China copy cat

[dtech]

Probably 3/4 of the contents of your home were made overseas, much of it in China. It's unfortunate but many of those items will never be made in the USA again as the worker knowledge isn't available, the factories don't exist, and it would cost way too much to attempt manufacturing them again.
Phones, puters, toys clothing....the US just dosen't have the ability to make this stuff anymore at a competitive price.
I'm a "Happy Days" era kid and I can remember when EVERYTHING was made here and the China imports were the cheap 10 cent tin toys.
Our first warning was in the 60's when Japan started sending those Honda Mopeds and small motorcycles that were better than anything we were producing at the time.
China took over from there, and now I doubt that we will ever catch up enough to take back our manufacturing enough to push them out.....
How many of you have a huge flat screen tv in your home ???? Costco has 75 inch on sale for under $500 bucks. And they last forever....until you buy a bigger one. Do you really think you could buy a US made for the same amount ??? Of course you can't....they don't make em here anymore. Same for probably every major and small appliance in your kitchen..
You may not like it, but you do have to accept it.....

yep, China is the world's manufacture - 60% of global mfg goods are made in China and that number is only projected to grow. It would cost about $5k to equip Chinese made autos to meet safety standards in the US , even adding on another $3k in tariff money they would seriously undercut current vehicle prices in the US, BYD who only makes EV recently surpassed Ford as the no 4 automaker in terms of units sold and they are not allowed to compete in the US market. And agree with Grumpaw about the majority of mfg jobs will not return to the USA, as Bruce sang in Your Hometown - "foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain't coming back"
China's transformation from a very poor mostly agricultural based economy in the last 50 yrs or so has been remarkable, and the US played a big part in the transformation - offshoring as much as possible to China so CEOs and stockholders profited handsomely and consumers benefited with cheaper goods. And China has an abundant source of cheap labor and they have invested in mfg - modern plants, technology world class supply chains, whereas in the US investments by and large were no longer made in mfg but moreso in financial and technology sectors.

Sponsored

 

[Fordup]

Have you really got BYD trucks coming to the US? They would have to be worth a fortune with the chicken tax and tariffs on top of that.

Millions of their battery cells make it here every month. Most of the lithium batteries on my solar system have BYD cells. They're not expensive at all and extremely reliable unlike some of the US made batteries. I was just looking at excavators and after getting a price of $45k from Kubota bought a chinese equivalent with better specs and the same warranty and 4 attachments for $20k including recent tariffs. The tarrif was very little because it goes by the buying price in China and not retail value unlike many misunderstand. Italian load sensing piston pumps and high end controls that are some of the best in the world along with a Japanese Kubota diesel engine warrantied here in the US. Pretty cool watching videos of the fabrication. They have 60 ft long laser tables running up to 1 inch thick steel sheets at very high speed with multiple heads and utilize every square inch of the steel they can. Manufacturing equipment that US companies won't invest in. 10 years ago I wouldn't have even though about buying Chinese equipment, but now if you do your homework and weed out the junk it's just as good and gonna get the job done. I'm guessing BYD truck would have about a $4000 value off the dock in China and that would add about $750 to the cost from tariffs and fees once onshore.

 

[Cmar]

We've just had the Foton Tunland V7 and V9 land in Australia. They look totally unique, ay?

And they don't look too bad apart from the tiny 2.0 litre appropriately named (weak hybrid) diesel engine. ( had a look at one parked next to me the other day)

 

[Cmar]

The BYD Shark 6 hybrid utility won Wheels car of the year over here above Toyota Hilux and Ford Ranger. Most owners are very happy with their purchase and the fit and finish is impeccable. I see more and more of them on the road every day.
BYD have been very clever as the only really new bits in these utes is the bodywork and interior trim, the rest all came from the BYD parts bin. This let them keep the price low.

 

[AzScorpion]

The chinese have no shame. They will build a substandard copy of anything. People need to stop buying chinese crap.

You mean like the computer or phone you're posting from? How about all the Chinese parts in your Ranger. It's not all crap anymore and most is affordable. Our leaders for the past 35 years have pushed us into a global economy and that's not going to change soon. Just about all US products have stickers on them saying assembled in America using global parts. Soon the BYD trucks will hit American ports and will be available here. WW3 will be the only thing that can stop that overnight.

Probably 3/4 of the contents of your home were made overseas, much of it in China. It's unfortunate but many of those items will never be made in the USA again as the worker knowledge isn't available, the factories don't exist, and it would cost way too much to attempt manufacturing them again.
Phones, puters, toys clothing....the US just dosen't have the ability to make this stuff anymore at a competitive price.
I'm a "Happy Days" era kid and I can remember when EVERYTHING was made here and the China imports were the cheap 10 cent tin toys.
Our first warning was in the 60's when Japan started sending those Honda Mopeds and small motorcycles that were better than anything we were producing at the time.
China took over from there, and now I doubt that we will ever catch up enough to take back our manufacturing enough to push them out.....
How many of you have a huge flat screen tv in your home ???? Costco has 75 inch on sale for under $500 bucks. And they last forever....until you buy a bigger one. Do you really think you could buy a US made for the same amount ??? Of course you can't....they don't make em here anymore. Same for probably every major and small appliance in your kitchen..
You may not like it, but you do have to accept it.....

