I think there's room in the market for a back to basics car company that takes out all this bs, goes back to crank windows and all that crap and sells new vehicles for an affordable cost with a good warranty.
It would probably crush today.
Edit: I got like 400 responses saying "slate" ok I get it you can stop
That’s because the Chinese government forced its cell phone and modem manufacturers to put spy devices in the ones sold to Western countries. It’s actually pretty interesting if you read up on it but the cell phone ban was actually a good thing. Unless of course you like the Chinese spying on you and harvesting your data.
Although I agree with the sentiment, in this case I would rather not have a Chinese spyware phone. Because then China and Google would have all my data.
Mapping the insides of non public places through gps tracking, then getting camera and sound feeds from phones in places they want to explore virtually
Canada is letting in a very small number (we also have a large car manufacturing industry). They will not trickle down, the whole point of us letting them in is to open our options after USA started a trade war with us.
I'm a mechanic and had the displeasure of working on a chinese ev (was a geely, can't remember the model) and they are bottom of the barrel quality. Cheap plastic everywhere, awful quality control and unsourceable parts. Service information was borderline incomprehensible, lots of content was missing and what was there was a shitty translation from Chinese to english. Ended up not being able to finish the repair as the bcm had bricked itself and the manufacturer doesn't sell replacement parts, at least anywhere in the USA.
If you need an example of a cheap EV imported from Asia to the US take a look at the Vinfast suv that killed a family of four because of a software error.
That comment is total nonsense with zero evidence behind it. Just Google Chinese EV crash tests and reliability rankings and see for yourself.
In the latest Euro NCAP crash tests, three Chinese cars, the AION UT, Geely E2, and Leapmotor B05, all got the top 5 star rating. Volkswagen's own Cupra Raval only got 4 stars unless you pay extra for a safety package. So who's actually taking safety seriously? Pretty clear.
Reliability is catching up too. J.D. Power's China dependability report shows the industry average dropped to 192 problems per 100 vehicles in 2026, down 5.3 from last year. First improvement after three years of getting worse.
Sales speak for themselves. In 2025, Chinese automakers sold close to 27 million vehicles globally. Japanese automakers sold around 25 million. That's the first time since 2000 that Japan lost the number one spot. BYD and Geely passed Ford and Honda on the global rankings.
Nobody's saying Chinese cars are perfect right now. But calling them "bottom of the barrel" is just ignoring the facts. The reality is: Chinese cars have caught up to European brands on safety, and they've already passed Japanese brands on sales.
Have you ever had to work on one? No. Have you ever driven or even sat in one? I doubt it. Stop parroting shit you've heard from other people. I've driven and worked on them. You haven't. End of story.
I am also a mechanic and I worked on Chinese cars and I’ve never had a problem working on them. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve used many electronics and almost all of these “American” companies made their stuff in China anyways so it was easy to work on it. If you tell someone to stop parroting shit, then you should listen to your own advice too.
That's the beauty of having industry standard testing and statistics, you never have to be in one to be able to see which are the safest, most reliable, or almost any important metric.
NCAP are no longer only crash tests though. Raval scores highly in passive and post crash safety, cheaper version does not have adaptive cruise control, which is what lost the fifth star.
The sales numbers are due to domestic production in a country with a population over double the entire continent of North America's. Crash safety numbers are near irrelevant when subpar software poses more of a risk than user error when driving. J.D. Power is also not a reputable source for anything really, its widely known that manufacturers purchase the awards and thry mean pretty much nothing.
BYDs are by far the most popular EVs in most markets. They get very few complaints from just about anyone driving them. They're also far cheaper than any US models of equivalent features. You also need look only as far as Stellantis group to see you don't even need reliability to do well in the US.
Funny because australia is having no issues with chinese evs, especially byd. The reason why parts are more difficult to get in america is they haven't been there as long, so the supply networks aren't as developed compared to the established brands. Give them a year or two and that'll all change
Service information was borderline incomprehensible
It'd be fine if you knew Chinese
manufacturer doesn't sell replacement parts, at least anywhere in the USA.
Maybe being banned in the USA has something to do with that. Idk. It'd be kinda dumb to complain about US car brands being terrible with supply chain and translation when they aren't allowed in a market
No, that's just capitalism. Corporations gain large profits, and find that they can spend some of their profit on politics to gain larger profits. It's called the political economy and every capitalist economy has had one. Adam Smith described it, it's not new.
