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Transportation China

China Makes Too Many Cars, and the World Is Increasingly OK With It (bloomberg.com) 83

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
After years of Western governments raising alarms about Chinese automotive overcapacity and erecting tariff barriers, an unexpected pivot is now underway as major economies cautiously open their markets to Chinese electric vehicles, Bloomberg writes. Beijing itself has started acknowledging the problem at home. Chinese regulators last week warned of "severe penalties" for automakers defying efforts to rationalize pricing in the country's car market, and earlier this month a government ministry urged battery makers to curtail expansion and cutthroat competition.

The European Union imposed steep tariffs on Chinese EV imports in 2024 and is now considering replacing them with minimum import price agreements. Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney last week decided to allow 49,000 Chinese EVs annually at a 6.1% tariff rate, removing a 100% surtax. Germany announced this week that its $3.5 billion EV subsidy program will be open to all manufacturers including Chinese brands. Germany's environment minister Carsten Schneider dismissed concerns during a January 19 press conference: "I cannot see any evidence of this postulated major influx of Chinese car manufacturers in Germany, either in the figures or on the roads."

BYD registered an eightfold increase in sales in Germany last year and pulled ahead of Tesla, though Volkswagen still registered around 2,300 vehicles for every one BYD sold.
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China Makes Too Many Cars, and the World Is Increasingly OK With It More

China Makes Too Many Cars, and the World Is Increasingly OK With It

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  • Things change (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Valgrus Thunderaxe ( 8769977 ) on Friday January 23, 2026 @03:34PM (#65944876)
    I'm old enough to remember my mother telling stories about being chastised for buying the first Celica (a Japanese car) sold into the US market (she was an account at US steel, so you can imagine how that went over). The US and the Japanese have had their day and can't compete with China in this industry.

    • You forgot South Korea. However Japanese manufacturing and its economy went down the toilet long before the current rise of china or korea. The electronics manufacturers outsourced to Taiwan, Hong kong (while still under british rule) and Indonesia. Now theyre just a sad shadow of themselves.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by drnb ( 2434720 )

        You forgot South Korea. However Japanese manufacturing and its economy went down the toilet long before the current rise of china or korea. The electronics manufacturers outsourced to Taiwan, Hong kong (while still under british rule) and Indonesia. Now theyre just a sad shadow of themselves.

        Like US auto makers in the late 1970s, early 80s.

        • At least then you could still get a decent pickup.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by drnb ( 2434720 )

            At least then you could still get a decent pickup.

            In the 1980s? I wouldn't know, I was driving a 1960s pickup I got from an Uncle. Almost nothing that couldn't be maintained or fixed after having a couple of auto shop classes in HS. :-)

            • You could get a Ford with a 300 straight six, or a good old simple Chevy with a 350. The Ford was by far the way to go IMO, mostly because Chevy electrical was terrible. You could also get a Dodge with a Cummins with a mechanical pump. They were simpler, dirtier times.

              I wish I had got my dad's 1962 C10 step side longbed with the 292.

          • At least then you could still get a decent pickup.

            You probably still can, but they're called vans. Unless you need a lot of towing capacity (over 3.5T, because as far as I can tell vans in America are based on European models which are designed around European rules), or really mega off road beyond what a 4wd van can do, they're basically what pickups should be. It's probably somewhat more work to find the configuration you want compared to here due to the relative popularity of trucks.

            • We did switch to Euro vans recently. Ram Promaster is a shitty FWD fiat with no towing capacity worth mentioning and the Sprinters before it which were offered in the consumer space topped out at something like 5500lb, pretty pathetic compared to any modern pickup. (Not utes, but real full frame ones.) Most of our vans are only offered in AWD, not 4WD. I think the Sprinter was finally offered with lockers very recently and there's a model of Transit where you can get them. Even when we were making full size

              • and the Sprinters before it which were offered in the consumer space topped out at something like 5500lb, pretty pathetic compared to any modern pickup.

                Anything that's come from the European market (assuming we are still aligned), will max out in the range at 3,500kg or about 7700 lbs, so you can get heavier duty sprinters than 5500, but not vastly. The reason being is that here to tow more than 3,500kg you need extra training with a commercial driver's license complete with a tachograph to limit the maxim

                • Sure, that makes sense. In this country you can tow quite a lot of weight without a special license in almost any state, so we tow heavier stuff here. Bigger boats, bigger campers and so on. You don't need a special license to tow a 14k lb 5th wheel travel trailer. I don't need a special license to drive a 30' bus to RV conversion which weighs 20k empty and has air brakes.

