cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/60717426
China’s EV manufacturers have a new target market in mind: commercial trucks.
Europe’s legacy heavy-duty trucking segment could soon face some serious competition.
Trucks built by Chinese automakers could beat out current battery-electric truck prices by 30%.
Contrary to what the other comments seem to suggest all the big European truck makers have good electric truck options that are already being sold and used. This isn’t about innovation, it’s about price. The Chinese trucks aren’t better, they’re cheaper. In fact, the Windrose truck seems very much worse than the European options for the truck driver, as it’s useability isn’t great. But that’s because it’s designed to be cheap, with the drivers seat in the middle for example, so they can sell the same model in right hand drive and left hand drive markets. So this isn’t about truck makers who have been sleeping, it’s about truck makers suddenly being confronted with prices they simply can’t compete with.
Exactly. It is quite absurd: our products are more expensive because, i.a., we have put limits to the exploitation of workers.
Yet, you have those that normally should be very much pro workers’ rights being the one singing the praises constantly for China.
Our companies could of course keep up: by also moving production to a country where there’s as little ‘obstacles’ in the way for profits, as in limits to the exploitation of the worker. No more production under the conditions European workers fought for, but a race to the bottom for the cheapest conditions. Sounds great! /s
that may be some of the reason but China’s move to automation and robotics means they’ve made incredible jumps in productivity.
An example
https://www.businesstoday.in/visualstories/news/china-builds-a-car-every-60-seconds-why-beijings-auto-assembly-is-the-fastest-on-earth-228157-24-04-2025
Unions while important work to ensure they protect jobs and better their employees safety and well being, they’re typically super conservative (in the sense of things wanting to stay the same) instead of being part of the broader solution around how to share productivity gains more equally amongst the wider population.
Yeah I’m surprised by everyone here. European Truck companies are famously top tier and have been innovating a lot.