Chery says Australia should restart car manufacturing
Posted by holyhesh@reddit | cars | View on Reddit | 37 comments
“A top Chery executive says more robots on production lines – and help from the government – could make producing cars in Australia viable again.”
Toucann_Froot@reddit
Replacing humans jobs with robots and subsidizing it via tax dollars doesn't sound like the kind of manufacturing I'd want in my country
MajesticBread9147@reddit
It's the only realistic way to have manufacturing "come back" to high labor cost countries, other than things where the country of origin itself is a big selling point (Swiss watches and Italian handbags) or it's too bulky to economically ship overseas.
You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Toucann_Froot@reddit
I never said I wanted cake
Shmokesshweed@reddit
Robots? The same ones producing cars in China, Thailand, and the U.S.? 🤣
This is nothing but a stir to create support for hundreds of millions or billions of taxpayer subsidies to open a factory.
franksandbeans911@reddit
Could also be the trojan horse of Chinese cars being rebranded as Aussie cars just coming out of one of their plants. That's how they crack tougher markets. Did the same with Geely/Volvo.
The_Owl_Man_1999@reddit
Iirc there was an actual plan to sell SAIC stuff as Holdens to try and make their lineup less Daewoo so it's funny you say that
RobinsShaman@reddit
Build all these factories with robots then when we make sure they go out of business will buy them for pennies and make our own Chinese cars. 🙃
Thomas_633_Mk2@reddit
We don't have a tariff wall (though I'm sure one would be rebuilt if need be). We saw in the 2000s that Australian built cars struggle to sell in the US anyway.
The most likely outcome is the government sponsoring CDK production, or the modern equivalent. Ship an Omoda (or a Cannon, or a Sealion, or an MGS5) over in parts, bolt it all up here, get the government to tariff everyone else to protect those jobs.
kstetter@reddit
That's how car manufacturing starts
Thomas_633_Mk2@reddit
It is, and perhaps Chery wants their own walled garden down under.
kstetter@reddit
Volvo still has Swedish designs and engineering on top of Chinese technology. If they do a Australian version of that it would be amazing.
costafilh0@reddit
Unless they put 100% tariffs on Chinese cars, not going to happen, and if it does, not gonna matter.
RacerM53@reddit
I thought tarrifs don't work?
PastPalpitationCry@reddit
they do but people don't like the short term price increases
Captain_Alaska@reddit
What do you mean 'short term' lol. Car prices in Australia are significantly cheaper than they were 30 or even 20 years ago because we stopped with our tariffs.
PastPalpitationCry@reddit
Short team until the local manufacturing is set up.
If for instance, cheap cars from elsewhere were to completely kill local producers then the loss of Jobs and its effect on the economy would be worse that the savings from local consumers.
Captain_Alaska@reddit
Those figures I provided are for a locally assembled car, Toyota did not cease operations here until 2016.
PastPalpitationCry@reddit
But they did eventually cease production right? As you said
Captain_Alaska@reddit
Yes, because it’s prohibitively expensive to build cars here, so if you apply tariffs to force local production it pushes the prices of all cars up. There is no ‘short term’ price increase.
PastPalpitationCry@reddit
Yes, which is better than having your consumers import fully foreign build cars and transferring wealth out of the country. You do realize that the job loss from this and the subsequent economic impact is worse?
Captain_Alaska@reddit
As opposed to spending billions of dollars on propping up foreign owned companies?
Is it? Can you point to the economic downfall of Australia that happened when we phased out our tariffs?
PastPalpitationCry@reddit
Aren't you spending billions on local companies? Since they have to employ Australians.
The Toyota plant was 3000 layoffs alone. Motor vehicle manufacturing employment plummeted by 42%, across Toyota, Ford Holden.
Sources:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12219199/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21681376.2022.2078737#abstract
Captain_Alaska@reddit
What local companies? We've never had a successful large scale local automaker, everything here has been an arm of a foreign company. Ford, GM, Toyota, Nissan, etc.
Yeah mate business shut down everyday. If you want to make accusations on the wider job market or economy try checking our employment rates or GDP and see how much of an effect there was.
Most of these people are still in the industry because we still build vehicles and vehicle components, just not wholesale passenger cars. As an example we have entire businesses that bulk convert LHD full sized trucks for our market using Australian designed and manufactured parts.
AngrySoup@reddit
As with all things, whether something works or not depends on
1) What your priorities are and what you're trying to do
2) If the trade-offs (because there are always trade-offs) make sense and are worth it
Put some thoughts into those things.
mantenner@reddit
Australians don't care about supporting Australian industry. We're not patriotic like other countries, mainly because we have so little identity any more and generally have such a steady flow of immigrants that will support manufacturers and cars from where they're from paired with the main issue being a tough economy where people prioritise cost over personal reasons i.e. supporting local industry.
Australian manufacturing would do absolutely nothing for Australians, and I say that as a prior falcon and territory owner with a family of Commodore owners.
Uptons_BJs@reddit
The problem with Australia was always that it didn’t have a big enough ecosystem. With three manufacturers, and a tough tariff regime, they could have enough car manufacturing to keep them in business.
With only one manufacturer interested, they can’t keep the suppliers in business
HiTork@reddit
Australia needs to export cars for their auto industry to survive. Ford and GM's Australian local manufacturing arms essentially collapsed because they primarily served a home market consisting of only about 27 million people. That may have worked when it was mostly just them in the 20th century, but as competitors from other countries came in and established themselves, their market shares drastically shrunk. In other words, it just didn't make sense for auto manufacturers to pour in money to design and build vehicles for such a small market.
What few exports GM's Australian arm produced in their later years wasn't enough. It was essentially a handful of Chevrolet SS sedans and Caprice police cars to the US, and a few other tiny markets like the Middle East.
kstetter@reddit
Australians designed some of the best cars in the world, I don't see why Australia shouldn't restart manufacturing.
harrw626@reddit
$$$
jessicalacy10@reddit
hard to see large scale car manufacturing returning given costs supply chains and global competition
Possible_Head_1269@reddit
australia has so many raw materials they could dig up and use, they could figure something out if they cared enough to
Angry_Robot@reddit
The V8 Holdens GM imported as Pontiacs were fire. Then GM killed off Holden and Pontiac.
Doctah_Whoopass@reddit
GWM has the opportunity to do something really funny and cool with that new 4.0 v8 theyre cooking up
V8-Turbo-Hybrid@reddit
After heard BYD doing salver labors in Brazil and even Hungary, no body trusts Chinese automaker goodly treating their employees whatever more automation production or not.
Seeker80@reddit
thefumingo@reddit
It's now a iCar GT Interceptor in Cyberpunk Dystopia
holyhesh@reddit (OP)