The list of 14 rules for running a skunkworks program and how they apply here is great and well worth reading the article, regardless of how you feel about the likelihood of Ford ever successfully executing on a $30k ev truck
I think Ford is technically capable of building a $30k EV truck and have been for some time. The F-150 Lightning was surprisingly close and only the overshot the mark in the direction most of the rest of the F-150 line has leaned in the same years.
I think Ford still hasn't solved its Dealer Problem that it currently would not have dealers willing to sell a $30k EV truck in the US.
I didn't, I said that $40k is closer to $30k than many would give it credit and that I believe that at least $10k-$20k more expensive than necessary for "luxury trim reasons" seems to be the current F-150 brand.
What stops Ford or General Motors from creating a "startup" that is not bound by its existing agreements with its dealership network to sell a new vehicle direct to consumers "in select states" where the law allows this? I mean any state where the Tesla is sold should allow this, right?
"Activist" Shareholders, primarily. Ford several years ago floated the idea of building its EV division as an almost entirely separate direct-to-consumer sub-company (specifically designed to directly compete with Tesla) and it got shutdown hard by shareholders.
Many of the biggest shareholders of both GM and Ford are their respective dealers. Shamefully this conflict of interest and reversal of some key controls is deeply entrenched in the US all the way back to the original lawsuit Dodge Brothers v Ford, which is also the dark origin of phrases like "fiduciary duty to shareholders", where then dealer network and automotive supply chain moguls the Dodge Brothers sued Ford for wanting to take record profits and reinvest them in R&D and asked that Ford give a record dividend instead (as its "fiduciary duty to shareholders"). They used that dividend to help finance their rival Dodge car manufacturer. In hindsight it is such a bizarre sequence of conflicts of interest that we're still dealing with the consequences of today (in how it created such quarterly earnings-focused myopia in US corporations), including specifically in the various ways that GM and Ford can't easily create a "startup" with no dealer network to stay competitive in EVs, why both are generally starved of R&D money compared to "startup" competitors, and also it all relates to why they are "too big to fail" given how much of the US economy is built on top of conflicts of interest and overlaps between them, their dealers, their supply chain, and their shareholders.
I live in Germany and am sure as hell that I will never be driving a $30k electric pickup here. They'll make sure nothing like this ever becomes legal to import or drive on German roads until after there's a German car brand on it, and it costs 10x that while being identical, just to subsidize lots of local jobs that are low-wage, high-tax, and taking away manpower from other sectors/fields where it's more needed.
In Germany it's mostly US service members and their families who drive US pickup trucks. They can ship personal vehicles to Germany without having to make them fully compliant with German regulations, and generally seem to like them
Away from US bases, pickup trucks are very rare in Germany. The closest thing you will see are 3-ton flatbed trucks as work vehicles, or something like a VW Transporter. But generally tradespeople prefer vans, and commuters prefer hatchbacks or SUVs (which are bad enough)
Despite failing to meet EU safety rules, they can be imported under Individual Vehicle Approval -
"""
The use of IVA for so-called ‘off-road’ vehicles (N1G) has more than doubled since
2019, rising from 2,900 new registrations in that year to 6,800 in 2022, with Dodge Ram pick-up
trucks accounting for approx 60% of IVAs in this category over these four years, 2019 to 2022
"""
Anyway, my point was that you can buy American trucks in Europe right now, so op may be able to get this $30k Ford.
For what it's worth, I have a big soft spot for trucks with long beds and normal-height hoods! Something like a Chevy S10 or 90's Tacoma is really useful! I just don't like biking with my kids by drivers who can't seem them.
I’ve wanted a kei truck for a while. Then when you park it next to suburban mom’s expedition/escalade/luxury bus it’s so tiny it looks unsafe. Unfortunately I live in a city where small town trips are difficult without getting on a 70+ mph freeway and competing with those vehicles
Lamenting the difficulty of registering kei trucks is kind of rich coming from the patron saint of "the roads are horribly dangerous and we need to do everything to safen them up and drivers can bear whatever that costs"
Protectionism when I don't like it, public safety when I do I guess.
In any case, they're pretty easy to register if you don't lick the boot. Whatever state you're in typically isn't gonna come after you for tax evasion for an object they aren't in the business of taxing if you catch my drift.
Not OP but I don't. What do you mean? How do you make the kei truck an object they aren't in the business of taxing when they are, in fact, in that very business? Or maybe I have some deeper confusion about the issue here.
I think they mean it’s easier than many of us suspect to register an imported car as something close enough and get away with it. The most challenging bit would probably be maintenance.
I meant just register it in one of the slightly less than half of states that let you do that.
Even if some Karen narcs on you to the tax man unless it's an especially slow day the tax man will say something along the lines of "It's a what? We don't register those"
The registration/tax people aren't in the business of giving a shit about the nuances of the vehicle code. They're in the business of collecting money. It's not like you're dodging meaningful fees on an entire truck fleet. You're dodging what would be a zero to them since they'd never let you register it. What are they gonna do send you one of those "we believe you owe us X, pay up or we'll use the full force of the state to fucking stomp you and ruin your life" letters with X= $0. I'm sure they'll get right on that.
If you title and register your kei car in washington (where you can register it, usually) and keep it and drive it in California (where you can't register it), there's a chance some officer who hates kei cars is going to find it and raise a stink. And then you've got to pay fines, and maybe your car gets towed and you have to flatbed it out of state. Plus fines, I'm sure.
If it's cheap enough or fun enough, it might be worth the risk; but I don't know that I would risk it.
I know someone who got pulled over, and then a ticket for driving in California with washington plates and changing 3 lanes at once. "Anybody who drives like that must live here"
Not sure what a kei car would be doing on a freeway 3 lanes over though.
I live outside of Austin TX and have seen one regularly parked outside a house in my neighborhood for 5 years now. Has a license plate. If I had to bet, I’d say it’s registered (taxes paid, has required insurance) because police around here have camera systems in their cars that scan plates looking for unregistered vehicles (found out the hard way one time when I forgot to renew).
That depends a lot on the state. I hear in Utah it's very easy to register a kei truck/van as street-legal. Here in Nevada it's quite the opposite, at least according to those I've talked to who've attempted it.
It is crazy when I hear people say they want to drive a kei truck on American roads. American SUVs and trucks are enormous in both height and weight. The kei truck does not offer the necessary crash protection.
It is crazy when I hear people say they want to walk, bike, or ride a motorcycle on American roads. American SUVs and trucks are enormous in both height and weight. Walking, biking, or riding a motorcycle does not offer the necessary crash protection.
> The kei truck does not offer the necessary crash protection
Eh, if you aren’t doing a lot of highway driving, I think this could be fine? Especially in a city where collisions should be low speed.
Put another way—and this is a genuine question—is the person who wants a Kei truck better off spending tens of thousands of dollars more for safety rather than investing that in their health, happiness or education?
You raise some interesting points. A different way to look at safety: Why do car companies bother at all? Why isn't it a race to the bottom for car crash safety? "Oh, it's expensive to have cars with crash safety. Let's reduce our materials cost."
> Why do car companies bother at all? Why isn't it a race to the bottom for car crash safety?
More safety, always, is usually a feel-good measure. If people aren’t trading in their old cars for the newer, safer ones, because the latter are too expensive, it’s not actually helping people. Same if the cheapest car someone can get for their commute is bankrupting them.
> Kei Vehicles are not compliant with U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS). Therefore, they are not “street legal.” Kei Vehicles are barred from titling and registration.
I found other sources on Google saying you can cheat this rule by finding a state that does not strictly enforce FMVSS rules for titling and registration. Then, you can (illegally) drive the kei truck in another state. To be clear: This is illegal, but you need to be caught. Also, it looks like there are auto body shops that will modify a kei truck/car to make it street legal. I have a seen a bunch of YouTubers driving kei trucks/cars with California license plates. Thus, I assume the work was done to make them street legal.
Thus, we can conclude that FMVSS prevents a race-to-the-bottom in vehicular safety for cars in the US. Honestly, I expect all highly developed nations to have similar rules. Why? For the safety of children, more than anything. Even if a parent wants to drive an unsafe car, most societies will prioritise the safety of child passengers over the "liberty" of the parent/owner/driver.
1. Seat belts - pretty sound investment.
2. Air Bags - excellent investment.
3. Crumple zones - outstanding investment.
4. ABS - outstanding investment.
5. Backup cameras - not worth the money if you don't value the lives of small kids.
6. Lane sensors - pretty handy, especially as your reflexes start to slow with age.
Why aren't performance improvements scrutinized the same way? How often are huge trucks given a pass despite never having anything in their truckbeds?
(Not) sorry (in the slightest), but this is a crook.
Stop getting your technical info from ideologues in the reddit comments. Each of those investments is an order of magnitude less valuable than the first.
Wear your seatbelt. That's 90% of the battle.
Crumple zones in particular punch below their weight class and are grossly misunderstood on the internet. Their primary purpose is to let the front of the car hit something before the cabin starts decelerating to buy time for airbag deployment. Force absorption is a secondary nice to have. They only make a meaningful difference to the forces in the cabin at a narrow range of speed.
Side curtain airbags punch above their weight class though because there's not much else to help you in that direction of movement.
ABS is pretty meh. It only really beats the operator by enough to matter in specific situations.
If your reflexes are so bad that the lane keeping is what's keeping you in the lane there's other problems.
I'm not gonna pick apart every one of these improvements and they do add value. But they do not add the amount of value you are acting like they do.
>Why aren't performance improvements scrutinized the same way? How often are huge trucks given a pass
Because you're simping vehicular safety theater. So where the dollars and cents actually matter, commercial trucks bought by commercial interests who can push back, what gets adopted is actually based on what's real vs emotion driven screeching. Like for example semi trailers got ABS real early. It's extra valuable in applications where weight changes a lot.
>despite never having anything in their truckbeds?
I know it's anecdata, but the number of high-speed crashes in my college-town are amazing. You have a 45mph zone, people routinely speed 5-10 over that and boom, dramatic crashes.
For driving around town to do stuff, I'd say they are fine and would love to have one. I doubt they would be able to safely drive on our freeways here though.
I mean, you can see how a kastenwagen nutzfahrzeug is a very different vehicle from a consumer mid-size pickup, right?
Sure, technically some would call the vehicle you linked a pickup, and technically German law still identifies the consumer pickup truck as a nutzfahrzeug instead of a PKW, but it doesn’t feel like you’re making a best effort to meet GP in the middle.
The distinction gets at something interesting though, and it's a weird intermingling of culture and politics. I think a truck as owned by a consumer, and as an American would understand the word, is, at least in part, a lifestyle statement derived from maybe overprovisioning on the horsepower. Such a lifestyle statement in Germany seems to be perfectly socially acceptable when it ties in with luxury and doing your "civic duty" by buying German, but it clearly ruffles feathers and meets with political headwind when it ties in with the culture and financial constraint of the "commoner".
