Ford’s and Toyota’s plans to take on the Chinese tsunami. An hour long video worth watching.
Ford & Toyota Are Betting the Farm on the SAME Desperate HAIL MARY
===== VIDEO DESCRIPTION =====
Legacy media claims Ford and Toyota are retreating from EVs. They are completely wrong. The reality is far more brutal: both companies realized their initial EV plans were rendered completely obsolete, carrying absolutely zero chance of survival from day one.
And both giants just ruthlessly axed these dead-on-arrival strategies to quietly adopt Tesla’s unboxed manufacturing blueprint.
We break down the engineering and financial realities forcing legacy auto to adapt or face bankruptcy. From escaping the “Architecture Trap” and mastering gigacasting, to the ruthless math of the Altman Z-Score—discover why Ford is using a secret skunkworks team to build an escape ark, while Toyota attempts to overhaul the entire mothership.
As has been pointed out numerous times in other threads, the slowdown is US EV sales started quite a bit before the 2024 elections. Even sales in California have plateaued since 2022.
Basically comes down to maintaining hydraulic pressure. Engine turns off, pressure goes down, increase wear and tear until pressure back up. One of the reasons you don’t start your car and immediately go, give it a few seconds to build up pressure. Say you start/stop 5 times on your drive to work, adds up over a year. Ditto with oil pressure and engine wear although engine wear seems to be less of an issue. Supposedly they have taken measures to help mitigate the problem but still have extra wear even if 90% solved.
The idea of start/stop is to save gas and improve fuel efficiency. Makes about a 0.1 mpg difference from my driving habits. Gas savings would not pay for a new transmission even if the SUV made 300k miles. Again, my driving habits.
a) it’s an opinion piece published in a predatory, pay to publish journal (as opposed to one that’s subject to any sort of review prior to publication or peer review after) The long established adage “Publication is not validation” holds here. Lots of similar opinion pieces floated around during the pandemic so nothing new here.
b) the author is a psychiatrist with apparently an inclination towards alternative remedies…so presumably not particularly on the cutting edge of virology, immunology, vaccinology, epidemiology etc. Not so much an ad hominem attack as pointing out that he might not be aware that much of his own narrative is false…or that his readership might fall into the same category.
c) his methodology for fact gathering for this Grand Opus looks as if he typed a very loaded prompt into an AI search engine (we can thank @Leap1 for providing a solid education in how this can lead a person astray)
You don’t have to accept this piece as the sole evidence. It references the twitter files and the work of Matt Taibi. You can go directly to his substack if you prefer that as a reference. You can also reference Google’s on response to the DOJ and Mark Zuckerberg’s own testimony.
More directly, you can read the testimony of researchers and scientists who’s online accounts were shutdown by merely providing links to the The Great Barrington Declaration.
These things did happen and what we witnessed is where politicians adopt policies and the most important thing to them is consistency rather than the actual science.
It is true that EV sales are growing. However the growth rate was slowing considerably before the '24 election, and that slowing was what caused the US automakers to pull back/slow down.
Using your chart:
Mkt Share
Growth
2020 to '21 +78%
2021 to '22 +81%
2022 to '23 +31%
2023 to '24 + 6%
Perhaps the ‘early adopters’ category has been tapped out.
My inference engine is having a problem. If EV sales, per Goofy’s chart, are going gangbusters, and if an American EV outsold the Toyota Corolla for a year or two, how come “Western car companies are struggling?” Can’t be all of them. Can someone help?
My last three cars were Toyotas, the last two Corollas, absolutely lovely cars. That EV that outsold the Corolla must have been brilliant. Anyone knows what it was?
Sure. Tesla has adopted a very atypical business strategy for its model lineup. Basically, they only have two car models - the 3 and the Y. Something like 2/3 of all Tesla sales are the Model Y.
So when comparing models, Tesla’s Model Y can have very high levels of sales even as the company’s overall sales volume is actually shrinking. Meanwhile, competitors like BYD have very large numbers of models - so even though those companies are growing, any individual model will have fewer overall sales than the single model Y.
Altogether, it means that you can’t really look at the performance of a single model for Tesla as being as representative of the company’s overall health the same way you could with other car companies.
You can see that most clearly in looking at Tesla v. BYD. Tesla’s top-selling model is the Y, at about 1.1 million or so - well beyond BYD’s 788K unit sales of the Song. But, when we look at their respective third best-selling models you see a ridiculously different story: BYD sold about 529K of the Seagull, while Tesla sold 20K of the Cybertruck.
It’s not unfair. It’s just the explanation for your confusion. Because Tesla puts all their production in a single model, it’s possible for the company to experience slowing to falling sales as a company while still having one of the global leaders as a single model. If you look just at a single model, Tesla looks great compared to BYD. If you look at total unit sales, BYD is running circles around Tesla - because BYD has a much deeper “bench” than Tesla. BYD’s seventh model by volume (the Dolphin) sold 10x times Tesla’s third model (the Cybertruck).
That’s how you can have a situation where western companies are struggling against Chinese competitors, but Tesla has the best-selling single model. Because having the best-selling single model doesn’t necessarily mean you have a strong competitive position in global auto sales as a company if you have a highly outsized proportion of your production in only one model.
Dude, try google. I get so frustrated when people ask a silly question they could have answered themself with a 15 second internet search.
In a landmark ruling, a federal court today ruled that the Trump administration’s policy of arresting, detaining, and deporting noncitizen students and faculty members for their pro-Palestinian advocacy violates the First Amendment.
