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”
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.
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.