Honda-Präsident nach Besuch bei chinesischem Autozulieferer: „Dagegen haben wir keine Chance“
https://www.motor1.com/news/792130/honda-reacts-china-supplier-strength/
Honda-Präsident nach Besuch bei chinesischem Autozulieferer: „Dagegen haben wir keine Chance“
https://www.motor1.com/news/792130/honda-reacts-china-supplier-strength/
35 Kommentare
Reality sets in , either join them or bow out.
I ask this from complete ignorance- they have the ability to produce quickly, but are their products quality, and do they make the kind of vehicles that would appeal to American markets?
These aren’t consumer retail products where they can flood the market with cheap easy to make copies that are designed to break and be replaced. People expect their cars to last 5 to 10 years and not require significant repair bills in the process.
Also, nobody wants the car market to end up like the cell phone market with a new model every year that doesn’t add much value but keeps going up in price. Plus a proliferation of models makes the repair market insanely complicated and more expensive.
Honda is worried about China, fine. Does the American market have to worry?
I have contacts in an automotive design department at a Chinese university, they helped design the software and UX for Li Auto. Most of us here have never even heard of Li, I certainly hadn’t. Yet they sold nearly as many cars as Audi did globally in 2025.
Most of their production line is robotic, their factory runs on renewables and they build cars that the Chinese middle-classes can afford and that offer more luxury than the European/Japanese premium brands. We (in Europe) are still convinced the quality of our vehicles is better, yet these cars outperform most equally priced competitors with a significant factor. This isn’t just about the size of the market being enormous, this is about the level of competition being murderous. If you don’t make something people want, you just disappear.
Yet our newspapers are still claiming that it’s all because of Chinese state sponsorship. A story we like to perpetuate as an excuse for not competing on what really matters.
They [CEOs] do this to prompt government action against Chinese companies
Honda, which didn’t have a viable EV product until 2024, suddenly realized they are late?
Honda and Toyota have done nothing for 15 years or more to move to EVs, touting hydrogen as a possible solution that’s always five years away. They absolutely could have been solid competitors for the future against the Chinese brands and stuck their fingers in their ears and closed their eyes instead. They are soon to be the Betamax to China’s VHS and they deserve it completely.
There’s a million ways this could have been prevented. If the US had competent leadership over the last decade, if Brexit never happened and the EU grew to dominance, if Nato had quashed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine early instead of sitting on their hands… But at this point competence is at a premium, and in terms of trade deals and alliances, that’s all that really matters.
If the last decade of the fall of the west was all part of the CCP’s plan, then there’s nothing to say other than that plan was absolutely evil, and absolutely genius. They win. Best we can hope for now is that the EU can build itself into enough of a power that it won’t just get subsumed into a patron state like Russia in a few decades.
Congrats Honda president, you had to go to China to realize what we all knew already.
Legacy automakers didn’t want to convert from gas to electric because that would have meant they needed to innovate, so, it was done for them and they are getting left in the dust for it.
The current American political insanity is the nail in the coffin for any legacy automaker that relies on the USA. Mexico and Canada are now welcoming Chinese EVs because of this.
It’s done. It’s over.
We tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!
I recall talking to an software lead from RIM (for anyone who remembers they made the blackberry) – after laughing at the iphone they got their hands on one and it was sheer panic once they saw how it was constructed on the inside
iphone 1 launched in summer of 2007 and RIM stock peaked about a month later before falling off a cliff.
Reality is humbling.
I hate when companies like this don’t just say, „Challenge accepted“, and put some actual R&D into these things. Car market has become so lazy, short term gain, little advancements.
It looks a lot like the dominance of American manufacturing in the last century. China has many interconnected industries in close proximity to each other. You can order custom supplies in the morning and have them that afternoon, made to tight tolerances. Even injection molded plastic parts.
US and Europe are finally seeing the consequences of allowing oligarchs and mega corporations to corrupt their governments and destroy the free market.
Noncompetitive companies designed to funnel money into their owners pockets. Propped up as „too big to fail“ by purchased politicians.
Nonfunctional anti-trust and monopoly enforcement. Again because the government is being paid not to.
Smash and grabs at any promising competition. Using the legal system as a hammer to keep competition down.
Regulatory capture making it impossible for new companies to navigate the legal minefield.
China is going to steamroll US and Europe as they flail helplessly. Because all the existing megacorps have long since been converted into ATM’s for the ultra wealthy. The US especially is owned and run by the ultra rich. Who will suck it dry then fuck right off to one of a dozen other countries where they purchased citizenship.
China mandated common specs for auto parts which means most parts are easily interchangeable by other makes/models/years. (this may or may not be directly related to the article)
Hondas engine is still reliable but the material they use on the car is piss poor half assed.