A federal court today ruled that the Trump-Vance administration unlawfully compelled civil servants at the U.S. Department of Education to transmit partisan political messaging from their government email accounts during the ongoing federal shutdown — violating core First Amendment protections.
Of course there are other violations of free speech where the courts have ruled against this administration involving NPR and another one for the press corps but I am staying on topic with it being individuals.
OK. Transmission wear is a new one on me.
I’ve heard about some mechanics indicating that the many successive starts wears out a starter on hybrids.
I do know several people who own Prius that have operated their hybrids 150,000 miles with no issues except regular maintenance. If I was in the market for a hybrid I would lean toward a Toyota. They have 30 years of hybrids on the road largely without problems.
Tesla has turned around somewhat with increased sales in EU & Asia.
BYD sales have shrunk. They have run into the same problem as Tesla with increased competition that has tanked profits. Yes they still are #1 in sales but the number of units sold is down.
https://insideevs.com/news/801344/tesla-q2-sales-explained-2026/ Last quarter, Tesla delivered some 480,000 vehicles worldwide, a 25% jump year-over-year. Growth in Europe and resilience in China helped the carmaker offset losses in the troubled U.S. market.
Slower domestic sales in China drove much of the downturn.
The Chinese market for electric cars is fiercely competitive. BYD has taken over as the market leader because of its low-priced models, yet price wars in its home market are intense.
But BYD is at a crossroads as it stands. Its expansion across borders may be the answer to whether it can bounce back. Analysts say the next few quarters will be critical, with domestic EV demand recovery and robust export growth seen as the keys to a profit rebound.
I believe Musk’s vision of transportation is different from competitors. Musk’s vehicles are like toasters: utilitarian. Models Y & 3 are temporary. They are the bridge to autonomous vehicle transport. The vision:Ultimately vehicle ownership no longer is desired. Transport is just a service. Personally if I could obtain an affordable car service, either autonomous or human driven, to pick me up and transport me. I wouldn’t need a personal vehicle.
I do believe that some people will still want to own a vehicle; especially a luxury status model.
Tesla auto division will be reduced to manufacturing autonomous vehicles for public use. Musk can move on to robots, Space X, brain chips, AI & new ventures he can dream up.
Every other EV manufacturer are interested in new models and vehicle turnover via new technology & exterior design changes. A continuation of the current vehicle business.
I would think as autonomous vehicles become more prevalent, Waymo type services will dominate large urban areas driving down sales of personal vehicles. Transport service might end up being just another monthly bill.
“You will own nothing and be happy” we have already given up privacy. Why not vehicle ownership?
I only live 5 miles from work and Uber runs me $15-22 based on the type of car. $600 a month just to get to work and back. Now… grocery runs. Kid errands. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Now think of the stuff I keep in my car, for convenience, that I would not be able to do.
I would too. But…we’re almost in dead horse territory, but albaby1 in particular has laid out very lucidly why TaaS can’t be that much cheaper than Uber/Lyft. Some, sure but not a huge amount. The numbers just don’t add up.
I’m also becoming increasingly skeptical Tesla is going to get there before competitors. We’re finding out that Tesla robotaxis without safety operators only operate in small, geomapped areas, and only during the day and in good weather.
Logically, that will improve over time, but it is hard to see how to scales to the point where people commonly won’t own cars outside of dense urban areas.
Sure - but again, I was really just trying to answer CCC’s question about how Tesla could have the best selling single model while western car companies are faring poorly against Chinese automakers. The answer is their atypical model mix. Yes, BYD is also starting to lose some ground against all those other Chinese automakers - but it’s the same dynamic. The Chinese automakers are collectively growing their market share at the expense of western companies. Tesla has had a recent reversal of their decline somewhat, at least on a YoY basis - but that’s off a truly terrible 2025 H1.
I think that’s an accurate description of Musk’s vision. But it’s one that is going to put Tesla at a severe disadvantage against other automakers until there actually exists an “affordable car service” that’s price-competitive against personal car ownership. Or perhaps, unless there exists such a service. No guarantee that we’ll actually be able to have a TaaS system that’s competitively priced against car ownership. When you write:
…the implicit assumption is that Waymo-type services can be provided at a cost that is competitive with personal vehicles. That may not be the case. It might simply cost too much to provide autonomous driving services. You have the deadheading, storage, and cleaning costs that everyone expected - but now we’re starting to see some of the new operating costs that are unique to unsupervised car rides:
As companies like Alphabet Inc. and Tesla Inc. bring self-driving taxis to more cities, the messier aspects of serving unpredictable humans are becoming harder to ignore. Passengers are falling asleep, spilling drinks, dropping food, vomiting, experiencing medical emergencies and, in at least two instances, giving birth in the cars. They stumble out of the vehicles and forget to close the doors, forcing the operators to pay nearby gig workers to do it.
“Drivers” in a conventional taxi perform important ‘invisible’ services other than driving. They act as security guards, janitorial staff, and in-person physical customer assistance for the cars and passengers as well. We’ll have to see what it costs to try to replicate those services remotely. If passengers behave consistently well, those costs might be low. The anecdotes mentioned in the above article don’t let us know how prevalent these behaviors are today, and the folks who are early adopters aren’t necessarily representative of how the broader customer base will act. But it’s a bit of an experiment to let people ride around in cars like this with no human supervision to keep them from causing trouble (either intentionally or negligently or inadvertently), and we have yet to see whether it’s economically viable to let them do that.
