Chinese cars have been in the news lately, as they — to many — represent a threat to the American auto industry. At the same time, they represent a potential relief in what many see as an overly expensive EV landscape, and thus a way to potentially get more people to give up gas guzzlers […]
Doesn’t seem like they’re making better cars, the most innovative things he points out is a funky gear shifter… But that they’re making them more cheaply. That doesn’t seem to be because of any production innovation or finding some hidden efficiency that western companies overlooked, moreso heavy subsidies and state support combined with a cheap labor market. Hopefully this competition makes the west adopt the former and not the latter, but considering the current political environment we’ll probably end up with the reverse.
Better doesn’t always mean innovative. How many new innovation have really happened in cars in recent years? Is this years iPhones better than last years? by nominal additions to the package without any real headliner, of course yes. That’s what’s happening.
The article doesn’t even try to say they’re being innovative and you’re really trying to shoe horn your extreme dislike of the fact they’re ahead.
In what ways are they ahead though besides price. A new iPhone has more battery, a camera with more MP, a faster chip etc. These cars have the same or shorter range then they’re competitors, same or slower acceleration, same cargo space, charging speed etc. just cheaper because of the reasons mentioned above.
When Japanese cars started taking off in the 70s it was because they had way better fuel economy and build quality then anything Detroit was putting out at the time, they were better at those fields. I don’t see any field where these cars are better at besides price.
What i wanna see from china is an offline bare necessities EV that doesnt record and report everything you do to the manufacturer that then sells this data. Most new western and probably chinese cars aswell currently do that stuff.
I want publicly accessible open source tools for analyzing faults and helping with repair. From other existing open hardware projects coming from china, we know that some companies can do this very well if they want to.
But the recording and reporting is the goal of their subsidized EVs
The goal is to move away from oil
It looks like the article is focused on the myriad styles and scopes of new EVs, production of which remains a struggle for the industry at large.
Once the 1980s-era Joint Ventures strategy broke down, a number of independent Chinese automakers began introducing their own models. And the end result appears to be a car industry in China more akin to the pre-mega-merger US Automotive industry.
The number of small-sized vehicles is notable. American Big Three car companies have all but given up making coups and sedans, in favor of SUVs and trucks. Toyota’s execs aren’t interested in full EV power train vehicles, leaving that market to Hyundai, Nissan, and whatever’s happening at Tesla.
This isn’t radical innovation of the concept car so much as it is radical entrepreneurial in the country where you’d least expect it.