In my experience the resistance seems to come from the sense of “waste” that comes from buying a specialized vehicle. Anecdotally the folks I talk to (all blue-collar “commoners”) are overly focused on buying the eierlegende Wollmilchsau[0] vehicle. They view specialized vehicles, especially luxury-priced specialized vehicles, as an unnecessary waste.
Does this relate with your experience? It sounds like your perspective is broader than mine and more informed.
Edit: oof two downvotes for trying to have a conversation and expand my understanding of a culture. Vielen dank.
I was referring to something slightly different namely that price, horsepower, and socioeconomic status are all monotonically increasing functions of each other when you look at any given lineup of cars -- say you're comparing the different company cars owned by a given company, the different cars in the lineup of a given manufacturer, or the cars parked outside the venue when there's a wedding and the extended family has been invited. The cars themselves are all "trivial" variations of each other. I've noticed this more strongly in Germany than in other countries I've lived in (which is a few). You don't get the kind of variety of styles and designs you would get in the U.S. and many cars that are commonplace in the U.S. like a Ford Mustang or a Dodge RAM, when you encounter it in Germany, would instantly read as "someone desparate to get noticed".
But the variation in horsepower is still there. It's not like cars with 300 HP are forbidden in Germany. It's just that they need to fit in the continuum. The 300HP BMW is the CEO's car, and its existence is justified by the fact that the other top managers drive the 200HP version which is otherwise almost the exact same car, which are in turn justified by the fact that the middle managers drive the 120HP version, and if you're a new-hire individual contributor then anything more than 90HP would cause a scandal if word got out. (I'm painting a mental picture here; obviously not making a universal claim).
I think that culture is part of the reason why a $30k electric pickup truck would ruffle feathers so much, and it's a particularly stupid reason, but I think it's real.
The "Kastenwagen" example from above escapes that calculus by clearly being something that stands completely outside of any established continuum of this kind. The rare Ford Mustang or imported Dodge RAM that you sometimes see in Germany is similarly socially/politically acceptable on the grounds that it would either be expensive as hell, or a car buff's hobby. Both of those cases mean the owner has duly paid for their ticket to the high-horsepower social club (either financially, or by having a respectable hobby and putting in the work), whereas a $30k electric pickup that you can just buy would come across as "cheating the system".
Cars in the US cost pretty much the same before taxes as in Europe. If Ford can build this truck in the US for this cost there seems little reason it couldn’t build it in the EU for a similar cost. Whether it will offer this body style or not is of course another question (Ford have stopped selling all regular cars in US, only offering crossovers, SUVs and trucks.) This is rather different to the perceived threat of cheap imports from China.
Who says you need Ford to do it? Aging Wheels tried a prototype of a small electric pickup a year ago from a team making one without the support of a huge car company. I have no dog in this fight, other than wanting more of transport to go electric but if Americans refuse to buy vans which probably make more sense for transporting goods this might be a good option.
You don't need Ford per se, but you do need an experienced manufacturer to take a concept car to mass production, and you need mass production to make something affordable.
Would be interesting to follow, but as of now they look to be in a startup phase still. Car companies take years to establish themselves. This one seems close though, they say they will do their first deliveries later this year.
It's almost exactly what I want out of a truck… except I'm no longer seeing non-RWD options (could've sworn there used to be a 4WD option; did I hallucinate that or are they just not showing it anymore?).
I don't know that that's true. Van popularity comes and goes. So does van manufacturing. When van sales are high, we get more makes, when sales slump, some of the exit. People who buy vans don't like to buy new ones unless the old one is totalled or falls apart...
I don't think you can buy a Ford or Chevy minivan right now, but Honda, Toyota and Chrysler usually have one. VW has one now, too. I just missed the window to a get Ford Transit Connect when my 2017 Pacific died, so I ended up with an 81 VW Vanagon... But I also have a pickup with a 6 foot bed. Sometimes you want your load enclosed; sometimes outside is better.
Kelly's 15th rule was actually "Starve before doing business with the damned Navy. They don't know what the hell they want and will drive you up a wall before they break either your heart or a more exposed part of your anatomy."
Structural battery pack with seats bolted to it. 48 volt, less wiring, castings front and rear. Focus on less parts, ease of manufacturing and aerodynamics.
Makes sense with so many ex-Tesla people there.
Looks like ford will only be ~5 years behind if they can pull it off
The original Skunkworks optimizes for a low production volume of vehicles which operate in a very extreme band of performance. And yes these projects are able to deliver within budget, but they are still very expensive machines. This is totally opposite to what is applicable to Ford, where really the innovation needs to be in the factory.
The other key lesson from the Skunkworks book, which is applicable, is that to the greatest degree possible, one should not reinvent the wheel. Reuse parts from other high production vehicles, which have proven their reliability. Focus the innovation tactically.
Pepperidge Farm remembers the $19,995 MSRP Ford Maverick with its standard hybrid drivetrain. Missed my chance to buy one, watched the price bloat out and nope.
To be fair to Ford, the Maverick launched in 2022 right before a period of accelerated inflation, especially in the car industry.
You’d be hard pressed to find any new vehicle that hasn’t seen a significant price increase since that time.
It’s still a truck you can get for $26k-28k and is only about $3k more than the cheapest cars sold in America.
I think your sentiment is an understandable bit of cynicism around EVs, and one that US consumers have felt for a while. It seems like the whole concept of the EV is dead. Nobody wants it, carmakers are pulling back.
Meanwhile, EVs are exploding in popularity and value basically all the other markets outside of the United States.
In my opinion, the idea that a good and affordable EV product will not become mainstream is sticking around because American car buyers have been starved of new EV models due to a market of weak demand and revoked incentives. This is going to change soon, and this change will hit the consumer market relatively suddenly. A lot of the cost challenges with EVs have evaporated.
In other words, yeah, Ford is easily going to make a $30,000 EV pickup. I totally believe it.
Remember when Toyota said they’re done bothering with EVs? Then all of a sudden the 2026 bz refresh is a legit EV, and now the new Lexus ES is launching with the EV model being the highest performance and cheapest model.
The Rivian R2 is yet another huge deal about to launch on the premium side of the market. I’d have a hard time figuring out why what I would choose something like a gasoline BMW X3 over the R2 - they’re pretty much in the same price range.
In other words, the era of EVs costing $10-20k more than an equivalent gasoline car is abruptly ending.
I liked Fords erev plan for a brief moment before China destroyed that with 1 MW charging. There is zero need for gas in a world when you can go from 20-80% in 3 mins.
In the UK EVs have a green rectangle on the number plate. I personally think this is helping adoption as it changes the mindset of people who have been programmed to think that “nobody wants EVs” - it’s hard to argue with the sheer number of them driving around now that you might otherwise miss since a lot of them just look like the ICE equivalents.
China, being a superpower, has a vested interest in bringing other superpowers down a peg as well as increasing other countries' dependence on China.
Their state has a serious incentive to ship out cheap cars to destroy the automotive industry in the US and the EU for example. When that happens they can double the price on all their vehicles and you can't restart your car factories to compete with them again until years down the line.
With Huawei its about telecom equipment which is essential in today's age, with TikTok it's about controlling the narrative, also essential.
Yes, US and EU manufacturers need to innovate and be less greedy but the cost to make things will always be higher than in China so even though protectionism sounds bad, you'll always have some of that around to even the playing field.
Something I've been trying to articulate for a while is that the EV revolution is a smaller version of the phone and internet revolutions: it requires a bunch of infrastructure buildout, but it's also the result of individual consumer choices. And it's highly synergistic. But along with that, it will create "losers", existing companies whose business can't adapt to the new ways. Sears had a hundred-year start on Amazon as a mail-order business and couldn't adapt, for example.
In the middle of this was Jack Welch's "destroy your business dot com", which is still highly controversial. But he did at least recognize that running a big ossified business in a time of change was going to need a massive kick to get everyone out of their complacency (and if not, out of their jobs!). Cannibalize your own legacy business, or some competitor will.
I think this is a serious problem in existing car companies. They attach too much prestige and career to being "petrolheads", or simply working in the engine division; after all, that's the most expensive to develop and least easy to substitute part of the car. The EV transition threatens to sweep that all away. Probably most of the EU manufacturers won't really get on board until those people retire.
There's probably a whole other essay that could be written about labour relations and the decline of mass car manufacture in the UK while we retain a lot of high-end boutique expertise (Formula 1 etc).
Anyway, I have an EV on order from FCA Poland, so we'll see how that turns out.
> I think this is a serious problem in existing car companies. They attach too much prestige and career to being "petrolheads", or simply working in the engine division; after all, that's the most expensive to develop and least easy to substitute part of the car. The EV transition threatens to sweep that all away. Probably most of the EU manufacturers won't really get on board until those people retire.
You speak as-if they didn't create EVs. It's just that most of the European EV platforms were resounding failures, be it CLAR, CLAR II (BMW), MEA1 & MEA2, (Mercedes), J1 (Porsche), e-tron (Audi), MEB (VW), of these MEB is pretty much the only one that turned around to generate some kind of volume, but that took many years. Sales numbers for all of these are way below predictions, we're not talking about a 50% miss here. I don't know how much a car architecture costs to develop, but I'd wager it is not a cheap endeavor. Between that and the comparatively large number of battery-related EV recalls these projects probably represent double-digit billions of losses for the European car industry. This seems realistic given the widely publicized $20bn Ford EV write-down. So given these enormous sunk costs and yet they're still somewhat investing in EVs doesn't read to me like they're not trying to compete on EVs. If that were the case, they'd just cut their losses, or done so years ago.
That's where all those European battery factories that were announced a couple years ago went: Consumers do not buy EVs anywhere near the expected volume and therefore there is no demand to finance such factories. The handful of batteries needed for the low volumes of EV production are easily sourced from existing factories and the rest is imported from China.
Stellantis/PSA doesn't appear in this story because they never went beyond compliance car EVs (i.e. their "let's stuff a 50 kWh gross battery and the cheapest electric drive we can buy from a supplier into an ICE chassis" approach).
> Consumers do not buy EVs anywhere near the expected volume
OK so the billion Euro question is: why not? Tesla seem to be making adequate sales in Europe. China has passed 50% EVs as new sales. Norway (in Europe, but not the EU) is approaching 100%.
Is it simply price? Of the car, and/or electricity?
The EU was originally proposing to phase out ICE in 2035, which is now less than 10 years away!
> compliance car EVs (i.e. their "let's stuff a 50 kWh gross battery
I had noticed that all the Stellantis EVs have desperately bad range. I guess that's why they're showing up for cheap leasing offers to meet compliance.
But that's what I mean. It's an intentionally half-assed product. Only the recent Renault 5 and VW ID series cars feel like serious market entrants rather than "will this do?"
BYD and Tesla are popular in the UK, but not EU manufacturers. Why? Product? Price?
I think e-tron have some success. As do Renault (and Nissan) despite Gohsn insistence on not building on it (goshn was a very successful manager and finance engineer, but people should understand he destroyed R&D at Nissan, Renault and Alpine, killing any chance at success they had despite their leg up on electric car)
> They attach too much prestige and career to being "petrolheads", or simply working in the engine division; after all, that's the most expensive to develop and least easy to substitute part of the car. The EV transition threatens to sweep that all away. Probably most of the EU manufacturers won't really get on board until those people retire.
