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Comment by bruce511 | Hacker News Reader

The Ford CEO is not wrong. Allowing foreign imports into the country at prices far below what US producers are able to make will decimate the local car industry in the US.

There are 4 possible solutions to this problem;

a) convince Americans that it's worth paying more for a locally built product. This is the simplest approach, but there's only so much margin here that the consumer will tolerate. At the moment this gap is too large.

b) Tariff foreign imports to raise their cost. So the US consumer pays more, whether they like it or not.

c) subsidize local production out of the "national interest to support this industry" budget. This has the effect of ramping up demand, hence production, hence production being developed, and eventually getting cheaper.

d) improve US products, and prices, so that they compete in price to the import - or at least fall inside the margins such that a) becomes effective. c) can help bridge the gap here until the US companies have caught up.

In the long run, not all these strategies win. If you go the tariff route, then it's hard to undo it later. Local products fall behind, and the harder it becomes to catch up. Not impossible, but hard.

If Ford wanted tarrifs to help boost EV demand, and so allow Ford to build out infrastructure and lower costs, then fine. But it seems it's more of a short term play to just keep ICE Fords selling in the short term.

This is one of those "the internet is a fad, it'll never catch on" moments. EV's are here to stay. They're going to win. That's pretty obvious to anyone paying attention. If the question is "how to maintain the US car production" then they should be all-in on EV development now. It seems to me though that the current strategy seems to be very short term thinking - trying to just hold back the tide.

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What’s interesting is that while most cars imported into Mexico (except for those from the NAFTA region) face stiff tariffs or outright bans (if you move to Mexico from the US you can only bring your car if it was manufactured in Mexico/Canada/US, other cars are not allowed at all), but electric cars have no tariff at all which means that, e.g., Chinese EVs are widely available there. The BYD Seal sells for MXN888000 in its AWD/big battery configuration which translates to USD51,184¹ which is comparable to the Tesla Model 3 price in Mexico (and a bit lower than the equivalent price in the US). Mexico is going at the EV transition with a two-pronged strategy: Building a domestic industry and encouraging imports at the same time. This seems to be the exact opposite of the US strategy.

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1. Worth noting two key differences between the Mexican and American car buying experience: First, prices are fixed. There’s none of this negotiating with the dealer about the price or upselling you on undercoating stuff. You can look on the website and know what the price is. Second, instead of sales tax, Mexico uses VAT to achieve the same purpose. As a result, the price you see for a product is going to be the actual price you pay walking out the door and not the price before sales tax (at my current residence, the total sales tax is currently 10%). As a consequence, some things that might appear to be slightly more expensive in Mexico, depending on where you live, may actually be slightly cheaper.

The US didn't go from #1 in global auto manufacturing to nearing extinction on accident. The companies shifted production abroad because they didn't want to pay for US labor. We can't just pray for "development" to spark a chain reaction that gets us back on track - we were the most developed and consciously chose to squander that advantage.

Onshoring can be done, but it will have a real cost someone will have to bear. The industry would prefer consumers just pay twice as much for cars, meanwhile consumers are at a breaking point like they've never felt. In the meantime there's a stalemate and nobody can move, as the decline continues.

> The companies shifted production abroad because they didn't want to pay for US labor

Realistically it’s the consumers who didn’t want to pay for it

Also US cars were genuinely horrendous in the 80s-90s in terms of build quality & reliability vs same price or cheaper Japanese equivalents.

It's only rather recent that all the big name car makes from US/Europe/Japan/Korea are pretty good & reliable. There were huge differences 30-40 years ago.

I think there's a finer point here: US consumers don't want to pay for local UAW labor. GM&Toyota did fine out of the NUMMI plant, and companies like Nissan and Mercedes are making cars in Alabama.

The problem wasn't assembly alone, the designers carry much blame as well in that era.

Parallel to how the UK car industry local brands collapsed, but Nissan Sunderland has just kept going nicely.

Customers will always aim for the best quality/price combination that they can get though.

By accident. (Good)

On purpose. (Good)

An accident. (Good)

On accident. (Bad)

> The companies shifted production abroad because they didn't want to pay for US labor.

That's not true. Reality is far more nuanced than that. Sadly, it is the equivalent of a bunch of Dodo birds falling off a cliff. And this applies to every industry, not just automobiles.

The simplified version goes something like this:

Three companies manufacture forks and knives in the US. They share the market equally. Each has 1/3 market share.

One of them decides they can be clever, manufacture in China, reduce the price of their products and get more than 1/3 share.

Their plan succeeds. Their market share goes up to 1/2 and the other two companies down to 1/4 each

Try as they might to compete, they cannot, the cost basis in the US is higher.

One of them decides "We can be just as clever" and they start manufacturing in China.

Now two of the companies, on account of their lower prices, have 2/5 of the market each. The third company is down to 1/5 share.

The last company has no choice at all, they have to manufacture in China or shut their doors.

With all three companies manufacturing in China, we are now back to each having 1/3 of the market again. Except that, due to the price war, they are now selling the same product they were selling before the transition for half the price. And, of course, their margins are no better, maybe even worse.

And now, the grand finale: The industrial development all three companies effectively funded in China has taught one or more factories how to make these products. Now the Chinese companies enter the market directly, compete with their customers and drop the prices even more. All three companies go out of business. One of the companies is acquired in bankruptcy by one of the Chinese factories who sell the same product for less under the same brand.

Ironically, the reason (one of them) consumers are at the breaking point is because this chain reaction --which required consumers to prefer cheaper goods from abroad-- managed to destroy untold number of industries everywhere. This destroyed jobs by the millions. And here we are.

