VW seems to be panicking...
Discussion
Puzzles said:
TheDeuce said:
Puzzles said:
There’s no reason why vw can’t produce compelling cars.
They can, via Porsche, Audi, Cupra, Skoda...they can create compelling cars via those brandsBut as a vw a car is expected to do everything proficiently, reliably, at a sensible price. The Chinese can now replicate that at a more sensible price.
They could in theory change the USP of 'VW' but that's tricky given that their name literally promises a focus on cars for the masses...
These days you can buy a Chinese car that is a better overall quality and package than the Italian/french stuff, for less money.
It's not a European car market anymore, loyalty is rapidly fading.
Puzzles said:
TheDeuce said:
Puzzles said:
There’s no reason why vw can’t produce compelling cars.
They can, via Porsche, Audi, Cupra, Skoda...they can create compelling cars via those brandsBut as a vw a car is expected to do everything proficiently, reliably, at a sensible price. The Chinese can now replicate that at a more sensible price.
They could in theory change the USP of 'VW' but that's tricky given that their name literally promises a focus on cars for the masses...
Silvanus said:
Puzzles said:
TheDeuce said:
Puzzles said:
There’s no reason why vw can’t produce compelling cars.
They can, via Porsche, Audi, Cupra, Skoda...they can create compelling cars via those brandsBut as a vw a car is expected to do everything proficiently, reliably, at a sensible price. The Chinese can now replicate that at a more sensible price.
They could in theory change the USP of 'VW' but that's tricky given that their name literally promises a focus on cars for the masses...
These days it's absolutely about warranty and tech. People are no longer afraid they need to spend more for a reliable, safe car - they're all reliable and safe enough. People want gadgets as standard... people buying a new car want the fancy stuff, same as their new smart phone.
VW has offered a restrained, sensible EV offering. People want a little more flair.
Puzzles said:
Maybe I’m in a bubble but no one I know buys a Kia, MG etc they still want the German brands.
I wouldn't even say 'want' but that there is no 'need' in certain areas or demographics. However, the fundamental issue the European car manufacturing industry has is that they've spent years applying rules and regs so as to try to keep out Asian competition that now a series of costs have spiked, consumer demands have changed and the countdown to pure EV is approaching the final decade, all at the same time they've shot themselves in the foot as their own medicine is currently poisoning them. They haven't even built enough battery assembly plants to meet their own legal requirements on their tariffs.
Puzzles said:
Maybe I’m in a bubble but no one I know buys a Kia, MG etc they still want the German brands.
you're in a bubble, Kia and MG outsell all there European rivals other than VW with an increasing market share, Kia massively so. MGs market share has risen incredibly fast, the HS hit the top 10 best selling cars earlier in the year. VW may still be the best selling brand here in the UK, but its market share is falling, despite having around 25 different models on sale. The tide is definitely in the favour of Chinese and Korean brands, only European brand that's really on the up is Dacia.jjones said:
China is doing to the car industry what Japan did to the bike industry. EV has added another a layer of complexity to this which the Chinese manufactures seem to be able to use as an accelerator for their market share increase via price and rapidly improving quality. The British bike industry sneered at the Japanese rivals and look how that ended for them.
Wait until the truck industry saves the day for the western world. jason61c said:
Puzzles said:
Maybe I’m in a bubble but no one I know buys a Kia, MG etc they still want the German brands.
That is a strange bubble to be in. The id etc is seen as a ‘cheaper’ car.
But at the budget end, Europe has never been able to compete against the manufacturing might of either North America or Asia and has been reliant on branding and lobbying to try and keep them at bay.
The idiots lobbied to get taxes applied to none European batteries and then never bothered building out their own battery supply just assuming it would be done for them, as happens among things that suckle from the State. Stellantis haven't even procured any formal supplies because they're too focussed fighting internally in one massive international knob slapping battle.
coetzeeh said:
The EU are already exploring tariffs for Chinese cars to counter subsidised Chinese brands. China apparently outraged. The EU won’t allow manufacturing to fail given The amount of people the industry employs.
