GM

augustaye

2021-2024 was when the internal and federal investigation was launched in to someone stealing large amounts of expensive shoes: limited releases, prototypes, and unreleased designs. besides Ann Herbert nike VP and GM of north america letting her son steal and buy shoes (yeezys with his mom's corporate CC) and resell them under the moniker West Side Streetwear. 11 others were arrested for abetting, grand larceny; by using fake UPS tags attached to a shipment (the logistics floor manager was in on it). from what i remember, the reseller Coolkicks was taken down with as the owner was colluding with said floor manager

vladedivac12

Tesla is not? GM is not?

drkgla

Not to mention Ford and GM had the same subsidies Tesla did and didn’t make much out of it because their main priorities are selling gas F150s and Silverados which to your point are what Americans really want.

drkgla

https://eletric-vehicles.com/tesla/tesla-leads-euro-ncap-safety-rankings-in-two-vehicle-segments/ It’s genuinely a safe car. Ironically these people would say go buy car from Ford or a GM who made death traps for decades and now prioritize hulking pick up trucks as their safety benchmark.

smok1naces

What r u investing in GM? This is r-tarded.

Quick1711

You know the saddest part of this? The fucking government will step in (on our behalf, of course) and bail them out because everything in this country has turned into a *”legacy company” and can’t fail in the eyes of this administration.* *Same shit as BYD not being sold here. Don’t wanna put GM or Ford in a position to where they have to innovate and build an affordable EV.*

Flashy_Chocolate3984

I did that with GM and lost it all

Overall_Hunt7211

LAC. US based Lithium mine starting up in late 27 early 28. Good growth for the next 10 years on it. The mine is backed by DOE and GM.

scramjetmode

MU just printed $54.2B revenue at 87% GM, guided $61.5B next quarter, says Q1 is the margin floor, supply stays tight through 2028, and most 2027 HBM is already locked at higher prices. Market calls peak cycle; I call $MU still wildly underpriced. See you at 2,000. Don’t be a panican.

Separate_Baker7280

Where did you get 87% GM?

RoutineRevolution544

This is the first quarter with Thornhill and an additional better line. Every quarter until now was about the single line, managing cash burn and proving the concept. If they had been churning out batteries at a higher rate and lower margins they would have caused more dilution. Cash burn can reduce significantly in these upcoming quarters, and they have the cash to get to GM profitability if they meet their target.

Severe-Weekend-6664

solid writeup, the Line 2 ramp masking the GM improvement in Q2 is the part most people sleeping on this are missing. the real risk isn't the thesis, it's getting chopped up on the Line 1 move to Thornhill in Q4 if Line 2 stutters at higher utilizations before then. what's your exit plan if the preliminaries don't drop within that 9-15 day window this time?

Clackamas_river

The move is in the guide. Street has $31.50 on a $31 guide, so a $32–$33 print is a shrug. The real swing is whether Mehrotra guides $35-plus with mid-80s gross margin held as the run-rate, and whether he previews the December 9 buyback unlock. listen for: Q1 guide versus the $35–$37 whisper, mid-80s GM as the run-rate, and buybacks after December 9. If those land, the $1,032 low is dead and the stock runs to $1,150–$1,200 by Friday.

goebela3

Ya they did the same thing in 2008 with GM, it’s a bipartisan strategy until orange man bad

Catsoverall

"right but Tesla is already valued as much as Ford, Toyota, and GM combined". Heard it all before

jark87

100% agree. But the data is pretty overwhelming and at some point common sense takes over. It's like saying a GM has no control over the results of the team. What is definitive is that supply side economics, which is primarily the GOP economic position, has never produced the promised widespread economic boost. Profit and shareholder value? Yes, but not in any other form.

jl2l

GM had 185B in revenue last year and has a market cap of 85 Billion. Make it make sense.

Artmasterx

I am curious what they are depreciating that yields $60M+ in D&A (slide 29). Are they depreciating a bunch of computing equipment? I wish they would put in a cash flow or more complete P&L. They have a net loss of $33M for 2025 but somehow get to a +$55M in adjusted EBITDA. What are they spending so much money on to go from $246M in revenue and 80% gross margin that yields a $33M net loss in 2025? Is this simply a highly labor-intensive consulting type business where GM doesn't really mean much in how they are reporting it?

MantaMunta

VW is going down. About 100k jobs expected to be axed in the next years, they are closing multiple factories in Germany. Already 65% down from 5 years ago. They fired the man who wanted to pull VW into the future 5 years ago. They fired Herbert because "he was going to fast". It's only a value play if you mean negative value. The company is royally fucked. I don't see a future for it unless they become a shell sales company for the Chinese like GM just signed a contract for.

tresslessaccount

Boeing, Ford, GM, Pratt and Whitney, GE, etc. (old fucking companies that employ hundreds of thousands of people) serve a couple primary purposes: Employ american people, get them healthcare and dental coverage. They just happen to also make planes, cars, engines, etc.

MantaMunta

GM is subsidised at like 3x Tesla and is still taken over by china

idkuhhhhhhh5

THANK YOU MR PRESIDENT FOR BRINGING BACK SUCH GREAT INDUSTRIES ESPECIALLY GM [THEY WOULD NEVER COST THE GOVERNMENT MONEY](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Chapter_11_reorganization) NOR WOULD [STELLANTIS](https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/stellantis) OR EVEN [FORD](https://www.factcheck.org/2011/09/ford-motor-co-does-u-turn-on-bailouts/) Don’t get me wrong here, I wouldn’t consider myself to be a commie, but the fact that “Capitalism breeds innovation” is widely believed, I’m not exactly sure how the most capitalist president since Reagan openly pushing us from one of the only automotive fields *actually doing any innovation right now* is compatible with reality.

madridddddd

Ahhh yes forcing us into buying Ford GM n Stellantis... Most reliable car makers in the world 😂

itsalwayscalls

GM forecasts $14b to $16b profits. Their market cap is $70b.

ExternalityXV

I recently had a meeting with the GM of the warehouse I work in, we were discussing our health savings plans and got on the topic of HSA. We both have one and he mentioned that his financial advisor recommended he invest his unused HSA money and how he doubled his money from it. He ended up getting pulled into another meeting so I didn't get to probe him very much on it. Just wanted to pick everyone's brain on investing your unused HSA money and whether that would be super beneficial for a smaller account. Obviously the GM of our facility is going to have much more in his account than me, I think I have less than $1k. And what would be a good investment to put it into?

music_is_gud

GM, Moe bb 😚

AlfredEensteen

What is the actual problem with CNG? I worked briefly for a company that was doing conversions to new GM trucks (pickups and medium duty) back when CNG was being pushed heavily as transport fuel (early 2010's). I know there was an issue with the pressure regulators where they would freeze up when you accelerated after driving on the interstate for a while (i.e., an hour at 70 mph then accelerate to pass, or come to a steep grade and the cruise control opens the throttle) which would be a major issue for tractor-trailers, but buses and UPS trucks and garbage trucks work fine around town with the varying throttle position. This was when pressure was 3500, before the high pressure began (5000? or 5500?, may be higher now). GM made factory CNG trucks briefly and I was thinking about getting one. I got to a point where I wasn't driving 35-40k miles a year any longer and I stopped paying attention.

itsalwayscalls

GM trading at 5.75 forward is stupid. They even raised guidance for Q3 after Q2. I get the whole America bad, no hybrid vehicles point, but it is wildly underpriced. They have SUVs that are selling more YoY and V8s in their trucks vs others. They actually have decent vehicles.

EmbarrassedPart1256

ALL HAIL u/johnnyshots22 !!! 

geebzor

This took out our exchange server back a few decades ago. The GM opened an email cause he thought they were pics of Anna. Our exchange server emailed the entire global address book with a copy of the virus. I was the LAN administrator back then. I walked into the server room and unplugged the Ethernet cable.

Spac55

$TSLA TSLA. 1.5 Trillion car company When GM, F, just 50 Billion market cap Interest rate same for all, buying car not easy for consumers, look $MCD how consumers suffering

Early_Paramedic_1862

Hello GM? Will you give me $60,000 in GM shares if I buy a $60,000 Chevy Silverado?

EntertainerDowntown3

I mean it being valued at higher than GM early on when it had zero sales should have been an eye opener for you.

DuckTalesOohOoh

The GM merger?

itsalwayscalls

GM is trading at a forward PE of 6. I bought calls the day it dropped 5%. They have V8s and SUVs that are affordable. Short F.

YugModnarEmosTsuj

You're joking, right? I had a '97 Camry that ran with the motor mounts broken for over a year, before we were finally able to pull the engine and extract a stuck bolt. (That bolt went to one motor mount, without it, they were eventually break one at a time.) I was able to replace the motor mounts, the entire exhaust, timing chain and water pump, all in a driveway. I drove it to work one day and it threw a rod through the crankcase on the way there. I left it, came back an hour later, started back up, drove it the last bit to work, and we pulled it apart to find where it was broken. After some fussing with it, I drove it home, including 3 miles on the highway at 65mph, again, missing an entire piston and having a hole in the side of the engine. Meanwhile, Ford built a dual clutch system that acted like a wet clutch, but was actually a dry clutch, just to cut costs, and then kept dropping these transmissions back into cars over and over despite knowing they were an issue and doing nothing to fix it. Now they (And GM) are trying to argue that since they designed their engines to use proprietary software, that means end users and third parties shouldn't be allowed to work on them at all.

MainlineX

Yea, back in the day the same platform served several models so a lot of parts are interchangeable across a lot of different cars. GM A body and G body, Crystler A body and B body had millions and millions of cars made with parts that fit across their perspective platforms for years and years.

joebraga2

That's basically the tension I was trying to point out. If Detroit maintains higher margins and market share because a major group of competitors is excluded, that's certainly beneficial to Detroit in the short term. But it doesn't automatically tell us whether Detroit has actually become more competitive. Those are different things. A company can be very successful inside a protected domestic market while simultaneously losing competitiveness in markets where it has to face the full field of competitors. That's why I keep looking at Latin America. GM, Ford and Stellantis don't get to pretend BYD, Geely, GWM, SAIC and others don't exist here. They have to compete with them for actual customers. So I wouldn't necessarily use “parasitic” as an economic description, because trade protection can have legitimate industrial-policy and national-security objectives too. The interesting question for investors is where the cost of that protection ends up and what Detroit does with the time it buys. If protection gives US manufacturers time to reduce costs, improve batteries, develop better affordable EVs and become internationally competitive, that's one outcome. If it mainly allows them to preserve domestic prices and margins while their foreign competitors keep improving elsewhere, that's a very different outcome. And that's exactly the distinction I was trying to make in the original post.

joebraga2

I think you're mixing up three different things: profitability, consolidation and government support. China absolutely has too many EV manufacturers, and I fully expect consolidation. Some companies will fail, some will merge and some brands will disappear. But that doesn't mean the Chinese automotive industry disappears with them. The important question isn't whether every Chinese EV startup survives. It's what happens to the companies that do survive. That's also why “Xi is taking away the subsidies, so bankruptcies are coming” is too simplistic. China has been reducing and restructuring EV support rather than simply switching it off. The industry is being pushed toward a more mature phase where weaker manufacturers are increasingly exposed to competition. And look at the companies we're actually talking about. BYD, Geely and SAIC aren't interchangeable with tiny EV startups. SAIC is an especially interesting example because it already has a deep industrial relationship with GM. This matters a lot in Latin America. For decades, Chevrolet's Brazilian and Latin American identity was heavily influenced by Opel engineering. We had generations of cars with European GM roots: Opala/Rekord, Chevette/Kadett, Corsa, Astra, Vectra, Omega, Meriva, Zafira and others. That era gradually disappeared as GM reorganized its global operations during the 2010s. But what replaced it is fascinating: Chinese engineering and GM's Chinese joint ventures became increasingly relevant to GM's global and emerging-market product development. The current-generation Chevrolet Onix, for example, was the first model based on GM's GEM architecture, developed through GM's global engineering structure with substantial participation from its Chinese operations and SAIC-GM/PATAC. And now GM is looking even further toward its Chinese partnerships for South America, including cooperation with SAIC-GM-Wuling on future products. Think about what that means for the original argument. Americans tend to imagine this as a simple competition between “Detroit” and “Chinese automakers.” But the global automotive industry doesn't work that neatly anymore. Chinese engineering can end up inside a Chevrolet. A Western manufacturer can use a Chinese-developed platform or product outside China. A Chinese company can supply technology to the same Western manufacturers that are politically protected from direct Chinese competition in the US. So yes, many Chinese EV brands probably won't survive the consolidation. That's almost beside the point. If ten weak manufacturers disappear but BYD, Geely, SAIC and several other survivors emerge larger, technologically stronger and more internationally experienced, Detroit still has to compete against the resulting industry everywhere outside the protected US market. Latin America is already showing how complicated this becomes. Chevrolet spent decades adapting European Opel engineering to this region. Now Chinese partnerships can play part of the role that European engineering once played in its product strategy. That's the irony: Americans may eventually encounter Chinese automotive engineering without ever buying a Chinese-branded car. Which brings me back to the question in my original post. Excluding Chinese-branded vehicles from the US doesn't stop Chinese manufacturers from developing technology, gaining scale or competing with American manufacturers elsewhere. The investment question isn't whether every Chinese EV startup survives. It's whether the Chinese companies that survive this brutal consolidation become stronger global competitors — and whether insulating Detroit from that same competitive pressure at home leaves it better or worse prepared to face them abroad.

Independent-Use-228

GM be offering a 4.9% APR for the new Sierra. How kind of you $GM to ram me without any lube.

soggy_mattress

I was, yes, but they still aren't exact numbers. In the US, it's something like 8.5x more than the next best-selling manufacturer (GM). Globally, it's \~6.1x the next manufacturer (VW group). My point stands: Tesla, despite horrible political headwind and a divisive CEO, sells multiples over the next best EV manufacturers.

