your spending is out of control and you have to cut tons of social services to balance the budget.
But, it's still a political problem, because people don't like paying more in taxes anymore than they like social spending cuts.
However this decision to raise revenue through the corporate sector rather than taxing households introduces a host of problems by aligning the financial interests of corporations with the state.
So downstream of this taxation issue are many ripples.
Nucor recycles steel, i.e. they don't do full steel making life cycle. They reheat leftovers, not farm to table. SSAB behind but closer to industry lead, like SKR POSCO or JP Nippon Steel. Useful comparison is Bao steel (not baowu) who built green field / automated mill and does 900+ tons on full life cycle steel, i.e. parity/better than POSCO or Nippon. But really the point is plenty of asian manufacturing examples for US to learn tier1 productivity.
On some SOE efficiency, Baowu conglomerate who absorbed sick state players to consolidate, their productivity basically running average of acquisitions due to corporate structure. SKR has their chaebols and Japan their Keirestus for functionally same SOE cleanup / receivership. That's more stability maintenance, which US does via zombie pork barrel job infusions.
This is communism with the efficiency of the interwar USSR era. It seems the humility, altruism and spirituality of the Chinese culture don't let the system fall due to corruption and inefficiency, yet. Amazing. I am curious to see what will happen in a few decades.
Also, it’s unlikely that the low prices could be maintained while also paying US labor and US safety standards. If they can then it means we’ve lost our competitive edge completely in the manufacturing sector. At that point we’d be reliant on foreign companies to operate locally here.
Let companies that actually want to innovate rise from the ashes.
Protectionism is how you end up with a country like North Korea on the extreme end.
Why is it ok nowadays to artificially prop up these companies? It has only led to the stagnation of US auto manufacturers, as it's expected when competition is curtailed.
The same can be seen happening in Germany and its auto manufacturers, they are on the same trend albeit slower, in my opinion they have one last shot to turn it around before being out-competed and requiring the state to continuously protect and sustain them as the USA has done.
There's also the issue, it that in most places in Europe outside of Scandinavia, the charger infrastructure is lacking, and regular people are quite rightly averse of getting an EV if you step out of the tech bubble.
I have a friend who's a high-level manager in automotive retail, and he said he thinks Chinese EVs will be like Chinese smartphones - yes they are nice, and cheaper, but still the market looks like 70% of it is controlled by Apple/Samsung, and the rest of the manufacturers fight over what's left
[1] https://www.autonews.com/retail/sales/ane-europe-chinese-feb...
https://www.carscoops.com/2026/01/chinese-car-sales-europe-2... says pretty much the opposite. Maybe more detailed analysis is provided by https://chinaevhome.com/2026/01/20/chinese-automakers-europe....
Both of them align what I personally see on the streets, more and more Chinese brands, especially BYD, MG and Geely.
For example, the Brits love their SUVs, and the Jaecoo undercut the market, so that particular model has been selling very well.
I think we should wait and see for stats to stabilize over time. Chinese smartphones did something similar - initially they were way better for way cheaper, but other manufactures adapted, so they failed to grab huge chunks of the market.
Market cap amounts to 10% as an absolute figure but that isn't what I find most important from reading that article - it is the trend I find intriguing, which doubles or triples by each year, so if such or similar trend continues, Chinese manufacturers will penetrate into the market substantially more.
They innovate at much higher pace at much lower price points and at pretty high quality as the evidence we have so far suggests. So IMO it's going to be hell of a ride for European manufacturers to adapt - they need to start moving faster and deliver at much lower cost. This means complete restructuring which I find hard to believe it will happen any time soon.
In response VW and co. dropped prices, so Chinese cars are not that much cheaper again.
Just to understand where I'm coming from - if the Chinese would put out a better car for less money, I would buy it in a heartbeat. But from listening to reviews, as well expert opinion, you don't get better stuff for the same money just by buying Chinese
Here's a comparison video for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1id5MpFLEw
I've heard that mechanics raised similar concenrns about the quality of rust protection as well as the thickness of steel on BYDs.
