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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   28601 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 24, 2024

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I don't see that Gretch isn't viable for no other reason that she gets home state advantage in a critical swing state. She's charted a decent course as governor, no major disasters.

I still don't think it's likely for anyone to swap in, but conditional on a swap, my money is on Gretch over Gavin.

Non-sequitur, but how fucked is Michigan right now?

The population hasn't grown in 30 years, and the pension crisis looms. The state's premier institution, the University of Michigan, only serves to hoover up any local talent and send it to the coasts. And 90% black Detroit is an absolute anchor around the state's neck.

But what's coming is worse. The Detroit auto industry is about to get obliterated. They have 120 years of expertise in building internal combustion engines. All those factories, all that human capital, is going to zero within 20 years. The Big 3 lose gobs of money on every EV they sell. On a level playing field they simply can't compete with China. Not when Detroit workers make 5x what Chinese workers do and are far inferior. Even with 100% tariffs, it's not clear how Detroit can win.

On a level playing field they simply can't compete with China.

The right tarrif level on Chinese imported cars will fix this problem.

Tarriff's can potentially fix the problem for the domestic market (though economists look at the gains to auto-workers, and losses to car buyers, buying expensive American cars to avoid tariffs, and declare the loss greater than the gain)

But Americans have traditionally made fat profits and high wages from exporting cars. They cannot expect foreign countries to tax Chinese EVs but not American EVs, for the sake of American workers, at the expense of their own people. Losing export markets will hurt.

Tesla pays California salaries for the workers in Fremont and has a high margin.

Tesla executed amazingly. But their margins were an artifact of first-mover advantage, massive subsidies, and the Covid stimulus. Elon played it perfectly, but it's not sustainable.

Elon now sees EVs as commoditized and therefore a dead end. That's why Tesla is pivoting towards autonomous driving and robots. A couple months ago they fired their entire supercharger team.

Tesla won't beat China on cost either. But as a luxury carmaker, Tesla will do better than the Big 3. Luxury has been one of the few things able to withstand Chinese competition.

Again, I plead for Jero-Bloomberg coverage of energy markets.

The Detroit auto industry is about to get obliterated. They have 120 years of expertise in building internal combustion engines. All those factories, all that human capital, is going to zero within 20 years. The Big 3 lose gobs of money on every EV they sell. On a level playing field they simply can't compete with China. Not when Detroit workers make 5x what Chinese workers do and are far inferior. Even with 100% tariffs, it's not clear how Detroit can win.

I don't buy that this is going to happen any time soon. There's almost zero overlap between the products GM and Ford sell and the products a Chinese company like BYD sells, even accounting for the fact that the Americans are mostly ICE cars. GM and Ford no longer sell regular sedans in the US because all their customers want is large trucks and SUVs. BYD's products aren't merely sedans, but small sedans and hatchbacks. Every time someone sounds the alarm bells about some foreign company that's making cars incredibly cheaply forgets that Americans don't want cheap cars, they want some semblance of luxury. There was a period in the 1980s when Japanese manufacturers made huge inroads into the American market, but there were two factors involved that don't apply here. First, there were oil shocks the likes of which hadn't been seen before, and the Japanese offered fuel-efficient products that the Americans weren't producing. These days, efficiency gains have made it so the marginal advantage of having a more efficient car is lowered, and we're more used to occasional price spikes, so that isn't really in play. Maybe there's a chance for a huge spike that would be a shock, but I wouldn't bet on the Chinese until something like that actually happens. And even then, there are still plenty of efficient Japanese and Korean cars on the market that already have that segment cornered.

The second factor is that, by the 1980s, Japanese manufacturers were making vehicles of much higher quality and reliability than American manufacturers. The Americans are much more competitive on that front now (though still not at the top), and the best I've heard about Chines brands is that they're approaching the American brands in quality, so not exactly a ringing endorsement. Aside from that, you can sell a subcompact for $10,000 but that doesn't mean anyone is going to want to buy it. This is a country where poor people buy SUVs. When I was a kid, it seemed like every working-class dad had a compact "getting around town" car with a standard transmission and no options, but it seems that most of these guys drive decked-out pickup trucks now. I used to have a Saturn. It was a great car, but even in the 2000s, no one wanted a great car as boring as a Saturn. Scion tried the same thing and failed.

The reason Tesla succeeded where EV manufacturers had failed for so many years is that they understood that marketing a vehicle based on efficiency wasn't going to cut it. So they played up the EV's performance advantages and marketed it as a sports car, and then as a luxury car, and now they're slowly making the transition to mass-market vehicles, though they're still a status symbol. The Chinese can't compete in this market because it would mean making an entire line of America-centric products that would be too big a gamble.

Swing state, if they have to ban Chinese (or indeed all third world) car imports they will.

Of course, abandoning the “ban all cars that aren’t pure EV” plan will handily accomplish this without the need for tariffs simply because pure EVs are inferior to everything else.

Doesn’t matter, Chinese EVs at $6000 new would still dominate among the bottom 50% of Americans by income when US built cars are $30k+.

If and only if a dealership keeps them in stock and offers financing for those suffering from irregular income and limited credit, that is. And that probably means they're $12k, not six, at a minimum.

The American poor don't know how to order a car from China. They won't sit and wait on one. And they need financing to spend thousands of dollars, even six thousand.

There's ways to do this without a dealership (see Tesla).

It still involves a middleman to make it doable for the American poor, who are broadly not great at planning or coming up with six thousand dollars. That middleman is going to drive costs up because that’s what middlemen do.

Selling the same used car more than once is a lucrative business. Replacing them with electric cars is a risk, albeit one that could easily pay off, but it’s going to double costs to where it’s not actually that much cheaper than used ICE cars(which is what poor people drive today).

Looking at cars under 12k in my area, I see a bunch of Mirais, a few cars very susly priced thousands under market, rental cars with multiple previous owners, 200k miles or more, etc.

If it were actually possible to deliver a $12k brand new chinesium car, that would be a better deal than a lot of the crap on the market (especially since the new car will have at least some warranty).

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If only the 7500-dollar Elio had not been a scam…

As one of those sub-normal poors, can confirm I've actually been looking at $5k electric kit cars on Alibaba, but no way I'm pushing that button without a test drive.

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