“Those damn pesky artists still painting by hand. We need to wait for them to die out to let the stable diffusion guys take over and then we will be number one!”
> “Those damn pesky artists still painting by hand.
Long ago hand painters used cadmium yellow. It may be art, but it's also poisonous. Same for Napoleon and his arsenic wallpaper. In the end, same for CO2-emitting engines.
Some engines maybe. Your average 1.5 TFSI is the equivalent of drawing corporate memphis clipart for a paycheck, no one is pouring their passion into that. Maybe not so bad if it gets replaced by an EV/AI.
Huh. It sounds a bit incoherent and manic, but I think that’s actually what it was, not just the description?
Interesting takeaway is everything on there (smart homes, integrated financial media and trading, etc.) eventually happened, not by GE, except the GE Capital stuff, which wound up a disaster. So the signal to look for in AI is folks deploying levered balance sheets directly to consumers. Which I don’t think we’re directly seeing, outside OpenAI.
US companies outsourcing all of their manufacturing to countries with cheaper labor and laxer environmental & labor laws led to this. What did those titans of industry think would happen down the road? "I'll be retired." Corporations have way too much power in the US, and that has considerably weakened it.
Clearly the USA has the same vested interest. The difference is they are aggressively initiating war outside their borders to bully and get what they want.
This is somewhere where sensible tariffs actually do make sense. Set the tariffs to offset any government subsidies or environmental regulatory costs. If the cars are actually better, let people buy them, make domestic manufacturers compete. Just don't allow dumping.
Complete protectionism doesn't work because it makes your own manufacturers non-competitive on the global stage.
> Set the tariffs to offset any government subsidies or environmental regulatory costs.
The problem is this is really hard to objectively measure.
> Complete protectionism doesn't work because it makes your own manufacturers non-competitive on the global stage.
Yes - and this is a problem Detroit has been struggling with since Japan got decent at cars. The recent wave of protectionism is backing them into the dead end.
How come this price hike hasn't happened with solar panels, inverters, telecom equipment, batteries etc. It's been a while that such industries in europe have become obsolete
Solar panels, inverters and batteries are not critical infrastructure and I'd wager the jobs impacted are considerably lower than the automotive industry.
Really this is conspiracy level thinking. It's not like there's no car industry in the EU, it's just that it's grown in the low-COL areas like Slovakia and not in high-COL areas like Germany.
Chinese imports and local manufacture should be able to compete in the "free market". It's just that that term has been heavily debased by idiots misusing it, like everything else.
It has. There's an enormous amounts of solar panel manufacturers in china that had to close down, due to the governments ordered over capacity, to try and take over the world. This has led to enormous waste of resources in china.
Now the government has ordered massive development of electric cars, to push down prices to loss making levels. In a few years, a lot of chinese elctric car manufacturers will close down, just like what happened with solar.
The trick here for the west, is to copy china, and once the internal bubble bursts, launch its own companies in solar and e-cars based on copied chinese technology.
How is that different from what the US and (to a lesser degree) the EU tried to do? Both are examples of capitalism.
Actually I know why it's different, I was just doing an online knee jerk response the difference is that western capitalism has a hands-off (but regulated) approach, letting the companies do their own thing. China and their companies are much more involved. I'm sure the US was a lot more directly involved in setting the directions of its industry in decades past, but since then the industry and stock market took over the reins.
Another factor may be that in the west, workers have more rights, unionized, and set their own boundaries. But they were also constrained - what would've happened if someone at Ford 10, 15 years ago said "I want to develop an EV?". In the US, it took a new company (Tesla with a heap of investor money) to make strides in that area. But because Tesla didn't have any actual experience in making cars, they reinvented the wheel and are (from what I gathered) still building sub-standard cars.
If an experienced company like Ford or VAG set aside money and resources to reinvent the car every once in a while they would've been able to keep up. As it stands, all the existing car companies bolted a battery and engine to their existing models, turning their cars into some weird frankenstein of 20+ year old car electronics, electric drives, and entertainment systems because they didn't have what it takes to design a car from scratch.
They also tried to min/max and moved a lot of production to China; short-term that was a benefit, especially VAG was the biggest car manufacturer / seller over there, until they caught up and overtook them in very short order.
> Tesla ... are (from what I gathered) still building sub-standard cars.
I'm not here to defend Musk, but Tesla makes some excellent quality cars: Model S, Model X, and Model 3 are all very good EVs. I also expect the Semi (heavy haul truck) to be of excellent quality.
I don't believe at all that China will always be cheaper. And in many cases I wonder if that is even true right now. Labor costs aren't what is keeping US manufacturing cost high, it is capitalist's demands for high and ever increasing profit margins and managerial bloat. Labor is only a small part of the cost of a vehicle. Workers wouldn't care if company profit margins were smaller or if the vehicles they help manufacturer are sold for less than the maximum possible, but the c-suites and investors do.
Still: if the number is that small a fraction of the overall cost, it barely matters which country it's made in? That's basically the cost of selecting a non-standard paint colour option, by the time you look at final price?
Meanwhile I'm looking at 20 year old Suzuki light trucks with a 25% import tariff because American autos STILL absolutely refuse to make non- Monster Trucks
Mitsubishi? I disagree. There were founded two years after the Meiji Restoration (~1870) to build cargo ships and (later) mine coal. However, during World War II, they were a huge part of the Japanese war machine.
Such a weird take, it sounds as if you have never read or listened to anything that the Chinese leadership have had to tell the world. Or for that matter, Confucius. Yet there is certainty of a paranoid mindset, with some 'yellow peril' going on. Hearst did well with that one!
Just read their five year plans. Not the 'yellow peril' fearmongering, just go to source and make your own mind up. The Chinaman is not out to get you. In fact, until recently, he looked up to you and had the open hand of friendship. He made you many beautiful things and you didn't say thank you, you wittered on about 'stolen IP' (from your stolen land, and it wasn't even your IP, not personally).
China is in no urgency to supply their fine electric cars to the 5% that consider themselves to be American. Why would you? The most litigious place going, with the cheap gas, sinophobia, tariffs and special dealership rules. There is no 'rug pull' either, you are on the 'rug pull' now, with US/EU vehicles costing a fortune. Chinese cars offer savvy consumers a way off, to the sensible land of great value cars.
What you are failing to understand is that, internally, China is hyper competitive, with no rent-seeking class and no settled in mono-duo-trio-polies to stifle all innovation, as per the West. What emerges from the brutal competition of the free market in China (free from rent seeking monopolists) is super-good when it makes it to the wider world.
Huawei kit was just too good, plus the backdoors for five eyes weren't in it, so it had to go. Do you honestly think they had 'communist' backdoors to key infrastructure they were selling into the West, to be scrutinised by armies of security engineers? They are not stupid.
As for the costs being higher in the West, that is just rent seeking, not workers getting paid more, just having more rent/mortgage to pay due to the class of rent seekers the West upholds as 'smart' when they are just parasites, in a financialised economy that is broken.
> Do you honestly think they had 'communist' backdoors to key infrastructure they were selling into the West, to be scrutinised by armies of security engineers? They are not stupid.
The UK used to have a special BT+Huawei+MI6 joint office where the kit was subject to inspection. I never heard of anything confirmed coming out of there, and the thing seems to have vanished from the internet. So I suspect the order to phase out Huawei was similarly politically motivated.
It looks like after Tsinghua Uni, he moved to the United States and attended Georgia Tech to get a Master's and PhD. Further, he has worked his entire professional career in the United States and has never worked for a Chinese company.
The US is concerned about Chinese EVs taking over the market. For good reason they’re not happy bad and they’re extremely cheap. I’m no economist nor moralist so I can’t say if banning Chinese evs are the right move or not but I can understand the US wanting to try to create its own market before getting destroyed by the competitor. I don’t think it’s fair to say that speaks to the quality of the US alternatives. There’s plenty of smart people trying to put this together to create affordable domestic electric cars. Personally I applaud that and am happy that competition is getting legacy auto manufacturers to finally make some interesting cars.
Ultimately China and US (and anyone else in the world for that matter) are doing the same thing - helping their domestic industry compete domestically and internationally, because they want prosperity for their country. They do it via different means - China via massive subsidies and US via bans and tariffs, but the end is the same.
If someone tries to tell you that these are somehow morally different, and one of them is the good guy and the other is the bad guy, they are pushing propaganda, knowingly or unknowingly.
There is a national security and sovereignty issue that the European countries (and others) not facing - its similar to dependence on American clouds etc.
A lot of these vehicles rely on OTA updates or are controlled through apps. This essentially means the manufacturer controls them. Imagine the consequences if half the vehicles in your country stopped working, or became unsafe? Do you really want to hand this power to a foreign country?
This type of concern could be ameliorated through the proper application of consumer protection laws concerning privacy and the right to modify and repair the things we own. The US doesn't want China to be able to spy on drivers because the US wants to be able to spy on drivers, which is why the proposed "solution" to your concerns is to simply ban Chinese cars. It's not about privacy or protecting consumers, it's about deciding which wolf gets to eat the sheep.
That is a different issue. There are many European countries where people have a high level of trust in their government so it would less of a concern assuming they are right. I think they are mistaken, even if their current government is trustworthy, as you should plan for bad future governments actions too.
> This essentially means the manufacturer controls them
The thing is, this problem exists regardless of who the manufacturer is, and using nationalism to make it about China disguises the real problem. Tiktok didn't magically become safe or unsafe when it was divested.
When the manufacturer in turn is under the control of the foreign government it adds another problem. It is similar to how using AWS means your data is not safe from the US government.
No, but at the same time, the established car manufacturers are very protective of their own stuff so they are disincentivised from e.g. building a car that works offline. John Deere is infamous for this, locking down their machines to the point that they would become scrap if the company ever went under (for example).
But it's all capitalist forces, because while in theory new companies could start that make basic / offline / affordable / maintainable / reliable cars (and tractors, and everything else), there is simply not enough demand making them non-starters.
It's like people (on here) asking for open phone platforms or phones with smaller screens; they're a minority. Most people do not care.
Yes, a foreign company in control does all that and adds a sovereignty/national security issue.
> It's like people (on here) asking for open phone platforms or phones with smaller screens; they're a minority. Most people do not care.
That is partly because most people do not understand the benefits of open phone platforms. This is a lot easier to understand and similar issues have gained traction: e.g. sovereign cloud is much discussed now.
China is definitely a manufacturing powerhouse. But if you think it’s morally superior to the USA I strongly recommend doing some reading. China is an authoritarian nation with extreme censorship as can be seen with the GFW. Criticism of the government is not taken well, LGBTQ content is forbidden, poor treatment of unsupported religions, poor acts of espionage, they have mongered plenty of wars and territory disputes themselves, and have been extremely poor stuwards of their corner of the internet onto the rest of the world.
China has no legs to stand on in a mortality debate. I’m not exactly of fan of things in the US recently either for the record
Edit: forgot to mention Taiwan as well as the Hong Kong protests. Recently individuals and an Artist were arrested in China for trying to remember those passed.