        • Come to Australia, home of the Torana, the Monaro, and the mighty GT-HO SuperRoo. We don't even have car industry anymore.

          • At least the Aussies have decent vehicles for RV-ing. Something that costs a reasonable sum down under would cost someone in the US a quarter of a mill, at minimum, and at best would be a collection of parts sort of moving in the same direction, compared to an Aussie vehicle that even has a positive pressure on the inside to keep dust out.

            IMHO Everything in the US seems to be overpriced, with quality issues. For example, if the US got the BYD Shark from Mexico, it would be a true miracle.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Viol8 ( 599362 )

              In europe an RV is nothing more than a van chassis with a plastic body on top and the same gutless engine. They're total garbage.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I'm old enough to remember my mother telling stories about being chastised for buying the first Celica (a Japanese car) sold into the US market (she was an account at US steel, so you can imagine how that went over). The US and the Japanese have had their day and can't compete with China in this industry.

      The US market got unquestionably greedy no thanks to UAW trying to address all of that CEO to employee pay disparity in a single CBA. They got their quite incredible hourly rates. Now they're closing auto manufacturing plants as a result of the consumer being forced to eat a lot of that increased cost. If we're to believe the stealerships who insist margins are low, then prove it by cutting them out and selling direct. (COVID can only be blamed so much when the prices are still fuck-your-budget high. N

    • I'm old enough to remember my mother telling stories about being chastised for buying the first Celica (a Japanese car) sold into the US market (she was an account at US steel, so you can imagine how that went over). The US and the Japanese have had their day and can't compete with China in this industry.

      There's only one real reason to be concerned about whether the rest of the world can compete with China, and that's national security. Specifically, if consumers shift to buying Chinese cars and the result is that everyone else's carmakers go out of business or permanently shutter most of their manufacturing capacity, that means that in the event of a war those manufacturing facilities aren't available to repurpose for military production. This, of course, assumes that repurposing them is useful. That was

      • Well, not contradicting you or anything, but your post is a good anchor.

        As you mentioned tanks and planes.

        How do you win a war?

        Well, the simplest way of course is you just Blizzkrieg the enemy and you are done.

        The second simplest way is, you conquer it part per part AND that way you conquer the resources. So, you move your tanks into Kuwait. Well, there are burning oil fields everywhere. But there is also a lot of oil there to refill your tanks. Especially as most modern tanks basically can run on anything

        • Re:Things change (Score:4, Insightful)

          by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Friday January 23, 2026 @10:43PM (#65945830) Journal

          I think you just have to look at the Ukraine war to see the shape of the future, and it doesn't look like it includes tanks, or even trucks. As drone warfare has developed, it's become nearly impossible to move large vehicles across the ground. It seems plausible that the same may happen to the seas as well, though maybe in that case we'll end up with drone carriers able to deploy intense protective drone and missile shells around them that allow them to survive and move... but maybe not.

          What will happen in the air? Drone fighters seem destined to make human-piloted craft unsurvivable. Without having to limit performance to the constraints of frail human bodies, drone fighters seem likely to become impossible for even 5th-gen fighter aircraft to take on. But will that even matter? The purpose of fighters is to attack or defend bombers (or to be small bombers)... but bombers seem destined to disappear from the battlefield, too, replaced by long-range missiles and/or drones (not that there's really much difference between them).

          It may well be that the industrial capacity that matters in WWIII is the capacity to produce large quantities of batteries, motors and electronic control systems, and the technology that will matter the most is effective small-scale AI, able to operate autonomously with a high degree of effectiveness. In Ukraine, radio-controlled drones have all but disappeared because they're too vulnerable to jamming. Instead, the land is being webbed over with miles-long spools of ultrafine fiberoptic cable so the operators can have reliable remote control, but that cable has its own problems and limitations, and the solution is clearly autonomy -- though fully-autonomous flying robots carrying large quantities of high explosives are a different sort of nightmare.

          Anyway, it's possible that the sort of manufacturing capability that is needed for the next great-powers war is exactly the same thing you need to manufacture EVs.

          Of course, the best option of all is to nip all this war stuff in the bud. The whole free world needs to come down on Russia in Ukraine like a ton of bricks, throwing them entirely out of Ukraine, including Crimea, and coming together to declare that wars of conquest ended with WWII. Obviously, that's a pipe dream when the "leader of the free world" is executing one war of resource extraction and contemplating a war of conquest against his country's closest allies, but it would be the best way -- convince everyone that unless they think they can fight the whole world, conquest is just off the table. Sigh.