In some ways this is no different from the race for higher minimum wage. The huge sucking sound you are hearing are the millions of jobs that are being lost because of it.

Tarfis seem to be the only way out.

Everyone laughed when Trump did it, now EU is doing the same.

Everyone laughed at Trump because what he did was stupid. Selective tariffs have always made sense in certain contexts and have never been controversial.

This is not political or even about Trump.

I manufacture products. I have been in manufacturing for decades. These are products with electronics, mechanical assemblies, software, etc.

I used to manufacture in the US. For a while, this worked out OK.

The competitors started to move production to China, one by one.

I continued to manufacture here, lowered my prices, which lowered my margins, but I accepted that against keeping people employed here.

At some point this was not sustainable and I had to layoff a few people. I bought subassemblies made in China for less and continued to assemble in the US.

That, too, became unsustainable.

Today, I have no choice but to manufacture in China. There is no way. None. No path. No way to manufacture in the US (or Europe). The supply chain is gone, it does not exist here. Our insistence in committing suicide by raising minimum wage instead of lowering our costs (lower taxes, investing in reindustrialization, etc.) has made it impossible to manufacture here. I can't pay someone $25/hour to put screws into holes or push cables into connectors. Not when everyone else is paying a very small fraction of that manufacturing in China and customers will not pay double or triple for the same product.

Do tariffs help?

I am sure that, in the mid term (a few years) they probably help a few industries. What they don't do and can't do is materially expand our industrial base. My opinion is that we have already gone too far and this is impossible to bring back.

What would we have to do to fix it?

In short, the impossible.

We would have to implement almost zero taxes, materially reduce or eliminate minimum wage, materially reduce or eliminate regulatory burden across the board, heavily subsidize a planned re-industrialization strategy and actually execute at scale and at speed.

Importantly, we would have to also create a large cultural change away from the crazy anti-business mentality that seems to prevail in certain circles and towards a maniacal entrepreneurial culture. We would have to put in systems, tools and funding to support entrepreneurship at levels that have never been seen in this country.

Again, the impossible.

And, if we actually did this we would have to sustain it for at least 25 years and, with luck, we could come out ahead.

My go-to example of just how bad things have gotten is the insanity of the California high speed train project. This is emblematic of just how badly this nation has degraded.

.. and the consumers get cheaper goods.

This debate is as old as Adam Smith, or older. I think the examples he used were centered around textiles? Everyone was afraid of the new job-destroying looms.

> This destroyed jobs by the millions. And here we are.

US unemployment has been about 5% for a while. If you look back on the graph: https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-une... , there are two big outliers. One is the business cycle disaster of 2008, which blew up the property market. One is COVID.

Unemployment is basically a managed number. It can't go too far below 4% before inflation kicks in, which everyone absolutely hates, so interest rates are raised to reduce investment and consumption and thereby increase unemployment and reduce wage pressure. All of this is orthodox economics.

> US unemployment has been about 5%

Anyone who has studied and actually used statistics beyond toy exercises understands how these single variable statements are 100% misplaced. I won't go into the details because it might be pointless and I have to get work done. The main point is that grabbing this magical single variable 5% unemployment number to explain 50 years of deindustrialization is, well, nonsensical.

It's like the old example about the fallacy of averages being applied to the entire sample: A billionaire and a minimum wage worker walk into a room. Someone comments that the average net worth in that room is half a billion dollars.

Right.

How is this not a longer way of saying companies didn’t want to pay for American labour?

It isn't.

The "didn't want to pay for American labour" idea is a false reality. Nobody makes decisions like that. This is preposterous.

Business decisions are made against the competitive landscape. In that chess game, if you can come up with a way to deliver the same goods for less --regardless of where they are made-- you could win greater market share, beat your competitors, etc. That's it. There is no "I don't want to pay for <insert city/state/province/country/continent> labor" in that decision.

Also, the mechanism I explained is one where once there's a first mover in an industry, it quickly becomes a chain reaction from there. There's no explicit plan or malice at all on the part of those who are facing a binary choice: do the same or shut down the business.

Here's an example that has nothing to do with China (at least now): Software manufacturing.

Companies are having to face competitors who, using AI, are able to manufacture software faster and with less people. We know this isn't smooth sailing yet, but it is happening and it is the way this is going to go.

If you run a software company and your competitors are using AI effectively with less people, all else being equal, you have a few options:

  1- Adopt AI and lower your head count
  2- Double (or more) your head count to be able to keep up
  3- Hire a large team at a region with lower costs
  4- Give up and shut down the company

On #3: Your competitors can do the same thing and still use AI to beat you. You are not playing the game against NPC's, they can make decisions and change the dynamic as much as you can.

Yeah, sure, you can add features, try to deliver a better product, etc. At the end of the day, a shop using AI well will be able to replicate everything you can throw at the market, do it quickly and at a lower cost.

So, that's it. It isn't that you are saying "I don't want to pay <insert region> software engineer wages". It's a competitive environment that forces decisions on you.

Someone once told me: A business is a living organism that tells you what you are going to do every day. You don't have the control you think you have.

I was young and stupid and did not understand what he said so many decades ago. Over time I would learn he was 100% correct.

Someone without the experience of running a non-trivial business likely isn't equipped to understand the hundreds of variables that drive the beast as you try to ride it and stay on top. From the context of someone with this experience, the single variable "don't want to pay <region> labor" idea is nothing less than, to be kind, completely inaccurate.

Comparing with China, I’d be curious about whether their companies face the same return-on-capital forces that US (and to a lesser extent western) companies do. So when we outsource to them, it’s to a vendor who is not needing to promised 10%+ returns. As I understand it, this is because the central government exerts pressure on banks to make loans at low rates, so that capital can be raised more easily for targeted industries.

