It’s ironic. I’ve been slammed so many times on European car websites for saying that the Chinese are coming. European car makers have been asleep at the wheel and it’s heartbreaking, it was all so predictable.
The design team of the BMW i3 had the foresight, they saw it coming. In retaliation, the old powers within BMW basically made their life hell. So, they left for China.
VW kicked out Herbert Diess, who also saw it coming. But Mercedes gave it quite a good shot, only to be welcomed by the hordes of backward thinking EU car ‘journalists’ who don’t like the design of Benz’ EVs.
I’ve said it before and will saying again, EU manufacturers have 3 years to turn things around, or they will become another British Leyland. Stellantis is already there with their 15 different brands of the same Peugeot.
Crazy how the status quo lasts for decades and then upends in just a few short years. I remember how not so long ago Chinese car brands were a laughing stock and deemed just as inferior copycats at best, while the Germans were the undisputed leaders in quality and innovation.
Can somebody answer one simple question – why europeans are so naive?
Love these. What’s not mentioned in the title is that the article is exclusively talking about the Chinese market but classic Redditors arent gonna click an article, are they?
Its a paywall article so i couldn’t quite read whats in this but its no surprise that China is heavily pushing their own car industry within their own borders. ICEs are very very complicated things and even with Chinese companies having some insight into German engines, they were ultimately never even close to competing in that regard. EVs are far simpler and China happens to also be the biggest manufacturer of battery packs which is a huge inherent advantage.
But whats more puzzling is that recent VW numbers in China were actually decent as they have increased sales year to year in China. BMW is selling incredibly well right now, idk their China numbers but in Europe BMWs EVs are selling really well.
Renault and PSA aren’t.
Can you guys ship it to Southeast Asia and sell it to us with discount? Thanks, love from Southeast Asia 🫡
Can someone post the article content?
We done f’d up.. We will see big european brands close for good within 5-10 years. Europe could be a grave yard of old car manufacturers.
Doesnt China subsidize its car industry heavily as it did with Solar?
It seems to be really difficult making cheap, good looking EVs. Imagine a retro looking, affordable Mercedes or BMW EV (think Hyundai 74 EV). Even people not fully onboard the EV train would buy those (including me).
It’s funny how no one in comments actually read the article
Europe subsidise on the consumer side when purchasing any EV. China subsidise the manufacturing of their own EVs. This means European cars are not subsidised in China and chinese cars are double subsidised in Europe.
Yes, European car brands have been sleeping, they were basically making money doing nothing. But these anti-competitive practises by china don’t help. They could’ve subsidised on the consumer side too like the rest of the world, but they don’t care about playing a fair game. The exact same thing happened with solar panels, let that be a lesson to Europe!
Lets not forget that this is by design of our economic system. Our system does not reward long term strategy. It only cares about short term investments. Investors can change horses any time. So why bother working on long term projects at all?
Also, the same investors that earned money by investing into European industries can pivot to betting against it, when the time comes and still make money out of it.
I run a company fighting chinese and indian competitors every day: 25 years ago china was subsidizing exports dolar for dolar and paying for all the shipping fees. They were seling for just about half the cost of productiin and making profit. West did nothing except accusing their own bussines of lazyness.
As a customer I don’t care if the car is German Chinese French. I only care if I can afford a good car. if Germany decided to become an old story like Nokia then let them be.
Old companies also tend to life on the fat layers they built up over decades and are slow to adapt. They would have to throw away a lot of tooling, IP, research etc. they built for ICE.
This Chinese industry started from scratch as EV, they didn’t need to transition.
We’re almost at a point where BMW sells more cars in China than in Europe, some models are even fully assembled in China despite the brand being called European. Meanwhile Chinese crap is flooding the home market which BMW happily lobbies for in favour because it allows them to keep producing and selling their cars in China.
Now skip forward a couple years when almost the whole European market is dominated by Chinese import cars. At this point the Chinese government can easily start sanctioning European brands and get rid of it in their homeland.
Just Europe being fucked as usual
thats what happens when u dont make a e34 but electric
The idea that this is happening due to subsidies is laughable, because nothing is more subsidized than the German car lobby, like even the green party bows to them. And even if it was the subsidies that drove the development, it would mean they gave us viable and affordable electric transport 15 years earlier than with a “free market”. In the face of absolute climate crisis, WHY. WEREN’T T. WE. DOING. THAT. TOO??? It’s not like people in 2100 walking a livable earth say “doesn’t count because they didn’t do it with a pure free market”…
It might be that the problem here is that politicians are too much in the pockets of car makers, so they never had to adapt to changes on the market because they knew that in the end, the government is going to bail them out
As someone who’s worked in a German corporation, being left in the dust is just another day at the factory.
