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from the Detroit-on-another-deathwatch-and-still-doesn't-know-it dept.
The BBC and many other sources report:
The US car industry will be wrecked if President Trump relaxes emissions standards, California's governor says.
Jerry Brown said China would dominate car manufacture because it was heavily promoting the electric vehicles that would dominate the future.
He said huge investment was needed on electric vehicles, along with federal rules to encourage their purchase.
He said President Trump and US car-makers were "half asleep" and hadn't understood the scale of the challenge.
He told BBC Radio 4's Costing the Earth: "There will be a serious threat to the US auto industry.
Unlike many in Silicon Valley, Gov. Brown seems to want the USA car industry to survive this Chinese nationally supported onslaught.
While not specifically mentioned in the article, China is working on cars at all price points, not just early adopters that can afford a Tesla or other luxury car. The Chinese stuff may be junk now (think about the batteries in Chinese "hoverboards") but it won't be for long, they learn fast. Here's a little minivan that's headed to production, https://carnewschina.com/2017/09/28/new-photos-sinogold-gm3-electric-mpv-china/
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2017, @01:27AM
> To be fair, if I'm spending several thousand (or tens of thousand) of my hard-earned dollars on a vehicle, there's no way I'm going to even consider the sort of awful quality junk the Chinese are producing at the moment.
For now, the Chinese domestic car companies are working on their domestic demand (sales within China). While they do that they are also learning the ropes, and their government will keep import duties high to keep out competition from established car making countries. By the time they decide to enter the USA (and/or Euro) markets the products will be good. And you (or others like you) will buy them because they are the low price solution (see Japanese cars in 1970s, and Korean ones now).
Jerry Brown is trying to get some "lead" into the market feedback system. He sees this coming (it's pretty obvious), and he also sees that our style of capitalism isn't going to do anything in advance to defend against it. If USA puts suitable rules/incentives into place that nudge Detroit in the right direction now, it might lessen the blow when it comes. Maybe both Ford and GM will survive, along with many thousands of middle-class jobs, although FCA (Chrysler) seems likely to be broken up into parts and sold off before the Chinese get to USA.