I agree that onshoring is likely impossible without some sort of contextual reimagining of US industry.

The tariff route is what happened in the 1970s under the "chicken tax", which still exists today to protect the US light truck industry, and is pretty much the reason why SUVs reign supreme in the US market. SUVs are classified as "light trucks", which has caused a Galapagozation of the US car industry/market.

I see this take on SUVs all the time, and I can't help but think it's wrong. Americans just like bigger vehicles and will downsize if gas gets too expensive. There's a reason almost all electric car companies start off with a CUV/SUV/truck, and it's not because they're allergic to sedans or coupes.

- Tesla, the most prominent and successful EV company, didn’t start with a truck.

- Neither did all the attempts at EVs from other competitors in the 2010s, like the GM Bolt/Volt or the Nissan Leaf.

- But you’re not wrong, that today EV companies usually start with SUVs/CUVs, but that’s because a larger chassis makes it easier to include a large enough battery.

They're mostly CUVs and above because fitting sedan seating into a CUV-shaped body frees up the height you need for a battery. Western OEM batteries were usually tall because they mostly used large-format pouch cells, because that promised the highest performance and lowest cost (spoiler: recalls are expensive).

Back in the 2010s, EVs were primarily sold to customers that were more likely to be averse to SUVs for the perceived environmental impact and, frankly, snobbery (liberals of the time used to mock big SUVs like the Cadillac Escalade and the Hummer, particularly after they got associated with the timespan of the Bush administration before becoming uneconomical after the late 2000s oil price spike). Also the batteries just didn't have enough capacity at a reasonable price to build anything heavier than a sedan.

As soon as it was feasible, Tesla released a CUV (the Model Y) which now outsells the Model 3 almost 2-to-1. Arguably Tesla has fumbled by letting Elon pursue the Cybertruck rather than a full-sized SUV or normal pickup truck. You can observe that Rivian went after precisely those missing models.

There is a market for smaller cars and trucks but its probably smaller than for other countries. We don't have the smaller roads/spaces associated with e.g. Europe. But for sure I would buy small cars or trucks first any day compared to the monsters on the road; there are few options though.

Idk if I'd say that Americans like bigger vehicles. There are just a lot of incentives that push us that way.

My incentive is that I want to walk into the car without fighting gravity much. I don't want big, but I do like tall. My GTI days are over, it's life, the knees say so.

The SUV branding is ridiculous. The Fiat 600 brands itself as "SUV" to appeal to this sector. It's basically a hatchback with a slightly elevated driving position. In a few years all cars will be called "SUV", and then sub-distinctions like "compact SUV" and "hatchback SUV" will be re-introduced.

There may be another option.

Consider Japan's Kei car initiative, for example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_car#Description

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_car#Taxation_and_insurance

One route is to provide incentives, if not regulations, to force innovation on US automakers. The goal would be to yield products that are head-to-head competitive with imports.

> It seems to me though that the current strategy seems to be very short term thinking - trying to just hold back the tide.

I'm seeing that too, but from a different angle. The era of big trucks seems to be as much an effort to extract cash from the economy as it is taking advantage of a peculiar set of EPA and DOT regulations. Basically, "gettin' in while the gettin's good." It's not a long-term strategy because, at some point, people can't afford these behemoths and will go for the used car market next for cheaper goods. EVs may get caught up in that too, considering that they're aimed squarely at the sub-luxury tier and above. As we have no good cheap EV options at the moment, I think it's the same story.

The main difference between a car like this and a kei car is the ability to drive it, at least for a short while, on the expressway. If this could go a couple miles at 45 or 50 mph that would work in lot more situations where two neighborhoods or urban areas are connected by a short stretch of highway.

Kei cars can comfortably go up to about 60mph. Not great for an 8 hour drive, but I regularly do 3-hour-drives with a loaded kei-van. Yep, same 660cc three-cylinder engine that those kei-trucks have. It'll hit 70mph, but not comfortably. 50mph is easy.

And on the highway, I see tons of other kei cars, too. Light weight class cars even get a toll discount!

> The Ford CEO is not wrong. Allowing foreign imports into the country at prices far below what US producers are able to make will decimate the local car industry in the US.

The local car industry in the US is doing that to itself by dragging its feet on EVs in the US market even when the very same companies are selling EVs outside of the US. Ford, for example, has an EV Bronco that's inexplicably only available in China; that'd sell like gangbusters here in the US, but Ford won't sell it here because reasons.

In that sense, the Ford CEO is about as dead-wrong as it gets. His company needs to either actually sell competitive products or else move out of the way for other companies to do so. His demands to keep foreign competitors out of the very US market in which his company refuses to offer products are downright insultingly greedy.

I’m interested in understanding more about what gives you the impression “that [an EV Bronco would] sell like gangbusters here in the US”.

I see non-EV Broncos everywhere here in Reno, and I also see EVs everywhere here in Reno. I would therefore expect to see EV Broncos everywhere here in Reno if they existed in the US market.

I also in particular see Cybertrucks and Rivian R1Ts everywhere here in Reno, so the very specific demand for electric pickup trucks clearly exists.

Not GP, but for starters, the MSRP for that car in China is $32k.

https://www.carsdb.com/en/news/1476

I get that's an apples-to-oranges comparison, considering that labor and material costs (not to mention subsidies and regulations) are probably not the same. But even at $40k, it would be cost-competitive with other EVs if nothing else.