          • Probably one of the best replies I've seen on this topic. War is back to World I trenches and paying for every inch of territory gone. Tanks have their place, but it has become a cat and mouse game of sticking more and more stuff around a tank so a drone's shaped charge doesn't finish it off. Tanks are also going to unmanned/autonomous. The M1E3 can be crewed by a single person, and I wouldn't surprised if that it will eventually be able to be completely autonomous.

            I know I'm cynical, but this is not be

            • However, drones are not everything. Conventional air superiority is a must. Otherwise, we will get repeats of Iran where, even with their drones, their airspace was effectively laid waste, and objectives met.

              I think this is only true until AI-controlled fighter jets become a reality. Human-piloted fighters will not be able to compete. Perhaps you were including fighter drones in your definition of "conventional air superiority".

              My worry is... what is endgame with 47? Is he playing the drunken master monk tactic?

              I wouldn't assume there is an endgame, or any real strategy at all. All of Trump's decisions and actions are based on what he feels at the moment. In a few areas he has deep-seated beliefs that provide a bit of consistency, not so much to the details of policy but at least to the dire

              • The orange shitgibbon might have the attention span of a toddler, but he is still being steered by the heritage foundation and the tech bros who consider themselves the modern nobility.

                • The orange shitgibbon might have the attention span of a toddler, but he is still being steered by the heritage foundation and the tech bros who consider themselves the modern nobility.

                  They're trying to steer him, anyway. It works sometimes.

    • I'm old enough to remember my mother telling stories about being chastised for buying the first Celica (a Japanese car) sold into the US market (she was an account at US steel, so you can imagine how that went over). The US and the Japanese have had their day and can't compete with China in this industry.

      China and Japan are not comparable. In the timeframe you refer to, late 1970s early 80s, Japan was not tolerating pollution and labor abuse to make their exports more competitive. Also, Japan was an ally. Japan was out engineering, out innovating, had superior designs, in that timeframe. Completely different than today's China in so many ways.

      To make a fair comparison between Japan and China, we have to look at pre-WW2 Imperial Japan where pollution, labor abuse, ruthless obedience to gov't, a crusade to

      • No need to waste time and money and increase pollution by putting cars on boats and sailing them across the ocean.
        So true!
        But what about making ponton bridges or similar and a MacDonalds or KFC every 50miles? A swimming parking lot. As the kids will get mad every 500 miles, what about Cinemas, too? I mean, with some tricks you perhaps can get Dolphin and Orca shows for free as well?
        Bonus points, if you make it along an oil pipeline. You just pump the oil up and fill it into the pickups and SUVs ...

        Wait, now

    • The US and the Japanese have had their day and can't compete with China in this industry.

      This is an extremely interesting question about current and future competitiveness. Why can't the non-Chinese companies compete with the Chinese ones? Is it a matter of cost, supply chain, technology, or something else. Cost is a complex issue, as even the Chinese government openly acknowledges that the prices charged by Chinese companies are not sustainable. Technology from the Chinese car companies is leading edge, but technology constantly evolves, so this is almost never a barrier for the future. S

      • Opinion here:

        I know in the US, a lot of it is self-inflicted wounds. The concept of a "stakeholder" doesn't exist. It is about pleasing the shareholder, the HFT company who will dump your stock in milliseconds. China, on the other hand, the government is part of the business process, so there is some guidance and organization, with thought past the next quarter.

  • In context (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Friday January 23, 2026 @03:37PM (#65944886)

    In Canada, this allowed quota as a percentage of vehicles sold in the country is in the low single digits. It's symbolic. But... the Canadian auto sector really does not like what it symbolizes. Neither will the US. Right now, Canada makes the cars of other countries - the US, Japan, and Germany. Now, in no way does this mean making Chinese cars is in the cards for Eastern Canada, but the long term chances of that go from zero to not-zero. And given the ongoing destruction of the American relationship, opening the door by just a crack is not a bad idea.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      Really only Tesla (reminder to Trump: an American company owned by your friend who benefits from this) will really benefit from the drop in tariffs. Tesla was importing approximately that many cars per year from China before the tariff. Also they are one of the few companies that can even sell cars in Canada from China because they already meet North American standards. As for the flood of cheap chinese cars, it's not going to happen. Canada is way too small a market for Chinese companies to customize the

      • Re:In context (Score:4, Interesting)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Friday January 23, 2026 @05:02PM (#65945096) Journal

        As for the flood of cheap chinese cars, it's not going to happen. Canada is way too small a market for Chinese companies to customize their offerings to meet safety crash test standards here

        I would not bet on that. In the 50, 60, 70s lots of small European makes managed to sell in the American market, it was not about scale because they were still only doing 3 and 4 digit volumes. If in an era before CAD they could come up with US spec bumpers, different intakes and PCV systems to meet US emissions rules that came on in in the late 60s; BYD can slap whatever Canada needs in terms of bumper height, rear camera, etc and crank out enough parts for CA spec versions of their existing models.