Above all I believe in a democratic system where the people’s voices can be heard and we can agree on things together with proper representation. The US definitely dosent always get it right and there’s tons of evidence of this, however I do encourage our effort and hope that one day we can achieve the full foundations of the promises of the US.
I don't want to come across as the China pisser because most big countries do scumbag things of have done them (cough colonialism). But some more of China's vices that are out of sight:
- Keep the war going in Myanmar with terrible results for the population of one of the biggest and most populous countries in the world. You just don't hear about it because no journalist goes there.
- Keeping North Korea in the saddle whereas they could have gently pushed for improvements.
- Keeping the war in Ukraine going. If Chinese leadership has any moral ambition, they could stop the war quickly. But they don't. Their own agenda comes first, as is the case with any superpower.
But yes man I would buy a BYD immediatey and it pisses me off to no end that hey are 5x more expensive in Europe than in China. I guess the whole morality of free trade was only 'good' as long as it benefited us.
Even if objectively one could agree that currently the products from china are better than the US ones, all the “China so good now” stuff is starting to sound like straight up in your face propaganda.
Or just objective reality? I've been shopping EVs lately and both Tesla and BYD have compelling offerings.
One things for sure: somehow Japanese cars aren't in the mix at all (the experience of trying to even see the bz4x at a Toyota dealer felt like the dealer was unhappy I was even there to see it).
I cannot speak for the the complete BYD cars, but I can say their battery tech is outstanding. As well, they are rolling out the world's first 1MW superchargers, than can charge an EV in less than 10 mins. (I saw a YouTube demo. It is pretty wild.)
Yeah that's mostly what's having me hold off at the moment - next year the flash charging cells will be debut'ing in Australia. I honestly don't know if I even need the capability, but I'm anticipating some further price drops.
You may want to give serious consideration to supply chain dynamics. If the commerce and political streams cross, the bargain EV could bring unexpected surprises.
I think Slate can get it shipped, that won’t be the issue.
The issue is that Slate has completely underestimated customer preference for four door vehicles.
Two door vehicle variants have absolutely died off in the market and I’d say with good reason.
Find a two door Jeep Wrangler. You’ll find 20-30 four door jeeps before you find a two door.
Can you even imagine in 2026 the idea of an Accord Coupe, a Camry Solara, Volkswagen Eos/Cabriolet, Ford Explorer/Bronco 2-door, Civic Coupe, Ford ZX2, Chevy Cavalier 2-door, the list just goes on and on.
Back in the day chopping off two doors was a semi-legitimate way to get a barebones base model or I guess look cooler or something. Honestly, I don’t understand how the practicality trade-off ever made sense.
Maybe in the days before heavily automated assembly lines, two door vehicles were legitimately cheaper to make?
> Two door vehicle variants have absolutely died off in the market and I’d say with good reason.
People looking for a four door will walk away from a two door, and people looking for a two door will grudgingly accept it? Because either you get a small four door truck, or you pay for a f-150 cause you can still get that with two doors... but not if you want any of the neat features... no electric single cable f-150, no single cab f-150 with the generator output. (at least when I last looked)
But if part of the pitch for the Slate is it shouldn't be very long, you can't put four doors and have any bed left. Unless you go cabover, but I don't know how many people would consider a cabover these days... VW and Toyota vans were cabover through the 80s, but I don't know how you pass safety tests when the drivers knees are the crumple zone.
I think the truth of the matter is that the middle class no longer buys second cars or cars meant to perform one specific utility. Whatever car you buy has to fit all your needs.
The other thing is that a four door truck has both interior and exterior cargo space. If you have a two door truck you don’t have a place to put significant cargo in a place with locking doors. If you have a four door Ford Maverick you can lift the rear seats and stick a lot of luggage back there in the locked area rather than in the bed.
Essentially, you buy a Maverick and you get all the benefits of two types of vehicles.
I can buy a Slate with 2 doors and the price is under $30k which is awesome. But if I buy an F-150 for $40-45k it has 6 seats (front bench option) and it can be my primary family vehicle that replaces a minivan. It can also tow a trailer with significant weight or hold 1,000 pounds of gravel in the bed since it’s a body on frame half ton truck.
The reason the Ford Maverick doesn’t offer a two door is exactly the same: the primary buyer is using it for all the things you’d use a 4 door SUV or sedan for.
I don’t think the buyer of the Slate exists in significant quantities. Even work trucks seem to be purchased in 4 door variants often so you can fit a crew of workers inside. That’s what they’re called a “crew cab.”
In most places if I need a long bed I can just get a longer vehicle. I have a family member with an F-250 that has the extended cab and the 8 foot bed. Yeah, it’s a huge truck. But they don’t live in New York City or Chicago, and the length of their vehicle is never a problem. But what is a problem is if they can’t fit drywall in the bed, they can’t lock up their gear in the back seat, and they can’t carry four people in the vehicle.
If the market for the Slate existed there would be 2-door variants of the Chevy Colorado, Ford Ranger, and Ford Maverick already on the market.
> I don’t understand how the practicality trade-off ever made sense.
I did over 100k kilometers in two/three door vehicles. Back seat never had any passengers in them. Meanwhile it was easier to get into my car, visibility was better and the car overall looked better. Less things to break. Less weight. In my specific vehicle the three door variant had pillarless windows.
I can understand your anecdote and even agree with it conceptually, but I don’t think the market agrees with you.
For ease of getting into the car, consumers clearly prefer the crossover SUV as the king of in/out ease.
For having less things to break and having a lighter car, I’m not sure those things are very common buyer sentiments as they relate to a four doors. I’ve never had anything related to my door break. The weight of my vehicle has never impacted me. I don’t even know how much my vehicle weighs.
As far as visibility, that’s just something where older cars always win out because of differences in crash and rollover safety standards.
I’m talking about a vehicle that you can buy in either two or four door version. In that direct comparison the two door wins in ease to get in to, visibility, weight and less complexity. If you don’t use the rear seat the two door is a no-brainer.
Vehicle weight in many countries is important for tax, registration, insurance, fuel economy.
demohgraphics with less and less chidlren being born and more and more single occupant households would beg to disagree with you, there surely is pretty big market for 3 doors cars
obviously 5 doors cars will suit bigger number of users, but many people just don't care
I mean my mother has some small Yaris which has 5 doors, but the back seat (height/head space) is so small I can't sit there anyway, so what's the point...
Btw. I am pretty sure cabriolets are still being produced, so are coupes, and obviously these are always 2 doors cars, those are not very good examples supporting your statement.
Also the new Suzuki Jimny was at release sold out for months/years in preorders.
All of this is valid reasoning, and honestly, so many 2-door vehicles have left the market that it almost seems like there must be some level of unfulfilled demand. Just like how full size sedans have been discontinued all over the place but the Camry still sells big numbers: all the buyers have had to move by necessity to Honda Accord and Toyota Camry.
However, if you are bringing up about the Jimny I assume you are not thinking in the context of the US or European market (the Jimny was largely pulled from Europe since it couldn’t meet emissions standards, and Suzuki does not sell cars in the US/Canadian market).
In the US there basically aren’t any 2 door vehicles outside of specialty or performance cars. Similar to the station wagon situation, they’re almost all imported from Europe and from brands like BMW and Audi.
There’s a long list of discontinued vehicles in the rear view mirror.
The only new 2-door vehicle released that I can think of is the Ford Bronco and the new Honda Prelude that is just coming out, which Honda has already made a statement saying it’s a low volume vehicle (it’s a very unappealing vehicle, basically a very expensive non-performance coupe).
Brands that no longer sell any convertible in the US that once did:
Some of those makes you list only sold convertibles that were extremely niche, short lived, and/or incredibly ancient history. I wouldn’t use them as practical examples.
We'll know the price in two more weeks. I'm yolo'ing it and I can't wait for my little orange-wrapped pickup.
So far their manufacturing and progress videos are quite impressive. The fact there's 25-50+ basically production-ready prototypes if not more now driving around their factory and doing testing compared to most of the other vaporware companies out there has me holding out strong.
(How many Elios are out there doing testing? How many TELOs? Oof.)
The list of 14 rules for running a skunkworks program and how they apply here is great and well worth reading the article, regardless of how you feel about the likelihood of Ford ever successfully executing on a $30k ev truck
I think Ford is technically capable of building a $30k EV truck and have been for some time. The F-150 Lightning was surprisingly close and only the overshot the mark in the direction most of the rest of the F-150 line has leaned in the same years.
I think Ford still hasn't solved its Dealer Problem that it currently would not have dealers willing to sell a $30k EV truck in the US.
Where did you see a F-150 Lightning new for less than $40k anywhere?
I didn't, I said that $40k is closer to $30k than many would give it credit and that I believe that at least $10k-$20k more expensive than necessary for "luxury trim reasons" seems to be the current F-150 brand.
What stops Ford or General Motors from creating a "startup" that is not bound by its existing agreements with its dealership network to sell a new vehicle direct to consumers "in select states" where the law allows this? I mean any state where the Tesla is sold should allow this, right?
"Activist" Shareholders, primarily. Ford several years ago floated the idea of building its EV division as an almost entirely separate direct-to-consumer sub-company (specifically designed to directly compete with Tesla) and it got shutdown hard by shareholders.
Many of the biggest shareholders of both GM and Ford are their respective dealers. Shamefully this conflict of interest and reversal of some key controls is deeply entrenched in the US all the way back to the original lawsuit Dodge Brothers v Ford, which is also the dark origin of phrases like "fiduciary duty to shareholders", where then dealer network and automotive supply chain moguls the Dodge Brothers sued Ford for wanting to take record profits and reinvest them in R&D and asked that Ford give a record dividend instead (as its "fiduciary duty to shareholders"). They used that dividend to help finance their rival Dodge car manufacturer. In hindsight it is such a bizarre sequence of conflicts of interest that we're still dealing with the consequences of today (in how it created such quarterly earnings-focused myopia in US corporations), including specifically in the various ways that GM and Ford can't easily create a "startup" with no dealer network to stay competitive in EVs, why both are generally starved of R&D money compared to "startup" competitors, and also it all relates to why they are "too big to fail" given how much of the US economy is built on top of conflicts of interest and overlaps between them, their dealers, their supply chain, and their shareholders.
I live in Germany and am sure as hell that I will never be driving a $30k electric pickup here. They'll make sure nothing like this ever becomes legal to import or drive on German roads until after there's a German car brand on it, and it costs 10x that while being identical, just to subsidize lots of local jobs that are low-wage, high-tax, and taking away manpower from other sectors/fields where it's more needed.
That sounds similar to the lamentations of American buyers who want Japanese kei trucks.
It’s protectionism all the way down I guess.
Though I see tons of US pickup trucks in the Netherlands, and have seen even lifted ones in Germany too for that matter.
