The SkyNomad—with heated floors, a projector, a pop-up roof, a fridge, swiveling seats, and over 1,000 miles of range—is a “luxury” ride that undercuts Range Rovers by tens of thousands of dollars.
They’ll be banned faster than you can memorize the spelling of Xiaomi. At least in the US, where we make sure the old inefficient companies stay afloat despite their incompetence.
Chinese cars are heavily subsidized by the state. The reason they’re so cheap is because China bets it can squeeze the competition out of the market before charging basically whatever they want.
I’ve seen Starbucks do the same thing to independent coffee shops.
Edit: This is a post about real car companies like Nissan, Volvo, Mercedes, Renault, whatever. I don’t care about America. Nobody has for decades.
American car companies (and American built cars) get subsidies from the US, Canada, and Mexico as all three form a single manufacturing chain. They simply have had a different set of priorities that allowed newcomers to eat their lunch, like it happens to any complacent industry.
Chinese cars are heavily subsidized by the state. The reason they’re so cheap is because China bets it can squeeze the competition
Used to be, to get them going, robotics, innovation and vertical integration is most of the reason now. An example, BYD have their own roro ships and have ordered another 10,
they make their own batteries, electric motors etc and have massive robotic assembly plants.
To suggest the reason why is because it’s not a level playing field is ludicrous, the US spends many billions subsidizing car manufacturers on top of the billions us consumers spend in subsidizing them. directly.
Detroit pays union wages and has to respect worker rights (at the top end of the supply chain). The “communist “ state seems to escape these limited obligations in big parts of their supply chains.
Workers in Detroit might get paid union wages, but many auto factories have relocated to the South where they can underpay and abuse workers much more easily. I just did some quick googling and it seems like being a factory worker in China isn’t bad compared to in the US. They work in highly automated, clean, air-conditioned spaces like would be found here. Dirty conditions and manual labor are no longer compatible with today’s automotive quality requirements. Low level workers make modest wages, but they employ a bunch of engineers and technicians just like here in the US, and they have subsidized cafeterias and some provide housing or stipends for housing. You might criticize the expectation of working significant overtime, but I’ve worked in factories which had mandatory overtime in the US, so that sort of structural coercion isn’t unique to China. Compared to a “right to work” state, Chinese workers have stronger protections from being laid off or fired. The main downside seems to be lax enforcement of safety standards. If the government doesn’t notice something unsafe on its own, there isn’t a Chinese version of dropping a hint to OSHA.
Now further upstream in the supply chain? No thanks. That’s where you’ll find abysmal working conditions. Just remember there are good reasons our government wants us to believe everything sucks for workers in China.
And yet even at 2-3x the price, the Chinese EVs provide a better value than the handful of the American options they would compete against.
This SUV would be competing with the likes of a high end EV option like Lucid or Tesla. The Lucid Gravity starts a around $70k, and the Tesla Model X (now discontinued) was around $92k.
The Xiaomi SU7 (the car the Ford CEO has driven since 2024, despite being banned in the US) starts at $32k and clearly is targeted to compete the Porsche Taycan at $112k.
The vehicle in this article has heated floors, a projector, a pop-up roof, a fridge, swiveling seats, and over 1,000 miles of range. Functions western companies consider “luxury” are basically just standard in the Chinese market like heated and ventilated seats. They don’t even bother to advertise things like that because it’s a minimum expectation. There are zero western options that come close to something like that. The options available in the US suck, even taking industry subsidies into account.
And yet there it is, along with basically every other “luxury” feature western companies save for high end models… all for the price of a base model SUV here.
The point is that what western car companies consider “luxury” features they charge extra for, like heated seats and that sort of thing, are basically standard there. So the luxury features they include to separate these models from the pack are these more niche things.
They were only high-end EVs because the EV market was dogshit then. They’ve never competed with high-end cars in general.
Unfortunately it’s a race to the bottom and high-end cars are doing the same Tesla bullshit of a minimalist interior with a huge display instead of physical buttons with heft like they used to.
Frankly, american cars could use a knockdown. Tesla was our only real hope, and we would have glided into a strong Tesla and EV empire if conservative dems didn’t bail out GM, Chrysler, and Ford. Additionally, Tesla wouldn’t have been in a position to get bought by a dumb nazi.
I’d say, let their stuff in. Lets get some good cheap and subsidizes vehicles from China on the condition that they don’t raise car prices by more than 2% a year.
