Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "Detroit Big 3 Doomed! Delay or cancel EV plans and invest billions in ICE" video.
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I not only live in the US, but in metro Detroit, so goings on at the big three are local news.
The North American market is a global oddity, due to the popularity of cars so huge, and expensive, they are irrelevant in much of the rest of the world. GM and Ford have progressively withdrawn from most markets around the world. Both companies have withdrawn from India. GM withdrew from the EU, while Ford's market share in the EU has shrunk from 10-12% in the late 90s, to only 3.3% in 2024. Ford's EU share will take another hit this year, as it discontinues the Focus, which accounts for 20% of Ford Europe's volume. Over the last ten years GM's share in China has fallen from 15%, to 6.8%, and the company has written off much of it's Chinese operation. Ford's share in China is only about 1%. Ford withdrew from all of South America.
I foresee the future US market looking, not so much like the Russian market today, but the Soviet Union market of the 1960s: a handful of companies that have withdrawn from the rest of the world, hiding behind tariff walls, producing huge, expensive, but poor quality, ICE powered vehicles that are irrelevant in the rest of the world.
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@someuser7501 I envisioned a GM, several years ago, where the only Americans employed by the company were the honchos at the HQ in Detroit. All vehicles would be entirely designed and built in China.
Of course, now we have a government that is eager to erect tariff barriers. So, now, the plan would be to offshore all the engineering, because foreign engineers are cheaper than Americans, transmit the design information to the US over the same fibre that brings us all those telemarketing calls, to duck tariffs on physical goods, then build here.
Thing is, with the US going all in on ICE, the skill set to design ICE powertrains, and the huge vehicles that the industry wants to sell in the US, will atrophy in places like China and India. The engineering will probably become a primary application of AI, or become entirely static, like US automotive engineering was from the 50s, into the 70s, before safety and emissions regs forced changes.
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@ZweiZwolf The US fuel consumption reg used to be based on a sales weighted average of all models built, which forced manufacturers to produce smaller, more economical, more affordable, vehicles, in addition to the larger models. The fuel consumption reg was 'reformed" around 2006. The new system assignes a "target" consumption number based on the vehicle's footprint: the product of the wheelbase and track. I read the reg when it was published. The reg plainly stated that the equation used to calculate the fuel consumption target was skewed to provide targets for large vehicles that were easier to attain, while the targets for smaller vehicles were made harder to attain, and the formula favored trucks over cars. This "reform" removed the need for manufacturers to make smaller cars at all, so the move to gigantism was expedited. Automakers make a larger profit margin on more expensive cars, so price soared, as well as size, in pursuit of higher profits from shrinking volume. Did you hear the howler from Ford CEO Farley recently? He declared Ford will be "the Porsche of off-road". What is Porsche know for? High prices, and exceptionally fat gross margins. Thing is, unlike Porsche, Ford is not a cult. People will not pay Porsche prices for the shoddy stuff Ford turns out.
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