The moment I left for a US company and realized it was not me that was crazy was a moment of zen. As imperfect as they still are, American companies are set up to get things done. German companies are set up to stall and protect embedded interests.
As many have already mentioned, Germany subsidises the car industry extremely heavily, and as soon as the brand name no longer sells almost exclusively German cars, the indirect subsidies will gradually be reformed. Even outside Germany and Europe, the German over-engineered cars, where every stupid thing a car doesn’t need, breaks down too quickly and needs servicing, is a major hindrance that people don’t want for their German cars. For almost 2 decades, Germany has been selling its cars solely on brand recognition. The government really need to enforce their industry not being stupid, but the families owning the german automobile industry are simply too powerful and well stupid.
Lol and Germany in the EU voted a few weeks ago against moving ahead with hefty tariffs on Chinese EVs. Pure insanity.
Incidentally in one of these sHoCkInG RePORts about NEVs, apparently the numbers they quote on the internet are sometimes insurance renewals. Some Chinese companies themselves internally debate these numbers being put out. not saying VW, BMW MB are saviours of the world but it looks like many want these companies to fail. In the end it’s like buying a Tecno mobile over an iPhone. People pretend these cars are good. They’re swanky, cheap and has a large tablet for a center console but BYD has absolutely no idea what they’re doing. They make cars like how Lada made cars. Lada sold more than VW when Soviet Union was a thing. Did that mean Lada left VW and Mercedes in the dust? It would’ve seemed that way, if we had tiktok and twitter back then
Its a strategy. EV’s fall massively in price when used. The Chinese EV’s will likely never hit the used market, just buy the new model. Its unsustainable long term unless new cars keep outselling used, like in the combustion engine world.
Grand Turism Folgore is beautiful, expensive, very expensive but beautiful.
29 comments
It’s ironic. I’ve been slammed so many times on European car websites for saying that the Chinese are coming. European car makers have been asleep at the wheel and it’s heartbreaking, it was all so predictable.
The design team of the BMW i3 had the foresight, they saw it coming. In retaliation, the old powers within BMW basically made their life hell. So, they left for China.
VW kicked out Herbert Diess, who also saw it coming. But Mercedes gave it quite a good shot, only to be welcomed by the hordes of backward thinking EU car ‘journalists’ who don’t like the design of Benz’ EVs.
I’ve said it before and will saying again, EU manufacturers have 3 years to turn things around, or they will become another British Leyland. Stellantis is already there with their 15 different brands of the same Peugeot.
Crazy how the status quo lasts for decades and then upends in just a few short years. I remember how not so long ago Chinese car brands were a laughing stock and deemed just as inferior copycats at best, while the Germans were the undisputed leaders in quality and innovation.
Can somebody answer one simple question – why europeans are so naive?
Love these. What’s not mentioned in the title is that the article is exclusively talking about the Chinese market but classic Redditors arent gonna click an article, are they?
Its a paywall article so i couldn’t quite read whats in this but its no surprise that China is heavily pushing their own car industry within their own borders. ICEs are very very complicated things and even with Chinese companies having some insight into German engines, they were ultimately never even close to competing in that regard. EVs are far simpler and China happens to also be the biggest manufacturer of battery packs which is a huge inherent advantage.
But whats more puzzling is that recent VW numbers in China were actually decent as they have increased sales year to year in China. BMW is selling incredibly well right now, idk their China numbers but in Europe BMWs EVs are selling really well.
Renault and PSA aren’t.
Can you guys ship it to Southeast Asia and sell it to us with discount? Thanks, love from Southeast Asia 🫡
Can someone post the article content?
We done f’d up..
We will see big european brands close for good within 5-10 years. Europe could be a grave yard of old car manufacturers.
Doesnt China subsidize its car industry heavily as it did with Solar?
It seems to be really difficult making cheap, good looking EVs. Imagine a retro looking, affordable Mercedes or BMW EV (think Hyundai 74 EV). Even people not fully onboard the EV train would buy those (including me).
It’s funny how no one in comments actually read the article
Europe subsidise on the consumer side when purchasing any EV. China subsidise the manufacturing of their own EVs. This means European cars are not subsidised in China and chinese cars are double subsidised in Europe.
