Volkswagen seeks to counter rivals with budget EV model

Autoworker salaries have very little effect on the price of cars. The final assembly labor costs are a single digit percentage of the sale price. The corporate workers (myself included) are about the same again, despite being a much smaller percentage of the workforce.

The majority of costs are just the price of raw materials and manufacturing anything, whether in the US or abroad. What Chinese OEMs are doing isn't anything secret, it's just optimizing the other things to hit those price targets. Cutting out dealerships, better value engineering, lower executive/corporate salaries and benefits, cheaper electronics, limited features, vertical integration, and most importantly being willing to sell lower margin vehicles.

Your figures are way out of date. The average Chinese auto worker now earns 21900 CNY/month, or about $36000/year. Even the low end is ~$15k.

https://www.salaryexplorer.com/average-salary-wage-compariso...

Also, Chinese manufacturers will do the same as Japanese and Korean manufacturers before them: work around tariffs by building assembly plants in the US and Europe.

I'd rather pay for a transition out of car-centricity instead of subsidising a dying industry that lobbied against every single move forward in the past few decades. Against air quality, against electric transition, for fossil fuel, against cycling infrastructure, against the safety of other road users. Right now they build only SUVs, mostly hybrids, when we actually need electric Twingos.

VW and Stellantis need to go bankrupt and their technical workers need help to transition to being part of industries that will strive in a low-carbon economy: public transports, bicycles, two-wheels EVs, etc. [0] As for the management of these companies, they can all bloody starve, frankly.

[0] https://ilnousfautunplan.fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Indus..., Claude's summary in English: https://claude.ai/share/695d7c05-25e5-4295-aa09-2bdc8717f8ca

"We"? Do you think the average American would pay more so workers can earn a living wage? Which America do you live in?

Give “we” people the choice to buy a cheap car and see what they would rather choose to do.

Says you. Poorer people in the United Stares would LOVE to have the option for a 10K car. It would really help their standard of living.

I’m happy for you that you can afford to plop $25K down for a car.

I would never pay $20k for a car. No matter who made it.

Does a thriving auto industry mean that its industrial workers can't afford eggs?

> by making the benchmark car to beat

Fun choice of words for the company that famously got caught cheating at the benchmarks

I have the GWM Ora.Very similar feelings about it. Not perfect, but very good. Mainstream/legacy automakers have already lost; They will seek to erect market barriers.

They are massively popular here in Australia, and I've not heard of any issues with quality or safety. They are held to the same standards as everyone else.

The moment you focus on quality, your price can't be that low. Then good luck competing with VW or other cars.

These cars are garbage, people are happy because they are cheap, shiny and have all multimedia and can do 400KM... why not.

Why? We’re told they are mechanically much simpler. Electric motor. No transmission. Why do they cost more?

EVs have less inherent character than internal combustion cars. They're all quiet and refined, with stable handling thanks to a low centre of gravity. Most of them offer far more performance than any normal person needs. A small electric city car doesn't feel all that different to a large electric sedan, it's just smaller. That's an existential threat for legacy auto manufacturers, because it offers fewer points of differentiation against much cheaper Chinese brands.

EVs are less constrained in terms of packaging. The battery and all the working parts are stashed down in the floor, so you can do whatever you like from the wheels up, without having to worry about where you're going to fit the engine or transmission or gas tank.

Some manufacturers are making EVs that look just like their gasoline-powered equivalents, but there's a real possibility that they're headed down a blind alley. I think that manufacturers who fully embrace the design freedoms of EVs and find new ways of creating distinctive experiences will stand a much better chance of surviving the next decade. Weird doesn't mean good, but bland is just a concession of defeat.

They want attention for sales from a younger demographic. That is because old people are too set in their ways to be willing to buy newer models and getting the young to adopt it will eventually produce a new generation of old people who will only buy it. That is how Toyota killed the Avalon. They chased after young people by making the car weirder and weirder, and then the people who actually wanted it could not stand to look at it anymore.

That is my personal opinion that is the result of a small sample set of observations.

I guess it makes the car harder to compare.

If you have a Golf vs E-Golf, you will compare everything from range, weight,...

Yeah they could just call it the Golf EV and be done with it

They don't. A BYD Seal or BYD Dolphin or a Sealion 7 look like 'normal' cars inside and out.

You kid but the median four doors and a hatch appliance car buyer (EV or otherwise) is probably some accountant or school teacher who actually believes that sort of if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear type stuff.

All glory to arstotzka!

The significant part of that story is there's no claim he used cocaine or recreational drugs "on the job" in China ...

  A senior executive for Volkswagen in China has been deported for allegedly using cocaine and marijuana while on vacation in Thailand, according to Chinese authorities and German media reports.

  Germany’s top-selling Bild newspaper [..] reported he tested positive for drug use after returning from a holiday in Thailand.

  Drug use is an administrative offense in China punishable by a 10- to 15-day detention and a fine of up to 2,000 yuan ($280).

  Thailand legalized marijuana in 2022 but Chinese authorities have warned that use of the drug overseas is equivalent to using it at home and subject to the same penalties.

> one reason Chinese EVs aren’t available here is that there’s a 100% tariff on them

Our egg prices are also high because we block Mexican and Canadian imports. Trump continues a multi-decade trend of taxing consumers to subsidise business owners.

And that’s a good thing. Modern cars are rolling surveillance devices. We don’t need CCP eyes in every garage in America. We also don’t want to lose the manufactiring capacity that the domestic auto makers bring.

Last time I was in Germany, I was looking forward to driving something smaller than the usual beasts here in the US, and something with a manual transmission. But when I got to the Munich airport rental counter, they had “upgraded” me to the biggest automatic Volvo SUV I’d ever seen, because they were out of everything else. It was nice enough on the autobahn, but it was a pain in the rear in the small towns.

As someone in the US who generally likes VWs and is interested in an EV as their next car, but who also finds the ID4 way too big this car has my attention.

s/small/cheap/gi

Americans like cheap, especially when there's a lot of economic pressure.

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