American companies will more than likely fall on their face and hopefully die. Making room for a new american car company to take their place.
The thing is, if the American government wants to be protectionist against Chinese cars, IMHO they need to pass legally binding legislation to force US car manufacturers to meet or exceed what the Chinese cars are offering and then directly subsidize the cost of those vehicles to the consumer, freely, with no stipulations. The punishment for failure to meet and exceed those expectations should be bankruptcy through immediate removal of the protectionist mechanisms.
They tried when Japanese cars became popular for being efficient, the US car companies preferred to pretty much abandon the rest of the world and keep the government money.
So you think the entire world’s auto manufacturers outside of China are incompetent and inefficient? People always act like the only vehicles sold in the US are domestic brands when they don’t even make up a majority here.
Well, in Germany VW (the second largest automobile manufacturer in the world) now is laying off a significant portion of their employees, closing factories and even selling them off to US/Israeli weapons manufacturers. Their head also already signaled VW is being open to switch to weapons manufacturing.
Pretty sure other German brands are in similar peril.
You mean Volks “we don’t even make an effort for our cars to obbey emission rules and instead we cheated” wagen is having trouble staying afloat?!
I wonder how such a high quality company which was not at all doing funny business and using political connections is having trouble competing with those who just offer better products at lower prices …
Volkswagen has made a ton of dumb mistakes, but among the worst are paying union wages and not getting super cheap lithium batteries from being located in a country that has a well integrated supply chain.
We don’t want to mine or refine lithium as much in the EU because “boohoo muh environment” but really, if we want to compete with China we can’t let the environment be a deciding factor. Mine and refine all the resources we need instead of buying them from China and letting them dictate the prices. China doesn’t give a fuck about small issues standing in its way and neither should we.
“We can’t let the environment be a deciding factor” is a preposterous take. There’s practically nothing more important that preserving the environment. Even the Chinese are looking beyond their borders for raw materials these days. If it costs more to extract raw materials in a way that doesn’t fuck up the environment, then subsidize it and pay for it. We can fund the subsidies with a carbon tax.
It’s not a preposterous take for China. They do whatever it takes to win and it shows. Lower wages, less considerations for the environment, etc.
Everything we care about has a cost. If we want the cheapest possible EVs, which most people here seem to want, then we need to ignore everything else. So you decide. Do you want super cheap EVs, or do you want good working conditions and limited pollution? And if it’s the latter, tariffs on Chinese EVs make sense because they do not adhere by the same rules.
I want the latter, and tariffs are not the only way go about protectionism. There is also subsidization, which is how the US has maintained its defense and agriculture industries. If we want stuff made domestically, we’re going to have to pay for it. Subsidies are generally preferable to tariffs because they can be paid through progressive taxation instead of regressive taxes on consumers.
Corrupted by the oil industry and colluding together would be a better term. Someone please stop China, they are destroying the “EVs are luxury vehicles only” gimmick.
Well I wouldn’t say they’re all incompetent but look at how glacial all the “traditional” car companies have become. These guys are innovating at a speed never seen before while your traditional car manufacturers are stumbling over themselves trying to keep up.
On the german side, just take a look at BMW and how long it took for them to come up with a competent electric platform. They just got their first car on a good platform (the new X3). Mercedes still doesn’t have a good EV, and neither does Audi. Their etron is outdated.
Moving to the Japanese brands. I know Toyota isn’t focused on EVs at all and their hybrid is top notch so they’re one of the better ones out there. But no one else is even close. Not in terms of value for money. Not in terms of tech.
The only ones that get close are Tesla because, like the Chinese, they’re running their car companies like tech companies and not car companies.
What innovations are lacking specifically? I dont know of any features unique to Chinese brands. It seems more like you think every company should only be selling EVs for dirt cheap prices, but that isn’t realistic becausw those aren’t real prices and EVs aren’t yet practical for everyone which is why they make up such a small percentage of sales here still (though this number climbs with each quarter).
They’ll be banned faster than you can memorize the spelling of Xiaomi. At least in the US, where we make sure the old inefficient companies stay afloat despite their incompetence.
Chinese cars are heavily subsidized by the state. The reason they’re so cheap is because China bets it can squeeze the competition out of the market before charging basically whatever they want.
I’ve seen Starbucks do the same thing to independent coffee shops.
Edit: This is a post about real car companies like Nissan, Volvo, Mercedes, Renault, whatever. I don’t care about America. Nobody has for decades.