Isn’t there a e) have investment at the federal level in R&D, specifically for industries that matter (economy, national security etc)? For automotive, China didn’t become the EV leader by accident. It was a deliberate national strategy, with funding to back it up. Yes there is cheaper labor, different regulations etc. But also in no small part to federal funding, investment in R&D etc. why are we surprised then that the US is in general falling behind?

The US could invest more in battery tech, manufacturing automation, robotics etc. This both lowers cost and increases product competitiveness.

> The US could invest more in battery tech, manufacturing automation, robotics etc

The US is investing in batteries. Domestic production has increased rapidly over the last couple of years and is continuing to do so. The US can now produce domestically all of its battery needs for grid storage, for example.

This is due to government incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act.

There should be a time limit to protectionism and a scale where tariffs on imports come down overtime. Otherwise you will get what you currently have in the US ie huge cars that cost a lot of money to make and run. US supposedly the free economy is the country where almost every industry is an entrenched virtual monopoly or a duopoly and with it's political finance system they are eating into every industry.

Its an inevitable state of any market system (especially if regulated). Eventually it will become more profitable to use the gains of capital to buy protection from regulators, instead of investing in ever smaller business improvements. Using money to defeat competition is ultimately inefficient and generates lower returns for investment. Unless regulators are totally insulated from the market, they will have a stake in selecting winners and will eventually construct moats that others can't cross, as that provides the highest returns to capital, and the greatest rewards to regulators.

Monopoly is the most market-efficient vehicle to deliver returns to capital, and the most natural state of the market; one player using advantages and gains eventually destroys all opponents. Smaller players can never gain a foothold due to the incumbents being so efficient and far ahead, and it makes more sense to merge with the front-runner, allies, or be destroyed (hence the competitor pool keeps shrinking).

These are features of the system that naturally emerge without counterveiling forces.

For example, AI companies will shortly find its cheaper to just get the government to constrain their competition. The alternative is many companies spending trillions to eek out profits, a poor state to be in. Regulators want money and power, so its in their interest to create this protected state, as the "free and open market" isn't buying elections or vacation homes. And of course, any unprotected competitors left behind will die, consolidate, or sell to the victors; so we will eventually have a "winner takes all" system where one or two big players dominate. Any startups will either be quickly destroyed as people ask "why use a worse product", or will sell to the monopoly when they realize they can't afford to spend $1T training models and building data centers, and complying with all the regulations.

My point is that protectionism (in any form) isn't something to bring down over time to encourage competition -- the system can't naturally function that way, as it would require each player to go against their own interests. Instead, protectionism is a natural ever-increasing good that will be cultivated for the controlling capital and regulators in the system. We only see the "free market" operations during a time before market / regulator capture, as that's the time when there aren't yet dominant players who can guarantee power and money to the regulators, and there isn't enough consolidation of capital to immediately destroy all competition, but its an unstable market state.

None of these strategies seem to address the other technological issue hiding beneath the surface, which is that EVs are fundamentally simpler (electric vs combustion motor) and hence should be cheaper than ICE cars when manufacturing pipelines are mature. This would result in lower profits across the car industry even in the absence of international competition. No US manufacturer so far has actually tried to build EVs cheaper than gas cars at scale (Tesla made a little noise and then got distracted), while Chinese manufacturers have no need to worry about cannibalizing the comparatively small domestic ICE market.

Letting the industry guide policymaking seems like it could lead to regulatory capture preventing EVs from reaching the (low!) price points that they should reach. Already the two-track emissions standards and chicken tax make cars too big and the "arms race" of having a bigger car than everyone else to stay safe (at the expense of others) prevents meaningful reform.

The "secret sauce" of being an OEM is integrating a good set of properties that sells at a price point that sells.

Yeah, they have a lot of $$ historically invested in good engines but they don't care that much. They'll buy engines from each other whenever they want. They don't see it as a critical moat.

Why is decimating our local car industry a problem? Why not build something else with the resources if cars are now a cheap commodity?

You can't really assume the prices will stay low forever and removing local competition exposes you to supply chain issues.

This reminds me of a quote from Peter Schiff, circa 2008 housing crash. To paraphrase,

“too-big-to-fail eventually becomes too-big-to keep alive"

historically car manufacturing gets redirected into defense for wartime though it's unclear how that would pan out with today's factory specialization

Historically being WW2. I'm not sure they've contributed much to the "war effort" since then.

A legacy of WW2 was the explosion of the whole defence industry. While a lot of the civilian factories got repurposed in WW2 to build trucks and planes and ships, the tech in all that stuff was very basic. For example the aircraft carrier Yorktown was "fixed" (at least good enough for the Midway battle) in 3 days. I somehow doubt a modern carrier could do that, simply because of the tech required. The US built 150 more carriers in the next 3 years.

The defense industry today gets a trillion $ a year. There's no civilian ship-building to speak of, and military vehicles are now highly specialized.

So why keep Ford et al afloat? Politically it's sold as "national security." In reality it's like more "they didn't die on my watch." And of course, having the ability to make local affects the supply chain. [1]

For example if China invades Taiwan, the US loses pretty much all electronics- especially PCs and Phones. That's a lot of leverage for a foreign country to have.

[1] US cars aren't really local - that's a fiction exposed by the proposed tarif on "car parts", which the industry squashed. In reality car parts are made all over the place (including the US) , and then assembled in the US (or anywhere else.)

Mercedes Benz and other car companies in Europe are going into defence directly as EU is investing more so any company in the engineering space see potential new market growth

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/11/mercedes-benz-anti-drone-veh...

Our local car industry is tightly related to our local military vehicle industry.

Should we get into a big war, we'll likely need mass production of military vehicles and having mass production of consumer vehicles is a good start.

> Should we get into a big war, we'll likely need mass production of military vehicles and having mass production of consumer vehicles is a good start.

