Even startups these days seem to be a case of too many chiefs, not enough Indians.
To that dimension I would add ethics as well. It's very hard to justify working for the likes of Tesla when being mindful of the attitude the company and company representatives have with regards to basic issues ranging from workers rights to totalitarianism.
Places that understand that physical production cannot be abstracted forever will prevail.
For example, we have 100+ drone startups in the United States. But our overall drone production capacity (hammers in Civ) hasn't actually increased. We just have 100 companies buying grey market from Vietnam and Indonesia, many of which came from China originally.
The way the system should work is if you want to do a drone startup, you need to build a drone factory. That's what the money is for.
If the startup fails, maybe the market leader buys the factory for cheap. This is how the automobile industry was in the United States - a bunch of those companies went bust, but the factories were often kept online by the winners.
I think the problem is more nuanced than that. The US was effectively "the world's managers", in the sense that their economic might, entrepreneur culture, and push for globalization resulted in a corporate structure where the ownership and executive levels were US whereas non-critical business domains reflected the local workforce, whether it was the US or not.
This setup worked great while the US dominated the world's economy and influenced their allies and trading partners to actively engage in globalization.
Now that Trump is pushing for isolationism, of course things change.
If I were to tell you a country over five years grew its GDP 5% in 1900, that would mean houses and roads and factories and mines and a whole range of things were built.
In 2020, 5% real GDP growth could be an increase in the value of various services. In fact, you might not need to change the physical world at all to achieve that growth.
Nowadays we're more in conflict, partly just because we can afford to be without risking immediate starvation. Billions get spent on swaying an election this way, more billions get spent on swaying it that way. Dollars spent in both directions count as GDP even though each one has another dollar on the other side pushing in the opposite direction. And it's not just elections, everywhere we're building moats instead of solving problems. It's a very busy way to not go anywhere.
We need to move from scalars to vectors--progress towards some goal--otherwise we're just patting ourselves on the back for working hard to no effect.
“Smart People Should Build Things”
There are plenty of smart people who are highly passionate about things other than money. The problem is a large portion aren't at top name universities and doing don't have the connections. Problem is, they spent all their time learning their craft and not how to market their ideas.
I disagree that it's just because those jobs pay well. Look at what people are investing in and how it works. We throw tons of money at obviously bad ideas, obvious cons, and anyone that took a semester at Stanford. There are plenty of Bitcoin billionaires! There's tons who have made riches off the VR hype wave before that.
I agree that we put too much focus on finance and the like but I think more importantly we have a system where you can get ultra wealthy for producing vaporware. It's much easier to build hype than build a product. You still get people who become millionaires & billionaires by shipping things, but we created a system where we reward conmen. Ultimately, the con is easier than the actual job.
There's a lot of that tech can do but let's be honest, our industry has capitalized on the boom and bust cycle and accelerated it. We're not the only ones, but we're a big player and it's easier to hold our own community accountable than get others to change.
Oh, there's a "tax credit" to make it easier? Sounds like more paperwork & friction. No thanks!
That's one reason Tech is such an attactor. Low barrier to entry.
When California and the EPA tried to legislate lower emissions 9 years into the future, the US automakers sued to block saying it was impossible. Japanese automakers were already selling vehicles that met those standards.
When they badly, badly screw up, they just get bailed out with public funds and then go on to pay execs tens of millions of dollars a year and fat bonuses. Guaranteed profits no matter what made them lazy and uncompetitive.
They’re all dying
When this happens, I think it's only fair that the bailed-out company becomes publicly owned. If I'm forced to invest in a company with my tax dollars, then I damn well better be treated as an investor. Where are my shares? Where are my dividends?
Also the many systemic, industry-wide factors discussed last week in
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43692677 ("America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back (molsonhart.com)" — 1010 comments)
I agree with the gist of that piece; focusing on specific engineering choices (important as they are) is missing the forest for a particularly interesting tree. Any American EV maker is heavily disadvantaged right now, no matter how clever they are.
Depending on what you are looking for they are WAY cheaper than comparable cars.
This matches reports from Tesla users. The cybertruck is specially prone to this sort of design problems.
The Cybertruck went with daisy chained PoE automotive Ethernet variant. The same cables delivering power to subcomponents handle data. Damage/problems in a single component can not only bring down the network but kill power to all the car's subsystems. It means less wiring in the Cybertruck (and lower production expense) at the cost of durability and fail-safety. Someone looked at TokenRing Ethernet and said "yes that is best".
I think it’s easy to look at the outputs of their industries and compare them extremely favorably to the outputs elsewhere, especially in EV.
But once you start comparing tariff adjusted pricing it gets much trickier much faster.
[1] https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/companies-markets/chinese-e...
They could have strong-armed the states into it with a combination of funding the construction and the way they mandated the 21 drinking age: by threatening to withhold highway funds.
https://www.govtech.com/transportation/federal-funding-for-e...
I think this sort of statement should be revised. From an outsider's point of view, there is a political current within the US that pushes with a fundamentalist fervor the idea that state institutions cannot do any good or anything right. This becomes a self fulfilling prophecy when they elect candidates that push these ideals, which have a vested interest in sabotaging, derailing, and shutting down projects.