SkyMarshal

Detroit can't become competitive as long as China keeps the Yuan artificially low, and maybe not even then if wages in China remain substantially lower than in the US. The restriction is about preventing further loss of US jobs and bankruptcy of GM/Ford/Chrysler. The massive outsourcing wave of the 2000s and 2010s created immense social instability, hatred and distrust of both US political parties, and the (correct) belief they've both been captured by Wall St and "globalists" who don't care about the US only their own profit margins. It's why America voted in Trump and MAGA took over the GOP, and Socialists are on the verge of taking over the Dems.

felixfortunate

GM, Ford and Stellantis sold over 6.3 million vehicles in the US last year. That's roughly 38% of every new vehicle sold in America. People love shitting on American manufacturers online, but the actual consumer behavior tells a very different story. Americans are still buying millions of GM, Ford, Jeep, Ram, Dodge and Chrysler vehicles every year. For comparison, the entire US BEV market was only about 1.3 million vehicles last year. So I'm not sure I buy the argument that exposing Detroit to heavily subsidized Chinese manufacturers and potentially sacrificing domestic volume is somehow automatically going to make them stronger. There's a massive domestic industry here worth protecting. The problem isn't protection. The problem is what Detroit does with it. If tariffs give them time to reduce costs, improve batteries/software and strengthen the domestic supply chain, great. If they spend ten years selling $70k trucks behind a tariff wall while BYD gets better everywhere else, then yeah, we've got a problem.

debrutsideno

Oh the giant AI response. Not my favorite.. On the Ford point, in 2024 the Ford CEO Jim Farley imported a Xiaomi SU7 and drove it for 6 months. At the end he said he didn’t want to give it up. The Xiaomi SU7 starts at around $32,000 USD and if it were available in the USA Tesla, Ford, Chevy, GM and the rest would have a tough time competing at that price. The closest comparison to a standard Xiaomi SU7 is the Tesla model 3. Which starts around $37,000 and has a smaller battery, less power and much worse interior. If I had the option I would probably buy something like the BYD Seal 08. Around $30k usd.

Aggravating_Storm835

I think Cybercab will be begging Uber. Mercedes, Volkswagen, and Hyundai are all launch theirs this year with Uber. GM, Rivian, and Toyota will be in 2027/2028. Ford, Nissan, and Honda aren’t lying down. That’s not even mentioning BYD, WeRide, and MayMobility and others. Retail thinks Tesla and Waymo are the only game in town. At $70k-$200k per vehicle, Waymo won’t be able to manufacture efficiently enough to scale. They’ll probably end up being an AV component manufacturer for people like Toyota who can. Tesla as a stand-alone provider will likely be hurt the most by AV’s. Once AV’s eat 30-50% of their car sales and all the other major OEM’s are on Uber. Ironically, I think Uber sinks Tesla. Not the other way around.

Aggravating_Storm835

I think Cybercab will be begging Uber. Mercedes, Volkswagen, and Hyundai are all launch theirs this year with Uber. GM, Rivian, and Toyota will be in 2027/2028. Ford, Nissan, and Honda aren’t lying down. That’s not even mentioning BYD, WeRide, and MayMobility and others. Retail thinks Tesla and Waymo are the only game in town. At $70k-$200k per vehicle, Waymo won’t be able to manufacture efficiently enough to scale. They’ll probably end up being an AV component manufacturer for people like Toyota who can. Tesla as a stand-alone provider will likely be hurt the most by AV’s. Once AV’s eat 30-50% of their car sales and all the other major OEM’s are on Uber. Ironically, I think Uber sinks Tesla. Not the other way around.

Aggravating_Storm835

I think Cybercab will be begging Uber. Mercedes, Volkswagen, and Hyundai are all launch theirs this year with Uber. GM, Rivian, and Toyota will be in 2027/2028. Ford, Nissan, and Honda aren’t lying down. That’s not even mentioning BYD, WeRide, and MayMobility and others. Retail thinks Tesla and Waymo are the only game in town. At $70k-$200k per vehicle, Waymo won’t be able to manufacture efficiently enough to scale. They’ll probably end up being an AV component manufacturer for people like Toyota who can. Tesla as a stand-alone provider will likely be hurt the most by AV’s. Once AV’s eat 30-50% of their car sales and all the other major OEM’s are on Uber. Ironically, I think Uber sinks Tesla. Not the other way around.

Aggravating_Storm835

I think Cybercab will be begging Uber. Mercedes, Volkswagen, and Hyundai are all launch theirs this year with Uber. GM, Rivian, and Toyota will be in 2027/2028. Ford, Nissan, and Honda aren’t lying down. That’s not even mentioning BYD, WeRide, and MayMobility and others. Retail thinks Tesla and Waymo are the only game in town. At $70k-$200k per vehicle, Waymo won’t be able to manufacture efficiently enough to scale. They’ll probably end up being an AV component manufacturer for people like Toyota who can. Tesla as a stand-alone provider will likely be hurt the most by AV’s. Once AV’s eat 30-50% of their car sales and all the other major OEM’s are on Uber. Ironically, I think Uber sinks Tesla. Not the other way around.

Aggravating_Storm835

I think Cybercab will be begging Uber. Mercedes, Volkswagen, and Hyundai are all launch theirs this year with Uber. GM, Rivian, and Toyota will be in 2027/2028. Ford, Nissan, and Honda aren’t lying down. That’s not even mentioning BYD, WeRide, and MayMobility and others. Retail thinks Tesla and Waymo are the only game in town. At $70k-$200k per vehicle, Waymo won’t be able to manufacture efficiently enough to scale. They’ll probably end up being an AV component manufacturer for people like Toyota who can. Tesla as a stand-alone provider will likely be hurt the most by AV’s. Once AV’s eat 30-50% of their car sales and all the other major OEM’s are on Uber. Ironically, I think Uber sinks Tesla. Not the other way around.

Storm_Chaser06

Let the Chinese cars in, and Ford, GM and Stellantis might finally think about spending money and making good cars.

BlueCowboy3758

GM sales are down in China as of late and Chevy has completely exited their market this year. It's really just Buick carrying them there, along with some Cadillac sales.

AnotherRandomGuy34

I mean it's not like they don't, but for Ford and GM majority of their revenue and profits are still US based. For Stellantis, China is already started to creep in their European market, so not long until they start feeling the brunt. But in general for these three companies ex-North American markets are looking bleak in near and long future.

aegee14

You think Tesla sells well and GM doesn’t in China? Lol.