Let's wait until these cars are 5 to 10 years old.
I don't really see that, perhaps if you could give a reference to the price points it would be clearer but new cars, especially the ones coming from German manufacturers, have never been so expensive. Mid-range vehicle used to be around 35k EUR few years ago and today it is no less than 50k. Upper mid-range is 60-70k EUR. And premium is almost 100k EUR. Chinese vehicles are almost at half of that price point, even with the tariffs that were imposed on them.
> I've heard that mechanics raised similar concenrns about the quality of rust protection as well as the thickness of steel on BYDs.
They have to comply with European standards so something like Euro NCAP safety tests. BYD in particular scores 5 stars across their models so "thickness of steel" sounds exaggerated and subjective.
Wrt rust the most notable example of that issue is Tesla. Many ADAC reports have been made pointing out exactly that problem, however, I haven't seen the same for Chinese models. They may exist though although my personal gut feeling is that this is also FUD.
Thinking now the only times I see the Ford badge are on work vehicles like vans or the odd Mustang Mach-E (well, not literally the Ford badge but the Mustang one).
I haven't seen (or at least noticed) any of the new cars in the Ford line-up in Sweden: Puma, Capri, Kuga, Bronco, etc.
Those cars doesn't fit at all into Europe, but it is what it is
Otherwise it's mainly Pumas and Vans, yeah.
The amount of trim and garbage I've had to take our domestic-built Ford Escape back in for service and factory bodge fixes for is staggeringly high. Meanwhile, my Mexican-built Fusion? Rock solid.
So instead of being able to buy a 10K BYD car, Americans have to buy 30k cars that are inferior in many aspects.
It would be easier to just pay fired American Auto workers directly over protecting inefficient auto companies. I have no sympathy for Ford who keeps making the F-350 or whatever bigger and more expensive every single year. Nobody needs a $90,000 truck
There are smaller, cheaper trucks, suvs, sedans, etc. $100k trucks make a lot of money, so Ford keeps building them.
Why should ford be protected from Chinese car manufacturers who can make better and cheaper cars.
This is about 9% better, so you could take the current real-world range and increase it by 9% and probably get a decent estimate for the normal driving condition range.
You will not get 560 miles of range out of this vehicle. The typical use is probably closer to your initial worst case guess at around 350-400 miles if I had to guess. Worst case scenario would be even worse than that. The numbers are good, but they're not in a completely different league
"The company claims 5C supercharging capability, with a 10% to 80% charge completing in about 11 minutes."
Assume your worst case of 350 miles, 80% of that is 280 miles. Getting to 280 miles of no-exaggeration-real-world range in 11 minutes is actually game changing.
An 11 minute break after each chunk of 280 real miles of continuous driving does not feel like an interruption on a road-trip. 33 minutes every 200 miles definitely does.
11 minutes once per week to cover 5 days of 30 real miles of each-way commute is a forgettable amount of time.
The time/mile charge ratio is actually the story.
> The company claims
You shouldn’t ignore that important detail. The company claims a lot of things.
Let’s wait until we actually see what the production models do as measured in real tests.
If that were the case they wouldn't have the cheap Chinese labor and I doubt the Chinese government would continue to subsidize US build vehicles for the US market.
It'd still be a compelling vehicle but it wouldn't be starting at $33k.
I don't think labour costs are much of a consideration anymore. It's 2026; robots do most of the work.
My EV costs 1/4 pence per mile in fuel compared to my diesel - money saved.
I charge at home meaning I no longer have to visit a petrol station once a week - time saved.
It’s faster than my diesel. It preheats automatically so more time saved scraping ice off my windows every winter.
The national grid in the UK is actually running lower demand than it did 20 years ago due to efficiency improvements, and nighttime charging controlled by my power company means they can balance it as they need - so infrastructure is fine.
The environmental benefits mean that my car was break-even on carbon emissions after roughly 15k miles.
Seems like it competes on figures just fine.