84·
8 days agoIs it a level playing field? In China workers rights are pretty non-existent and there’s no OSHA equivalent, at least not to the degree we have in the US. Then add in government subsidies, lower worker pay, reduced R&D costs because they pilfered the engineering from a US company, and you end up with a very lopsided market.
To be clear, I am in no way defending the US auto industry. They have little customer loyalty for a reason – low quality, overpriced, subscription dependent vehicles with terrible warranties, expensive service requirements, and invasive telemetry. They need more competition to force them to make more consumer-friendly decisions, but China is hardly a fair competitor.
Half the technology only prevents death, but doesn’t necessarily give you quality of life, so they can keep it. It’s the pharmaceutical advancements that have had the biggest QoL impact on me, and thankfully generics have been reasonably affordable.