Significant_Eye_5130

Ford and GM don’t have international markets? Yes they do. In fact Ford sells Chinese produced cars in the US right now.

joebraga2

I think a lot of people are missing the broader point here. This isn't simply “China cheats, therefore Chinese cars are cheap.” Yes, China has heavily supported its auto and battery industries. But industrial policy isn't uniquely Chinese. The US has protected and subsidized its own auto industry too, including the interventions during the 2008–09 crisis and, much more recently, huge incentives for EV and battery manufacturing. The bigger question is what automakers did with that protection and investment. Detroit spent years concentrating on high-margin pickups and large SUVs while affordable cars gradually disappeared from their lineups. Then EVs arrived and many manufacturers tried to repeat essentially the same strategy: large, expensive vehicles with large batteries and high margins. That left a huge opening at the affordable end of the market. Meanwhile, Chinese manufacturers invested aggressively in batteries, electric platforms, vertical integration, manufacturing scale and smaller EVs. You don't have to agree with Chinese industrial policy to recognize that this created real technological and manufacturing capabilities. Reducing all of that to “cheating” doesn't explain the product gap. The quality argument is also becoming increasingly difficult to make as a blanket statement. GM itself has spent decades working with SAIC in China, and SAIC-GM-Wuling has become a major part of GM's Chinese operations. Chinese manufacturers aren't simply producing primitive cheap cars anymore. Brazil is particularly interesting because we can actually watch this competition happening in an open market. BYD's Dolphin Mini and Dolphin compete directly against cars from Chevrolet, Fiat, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Toyota and others. Consumers aren't being forced to buy them. They're comparing purchase price, equipment, performance, warranty and operating costs. And now the traditional manufacturers themselves are reacting. GM is bringing products developed through its Chinese partnerships, Stellantis is using Leapmotor technology and products, and other legacy manufacturers are developing cheaper EVs because they know this segment cannot simply be abandoned. So tariffs can keep Chinese-built EVs out of the US market, but they don't solve the underlying product problem. If Detroit wants to remain competitive globally, eventually it has to build affordable vehicles that people actually want to buy at competitive prices. You can criticize Chinese subsidies without pretending that every competitive advantage Chinese manufacturers have today comes from “cheating.” Those are two very different arguments.

joebraga2

That's actually very close to what makes me ask this question in the first place. I'm from Brazil, and we're seeing another version of this experiment here. Chinese automakers are competing directly with the established brands, and they're putting a lot of pressure on the market through price, equipment and electrification. But here's the part I find interesting: keeping those companies out of the US doesn't protect Detroit from that competition everywhere else. GM, Ford and Stellantis have been trying to compete in Latin America for decades. Ford even stopped manufacturing vehicles in Brazil in 2021, long before the current wave of Chinese EV competition here. So the difficulties of American automakers in this region can't simply be blamed on Chinese companies. Now they have another problem: BYD, GWM and other Chinese manufacturers are expanding in markets where American, European, Japanese and Korean brands already compete. That's why I'm not convinced that keeping Chinese cars out necessarily makes Detroit stronger in the long run. It may protect the extremely profitable US market, but GM, Ford and Stellantis still have to face those manufacturers in Mexico, Brazil and the rest of the world. And your Mexico example is especially interesting for that reason. If American automakers increasingly depend on protected or particularly profitable segments at home while losing ground in competitive segments abroad, protection may preserve their US business without actually solving the underlying competitiveness problem. That's the distinction I'm trying to make: keeping Detroit profitable in America and making Detroit globally competitive aren't necessarily the same thing.

IllStickToTheShadows

Yes. Where my family is from in Mexico the vast majority of people switched to Chinese cars in general because they are cheaper. GM, Ford, and Stellantis are basically extinct now except for their trucks used by the government or businesses. If you introduce Chinese cars in the US, you’d cause Detroit to go bankrupt…again

Alarmed_Sky3253

Out of all companies GM is by far the worst at any innovations and any logical decisions.

Pimpwerx

Ford and GM are just going to become the new Lada and Aurus Motors. What? You haven't heard of these prestigious Soviet car brands? Well then, that's your loss. In Soviet Russia, car drives you!

joebraga2

That's a much more reasonable concern than simply saying “Chinese car = spy device.” Connected vehicles absolutely create privacy and national-security questions. Cameras, GPS, cellular connectivity, driver-assistance systems and other sensors can generate enormous amounts of data, and I understand why the US would want strict rules governing where that data goes and who can remotely access the vehicle. But I don't think this is inherently a Chinese-car problem. It's a connected-car problem. The FTC has already taken action against GM and OnStar over allegations involving the collection and sale of precise geolocation and driving-behavior data from millions of American vehicles. So American cars can create serious data-privacy problems too. The important distinction, in my view, is between regulating the data and simply banning the product because of its nationality. If a Chinese automaker wants to sell cars in a country, require local data storage where appropriate, cybersecurity audits, restrictions on remote access, transparency about what the cameras and sensors collect, and compliance with that country's privacy laws. If a particular manufacturer can't comply with those requirements, then that's a concrete security problem. But “this car has cameras and LiDAR, therefore Beijing is mapping everything within 100 feet of it” requires evidence of what is actually being collected, transmitted and accessed. Otherwise we'd have to ask the same privacy questions about every highly connected vehicle on the road, regardless of whether the badge says BYD, GM, Ford, Tesla or something else.

joebraga2

That's a much more reasonable concern than simply saying “Chinese car = spy device.” Connected vehicles absolutely create privacy and national-security questions. Cameras, GPS, cellular connectivity, driver-assistance systems and other sensors can generate enormous amounts of data, and I understand why the US would want strict rules governing where that data goes and who can remotely access the vehicle. But I don't think this is inherently a Chinese-car problem. It's a connected-car problem. The FTC has already taken action against GM and OnStar over allegations involving the collection and sale of precise geolocation and driving-behavior data from millions of American vehicles. So American cars can create serious data-privacy problems too. The important distinction, in my view, is between regulating the data and simply banning the product because of its nationality. If a Chinese automaker wants to sell cars in a country, require local data storage where appropriate, cybersecurity audits, restrictions on remote access, transparency about what the cameras and sensors collect, and compliance with that country's privacy laws. If a particular manufacturer can't comply with those requirements, then that's a concrete security problem. But “this car has cameras and LiDAR, therefore Beijing is mapping everything within 100 feet of it” requires evidence of what is actually being collected, transmitted and accessed. Otherwise we'd have to ask the same privacy questions about every highly connected vehicle on the road, regardless of whether the badge says BYD, GM, Ford, Tesla or something else.

joebraga2

That's actually the historical comparison I had in mind when I wrote the post. Japanese competition exposed a real weakness in Detroit's product strategy, especially when American consumers suddenly cared much more about fuel economy and smaller cars. Detroit eventually improved enormously in quality, but today the Big Three have largely retreated from several mainstream passenger-car segments where Toyota and Honda remained strong. What makes the Chinese situation interesting to me is that the competitive pressure doesn't disappear just because those cars are kept out of the US. BYD, Geely and others can continue competing against GM, Ford and Stellantis in Brazil, Europe, Southeast Asia and other markets. So Detroit could remain very profitable at home selling trucks and large SUVs while simultaneously losing competitiveness elsewhere in smaller EVs, affordable EVs and PHEVs. That's the part that makes me wonder whether protection is buying Detroit time to catch up, or simply delaying the moment when it has to respond to the same kind of competitive pressure that Japanese manufacturers created decades ago.

alexrobinson

Protectionism is a useful tool for infant industries that has been used since the industrial revolution to protect domestic production. The problem is GM, Ford, Chevy and the like are not infant industries, they don't give a shit about the US economy and it's national security beyond their own share prices and profit margins.  As a result of this, any US protectionism is used purely to stifle competition, not to actually innovate or gain a foothold in new markets like it has in China. This is what happens when protectionism is done to prop up failing businesses. You get companies that are unable to innovate because resting on their laurels has become their bread and butter instead of competing.  