And all those military vehicles we build will be destroyed by tiny fpv drones that cost a tiny percent of what the vehicles cost.

Why do people cling to this WW II era idea that we need car factories in case we go to war?

Gotta move infantry some how. If they're being destroyed all the time, gotta build new stuff.

Last world war, a lot of the mass production facilities got pushed into building munitions too. Harder to do that without manufacturing facilities.

Those tiny fpv drones pack a tiny punch. Sure, it will destroy a current generation Chevy Equinox. But two weeks after the war starts, countermeasures will be created. The vehicles will be changed to make them harder to find, and harder to kill. A small drone will be rendered ineffective by small countermeasures. As much as I dislike the current US administration, Ford moving to making missiles and other military hardware is a good idea. They sure can't build a cost effective vehicle; yet there is a lot more potential profit in a Standard Missile, not to mention less competition.

> But two weeks after the war starts, countermeasures will be created. The vehicles will be changed to make them harder to find, and harder to kill. A small drone will be rendered ineffective by small countermeasures

Where did you get this?

Nobody solved FPV's in four years, why do you think US or any other country will solve it in two weeks?

"small drone will be rendered ineffective by small countermeasures" – only a person that lives under a rock and doesn't follow RU-UA war in any way can say such things.

Not solved. Made less effective. So it takes 100 of them to make any military effect.

The thousands and thousands of FPV drones being used have not been decisive on the battlefield.

The war is a slog, and resembles WWI more than WWII.

You don't know what you're talking about.

It's truly shocking that westerners still believe in fancy military megafauna.

> c) subsidize local production out of the "national interest to support this industry" budget. This has the effect of ramping up demand, hence production, hence production being developed, and eventually getting cheaper.

We already have a trillionaire from subsidizing local production.

Like many things, it seems like a combination of all of those would work better than any single one, depending on the actual goal. If the goal is to help drive EV adoption, tariffs that raise foreign prices to the desired price point, rather than simply being more expensive, would provide competition to the America companies, perhaps driving improvements. Subsidies would help with labor and ensure the company keeps driving the right direction. Improvements to products can help sell "American made" as a good thing.

Part of the point of historical import taxes/tariffs was to get them to build it here, invest in facilities, train the local workforce, etc.

But is "it" in this context EV's or just protecting ICE production? That's the real heart of the issue.

Building EVs would seem to be a logical goal. But is that what the policies are promoting?

Where do interest rates factor in to your calculus? We've just had really cheap money for a really long time in the US and the car makers seem to have adapted and found ways to sell vehicles for more. A top of the line raptor has a tremendous amount of power and interior amenities. Oddly, they're not uncommon, I see landscapers driving them around. Maybe not the very top line Raptors, but I do see Raptors and that seems like an awful lot of truck to pull some lawnmowers and sprinkler parts around in. Low-interest financing and then we've never had high gas prices for terribly extended periods of time.

I don't know that I think the US manufacturers have taken "inexpensive, but good value" cars seriously for decades. The least expensive Ford vehicle, I think is a Maverick which starts around $28k, Hyundai, Kia, Toyota, Mazda and Honda all have cars under $25000.

Before deciding on a solution, Governments also need to decide on what problem they are solving. Why do they want to protect domestic automakers specifically?

Is it national defense synergy / surge capacity reasons? Is it general manufacturing know how / impact on overall domestic manufacturing supply chain? Is it jobs for current workers? Is it to keep the pensions solvent for retirees?

I saw a comment re: this issue in Europe where a Portuguese commenter asked why it was fine for the Eurocrats (lead by Germany) to let all their apparel jobs go overseas, but now he doesn't get the option of buying a Chinese car because German auto jobs need protection. There is something of a point there.

(Is "foreign imports" redundant?)

I'd be OK with tariffs if they are not meant to simply keep foreign car companies out of the US, but rather to encourage foreign car companies that want to enter the US market to build factories in the US and build their cars here with US labor.

There would probably still have to be tariffs on parts so they can't just ship all the parts here and just assemble in the US, but if they come here and build cars with US labor and with much of the supply chain being here too and are still causing headaches for the US car makers I don't see why American consumers should care.

Allowing foreign competition is a forcing function to be more productive and innovative. Japanese/German competition didn't annihilate US car industry, why would Chinese cars do it?

Cars are a way to signal status. Americans don't want to buy cheap cars, because cheap cars means low status. They'd rather go into significant debt and keep up with the Joneses. The people buying pickup trucks and SUVs are mostly picking up their kids from elementary school which is half a mile away.

Last time I looked at the total labor costs of producing a car in the US versus China or elsewhere and it was laughably small compared to the sale price.

Auto manufacturers did this to themselves thinking they could outsource all the heaviest labor portions and pocket the extra and that either the foreign labor would stay cheap and not foster the development of the industry in those countries or local labor would magically be ready whenever they needed despite being starved for decades. But they were wrong on both counts. And on top of all that they squandered all that extra profit they made so they can't seemingly afford to drop the capital needed to return to the cheaper high-volume low-margin market, atleast not with the massive managerial burden they have built up and sustained.

This seems to fill a useful niche, but may be too downscale. Remember the Tata Nano.[1] Tata built a basic car with a price below 1 lahk, but it didn't sell.

In the US, there's Slate, which claims to be making a small electric pickup truck. "Preorders will start on June 24, 2026. First deliveries are slated for late 2026." [2] Price in the US$20K range, they claim. Claimed range is 150m with the base model battery. A larger battery is available. It's America's answer to the kei car. If it ships and keeps shipping.