While you're all right to a degree we could've/should've still been producing all our own things here. Sadly it's been going on way too long and most alive today don't know of the products we grew up with. Especially appliances which would never seemed to beak down and the only reason you got rid of them is to change the color or design. One thing I'll disagree with that china makes better are appliances because almost all are junk now. I just went through buying them for 2 houses in the last year and it's impossible to find any one with good reviews anymore. Doesn't matter if it's GE, Maytag or even higher end ones like Bosch and Wolf they all say the same thing about being cheaply made and crapping out early. We live in a disposable world now where things are only made to last x - amount of years so we can throw them out and buy more. Now the Maytag man is busier than ever! lol

Ed is right though on the tvs, you just can't beat them now. Years ago a 50" plasma tv was $5,000 (they were close to $20K when they first came out) and I just recently bought a really nice Samsung 70" for $500 OTD! But one thing China has ZERO regulations there so while we're doing our best here to keep the air clean and our workers safe they're doing just the opposite. Sadly ALL our scummy politicians sold us all out ever the years and now this is what we're stuck with. I do my best to not but things from China but it's virtually impossible now.

 

[GhostStrykre]

i remember seeing this image:

someone noted that the higher the inflation the more likely there was to be government regulation involved. i have no idea how accurate these numbers are.

 

[dtech]

As you likely know LG and Samsung are Korean companies - however with the exception of their very high end TVs most of their TVs are now made in China, Hisense and TLC are Chinese companies and their TVs have become very very good. Companies that made highly durable long lasting products have been forced to cheapen products in order to survive, in autos I think a good example might be Mercedes who many decades back made autos that lasted a long long time but was losing chunks of market share once the Japanese made Lexus, Acura's and Infinity. Now Mercedes relies on packing their cars with technology to compete and once they hit 100k or so are arguably worse than many brands in terms of reliability.

 

[Mighty Little Blue]

The chinese have no shame. They will build a substandard copy of anything. People need to stop buying chinese crap.

How can that happen? Covid proved the world is dependent on Chinese products. It is too late for that to change. China has a monopoly and the world knows it.

 

[DukeCanBuildit]

You mean like the computer or phone you're posting from? How about all the Chinese parts in your Ranger. It's not all crap anymore and most is affordable. Our leaders for the past 35 years have pushed us into a global economy and that's not going to change soon. Just about all US products have stickers on them saying assembled in America using global parts. Soon the BYD trucks will hit American ports and will be available here. WW3 will be the only thing that can stop that overnight.

We’ll be getting BYD automobiles here in Canada soon. We struck a deal to permit a modest number into the country before large tariffs are applied. Long-term plans are to have BYD build an assembly plant here to meet domestic demand.

Could Tata Motors be next? Who knows but we’re in interesting times, for sure.

 

[DukeCanBuildit]

We've just had the Foton Tunland V7 and V9 land in Australia. They look totally unique, ay?

I had to chuckle at the tailgate lettering because it reminds me of the “DORF” and “DOOD” Raptor style grills that came with the extra letters needed to change them to “FORD”.

 

[Fordup]

We’ll be getting BYD automobiles here in Canada soon. We struck a deal to permit a modest number into the country before large tariffs are applied. Long-term plans are to have BYD build an assembly plant here to meet domestic demand.

Could Tata Motors be next? Who knows but we’re in interesting times, for sure.

EV's in a cold climate can be a challenge. I don't see them being the final answer but for many city folks they work and are available now.

 

[Cmar]

We’ll be getting BYD automobiles here in Canada soon. We struck a deal to permit a modest number into the country before large tariffs are applied. Long-term plans are to have BYD build an assembly plant here to meet domestic demand.

Could Tata Motors be next? Who knows but we’re in interesting times, for sure.

You don't want TATA, I had a TATA Xenon ute for a couple of years, it came to me a few years old but almost new via a family estate. Whilst it looked good on paper, like if you could buy a mid eighties Hilux new in 2011. In fact it was the crappiest car I ever owned and I ended up trading it on a Santa FE a couple of years later because I was sick of constantly fixing it. (this was all before it had even done 35,000 Km).

TATA themselves stopped making them after only a few years in production - I wonder why.

 

[dtech]

Here's something the Chinese dreamed up on their own, article says they have 7k orders, an EV with a personal aircraft, article references the worlds worst traffic jam lasting 10 days and 60 miles long.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a70445235/xpeng-ev-van-with-aircraft-details/

• EV manufacturer Xpeng has a wild new vehicle currently in pre-production.
• The deployable six-rotor drone is capable of autonomous takeoff and landing and stows securely in the van's cargo area for charging.
• Obviously, there are some regulatory issues to clear, but Xpeng does export its EV

 

[AzScorpion]

Here's something the Chinese dreamed up on their own, article says they have 7k orders, an EV with a personal aircraft, article references the worlds worst traffic jam lasting 10 days and 60 miles long.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a70445235/xpeng-ev-van-with-aircraft-details/

• EV manufacturer Xpeng has a wild new vehicle currently in pre-production.
• The deployable six-rotor drone is capable of autonomous takeoff and landing and stows securely in the van's cargo area for charging.
• Obviously, there are some regulatory issues to clear, but Xpeng does export its EV

Dear God I hope We never get anything like that here while I'm alive. It's bad enough so many can't drive on the roads whether it's just being distracted by their phones or just bad driving in general. Now you'll have to watch for them crashing into each other up above and parts falling all over you and your house. No Thanks!

 

[Grumpaw]

Dear God I hope We never get anything like that here while I'm alive. It's bad enough so many can't drive on the roads whether it's just being distracted by their phones or just bad driving in general. Now you'll have to watch for them crashing into each other up above and parts falling all over you and your house. No Thanks!

Sponsored