You’re just repeating the subsidies and overcapacity narrative over and over again that the west pushes to protect profit margins of their auto companies that fail to compete. The whole point of subsidies is to grow an industry and overcapacity is a function of the market that corrects itself when the companies that can’t compete drop out.

Companies in the west dragged their feet to create EVs and still do so to this day. Tesla was the sole western company for the longest time putting in a serious effort and they got billions in subsidies. Most other companies just wanted to target the “luxury” market if they made any EVs at all.

Things were apparently fine when the west was making billions in China’s market, apparently not a problem of overcapacity in that case, but now that Chinese companies are competitive, it’s endless crying that lower prices for customers is a bad thing.

Government subsidies are paid for by the taxpayers, yes, but what companies are doing with subsidies matters. It’s common practice in the US for companies to take subsidies and then continue with high prices (i.e. pocketing the government subsidies, as I was saying), unlike the price wars we’re seeing in China. So at least they’re seeing lower prices in China thanks to subsidies whereas I can’t say the same over here.

Interesting that Chinese car manufacturers pay their suppliers much later, I didn’t know about that. I’m sure that makes a difference in the quarterly budgeting for suppliers, but if manufacturers like BYD make good on their payments eventually then suppliers know what they’re getting into.

China’s car industry being in trouble is up to the definition of “trouble” I’d say. Too much competition can be a kind of trouble, but currently that means really low prices. Eventually it’ll mean a bunch of failing companies and consolidation, but that’s how a market is supposed to work. Meanwhile in the west we’re already at the consolidated stage with only a small number of auto companies that are so comfortable that they feel they can charge top dollar for bottom-of-the-barrel quality (particularly in the US), still getting subsidies and tariffs in their favor and are considered too-big-to-fail so they can safely assume they will be bailed out every time.

Sounds like the market working as intended. I wish we could get some price wars here to reduce our cost of living. Imagine that, companies competing to gain sales rather than a handful of companies with full control of the market jacking prices up together and telling customers “take it or leave it” while pocketing government subsidies.

Based on the chart I previously posted, it looks like 2025 was a record year in sales. I’ve looked up another source: https://tradingeconomics.com/china/total-vehicle-sales and it looks like 2026 is set to have lower sales than 2025, but I wouldn’t necessarily call it weak. The numbers are in-between 2024 and 2025, and 2024 was no slouch.

I’m not so sure about that: https://www.ceicdata.com/en/china/automobile-sales-annual/automobile-sales

I think it’s more like Chinese companies are producing so many vehicles and there is so much competition in the market that companies need to find a bigger pie to make more sales. From what it looks like, BMW is just getting crowded out of the market in favor of vehicles made by Chinese companies.

I’ve read of smaller reactors that should speed up prototyping, but nothing about actual net positive energy production. That’s still far away.

I look forward to seeing them produce energy in a short 20 years from now.