VeryStableGenius

The domestic US auto industry is a pickup truck industry that makes cars as a money-losing hobby, thanks to mix of chicken tax (banning imported trucks) and the weird math of the CAFE standards (that makes cheap light pickups technically unfeasible), and the fact that everybody else can make cheaper, better cars. And the fact that rednecks love their F-150s and Dodge Rams, and will into debt to buy them. Pickups are 50% of GM's profits, and 80% of Ford's. Large SUVs are 45% of GM's profits, and 15% of Ford's. Cars are under 5% of each brand's profits. Basically, Ford's and GM's profits already sit in a protected bubble. An influx of Chinese imported cars, assuming the truck/car balance doesn't shift, would seem to hurt the companies that actually sell cars: Toyota, Hyundai, Honda, Tesla, BMW, VVW, Nissan. The overlap I see with China's EVs is Ford's SUV division (45% of profits). Ford and GM could innovate more in the mini-pickup category, where CAFE would no longer apply (small trucks would be allowed), but which are still protected by chicken tax.

blindnlearning2see

As an American, I'd rather buy a cheap Chinese EV than a car/SUV, from GM or Ford. There's like 6 actual car models still available for sale in the US - it's all SUVs, trucks, and crossovers. There's like 2 minivan models left. The US vehicle market is so cringe.

RobotChrist

lmao gotta love this dumb takes that are completely ignorant on a subject and end with "you're uneducated on the subject" hahaha First and foremost, I don't have time to correct all the propaganda that you're repeating (everything that you have said is factually wrong), but I'm just going to tell you what's actually happening in the real world: All the western car companies work in China, all of them, all of them are designing, building, exporting and selling in China, even for a couple of them China is their biggest and most important market, for most of them all of their progress in electrification comes from their China's ventures and developments All of these western car makers have Chinese models, they're usually cheaper and more technologically advanced, they sell these cars not only in China, but all over the world, and lately they have been so good that they're the best sellers in the markets they're sold, and not only that, GM is starting to build their Chinese models now outside of China, starting this year they'll build the Aveo and the Groove in Mexico, because they're just better than their US models, and their best sellers by much I could list every western company and how they're growing thanks to their partnerships and business in China, Toyota, VW, Honda, Nissan, Ford, Tesla, you name it. All the propaganda you're parroting is designed to make it seem like China is destroying western car makers, when the reality is quite the opposite, most of them are able to move forward thanks to their Chinese links, but obviously most of them are dragged by their stupid constraints, overpaid executives, bloated portfolios, inefficient logistics, chronic lack of innovation and a long ass etcetera

spendanightinthebox

I think that argument is hugely overblown. The lithium in batteries can be recovered to 90-95% through new recycling practices. Lithium is abundant in solid form in the ground and in liquid form from wells in California, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. The oil companies are clinging to disinformation while the walls crumble around them. GM and Ford will lose their global markets and be left with only the USA. The rest of the world zooms past us. Pure electric vehicles are far more efficient and have about 70% fewer moving parts, meaning low maintenance.

joebraga2

Esse comentário do benwinner está formulando o argumento de predatory pricing: vender abaixo do custo para eliminar concorrentes e depois aumentar preços. É uma hipótese possível em teoria, mas ele está apresentando como certeza que seria isso que BYD/Geely fariam nos EUA. Aí dá para responder usando justamente seu teste de localização, sem negar que subsídios ou preços agressivos possam existir. Eu responderia assim, pronto para copiar: That's a legitimate risk to consider, but that's also why I keep proposing local production rather than unrestricted imports. Require BYD or any other Chinese automaker entering the US to build locally, employ American workers, comply with US labor, safety and environmental rules, and make its corporate structure and subsidies subject to the applicable US trade and competition rules. Then the “they're only cheap because China subsidizes exports and pays Chinese wages” hypothesis becomes much easier to test. Brazil is already giving us an imperfect version of that experiment. Chinese companies that arrived here 15+ years ago didn't automatically succeed. Chery struggled badly in its early years but stayed, localized and eventually partnered with CAOA. JAC initially had a much stronger launch, but its passenger-car operation later shrank dramatically. Now BYD, GWM, Chery and Changan are localizing manufacturing in Brazil and employing Brazilian workers, while competing against GM, VW, Stellantis, Toyota, Hyundai and others that also manufacture here. If the business model really depends on permanently selling cars below cost, localization won't magically make that sustainable. But if Chinese manufacturers can eventually make money producing locally while still offering competitive prices, then we have to consider another explanation: maybe part of the advantage actually comes from manufacturing efficiency, batteries, vertical integration, platforms, procurement and scale. That's exactly what I want to find out. I don't want American workers flipping burgers either. I want to know which manufacturing system can employ them while producing globally competitive cars.

joebraga2

That's another reason I think the competition question matters. The issue isn't simply whether Detroit survives. It's also what American consumers are getting for their money. And North American manufacturing already gives us a way to have competition without simply importing everything from China. GM, Nissan and other manufacturers already use highly integrated US-Mexico supply chains. So if the concern is American manufacturing, require Chinese automakers to localize production in North America and meet the same labor, safety and regulatory requirements. Then see what happens to prices. If their cost advantage disappears, we learned something important. If it doesn't, then American manufacturers have a much more fundamental cost and product-positioning question to answer.

