- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
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I hate this underhanded bullshit, build better cars. Competition is healthy in the market and seeing manufacturers push to ban the Chinese market just because they can’t compete is bullshit.
US businesses eagerly gave up the American manufacturing sector when it meant they didn’t have to pay American wages anymore in the 90s. Now that China is cutting out US business itself, they’re all up in arms.
Wages are not the problem. It’s US healthcare costs. This is why the Mexican and Canadian auto sectors exist.
I call it the great illusion of “globalism for thee but not for me”.
The managerial class in the Western world championed globalized trade, outsourcing, and open markets under the assumption that only low skilled, blue collar workers would face market disruption. When that happened, the working class was told to “retrain for the digital age”, in other words “deal with it, not our problem nor responsibility”.
This credentialed elite mistakenly believed that their specialized degrees, cognitive skills, and institutional placement rendered them permanently immune to the same forces of automation, offshoring, and global competition they so eagerly unleashed on others.
That illusion is shattering today for several macroeconomic and structural reasons, the original architecture of globalism, as engineered in the 80s, completely failed to anticipate the modern shifts redefining our world, the total digitization of the economy through the internet, foreign competitors like China bypassing Western credentialized gatekeeping entirely to scale up the value chain, and the rise of automation also eroding the premium on cognitive labor.
In the end, they’re just reaping what they sow.
This post I saw yesterday on Bluesky is gonna age like fine wine, it seems. It will be 2040 and most of the cars on US roads will still be from 2000’s and 2010’s because dipshit politicians paid by Ford and GM will ban everything else.
In Cuba the old cars are meticulously maintained, though. In the US it will be all rusty old death traps.
[Seriously though, the bad economy is already turning the roads into this. The number of frighteningly unmaintained and crashed-but-not-repaired cars is noticeably increasing lately.]
In the US it will be all rusty old death traps.
This description already applies to new Cybertrucks.
Rusty new deathtraps
They don’t rust, they burn.
Do you not have mandatory checks for cars in the US? Here you have to go to a certified mechanic’s shop within 4 years after the car is first registered and every 2 years after that. They check brakes, steering, emissions and lights and if you fail any of those checks you are not allowed to drive that car until you get it fixed.
Do you not have mandatory checks for cars in the US?
Not in most states. only 13/50. Cars crash on failures, wheels fly off and kill, brakes fail, no one gives a fuck.
My state recently did away with annual inspections. It used to be required before you could renew your annual license plate registration. They’d do exactly what you said: check brakes, lights, emissions, steering, dashboard lights, etc and you had to pass all of them. Now none of that is required, because “small government” or some other BS.
So yeah, now we have a ton of screaming metal death traps on the road, because of course we do. Normally those cars would get failed at inspection if they were missing all of their brake lights. Now it will only be discovered when they get rear-ended. And wrecked cars that wouldn’t otherwise be legal are suddenly driving all over the place, because they can still technically get from A to B… They just don’t do it safely.
Depends heavily on the state, but even inspections in the strictest states do not compare to the ones in Europe. Some states have no inspections whatsoever.
hence for the gas-guzzlers for the small pp, and for soccer mom karens, large suvs.
Depends on the state, and how eagerly and effectively they enforce it.
When I was a kid my state had yearly inspections, but that was stopped like 25 years ago. Occasionally you still see one of the green stickers on the windshield of an old car.
All I can attest to is in Virginia, yes, in Michigan, no.
37/50 states, no. I avoid Michigan highways.
There are different kinds of “old cars”, the kind of old cars made before 70s that are really inefficient with gasoline, but might last another hundred years if maintained, and the kind of old cars made up to 90s that are harder to keep from falling apart, and then the kind made later, which is - not really for future generations.
The more optimized their production is and the less luxurious they are as a thing, the closer they are to something that’ll only last their guaranteed time. Preferably for the producer - falling apart into rust a couple of days after that.
By the 80s the Mercedes mechanical injection diesel engined cars were capable of a million+ miles if maintained at all, that was a major business mistake (killing your new unit sales because all your customers already have good cars) which they slowly reversed across the next 20 years. Now they make disposables like everybody else.
The whole global auto industry should be incentivized to go back to that “runs forever” design focus of the Mercedes W123 series and improve on it with more longevity, cheaper serviceability. Efficiency and emissions don’t mean much when you’re scrapping the whole 5000lbs of automobile every 10 years.
The whole global auto industry should be incentivized to go back to that “runs forever” design focus of the Mercedes W123 series and improve on it with more longevity, cheaper serviceability.
That works when the car itself is something produced in small batches and a very capital design and costs accordingly, or when its maintenance makes bank and for the producer at that, or when there’s continued growth, so you don’t sell new cars to people with old cars.
I mean, of course there’s the variant of cars being as modular as PCs and a Mercedes of Theseus being possible. Always profitable for the producer, since from time to time the customer buys spare parts (a law is necessary that it’s legal to make and sell spare parts for anyone ; just like with Apple stuff, official things will be more popular), and never just fully going to junk at once. Seems the most realistic variant for me, economically, of the good ones.
There’s another variant, a dystopian one, being implemented in fact, where car producers own you via parts pairing, planned obsolescence, parts barely surviving guarantee age and impeded repair and telemetry, all at once.
Without ability to put pressure almost like in war, the modular variant would be the equilibrium, unfortunately we the humanity haven’t yet adjusted our societies for computers (no need for a more complex description).
Tesla literally private labels its batteries from China and is directly pattered with the PRC via this arrangement with CATL. Such bullshit
The US has lost the ability to act in its own interest. Run, flee! I promise it will all get worse soon.
Run, flee! I promise it will all get worse
Sure, but where to?
Do. It. Do a flip. I want to see China buy a bunch of stock in publically traded American Automakers. Just so those automakers get forced out of the market too. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
While the article focuses on Mercedes-Benz, as a Volvo owner, I was immediately concerned about what will happen when my lease is up.
Buried at the bottom of the article are these three paragraphs:
Volvo, which is majority-owned by Shufu’s Geely, said on Tuesday that it received specific authorization from the U.S. government to bypass federal bans restricting connected vehicle software and hardware linked to China.
Volvo confirmed its special authorization but did not immediately respond to questions about the other bills and their potential impact on the company.
Volvo Cars sold 121,600 vehicles in the U.S. last year. Mercedes-Benz sold 303,200 passenger cars and 12,400 vans in the country during the same period.
I assume it’ll go the same way as the Chinese router ban, and there will be loopholes for the Special Favorites, probably totally unrelated to any monetary contributions to Trump’s circle.
Don’t worry, they’ll just give the Mustard Mussolini the first Mercedes-Benz Peace Prize and get an exception.
mustard mussolini 😂
less douches driving those in the USA.
