Historic crash: German car industry collapses as Chinese imports and US slump destroy market
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Historic-crash-German-car-industry-collapses-as-Chinese-imports-and-US-slump-destroy-market.1258707.0.html
Posted by diacewrb
34 Comments
I’m an expat in Germany. I’ve been looking for a new car for awhile and simply having talks with Audi (dealers) is a pain. Being in Sales myself I have the feeling I’m constantly being fooled. Not sure if the reasons in the title are the only ”external” ”macro” factors that bring this sector down. Also, the pricing is insane and only increasing. Last time I mailed a dealer about the last time it had an official ”check” I got mailed back: Lots of enquires come for this car. You can have a 500,00 EUR discount if you’d like to. How does that even go together and it’s not answering my question.
Check who is selling the most cars here…it’s for sure not China 🤣
The ultimate sign that the German automotive industry might be in trouble is that they have to undercut Dacia with their pricing, at least in Hungary. The cheapest new VW Polo is actually cheaper than the cheapest Dacia Sandero. Only by about 50 euros, but still cheaper. And the Dacia is better equipped.
All that as it may be, Germany is still leading the car production market with over 4 mil units produced annually.
The profit loss is the real pain for them … and for anyone else under capitalism.
German car tech is completly retarded. the 100k Audi A6 uses a 7 year old processor.
>The global market is delivering the final, devastating blow to Europe’s struggling industry. Exports to the USA, which is still the most important customer for German vehicles with a turnover of €28.5 billion, slumped by a catastrophic 18 per cent last year. The crash in the Far East is even more dramatic. China has slipped from second to sixth place as an export market. Exports to the People’s Republic have fallen to their lowest level since 2009.
The Euro car industry was warned a long time ago that they need to change to affordable electric or they’ll lose in the future.
**Current average monthly car note in the US is at an all time high of $800.**
I worked in the car industry for 15 years. Got out of it 7 years ago. No idea what this is gonna do to America. We are a car nation. Public transit is a joke, and often times it is propped up by taxes/government spending in small towns.
Funny reading this a minute after seeing this article talking about [BMW confirming 7 billion profits](https://www.reddit.com/r/BMW/comments/1s7qb1c/bmw_confirms_7_billion_profit_for_2025/) for 2025.
Are we going to talk about this topic being on a notebook check website?
I live in EU and almost do not see any Chinese cars. My car ir WV, my colleague’s new car is electric Kia. I asked him why he didn’t buy cheaper Byd car, he laughed that he didn’t want to burn alive 🙂
Who would have thought that building expensive electric cars in a world that’s forever stuck in a cost of living crisis would be a problem. Nobody is going to pay 40k€ for a run of the mill sedan/SUV with a handful of useless gadgets, regardless of how aspirational and successful it makes them look.
People aren’t flocking to chinese brands because they like their politics. It’s because they’re cheap. The only ones competing with them are Renault/Dacia because they’re affordable.
Yeah… well… you seen the price tag of German cars vs. the quality offered?
No worries, Merz is already working on Abwrackprämie 3.0! /s
When you price your products to only be affordable on a loan and then inflation hits and most people no longer want to have an extra mortgage payment each month for something that is not only a depreciating money pit in the long term, but they also wont even end up owning.
Fucking lol.
Did I mention diddling with regulations so that you have a competitive advantage but now that means you cant realistically lower prices because of all the regulatory bullshit you lobbied for?
Good luck shifting those 40K Golfs and Astras
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Let’s add another subscription to use a fucking wiper, that will certainly solve the problem.
This doesn’t surprise me. I’m seeing more and more Chinese cars in Germany particularly BYD cars.
Yeah. Well. Over price things for years like they have and and you can expect to be undercut by someone.
Time for them to start competing again. Rather than relaxing on their podgey posteriors.
Guess after the good ol’ days of cheap Russian energy is gone, the management is not sure how to make their paycheck fatter. More job cuts, zero investments, cutting down on research budget.
Who would have known?
Don’t worry I’m sure all of our pockets will be emptied out to save the car industry, it’s everybody’s favourite nationalistic vanity piece after all.
EU and UK political leadership is at fault here. The objective wasn’t EVs specifically it was to drive down pollution. We should have prioritised and incentivised small city EVs at high volume to target the dominant sources of car pollution. Instead we let the car manufacturers focus on investment recovery via high end expensive cars. The EU car makers think they are too big to fail and that govts will bail them out. We should let them die like the dinosaurs they are
The uncomfortable truth is that this isn’t just an automotive problem, it’s a broader cultural one. A mix of complacency and a certain German arrogance that assumes whatever worked in the past will automatically dominate the future.
German cara cost more than ever and their build quality is worse than ever, any wonder why their car industry is collapsing?
So their unwillingness to adapt to modern technologies finally bites them in the ass? Same old same old doesn’t cut it anymore?
Germany is that guy from your hometown who still wears the high school jacket and acts like his football accomplishments are relevant 20 years later. Germany just refuses to wake up.
favourite words of the world: crash, collapse, destruction.
Man, I don’t want to engage in too much metaposting but this kind of thing was forewarned about extensively. There have been many posts about Europe’s economic decline and headwinds and typically the reaction in here is to accuse it of being some kind of foreign PsyOp to demoralise the amazing Europe that has no problems and its all just Americans/Russians/whoever being jealous of our superb social welfare model. You see this kind of instinctive kneejerk response to almost any article of Europe’s economic relative (or absolute) decline. Its by far the most common and emotionally charged response to get.
So is this a good enough reason to nationalise the car industry or we gonna just let them be bought out by foreign countries?
So many German auto-industry bootlickers in these comments. Probably the same people who will automatically cum out “supply and demand” and “over-regulation” whenever there’s a economic debate.
German auto industry is simply too overpriced for what it offers these days. The goal of progress is to make good products available to the wider population. Especially in the auto industry this means increased safety for everyone if nothing else.
This is nothing else except shareholder greed. If they do collapse, their fate is deserved.
Here’s my anecdote: With all that’s currently happening (and some family reasons) I decided now’s the time to get an EV.
I looked into VW first. One vehicle in stock, to be leased at 800€/month. Lots of gratuitous luxury features I guess. Other models are coming if I’m willing to wait until September.
Peugeot 2–4 months waiting time but a lot more affordable. BYD surprisingly not much different.
Now I’m taking a KIA which is available right away, has a better battery range and costs <300€/month.
I swear, the German car industry doesn’t *want* to survive.
Every financial, technological, marketing sign was there but no, the automotive industry must cling on the internal combustion engine.
Notebookcheck.net? LOL, GTFO with this bullshit.
I love how it’s always China the issue and not the dumbfucks at the helm: heavy investment in China rather than Europe? Well guess which engineer, who starts at the EU company will move to a local one to improve the local community? They allowed such a change because “cheap labour means better $$”. And now we see the return in investment, 2035 EV law turn to shit thanks to the heavy lobbying because they would rather fuck everyone else rather than starting to work on the issue
Energy, materials and workers are far too expensive in Europe. You can get all of the three in China at a fraction of the cost and they are just as skilled.