Thursday, August 21, 2025

Fair Warning

 Found in a plant manufacturing 155's:

 

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Talking about factories. Trump is letting America down.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/08/ford-china-electric-cars/683880/

—Ford’s plans will be challenging to pull off. China has immense government subsidies, a huge pool of engineering talent, the world’s best battery technology, and ultra-low labor costs. (According to Reuters, BYD, the Chinese EV giant, recently advertised a factory position that pays roughly $850 a month.) Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act just gutted many EV subsidies and incentives that would have helped America catch up to China.

Legacy automakers have made big promises before about a forthcoming EV revolution, only to retreat, retrench, and rethink when things got hard, or when they got a pass from environmental regulators.

Last year, Ford canceled a large electric SUV, and its current EV lineup is getting old while competitors such as General Motors have been rolling out new models all of the time. Ford’s new truck is at least two years away, and China isn’t waiting around.

Chinese EVs are surging in developing countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka, Djibouti, and Ethiopia—where more limited gasoline infrastructure and lower EV-maintenance costs make them especially appealing. That competition is bad news for a company like Ford, which builds and sells cars all over the world. Ford’s new car is designed to be exported as well, though the automaker won’t say where yet.—

8/21/2025 5:41 PM
Dad29 said...

Following The Atlantic's hard-Left line, you mistakenly assume that EV's are going to capture more than 1/10th (at best) of the US auto market. They won't. So who cares??

8/22/2025 7:52 AM
Anonymous said...

“They won’t”.

It’s not about capturing the market, it’s about being viable in the market.

Big difference, chief.

8/22/2025 8:56 AM
Dad29 said...

Manufacturing Econ 101: Labor cost is ~5% of cost-to-manufacture in a well-run plant.

Beyond that--and more important--WHICH "market", Tonto? The US market is small--maybe 6% of all automobiles and trucks. Does FoMoCo have to compete in EV's overseas? Then they can build the damn things overseas.

If "viability" means that they have to import their foreign-made EV's, then FoMoCo (et al) can pay the tariff and price accordingly.

8/22/2025 10:41 AM
Anonymous said...

The 5% figure may be a target in an extremely efficient, highly automated operation. However, it is not a realistic average for manufacturing as a whole. A "well-run plant" optimizes efficiency to lower labor costs, but the final percentage of total manufacturing costs will depend on the industry and the specific production process.

Furthermore, here is the money quote from the link. Learn from it rather than be a stubborn fool.

—If things changed, Ford—along with all other automakers in the U.S.—would be in serious danger. Chinese EVs can be so cheap and high tech that they risk outcompeting all cars, not just electric ones. In the rest of the world, traditional automakers are already struggling as Chinese cars hit the market. In Europe, Chinese brands now have roughly as much share of the market as Mercedes-Benz. “We are in a global competition with China,” Farley said earlier this year. “And if we lose this, we do not have a future at Ford.”—

8/22/2025 4:19 PM

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