"American car sales have been lagging behind their competitors for years. Ford and General Motors, once lions of the industry, now have a smaller market share than Toyota, Volkswagen, or Honda.
This isn’t because our major competitors are blocking American cars from entering their markets. It’s because people just don’t want our cars.
American manufacturers have tried to adapt to global tastes. Ever heard of the Ford Puma? You probably haven’t because Ford doesn’t even sell the small crossover here — it does sell it across Europe. To America’s credit, it was actually the bestselling car in the United Kingdom last year.
But a quick look at the list of most popular cars in the UK will show you that the Puma and the Model Y were the only American cars to hit the top 10 last year. For many consumers, American cars aren’t considered as reliable as Japanese models or as plush and tech-forward as German or Korean ones.
And even Chinese vehicles, which were once considered a non-entity in the global race, are starting to exceed Tesla in winning the race for the most electric vehicle (EV) sales.
A BYD car with an anime wrap. Photo by Joshua Fernandez on Unsplash
One reason why that might be is due to cost, but there’s also build quality. Teslas are known to have fantastic software and not-so-fantastic hardware, with panel gaps, creaks/rattles, and unevenly applied paint being endemic problems for their cars. One thing Build Your Dreams (BYD), the big Chinese EV company understands, is that you don’t want to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a vehicle that feels like it was put together by a toddler with a Lego set."
https://www.theamericansaga.com/p/does-anybody-in-the-trump-white-house
The auto industry is facing a historic inflection point.
In this critical conversation, Sig Huber of Elm Analytics and Jan Griffiths dive into: