Have you seen the level of robotic automation in Chinese car factories?

Not sure what universe you live in...

A UBS teardown estimated the BYD Seal’s (premium version) gross margin at roughly 16%. These cars are selling for $50k in Thailand. These data points suggest BYD is leveraging vertical integration, not selling the Seal at a loss.

I used to think the same way until this year on a trip to Asia. I was genuinely surprised by the range of new Chinese cars. Not just the low-cost models, but truly impressive, high-end vehicles with super innovative designs. I am very pro local manufacturing. But as a builder at heart, I have to admire the builder innovation energy coming out of Chinese auto companies. This wasn't just centrally planned... Its clear innovation.

This strange conspiracy theory considering PRC cars sell for 40-80%+ markup vs domestic market. Struggle to think of single sector where cheap Chinese entrants have hiked prices after eliminating competition. What has happened is they eliminate competitors and prices stays low because they're good at building things cheaply, while keeping things cheap also prevents new competitors. Like they've been exporting cheap / value goods for 20+ years now. When are they going to jack up the price?

I think the issue isn't running the established companies in the ground - EVs aren't really that complicated for new brands to bootstrap if China stopped their subventions... It's where these cars are being produced, and that's already China for almost everything, or am I wrong there?

Seriously, if China wanted to ruin these companies it could just pass a legislation that makes production for $established_brand impossible, and that company would be hard pressed for years to get production up and running - and I sincerely doubt they would have enough runway to get through that.

> but now that market of house owners is saturated, since they already own EVs so of course sales have tanked, d'uh!

How are you defining tanked? They stalled for about a year but have resumed growth.

> Europeans couldn't justify the purchase of an EV especially given the lower purchasing power compared to USaians.

And yet, somehow, Europe remains a larger market for electric cars than the US (of course, China is far larger than either).

> so now the industry is stuck with an economic recession to boot waiting for more regulations to save it

Again, VW etc seem fairly healthy. Stellantis not so much (though they are somehow still profitable), but their strategy of just owning all the brands that everyone thinks no longer exist and not doing much with them always seemed fairly incoherent.

All in all, this feels like you've come up with a narrative, and are just running with it regardless of reality, tbh.

Funny thing is, the rest of the industry has now caught up to this particular ugliness, so as it turns out it was futuristic. I really disliked the look of the Nissan Leaf ten years ago, but I now own one and whilst I don't love it's stylings, it's not stand-out-in-the-crowd ugly like it used to be - not because it's changed, but all the other cars have caught up (to the ugly, unfortunately).

I just wonder whether they made them look like 'normal' cars back then would they have sold better?

Thanks, this is something important I forgot about.

Tesla and BYD went fully vertically integrated by now, while EU car companies have done the exact opposite over the last 20-30 years in the quest for maximizing shareholder returns, outsourcing everything to the cheapest bidder and resorted to mostly badge engineering, assembling cheap parts from various OEMs under high markups sometimes not even in their own factories, hoping the brand prestige alone will carry them.

When you outsource everything, in time you also loose core competence. Bringing back core competence is difficult but not impossible except now they're in a recession so they have a lot less money than before to invest in innovation.