World News

"We took zero action to compete and relied on protectionism and other forms of corruption to stay in business knowing that China was pulling ahead, we refused to plan for the future and harvested all the money for our owners instead and now we're fucked unless you bail us out! Not the owners, of course, who could afford to bail us out, they will continue siphoning money even though they're clearly incompetent, we need your taxes" ... How about no?

Maybe you should have kept up and innovated instead of just trying to stifle your competition and enshittify your products idiots.

Compete or die

"We insisted on fossil fuels and now Chinese electric car companies are eating our lunch, boo hoo"

Cry more fat capitalists

Won't somebody PLEASE think of the shareholders‽

That's capitalism.

¯\(ツ)/¯

Back in the 80s, American cars got really, really crappy, and that's when Honda, and Toyota, and later Hyundai, Daiwoo, and Kia were able to get market share. American car companies got their shit together, and started making cars that could compete again. So here we are a few decades later, in the same spot.

These scummy Capitalists get a taste of luxury, and they start getting lazy, while the Asians continue to crank away like they're in last place. In the past, the Capitalists finally wised up, and got back into the game, but the current crop are so breath-takingly ignorant, that I doubt they could even recognize that they're in trouble. If someone were to try to explain it to them, they'd probably just attack back.

The Japanese and Koreans will get their shit together. America won't.

Then stop being greedy fuckers

China will soon, or prolly has already, be the number 1 country. US oligarchs are just focussed on getting richer instead of trying to advance humanity technologically.

Maybe the workers at Toyota, Ford and Honda should take control of these plants. They would run it better without the capitalist leeches squeezing out every ounce of profits into their own pockets.

I cannot wait to see legacy auto disappear. It’s about time they failed. It’s fucking absurd that the most expensive piece of tech I own has a 15fps display with touch response rate measured in seconds, rather than milliseconds. They did this to themselves.

Legacy auto did nothing to compete with Tesla software, and they came out over a decade ago.

Oh, and they took the ‘10 bailouts and did fuckall with them. They didn’t take the bailouts and make a suddenly better product.

that he did not spot a single human worker on the supplier's floor.

I know that workers cost money to have but eveytime I read something like this I wonder if the corporations take into consideration the decrease in the number of people who may be able to purchase the product in the first place.

I dunno how the Japanese and Koreans will do, but I 100% guarantee that the American companies will do absolutely nothing, whine about it to their child rapist in chief and then get a massive government bailout paid for by ordinary Americans.

Aw, Capitalism not working out for you car manufacturers? Awww, that’s too bad.

OH NO! THE FREE MARKET IS WORKING BUT NOT IN OUR FAVOR!!!

I would bet that Chinese auto manufacturers aren't taking 6 billion a month out of their company to pay shareholders in stock buybacks. Maybe reinvesting in the company to remain competitive is in fact, a good strategy.

Cold Take:
Good. They don't deserve to survive. Demand will ensure industry bounceback and stability long term, at least nationally as new buniesses fill the void and labour recovers. Mind you, the US industry will probably never compete globally again having collectively chosen to just lag behind technological trends toward efficiency and sustainability to appease fossil fuel entanglements. These companies made the decisions they did not to adapt at a critical turning point and this is the result, and their current rhetoric is an artifact of decades of coddling by a lopsided nanny state spoon-feeding subsidies and bailouts to shitty investors and executives with garbage management practices at the expense of public services and infrastructure. There is no too big to fail, that's capitalist coping propped up by a corrupt and captured economy that THEY lobbied for.

In short, get fucked, and take your CEOs with you.

Well that's capitalism. It's what you wanted right? Competition to keep you on your toes?

Looks like the invisible hand of the market favors what the people want more than what bosses think we can take.

How many of those companies spent literal billions of dollars on stock buybacks to inflate share market price over the last decade instead of investing in the people and facilities and products to remain competitive. Even if there is dumping I doubt it's anywhere near the combined spent on share price inflation buybacks & savings instead of investing in the workers and business, these companies enjoy unjustified tax breaks and subsidies from their governments as well.

This is a the economy being equated to wealth/investor class problem. Workers in and around cities want cheap affordable evs & charging infrastructure for renters, mechanics and parts producers want to build and work on affordable evs. People who own stocks expecting growth returns and executive compensation want to sell 10 cars a year for a trillion dollars each if they could.

Oh no my portfolio... Seriously, there's something called competition, it's been around for a long time. If Chinese companies continue pushing ahead while US companies remain complacent then that's just what will happen. These older car manufacturers have had DECADES to prepare for the newer battery tech to design and build good affordable BEVs, but they just didn't.

This is what happens when billionaires try to steal the future. Read about the General Motors EV1. Oil companies have fought against the development of EV charging infrastructure in the US.

Honda and Toyota have been EV technology laggards all along, even behind us automakers

Is everyone going to import the dregs of their technology to the us, to eke out a few more quarters of profitability before becoming irrelevant?

Good these are companies that fought the transition to EVs every step of the way. Toyota in particular. Which was ironic after releasing the Prius

Herp my derp look who is mad about the "free market" now?

Don't come crawling to us for bailouts this time

Well I guess your high paid CEOs and executives really fucked up then, right? That's exactly what you were saying? Because everyone else saw this coming from miles away, and we have been clamoring for these kinds of cars for a long ass time, even small gas cars are hard to find now. So what are those guys paid such high salaries for if they are so completely dense...?

That’s the problem with disrupters, people are so involved with dismissing them that they don’t see what’s happening. For years it was all about cheap Chinese labour then turn around and discover that it’s really all about robotic factories and slick organisation. Throw in EVs and it’s the same but worse.

Okay, so you're getting out-competed in the market. Pay proper wages, invest in innovation instead of executive salaries, and take a slimmer profit margin to help your customers.

Don't charge $100,000 for a regular fucking vehicle?

Seriously, all the useless expensive shit they add to vehicles to make them unmaintainable data miners is why they're going to get slaughtered.

Give me an electric pickup with 4WD and crank up windows. Preferably no radio. I'd buy one of those Slates in a heartbeat if it were 4WD, as much as I hate Jeff Bezos.