American car companies (and American built cars) get subsidies from the US, Canada, and Mexico as all three form a single manufacturing chain. They simply have had a different set of priorities that allowed newcomers to eat their lunch, like it happens to any complacent industry.
Used to be, to get them going, robotics, innovation and vertical integration is most of the reason now. An example, BYD have their own roro ships and have ordered another 10,
https://www.whichcar.com.au/news/byd-orders-10-more-car-carriers-export-push-accelerates
and the new ships will be built in China
they make their own batteries, electric motors etc and have massive robotic assembly plants.
To suggest the reason why is because it’s not a level playing field is ludicrous, the US spends many billions subsidizing car manufacturers on top of the billions us consumers spend in subsidizing them. directly.
Detroit has received $88B in subsidies and loans since 2008. That’s why we have so many cheap EV options?
Heavily subsidized by misery, as well.
Detroit pays union wages and has to respect worker rights (at the top end of the supply chain). The “communist “ state seems to escape these limited obligations in big parts of their supply chains.
Workers in Detroit might get paid union wages, but many auto factories have relocated to the South where they can underpay and abuse workers much more easily. I just did some quick googling and it seems like being a factory worker in China isn’t bad compared to in the US. They work in highly automated, clean, air-conditioned spaces like would be found here. Dirty conditions and manual labor are no longer compatible with today’s automotive quality requirements. Low level workers make modest wages, but they employ a bunch of engineers and technicians just like here in the US, and they have subsidized cafeterias and some provide housing or stipends for housing. You might criticize the expectation of working significant overtime, but I’ve worked in factories which had mandatory overtime in the US, so that sort of structural coercion isn’t unique to China. Compared to a “right to work” state, Chinese workers have stronger protections from being laid off or fired. The main downside seems to be lax enforcement of safety standards. If the government doesn’t notice something unsafe on its own, there isn’t a Chinese version of dropping a hint to OSHA.
Now further upstream in the supply chain? No thanks. That’s where you’ll find abysmal working conditions. Just remember there are good reasons our government wants us to believe everything sucks for workers in China.
Oh yes, and even plum union jobs for floor workers in Windsor or Brampton can be kind of shit too, especially in some of the parts factories.
I expect that from hypercapitalist oligarch-run societies. I don’t expect it from vanguard countries. It’s a betrayal.
Good news, the Vanguard are just capitalists by another name.
And yet even at 2-3x the price, the Chinese EVs provide a better value than the handful of the American options they would compete against.
This SUV would be competing with the likes of a high end EV option like Lucid or Tesla. The Lucid Gravity starts a around $70k, and the Tesla Model X (now discontinued) was around $92k.
The Xiaomi SU7 (the car the Ford CEO has driven since 2024, despite being banned in the US) starts at $32k and clearly is targeted to compete the Porsche Taycan at $112k.
The vehicle in this article has heated floors, a projector, a pop-up roof, a fridge, swiveling seats, and over 1,000 miles of range. Functions western companies consider “luxury” are basically just standard in the Chinese market like heated and ventilated seats. They don’t even bother to advertise things like that because it’s a minimum expectation. There are zero western options that come close to something like that. The options available in the US suck, even taking industry subsidies into account.
Never have I once thought I needed any of that bullshit.
it seems to want it to be like a compact RV rather than a SUV
because all of those does sound like something you want in an RV
And yet there it is, along with basically every other “luxury” feature western companies save for high end models… all for the price of a base model SUV here.
Those aren’t luxury car features (minus the fridge), those are camper van features lol
The point is that what western car companies consider “luxury” features they charge extra for, like heated seats and that sort of thing, are basically standard there. So the luxury features they include to separate these models from the pack are these more niche things.
Ok
…fucking WHAT?
I see you forget about the first 3 models that Tesla made that were $70k or higher when they were discontinued, and all launched at $90k+
They were only high-end EVs because the EV market was dogshit then. They’ve never competed with high-end cars in general.
Unfortunately it’s a race to the bottom and high-end cars are doing the same Tesla bullshit of a minimalist interior with a huge display instead of physical buttons with heft like they used to.
Frankly, american cars could use a knockdown. Tesla was our only real hope, and we would have glided into a strong Tesla and EV empire if conservative dems didn’t bail out GM, Chrysler, and Ford. Additionally, Tesla wouldn’t have been in a position to get bought by a dumb nazi.
