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boonhet

@ boonhet @sopuli.xyz

Posts
3
Comments
4121
Joined
12 mo. ago

  • The world's carmakers are struggling to compete with China

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  • state intervention is actually superior

    For every EV built, Chinese government pays the manufacturer, but it's not exclusive to EVs built for the domestic market. It's EVs built for any market.

    That's tens or hundreds of billions each year that the Chinese government could spend on its own people, but instead spends on trying to make western car companies bankrupt.

    Is it actually better in some way for Chinese people in their day to day lives if non-Chinese people to get cheaper cars, or is that modern day colonialism, trying to gain more resources in the long term at the expense of people living in other countries?

  • The world's carmakers are struggling to compete with China

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  • The US isn't paying for every car manufactured. The Chinese government has also spent tens of billions in R&D grants and such, we're not even talking about that, we're talking about the simple fact here that if I buy a Chinese EV, China is essentially paying me to do it (or rather, paying their manufacturers to build them), PER car. Not some lump sump investment into their manufacturing years ago.

    The US isn't paying their manufacturers every time a new EV rolls off the line destined for another country.

  • The world's carmakers are struggling to compete with China

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  • Then why does nobody else do it? Why doesn't Germany pay their manufacturers for every car built?

    Nobody except for the world's biggest economy can afford to literally subsidize manufacturing of luxury goods for overseas markets.

  • The world's carmakers are struggling to compete with China

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  • Yes, because western employees like getting paid and working 40 hour weeks. Only way to be competitive is to start treating western employees like shit (unions won't allow) or shifting manufacturing to China.

  • The world's carmakers are struggling to compete with China

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  • Yes, the super high wages in China have gotten to a point where BYD's average employee in China (that includes everything from manufacturing to top level leadership) makes about a third of what a manufacturing employee in the IG Metall union makes in Germany.

    It's like I keep saying. If the west wants to even dream of being competitive with Chinese manufacturers, unions need to go bye-bye. Or we can tariff the subsidized + cheap labour cars.

  • The world's carmakers are struggling to compete with China

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  • Lisbon to Vladivostok is a Russian ambition for sure, but not one of partnership lmao, it's an imperial ambition going back to the actual Russian Empire.

  • The world's carmakers are struggling to compete with China

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  • Yes, surely the manufacturing plant employees live in downtown high-rise buildings next to a beautiful park.

    Do you want me to post a photo of Central Park or Times Square? That certainly shows how the American manufacturing employees live.

  • The world's carmakers are struggling to compete with China

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  • If I go buy a Tesla right now in Estonia, the US government isn't paying Tesla extra for building the car, despite the fact that Musk was literally president of the united states a year ago. If I buy a Mercedes, Germany won't pay the company to build the car. If I buy a BYD, the Chinese government will pay BYD.

    Tesla received tax benefits and grants for building factories, but that's normal, the Chinese do that too. Nobody's complaining about that. It's the fact that they literally still pay per car built, even if the cars are sold to other countries, long after the companies are successful.

    Then there's the working hours. 996 is technically illegal now, but plenty of Chinese companies still do it. There was another comment somewhere in this thread where a person said they thought Chinese factory employees have good living conditions, as he'd done the job for a few months and didn't have any issues affording things. When asked how much they had to work? 84 hours. That's worse than 996, which is "only" 72 hours.

  • The world's carmakers are struggling to compete with China

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  • Okay, now add the labour of every other step of the process too. The 15% is at VW's own factory. But they buy parts from, among others, Bosch and ZF who also have employees producing the parts.

    Then also add the labour costs for R&D. BYD's average employee salary in China, including everyone from manufacturing to design to engineering to leadership, was less than half of what the manufacturing plant employees make at VW's German plants and still significantly less than the Bratislava plant. Only top level leadership at BYD gets high salaries.

    Which is why VW has been fighting the IG Metall union for the right to close down plants they can't afford to run because their cars aren't expensive enough to be profitable at these labour costs.

    It's gonna suck for everyone involved, but that's just what you have to accept if the biggest economy in the world has both super cheap labour AND manufacturing subsidies. It's game over for everyone else unless people are willing to take a major pay cut.

  • The world's carmakers are struggling to compete with China

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  • Ew that sounds like the American system. Disgusting.

  • Please

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  • Fuck that. A lake of lager for me! I don't want to get accustomed to fancy stuff.

  • Interesting how if you live close to something famous like the pyramids or the NYC skyline you just take it for granted.

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  • Wanna trade places for a while? I'm certainly not used to your view.

  • Well said

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  • I identify as a family of four.

  • Sloup

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  • If you pay the carpenter to make something, he should make what you asked him to.

    If the carpenter makes free stuff out of his own kindness, you don't get to complain that it isn't exactly what you asked for.

  • Hello 911, it's me again

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  • The British are animals

  • Damn straight!

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  • The truck driver's job is much harder to do day in and day out. It's also much more necessary. However, it's also significantly easier to train a truck driver than it is to train developers and there's no infinite upside potential for delivery like there is with software projects in some cases (unicorn startups) and there are so many other expenses to run a delivery company that a software company might not have that they need to run on pretty thin margins, otherwise we're all paying more for all of our food.

    First job where I worked as a dev, they took on 3 of us on the same time, all entry-level. One of us was a physicist who was laid off by the university since the government reduced spending on academia. Absolutely an intelligent person. Didn't last past the probationary period, he just didn't get things naturally on his own, he needed a lot of guidance. Over the years I've seen that nearly half the people hired into entry-level roles don't learn to become independent enough by the end of their probationary period to be retained after it. Sometimes it's seniors too, they've worked at a place that just cranks out very similar solutions day in and day out (e.g only done frontend and only with one framework, or only a bunch of CRUD applications in one single tech stack) for like 7 or 8 years, that place has a downturn and then they apply for a job elsewhere and they just don't adapt.

    Not everyone's cut out to be a truck driver either, but once someone has learned to drive trucks, they can drive trucks for another company too. Whether your new employee starts pulling in profit on the first week or you need 4 months to determine if there's a decent chance of them being a net benefit by the end of the first year has a lot of bearing on how badly you want to retain your existing talent.

    Anyway, in my country only the top talent at a couple of companies gets paid significantly more than truck drivers. A junior developer might make less than someone who just started driving a truck. Places like the US just have highly inflated salaries for devs because they're expected to work in high cost of living cities and compete like crazy for their jobs.

  • French Parliament member Karl Olive filmed jumping on a car after PSG victory

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  • The problem is that the right in many countries have taken to using the American definition of liberal. In my country (Estonia), the word "liberast" (basically "libtard" except gay connotation, as pederast is just gay in common parlance here, doesn't matter if the other party is a boy or a grown man) has been thrown around plenty and it's NOT about economic policy, I can tell ya that.

  • Google won't rest until Gemini is everywhere in your home

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  • CoMaps is the less suspicious fork. Organic was made by two shady dudes from Russia and Belarus.

  • Google won't rest until Gemini is everywhere in your home

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  • Probably the latter