And, a recent tour of one of the Asian powerhouse’s vehicle plants has proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt, at least to Honda President and CEO Toshihiro Mibe.
“We have no chance against this,” Mibe said upon a visit to a Shanghai parts factory, commenting on its seamless automation across all levels of production. Logistics, procurement and all aspects of the process were so automated, in fact, that he did not spot a single human worker on the supplier’s floor.
Ford executives saying even three years ago that China was way ahead of the game
Toyota’s CEO has likewise said regarding not just his company, but the industry in general, “unless things change, we will not survive”
That’s the problem with disrupters, people are so involved with dismissing them that they don’t see what’s happening. For years it was all about cheap Chinese labour then turn around and discover that it’s really all about robotic factories and slick organisation. Throw in EVs and it’s the same but worse.
“Detroit Motor City”. I.e subsidizing losses.
Of course you could apply protectionism, but that wouldn’t be fair and would set a public precedent on the global markets.
But yeah, the petroleum lobby really managed to screw us sideways. All those anti EV, anti solar and anti wind campaigns.
It is perhaps the biggest, oldest, slowest moving and most fraudulent of bailouts in all of history.
We are just that stupid.
OH NO! THE FREE MARKET IS WORKING BUT NOT IN OUR FAVOR!!!
How many of those companies spent literal billions of dollars on stock buybacks to inflate share market price over the last decade instead of investing in the people and facilities and products to remain competitive. Even if there is dumping I doubt it’s anywhere near the combined spent on share price inflation buybacks & savings instead of investing in the workers and business, these companies enjoy unjustified tax breaks and subsidies from their governments as well.
This is a the economy being equated to wealth/investor class problem. Workers in and around cities want cheap affordable evs & charging infrastructure for renters, mechanics and parts producers want to build and work on affordable evs. People who own stocks expecting growth returns and executive compensation want to sell 10 cars a year for a trillion dollars each if they could.
Yeah, this is what bad leadership is. Lack of leadership really. China and the US both found themselves the manufacturers of the world.
China took the money and built an infrastructure. The US took the money and destroyed unions…
It all went up oil subsidies…
GOOD.
automation across all levels of production
Maybe its true. Regardless, article sounds like anti-worker propaganda to me. China is gonna eat our lunch! Better take a pay cut, and be glad you’re not laid off!
I get your perspective, but complete automation with as little human input as possible is exactly how you make cheap products.
This has been reported on by multiple sources outside of the automotive industry about the rise of dark factories in China.
It’s not a secret that China has heavily invested in automation in part due to the necessity thanks to unforeseen consequences of the one child policy. There’s a very much lack of labor workers because the current generation are full of people who ultra emphasized education, even in rural areas, and this generation has no intention of working labor jobs. I don’t think Western countries, especially America with their abysmal education and having the average citizen reading at a sixth grade level wouldn’t be able to absorb that level of automation without tanking the economy unlike China’s unique situation.
Now what I’m going to probably find interesting is what’s going to happen when inevitably with the revocation of the one child policy and you see the next generation of young adults that may not have the same level of education since you now can’t pump all your resources in the singular kid and how that’s going to affect them. I do wonder how long this competitive advantage will last.
The one child policy was revoked a decade ago.
You need to update your China bad talking points.
Guess how old the children are from a policy that was ended 11 years ago.
Now, guess how old the people are who would be working in a car factory if it weren’t automated.
Finally, take 30 seconds to really understand why your post was idiotic.
I see you have no reading comprehension skills.
Single child families are still common even if it’s not a law anymore.
While Toyota and Honda at least have an acclaimed history in low cost and efficient vehicles, Ford is literally 1/3rd the the reason the US doesn’t manufacture sedans anymore, with the other 2/3rds being GM and Chrysler.
I actually witnesses them layoff their entire sedan division in real time when they announced the end of the fusion. I’m pretty sure it was mostly liquidated by the time covid hit.
Because trucks are made with safety loopholes and have higher profit margins, and Ford shit the bed with the Fusion, Festiva and Focus with a garbage transmission they knowingly sold for 7 years.
I’m still mad we lost sport sedans for this EPA bs.
Everything is a crossover or SUV to gg ez the emission laws because of the weight class.
Random 5 seater SUV will be producing more emissions than a WRX or Evo Lancer.
Okay, so you’re getting out-competed in the market. Pay proper wages, invest in innovation instead of executive salaries, and take a slimmer profit margin to help your customers.
Did you not read the story? The reason why they can’t compete is because China has NO wages to pay. Their plants are fully automated.