In Germany it's mostly US service members and their families who drive US pickup trucks. They can ship personal vehicles to Germany without having to make them fully compliant with German regulations, and generally seem to like them
Away from US bases, pickup trucks are very rare in Germany. The closest thing you will see are 3-ton flatbed trucks as work vehicles, or something like a VW Transporter. But generally tradespeople prefer vans, and commuters prefer hatchbacks or SUVs (which are bad enough)
Despite failing to meet EU safety rules, they can be imported under Individual Vehicle Approval - """ The use of IVA for so-called ‘off-road’ vehicles (N1G) has more than doubled since 2019, rising from 2,900 new registrations in that year to 6,800 in 2022, with Dodge Ram pick-up trucks accounting for approx 60% of IVAs in this category over these four years, 2019 to 2022 """
https://etsc.eu/concerns-over-loopholes-allowing-american-pi...
Anyway, my point was that you can buy American trucks in Europe right now, so op may be able to get this $30k Ford.
For what it's worth, I have a big soft spot for trucks with long beds and normal-height hoods! Something like a Chevy S10 or 90's Tacoma is really useful! I just don't like biking with my kids by drivers who can't seem them.
I’ve wanted a kei truck for a while. Then when you park it next to suburban mom’s expedition/escalade/luxury bus it’s so tiny it looks unsafe. Unfortunately I live in a city where small town trips are difficult without getting on a 70+ mph freeway and competing with those vehicles
> That sounds similar to the lamentations of American buyers
Is there a good international metric for how much a given country’s car buyers pay extra due to tariffs, duties, protectionist regulation, et cetera?
Lamenting the difficulty of registering kei trucks is kind of rich coming from the patron saint of "the roads are horribly dangerous and we need to do everything to safen them up and drivers can bear whatever that costs"
Protectionism when I don't like it, public safety when I do I guess.
In any case, they're pretty easy to register if you don't lick the boot. Whatever state you're in typically isn't gonna come after you for tax evasion for an object they aren't in the business of taxing if you catch my drift.
> if you catch my drift
Not OP but I don't. What do you mean? How do you make the kei truck an object they aren't in the business of taxing when they are, in fact, in that very business? Or maybe I have some deeper confusion about the issue here.
> What do you mean?
I think they mean it’s easier than many of us suspect to register an imported car as something close enough and get away with it. The most challenging bit would probably be maintenance.
I meant just register it in one of the slightly less than half of states that let you do that.
Even if some Karen narcs on you to the tax man unless it's an especially slow day the tax man will say something along the lines of "It's a what? We don't register those"
The registration/tax people aren't in the business of giving a shit about the nuances of the vehicle code. They're in the business of collecting money. It's not like you're dodging meaningful fees on an entire truck fleet. You're dodging what would be a zero to them since they'd never let you register it. What are they gonna do send you one of those "we believe you owe us X, pay up or we'll use the full force of the state to fucking stomp you and ruin your life" letters with X= $0. I'm sure they'll get right on that.
If you title and register your kei car in washington (where you can register it, usually) and keep it and drive it in California (where you can't register it), there's a chance some officer who hates kei cars is going to find it and raise a stink. And then you've got to pay fines, and maybe your car gets towed and you have to flatbed it out of state. Plus fines, I'm sure.
If it's cheap enough or fun enough, it might be worth the risk; but I don't know that I would risk it.
I know someone who got pulled over, and then a ticket for driving in California with washington plates and changing 3 lanes at once. "Anybody who drives like that must live here"
Not sure what a kei car would be doing on a freeway 3 lanes over though.
I live outside of Austin TX and have seen one regularly parked outside a house in my neighborhood for 5 years now. Has a license plate. If I had to bet, I’d say it’s registered (taxes paid, has required insurance) because police around here have camera systems in their cars that scan plates looking for unregistered vehicles (found out the hard way one time when I forgot to renew).
My understanding is they generally need to be 25+ years old, but this may vary (or I am out of date?) https://www.kei-trucks.com/blogs/kei-trucks/state-restrictio...
I think OP’s point is nobody is going to verify if it’s 10 or 25 years old.
That depends a lot on the state. I hear in Utah it's very easy to register a kei truck/van as street-legal. Here in Nevada it's quite the opposite, at least according to those I've talked to who've attempted it.
But... I'm allowed to walk, bike, or ride a motorcycle on American streets...
It is crazy when I hear people say they want to walk, bike, or ride a motorcycle on American roads. American SUVs and trucks are enormous in both height and weight. Walking, biking, or riding a motorcycle does not offer the necessary crash protection.
People already ride motorcycles so why not let them drive in much safer kei trucks?
> The kei truck does not offer the necessary crash protection
Eh, if you aren’t doing a lot of highway driving, I think this could be fine? Especially in a city where collisions should be low speed.
Put another way—and this is a genuine question—is the person who wants a Kei truck better off spending tens of thousands of dollars more for safety rather than investing that in their health, happiness or education?
You raise some interesting points. A different way to look at safety: Why do car companies bother at all? Why isn't it a race to the bottom for car crash safety? "Oh, it's expensive to have cars with crash safety. Let's reduce our materials cost."
> Why do car companies bother at all? Why isn't it a race to the bottom for car crash safety?
More safety, always, is usually a feel-good measure. If people aren’t trading in their old cars for the newer, safer ones, because the latter are too expensive, it’s not actually helping people. Same if the cheapest car someone can get for their commute is bankrupting them.
I did more research on this matter and found a this PDF: https://dor.georgia.gov/document/document/policy-bulletin-mv...
I found other sources on Google saying you can cheat this rule by finding a state that does not strictly enforce FMVSS rules for titling and registration. Then, you can (illegally) drive the kei truck in another state. To be clear: This is illegal, but you need to be caught. Also, it looks like there are auto body shops that will modify a kei truck/car to make it street legal. I have a seen a bunch of YouTubers driving kei trucks/cars with California license plates. Thus, I assume the work was done to make them street legal.Thus, we can conclude that FMVSS prevents a race-to-the-bottom in vehicular safety for cars in the US. Honestly, I expect all highly developed nations to have similar rules. Why? For the safety of children, more than anything. Even if a parent wants to drive an unsafe car, most societies will prioritise the safety of child passengers over the "liberty" of the parent/owner/driver.
Sorry, but this is a crock.
1. Seat belts - pretty sound investment. 2. Air Bags - excellent investment. 3. Crumple zones - outstanding investment. 4. ABS - outstanding investment. 5. Backup cameras - not worth the money if you don't value the lives of small kids. 6. Lane sensors - pretty handy, especially as your reflexes start to slow with age.
Why aren't performance improvements scrutinized the same way? How often are huge trucks given a pass despite never having anything in their truckbeds?
(Not) sorry (in the slightest), but this is a crook.
Stop getting your technical info from ideologues in the reddit comments. Each of those investments is an order of magnitude less valuable than the first.
Wear your seatbelt. That's 90% of the battle.
Crumple zones in particular punch below their weight class and are grossly misunderstood on the internet. Their primary purpose is to let the front of the car hit something before the cabin starts decelerating to buy time for airbag deployment. Force absorption is a secondary nice to have. They only make a meaningful difference to the forces in the cabin at a narrow range of speed.
Side curtain airbags punch above their weight class though because there's not much else to help you in that direction of movement.
ABS is pretty meh. It only really beats the operator by enough to matter in specific situations.
If your reflexes are so bad that the lane keeping is what's keeping you in the lane there's other problems.
I'm not gonna pick apart every one of these improvements and they do add value. But they do not add the amount of value you are acting like they do.
>Why aren't performance improvements scrutinized the same way? How often are huge trucks given a pass
Because you're simping vehicular safety theater. So where the dollars and cents actually matter, commercial trucks bought by commercial interests who can push back, what gets adopted is actually based on what's real vs emotion driven screeching. Like for example semi trailers got ABS real early. It's extra valuable in applications where weight changes a lot.
>despite never having anything in their truckbeds?
Because the 2nd row of your car gets so much ass?
They did before consumer safety regulations went into affect
I know it's anecdata, but the number of high-speed crashes in my college-town are amazing. You have a 45mph zone, people routinely speed 5-10 over that and boom, dramatic crashes.
> American SUVs and trucks are enormous in both height and weight.
That has nothing to do with actual consumer preference and everything to do with regulatory capture.
For driving around town to do stuff, I'd say they are fine and would love to have one. I doubt they would be able to safely drive on our freeways here though.
vw offers a electro pickup for 36k excluding tax (43k EUR with tax, ). https://www.volkswagen-nutzfahrzeuge.de/de/modelle/transport...
Its less than 10x
I mean, you can see how a kastenwagen nutzfahrzeug is a very different vehicle from a consumer mid-size pickup, right?
Sure, technically some would call the vehicle you linked a pickup, and technically German law still identifies the consumer pickup truck as a nutzfahrzeug instead of a PKW, but it doesn’t feel like you’re making a best effort to meet GP in the middle.
The distinction gets at something interesting though, and it's a weird intermingling of culture and politics. I think a truck as owned by a consumer, and as an American would understand the word, is, at least in part, a lifestyle statement derived from maybe overprovisioning on the horsepower. Such a lifestyle statement in Germany seems to be perfectly socially acceptable when it ties in with luxury and doing your "civic duty" by buying German, but it clearly ruffles feathers and meets with political headwind when it ties in with the culture and financial constraint of the "commoner".
> lifestyle statement derived from maybe overprovisioning on the horsepower
For what it’s worth, that horsepower is billed for towing.
most truck owners don't tow; studies show it's < 2 times a year.
the horsepower is for phallic compensation reasons
In my experience the resistance seems to come from the sense of “waste” that comes from buying a specialized vehicle. Anecdotally the folks I talk to (all blue-collar “commoners”) are overly focused on buying the eierlegende Wollmilchsau[0] vehicle. They view specialized vehicles, especially luxury-priced specialized vehicles, as an unnecessary waste.
Does this relate with your experience? It sounds like your perspective is broader than mine and more informed.
Edit: oof two downvotes for trying to have a conversation and expand my understanding of a culture. Vielen dank.
0: definition for the English speakers: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eierlegende_Wollmilchsau
I was referring to something slightly different namely that price, horsepower, and socioeconomic status are all monotonically increasing functions of each other when you look at any given lineup of cars -- say you're comparing the different company cars owned by a given company, the different cars in the lineup of a given manufacturer, or the cars parked outside the venue when there's a wedding and the extended family has been invited. The cars themselves are all "trivial" variations of each other. I've noticed this more strongly in Germany than in other countries I've lived in (which is a few). You don't get the kind of variety of styles and designs you would get in the U.S. and many cars that are commonplace in the U.S. like a Ford Mustang or a Dodge RAM, when you encounter it in Germany, would instantly read as "someone desparate to get noticed".
But the variation in horsepower is still there. It's not like cars with 300 HP are forbidden in Germany. It's just that they need to fit in the continuum. The 300HP BMW is the CEO's car, and its existence is justified by the fact that the other top managers drive the 200HP version which is otherwise almost the exact same car, which are in turn justified by the fact that the middle managers drive the 120HP version, and if you're a new-hire individual contributor then anything more than 90HP would cause a scandal if word got out. (I'm painting a mental picture here; obviously not making a universal claim).