Detroit got way too much into the "more car per car" thing. Chevrolet once had the slogan "basic transportation". They lost sight of that market. The giant pickups are just silly.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tata_Nano

[2] https://www.slate.auto/en

> Claimed range is 150m with the base model battery.

Surely 150km

Sorry, 150 miles. Not km, Slate is a US company.

The abbreviation for miles is mi.

Are we just ignoring data now? Giant pickups have silly sales- silly in the crazy high sense of the word. I love my EV but I have never wished for less range. The Slate is a toy for the wealthy, like kitted up Jeeps that have snorkels

If it shows up in the suggested price range, it's going to one of the least expensive new vehicles on the market.

Yes, it has less utility than many other vehicles in many ways, but the bed length (5 ft) is longer than a lot of trucks I see on the road which enables carrying certain kinds of loads that aren't easy in cars or trucks with very short beds as seems fashionable now.

150 miles isn't a ton of range, but it's 50% more than a first generation Leaf and those sold.

The Slate clearly isn't trying to check all the boxes, but every vehicle doesn't need to try to do everything.

Bed length is a silly metric to use. It's single dimensional and doesn't capture any of the other important metrics. Such as width, air-volume, cubed-volume, or weight capacity.

Slate's 5 foot bed is on the shorter end of common bed sizes. Certainly shorter and worse on every other metric than the F-150/Silverado/1500 'short bed' so commonly seen hauling air in the US.

Giant pickups have silly sales because pickups in general have silly sales and there are basically zero non-giant options in the US market (thanks, Chicken Tax, very cool).

The Slate would be the absolute perfect truck for me if it had a 4WD option. Being RWD-only is the only thing making me unwilling to replace my Tacoma with it.

How often do you off-road and need 4WD? I have a Jeep Wrangler, and in winter I have to go up a muddy hill with about a 15% grade to a back pasture at a stable. I sometimes engage 4WD (high) for that, but I don't really have to.

Very few of the giant pickups I see have mud on them.

> How often do you off-road and need 4WD?

These are two separate questions.

I off-road an average of once a month, specifically to reach my usual shooting spot on BLM-maintained land. I don't necessarily need 4WD for that, but it's a good excuse to turn it on anyway.

I “need” 4WD when it snows, since 4WD/AWD + snow tires = not being required to chain up when chain controls are in effect, and because 4WD > AWD > FWD > RWD when it comes to snow driving (especially here in Reno/Tahoe, where the snow/ice happens on hills and having more drive wheels is a strict improvement over fewer).

I wanted to buy a Tata Nano but unfortunately didn't make it to my country at an affordable price.

I think the demand was there, the supply wasn't.

My country, Uruguay, leads in EV adoption, and some small EVs are absolutely selling like hotcakes, a friend has the BAW Pony and I'd buy it if I had a place to charge it (there's issues with chargers inside condos due to fire risks).

170 km is plenty for city and suburban driving.

https://bawauto.com/pony/

5th possible solution:

e) End the socialism that is taxpayer-funded bailouts and subsidies for failing car companies, and let the free market decide.

Tired of paying for their losses.

> This is one of those "the internet is a fad, it'll never catch on" moments. EV's are here to stay. They're going to win. That's pretty obvious to anyone paying attention.

That's not clear at all from the long-term habits of American consumers. Why did Ford, GM, and Stellantis all cut EV investment and increase ICE investment in the last year then?

Short term buyer habits don't necessarily track technological progress - they tend to be resistent, then inertia is broken and consumers buy en-mass. Companies need to brunt to cost of innovation until the cost benefit analysis makes sense for consumers. Mobile phones were a passing fad for niche power users until companies threw so much money at them so they weren't, and we became reliant on carrying one. Same can be said for thousands of other products. Nobody used them until suddenly we all were.

We're seeing a moores-law-like improvement in electric cars and their power densities. If the American car manufacturers don't want to be a part of that progress, it's on them, but Asia and Europe will continue to innovate in that area and the US will be playing catch up because they're servicing what consumers want now, not what they will probably want in the future.

Because they are focused on short term returns, not long-term strategy.

In the short term cutting r&d, killing off "not yet profitable" lines etc all lead to improved results this quarter. Who cares about 5 years, or 10 years from now?

If you look beyond the US then you see EV market share growing year on year. Yes, the US is resisting hard, but you can't hold back the tide forever.

Kodak invented digital photography, but kept going with film. In the end the world moved on, even if they didn't.

50 years from now ICE will be a niche market. And if US producers want to own that niche, well that's great. But it'll be a tiny fraction of what they are now.

> 50 years from now ICE will be a niche market

EVs are roughly at two thirds market share in the largest car market of the world. The third largest market has them at 20%. Funnily enough, India (4th largest market) is slightly ahead of the US for EV adoption in passenger cars.

ICE cars will be a niche market much more rapidly than 50 years.

The US is again exceptional insofar that it is actively pivoting to become a petrostate. Even petrostates have been trying for a while to not be petrostates any more, which could be telling for the US electorate but isn't.

Industry famously never makes mistakes due to short term thinking.

Tariff is probably the easiest path forward.

You'll need to pay workers more to make D) work. That cuts into margins. That means it's DOA.

GM has had like what, 1.5% net profit in 2025?

It wouldn't matter if it was 50%. Shareholders have the expectation of the number getting bigger every 90 days in perpetuity. If you want better vehicles to increase sales and compete better against international competition, you need to have the rank-and-file feeling like their work will matter not just for the company, but for them too. That's diametrically opposed to the number getting bigger.

5) Force outside companies to partner with local companies in join ventures with IP and knowledge sharing. This strategy seems to work remarkably well when you have a captive market others want to break into.

