America’s Worst Industry
Detroit Committed Suicide, and Tesla is Joining In
Car makers are America’s worst industry.
This isn’t a pollution story, or an urban design story. Cars don’t scale. This is about America’s car companies. They’re stupid.
Ford, GM, and what was then Chrysler spent decades fighting both political parties over CAFÉ standards. Instead of innovating as Toyota did, with hybrids, they hired lobbyists.
The ultimate replacement technology is electric, and the Obama Administration began subsidizing the effort.
Detroit’s answer? Bigger cars and trucks you can’t see a 10-year old over.
Elon Musk took the money and built a $1 trillion company with it. Then he got the American car disease. Instead of building for the mid-market, he gave us the CyberTruck, the ugliest, most useless electric vehicle of all time. Instead of investing in solid state batteries, he let Chinese and Korean companies take away the market.
America’s car companies insist there’s no market for small cars. This is false. There’s a huge market. It’s just dominated by Japanese and Korean brands. Kia, Hyundai, and Toyota all operate large assembly plants in the U.S., and they’re all profitable.
Meanwhile, the EVs we are producing are, like the F-150 “Lightning,” too big to get good range, and too heavy for American roads. You’re going to see a lot of agitation in the next year, demanding that EVs pay more road taxes. They won’t be apportioned as they should be, by weight. It will be a tax on all EVs, and hand the future of transportation to China.
We’re lucky manufacturing isn’t the leading edge of growth anymore. Neither are resources like oil. This is the technology age, and the gating factor to growth are trained, empowered, free, creative minds.
You won’t find them in Detroit. Or at Tesla.
Related, auto industry bafflingly ignoring a market segment. I drive a 2007 Honda Accord coup six-speed stick. I like coupes, have always driven them. I like stick shifts, have always given them. But good luck finding upper-midrange car like that. Honda/Toyota Accord/Camry coupes ended with 2017 models. So I can go up or down -- down to Honda Civic, up to ... Lexus/Infiniti/BMW/etc. You'd (well, at least I) think what I'm looking for should be sweet spot for fair number of consumers: youngsters, early marrieds, empty nesters. I drive mostly alone, if not alone, mostly with my wife. Occasionally/rarely I stuff people in back seat. So coupe -- with larger doors -- is optimized for my use.
I've badgered dealers, manufacturers at industry/trade events to make more coupes. Nobody buys them, they say -- sure -- because you don't advertise/market or even build them. As this piece said, "Detroit’s answer? Bigger cars and trucks you can’t see a 10-year old over" -- but it's not just Detroit.
Stick is separate issue -- last I heard, 1% cars sold no have them. Besides making driving more enjoyable, they're excellent anti-theft feature -- see funny online videos of failed car thefts.
For a while I was interested in Hyundai Veloster -- compromise three-door model, one door driver side and two doors other side. Went for a test drive, was about to back out of spot at dealer. Looked back, no visibility - huge rear pillars. Got out, gave back keys -- told salesman, I'm not driving this menace. That's a separate question, of course -- insane design decisions on cars that ARE built.