U.S. buyers can’t currently purchase any Chinese-branded EVs, but a new study revealed that drivers aged under 40 would welcome them with open arms.
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It has been shown repeatedly that consumers will buy the cheapest – even if it means layoffs in domestic manufacturing.
Of course an auto is a long term investment. Reliability, parts, service, repair, and even taxes and insurance are all part of the decision.
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Young people do not buy into the cold war.
The Vietnam generation also had a hard time when young buying into the cold war.
I do not think the risk is much. I think corporate America needs to continue to grow up and compete. Not shrink away from doing the job.
I have no clue why the executives currently at F or GM have jobs.
And let’s not forget that those headline cheap numbers for Chinese EVs probably don’t meet US standards. It wouldn’t surprise me if those low prices go up by 50% to 100% by the time they hit US dealers.
—Peter
The ones selling in the EU likely meet US standards.
And China EV manufacturers jack up the pricing in that market.
BYD gross profit margin can be 100% for EV sold in the EU.
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*U.S. buyers can’t currently purchase any [Chinese](https://www.carscoops.com/tag/china/)-branded EVs, but a new study revealed that drivers aged under 40 would welcome them with open arms.*
The first big block of buyers for Japanese imports in the 70’s were young people. Cost was the driver, but then it was a pleasant surprise to find that the cars were better built than American ones. The Detroit Big 3 belatedly decided to try to emulate them, and did some sales, but the entries were mostly poorly built junk piles and the Toyotas and Hondas survived, while the Pintos, Vegas, and Gremlins did not.
Side note: My mother, having worked in a WWII factory during the war, refused to consider any Japanese or German automobile for the rest of her life. Cost didn’t matter to her even though, in the first part of the marriage, money was touch-and-go. Some prejudices die hard. The family cars were Plymouths, mostly, and I inherited a Rambler station wagon as my first car. The saving grace was that the front seats reclined totally to form a perfect bed with the back seat cushion. It might not have been stylish but it had its advantages.
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Yes, for years it was un-American to drive a Japanese car in a city with an auto plant. But i recall debates about quality and 200k miles service life.
Now all is changed. When i pull up to a stoplight the cars around me are almost always Japanese or Korean. I would guess close to 2:1 over US auto companies. But reversed in pickups.
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Just a side note. This isn’t a prejudice per se. Prejudice is mostly defined as “a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.” In this case, it is VERY likely that she wasn’t prejudiced against Japanese or Germans, but rather was opposed to Japanese/German products because Japan/Germany made war against us relatively recently. That war was an “actual experience”, and her choice of products was based on that actual experience.
Right at the beginning, they were NOT better built, they were mostly junk made cheaply and with very thin sheet metal (my civic hatch had rust spots all over, and even a complete hole in the front footwells! I used plenty of Bondo and metal mesh keeping that car together as long as I needed it.) with tiny “sewing machine” engines. Once oil prices started going up in the mid-70s, and once they were on the second or third generation of models, the quality went up, and the fuel efficiency attracted many young people (including me).
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I had a VW bug in 1967. It was pretty well built, I’d have to say. I had very few mechanical issues with it until I reached around into the back seat to stop a pile of record albums from falling over … and drove it over a cliff.
That’s a bit over dramatic, it was only about 10 feet. But what a surprise as my eyes were pointed backwards as the car drove forward. One of the many not-so-smart things I have done in my life.
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When I was 5 years old, my parents and kids were taking a trip upstate and we were on the Palisades Parkway at a scenic lookout spot. Well, while everyone else was looking at the scenery, I snuck back into the car, into the drivers seat, and took it out of park … the car rolled down the hill, hit one of those low stone barriers at the end, and luckily didn’t break through over the cliff (hundreds of feet down). I think it was a green 1960 Dodge Dart, but it may have been a previous car, not sure when exactly we got the green dart.
German cars didn’t have the reputation for being junky as the early Japanese cars did. Even the little bug!
It varies by where you are. iirc, the US “big three” combined, have something like a 36% market share in California.
Steve
I’m in St. Louis. We used to have three auto plants. Now all we have is a GM van plant. 36% sounds like a reasonable guess here too. A few Teslas too but not a lot. More BMWs than Teslas.
Hartford suburbs, a lot of SUVs and pickups. Most sedans and coupes are Japanese. The Americans rule the larger stuff. The luxury mix is not straight forward anything in particular.
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