joebraga2

One thing I think is missing from this discussion is that Brazil has already been through an earlier wave of Chinese automakers, and it shows that being Chinese, having lower manufacturing costs or offering more equipment does not automatically guarantee success. Chery entered Brazil in 2009, long before the current EV boom. Its first attempt was not particularly successful. The cars could offer a lot of equipment for the money, but the products, powertrains, dealer experience and overall strategy were not yet sufficiently adapted to Brazilian conditions and consumer expectations. Several early models disappeared. But Chery stayed. It built a factory, accumulated experience and eventually partnered with CAOA, a Brazilian automotive group with decades of experience in the local industry. CAOA had previously built its business through Ford dealerships, imported Hyundai vehicles and eventually manufactured Hyundai vehicles in Brazil. The result is that today's CAOA Chery is almost unrecognizable compared with the Chery that entered Brazil more than 15 years ago. And now CAOA is doing something similar with Changan. Changan is a separate Chinese automaker, but CAOA is using its Brazilian industrial and commercial infrastructure to manufacture and sell Changan products here as CAOA Changan. That is important because this competition is no longer limited to cheap imported EVs. Chinese-designed ICE, mild-hybrid, hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles are increasingly competing with traditional manufacturers too. JAC is a useful counterexample because its history went almost in the opposite direction. JAC entered Brazil in 2011 with a huge marketing campaign, quickly established a large dealer network and initially sold quite well. It promised Brazilian manufacturing, but that passenger-car factory never materialized. Over time its light-vehicle operation shrank dramatically and most of that original dealer footprint disappeared. So Brazil has already demonstrated something important: Chinese origin alone doesn't guarantee success. Chery initially struggled, stayed, learned, localized and found a strong Brazilian industrial partner. JAC had a much stronger initial launch but failed to establish the same industrial footprint and eventually became a much smaller player. Now we're watching a much larger second wave. BYD took over Ford's former industrial complex in Camaçari. GWM took over Mercedes-Benz's former factory in Iracemápolis. Renault and Geely are expanding their industrial relationship. GM itself is assembling Chinese-developed Chevrolet EVs in Ceará through products originating from its Chinese ecosystem with SAIC and Wuling. Toyota and BYD have a 50/50 EV R&D joint venture. Tesla complicates the story even further. Tesla is one of America's biggest automotive technology success stories, but its battery supply chain has always been international. Panasonic was fundamental to its early scale, while its later battery sourcing expanded to suppliers including LG Energy Solution and CATL. So the modern auto industry is already much more interconnected than “Chinese technology vs American technology” suggests. And this is why I find the comparison with Japanese and Korean automakers so interesting. Foreign manufacturers don't necessarily remain importers forever. They enter a market. Sometimes they fail. Sometimes they learn. They change products, establish dealerships, find local suppliers, partner with domestic companies, hire local engineers and workers, and eventually manufacture locally. Brazil watched Japanese and Korean companies go through versions of that process. Now we're watching Chinese companies do it. And localization gives us a much better experiment for the question this thread started with. If BYD, GWM, Changan or another Chinese manufacturer loses most of its price advantage after producing in Brazil, Europe or eventually the US with local workers and local regulations, then Chinese wages, subsidies and domestic production conditions were clearly responsible for a large part of that advantage. But if a significant advantage survives localization, then wages cannot be the whole explanation. Battery costs, vertical integration, platform architecture, supplier organization, procurement, automation, manufacturing scale, development cycles and margins all become part of the answer. That's why I don't think the most interesting experiment is simply importing millions of Chinese cars into the US. Make them manufacture there. Make them employ American workers. Make them comply with American safety, labor and environmental rules. Then compare the products. Brazil is increasingly doing exactly that experiment with Brazilian workers. And after watching what happened with Chery and JAC over the last 15+ years, I wouldn't assume the result in advance. Localization can expose weaknesses just as easily as it can expose advantages.

joebraga2

There is another part of this discussion that makes the whole “Chinese auto industry vs American auto industry” framing much less clean than it sounds. Tesla itself is a good example. Tesla is American, but its battery supply chain has never been purely American. Panasonic was crucial to Tesla’s early scale, and Tesla later diversified its battery sourcing to companies including LG Energy Solution and CATL. So even the most successful American pure-EV manufacturer was built around a global, heavily Asian battery supply chain. Brazil makes this even more interesting because we are watching several versions of this industrial integration happen at the same time. BYD took over Ford’s former industrial complex in Camaçari and is progressively localizing production. GWM took over Mercedes-Benz’s former factory in Iracemápolis. Renault and Geely are expanding their industrial relationship in Brazil. GM itself is now assembling Chinese-developed Chevrolet EVs in Ceará. The Spark EUV and Captiva EV come from GM’s Chinese industrial ecosystem with SAIC and Wuling and are being assembled locally. Toyota and BYD have a 50/50 EV R&D joint venture. Nissan has had a major industrial relationship with Dongfeng in China for decades. At some point, asking whether a technology is simply “Chinese” or “Western” stops having an easy answer. And Brazil gives us another interesting experiment: range. If you look only at Brazilian homologation figures, some EVs can look surprisingly short-legged. Cars with batteries in the 50-60 kWh range can receive official Inmetro/PBEV range figures around 300 km. But the Brazilian number is deliberately conservative. Inmetro does not simply publish the raw laboratory result. Adjustment factors are applied to produce a more conservative real-world reference. The problem is that a lot of automotive discussion here then treats that number almost as the maximum distance the EV can realistically travel. Owner experience often looks very different. We now have EV owners driving these cars across Brazil, including mountainous areas and routes that climb from the coast onto the plateau. There are owners and independent tests substantially exceeding the official Inmetro range, and under favorable conditions some results get much closer to WLTP. Larger-battery EVs can exceed 400 km in real use even when their Brazilian homologated number looks much less impressive. Obviously that does not mean WLTP is guaranteed real-world range. Drive at 120 km/h, climb continuously, add headwind, temperature changes or heavy HVAC use and consumption changes dramatically. But this exposes an interesting asymmetry in how cars are discussed here. When a small 1.0-liter ICE car achieves an exceptionally good km/l result, automotive enthusiasts and media are perfectly happy to show what the car can achieve under favorable real-world conditions. With EVs, I often see the opposite. The conservative Inmetro figure gets repeated as the defining range of the vehicle, while owner consumption and independent road results receive much less attention. A much better way to discuss EV range is to show the homologation numbers and then show actual energy consumption. If an EV does 12, 15, 18 or 22 kWh/100 km, anyone can understand what a 40, 60 or 90 kWh battery means under different conditions. That's much more informative than saying “this is a 300 km car” because one homologation system printed 300 km on the label. And all of this comes back to the original Detroit question. Brazil is becoming a useful real-world laboratory because Chinese manufacturers are no longer simply shipping Chinese-built cars here. They are buying former Western factories, hiring Brazilian workers and progressively localizing production. At the same time, established American, European and Japanese manufacturers are increasingly using Chinese partners, platforms, batteries, engineering or complete vehicles. Europe is moving in a similar direction as Chinese manufacturers localize more production there. That gives us an opportunity to separate two things that are constantly mixed together in this discussion. If Chinese manufacturers lose most of their price advantage when they manufacture in Brazil, Europe or eventually the US with local workers, then Chinese wages, subsidies and domestic production conditions were clearly doing much of the work. But if a substantial advantage survives localization, then wages cannot be the entire explanation. Battery costs, vertical integration, EV-specific platforms, supplier organization, procurement, manufacturing scale, automation, development cycles and margins all have to enter the discussion. That's why I would actually find an American-built Chinese EV much more interesting than another imported Chinese EV. Require American production. American wages. American safety and environmental standards. Apply the same rules to everyone. Then compare the products. If an American-built BYD ends up costing roughly the same as an equivalent American-built GM or Ford, we learn something important about where the original Chinese cost advantage came from. But if it can still compete aggressively on price, equipment and efficiency while paying American production costs, then tariffs didn't answer the underlying competitiveness question. They only delayed the experiment.

rossmosh85

If BYD comes in, it will really erode GM and Ford. Ford already is struggling pretty badly. GM is just treading water. Any deal to bring Chinese cars into the US would need to require they are built/assembled in the US. Otherwise they'll absolutely destroy the competition. It's extremely dangerous to basically let China do all of the world's manufacturing

Smok3dSalmon

Look up GM's Ultium platform and Ford's Universal EV platform. This should answer all your questions. No idea what Stellantis is doing, I assume they will die.