I think the idea of public transport or rather functional public transport is completely omitted in that context of this country, isn't it? That alone can be a huge local competition as there should be.

Eu tariffs have had a different effect - Chinese companies are signing deals with European car makers to make the cars at their existing eu factories.

Stellantis is in talks for the Chinese to invest in them too.

A lot of the underlying EV technology is military applicable too

The playbook to study is South Korea. Protectionism and subsidies for nascent and transitioning industries with a clear ex ante timeline to full liberalization to force international competitiveness. Absent the latter, American car companies’ inefficiencies in design and labour structure have zero incentive to change, and American consumers get stuck with shitty, expensive products.

For cars, this would mean federally-guaranteed loans up to the median value of a plant for any manufacturer with any production base worldwide (the plant to be built or retrofitted in America, of course) plus an N-year (N set to the expected payback period for a new or retrofitted plant) tariff schedule starting very high before decreasing to virtually zero. Maybe also pass a special bankruptcy regime to expedite the redistribution of assets for those who fail to really send the message that failure is an option.

I feel like the "clear ex ante timeline" is a big problem for us in the US. A prominent feature of US politics (and indeed culture) is constantly setting such targets and then chickening out and moving the target back as the time approaches. That in turn creates a sort of moral hazard where no one feels an urgency to meet deadlines because they know they'll be loosened up later.

Hmm, maybe a carrot with liberalization? Tax benefits to the car companies come to mind. But I’m almost more of a fan of creating a monetary incentive for the lenders with the federal guarantees—if the liberalization gets delayed or derailed, they lose money.

> A prominent feature of US politics (and indeed culture) is constantly setting such targets and then chickening out and moving the target back as the time approaches.

I'm not an American, so I want to check with this: this is normal for the broader culture? Not just Musk?

Musk is an extreme case but the general pattern is pretty common. See for instance rules passed in various jurisdictions to the effect of "a budget must be passed by date X", which then is circumvented via loopholes or changing the law so that deadline no longer applies.

One might wonder why the Ford CEO cares about low cost foreign cars when Ford doesn't even make any. They have shifted all of their lineup except one car model to higher- margin compact SUVs, SUVs, pickups, and full size commercial vans. And that one car, the mustang, another one marketing exercise on four wheels with accompanying margin markup - not exactly a practical entry level car.

Oh, but the poors but the used cars and competition for their business will lead to greater supply of used cars, diminishing the resale value they can point to to justify purchase of their high-margin vehicles. Can't have that now.

>This is one of those "the internet is a fad, it'll never catch on" moments. EV's are here to stay.

Not saying you're one of them (there are other people here who fit the bill much better) but like with anything else the people on the internet peddling grand narratives lacking of nuance are delusional fanboys, malevolent liars or some combination of the two. EVs are absolutely going to win certain market segments and take good chunks out of others. Unless the government gets out of the business of regulating the crap out of electrical infrastructure at great cost to us all there will likely be a whole bunch of heavier use cases where they just can't pencil out barring some yet unforeseeable breakthrough in the basic physics of batteries.

I think the auto industry is wise to think about the upcoming ~30yr transition period where all that shakes itself out and how to invest the right amount into keeping ICE stuff competitive but without investing to the detriment of winning the EV segment, etc, etc, standard big business stuff.

> there will likely be a whole bunch of heavier use cases where [EVs] just can't pencil out

Do the big Detroit automakers also build a lot of semis, garbage trucks, snow plows, and fire engines? I can see those types of vehicles being ICE holdouts. But certainly not anything you can drive with a regular driver license.

I meant more like bog standard 1500-5500 sized trucks and vans. Depending upon the actual fine details of the use case it's gonna be hard to make the math math.

Your local DPW with a lot of money for new over spec'd trucks, friendly permitting office approving their permit for charging infra, strict 9-5, etc might make it pencil out for their facility maintenance. But a landscaper who's engaged in fundamentally the same work but out of rented space, a landlord that won't get preferential treatment on the install of charging infra, won't qualify for the same fleet discount, works way harder than 9-5, etc, etc. might not make it pencil out.

Local delivery can potentially make great use of EVs, but if you turn up the operational tempo or the range and have drivers slip seating or really racking up the miles it can be a non-starter vs just buying the same thing in non-ev. And of course the fixed infrastructure cost questions still apply.

You might get hybrids but you also have to remember weight matters in a lot of these applications. Can't be rolling around over weight as part of normal business. And a lot of these applications are trying to stay under 10k while still having as much cargo capacity as possible.

The current Chevrolet Silverado EV has a 200 kWh battery option. Even with towing reducing the range to say 200 miles, you could do a lot of pickupy things with that.

I’d argue that garbage trucks, snow plows and fire engines are candidates for EVs. They are large and heavy with plenty of space for batteries. Typically used in predefined routes, traveling less than 100 miles per day.

I would gladly vote for a bond to fund electric trash trucks if that resulted in quieter weekly trash service.

More than half of the garbage trucks I see in Copenhagen are EVs. The first was introduced in 2022.

https://www.volvotrucks.com/en-en/news-stories/stories/2025/...

I haven't seen a fire truck EV, but those exist in other cities.

And they are so much nicer. Way less noise and pollution and much better maneuverability on narrow streets or on slippery roads in winter.

Yes, it won't happen all at once. And some use cases will survive longer.

I'm not sure size is the qualifier though. Electric busses are becoming more and more common. I think city vehicles make good candidates for EV - they don't typically go far from home. They are cheaper to build and buy, and much cheaper to run.

The reason I think EVs win is because of the "support system" ICE vehicles need. And as ICE share decreases that support system also starts to dwindle. So those services get more expensive. I'm thinking gas stations, mechanics, parts and so on. It becomes a death spiral.