The thing is.The world's universities have been giving away our IP for nearly free, the corporations in the west have milked the low wage economy of China for years, and we got in bed with the devil long ago.
Cam we even make electronics anymore ?
Pit Pony said:
coetzeeh said:
The EU are already exploring tariffs for Chinese cars to counter subsidised Chinese brands. China apparently outraged. The EU won’t allow manufacturing to fail given The amount of people the industry employs.
The thing is.The world's universities have been giving away our IP for nearly free, the corporations in the west have milked the low wage economy of China for years, and we got in bed with the devil long ago.
Cam we even make electronics anymore ?
In the place where I work:
One research group, hugely successful in repeatedly gaining EPSRC research grants. Well into the millions at this point. Highly technical, mathematical, and, increasingly ML-related, area. Hits all the right buttons for the Government's vision of UK Plc and, therefore, gets lots of money thrown at it.
The Prof leading the research group is a Chinese national.
The lecturers associated with the research group are all Chinese nationals.
Every single PhD student they recruit is a Chinese national (strange, that).
And they don't interact with anyone outside their group.
So, UK research funding is generating IP that is flowing straight to China year after year.
The Government doesn't care because it's "supporting UK Plc."
The University VC absolutely does not care because these guys are generating the research income and writing the papers and that means league table movement in the "right" direction.
This situation is not rare across the UK.
And don't get me started on Confucius Institutes...
Pit Pony said:
The thing is.
The world's universities have been giving away our IP for nearly free, the corporations in the west have milked the low wage economy of China for years, and we got in bed with the devil long ago.
Cam we even make electronics anymore ?
We can and do make electronics (my firm does), we just don’t build on the same scale with low cost that other countries do. The world's universities have been giving away our IP for nearly free, the corporations in the west have milked the low wage economy of China for years, and we got in bed with the devil long ago.
Cam we even make electronics anymore ?
coetzeeh said:
The EU are already exploring tariffs for Chinese cars to counter subsidised Chinese brands. China apparently outraged. The EU won’t allow manufacturing to fail given The amount of people the industry employs.
Yup but that is their cross to bear, not ours. We went through the pain of deindustrialisation 30 years ago and there is zero need or upside in the people of U.K. now paying for other nation's failures to exit the 20th century, while implementing laws that kill that industry. As for state subsidies, the European brands only exist today because they suckle at the teat of the State, as do the assemblers in the U.K. They receive enormous subsidies from our taxes and they get numerous laws enacted to protect them from competition. All of which we, as tax payers pay for and then pay again when we purchase a car.
From the U.K. perspective, modern cars really are just rented white goods and we should be free to import from the cheapest suitable markets like we do TVs and fridges and exercise our natural competitive advantage that's been randomly handed to us by our European lobbyists.
Pit Pony said:
coetzeeh said:
The EU are already exploring tariffs for Chinese cars to counter subsidised Chinese brands. China apparently outraged. The EU won’t allow manufacturing to fail given The amount of people the industry employs.
The thing is.The world's universities have been giving away our IP for nearly free, the corporations in the west have milked the low wage economy of China for years, and we got in bed with the devil long ago.
Cam we even make electronics anymore ?
coetzeeh said:
The EU are already exploring tariffs for Chinese cars to counter subsidised Chinese brands. China apparently outraged. The EU won’t allow manufacturing to fail given The amount of people the industry employs.
The ACEA are making noises around the potential cost implications around 'rules of origin'. Neither the EU or the UK are anywhere near where they need to be and a predicting many homegrown electric cars to be hit with the 10% tariff.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66889029
TheDeuce said:
Pit Pony said:
coetzeeh said:
The EU are already exploring tariffs for Chinese cars to counter subsidised Chinese brands. China apparently outraged. The EU won’t allow manufacturing to fail given The amount of people the industry employs.
The thing is.The world's universities have been giving away our IP for nearly free, the corporations in the west have milked the low wage economy of China for years, and we got in bed with the devil long ago.
Cam we even make electronics anymore ?