Brands from China like BYD are getting pretty popular in Mexico. I don’t know shit about cars but some of them seem pretty nice for how much they cost.
The Chinese would happily subsidize the shit out of their EVs long enough to obliterate the US auto sector, then up the prices when we have no onshore alternatives. I’m pro-competition and not a nativist but this dumping playbook is hardly a secret.
the US used to subsidize EV sales too until a certain pedophile returned to office, and they were still generally more expensive than Chinese ones are now.
And why does it matter? oh no the Chinese tax payer subsidized my car. This is a negative somehow. There's worse things to subsidize than EVs, like growing alfafa in the desert.
The real negative is just the long term concern of a country having a self supporting economy. What happens when all technological production is done offshore and we import everything? Where's the jobs that will pay for that?
Shipping used to be a major barrier to this but ever since the shipping container was developed its gotten exponentially cheaper to ship things to the point that now a worker has to compete with people literally on the other side of the planet being paid horrible wages and working in terrible conditions.
Don't US auto companies get all kinds of tax breaks plus are part of industry protectionism? Yet it seems to be a competition to make the most expensive daily driving car.
Using your massive size to crush local competition is basically what WalMart did and everybody hates that, but apparently they'll cheer for it when China does it because /r/AmericaBad
It's hard to eat morals. It's easy to take a moral stance against something when you are not having to choose between heating your home this winter or buying snow tires.
When the entire economy is trying to grind you into the dust so some shareholders can make a few more dollars it is easy to not look the gift horse in the mouth.
Put another way, your comment better than any single one I have ever read perfectly defines the idea of privilege.
Yep. They know if they don't, the same thing will happen to the US market when Japan started exporting cars, except US auto makers won't survive this time.
There's some logic behind it, but not the way US has handled it. Not by a long shot.
Simply put, there's strong incentive to prevent any further loss of the market to China from similar practices that companies have used to kill other businesses in the US. Like Amazon, Wallmart etc. Also China has already managed to do that, by undercutting most manufacturing costs, they've effectively killed most US based manufacturing. Vehicles are one of the few things US actually still makes.
The reason it's such a big issue is because if US loses all its local vehicle manufacturing to China, then China can flip the switch and raise their prises or worse, just threaten ending shipping to the US. That's not a position you want a country the size of US to be in. Things are already bad enough, something as critical as vehicles would make it worse.
This basically means the blocks are to stop China from gaining more control AND to give incentive for companies to not just move everything to China. Because US has already fucked up on enough fronts, they can't give up whatever is left. It makes sense, China isn't exactly known for not abusing positions of power and companies are known for going where things are cheapest.
There's even more layers to it, like how China could undercut competition by selling to the US at a loss, because they effectively have total control in that situation. They also have just generally cheaper work force, due to horrid worker rights. In all honesty, US should have been firmer against this stuff from the beginning with all manufacturing, and this applies to EU as well. Cheap products shipper from over seas massively harmed local manufacturing and it was achieved with what is practically slave labour. We shouldn't have ever been okay with that, but the short term is just too tempting for greedy businesses, corrupt governments and uninformed consumers alike.
As soon as you're willing to work for the wage the workers in the Chinese plant make, your argument will have some value. Until then, you're missing the point.
Labor arbitrage is why importing good into the us seems appealing. Ironically, this is exactly how executives are able to become so wealthy.
Consumers choose their own savings over their supposed political stance.
It does not help that they are piles of junk. They have problems with range and safety features. They are now being rejected by the EU and Russia due to quality and safety concerns. If one does break down it is near impossible to get one fixed since they don't ship spare parts with the vehicles.
They don't meet the safety standards required in US. There are like 6 options in the US for under $25k and no one is stopping anyone from buying them. Most people just want the better more expensive stuff.
To be fair the Chinese specifically blocked their sale in the US first and the first ones couldn’t even meet US requirements. They could have been sold here for years and weren’t. Then the whole trade war thing which is dumb but on the bright side it does help keep US autoworker job in the US.
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u/burge4150 9h ago edited 3h ago
I think there's room in the market for a back to basics car company that takes out all this bs, goes back to crank windows and all that crap and sells new vehicles for an affordable cost with a good warranty.
It would probably crush today.
Edit: I got like 400 responses saying "slate" ok I get it you can stop