I think that culture is part of the reason why a $30k electric pickup truck would ruffle feathers so much, and it's a particularly stupid reason, but I think it's real.
The "Kastenwagen" example from above escapes that calculus by clearly being something that stands completely outside of any established continuum of this kind. The rare Ford Mustang or imported Dodge RAM that you sometimes see in Germany is similarly socially/politically acceptable on the grounds that it would either be expensive as hell, or a car buff's hobby. Both of those cases mean the owner has duly paid for their ticket to the high-horsepower social club (either financially, or by having a respectable hobby and putting in the work), whereas a $30k electric pickup that you can just buy would come across as "cheating the system".
Cars in the US cost pretty much the same before taxes as in Europe. If Ford can build this truck in the US for this cost there seems little reason it couldn’t build it in the EU for a similar cost. Whether it will offer this body style or not is of course another question (Ford have stopped selling all regular cars in US, only offering crossovers, SUVs and trucks.) This is rather different to the perceived threat of cheap imports from China.
I've worked on skunkworks projects. It's all fine and dandy until it becomes a product and the main company takes over.
Who says you need Ford to do it? Aging Wheels tried a prototype of a small electric pickup a year ago from a team making one without the support of a huge car company. I have no dog in this fight, other than wanting more of transport to go electric but if Americans refuse to buy vans which probably make more sense for transporting goods this might be a good option.
Video: https://youtu.be/1OgN_qctcGs
You don't need Ford per se, but you do need an experienced manufacturer to take a concept car to mass production, and you need mass production to make something affordable.
I'm watching Slate [0] with interest; they aren't following a path according to your assumptions.
[0] https://www.slate.auto/en
Would be interesting to follow, but as of now they look to be in a startup phase still. Car companies take years to establish themselves. This one seems close though, they say they will do their first deliveries later this year.
It's almost exactly what I want out of a truck… except I'm no longer seeing non-RWD options (could've sworn there used to be a 4WD option; did I hallucinate that or are they just not showing it anymore?).
They have financial capital via Bezos, I thought?
Not denigrating them whatsoever, I would like to have one.
Yes; but they don't (AFAIK) have a track record or pre-existing facilities for car design or manufacturing, per the comment I was replying to.
> Americans refuse to buy vans
I don't know that that's true. Van popularity comes and goes. So does van manufacturing. When van sales are high, we get more makes, when sales slump, some of the exit. People who buy vans don't like to buy new ones unless the old one is totalled or falls apart...
I don't think you can buy a Ford or Chevy minivan right now, but Honda, Toyota and Chrysler usually have one. VW has one now, too. I just missed the window to a get Ford Transit Connect when my 2017 Pacific died, so I ended up with an 81 VW Vanagon... But I also have a pickup with a 6 foot bed. Sometimes you want your load enclosed; sometimes outside is better.
#15 Don't tell anyone about it.
Kelly's 15th rule was actually "Starve before doing business with the damned Navy. They don't know what the hell they want and will drive you up a wall before they break either your heart or a more exposed part of your anatomy."
Structural battery pack with seats bolted to it. 48 volt, less wiring, castings front and rear. Focus on less parts, ease of manufacturing and aerodynamics.
Makes sense with so many ex-Tesla people there.
Looks like ford will only be ~5 years behind if they can pull it off
The original Skunkworks optimizes for a low production volume of vehicles which operate in a very extreme band of performance. And yes these projects are able to deliver within budget, but they are still very expensive machines. This is totally opposite to what is applicable to Ford, where really the innovation needs to be in the factory.
The other key lesson from the Skunkworks book, which is applicable, is that to the greatest degree possible, one should not reinvent the wheel. Reuse parts from other high production vehicles, which have proven their reliability. Focus the innovation tactically.
Can't wait for Ford's $40,000 electric pickup.
Pepperidge Farm remembers the $19,995 MSRP Ford Maverick with its standard hybrid drivetrain. Missed my chance to buy one, watched the price bloat out and nope.
To be fair to Ford, the Maverick launched in 2022 right before a period of accelerated inflation, especially in the car industry.
You’d be hard pressed to find any new vehicle that hasn’t seen a significant price increase since that time.
It’s still a truck you can get for $26k-28k and is only about $3k more than the cheapest cars sold in America.
I think your sentiment is an understandable bit of cynicism around EVs, and one that US consumers have felt for a while. It seems like the whole concept of the EV is dead. Nobody wants it, carmakers are pulling back.
Meanwhile, EVs are exploding in popularity and value basically all the other markets outside of the United States.
In my opinion, the idea that a good and affordable EV product will not become mainstream is sticking around because American car buyers have been starved of new EV models due to a market of weak demand and revoked incentives. This is going to change soon, and this change will hit the consumer market relatively suddenly. A lot of the cost challenges with EVs have evaporated.
In other words, yeah, Ford is easily going to make a $30,000 EV pickup. I totally believe it.
Remember when Toyota said they’re done bothering with EVs? Then all of a sudden the 2026 bz refresh is a legit EV, and now the new Lexus ES is launching with the EV model being the highest performance and cheapest model.
The Rivian R2 is yet another huge deal about to launch on the premium side of the market. I’d have a hard time figuring out why what I would choose something like a gasoline BMW X3 over the R2 - they’re pretty much in the same price range.
In other words, the era of EVs costing $10-20k more than an equivalent gasoline car is abruptly ending.
Kelly's 14 points are still a great read and should resonate with a lot of people here.
That said, when they tried this in the past they did it by changing the sticker price to $65k+. So, color me skeptical.
I liked Fords erev plan for a brief moment before China destroyed that with 1 MW charging. There is zero need for gas in a world when you can go from 20-80% in 3 mins.
They designed a $70,000 electric pickup that ended up costing $100,000 not too long ago. You don't see them on the road.
You don't SEE them on the road, because they look like other F-150s.
You see the cybertruck, because you can't help it.
Meanwhile the F-150 lightning outsold the cybertruck.
In the UK EVs have a green rectangle on the number plate. I personally think this is helping adoption as it changes the mindset of people who have been programmed to think that “nobody wants EVs” - it’s hard to argue with the sheer number of them driving around now that you might otherwise miss since a lot of them just look like the ICE equivalents.
They sold >100,000 of them, including one to me. The F-150 Lightnings are coming off lease and are available used now for a reasonable price.
Honestly, most of the F150s I see on the road in the Pacific Northwest are Lightnings. I just glanced up from my laptop and see one now.
From the title, I expected this to be about electric guitars :-(
Meh. I want that IMV Origin from Toyota
https://www.core77.com/posts/139132/Toyotas-Brilliant-Plan-t...
Simple. You strip out all the bullshit and don’t put a 100 kWh battery into it. There, I’ll await my check.
Anyone have semi-reliable data on the volume price for lithium ion cells in mid-2026? (or packs if that data is easier to come by).
The batteries are less and less of an issue now - that battery would now be less than $10,000.
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China, being a superpower, has a vested interest in bringing other superpowers down a peg as well as increasing other countries' dependence on China.
Their state has a serious incentive to ship out cheap cars to destroy the automotive industry in the US and the EU for example. When that happens they can double the price on all their vehicles and you can't restart your car factories to compete with them again until years down the line.
With Huawei its about telecom equipment which is essential in today's age, with TikTok it's about controlling the narrative, also essential.
Yes, US and EU manufacturers need to innovate and be less greedy but the cost to make things will always be higher than in China so even though protectionism sounds bad, you'll always have some of that around to even the playing field.
Something I've been trying to articulate for a while is that the EV revolution is a smaller version of the phone and internet revolutions: it requires a bunch of infrastructure buildout, but it's also the result of individual consumer choices. And it's highly synergistic. But along with that, it will create "losers", existing companies whose business can't adapt to the new ways. Sears had a hundred-year start on Amazon as a mail-order business and couldn't adapt, for example.
In the middle of this was Jack Welch's "destroy your business dot com", which is still highly controversial. But he did at least recognize that running a big ossified business in a time of change was going to need a massive kick to get everyone out of their complacency (and if not, out of their jobs!). Cannibalize your own legacy business, or some competitor will.
I think this is a serious problem in existing car companies. They attach too much prestige and career to being "petrolheads", or simply working in the engine division; after all, that's the most expensive to develop and least easy to substitute part of the car. The EV transition threatens to sweep that all away. Probably most of the EU manufacturers won't really get on board until those people retire.
There's probably a whole other essay that could be written about labour relations and the decline of mass car manufacture in the UK while we retain a lot of high-end boutique expertise (Formula 1 etc).
Anyway, I have an EV on order from FCA Poland, so we'll see how that turns out.
> I think this is a serious problem in existing car companies. They attach too much prestige and career to being "petrolheads", or simply working in the engine division; after all, that's the most expensive to develop and least easy to substitute part of the car. The EV transition threatens to sweep that all away. Probably most of the EU manufacturers won't really get on board until those people retire.
You speak as-if they didn't create EVs. It's just that most of the European EV platforms were resounding failures, be it CLAR, CLAR II (BMW), MEA1 & MEA2, (Mercedes), J1 (Porsche), e-tron (Audi), MEB (VW), of these MEB is pretty much the only one that turned around to generate some kind of volume, but that took many years. Sales numbers for all of these are way below predictions, we're not talking about a 50% miss here. I don't know how much a car architecture costs to develop, but I'd wager it is not a cheap endeavor. Between that and the comparatively large number of battery-related EV recalls these projects probably represent double-digit billions of losses for the European car industry. This seems realistic given the widely publicized $20bn Ford EV write-down. So given these enormous sunk costs and yet they're still somewhat investing in EVs doesn't read to me like they're not trying to compete on EVs. If that were the case, they'd just cut their losses, or done so years ago.
That's where all those European battery factories that were announced a couple years ago went: Consumers do not buy EVs anywhere near the expected volume and therefore there is no demand to finance such factories. The handful of batteries needed for the low volumes of EV production are easily sourced from existing factories and the rest is imported from China.
Stellantis/PSA doesn't appear in this story because they never went beyond compliance car EVs (i.e. their "let's stuff a 50 kWh gross battery and the cheapest electric drive we can buy from a supplier into an ICE chassis" approach).
> Consumers do not buy EVs anywhere near the expected volume
OK so the billion Euro question is: why not? Tesla seem to be making adequate sales in Europe. China has passed 50% EVs as new sales. Norway (in Europe, but not the EU) is approaching 100%.
Is it simply price? Of the car, and/or electricity?
The EU was originally proposing to phase out ICE in 2035, which is now less than 10 years away!
> compliance car EVs (i.e. their "let's stuff a 50 kWh gross battery
I had noticed that all the Stellantis EVs have desperately bad range. I guess that's why they're showing up for cheap leasing offers to meet compliance.
But that's what I mean. It's an intentionally half-assed product. Only the recent Renault 5 and VW ID series cars feel like serious market entrants rather than "will this do?"
BYD and Tesla are popular in the UK, but not EU manufacturers. Why? Product? Price?