I’d say, let their stuff in. Lets get some good cheap and subsidizes vehicles from China on the condition that they don’t raise car prices by more than 2% a year.
American companies will more than likely fall on their face and hopefully die. Making room for a new american car company to take their place.
The thing is, if the American government wants to be protectionist against Chinese cars, IMHO they need to pass legally binding legislation to force US car manufacturers to meet or exceed what the Chinese cars are offering and then directly subsidize the cost of those vehicles to the consumer, freely, with no stipulations. The punishment for failure to meet and exceed those expectations should be bankruptcy through immediate removal of the protectionist mechanisms.
They tried when Japanese cars became popular for being efficient, the US car companies preferred to pretty much abandon the rest of the world and keep the government money.
The US is too busy licking other corps boots. They do not have enough funds to do it for everyone.
They’d probably need to tax the rich a significant amount of money to do that.
So you think the entire world’s auto manufacturers outside of China are incompetent and inefficient? People always act like the only vehicles sold in the US are domestic brands when they don’t even make up a majority here.
Well, in Germany VW (the second largest automobile manufacturer in the world) now is laying off a significant portion of their employees, closing factories and even selling them off to US/Israeli weapons manufacturers. Their head also already signaled VW is being open to switch to weapons manufacturing. Pretty sure other German brands are in similar peril.
Traditional manufacturers are dead.
You mean Volks “we don’t even make an effort for our cars to obbey emission rules and instead we cheated” wagen is having trouble staying afloat?!
I wonder how such a high quality company which was not at all doing funny business and using political connections is having trouble competing with those who just offer better products at lower prices …
Volkswagen has made a ton of dumb mistakes, but among the worst are paying union wages and not getting super cheap lithium batteries from being located in a country that has a well integrated supply chain.
We don’t want to mine or refine lithium as much in the EU because “boohoo muh environment” but really, if we want to compete with China we can’t let the environment be a deciding factor. Mine and refine all the resources we need instead of buying them from China and letting them dictate the prices. China doesn’t give a fuck about small issues standing in its way and neither should we.
“We can’t let the environment be a deciding factor” is a preposterous take. There’s practically nothing more important that preserving the environment. Even the Chinese are looking beyond their borders for raw materials these days. If it costs more to extract raw materials in a way that doesn’t fuck up the environment, then subsidize it and pay for it. We can fund the subsidies with a carbon tax.
It’s not a preposterous take for China. They do whatever it takes to win and it shows. Lower wages, less considerations for the environment, etc.
Everything we care about has a cost. If we want the cheapest possible EVs, which most people here seem to want, then we need to ignore everything else. So you decide. Do you want super cheap EVs, or do you want good working conditions and limited pollution? And if it’s the latter, tariffs on Chinese EVs make sense because they do not adhere by the same rules.
I want the latter, and tariffs are not the only way go about protectionism. There is also subsidization, which is how the US has maintained its defense and agriculture industries. If we want stuff made domestically, we’re going to have to pay for it. Subsidies are generally preferable to tariffs because they can be paid through progressive taxation instead of regressive taxes on consumers.
They chose to actively ignore EV technology. Despite 80-100 years of manufacturing , they got overtaken by China in just 15 years.
Corrupted by the oil industry and colluding together would be a better term. Someone please stop China, they are destroying the “EVs are luxury vehicles only” gimmick.
Well I wouldn’t say they’re all incompetent but look at how glacial all the “traditional” car companies have become. These guys are innovating at a speed never seen before while your traditional car manufacturers are stumbling over themselves trying to keep up.
On the german side, just take a look at BMW and how long it took for them to come up with a competent electric platform. They just got their first car on a good platform (the new X3). Mercedes still doesn’t have a good EV, and neither does Audi. Their etron is outdated.
Moving to the Japanese brands. I know Toyota isn’t focused on EVs at all and their hybrid is top notch so they’re one of the better ones out there. But no one else is even close. Not in terms of value for money. Not in terms of tech.
The only ones that get close are Tesla because, like the Chinese, they’re running their car companies like tech companies and not car companies.
What innovations are lacking specifically? I dont know of any features unique to Chinese brands. It seems more like you think every company should only be selling EVs for dirt cheap prices, but that isn’t realistic becausw those aren’t real prices and EVs aren’t yet practical for everyone which is why they make up such a small percentage of sales here still (though this number climbs with each quarter).
They’ve been banned lol, like for decades