joebraga2

One thing I think this thread is showing is that the question is becoming bigger than simply "Chinese cars are cheap because Chinese workers are cheap." Wages and subsidies matter. But Chinese manufacturers are increasingly moving production outside China, which gives us a chance to test that explanation in the real world. Brazil is a particularly interesting example. For decades, the market was dominated by established American, European, Japanese and Korean manufacturers with local factories, suppliers, dealerships and huge brand recognition. Chevrolet was enormously strong, and the Onix spent years as the country's best-selling car. Now the structure is changing. BYD took over Ford's former industrial complex in Camaçari and is progressively localizing production. GWM took over Mercedes-Benz's former factory in Iracemápolis. Renault and Geely are expanding their industrial partnership and investing together in Brazil. And it gets stranger than simply "Chinese companies versus legacy automakers." GM itself is assembling Chinese-developed Chevrolet EVs in Brazil. The Spark EUV and Captiva EV are being assembled in Ceará using products originating from GM's Chinese ecosystem with SAIC and Wuling. Toyota has a 50/50 EV R&D joint venture with BYD. Nissan has a long industrial relationship with Dongfeng in China. Renault is partnering with Geely. So the borders between "Chinese" and "traditional" manufacturers are becoming increasingly blurry. Europe may become an even better test. Chinese manufacturers are actively looking for existing European factories rather than simply exporting everything from China. BYD says that, longer term, it expects to need three vehicle assembly plants and a battery plant in Europe. That is why I don't think the wage argument settles this. If BYD builds cars with Brazilian or European workers and most of its price advantage disappears, then labor costs, subsidies and producing in China were obviously doing a huge amount of the work. But if a substantial advantage remains, we have to ask what else explains it: battery costs, vertical integration, platform design, automation, supplier organization, scale, development cycles, margins, or some combination of them. And this is where I come back to Detroit. The US doesn't have to allow unlimited Chinese imports to test this. Require local production. Require American wages. Require US safety and environmental standards. Apply trade safeguards. Then let the products compete. Protection can give an industry time to adjust. But the important question is what Detroit does with that time. Because Chinese manufacturers aren't standing still outside the US. They're localizing production, buying or reusing factories, forming partnerships with established manufacturers and becoming part of the same global supply chains that legacy automakers use. Brazil is already experiencing that transition. Europe increasingly is too. Renault and Geely, for example, just announced another €319 million investment in their Brazilian partnership. If an American-built Chinese EV eventually costs roughly the same as an American-built competitor, we'll have learned something important about the original Chinese cost advantage. But if it can still compete aggressively on price and equipment while paying American production costs, then keeping the imported version out didn't solve Detroit's underlying competitiveness problem. It just postponed the test.

Smok3dSalmon

Why would they diverge? That’s a false argument. They would fire the CEO for being an idiot. GM in other geographies mostly just makes the same vehicles unless they partner. Most of the partnerships are just to piggyback off the partner’s supply chain.

Wermys

The reason you will NOT see GM be competitive with the Chinese brands in the short term is cost of manufacturing. The moment automatition with stuff like Optimus happens the advantage to having cars produced in China vanishes. But China knows this also which is why they are also building plants overseas anticpating this in other countries. Frankly the bigger question for countries is whether or not they decide to put up protectionist barriers to try and force local manufacturing once automatition makes production outside of China viable. What I am more curious is if some of the larger economies like Brazel, Nigeria etc will start to have its own domestic car manufactureres come to the forfront due to automation rather then foreign car manufacturers whether they are from the US, Japan, China or Korea.

Crayon_Eater_007

|GM 2025 Metric|Amount| |:-|:-| |Free Cash Flow|\~$17.6B| |Pension payments |\~$4–6B| |Dividends + Buybacks|\~$7.7B| It's always the pensions fault, but somehow they can afford tons of dividends & stock-buybacks....

joebraga2

I think several comments here are mixing two separate questions. Yes, China has lower manufacturing wages, industrial subsidies matter, and the US has legitimate reasons to care about trade rules. I'm not arguing that Chinese manufacturers should simply get unrestricted access to the American market. What I'm questioning is the idea that cheap labor alone explains why Chinese cars are cheaper, and that keeping them out therefore solves Detroit's competitiveness problem. Brazil is becoming a useful real-world test. GM, Volkswagen, Fiat and Toyota have been manufacturing here for decades. They already have factories, established suppliers, huge dealer networks, brand recognition and enormous scale. Chinese manufacturers entered with almost none of those advantages. Their cars initially had to be shipped across the ocean, pay import duties and Brazilian taxes, establish distribution and dealerships from scratch, and compete against locally produced ICE cars. Yet they were still able to price BEVs and PHEVs directly against conventional ICE vehicles. And now Chinese manufacturers are increasingly localizing production in Brazil. That makes the labor argument even more interesting, because progressively more of the production cost is Brazilian rather than Chinese. So where does the remaining price competitiveness come from? That's the part I think deserves more attention: vertical integration, battery costs, dedicated EV platforms, fewer components, supplier structure, manufacturing efficiency, scale, software/electronics integration and possibly lower margins while entering a new market. It doesn't mean subsidies and Chinese labor costs are irrelevant. It means they probably aren't the entire explanation. There's also an interesting counterargument several people here have raised: protecting Detroit's highly profitable US market could give GM and Ford the cash and time they need to become more competitive elsewhere. That could work. But then the important question is what they do with that protection. GM can make excellent money selling large pickups and SUVs in the US while simultaneously competing with BYD, GWM and Geely in places like Brazil. If those American profits finance better platforms, lower production costs and more competitive electrified cars globally, then the protected home market is buying useful time. If instead protection allows Detroit to remain increasingly dependent on high-margin trucks and SUVs while competitors gain scale and manufacturing experience in the rest of the world, then protection may simply be hiding the competitiveness problem. That's why I'd actually like to see Chinese manufacturers subjected to the hardest possible version of this test in the US. Don't give them unrestricted imports. Require local production. Require American wages, American safety standards and American regulations. Then let an American-built BYD compete against an American-built GM or Ford. If the price advantage largely disappears, then labor, subsidies and imports really were doing much of the work. But if a locally produced Chinese EV can still compete on price with a locally produced American ICE vehicle or EV, then Detroit has a manufacturing-cost problem that tariffs alone aren't going to solve.

Sea_Bear7754

The big 3 have a world of problems, some their cars, most are not. Ford for example can’t make an EV of Bibi held a gun to their head. GM is fine, FCA can’t make anything that isn’t a Ram 1500.

SigX1

What are you talking about? We will love the GM Trabant and Ford Yugo. That totally worked out for East Germany and Yugoslavia, right?

connly33

GM seems to be trying but it’s painfully clear how bloated and kneecapped they are. They seem to be afraid to dump money into their new platforms as fast as they need to and everyone is afraid of making individual decisions without running it through 37 departments for approval and waiting 8 months for the most basic changes to start being implemented. If a Chinese auto manufacturer decides they need to build a new test facility, make a design improvement, change suppliers or demand different specs on components it’s done in matter of days to weeks. The US corporate structure isn’t setup to make fast decisions. Even me as an individual or small business if I want to get a tool die made, I’m looking at 6 months minimum and $350k USD. If I go to get that same die made in China I can get it done for $15k and I can make daily or weekly revisions by sending new prints directly to the machine shop through WeChat. And if I don’t like the quality they’ll have a new one on the way immediately. In the US it would be a month of back and forth and possibly involve them firing me as a customer.