I think e-tron have some success. As do Renault (and Nissan) despite Gohsn insistence on not building on it (goshn was a very successful manager and finance engineer, but people should understand he destroyed R&D at Nissan, Renault and Alpine, killing any chance at success they had despite their leg up on electric car)
> They attach too much prestige and career to being "petrolheads", or simply working in the engine division; after all, that's the most expensive to develop and least easy to substitute part of the car. The EV transition threatens to sweep that all away. Probably most of the EU manufacturers won't really get on board until those people retire.
“Those damn pesky artists still painting by hand. We need to wait for them to die out to let the stable diffusion guys take over and then we will be number one!”
I know what I said. Engines are an art.
> “Those damn pesky artists still painting by hand.
Long ago hand painters used cadmium yellow. It may be art, but it's also poisonous. Same for Napoleon and his arsenic wallpaper. In the end, same for CO2-emitting engines.
>I know what I said. Engines are an art.
Some engines maybe. Your average 1.5 TFSI is the equivalent of drawing corporate memphis clipart for a paycheck, no one is pouring their passion into that. Maybe not so bad if it gets replaced by an EV/AI.
> Jack Welch's "destroy your business dot com"
What is this?
Difficult to find references other than my own memory and this paywalled Economist article: https://www.economist.com/special/1999/09/16/dybcom
Huh. It sounds a bit incoherent and manic, but I think that’s actually what it was, not just the description?
Interesting takeaway is everything on there (smart homes, integrated financial media and trading, etc.) eventually happened, not by GE, except the GE Capital stuff, which wound up a disaster. So the signal to look for in AI is folks deploying levered balance sheets directly to consumers. Which I don’t think we’re directly seeing, outside OpenAI.
US companies outsourcing all of their manufacturing to countries with cheaper labor and laxer environmental & labor laws led to this. What did those titans of industry think would happen down the road? "I'll be retired." Corporations have way too much power in the US, and that has considerably weakened it.
Clearly the USA has the same vested interest. The difference is they are aggressively initiating war outside their borders to bully and get what they want.
This is somewhere where sensible tariffs actually do make sense. Set the tariffs to offset any government subsidies or environmental regulatory costs. If the cars are actually better, let people buy them, make domestic manufacturers compete. Just don't allow dumping.
Complete protectionism doesn't work because it makes your own manufacturers non-competitive on the global stage.
> Set the tariffs to offset any government subsidies or environmental regulatory costs.
The problem is this is really hard to objectively measure.
> Complete protectionism doesn't work because it makes your own manufacturers non-competitive on the global stage.
Yes - and this is a problem Detroit has been struggling with since Japan got decent at cars. The recent wave of protectionism is backing them into the dead end.
How come this price hike hasn't happened with solar panels, inverters, telecom equipment, batteries etc. It's been a while that such industries in europe have become obsolete
> How come this hasn't happened with solar panels, inverters, telecom equipment, batteries etc.
It actually began a few months ago regarding solar panels and batteries [1].
[1] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/china-...
Solar panels, inverters and batteries are not critical infrastructure and I'd wager the jobs impacted are considerably lower than the automotive industry.
According to everyone building out renewables, they absolutely are critical infrastructure?
Frankly, what are they if not power delivery/generation - which is always defined as such.
I guess it's a bit like the nuclear deterrent. The threat of them raising prices or refusing to sell to other countries might be enough.
For telecom, at least, governments have legislated against Huawei equipment, Nokia is going strong from a European side
Really this is conspiracy level thinking. It's not like there's no car industry in the EU, it's just that it's grown in the low-COL areas like Slovakia and not in high-COL areas like Germany.
Chinese imports and local manufacture should be able to compete in the "free market". It's just that that term has been heavily debased by idiots misusing it, like everything else.
It has. There's an enormous amounts of solar panel manufacturers in china that had to close down, due to the governments ordered over capacity, to try and take over the world. This has led to enormous waste of resources in china.
Now the government has ordered massive development of electric cars, to push down prices to loss making levels. In a few years, a lot of chinese elctric car manufacturers will close down, just like what happened with solar.
The trick here for the west, is to copy china, and once the internal bubble bursts, launch its own companies in solar and e-cars based on copied chinese technology.
The hunter has truly become the hunted!
How is that different from what the US and (to a lesser degree) the EU tried to do? Both are examples of capitalism.
Actually I know why it's different, I was just doing an online knee jerk response the difference is that western capitalism has a hands-off (but regulated) approach, letting the companies do their own thing. China and their companies are much more involved. I'm sure the US was a lot more directly involved in setting the directions of its industry in decades past, but since then the industry and stock market took over the reins.
Another factor may be that in the west, workers have more rights, unionized, and set their own boundaries. But they were also constrained - what would've happened if someone at Ford 10, 15 years ago said "I want to develop an EV?". In the US, it took a new company (Tesla with a heap of investor money) to make strides in that area. But because Tesla didn't have any actual experience in making cars, they reinvented the wheel and are (from what I gathered) still building sub-standard cars.
If an experienced company like Ford or VAG set aside money and resources to reinvent the car every once in a while they would've been able to keep up. As it stands, all the existing car companies bolted a battery and engine to their existing models, turning their cars into some weird frankenstein of 20+ year old car electronics, electric drives, and entertainment systems because they didn't have what it takes to design a car from scratch.
They also tried to min/max and moved a lot of production to China; short-term that was a benefit, especially VAG was the biggest car manufacturer / seller over there, until they caught up and overtook them in very short order.
Oh yes, the hands off capitalism that involves the CIA forcing multiple regime changes in other countries to beenfit American corporations.
I don't believe at all that China will always be cheaper. And in many cases I wonder if that is even true right now. Labor costs aren't what is keeping US manufacturing cost high, it is capitalist's demands for high and ever increasing profit margins and managerial bloat. Labor is only a small part of the cost of a vehicle. Workers wouldn't care if company profit margins were smaller or if the vehicles they help manufacturer are sold for less than the maximum possible, but the c-suites and investors do.
According to ChatGPT the labor cost per vehicle is more than twice as high in the US versus China. $1,341/vehicle vs $585/vehicle
https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6a292f0205ec819182b54e48ce9702a3
For vehicles in the $20-$100k price range? That feels too trivial to make a difference, is it correct or just a number chatgpt invented?
I think it's based on a few sources + page 6 from here https://www.oliverwyman.com/content/dam/oliver-wyman/v2/publ...
Still: if the number is that small a fraction of the overall cost, it barely matters which country it's made in? That's basically the cost of selecting a non-standard paint colour option, by the time you look at final price?
Meanwhile I'm looking at 20 year old Suzuki light trucks with a 25% import tariff because American autos STILL absolutely refuse to make non- Monster Trucks
the ironic factor is - this is how vw itself started, as did mitsubishi etc
this is called: sensible state industrial policy
Mitsubishi? I disagree. There were founded two years after the Meiji Restoration (~1870) to build cargo ships and (later) mine coal. However, during World War II, they were a huge part of the Japanese war machine.
Such a weird take, it sounds as if you have never read or listened to anything that the Chinese leadership have had to tell the world. Or for that matter, Confucius. Yet there is certainty of a paranoid mindset, with some 'yellow peril' going on. Hearst did well with that one!
Just read their five year plans. Not the 'yellow peril' fearmongering, just go to source and make your own mind up. The Chinaman is not out to get you. In fact, until recently, he looked up to you and had the open hand of friendship. He made you many beautiful things and you didn't say thank you, you wittered on about 'stolen IP' (from your stolen land, and it wasn't even your IP, not personally).
China is in no urgency to supply their fine electric cars to the 5% that consider themselves to be American. Why would you? The most litigious place going, with the cheap gas, sinophobia, tariffs and special dealership rules. There is no 'rug pull' either, you are on the 'rug pull' now, with US/EU vehicles costing a fortune. Chinese cars offer savvy consumers a way off, to the sensible land of great value cars.
What you are failing to understand is that, internally, China is hyper competitive, with no rent-seeking class and no settled in mono-duo-trio-polies to stifle all innovation, as per the West. What emerges from the brutal competition of the free market in China (free from rent seeking monopolists) is super-good when it makes it to the wider world.
Huawei kit was just too good, plus the backdoors for five eyes weren't in it, so it had to go. Do you honestly think they had 'communist' backdoors to key infrastructure they were selling into the West, to be scrutinised by armies of security engineers? They are not stupid.
As for the costs being higher in the West, that is just rent seeking, not workers getting paid more, just having more rent/mortgage to pay due to the class of rent seekers the West upholds as 'smart' when they are just parasites, in a financialised economy that is broken.
> Do you honestly think they had 'communist' backdoors to key infrastructure they were selling into the West, to be scrutinised by armies of security engineers? They are not stupid.
The UK used to have a special BT+Huawei+MI6 joint office where the kit was subject to inspection. I never heard of anything confirmed coming out of there, and the thing seems to have vanished from the internet. So I suspect the order to phase out Huawei was similarly politically motivated.
> internally, China is hyper competitive, with no rent-seeking class
The party elites and their families are all billionaires!
I found his LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jiaqi-liang-6a653b1b/
It looks like after Tsinghua Uni, he moved to the United States and attended Georgia Tech to get a Master's and PhD. Further, he has worked his entire professional career in the United States and has never worked for a Chinese company.
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The US is concerned about Chinese EVs taking over the market. For good reason they’re not happy bad and they’re extremely cheap. I’m no economist nor moralist so I can’t say if banning Chinese evs are the right move or not but I can understand the US wanting to try to create its own market before getting destroyed by the competitor. I don’t think it’s fair to say that speaks to the quality of the US alternatives. There’s plenty of smart people trying to put this together to create affordable domestic electric cars. Personally I applaud that and am happy that competition is getting legacy auto manufacturers to finally make some interesting cars.
Ultimately China and US (and anyone else in the world for that matter) are doing the same thing - helping their domestic industry compete domestically and internationally, because they want prosperity for their country. They do it via different means - China via massive subsidies and US via bans and tariffs, but the end is the same.
If someone tries to tell you that these are somehow morally different, and one of them is the good guy and the other is the bad guy, they are pushing propaganda, knowingly or unknowingly.
There is a national security and sovereignty issue that the European countries (and others) not facing - its similar to dependence on American clouds etc.
A lot of these vehicles rely on OTA updates or are controlled through apps. This essentially means the manufacturer controls them. Imagine the consequences if half the vehicles in your country stopped working, or became unsafe? Do you really want to hand this power to a foreign country?
This type of concern could be ameliorated through the proper application of consumer protection laws concerning privacy and the right to modify and repair the things we own. The US doesn't want China to be able to spy on drivers because the US wants to be able to spy on drivers, which is why the proposed "solution" to your concerns is to simply ban Chinese cars. It's not about privacy or protecting consumers, it's about deciding which wolf gets to eat the sheep.
That is a different issue. There are many European countries where people have a high level of trust in their government so it would less of a concern assuming they are right. I think they are mistaken, even if their current government is trustworthy, as you should plan for bad future governments actions too.
> This essentially means the manufacturer controls them
The thing is, this problem exists regardless of who the manufacturer is, and using nationalism to make it about China disguises the real problem. Tiktok didn't magically become safe or unsafe when it was divested.
