• Tango@piefed.ca
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    6 hours ago

    Telling your employees that they might soon have options for who to work for? It’s a bold strategy, Cotton…

  • Treczoks
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    9 hours ago

    They are just moving into the void left by American car brands. Anyone surprised by this?

  • jobbies@lemmy.zip
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    18 hours ago

    I mean, I’d never buy one, but I dont see the harm a little competition.

    • Notyou@sopuli.xyz
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      15 hours ago

      The reason you don’t see harm in a little competition is because that competition won’t make you lose money or work harder in order to generate profits.

      Think about the capitalist/Epstein class for once in your life.

    • Greyghoster@aussie.zone
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      17 hours ago

      I said I would never buy a Chinese car but when I needed to replace my old Subaru I decided I wanted to try an EV and the only reasonable options were Chinese. The MG4 is not perfect but it’s a lot of fun and really cheap to run!

      • stylusmobilus@aussie.zone
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        11 hours ago

        No issues ay? The MGs are copping a bit of a panning in Australia for not quite cutting the mustard against the BYDs and Geelys. Not sure how much of it is justified though.

        • Greyghoster@aussie.zone
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          8 hours ago

          I suspect that the BYD is better however they didn’t have one that met the wife’s requirements. It goes well but has some quirks with not remembering settings, CarPlay can be difficult and the maps have this atrocious habit of chiming when you enter a suburb. Otherwise it’s a car and it was fairly cheap.

          • stylusmobilus@aussie.zone
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            8 hours ago

            Well that’s not the complete panning I’ve heard some give them. Thank you, happy trails with it. It’s a smart move; I’d do it if I could afford to despite concerns about car privacy issues. They can back a house up in a blackout and that alone is enough reason.

  • isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    17 hours ago

    Whelp, guess you shouldn’t have spent years abandoning the legacy of Henry Ford. While I’m certainly glad they’ve let go of his overt racism, they abandoned the positive parts of his legacy too.

    There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.

    -Henry Ford

    Henry Ford would have never done a stock buyback. He designed and improved the Model T to be as cheap as possible. He designed it to be as repairable as possible. He built in clever features like a power takeoff so that farmers could power attachments with their car. He fostered a diverse ecosystem of third party manufacturers that would make accessories and modifications to Model Ts. He didn’t try to sue them or do whatever the 1920s equivalent of locking things behind DRM would be.

    Today, if it lives anywhere, the legacy of Henry Ford lives on in China. American car manufacturers have completely abandoned the vision of creating an affordable vehicle for the common man. Instead, the companies have been completely infested by the MBA class, who realize you can get a higher rate of return by making fewer numbers of extremely expensive cars. Ford invented the assembly line specifically so he could make a car that the average person could afford.

    Henry Ford was a common man born on a small farm, son of an Irish immigrant. Today, Ford Motor Company is lead by CEO Jim Farley, who previously was CEO of McDonalds and Harley-Davidson. His bio from his Wikipedia page:

    Farley was born to a banker father in Buenos Aires, Argentina,[1] where he spent his early years, before moving to Greenwich, Connecticut. Before university, Farley attended Portsmouth Abbey School, a Catholic, college preparatory school in Portsmouth, Rhode Island.[citation needed] He graduated from Georgetown University and then later, the UCLA Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles.[2][1]

    Farley’s grandfather worked at Henry Ford’s River Rouge Plant in 1918.[2] He is a cousin of the entertainers Chris Farley, Kevin Farley, and John Farley. He is also a cousin of Carolina Hurricanes TV analyst and former NHL and AHL player Tripp Tracy.

    Ford Motor Company was founded by a man who came from nothing. Currently it’s lead by a man born with a silver spoon in his mouth. China is recent enough to industrialization that most of its car companies are still led by their original founders, most of whom came from very humble beginnings. I can’t help but think this has a profound impact on how they see the world and the types of cars they seek to build.

    If the American car companies really want to compete, they should adopt a new rule. No executive should have been born to a family making more than 90% of the median household income or have attended an Ivy League school. And they must have an engineering degree and no MBA.

    • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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      6 hours ago

      JFC…Henry Ford was an antisemite and hired thugs to kill workers trying to unionize his factory. He also tried to build his own country and forced workers to eat a diet the dictated. He’s no different than any modern billionaire. He literally murdered workers during the 1930s,

      In the aftermath, Ford Motor Company attempted to control the narrative by destroying news photographs onsite. The surviving photographs were published nationally as evidence of Ford’s brutality, helping to turn public perception in favor of the union.

      The incident had been preceded five years earlier by the 1932 Ford Hunger March, in which hunger marchers were attacked with gunfire from the Miller Road pedestrian overpasses. The site of that attack remained an entrance to the Rouge plant, and the overpass bears the logo of the United Auto Workers in addition to Ford’s.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Overpass?wprov=sfla1

      • unitedwithme@lemmy.today
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        17 hours ago

        Not to mention he spread rumors he was leaving the company to tank its value to then buy out the Dodge Bros for pennies on the dollar.

        I just finished the docuseries lol

        • Tyrq@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          10 hours ago

          Oh there’s a lot more to it than I’m going to briefly link to for those curious enough to follow breadcrumbs

          Another Ford misadventure for the savvy: when he bought 2.5million acres in Brazil to make a rubber plantation factory town, but quickly turned into a disaster. They built suburban homes in a jungle to house local workers while trying to get his American managers to enforce diets on them.

          I guess these ideas seemed good at the time…?lol

  • Greyghoster@aussie.zone
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    18 hours ago

    I was blown away by this documentary on the Chinese EV industry. Can see why the old companies in the west can’t easily adapt, mostly due to mindset and sunk cost fallacy. Roboticics everywhere and cutthroat competition driving innovation.

    Watching  S2026 China’s EV Revolution  in iview https://iview.abc.net.au/show/foreign-correspondent/series/2026/video/NC2604H012S00

  • apftwb
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    16 hours ago

    From the Wikipedia page of the Ford Mustang Mach-E

    In April 2022, Ford stopped accepting new orders for the 2022 model year Mustang Mach-E due to its popularity.

    In June 2022, the CFO of Ford Motor announced that the profitability of the Mustang Mach-E had been wiped out due to increases in the cost of raw materials.[47]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Mustang_Mach-E