Paying proper wages would make Toyota and Honda even LESS competitive.
The trouble is the opposition is subsidised so they can pretty much run negative margins and still turn a profit.
Paying proper wages is the opposite of what would help here.
It is way bigger than that.
The traditional model of manufacturing has been multiplied by 10, “traditional” auto makers will not be able to afford retooling to even produce anything close to the volume of byd and their ilk.
Don’t charge $100,000 for a regular fucking vehicle?
Seriously, all the useless expensive shit they add to vehicles to make them unmaintainable data miners is why they’re going to get slaughtered.
Give me an electric pickup with 4WD and crank up windows. Preferably no radio. I’d buy one of those Slates in a heartbeat if it were 4WD, as much as I hate Jeff Bezos.
Don’t charge $100,000 for a regular fucking vehicle?
Chevy Bolt was under $25,000. No one bought them. Total sales in Q2 2025: 33.
But they sold hundreds of thousands on $100K pickup trucks.
The Bolt was discontinued in 2023 and won’t be made again until 2026. Not really surprising that a vehicle that is no longer being made isn’t selling a lot.
Well I need a vehicle, not a chevy bolt
I didn’t even know the Bolt was around in 2025. Perhaps they should’ve done a little more to let the public know about them. I think they really wanted to use them for tax purposes, not take away sales from vehicles that make them much more money.
It kind of wasn’t. While you could buy a Bolt in 2025, they stopped making new ones in 2023. Anything on the lots was just leftover inventory, so not surprising nobody was buying a vehicle that wasn’t current.
I don’t think that’s why they are too expensive.
China is pumping out nice cars for like 15k and I guarantee you it has all sorts of data mining. China could probably make one of those Slate things for like $5k.
They all have data mining, regardless of country. China subsidises EVs even when they’re sold abroad, to kill the competition. Of course most legacy manufacturers have also lost the plot when it comes to affordability. To make matters worse, many of them also have to deal with expensive union labour. Chinese labour is still much cheaper.
China could probably make one of those Slate things for like $5k.
That’s dumb.
No, Chinese EVs are not $15K in export markets, they are over $25K.
Well I guess your high paid CEOs and executives really fucked up then, right? That’s exactly what you were saying? Because everyone else saw this coming from miles away, and we have been clamoring for these kinds of cars for a long ass time, even small gas cars are hard to find now. So what are those guys paid such high salaries for if they are so completely dense…?
The only reason these cars are so cheap is because they have no humans manufacturing them and have heavy subsidies from the government.
Are you really saying you would have been happy to hear that a CEO laid off all their blue collar workers and took government bailout money?
No of course I wouldn’t, but then, none of that would be necessary if they were listening to their customers instead of watching their profit margins, paid their workers and executives what they were worth (a lot more and a lot less), not spending a fortune on lobbying against the inevitable future, etc.
They thought they had captured the market and could get away with anything because there were no other options.
Now there are options. They fucked around, now they find out.
The stock markets have turned every company into a bunch of myopic dipshits.
Lmfao at the pro capitalism crybabies in this thread
- Free market is superior
- We’re getting steamrolled by a planned economy
Pick one.
Are we supposed to feel bad about corporations ?
No.
This continues to baffle me. Europe, the US, and likely even Japan was never going to be able to win the race to the bottom on price. China understands its supply chain and mineral strengths and has optimized its entire production towards churning out good (or good enough) EVs at scale.
Still, the US could continue to wall China out of its market with massive tariffs while also promoting alternative cheaper vehicle options, a large portion of which should and could be EVs. But the US hasn’t even done that… Domestic manufacturers have run screaming from EVs, seemingly ceding the entire field to China.
But the US hasn’t even done that…
And continues to stubbornly refuse to.
This is a repeat of the '70s when fuel prices shot up, and people started buying fuel efficient Japanese cars.
The American manufacturers just continued making their land yachts and muscle cars until they came up with such innovations as the Ford Pinto or the AMC Gremlin…
And even those weren’t as fuel efficient as the average Toyota or Honda or Datsun of the era.
Ford, GM and Stelantis are going to just keep pumping out SUVs as fast as they can with only the occational token EV that doesn’t meet what the market demands.
Mustang drivers or pickup truck drivers aren’t the ones most actively seeking an EV.
They need to come up with an EV that competes with a Corolla. Or one that is in the same ballpark as the BYD cars. Not on price alone - no North America based manufacturer can compete directly on price against a subsidizd Chinese company, but on the being a car part.
Skill issue
They should learn how to vibe-code
Not my portfolio!