When the manufacturer in turn is under the control of the foreign government it adds another problem. It is similar to how using AWS means your data is not safe from the US government.
No, but at the same time, the established car manufacturers are very protective of their own stuff so they are disincentivised from e.g. building a car that works offline. John Deere is infamous for this, locking down their machines to the point that they would become scrap if the company ever went under (for example).
But it's all capitalist forces, because while in theory new companies could start that make basic / offline / affordable / maintainable / reliable cars (and tractors, and everything else), there is simply not enough demand making them non-starters.
It's like people (on here) asking for open phone platforms or phones with smaller screens; they're a minority. Most people do not care.
Yes, a foreign company in control does all that and adds a sovereignty/national security issue.
> It's like people (on here) asking for open phone platforms or phones with smaller screens; they're a minority. Most people do not care.
That is partly because most people do not understand the benefits of open phone platforms. This is a lot easier to understand and similar issues have gained traction: e.g. sovereign cloud is much discussed now.
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China is definitely a manufacturing powerhouse. But if you think it’s morally superior to the USA I strongly recommend doing some reading. China is an authoritarian nation with extreme censorship as can be seen with the GFW. Criticism of the government is not taken well, LGBTQ content is forbidden, poor treatment of unsupported religions, poor acts of espionage, they have mongered plenty of wars and territory disputes themselves, and have been extremely poor stuwards of their corner of the internet onto the rest of the world.
China has no legs to stand on in a mortality debate. I’m not exactly of fan of things in the US recently either for the record
Edit: forgot to mention Taiwan as well as the Hong Kong protests. Recently individuals and an Artist were arrested in China for trying to remember those passed.
Above all I believe in a democratic system where the people’s voices can be heard and we can agree on things together with proper representation. The US definitely dosent always get it right and there’s tons of evidence of this, however I do encourage our effort and hope that one day we can achieve the full foundations of the promises of the US.
If the US is shit, then the CCP is shit that has been eaten and puked back up.
You know China is busy genociding its Uyghurs population, right?
Their cars are probably better than US ones, but they are not free of the taint of genocide.
Edit: and that's not counting their aggressive territorial expansion in the South China Sea and their threats against Taiwan.
I don't want to come across as the China pisser because most big countries do scumbag things of have done them (cough colonialism). But some more of China's vices that are out of sight:
- Keep the war going in Myanmar with terrible results for the population of one of the biggest and most populous countries in the world. You just don't hear about it because no journalist goes there. - Keeping North Korea in the saddle whereas they could have gently pushed for improvements. - Keeping the war in Ukraine going. If Chinese leadership has any moral ambition, they could stop the war quickly. But they don't. Their own agenda comes first, as is the case with any superpower.
But yes man I would buy a BYD immediatey and it pisses me off to no end that hey are 5x more expensive in Europe than in China. I guess the whole morality of free trade was only 'good' as long as it benefited us.
Even if objectively one could agree that currently the products from china are better than the US ones, all the “China so good now” stuff is starting to sound like straight up in your face propaganda.
Or just objective reality? I've been shopping EVs lately and both Tesla and BYD have compelling offerings.
One things for sure: somehow Japanese cars aren't in the mix at all (the experience of trying to even see the bz4x at a Toyota dealer felt like the dealer was unhappy I was even there to see it).
I cannot speak for the the complete BYD cars, but I can say their battery tech is outstanding. As well, they are rolling out the world's first 1MW superchargers, than can charge an EV in less than 10 mins. (I saw a YouTube demo. It is pretty wild.)
Yeah that's mostly what's having me hold off at the moment - next year the flash charging cells will be debut'ing in Australia. I honestly don't know if I even need the capability, but I'm anticipating some further price drops.
You may want to give serious consideration to supply chain dynamics. If the commerce and political streams cross, the bargain EV could bring unexpected surprises.
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Slate seems closer to shipping a ~$30k electric pickup: https://www.slate.auto
I will believe when I see it, until then it's just vaporware, let's see the price if they ship at all by the end of 2026/beginning 2027 maybe.
I think Slate can get it shipped, that won’t be the issue.
The issue is that Slate has completely underestimated customer preference for four door vehicles.
Two door vehicle variants have absolutely died off in the market and I’d say with good reason.
Find a two door Jeep Wrangler. You’ll find 20-30 four door jeeps before you find a two door.
Can you even imagine in 2026 the idea of an Accord Coupe, a Camry Solara, Volkswagen Eos/Cabriolet, Ford Explorer/Bronco 2-door, Civic Coupe, Ford ZX2, Chevy Cavalier 2-door, the list just goes on and on.
Back in the day chopping off two doors was a semi-legitimate way to get a barebones base model or I guess look cooler or something. Honestly, I don’t understand how the practicality trade-off ever made sense.
Maybe in the days before heavily automated assembly lines, two door vehicles were legitimately cheaper to make?
> Two door vehicle variants have absolutely died off in the market and I’d say with good reason.
People looking for a four door will walk away from a two door, and people looking for a two door will grudgingly accept it? Because either you get a small four door truck, or you pay for a f-150 cause you can still get that with two doors... but not if you want any of the neat features... no electric single cable f-150, no single cab f-150 with the generator output. (at least when I last looked)
But if part of the pitch for the Slate is it shouldn't be very long, you can't put four doors and have any bed left. Unless you go cabover, but I don't know how many people would consider a cabover these days... VW and Toyota vans were cabover through the 80s, but I don't know how you pass safety tests when the drivers knees are the crumple zone.
I think the truth of the matter is that the middle class no longer buys second cars or cars meant to perform one specific utility. Whatever car you buy has to fit all your needs.
The other thing is that a four door truck has both interior and exterior cargo space. If you have a two door truck you don’t have a place to put significant cargo in a place with locking doors. If you have a four door Ford Maverick you can lift the rear seats and stick a lot of luggage back there in the locked area rather than in the bed.
Essentially, you buy a Maverick and you get all the benefits of two types of vehicles.
I can buy a Slate with 2 doors and the price is under $30k which is awesome. But if I buy an F-150 for $40-45k it has 6 seats (front bench option) and it can be my primary family vehicle that replaces a minivan. It can also tow a trailer with significant weight or hold 1,000 pounds of gravel in the bed since it’s a body on frame half ton truck.
The reason the Ford Maverick doesn’t offer a two door is exactly the same: the primary buyer is using it for all the things you’d use a 4 door SUV or sedan for.
I don’t think the buyer of the Slate exists in significant quantities. Even work trucks seem to be purchased in 4 door variants often so you can fit a crew of workers inside. That’s what they’re called a “crew cab.”
In most places if I need a long bed I can just get a longer vehicle. I have a family member with an F-250 that has the extended cab and the 8 foot bed. Yeah, it’s a huge truck. But they don’t live in New York City or Chicago, and the length of their vehicle is never a problem. But what is a problem is if they can’t fit drywall in the bed, they can’t lock up their gear in the back seat, and they can’t carry four people in the vehicle.
If the market for the Slate existed there would be 2-door variants of the Chevy Colorado, Ford Ranger, and Ford Maverick already on the market.
> I don’t understand how the practicality trade-off ever made sense.
I did over 100k kilometers in two/three door vehicles. Back seat never had any passengers in them. Meanwhile it was easier to get into my car, visibility was better and the car overall looked better. Less things to break. Less weight. In my specific vehicle the three door variant had pillarless windows.
No downsides for me.
I can understand your anecdote and even agree with it conceptually, but I don’t think the market agrees with you.
For ease of getting into the car, consumers clearly prefer the crossover SUV as the king of in/out ease.
For having less things to break and having a lighter car, I’m not sure those things are very common buyer sentiments as they relate to a four doors. I’ve never had anything related to my door break. The weight of my vehicle has never impacted me. I don’t even know how much my vehicle weighs.
As far as visibility, that’s just something where older cars always win out because of differences in crash and rollover safety standards.
I’m talking about a vehicle that you can buy in either two or four door version. In that direct comparison the two door wins in ease to get in to, visibility, weight and less complexity. If you don’t use the rear seat the two door is a no-brainer.
Vehicle weight in many countries is important for tax, registration, insurance, fuel economy.
demohgraphics with less and less chidlren being born and more and more single occupant households would beg to disagree with you, there surely is pretty big market for 3 doors cars
obviously 5 doors cars will suit bigger number of users, but many people just don't care
I mean my mother has some small Yaris which has 5 doors, but the back seat (height/head space) is so small I can't sit there anyway, so what's the point...
Btw. I am pretty sure cabriolets are still being produced, so are coupes, and obviously these are always 2 doors cars, those are not very good examples supporting your statement.
Also the new Suzuki Jimny was at release sold out for months/years in preorders.
All of this is valid reasoning, and honestly, so many 2-door vehicles have left the market that it almost seems like there must be some level of unfulfilled demand. Just like how full size sedans have been discontinued all over the place but the Camry still sells big numbers: all the buyers have had to move by necessity to Honda Accord and Toyota Camry.
However, if you are bringing up about the Jimny I assume you are not thinking in the context of the US or European market (the Jimny was largely pulled from Europe since it couldn’t meet emissions standards, and Suzuki does not sell cars in the US/Canadian market).
In the US there basically aren’t any 2 door vehicles outside of specialty or performance cars. Similar to the station wagon situation, they’re almost all imported from Europe and from brands like BMW and Audi.
There’s a long list of discontinued vehicles in the rear view mirror.
The only new 2-door vehicle released that I can think of is the Ford Bronco and the new Honda Prelude that is just coming out, which Honda has already made a statement saying it’s a low volume vehicle (it’s a very unappealing vehicle, basically a very expensive non-performance coupe).
Brands that no longer sell any convertible in the US that once did:
Acura, Audi, Buick, Cadillac, Chrysler, Genesis, Honda, Hyundai, Infiniti, Jaguar, Kia, Lincoln, Mitsubishi, Nissan, RAM/Dodge, Subaru, Tesla, Toyota, Volkswagen, Volvo
Brands that no longer sell a 2/3 door that once did:
Acura, Audi, Buick, Cadillac, Chrysler, Genesis, Hyundai, Infiniti, Jaguar, Kia, Land Rover, Lincoln, Mitsubishi, Ram, Volkswagen, Volvo
Some of those makes you list only sold convertibles that were extremely niche, short lived, and/or incredibly ancient history. I wouldn’t use them as practical examples.
We'll know the price in two more weeks. I'm yolo'ing it and I can't wait for my little orange-wrapped pickup.
So far their manufacturing and progress videos are quite impressive. The fact there's 25-50+ basically production-ready prototypes if not more now driving around their factory and doing testing compared to most of the other vaporware companies out there has me holding out strong.
(How many Elios are out there doing testing? How many TELOs? Oof.)
producing 25-50 prototypes and launching mass production are two very different things
edit: just for the record I am their fan and wishing them well, but I am too old for fairy tales unless the product is in market
I meaaaaan... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QF_qGEzm0JA - definitely a lot further than either of those ;)