        Carney sold you out! He needed to show he could do something about your economic dependence on the US and he chose the quick route of giving more influence to China rather then dealing with the inflationary consequences and political fall out of trying to find ways to make CA industry less vertical and more balanced. It feels good right now but this will prove to have been a big mistake a decade or so from now. When the 'great sucking sound' the American industry has heard over the last 30 years comes to CA.

        • No. Back then you could meet the crash standards by bolting on some ugly bumpers. These days it takes structural changes, which means making more tooling and probably an additional line.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by caseih ( 160668 )

          What Canadian industry? How could it become "more balanced?" And if US industry has been failing as you suggest, how would Canada fair any better? Canada does have auto plants, true, and that is a part of the overall economy. But they are all foreign owned; we have none of our own. No car companies either.

          Economic interdependence isn't inherently bad. The US and Canada have been interdependent for a hundred years or more, to each others' benefit. Granted the relationship has always favored the US at som

        • I don't think Carney sold us out at all. This is the bare minimum.

          If we're going to exist in a nominally capitalist society, we need to be able to reap the sole benefit of capitalism, which is competition making better products for less. Not only has the government propped up the auto industry for years with subsidies, tax breaks, and union weakening legislation, we get to pay more for our (huge, wasteful) vehicles to boot. It was all the other governments that sold us out. The amount of money that has gone

  • Solar panels (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Friday January 23, 2026 @03:39PM (#65944888)

    The most important technology product is the solar panel. If we can make that dirt cheap and plentiful, then everything else -- transportation, farming, mining, medical, elderly care, public safety, and robotics will fall into place.

    • The most important technology product is the solar panel. If we can make that dirt cheap and plentiful, then everything else -- transportation, farming, mining, medical, elderly care, public safety, and robotics will fall into place.

      I'd say the most important technology product will be the battery attached to that solar panel. You ain't transporting shit without it. And without transportation, everything stops.

      Not like the tens of millions living in cities would survive without the CAFOs feeding them. Or any other food factory hundreds of miles away supplying them. We literally transport human survival. Daily.

    • It's going to be a long effort. People hate the way solar panels look. One acquantienace even said rooftop solar panels will be as dated as those huge satellite dishes, in just a few years. I'm not destroying the value of my house to get them. and no one else in my neighborhood is, either.

  • Tesla (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Friday January 23, 2026 @03:42PM (#65944902) Homepage

    Before the 100% tariff that Canada imposed, almost all Tesla vehicles sold in Canada were manufactured in China, so Tesla was the brand most impacted. I believe that the new deal for 49,000 will end up allowing a lot of Tesla vehicles, and a few EVs that other existing brands make over in Chinese factories, and we're not going to see so many BYD vehicles, as I don't think it's worth setting up dealerships, etc. I suppose BYD might create a partnership with another brand for a few years and use those dealerships. In exchange for the EV deal, China agreed to lower tariffs on canola exports from Canada, which was a big deal for farmers in western Canada.

    If China wants larger numbers of EVs, then I suspect the Canadian government will require that BYD or whoever setup a manufacturing plant in Canada as a stipulation. That's similar to Japanese manufacturers.

    As a Canadian I'd prefer we avoid too many "deals" with China, but the fact is that the North American free trade agreement is probably not going to get renewed this year (even though Canada is the largest buyer of American-made cars and trucks by far), and we need to rapidly expand our trade with countries other than the US because the US has made it clear that they're going to use trade as leverage to exploit any country that trades with them. That's they're choice, but it means countries are incentivized to diversify away from buying American.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ET3D ( 1169851 )

      The Trump administration has been pushing Canada away from US brands, so it's a question whether Tesla will have that much success.

      It's a pity that the US is pushing the rest of the world into the arms of China, but it's hard at this point to tell which authoritarian regime will end up worse for the rest of us.

  • Chinese companies like BYD are lying about exports for a variety of reasons, the majority of which revolve around scamming the CCP out of export incentives or covering up sales deficits to investors.

    https://thenewswheel.com/byd-e... [thenewswheel.com]

    • Just as if you can lie about your exports.

      In Asian countries, you need a license to export. And often also to import.

      I do not know how BYD is standing at the moment, but they are more than a decade beyond government subsidies ... it is unlikely that they get any at the moment.