> Approval of funding does not necessarily mean the money has been dispersed. Only about $500 million of the $5 billion allotted for NEVI had been dispersed as of October, said Corey Harper, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering, who has conducted research into the NEVI program
Fast chargers as I understand are more taxing to the electric grid and so are not simply able to be placed just anywhere there is electricity. Additionally a source paper in the govtech.com article also emphasizes looking at coverage rather than number of chargers. That is wanting to have chargers spread out such a way that people can complete longer trips.
https://cyberswitching.com/understanding-grid-connections-dc...
Here's a true statistic:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/03/28/... ("Biden’s $7.5 billion investment in EV charging has only produced 7 stations in two years" (2024))
This is a story about a program not getting off the ground in two years and then being cancelled by the political opposition. Is two years too slow? You could certainly argue that.
But this really isn’t a story about government incompetence wasting billions of dollars on a handful or charging stations. Money was allocated, but it never had the chance to be spent.
That money was wasted when the project was cancelled, not before.
From an EU perspective the world as it has existed in the living memory is a world shaped by decisive US-actions. The way EVs have been approached were anything but that. Arguably neither did Germany, because of the way their politicians are entangled with the car manufacturers.
Yea let's give the federal government more power. That's going so well right now.
Investing on a nation-wide infrastructure grid that fundamentally changes the nation's energy independence is hardly a reason to mindlessly parrot state rights cliches.
While useful parts of the federal goverment are destroyed, because they dont serve ultra rich.
Read about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System
But if you sold the Spark EV for 20k today with like 120mi of range, it would be perfect and would satisfy all my needs 99% of the time. Even mine (13k all in) was great here in LA with ~60mi of range. I loved how small and easy to park it was without feeling cramped to me at all. If it had CarPlay I'd've said it was the perfect car haha.
It's a shame they haven't rebooted it yet as a pure EV. It's right there in the name!
They had to in order to build the manufacturing capacity without literally bankrupting themselves. As GM has shown, once they had the expertise and manufacturing capabilities, they could quickly move downmarket. By all accounts GM's entry into the space has been a raging success, moving downmarket with the Equinox being available for as low as $27,500.
They obviously aren't to Tesla level sales numbers yet, but they're growing rapidly and I would not count them out of the fight.
https://insideevs.com/news/746177/general-motors-record-2024...
That's because they plan to have a small number of huge factories to keep costs down.
But that means they need cheap ships, and can only sell to places with no car tariffs - which tends to be the countries without an auto industry.
https://www.shs-conferences.org/articles/shsconf/pdf/2024/27...
Just 2018 to 2022, BYD received $5.9B. And that doesn't include all the indirect subsidies that went to suppliers like the battery manufacturers.
It's a part of Chinese government strategy of "build it and they will come". Massively subsidize select industries, dominate the market.
Which is why the EU has put high tariff's on the cars.
Pretty sure they plan to disrupt any market
Obviously an electric vehicle is so much simpler than one with a gasoline engine. We have seen it already with lawn mowers who shrank from huge tractors to nimble robots.
An in particular when you don't start from the Autobahn-eater type of cars.
This is because the LITERALLY CAN'T make money of a non premium product.
And for Tesla is just because Musk is stupid and went ALL-IN on self driving. They literally believe that the market will drop by 80% because of self driving. That's why the only build robotaxi and no model 2. Against the advice of basically everybody in Tesla leadership.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automobile_manufacture...
Today, most of BYD's products use this technology. It's been improved to handle higher charging rates. Seems to work fine. Lithium-ion has better Wh/Kg, and it's still used in some high-end cars, mostly Teslas. BYD's approach has captured the low and medium priced markets.
BYD has announced that they plan first shipments of cars with solid state batteries (higher Wh/Kg) in 2027. Price will be high at first, and they will first appear in BYD's high-end cars. Like these.[3] BYD has the Yangwang U8, a big off-road SUV comparable to the Rivian, and the Yangwang U9, a "hypercar". Just to show that they can make them, probably.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIt5z4wT9RE
[2] https://electrek.co/2025/02/17/byd-confirms-evs-all-solid-st...
I really did not expect to open this and have it be presented by Kryten! Fun surprise! :)
It appears that EV technology is new enough that it's Chinese companies that are the ones innovating, especially in battery technology.
Fundamentally, IMO, EVs are such a simple concept mechanically that any company capable of building a conventional ICE vehicle can build an EV.
It's glib to say that - obviously there's a lot of unsaid complexity (battery back cooling, fitting into the frame, and so on), but the actual drivetrain component is just so simple. That EVs are still expensive is to me a sign that production hasn't ramped up yet. So long as production is limited EVs will remain a luxury product - but I can't imagine that's going to continue for all that much longer with an increasing backlog of used EVs on the market and decreasing battery prices.
Honda and Toyota weren't able to outcompete US manufacturers in the 1980s by offering higher performance vehicles but by delivering similar quality products at lower prices by making use of superior production techniques like Lean and JIT inventory management.
VW Group and Stellantis totally failed to compete with Chinese manufacturers and were driven out of the Chinese EV market almost entirely. Competition is extremely fierce.
>That EVs are still expensive
Look up what they cost in China.
>So long as production is limited EVs will remain a luxury product
Around 50% of new sales in China. Not "luxury" in any meaningful way.
The issue is that EVs do not differentiate themselves by power train. They differentiate themselves by battery and software.