TheDeuce said:
We can do the design work as well as anyone else, better than most in fact. The manufacturing though.. not so much. We're not at all competitive when it comes to the manufacture of anything designed to sell globally. We chose shorter working weeks and higher welfare and rights. Asia did not, hence they remain able to manufacture things far cheaper than we can.
Japan have as good and sometimes better working rights and welfare than the UK, we imported their management practices because they were better than our own.They out competed the west by investing in new technology, not by cheap sweatshop practices.
Tariffs and quota limits kept them from totally destroying the European and USA manufacturers to the point they had to build factories in the local market.
China are doing it differently, they have stolen western IP, we made that easy for them by giving them easy access, they are now using their despotic system to produce at pence in the pound.
We have to decide if thats OK, or shut them out.
That does somewhat whitewash the 'work or die' mantra of Japan in the latter 20th century along with being able, like Germany, to allocate all manufacturing resources, intellectual and fiscal, away from military investment fighting the Cold War etc.
The U.K. was uncompetitive at manufacturing cars. The post war labour force became less and less productive and more and more costly and management quality was dismal as the intelligent and diligent people went into more lucrative enterprises.
All the U.K. does today in terms of car manufacturing is subsidise overseas firms to assemble some cars which employ a few thousand people which then mostly get exported to Europe while everyone in the U.K. imports their cars from overseas.
Outside of the top end of the market we should recognise that we stopped the mass production of generic utility cars decades ago and the risks of the transition to EV are simply not ours to bear. That is the reward of the pain taken in the 90s during the final stages of winding down 20th century manufacturing.
We need to also recognise that the reason many people are suddenly and only now up in arms about Chinese goods, despite living off them practically their entire lives is because industries such as the European automotive industry are buying PR and even propaganda to try and salvage the dismal situation that they are 100% to blame for.
The question the U.K. needs to be asking itself isn't about China or India but why we should pay vast sums to protect some legacy European manufacturers when it is of absolutely zero benefit to us. We paid that bill 30 years ago as a nation. It's now the turn of France and Germany to pay their bill for something they've delayed and made far worse through their own legislation.
The U.K. by deindustrialising decades earlier has today a unique competitive advantage, along with the ability to become energy self sufficient and it would be mad to throw that away just to help the shareholders of Mercedes, BMW, VW, Renault etc etc.
The U.K. was uncompetitive at manufacturing cars. The post war labour force became less and less productive and more and more costly and management quality was dismal as the intelligent and diligent people went into more lucrative enterprises.
All the U.K. does today in terms of car manufacturing is subsidise overseas firms to assemble some cars which employ a few thousand people which then mostly get exported to Europe while everyone in the U.K. imports their cars from overseas.
Outside of the top end of the market we should recognise that we stopped the mass production of generic utility cars decades ago and the risks of the transition to EV are simply not ours to bear. That is the reward of the pain taken in the 90s during the final stages of winding down 20th century manufacturing.
We need to also recognise that the reason many people are suddenly and only now up in arms about Chinese goods, despite living off them practically their entire lives is because industries such as the European automotive industry are buying PR and even propaganda to try and salvage the dismal situation that they are 100% to blame for.
The question the U.K. needs to be asking itself isn't about China or India but why we should pay vast sums to protect some legacy European manufacturers when it is of absolutely zero benefit to us. We paid that bill 30 years ago as a nation. It's now the turn of France and Germany to pay their bill for something they've delayed and made far worse through their own legislation.
The U.K. by deindustrialising decades earlier has today a unique competitive advantage, along with the ability to become energy self sufficient and it would be mad to throw that away just to help the shareholders of Mercedes, BMW, VW, Renault etc etc.
DonkeyApple said:
That does somewhat whitewash the 'work or die' mantra of Japan in the latter 20th century
karoshi, or death by overwork, was a post WW2 practice that had died 3 generations ago, they have had very similar working hours to the USA since the mid 90'sThe culture shifted when the employers broke the contract of employees never being made redundant, something people like Ghosn introduced to Japanese majors like Nissan.
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