Yes, European car brands have been sleeping, they were basically making money doing nothing. But these anti-competitive practises by china don’t help. They could’ve subsidised on the consumer side too like the rest of the world, but they don’t care about playing a fair game. The exact same thing happened with solar panels, let that be a lesson to Europe!
Lets not forget that this is by design of our economic system. Our system does not reward long term strategy. It only cares about short term investments. Investors can change horses any time. So why bother working on long term projects at all?
Also, the same investors that earned money by investing into European industries can pivot to betting against it, when the time comes and still make money out of it.
I run a company fighting chinese and indian competitors every day: 25 years ago china was subsidizing exports dolar for dolar and paying for all the shipping fees. They were seling for just about half the cost of productiin and making profit. West did nothing except accusing their own bussines of lazyness.
As a customer I don’t care if the car is German Chinese French. I only care if I can afford a good car. if Germany decided to become an old story like Nokia then let them be.
Old companies also tend to life on the fat layers they built up over decades and are slow to adapt.
They would have to throw away a lot of tooling, IP, research etc. they built for ICE.
This Chinese industry started from scratch as EV, they didn’t need to transition.
We’re almost at a point where BMW sells more cars in China than in Europe, some models are even fully assembled in China despite the brand being called European. Meanwhile Chinese crap is flooding the home market which BMW happily lobbies for in favour because it allows them to keep producing and selling their cars in China.
Now skip forward a couple years when almost the whole European market is dominated by Chinese import cars. At this point the Chinese government can easily start sanctioning European brands and get rid of it in their homeland.
Just Europe being fucked as usual
thats what happens when u dont make a e34 but electric
The idea that this is happening due to subsidies is laughable, because nothing is more subsidized than the German car lobby, like even the green party bows to them. And even if it was the subsidies that drove the development, it would mean they gave us viable and affordable electric transport 15 years earlier than with a “free market”. In the face of absolute climate crisis, WHY. WEREN’T T. WE. DOING. THAT. TOO??? It’s not like people in 2100 walking a livable earth say “doesn’t count because they didn’t do it with a pure free market”…
It might be that the problem here is that politicians are too much in the pockets of car makers, so they never had to adapt to changes on the market because they knew that in the end, the government is going to bail them out
As someone who’s worked in a German corporation, being left in the dust is just another day at the factory.
The moment I left for a US company and realized it was not me that was crazy was a moment of zen. As imperfect as they still are, American companies are set up to get things done. German companies are set up to stall and protect embedded interests.
As many have already mentioned, Germany subsidises the car industry extremely heavily, and as soon as the brand name no longer sells almost exclusively German cars, the indirect subsidies will gradually be reformed.
Even outside Germany and Europe, the German over-engineered cars, where every stupid thing a car doesn’t need, breaks down too quickly and needs servicing, is a major hindrance that people don’t want for their German cars. For almost 2 decades, Germany has been selling its cars solely on brand recognition.
The government really need to enforce their industry not being stupid, but the families owning the german automobile industry are simply too powerful and well stupid.
Lol and Germany in the EU voted a few weeks ago against moving ahead with hefty tariffs on Chinese EVs. Pure insanity.
Incidentally in one of these sHoCkInG RePORts about NEVs, apparently the numbers they quote on the internet are sometimes insurance renewals. Some Chinese companies themselves internally debate these numbers being put out. not saying VW, BMW MB are saviours of the world but it looks like many want these companies to fail. In the end it’s like buying a Tecno mobile over an iPhone. People pretend these cars are good. They’re swanky, cheap and has a large tablet for a center console but BYD has absolutely no idea what they’re doing. They make cars like how Lada made cars. Lada sold more than VW when Soviet Union was a thing. Did that mean Lada left VW and Mercedes in the dust? It would’ve seemed that way, if we had tiktok and twitter back then
i smell bulls**t:
https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/global/article/detail/T0443729EN/bmw-group-posts-strong-growth-in-fully-electric-vehicles-and-upper-premium-segment-in-first-half-of-2024?language=en
Its a strategy. EV’s fall massively in price when used. The Chinese EV’s will likely never hit the used market, just buy the new model.
Its unsustainable long term unless new cars keep outselling used, like in the combustion engine world.
Grand Turism Folgore is beautiful, expensive, very expensive but beautiful.
https://www.maserati.com/global/en/models/grecale-folgore
Welcome to 2020, when everyone was saying this is gonna hapoen.
And when VW, Mercedes and BMW were still ‘lobbying’ politicians after a decade of deliberate EV fake news creation.
So we are supposed to feel bad for them now?
Hey Europe you gonna start this trade war with China or not ? – US media