It's not unlike the switch from mainframes to PCs. At the beginning there wasn't a contest, but now mainframe skills are hard to find and hence very expensive. So the market for them goes down. Indeed most mainframe suppliers (DEC, SUN et al) died off ages ago.

ICE -> EV is not a 30 year transition.

I’d be surprised if there’s a consequential ICE industry after 2040 (that doesn’t mean there won’t be ICE cars being driven, just that they won’t be selling outside niche industries after 2040).

The collapse of ICE vehicles will happen sooner rather than later due to a few fundamental reasons.

- China has gone all in on EVs. It’s hard to compete against the Chinese and they’re unlikely to ever develop the skills and capabilities to develop cheap ICE vehicles.

- The Strait of Hormuz fiasco has pretty much convinced countries about not being dependent on gas. Electricity is an energy abstraction. It allows you to run your EV no matter where you get your energy from because almost all sources of energy can easily be converted to electricity. Running your vehicles on this abstraction provides a lot of sovereign flexibility.

- ICE infrastructure is incredibly expensive to maintain. You have so many dedicated gas stations spread out all over that use up valuable space and resources, but also then need to be supplied with gas coming from all over the world. As EVs take meaningful share from ICE vehicles, the cost of maintaining this infrastructure for each ICE vehicle driver will keep rising. As demand goes down, gas stations will start shutting down, and then the distance between 2 gas stations or your home and thr closes fast station may increase, and range anxiety will start working against ICE and in favor of EVs.

- ICE vehicles are 100+ years into their development. EVs are just getting started. And they’re almost close to parity. It’s not clear how ICE will maintain any edge outside of very niche use cases as EVs continue to improve.

> ICE -> EV is not a 30 year transition

> I’d be surprised if there’s a consequential ICE industry after 2040

It started in the 00s, really took off around 2010.

And don't forget that 2040 is in 14 years. You can buy plenty of brand new ICE cars today, the majority of them will definitely still be around in 14 years.

I agree with you, for the mass consumer car market (individual/family transport) as a whole. It's coming fast. However, the current EV technology (mostly batteries + charging) is not a good fit for a whole lot of edge cases, and in the aggregate they matter, too, and thus the ICE engine industry won't really go away anytime soon:

* General-purpose Semis for commercial hauling. Yes, there's some EV Semis on the road today - pilot projects, or specific routes on specific schedules. But there's a lot of general purpose semi-hauling that happens every day on odd/long routes without sufficient chargers in the right places, and they need much bigger chargers. And then there's the specialty semis that carry large/wide loads. I see them almost every day in my area, carrying large chunks of power substations, heavy manufacturing equipment, blades for wind turbines, etc.

* Fire trucks, Ambulances, Tow trucks, Police cars - For various similar reasons, it's tricky with some of these, although in well-constrained cases and with extra vehicles on tap as backup (when the other one is low on charge in an emergency), maybe can kinda work, eventually.

* "Personal" trucks that see heavy towing/hauling use (think: hauling a livestock trailer or farm equipment or heavy materials (or maybe an EV race car!), possibly long distances on a regular basis). The battery range really suffers when you put all the extra weight and drag on by towing, and people aren't willing to turn what was a 5 hour diesel trip into a 9 hour trip with supercharger stops (more time in the heat with animals, more time on the road in general, and do you have to disconnect the trailer just to reach the charge cable?)

* Backup generator ICE engines - home, datacenter, industrial use, etc. The problem here is mostly runtime and peak watts of output vs cost. You can use a battery-based solution for most of these cases, but it currently costs prohibitively more for the same performance specs. When they're being used in austere environments, sometimes there's no electric grid to even charge from, so slap on a massive solar array cost, too.

* All military use of ICE engines in general (transport, generators, etc) - Not insignificant in scope and scale, and obviously they're not going to run EVs or find chargers on battlefields.

These cases will diminish over time, especially as we continue to make advances in charging and especially battery technology, but it will probably take a few decades because there's science challenges, not just engineering ones. The military case might never go away.

Look, sure. No one is saying "no ICE ever". Some people still ride horses.

125 years ago cities were built around horses. Stabling. Breeding. Feeding. Grooming. Street cleaning (turns our horses poop a Lot). By 20 years later that's all gone.

Sure horses survived in rural areas. Sure the Amish use them today as then. But the horse-based industry has (in real terms) vanished.

ICE is headed the same way. It will exist, but no daily-driver car will be ICE. EVs win, because in cities they are better. Because they're cheaper to own.

If Ford wants to own the ICE niches, fine. But it won't be cars.

It's not quite that simple though. A lot of these edge cases are necessary for everyone to live their cushy little city lives. It's not a matter of outmoded things. We will still need ambulances, and we will still need livestock trailers, and everything else on my list, for all of the foreseeable future. Unless batteries and charging gets a lot better, we'll still be manufacturing and improving ICE engines for many applications. Just not simple passenger cars.

ICE cars/vehicles aren't going to disappear overnight. There are enough used ICE vehicles for ALL of the edge cases and a ton more for the next 20 years. There is no need to buy new ICE vehicles.

You are underestimating how countries and towns can drag their feet. I live in Germany, in an apartment, in a large city. There's hardly any public charging infra in a 1km radius (if I discount the supermarket parking lot with ~3 chargers), maybe still zero and not hardly any.

Yes, some of my friends who live in a house with a garage are very happy with their EVs, I'm still calling it absolutely ridiculous without spending extra time driving somewhere, then charging, then driving back (or a folding bike maybe).

How good they are literally does not matter at all if I can't fill it up.

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