Plenty of blame to go around for the legacy automakers falling behind. But I keep going back to their u.s. dealers who are god-awful and all hate electric vehicles because they make so much damn money at their freaking service departments even just changing oil.
China will win because they have a long term perspective on things – I think it’s cultural, correct me if I’m wrong. Whereas in the West companies are only worried about the next quarter earnings call. This works for a while, but China is playing the Long Game and in this day and age it might be the right move, especially when it comes to major changes (like switchting away from fossil fuel).
Nothing beats slave labor
japan got signal… make your time.
move zig?
china has been planting the trees that are starting to bear fruit. The US has been chopping their trees down and making the seeds illegal.
Make something that isn’t a disposable, made-to-break POS that costs a fortune each time it needs repaired and people will figure out they should buy from you instead.
I was in Beijing late last year, my first trip since COVID. Electric cars are taking over. Charging is plentiful and cheap. The fit and finish of the cars are great and they are comfortable and quiet. Performance is between good and insane. Connectivity is key, and the navigation systems not only show you the state of the traffic lights ahead of you _in real time_, but also how much longer it will be before it changes. The U.S. are pitifully far behind, and it’s unlikely we will ever get close to catching up.
They should be. China’s ability to scale is unrivaled and when China cares about a thing it produces, it can be the best in the world.
Also suspect in car case, instead if copy/pasting Tesla like all the other companies did and now having to unwind that poor user experience, China was much more selective in what they copied and level of unnecessary complication they added to vehicles. The rest have made their vehicles overly complicated with an eye towards perpetual subscriptions that China does not have an interest in.
Did these people not grow up wirh the Tortoise and the Hare story?
Good thing the land of freedom and capitalism has restored to outright banning the competition instead.
Imagine if we had to actually compete instead of releasing the same gas guzzler every year instead?
Like let’s be real, between a Honda Accord 2010 and a 2026, what has actually changed? A bit better safety and a better looking design? That’s basically it.
Honda, who forgot to use their xp to build electric motorcycles?
They said the same about Evergrande
Of course he doesn’t. I worked for years for a japanese car maker, in japan. There is literally no innovation. Development is slow, “safe” and has to run through 5 circles of approval for the simplest change. Oh, and if a competitor doesn’t already have it? Forget about it. Zero risks and relying completely on their market position.
While Honda’s president did make that statement, he’s saying it in the context that Honda needs to change.
The takeaways from his visit were that those suppliers are entirely focused on low production costs with rverything from procurement to logistics management being entirely automated. Secondly, the Chinese are able to crank out a new model in half the time it takes most automakers. I don’t see many Westerners lining up for that kind of grind culture, assuming jobs are even plentiful.
That’s just one facet of a highly complex industry and a reminder that while it’s easy to criticize legacy automakers they can’t will engineers, factories, domestic supplies chains and capital investment into existence.
The world sent all its manufacturing to China so the 1%, Epstein Class, and shareholders could get rich by not paying a livable wage, now they are starting to get concerned over the obvious outcome.
Was just talking about this recently while looking at the BYD cars since they are coming to Canada. Not even in the market for a new car and im thinking a BYD will be my next car. Chinese cars are going to decimate every other company out there and the only thing holding them back is government policies keeping them limited or out lol. I say fuck it and let the other companies either die out or force them to innovate and compete. They have enjoyed their safe market for how long now and all they have done is use that stance to gouge and profit while offering no real innovation or improvements, at the cost of consumers. The Chinese auto industry is cut throat and has forced them to innovate and achieve in 10 years what everyone else took how long to achieve?
Honda doesn’t have a chance because they fucked all their cars up. Though maybe this will force them back to making simple, reliable, economical vehicles again some day.
And no one saw this coming. [fingers in ears] La la la la la.
I think this quote in this article is meant specifically for the Chinese market, but nevertheless…
I think the economy automakers are in deep shit. Nobody buys a Toyota or a Honda because they’re excited about the brand. They buy them because they’re cheap, safe and reliable. With EVs, reliability is less of an issue, and China can obviously do cheap. They just need to nail down safety and they’ve got the market in their hands.
The luxury brands have a bit more room for now. It will take a long long time for BYD to be seen as a luxury product in the west.
The performance auto market will also be thrown into disarray because EVs can do ridiculous 0-60mph times and it’s not even impressive anymore. It used to be a major selling point.
Visited China last year and that was pretty
much my thought about most industries. They are dominating cybersecurity for example, the ability to create and control entire offensive security universities and work people six days a week at a relatively lost cost is tough to compete against.