Treinrukker

GM and other American car makers have received billions, they just don't call it subsidies 🤣🤣

joebraga2

That's actually the strongest counterargument to what I'm suggesting, and I think it's possible. A protected and highly profitable US market could give GM the cash flow to compete much more aggressively elsewhere. GM could make money on trucks and SUVs at home while being forced to cut costs and develop cheaper electrified products in markets like Brazil. My question is what happens if those two sides of GM start diverging too much. If the protected US profits are being used to make GM more efficient globally, then protection may genuinely be buying useful time. But if GM becomes increasingly dependent on high-margin trucks and SUVs in the US while its smaller and more affordable products struggle against Chinese competitors internationally, then the protected market may be masking the problem rather than fixing it. Brazil is why I'm interested in this distinction. GM can't avoid BYD, GWM and Geely here. Chevrolet has to compete for the same private customers, and that is already forcing a different product and pricing environment. So I agree that protection doesn't automatically make GM less competitive. The question is whether Detroit is using the protected revenue stream to become capable of competing without protection later. If it is, that's a successful industrial strategy. If it isn't, then the US market becomes a very profitable shelter while the competitive problem keeps growing outside it.

Smok3dSalmon

You’re talking about GM competing with Chinese companies in international markets and then wondering if banning them from the US is making them less competitive? I think protecting their home market secures their revenue streams while they compete and evolve.

joebraga2

There's another US-specific factor that I think matters here: the American auto market isn't just protected from Chinese competition. It's also unusually dependent on large pickups and SUVs, especially for Detroit's most profitable products. The reaction to Ram dropping the Hemi V8 from the 1500 was a fascinating example. There was enough customer demand for the V8 that Ram eventually brought it back. Brazil has some of that culture too, particularly among wealthier pickup buyers and in agribusiness. Brazilian V8 enthusiasts celebrated its return as well. But the scale is completely different. In the US, the F-150, Silverado 1500 and Ram 1500 are mainstream vehicles, and above them you have the F-Series Super Duty, Silverado 2500/3500 and Ram 2500/3500. That creates an interesting situation for Detroit. Chinese manufacturers have become extremely aggressive in compact cars, crossovers, batteries, BEVs and PHEVs, while American manufacturers still make enormous amounts of money in vehicle segments where US consumer preferences are quite different from most of the world. That can be a strength. BYD can't simply take a successful Chinese compact EV and expect it to replace an F-150. But it could also become a weakness if those highly profitable American segments allow Detroit to postpone becoming price-competitive in smaller vehicles and electrified powertrains that it needs to sell internationally. That's why I keep coming back to GM. GM can make excellent money selling large trucks in the US while simultaneously being forced to learn how to compete with BYD, Geely and GWM in markets like Brazil. Maybe that strategy works. But if the US business becomes increasingly dependent on expensive trucks and SUVs while other markets move toward cheaper electrified vehicles, that's a very different long-term risk from simply asking whether Americans want Chinese cars.

hkmamike

In the dynamic that you laid out, GM actually builds muscles for producing price competitive cars, while keeping the US market more profitable, at the expense of US consumers.

throwaway110c

New GM V8 engines will no longer include a dipstick to check your oil. We've now reached max retardation.

Infamous_Ad8730

Shiller P/E is mostly irrelevant in today's market. It was helpful and meaningful when the big companies were GE, GM, Ford, PG, WM etc. Those businesses had 5-10% margins and investors were only going to pay so much for that kind of profit. Now, the major companies (by far) are NVDA, AAPL, MSFT, META, GOOGL and those companies are running 50-75%! margins, so investors are now willing to pay more for those outrageously higher profits.

realjlj

Margins like that in memory never feel temporary while they're happening. I'd watch how they talk about customer pricing and inventory on the next couple calls more than the GM print itself. Cycle businesses always look like they've structurally improved right before the turn.

Paganly

I love LAC. Been buying chunks every pay cheque since spring. Near production status next year. And, good outlook with a US energy position and GM holding.

effyourAI

What makes you think GM isn’t going to shake down LAC for all that it’s worth? GM doesn’t give a shit about LAC’s stock price, they now essentially own all first phase production of Thacker Pass. Not to mention the U.S. department of energy getting their cut too.

ReDesignMe

Copy pasted from another post. My LAC analysis.  It's green energy but still energy. Pre-revenue yes but you have to look at the bigger picture. Firstly the commodity, lithium, is critical to national security and the project is backed by $3B in funding from DOE, GM, and private equity. Trump likes the project so much he even had his government take an ownership stake in it. I think Trump has messed up badly with the Iran war and will cause some sort of energy crisis when the reserves can no loger suppress the price of oil. This will hand Democrats the next election and they'll preach about diversifying and innovation of energy, just like last time. Regardless of if that actually happens or not, LAC will still go through a re-rate next year as construction ends in 2027 and commercial production begins 2028. All miners go through it, it is verifiable data and the gains are usually between 100-250% as a reward for the project being majorly derisked and start of revenues. Insert the Democrats in office and most likely this is 300-500% by 2030. The play here is simply to wait for the big money to come to you instead of chasing it. It's the same playbook from TNZ that changed my life. You just have to think ahead a little and be patient, that's it.

Valkorion335786

https://youtu.be/P7GM5uu6GII?is=5yT0ur7gYRIReu2S At 3:12

AgitatedStranger9698

SHould've gone Rivian, GM equinox is solid too. But you strike me as a cybertruck kind of guy.

Kpints

Revenue share should be in GM. Stock based comp should stay in. There's a very realistic argument to be made that model *training* costs (not inference) should be capitalized. Do with this that you will

The_Alan_Greenspan

$GM overvalued

Accurate_Flower_4233

GM stock price tripled. 

Particular_Rule304

PANW? Definitely seems the most reasonable of all the big names. \~74% GM with compression only from memory prices is attractive.

POsIDeCTAc

We have already lost it. We are just prolonging the inevitable. It's time to rip the band aid off and force Honda, Toyota, Ford, GM, and Stellantis to compete.

Aggravating_Storm835

You are completely overlooking a lot of big factors: primarily Volkswagen, Mercedes, Hyundai, GM, Toyota, and Rivian. The first three have L4 autonomy. The last three are nearing it. Ford, Honda, and Nissan ain’t rolling over, either. And those are just the legacy giants. Not even counting other startups like May Mobility and WeRide. You miss the fact that the industry is expected to 10x in the next decade and there’s a lot of major producers that manufacture cars for a lot less than Waymo can at their current $70k-$200k per car rate. Most manufacture cars cheaper than Tesla does, too. Tesla only manufactures less than 1.5-1.8 million vehicles a year. Waymo only produces about 2k a year. 100 million vehicles are sold each year. Let’s generously assume both will produce a combined 5 million AV’s each year. 100 million vehicles are currently sold every year and it’s projected that AV’s could reduce that by 30-50%, creating an implied demand for 30-50 million AV’s annually. So even with my generous assumptions, Tesla and Waymo combined can only supply at most 13% of the projected demand. This is why Waymo and Tesla’s efforts to be a stand-alone provider are unlikely to be successful. Even if one happens to be available near you (which appears improbable), maybe you want/need a Mercedes or Rivian. Most likely, you’ll just want the car that is available when you need it and not care if it’s a Waymo or Tesla or anything. That’s where Uber comes in.