      China is (in general) not giving subsidies to established companies, they fund start ups. No idea if BYD is an exception. And of so: no one cares.

      Your link looks more like anti BYD propaganda than any news.

  • If another country wants to enrich us and impoverish themselves by selling us stuff at below-cost, we should oblige them by purchasing as much as we want.

    We should be buying as much Chinese rare earths and as many Chinese solar panels as they're willing to sell. I would be wary of buying a Chinese EV, since their car industry has a bad habit of producing cars that only last 5 years before replacement parts become unavailable. I like to keep my cars for a solid decade or more. But we should let the marke

    • Well, it is well known that the Chinese can switch off every car remotely via internet.
      But the solution is super simple: just switch off your internet, before they switch of your car.
      You see?

      I don't remember if I have that from a book by Tsun Zu, or was it Konfucius?

    • False ! "If another country wants to enrich us and impoverish themselves by selling us stuff at below-cost, we should oblige them by purchasing as much as we want. " Any action that reduces a nations/persons self-sufficiency will fail in the worst way at the worst possible time. People/nations are asswholes ... as St Paul points out. ECON-101 is just toxic cultural advice -- history is littered with examples ... from collapse of bronze-age copper trade to 1973 Arab-oil-embargo.
      • Easily mitigated. The country subsidizes just enough indigenous industry to maintain the capability to spin back up if needed. Pay a local company just enough to keep one or two solar manufacturing facilities open. Same for rare earth refining. Same for steelmaking. Chipmaking too.

  • This Just In (Score:3)

    by lazarus ( 2879 ) on Friday January 23, 2026 @04:53PM (#65945074) Journal

    The Trump administration just pushed out [yahoo.com] the official who's unit banned Chinese vehicles.

    "Jan 23 (Reuters) - The Trump administration has pushed out a Commerce Department official whose office effectively barred nearly all Chinese cars from the U.S. market for national security reasons, according to people familiar with the matter."

    "The sources said that, had she not resigned, Cannon would have been reassigned, and that the new administration plans to put a political appointee in the post. Her last day is expected to be February 20, two people said."

    Why this is happening is anyone's guess.

    • Why this is happening is anyone's guess.

      They probably said something unflattering about Trump - that's usually it. I seriously doubt the current administration (or even the next one) is going to change their position on Chinese EVs.

  • There's a strategic reason why (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DeplorableCodeMonkey ( 4828467 ) on Friday January 23, 2026 @05:04PM (#65945108)

    If we go to war with China, we'll have to rely on companies like Anduril, not Raytheon, to supply our military.

    Anduril and other startups focus on engineering systems and weapons that can be built with civilian factories, not highly specialized factories that can't scale.

    BTW, that's how we won WWII. We didn't produce systems that were capability-at-any-cost. Engineers had to design systems that could be built at civilian factories because that's where the scalability has always been.

    • Civilian factories went through major overhauls and improvements, at gov't expense, in the ramp up before the war and during the war. It wasn't just the parts for the weapons and equipment, it was making the tools that would make these parts. Redoing floor plans and buildings for more modern processes. The IBM shop floor that made M1 Carbines (a short lightweight riffle) had entirely different equipment than when typewriters were made there. Equally important was the new logistics, which managed the incomin

  • next time someone tells you this is a free market economy, you know they're an idiot and a republican ...

  • BS (Score:3)

    by SuperDre ( 982372 ) on Friday January 23, 2026 @05:59PM (#65945232) Homepage
    "though Volkswagen still registered around 2,300 vehicles for every one BYD soldâ That VW figure is including gasoline/hybrids, not full EV.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by djgl ( 6202552 )

      They believe European manufacturers will eventually build models that are as cheap as the minimum price set for the Chinese cars. VW's ID.Polo is said to arrive in autumn for 25k€. The Dacia Spring can already be bought for 16.9k€. Chinese models still have the drawback that it is difficult to get spare parts.

      But it is true, Germany still has no good strategy to make people buy EVs.

      • Yes, but those european models are way less specced as the chinese ones for the same price INCLUDING tariffs

  • Now that every China car is internet connected, what is the chance they have a remote kill switch so in time of war, Chinese cars can be used as weapons of war.

    • I dunno, what IS the chance? Do you have a good analysis/source, or is this just something you're abstractly worried about? What are the chances that the US government has a kill switch in US-made cars? They seem like a bigger threat to Canada than China right now, so should we stop buying American cars?

      I'm more worried about the stuff that EV makers are TELLING US, like they might be recording us in our cars and uploading that data for customer tracking. I think it was Hyundai/Kia that basically said, "hey

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